Racial relations-wise...

-5 Morale for Orc presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Demonic presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Undead presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Light Human presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Traitor Human presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Dark Elf presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Light Dwarven presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Zwergr presence in allies.
-3 Morale for Viking presence in allies.

... Elves are now hostile to even Light Humans, which have historically been the only non-Elf-non-Neutral group they could tolerate. The forces of Light are racist jerks.

Dark Elves, meanwhile...

-5 Morale for Light Human presence in allies.
-1 Morale for Traitor Human presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Light Elf presence in allies.
-5 Morale for Light Dwarven presence in allies.
-2 Morale for Zwergr presence in allies.
-3 Morale for Viking presence in allies.

... as usual for Dark races, they flip the Light/Dark relations and in the process end up with far less racial tension than their Light counterparts.

Elemental Power has been dropped as the Elven factional Ability and been replaced with:

Known Enemy
Each time this stack targets an enemy, the attacking stack's crit chance is increased by 20% for future attacks against any stack that matches that unit type. This crit chance bonus is reduced to 0 when the attacking stack does get a crit.

Known Enemy isn't nearly as powerful or interesting as Elemental Power was, but it's also replacing a system adding in extra randomness with a randomness-reduction effect, so I overall approve. It's also a pretty good fit for how Elves are aggressively oriented. Unfortunately, since crits aren't very notable in Dark Side, it's also not particularly worth planning around, so in practice it ends up a bit eh. This may be a product of Dark Side having a fairly different mindset when it comes to design, though: while Frenzy is probably more impactful than Ardent was, and Adrenaline's overhaul certainly has significant implications, the overall trend with Dark Side is to keep factional features fairly low-impact. As such, I'm not sure it's really accurate to call Known Enemy's mildness a flaw.

Note that the game helpfully lets you check the current bonus set by hovering over the little checkmark in the area statuses are represented in. It's a little awkward -if you've got multiple steps of bonus against a given unit type, it will list that unit multiple times instead of just telling you 'X Unit: +60%'- but it's still nice you can check it at all.

Units-wise, Black Unicorns have been removed from the game -without removing their loading screen graphic, surprisingly. The puzzling thing is that they have a UI portrait graphic in the code for a Dark version:


(With the Black Unicorn side-by-side for comparison purposes)

So apparently there was going to be a Dark Black Unicorn at some point. I'm not sure if they decided to drop it because that's kind of a silly concept (Just look at the name I'm giving it), or if it's one more example of Dark Side's incompleteness, or what.

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Lake Fairy/Dark Water Fairy
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 16
Leadership: 7
Attack/Defense: 3 / 3
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 5
Health: 8
Damage: 1-2 Magic
Resistances: 25% Magic
Talents: Dispel (Charge: 1. Purges all status effects from a single arbitrary target)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Soars, No retaliation, Magic Resistance (25% Magic resistance), Oblivion (Melee attacks have a 50% chance of purging the target's Talents), Known Enemy

Note that they've taken the Forest Fairy's distinctive Talent and Ability over their own: they used to have Fairy Dust and Hunter's Mark. The only other change is the standard stuff, surprisingly.

I actually kind of like the name for the Dark edition.

With the Ability/Talent switch, Lake Fairies are now the clear-cut general-purpose fairy. No weakness, better Health, better damage, better Speed and Initiative, and wiping Talents or Dispelling effects are both extremely widely useful. As such, while the swap might seem random, I find it quite purposeful and good for the design.

It's just unfortunate the player doesn't get much opportunity to engage with it in Dark Side.

As another example of Dark Side Is A Buggy Game, the Dispel doesn't have the Lake/Dark Water Fairy actually play an animation, by the by. The Dispel animation on the target still plays, but the fairy herself just keeps cycling through idle animations as her Talent goes off. Oops.


Forest Fairy/Dark Forest Fairy
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 20
Leadership: 9
Attack/Defense: 4 / 2
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 4
Health: 9
Damage: 1-3 Magical
Resistances: 25% Magic, -50% Fire
Talents: Hunter's Mark (Charge: 1. All enemies are afflicted with Hunter's Mark. Archers that fire on such a marked unit will automatically get a critical hit)
Abilities: Of The Light/Dark, Soars, No retaliation, Fairy Dust (Melee attacks have a 30% chance of inflicting Weakness on the target for one turn. Level 5 units are immune to this effect), Magic Resistance (25% Magic resistance), Susceptible to Fire (-50% Fire resistance), Known Enemy

As I just noted, Forest Fairies swapped with Lake Fairy's Talent-wise, and so too swapped Fairy Dust with Oblivion. Hunter's Mark itself suffers a bit from crits being weaker than in prior games, unfortunately, but still.

And of course Elemental Power has been replaced with Known Enemy, which is actually pretty annoying in their case as Elemental Power was almost always really useful for them, where Known Enemy is... acceptable.

In any event, the swap makes Forest Fairies more of a specialized supporting fairy. If you're using an archer-heavy army anyway, then Dark Forest Fairies are worth considering to get your damage stably high. If you're not, then they're largely inferior to Dark Water Fairies, particularly since inflicting Weakness is a pretty minor benefit that may well fail to apply even when it triggers since crits ignore Weakness.

Unfortunately, for various reasons you're unlikely to have an archer-heavy army in Dark Side, so in practice Dark Forest Fairies tend to be flatly inferior to Dark Water Fairies. Alas.


Werewolf Elf (Elf form)/Cannibal Werewolf (Elf Form)
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 160
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 16 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 55
Damage: 7-9 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Transformation (Reload 2: Switch forms)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Blades (Inflicts Bleeding on melee hits), Night Vision (+50% Attack at night or underground), Regeneration ('Top' member of the stack fully heals at the start of each turn), Tolerance (Reduces Morale penalty from Of The Dark/Of the Light allies by 2), Known Enemy

They no longer hate vampires and Elemental Power has been replaced with Known Enemy, while Tolerance has been made... a lot less useful. Even aside how rarely the game gives you access to Of The Light units, a reduction of 2 when the standard Of The Light/Of The Dark Morale penalty is -5 is basically worthless, especially since this particular Morale penalty is mutual: tolerating Undead presence in prior games was useful because the Undead were indifferent to what else was in their army. Even if you try to implement a Light Werewolf Elf into your Dark army, the Dark forces will be so mad it's just not worth it, and this would be true even if Tolerant actually wiped the penalty entirely.

With significant Morale support you could potentially slip regular Werewolves in with Undead (Since they don't get offended by other species), but why would you if you can use Cannibal Werewolves instead? Which is a pretty broad design oddity with Dark Side, that the Dark/Light mutual hatred doesn't actually matter that much because you can get nigh-identical Dark versions of just about all of the Light troops, making mechanics like Tolerance basically irrelevant.

In general combat terms, though, they're essentially the same as they were in Warriors of the North. They're one of the units hurt most by the overhaul to crits, it's worth mentioning; they already inflict Bleeding on every hit, so crits having a 5% chance of inflicting Bleeding is irrelevant to them, whereas the drop in crit damage is absolutely relevant to them. It's all disadvantage, where for other units it's a trade.

Werewolves are the final pair of units to benefit from Blessing of the First Blood. They're also the most bizarre case, as the Light and Dark versions get different bonuses. For Cannibal Werewolves, they get the usual +1 Initiative, +5 Attack, and +5 Defense. For their Light counterparts, they get +3 Initiative, +1 Speed, +10% Physical resistance, +50% Magical resistance, +5 Attack, +5 Defense, and +5% crit chance.

Notably, there's a shop in Dragandor (Gnawie the Werewolf) that's guaranteed to offer a supply of Light-type Werewolf Elves. It's not a lifetime supply, but hey, that's what Priestesses of Blood are for, right?

This makes this the one case where it might be worth dealing with the Light/Dark mutual hatred. I'd sooner recommend just putting Werewolf Elves into a non-Dark army, personally, but still. A base Initiative of eight is insane, tied with Archdemons (So with just one more Initiative your Werewolf Elves will go before everything), the 50% Magic resistance is amazing in conjunction with even modest resistance from other sources, letting them go toe-to-toe with fairies (Among other examples) and take basically no damage, the Speed makes it a lot more plausible to walk places in Elf form instead of feeling obligated to transform just to reach targets, and while the Physical resistance boost is minor it still adds up, especially on Bagyr with his innate access to permanent resistance boosts via Bloodlust.

It's too bad the game doesn't explain Blessing of the First Blood at all, and in fact its bonuses won't show up when inspecting a unit in a store; probably the overwhelming majority of players have no idea this is a thing at all and just ignore Gnawie's shop as a bizarre curiosity rather than a meaningfully useful stock.

If you've always wanted to give Werewolf Elves a try but felt you couldn't justify it in prior entries, consider swinging by Gnawie's shop once you've completed Mimicromania.


Werewolf Elf (Wolf form)/Cannibal Wolf
Level: 3
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 16 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 4
Health: 55
Damage: 5-8 Physical
Resistances: -10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Howl (Charge: 1. All enemy living enemies of Level 1-2 are hit with Fear, and additionally have a 50% chance of skipping their turn entirely), Transformation (Reload: 2. Switch forms)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Night Sight (+50% Attack at night or underground), Rabid (20% chance to inflict Frenzy for 1 turns on melee attacks. Frenzied units are hostile to all units, but the effect ends after the first time they attack something), Regeneration ('Top' member of the stack fully heals at the start of each turn), Tolerance (Reduces Morale penalty from Of The Dark/Light allies by 2), Lycanthrope (When melee attacking humanoid enemies, there is a 30% chance that 25% of the units killed in the attack will join the Werewolf's stack. At night or underground 50% of the units killed will join instead), Beast (-10% Fire resistance, +10% Ice resistance) Known Enemy

As we saw with Wolves earlier, Howl has been overhauled to be waaaay more general, and that carries over to Werewolves as well. Otherwise the only substantial changes I already covered with the Elf form: Known Enemy instead of Elemental Power, and Tolerance being a lot less useful. Lycanthrope's description has also been updated to more or less accurately convey its true mechanics, thankfully. As for what units it can convert, they are;

Peasants, Swordsmen, Guardsmen, Bowmen, Horsemen, Knights, Forest Fairies, Lake Fairies, Dryads, Elves-the-unit, Rangers, Slingers, Vikings-the-unit, Skalds, Berserkers, Axe Throwers, Jarls, Robbers, Marauders, Pirates, Sea Dogs, Barbarians, Raging Barbarians, and Assassins.

You might notice this is the same list of units Ancient Vampires can use Conversion on to get boosts.

A mechanics oddity with Lycanthrope is that it can actually generate additional units off of Orc Shield-blocked damage. This doesn't really matter, but it feels very strange to see in action, given the entire concept is that units in the target stack are being converted.

Aside Howl's new implications, though, you use and fight them much as you did in Warriors of the North. Mostly fight, due to how access to Dark Elves is placed so late.


Unicorn/Black Unicorn
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 750
Leadership: 150
Attack/Defense: 27 / 24
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 4
Health: 140
Damage: 10-17 Physical
Resistances: 25% Magic
Talents: None
Abilities: Of The Light/Dark, Magic Resistance (25% Magic resistance), Horn of Light/Shadow, (Adds 3-6 Magic damage against Of the Dark/Light units) Defender of Beauty (Allied Lake Fairies, Forest Fairies, and Dryads gain +2 Morale), Known Enemy

Yes, the Dark version has the name of the old Tolerant Unicorns. This is perhaps appropriate, as their stats largely align with those Black Unicorns instead of the old 'plain' Unicorns, the main change being swapping out Blood For Blood and Tolerant for Defender of Beauty. They've lost a little damage, too.

Unfortunately, you're likely nearly done with the game by the time you get access to Dark Unicorns, and if you've deliberately held off on some of the late-game side areas... those areas aren't populated by Light enemies, so Horn of Shadow won't be applying in such cases. It's still relevant in the endgame proper, so if you want to give Dark Unicorns a try in the handful of endgame fights, go right ahead, but the situation is a bit disappointing.


Dryad/Dark Forest Dryad
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 20
Attack/Defense: 4 / 12
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 25
Damage: 1-3 Magical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Summon Thorns (Reload: 2. Generates a Thorn Hunter or Thorn Warrior stack in a chosen adjacent tile with a total Leadership of 8-10 per Dryad in the summoning stack), Elven Song (Charge: 1. All Elven allies have +3 Initiative for 5 turns), Lullaby (Reload: 3. All enemies below Level 4 that are not immune to Mind effects fall asleep for 1 turn)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Soaring, No retaliation, Beauty (30% chance for male humanoids to Miss when attacking this unit), Charm (Melee attacks have a 20% chance to temporarily convert male humanoids into allies, assuming they're below Level 4 and the target stack has equal or less total Leadership than the attacking stack), Wood Fairy (+1 Morale for allied Plants and Fauns/Satyrs), Oblivion (Melee attacks have a 50% chance of wiping all the target's Talents), Known Enemy

They've switched back to their Armored Princess graphic now that Snow Elves are gone. Other than the standard changes, that's it.

Not sure why the Dark version throws in an explicit reference to forests in its name. Are there non-forest dryads in mythology I've simply failed to hear about?

Minor mechanics point: if you're fielding Dark Elves and use Flames of Passion on a Light Dryad, having the resulting unit use Elven Song won't benefit your Dark Elves.

More major bug point: if you have a Dark Forest Dryad use Elven Song, that also won't benefit your Dark Elves! It will benefit any Light Elves you've inexplicably mixed them with. Whoops!

Also, Lullaby has gone back to being obnoxious and not caring about Leadership limits.

sigh

Aside the Elven Song bug, though, you use Dark Forest Dryads pretty much exactly as you used Dryads back in Warriors of the North, which itself wasn't terribly different from how you used them in Armored Princess. As enemies, they're overall less annoying to fight -Dark Side biases you to using units that don't count as male humanoids, making Beauty and Charm less relevant or non-issues entirely, and on top of that Rage is consistently so strong in Dark Side that even if your army is susceptible in its entirety, you can reliably lean heavily on Rage to wear them down. It's pretty nice!


Ent/Dark Forest Ent
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 800
Leadership: 260
Attack/Defense: 30 / 36
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2
Health: 260
Damage: 25-30 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 50% Poison, -100% Fire
Talents: Running (Charge: 1. +1 Action Points), Swarm (Reload: 1. Ranged attack which does 12-15 Physical damage and 12-15 Poison damage to a single target with an effective range of 4)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to Mind spells, the 'top' member of the stack restores 10% of their Health at the beginning of their turn, assorted secondary implications), Entangle (30% chance to Entangle enemies with melee attack, reducing AP to 1 for 2 turns), Wooden (+10% Physical resistance), Known Enemy

Entangle's chance to trigger has dropped, but otherwise it's just the standard changes. This includes the regeneration from being a Plant, though, and unlike on Thorns this is mildly useful. Mildly.

As with Dryads, I don't really get why the Dark version explicitly specifies that it's a 'forest' Ent. While, say, a cactus Ent would be an amazing concept, I don't think I've ever seen someone come up with an Ent where specifying 'forest' wasn't redundant.

Something worth pointing out: if you use an Ent Sprout, you always get a Light Ent. This is one of a few reliable ways to get a Light unit in the game, as one shop has a guaranteed supply (After some Questing) to ensure you can complete another Quest. You can actually also get them from a Call Colossus Wanderer Scroll, and that too will always be a Light Ent, not a Dark Forest Ent.

Also, the Dark Forest Ent is another unit that 'under the hood' isn't properly classed as Of The Dark, but rather is classed as Of The Light. So for example Unicorns won't get their bonus Magic damage against a Dark Forest Ent, while a Black Unicorn would. (This latter point basically requires you deliberately set it up to come up, mind) Sadly, this doesn't let them benefit from Elven Song.


Ancient Ent/Ancient Dark Forest Ent
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3600
Leadership: 1200
Attack/Defense: 50 / 60
Initiative/Speed: 1 / 1
Health: 1400
Damage: 100-140 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 50% Poison, -100% Fire
Talents: Swarm (Charge: 1. Does 50-90 Physical and 50-90 Poison damage to a single target with an effective range of 4. Cannot be used if an enemy is adjacent), Summon Swarm (Reload: 1. Adds a charge to Swarm. Can't be used if there's already 2 charges), Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Of The Light/Dark, (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to Mind spells, the 'top' member of the stack restores 10% of their Health at the beginning of their turn, assorted secondary implications), Wooden (+10% Physical resistance), Entangle (50% chance to Entangle enemies with melee attack, reducing AP to 1 for 2 turns), Known Enemy

They've lost their Ice resistance. Unlike Ents, their Entangle chance is actually unchanged, making it now another way Ancient Ents are overall better Ents.

As with Ents, they pick up Plant-derived regeneration, but Ancient Ents are by far the unit that most substantially makes use of this change. 140 Health per turn is actually relevant, especially when eg absorbing punishment from Poison attackers. It's too bad you can't get a hold of any until your Leadership is so high the healing is trivial anyway. (Bar luck with Call Colossus, but that will always be a Light Ancient Ent, which is inconvenient)

One odd thing is that AI Ancient Ents will frequently use Running on the turn they use Summon Swarm. As in, they'll use Running and then immediately waste it by using Summon Swarm without moving at all. This is a new piece of AI stupidity, and it makes Ancient Ents a little less effective than they really ought to be as enemies.

Unfortunately, I've only ever seen Ancient Dark Forest Ents offered by getting a good chunk of the way through conquering Aralan, and by that point there's barely anything left to do, so you're unlikely to get real use out of them yourself.


Elf/Dark Elf
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 270
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 21 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 60
Damage: 4-5 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Double Shot (Reload: 2. Ranged attack that does 8-10 Physical damage to a single target)
Abilities: Archer, Sniper (Unlimited range), No Melee Penalty, Known Enemy

Light Steps is gone, Elemental Power has been replaced by Known Enemy, and otherwise no changes.

Thanks to how much stronger of support you can get on other factions than for Dark Elves, Dark Elves-the-unit are merely okay units, not the kind of great unit they've been in other games, compounded by how late you can actually access them. It's kind of refreshing to not be strongly tempted by this highly lethal Sniper with no melee penalty, even if it's not exactly ideal as far as variety of play experience within Dark Side.


Ranger/Hunter
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 700
Leadership: 150
Attack/Defense: 27 / 18
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 2
Health: 110
Damage (Ranged): 8-12 Physical
Damage (Melee): 4-8 Physical
Resistances: Generic
Talents: Poisoned Arrows (Charge: 1. Standard ranged attack that does 8-12 Poison damage and automatically Poisons the target), Arrow Shower (Reload: 2. 3-4 Physical damage to all enemies in a 7-tile designated circle. No friendly fire risk)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Archer, Sniper (Unlimited range), No Melee Penalty, Hunter (+50% damage against 'beasts', and ranged attacks can inflict Bleeding in general), Known Enemy

Rangers have lost Trap resistance and Poisoned Arrows has become Physical instead of Poison for some reason, but they've gained Arrow Shower and now routinely cause Bleeding with their ranged attacks. Overall this is a good deal for them, even if it's inconvenient that they can't directly work around Physical resistance anymore. Note that Arrow Shower can actually be used even if there's an enemy adjacent to the Hunter stack: I suspect this is an oversight, rather than a deliberate decision to make it even more powerful.

They've also secretly lost No Melee Penalty ('Secretly' because they still list it), doing only a bit better than half damage in melee. It's often trivial to avoid this coming up on your troops by the time you have access to them, so it's mostly a weakness on Rangers. And even then, pinning them with melee will just result in Arrow Shower to start. Conversely, the Hunter Ability now actually provides a general modification to damage against animals instead of calling special anti-beast attacks.

Speaking of that Ability, I've gone with a vague description for the Bleed inducement because it's bugged in a very strange way. Rangers of the light work exactly as the game says: their ranged attacks have a 50% chance to inflict Bleeding. Hunters of the dark, however, have a 100% chance to inflict Bleeding with their basic ranged attack and with Poisoned Arrows, but if you have them fire a Dragon Arrow it will never inflict Bleeding. It's one of the most bizarre bits of bugginess in Dark Side.

As an additional oddity, the Hunter Ability's damage bonus even affects damage caused by Bleeding or Poison they inflict if they inflicted it on a beast!

As for what's considered to be a beast in this game, it's...

Wolves, Bears, Ancient Bears, Polar Bears, Lake Dragonfly, Fire Dragonfly, Griffin, Royal Griffin, Snake, Swamp Snake, Royal Snake, Hyena, Werewolves in wolf form, and Unicorns,

Including that for Werewolves and Unicorns this includes their Dark counterparts.

It amuses me the Dark version has the name Rangers had in the first two games.

Alas, you tend to only get Hunters in any real quantity when it's far, far too late to really care that you have access to them. I mean, they're a useful unit in the final fight of the game, but you really just don't get much opportunity to meaningfully leverage their new qualities. Dark Side really needed, like, a more extensive endgame so Dark Elves in general were properly relevant.


Druid/Renegade Druid
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 240
Leadership: 100
Attack/Defense: 16 / 22
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 2
Health: 100
Damage (Ranged): 4-8 Magic
Damage (Melee): 2-4 Physical
Resistances: 25% Magic
Talents: Summon Bear (Reload: 2. Summons a stack of Bears or Ancient Bears, whose stack size is determined by having their Health be 20-25 per Druid in the casting stack), Training (Charge: 1. Take control of an enemy animal stack whose Level is 1-3, whose Leadership total is 80 or less per Druid in the casting stack. The control lasts for 2 turns), Natural Healing (Charges: 2. For three turns, a single target ally is healed at the beginning of its turn for 10% of its maximum health. The healing is also increased by 1% for every 10 Druids in the casting stack, up to a maximum of 20%. Cannot be cast on Undead, Plants, or units immune to magic)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Force of Nature (Range: 6. Ranged attack splashes to adjacent enemies with no friendly fire. The splash damage is only 50% of base), Magic Resistance (+25% Magic resistance), Aura of Harmony (+1 to Morale for allied Elves of the matching faction), Known Enemy

Summon Bear's numbers have dropped back down (By 5 for the minimum roll and 10 for the maximum roll) and Light Steps has been lost. Overall a bit of a nerf, but Druids in Warriors of the North surprised me with their buff in the first place, so not exactly unjustified to tone it down a little.

And yes, Renegade Druids still have Aura of Harmony as the Ability name. It's funny, but whatever.

Note that the in-game description has been overhauled, but its mechanics are unchanged from Warriors of the North, including the part where it's supposed to fight Plague but doesn't actually do so.

As enemies, they're one of the more convenient ones to see in a battlegroup, since they tend to summon a bear instead of attacking on the first turn, letting you ignore them in favor of eg Rangers and Elves-the-unit who'll be trying to do damage now. Though it can be annoying to have them steal an animal you summoned, if you forget to account for that possibility. Usually not hugely problematic, but frustrating for sure.

As player units, you don't get them until it's basically too late to care, and unlike eg Hunters Renegade Druids don't particularly excel in the final fight of the game. Alas.


Faun/Satyr
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 80
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 16 / 16
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 4
Health: 23
Damage: 3-5 Physical/Magical
Resistances: 10% Magic, -10% Fire
Talents: Forest Magic (Charges: 2. Can heal an adjacent Plant for 10 Health per Faun in the healing stack, potentially reviving the dead), Fatigue (Reload: 3. An enemy stack that has already moved below Level 5 whose Leadership is less than 90 per Faun in the casting stack is put to Sleep for 2 turns), Nightmare (Reload: 1. Target currently Sleeping foe takes 5-12 Magic damage, and immediately awakens)
Abilities: Of the Light/Dark, Sting of the Forest (Range: 4. The ranged attack lowers the target's Attack and Defense by 1 for the rest of the battle. This effect stacks to a maximum of -5), No Melee Penalty, Spirit of the Wood (Doubled damage against Plants, and allied Dryads and Plants get 2 Initiative), Known Enemy

+1 Defense, the Attack/Defense penalties the ranged attack imposes can't stack as far, Fears Darkness has gone away (Thankfully), Spirit of the Wood has lost its personal stat boosts, Nightmare's low roll is lower, Plant-healing/resurrection is down a couple points, and of course Known Enemy has replaced Elemental Power. Also they have a brand-new graphic that isn't nearly so sinister-looking, with horns that look like floppy ears and so on.

Don't be fooled by Satyrs using a darkened version of the old graphic for their portrait. Their in-game graphic is actually a purple version of the new Faun graphic, not a darkened version of the old one. It's really puzzling all-around, and I'm genuinely curious what happened in the development process to end at this strange combination.

It should be noted that Spirit of the Wood's in-game description is simply wrong. It is supposed to provide +1 Morale in forest battles, but that component is bugged and doesn't work. Meanwhile, the damage bonus against Plants and the boost to allied Plants/Dryads is simply unmentioned. It's also coded wrong -normally when you have dark or light units boosting allies like this, it's restricted to their alignment, but this case is not; a Satyr will happily boost light Ents, Ancient Ents, or Dryads, while a Faun has no issue with boosting with dark counterparts -except for another bug/oversight, which is that Dark Forest Dryads are simply not in the list at all and so don't benefit from either of them. Oops.

Fauns are another enemy that's generally a relief to see in enemy hands. Their Health is so low it's generally fairly easy to wipe them out -often incidentally- before they get a chance to do anything, and since you'll inflict such severe casualties on them so readily they won't even get the chance to use Fatigue on anybody.

The utility of Satyrs in player hands, like so many Dark Elves, is essentially wholly irrelevant. Unlike most such cases, they'd probably be terrible regardless. Fauns have always struggled to justify themselves, and Dark Side hasn't really done anything to address the core flaws. (Like their godawful Health)

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One weird and fairly obnoxious thing Dark Side does with some fights is giving the enemy units arbitrary stat boosts, with no Hero to justify them. I mention this in the Elves post because Elven battlegroups are by far the biggest offender: in Aralan almost all the battlegroups that involve Elves (Which is most of them) have +1 or +2 Speed on everything, and also have Initiative boosts on everything! I'm not sure why Dark Side does this, and I'm especially puzzled by why Elves have it most widespread/consistent. It creates weird, obnoxious artificial difficulty, where eg Rangers are almost impossible to pin down even with support from Freeze or the like, and yet Hunters in the player's hands are not anywhere near as mobile. It's one thing when Dark Side uses this to power up an individual fight that has some kind of plot/Quest significance, but when it's just random battlegroups of no importance it just feels weird and obnoxious. Why are these random Elves so much better than the random Elves on some earlier island? No, seriously, why?

Perhaps the most frustrating part of the whole thing is that +50% Magic resistance is eventually a part of this package. Depending on what forces you're using, you might not notice it at all, or it might have a substantial negative impact on some of your units that really ought to be just fine against Elves. I assume it's a thematic choice, but it's just weird and frustrating in actual practice.

An additional layer of frustration with Elves is that if you play sensibly you've basically got no opportunity to use them. Galenirim, which is the first Elf island, has encounters that are nastier than the stuff in Helvedia, and Aralan is flat-out the nastiest area of the game by far, and it takes a full conquest of Galenirim or Aralan to gain access to Dark Elf stocks... neither of which is actually necessary for beating the game. (By contrast, it's strictly necessary to conquer Insulberg and thus gain access to Traitor Humans) Furthermore, the Elven islands are placed late enough that it's pretty easy to not bother conquering them; even if Insulberg's conquest wasn't mandatory, you'd probably conquer Portland and Monteville (Your other Traitor Human sources) just because you need the experience and they're placed so early that putting it off will eventually turn them into easy experience. Darenbam and Dragandor (The Dwarf lands) aren't placed quite so early, but it's still generally more practical to conquer the two of them than not, which means Zwerg stocks are realistically going to be a thing in any halfway-sane run.

Dark Elves, by contrast, require you go out of your way to unlock them, and require you go very out of your way if you want to actually use them for a reasonably lengthy period of time.

This is particularly frustrating given Dark Elves are probably the most powerful and useful of the darkened factions. (As far as intrinsic quality goes, I mean) Zwerg are fairly awful, while Traitor Humans are primarily propped up by the Nightmare Title combined with Item support to give them hilariously low Leadership values. Dark Elves are legitimately good, but in practice you'll tend to end up leaning on Demons, Undead, and Orcs in Dark Side, plus some key Neutrals and leveraging Traitor Humans in the early-midgame consistently.

It's probably another example of Dark Side having been rushed, mind, as it comes about from weird tuning and probably outright missing content. The endgame is strangely abbreviated, and Lizardmen are outright missing from Dark Side in spite of evidence they were intended to be included, so likely there would've been a Lizardmen island if the game had been more fully developed. For that matter, probably the Companions -and thus the components of the Weapon of Vengeance- would have been placed differently, helping dodge the issue.

It's so frustrating that Dark Side got so badly rushed.

Next time, we wrap up units that are actually in the game by covering Vikings.

See you then.