Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos/The Spirits of Ashenvale

Two days later, along the borderlands of Ashenvale forest....

Mission Objectives
🇨🇴
 * Main Quest - Slash and Burn
 * Amass 15 000 lumber

🇨🇴
 * Optional Quest - Furbolg Chieftain
 * Slay the Furbolg Chieftain

🇨🇴
 * Optional Quest - Destroy the Trees of Life
 * Destroy the Trees of Life

🇨🇴

Overview
This scenario is quite easy, so you should be able to win with any reasonable approach. However, you should run through the first few minutes a couple of times so that you can get a good start. This walkthrough describes a cautious, analytical approach, but at some point, you will realize that there is no room for finesse here. Due in large measure to the fact that you can't heal your troops, you are reduced to brute force. Just produce a large army, smash part of the enemy position, rinse and repeat. Your casualties will be horrendous.

Shaman spells
It may be a bit tricky to figure out just exactly what Shamans do.
 * The Purge spell doesn't seem to be terribly useful here. It can't be auto-cast, so it requires a lot of micromanagement to use it at all. It is good against summoned units, which doesn't apply here. It can remove positive buffs from enemy units, which doesn't seem to apply here. It can slow the MOVEMENT of enemy units, which is almost irrelevant to missile troops. It can remove negative buffs from your own units, but the only time that seems to matter is if your entire army is fleeing, so you may save a unit or two, at the cost of losing the Shaman. Overall, don't expect to use this much, or at all, in this scenario.
 * Despite the name, Lightning Shield is actually an offensive spell. DO NOT CAST THIS ON YOUR OWN UNITS. This can be useful if there are a bunch of enemy units clumped together. Again, this cannot be auto-cast.

A significant bug
It turns out that certain game functions proceed in the background while the initial cinematic is playing. Normally, this doesn’t matter, but it has an important effect here. Specifically, there is a thin screen of trees that isolates your initial base from the rest of the map, and some Peons are busily cutting through it while the cinematic plays. If you watch the entire cinematic, then there will be a hole in the forest barrier a few seconds later. On the other hand, if you use Esc to bypass the cinematic, then your Peons don’t manage to harvest any wood before you can give them direct orders. However, the amount of wood in your initial stockpile is the same in either case.

The difference can be seen clearly in the two screenshots included here. One is taken after the cinematic ends; the other is taken after bypassing the cinematic. In the first case, three trees have already been chopped down, with two more about to follow. In the second case, the Peons have harvested two wood each. Note that trees in this scenario provide 25 wood.

You need to decide which way you’re going to play it, but in either case, don’t let your Peons chop a large hole in the screen. Also, don’t move through the hole yet!

Strategy
The first thing to note is that there is no gold mine hiding anywhere in your base! The consequence is that you can only afford to build two Towers until you have a source of gold, because you need to retain 450 for a Great Hall, and something for repairs. The second thing you should realize is that you still don’t have any healing options. Only buildings and mechanical units can be repaired, and only Trolls and Grom have a high healing rate.

As soon as you have a small exit from your base, pull all of your Peons off wood harvesting. Two of them should continue harvesting in the SE corner, two will build Towers, and two will hide in Burrows to give you some preliminary air defense. One Tower should be built near the exit, and the other should be in the NW corner, so that you have some attempt at comprehensive air defense.

Send Grom around your base to harvest all the Sprites and collect 60 experience points. Assign control groups to all your units. This is critical for the Raiders, because Ensnare cannot be auto-cast. It is a really good idea to save the game as soon as your Towers are finished.

It is time to leave your base. Send only Grom, due to his high survivability. This action triggers a small attack from dark blue, and later attacks follow this one. Get a Mirror Image and kill them off. Note that Images can explore as well as Grom himself, and they are going to "die" anyway, and your enemies won't get any useful experience by killing them, and creeps don't get experience, so when you are done with an Image, just send it running off into the wild black yonder. You will detect a small gold mine a short distance outside your base, and a Goblin camp to the right of that. This activates the “Furbolg quest”.

Scout around the mine. The coast is clear, but keep harvesting Sprites with Grom. Send a Peon to build a Great Hall near the mine. Send your Raiders over there for local defense. About this time, you will be attacked by two Gryphon Riders. Your initial base can defend itself, but if they attack your expansion, you will need to commit your Raiders. Send any wounded Raiders back into your initial base, and send healthy units forward if necessary. You will have to deal with a second ground attack before your Great Hall is finished.

As soon as your Great Hall is finished, send three Peons to mine gold. Send a fourth Peon to build, first, a Burrow to give your miners a place to hide, and then three Towers across the NW approach to your expansion. As gold becomes available, produce 4 Trolls and then 2 Grunts. This puts you at 36 food, where you will hold for the time being. Upgrade everything as rapidly as possible. Meanwhile, scout with Grom and any Images left over from combat. You should quickly locate a dark blue base just SW of your initial base. If Grom can kill some isolated units, he should do so, but he should run away from tough fights at this time. His major spells make him an excellent raider.

Research the "Pillage" ability before attacking enemy buildings, because it will give you additional gold. You also get a bit of wood this way, but that turns out to be entirely irrelevant.

Save the game just before attacking the dark blue base just SW of your initial base. You should have no difficulty eliminating this position, which turns out to be only an outpost. Surprise! You just got 3,000 wood! You will get 3,000 wood for every Tree of Life that you chop down, you dastardly Orc! Don't forget to pillage, i.e. when only buildings are left, attack them with only Grunts or Raiders.

With your huge new wood stockpile, build 3 more Towers at the western exit from your expansion, and then 3 more at the northern exit. Your position is now secure. LOL. This is a good time to do some exploring. However, avoid exploring at night, because the Elves can hide at night, as can some creeps, and the creeps don't necessarily sleep at night, and your sight range is reduced.

The mass casualty phase
Most of the rest of the scenario will be a huge battle of attrition. Every time you send your army out to attack something, it seems, an enemy counter-attack overruns your base. One of the factions attacks with big batches of Gryphon Riders, which can do some serious damage by themselves. However, the big problem is the attacks that include artillery; these can erase big chunks of your base and big chunks of your army. Despite the large amount of forest, there really aren't any good choke points, so you have to defend the entire perimeter all the time, and by the time you realize that this is going to happen over and over again, it's too late to do much about it.

The first big problem that you face in this phase is that you have very little gold, so you absolutely must secure a second expansion immediately. The only realistic possibility is the mine in the south of the map, which is guarded by a camp of Trolls. Go there and clear them out. You will acquire a Potion of Greater Healing and, in a hut, a Crystal Ball. There are two subsidiary problems. One is that your second expansion is very close to a strong enemy base. The other one is that you now need to protect two widely separated locations.

(being revised)

Have Grom travel east from here to the goblin workshop to start the optional quest "Furbolg Chieftain" the Furbolgs have been giving the goblins trouble, so after slaying the chieftain the goblins will let Grom use their Shredders which help with the lumber gathering quite a bit.

Take Grom and move him towards the small circle on your mini map, it should be west of the mines, use Grom to soften up the first wave of Furbolgs and bring them back to the mines so the rest of your army can finish them off. Recruit 3 more grunts, a Catapult and a Raider plus upgrade everything at the War Mill again. Take two Raiders and two Grunts with Grom to finish off the second small wave of Furbolgs. Before engaging the Furbolg Chieftain make sure you have at least two Raiders and three Grunts with Grom; also, make use of Grom's Mirror Image technique, with this you should be able to take him out with ease. Train two more Grunts and three more Raiders and now with the Chieftain dead you can collect your reward from the Goblin merchant! He will present you with two Shredders which will collect Lumber at a much faster pace than the Peons.

Take Grom and his army and head directly west from your main base, you will eventually run into another one of the Night Elf bases which will contain yet another Ancient Tree. Do your best to destroy as much Night Elf structures as you can, when you are running low on troops retreat back to the mines to build your troops back up again, in the mean time send Grom directly north to deal with a few Night elves and to destroy an Ancient Tree. By now you should almost be nearing our lumber quota, take Grom and head directly northwest to collect a Tome of Agility, before entering the circle use Mirror Image to make this fight against the Forest Spirit a little easier.

Beside the Blue base is a mine Guarded by a few Night Elves and Trolls, send Grom in to dispose of them and build your new Great Hall here. Grab all your Peon's that were mining the previous mine and send them to the new one, also build two Guard Towers at the northern entrance, keep an eye out for your outpost where the old mines used to be at, there will be a few rushes from the Night Elves here.

By collecting 15000 units of lumber the mission will be won. Just keep on defending until you have reached your quota (which should be very soon) or proceed to destroy all Night Elf forces (which might take longer). Completing optional quest gives exactly 15000 units of lumber as each Tree of Life gives 3000 units upon destruction and there are five of them.

Treasures

 * Health Stone from the Furbolg Chieftain. His location is revealed upon picking up optional quest.
 * Crystal Ball is hidden in one of the huts in Forest Troll Camp, directly west from Grom's base.
 * Potion of Greater Healing from the Dark Troll Warlord.
 * Boots of Speed guarded by Forest Spirits below the small Elf Base next to Troll's encampment.
 * Potion of Restoration north from the Furbolg camp.
 * Tome of Agility right in the middle of the map.