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Alright. I'm retiring Wartales, The Skelmar Invasion for now. Why? Because at the moment, it is broken for me. I'll start by saying that this scenario is actually pretty cool. The Skelmar are a more barbarian tribes-esque people from what I can tell, fierce and overwhelming, with pet Sabre-tooth tigers and such. And the actual scenario set-up of trying to save and unite Ormance soldiers while looking for one of the Ormance leaders, is effective. All that is great. The Skelmar are a lot of fun to battle.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3459873943
But there is a new gameplay mechanic added (actually several tied to one overarching gameplay mechanic), which is to take over Castles or fortified locations via siege battle and then total invasion. This takes place over two stages. The actual siege, where you try to break into the bastion using battering rams and your soldiers (of course), and the second phase, where you have to kill the enemy commander and re-capture and raise your flag, then defend the flag for set amount of time. And this is the specific gameplay mechanic that was broken for me.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3459873999
Unfortunately, when I got to the commander of the first fortress, the game didn't register him as a combatant. I could right click on him to check his stats, but I was unable to target him directly and he was unaffected by area effects as well. And he also didn't get a turn in combat. He basically was just a bump on a log for all intents and purposes. The same can also be said of the second stage archer walls, which also were there but not there. As a result, it was obviously impossible to capture the flag, and as a result of that result, I am unable to complete that quest, which is necessary to advance the DLC's scenario. This is not the first game breaking bug I've encountered in Wartales (it's the third actually: one in Ludern, one during the base game's final story battle in Drombach, and this one), but it is the first one with no obvious end around solution. I did the entire two stage battle twice, killing all the enemies (except the commander and the two final archer walls) hoping maybe something would change, but it was the same both times. And since I am a larger battle type player, that was like four hours of fighting with no end result.
So, I'm done for now. I don't feel like trying different methods for hours and hours to hopefully get the game to respond differently, and Shiro's bug reporting system is subpar (still waiting on a response to my other bug reports lol) and it almost seems like their intent in redirecting bug reports is to keep them off the game's forum so they can ignore them, at least until they feel like looking into it. Since their focus is clearly creating more DLC scenarios for the game, bug fixing seems to be low on their priority list, and that is evident by how long the other bugs I referenced have existed without being fixed despite many reports by many players over months and indeed a couple years, for the same exact bugs.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3459874065
Anyway, I'm retiring this scenario for now pending an actual bug fix and am also suggesting that you don't buy this until such is forthcoming. It's a roll of the dice as far as whether you will encounter this significant bug or not. For $19.99 you shouldn't have to rely on chance, no matter how cool the scenario is (and this is a super awesome scenario).
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