The Castle of Warren

Size: 2x2 (Small) Overall Terrain: Mountainous Island 24 Hour Speed: Normal Stage Music: Thunder Overall Difficulty: 1 Stage Boss: Warren Moon

City & Roshian Temple Information Cities (3) Hidden Cities (1) Roshian Temples (1) Buried Treasure (2) Felnamia Zeltenia RT #1: W of Daskania 1) SW of Volzak Rebel Base On the NE most island   2) Small island S of Volzak       Felnamia Boss Castle         Daskania         NE corner of the main island

Stage Shop Wares

There’s no shop on this stage! It is something of a tutorial, after all...

Neutral Encounters

LV: 8 Cockatris LV: 8 Dragon LV: 8 Wyrm Ocean? Mountains? Ocean?

I’m not exactly sure where these guys hang out.  My guess would be that the Dragon is lurking in the mountains somewhere, and the other two beasts are found over the watery areas. You will probably have to come back after to find them, as I have never discovered any while doing the stage.  Getting these types of characters this early will go along way in helping those Amazon & Fighters that you have!

Enemy Units

Consider yourself lucky! There are no enemy units on this stage!  The main reason why there is no opposition is because this stage is a "practice stage" to get you used to the controls, moving around the map, and all of those types of things.

Beat The Stage!

Prologue:  Warren Moon, one of the most respected wizards on the entire continent, wishes to fight the Empire.  He's seen too many false leaders and time-wasters, and will only join the true leader of a rebellion - the warrior who proves himself or herself worthy of the task.  What do ya know, that’s you!  To be that leader, you must liberate the entire island, and then take on and defeat the Wizard himself.

Deployment Time!
Try not to get too overwhelmed!  There will be no enemy units this time around to mess with your plans, so you should have no problems getting from place to place. You’ll have free reign of the whole island, tiny though it may be. You’ve only got the one unit, and there aren’t too many towns or temples to confuse you, so it should be pretty obvious what to do!

Step 1:  This is the first stage of the game, so you may as well take the time to familiarize yourself with all of the commands and controls if this is your first go around with Ogre Battle.  All that you have to do is liberate all of the cities and the single Roshian Temple on the map in order to meet the requirements that Warren has put before you in order to face him in battle.  No biggie.  You can see the temple and the town of Daskania, but the other town, Zeltenia, is hidden. So, take the main road, and move your Opinion Leader’s unit along it to the town of Daskania.  Save the Roshian Temple for when you make your way to the boss castle of Volzak. 

M.O.B.Q. Tip!

Because the size of this stage is so small, there are few towns, and, most importantly, no enemy units, this is the stage where I love to get a head start on my Reputation and Opinion Leader’s Charisma & Alignment.  I make sure that when I liberate the towns & temple that I pull any of these Tarot Cards: “Hierophant,” “Empress,” “Priestess,” “Emperor,” or any of the cards that increase Reputation.  Even if you want to go for the more, well, evil endings, you need to have at least some Reputation in order to eventually get the “BRUNHILD” (Brunhild) and any special characters if you so desire. And, if you get a bad bunch of cards as you are going through this stage, just reload and go at it again!  It doesn’t take that long really.  This trick is especially helpful for the SNES version where there is no in-game saving!

Step 2:  After liberating Daskania, move through the shallow water to the northeastern-most island in the series of small islands. The town of Zeltenia is hidden here. But that's not all!  Upon liberating this town, you will meet up with Lans, a knight of the former Royal Zenobian Army.  After listening to his story, he joins you, no questions asked! You've just got your first special character!

Ally!

Step 3:  You are probably itching to deploy your new unit, but I would advise against it. Your Opinion Leader’s unit should be good enough to deal with Warren, and it will save you some Goth in the process, which you don’t have a lot of right now!  Make your way back along the main road towards the Roshian Temple.  Once you liberate the temple, you are now able to to challenge Warren to battle!  However, before you do, there are a few things you may want to do first.

Step 4:  Before you confront the boss, search out the two buried treasures. Whatever you find will help your Front Row Fighters immensely.  You have to be careful about getting the one that is located nearby the boss castle of Volzak, however, because if you wander to close, you initiate the boss battle! Another reason why you should get these items now and not upon your return trip is because you want a few days to pass.  This way, you will gain some tribute Goth from the towns you have liberated, and it will give you that little bit of an extra jump in your quest. As long as you don't take more than two or three days before completing the stage, you don't have to worry about any bad effects on your Reputation.  At this point, it almost can't get any lower...  And yet a third reason is that you don't have to return to the stage once you have beaten it. There is absolutely nothing of note here once Warren is dispatched, unless you want to mine for neutral encounters.  Get ready to...

Fight It Out!!

Boss Time!

Warren Moon Ally! Wizard HP 102 LV 4 STR 49 CHA 51 AGI 65 ALI 42 INT 75 LUK 54     LV: 4 Wizard           2 Targeted

There is no excuse for losing to Warren.  I mean, it’s five on one! If you lose, go and sell your copy on Ebay so that someone more worthy, with real gaming skillz, can own this game!  He is the only guy in the unit, and he only gets a total of two attacks. Granted, they are Targeted attacks, but still! It should only take about three or four hits to beat him.  The only possibly way that you can lose is if almost every single character of yours misses, and he manages to kill your Opinion Leader, who he most definitely will target.  I’ve heard embarrassing stories about people actually dying here. If such a pathetic thing does happen, you have to start the whole game over again! In effect, you are one of the poser wannabe heroes that Warren has been complaining about! If you are super paranoid about losing, you could use Tarot Cards in this battle. Snicker The “Star” card would be my first choice really, and any other damage card that you might have. When you do manage to defeat him, he will join your rebellion, contented in knowing that you are the next great hero. With Lans already aiding your cause, that makes two special characters already!! Not too bad for only one stage’s worth of work!

Available Items

There aren’t any special items of any kind to be found on this stage!  Once again, it is a training mission. Don’t worry, though, as you’ll have plenty of stages to make this up on!

Aftermath

Other than the two buried treasures, there is nothing of note to come back to this stage for.  However, after you beat this first stage, you’ll have a very nice surprise when you look at your Army Screen. You now have tons of characters to build units with! You can probably make seven to eight decent units at this point, mostly comprised of Amazon & Fighters.  The character classes that you will get depend on which type of starting Opinion Leader you have. The ‘Goodly’ hero will net you some Clerics and Knights, the evil variety will provide Wizards, etc.

As far as what units you should make, that is up to you. The one thing that is really important is to add a Gryphon to your Opinion Leader’s unit. This way, his/her unit will have a High Sky terrain type, and you can have him/her respond to anything very quickly. I would also point out that the maximum number of units that you can deploy on any stage is 10, but you don’t want to make anything near that mark this early. It will stress your Goth, and you will get much better characters (and special ones!) later on, so it’s a waste of time to develop characters you will not end up using.