See, one of the dilemmas I have with the game is this.
All of the best things, my favorite aspects of the game, are Northern Expansion additions.
Gnomes become Champions at Level 8. (While all heroes have a "champion" message at level 10, this merely allows for you to rename the hero and is a purely aesthetical thing aside from Level 10 being the point where most heroes start to be incredibly badass. Gnomes, on the other hand, upon becoming Champions, have a complete and total head to toe transformation from being the weakest hero to having stats on par with the strongest melee hero.)
Paladins and Healers both gain the 'Harm Undead' ability.
Warriors of Discord gain AT LEAST two, if not three abilities: Howl of Discord (and area of effect attack that also looks ridiculously awesome), maybe a multi-target sideways-slash, and being the Fervus-Krypta temple path hero with the ability to crit a strike. (Albeit, the hero I suspect has the weakest of the crits, a crit is still more damage than normal!)
Cultists and Priestesses didn't directly gain anything, but each has access to a new powerful monster they can charm/control: Wendigos and Shadow Beasts, respectively. (That being said, Priestesses also get high utility out of the magic bazaar.)
Monks gained the status of being the Dauros-Agrela temple path hero with the ability to crit a strike (and their crit might be the strongest of the three, I believe, since I've seen crits of other heroes leave foes alive but I've never seen a Monk's crit fail to kill the foe).
Adepts gained the incredibly-awesome-looking and even more incredibly-awesome function of long-range teleportation, allowing them to appear anywhere on the map instantly. (As TVTropes puts it, this makes them something of a fantastical equivalent of a SWAT squad.) They also gained the double-strike ability, which makes them do more damage, plus, if nothing else it just aesthetically looks cool.
Solarii gained an additional magical (I think it's magical anyway?) ability (furthering their status as the only true universally Battle Mage hero to use both melee and magic attacks), Fire Hammer: a single-target strike dealing high damage, which even works on structures!
Also, though you'd hope to never need it, they do technically gain a suicide bomb of sorts: when they are killed, they deal chain lightning damage to all nearby enemies, in a sense a way to hopefully/potentially take out their attackers for having taken them out.
Barbarian guilds gained the ability to house six heroes--two extra from all other temples/guilds, double that of gnomes/dwarves, and triple the space of an elven bungalow. This essentially allows for more bang for your buck, allowing you to field a greater number of barbarians at a relatively lower cost.
Barbarians themselves proper gained two abilities. The first, a literal lifesaver: a chance to, upon reaching zero HP, be non-lethally KO'd. This is particularly important because Krolm offers no revive spell, unlike Krypta or Agrela, so if a Barbarian is dead with no Mausoleum, he's gone for good since you can't revive his grave without Krypta/Agrela temples that are mutually exclusive with Krolm.
Plus, even with a Mausoleum. Resurrecting heroes is ridiculously expensive. Even low-leveled ones cost a couple thousand. High-leveled ones can be...well, I believe a level 50 hero is either 50,000 or 500,000. (Keep in mind, 50,000 is a fairly large sum of gold, and 500,000 even more so. The gold cap in Majesty is two million.) So what I'm saying is, having them be knocked out rather than killed is rather convenient, since it saves their life and allows them to keep fighting reasonably well.
The second ability Barbarians gain is that they are the Krolm temple path hero with the ability to crit a strike.
Wizards don't directly gain anything, but no other hero gets as much use out of the magic bazaar as they do.
Elves, Rangers, and Rogues don't directly gain anything, but the magic bazaar sells fire balm to these three hero classes, which acts I believe as essentially something akin to a second poison...which also works on buildings. (I don't know the details, but point being, it massively increases the damage they do, and only they can get it because fire balm is a ranged-hero-exclusive item.)
Then you get into the buildings.
I don't really know what the Hall of Champions does exactly, but it gives a buff to heroes who visit it, it tracks monsters slain, and you can set a call for champions which essentially serves as a bounty for all monsters of that type across the whole map for the duration of the call, a pretty useful thing to have.
The Mausoleum allows you to resurrect all heroes except for Monks, Healers, and Paladins (who refuse to be interned in them) if you miss the chance to revive their gravestone (or with Krolm, are unable to in the first place). This is a godsend, since it is a safety net for preserving your heroes. Especially since you might not always be able to see where a hero died, or if you can, you might not always be able to have the interface cooperate such that you can select them. (Death behind a building is especially nasty that way since often the building blocks you from selecting units.)
The Magic Bazaar gives heroes a whole bunch of neat items, and they are ridiculously powerful, even gamebreakers. Heroes getting Blacksmith/Wizard Enchantment upgrades are marginally more powerful. Heroes with potions can survive much easier. Heroes with a ring of protection are harder to kill. Heroes who can teleport are immensely valuable.
But all of those utilities are blown out of the water by the Magical Bazaar. Speed Tonic is akin to Winged Feet; heroes use it to run away and it works pretty well for making them faster than their pursuers and lasts respectably long. Fire Balm does disproportionately high levels of damage to things. Regeneration Elixir keeps heroes alive almost indefinitely for its duration. Dirgo Strength is mostly useful for melee heroes after their Shapeshift wears off, but all heroes apparently get a boost from it.
Shapeshift helps keep wizards (and to some extent, Priestesses) alive, making them much harder to kill. It also makes melee heroes more difficult to kill and might also boost their strength making them pack a bigger punch. It also boosts these things for ranged heroes, who use it less often. (It is often used when the hero beserks.)
Invisibility Brew is the hero's answer to when they need to flee, even before Winged Feet. And why not? After all, being invisible to your enemies ensures you can run away better than being fast does. It does have an annoying side-effect though: heroes who use it are, for the duration of the invisibility, completely immune to you casting ANY sort of spell on them (including a change of heart to force the coward back into a battle they would win). The item also has a reasonably short duration, both a blessing and a curse.
The Sorcerer's Abode allows for you to cast some critical spells. All of them have their use; Earthquake is excellent in demolishing things you can't/don't want heroes to get too close to (though it still counts as an act of aggression all the same). More commonly, Change Of Heart sends a fleeing unit into beserking, and otherwise sends a unit from whatever they were doing to fleeing. This is a godsend spell, because it can keep heroes from destroying a lair too soon, it can save heroes' lives, and it can save your kingdom, too, by forcing them to fight.
Outposts are incredibly useful because of their henchmen. They synergize well with guardhouses, and are good replacements for them, too, when need be. The palace guards are marginally useful, and the extra tax collectors help quite a bit when you have trouble getting enough fountains. Then there's the added peasants, allowing you to have more peasants repairing/building buildings across your kingdom, something which is essential to have given that without cheats, there's a limit to what you can have.
Dwarves get too expensive after a while, and gnomes you can only have nine of, and the two of them are mutually exclusive, and while dwarves build faster they are so slow that they are too late by the time they reach what you want them to build/repair.
Of course. The main use of an Outpost is its ability to house heroes. If you're looking to have some wiggle room in case a guild/temple/settlement/bungalow gets destroyed, an Outpost gives that, allowing for your heroes to have a home still and thus, stopping them from leaving Ardania before you can rebuild their home.
If you want to cram your kingdom as full as heroes as possible, then the Outpost can be used to circumvent hero restrictions--simply build the type of hero you don't want to keep the buildings of (except for gnomes), get the heroes you want (up to six per outpost), demolish the buildings those heroes are housed in, they move to the outpost, and then you build the type of hero you DO want to keep the buildings of.
Alternatively, just save scum the Embassy or hope for the luck of the gods in getting the heroes you want. Speaking of which, the Embassy can house two extra heroes, and recruits heroes that're levels 2-3, and it will automatically fill empty guilds/temples/etc. you have built with their appropriate heroes when they run out of embassies/outposts to recruit random heroes to. In short, if you want to go without cheats or exploits, an Embassy is the only way to get all sixteen heroes in your kingdom (unless playing The Day Of Reckoning, natch).
But MY POINT BEING.
That's all pretty cool stuff.
...The problem is...
...Most of the Northern Expansion levels, be it cheats or no cheats, have low replayability compared to their original/southern counterparts. The original game had at least seven boss monsters, spread across the various levels. The northern expansion has...four, two in the same level and one who is barely a boss at all frankly. And one of said bosses is meant to be the final boss of the game more or less--the final challenge a player will face when playing the game through fairly.
Then you get into the nature of the levels. The original game had--including the final boss level--five "timed" levels. Out of nineteen total, from what I counted. The expansion has three, of twelve. Most of the content is rehashed as well. The Siege is one of the best levels to play, but it has the flaw where the enemy Sovereign is utterly incompetent and will spend his entire treasury going from 40,000 to broke in no time flat wasting money on trivial things rather than using it on things that matter.
Spires of Death is a rehash of Fortress of Ixmil, except it's actually easier for the most part. Urban Renewal regardless of cheats or no cheats is a small map cramped with red buildings, so its replay value is low. Clash of Empires is a 4-way brawl, so that's one of the better ones, but the map may be a bit small.
The Fortress of Ixmil is a pretty decent level for replaying a different temple path, in that it's possible to win fairly with all three. Dauros-Agrela is easiest with a mad dash to paladins (since on most levels, 8 well-equipped paladins can defend your entire kingdom from a ridiculously low level; they are the only hero to take on the toughest universally-appearing-monsters of trolls/minotaurs from as low as level 4), Krolm is apparently also possible, but Fervus-Krypta is also a possibility for the level.
The Valley of the Serpents is another level with some replayability, in that you can have a decent amount of fun there, but it's also a reasonably small map, again limiting the playground, and serpent lairs appear in inopportune locations, hindering your efforts to build ideal cities and also hindering your ability to stop heroes from raiding them. (And yes, you will have heroes who raid them thanks to elves who raid lairs, dwarves coming in that raid lairs, and you practically requiring heroes to defend against ice dragons that raid lairs.)
Rise of the Ratmen is just an obnoxious level in general to play, because it is just dealing with nuisances you deal with normally, except on a grander scale. Darkness Falls is similar to the Fortress of Ixmil in having replayability, but by now I think you're beginning to see my point.
Most of the better levels are from the original game.
One level has a fully functioning (albeit basic) ally kingdom which can turn enemy. This is unique to that level alone, essentially, since while other levels feature reds in the form of wizards, none take it to that extreme.
The Day of Reckoning allows access to every hero and their associated buildings' quirks, but it's a southern quest so we don't get to see anything like this in the north without utilizing cheats. Many of the larger maps like Free the Slaves and Vengeance of the Liche Queen are also southern maps; you can only build a kingdom so large on a small map.
So the dilemma I often face when playing the game is, do I go for all the awesome things I like, or do I go for all the awesome level designs? To some extent, this can be mitigated by downloadable quests. Some are ill-suited for long-term play. Can't do much in Vampiric Revenge. The Wrath of Krolm is a southern downloadable quest anyway and playing it fairly limits your economy severely.
The Recluse is just an annoying quest to do fairly and there's not much point to cheating on it (if cheats even work). Slaying Merlin, Containment, and Defending the Throne are all "timed" quests. (Slaying Merlin isn't supposed to be timed, but because Merlin is a freakin' moron who will teleport into your town where there are dozens of heroes, guardhouses, and henchmen who can wail on him and he lacks invincibility to their attacks, he dies before he's supposed to.)
Dwarven Brothers is also essentially a "timed" quest in that it doesn't take your heroes too long to kill even should-be-immortal dwarves by killing them at their spawn point and also the mage dwarf could be found early. Ardanian Civil War and Strife are both fun, for basically being The Siege...without the stupid failure condition, but they have limitations on them. (A particularly good touch is that they are meant to mimic players and they do so...including essentially having access to the build anything cheat by building fully-upgraded buildings rather than the level 1s you get.)
So there's only a handful of quests I've downloaded that allow me to have the best of both worlds. All the same, I don't stop playing the game because there's still endless replayability; I always find a way to make the most of the game. Something I was working on in fact is a mental compilation of everything each of the sixteen heroes says.
Keep in mind, this is just from memory.
Every hero has the following:
-Wandering
-Level-up
-Champion
-Bounty Hunting and/or Explore Flag
-Fighting
-Fleeing
-Dead
-Retrieving Treasure
-Easter Egg bonus quote
-And three heroes have a crit noise.
Dwarf:
Wandering: "Ho diddly hey diddly ho diddly ho..."
Level-up: I'm ashamed to say I can't quite remember this one. It has to do with work and improvement but I can't recall the exact wording.
Champion: "I just keep on getting better at this!"
Bounty: "More work to do!"
Fighting: "Not now! I've got work to do!"
Fleeing: "If I had my good hammer, you'd be sorry!"
Dead: "There's no fixing this......"
Treasure: "Ahh! A fine piece of work!"
Bonus: "My wife's beard is even better than this!"
Gnome:
Wandering: "Ho ti to ti to ti to", I believe. I'm not quite sure on this one to be honest.
Level-up: "Hey I'm getting better at this!"
Champion: "I...am...a...CHAMPION!!!"
Bounty: "At last, some adventure!"
Fighting: "Now's my chance!"
Fleeing: "I wasn't trying to hurt you!"
Dead: "But I'm...just...a gnome......"
Treasure: I've heard it before but not often enough to have it memorized.
Bonus: Most bonuses, I don't remember; this one's no different.
Elf:
Wandering: "Long live the elves!"
Level-up: "Refreshing!"
Champion: I don't use elves often enough to have this one memorized.
Bounty: "This'll be a quick bit of gold..."
Fighting: "A threat!"
Fleeing: "Victory's...not in the cards."
Dead: "No fun...at all..."
Treasure: Also not something I hear often.
Bonus: Another one I don't have memorized.
Rogue:
Wandering: "One day, this will all be mine."
Level-up: "My ambition has paid off."
Champion: "Keep it comin'!"
Bounty: "What a delicious looking reward......"
Fighting: "You won't get my gold!"
Fleeing: Given I use rogues every level (except when they're not allowed in which case enemies still spawn them), I should know this. Unfortunately, I do not.
Dead: "Leave my gold...alone......"
Treasure: "Nobody will miss this..."
Bonus: Another one I don't have memorized.
Ranger:
Wandering: "I take the path less traveled."
Level-up: This is another one I should know.
Champion: "Wild adventure...builds character!"
Bounty: "My services may help."
Fighting: Yet again, I should know this but I don't.
Fleeing: "Ooh, tough fight."
Dead: "I join...the wild spirits......"
Treasure: "A good find..."
Bonus: Yeah, I don't remember this.
Wizard:
Wandering: "Where did I leave my spellbook?"
Level-up: "My power grows!"
Champion: "Practice makes perfect!"
Bounty: "A-ha! My services are required!"
Fighting: "What's that sound?"
Fleeing: "I'm DONE for......"
Dead: "I'm MELTing......"
Treasure: I've heard this, but I can't remember it.
Bonus: Ditto.
Warrior of Discord:
Wandering: (Okay I don't know most for this hero.)
Level-up: I believe the warrior discord lets out a wolf howl.
Champion: This one's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't recall what.
Bounty: Another one I've heard but can't quite remember.
Fighting: Similarly, cannot remember.
Fleeing: "Baaawk...bawk bawk bawk bawk!"
Dead: (Muffled) "Pretty...nice"? (It's hard to make out.)
Treasure: I'm honestly not sure I've heard this.
Bonus: I've maybe heard it once?
Crit: (Muffled) "Big Mark!" (At least I assume that's what he's saying?)
Paladin:
Wandering: "The law of Dauros is above all others" (or "above all else", I don't quite remember which).
Level-up: I can't quite remember this.
Champion: "I am enlightened!"
Bounty: "I deem your mandate just."
Fighting: "The unholy are near."
Fleeing: "Dauros has spare you...for now!"
Dead: "Evil...has won..."
Treasure: "An item of holy significance!'
Bonus: "Dauros! Grant me better headgear."
Healer:
Wandering: It might be, "Let Agrela help"?
Level-up: "Agrela smiles upon me."
Champion: "I can now help so many more!"
Bounty: "Let me help!"
Fighting: This one I don't think exists.
Fleeing: "I must find a haven!"
Dead: "I will be...reborn......"
Treasure: Annoyingly enough, I had this in mind thirty seconds ago but can't remember it now.
Bonus: This one I just don't remember though.
Monk:
It should be noted that the Monk is a mute so it's a bit hard to convey his sounds, but he has them.
Wandering: "Om ne ah ne om ne ah ne om..." or something to that effect.
Level-up: "Ah...!"
Champion: I don't remember this (it's pretty rare to get).
Bounty: I don't remember this in spite of it being easy to get.
Fighting: I should know this, but I don't.
Fleeing: "Ohh..."
Dead: "*cough ooh-uhh", more or less.
Treasure: Exists, but I don't remember it.
Bonus: Ditto.
Crit: "A-HA!"
Priestess:
Wandering: I'm not sure I've heard this actually.
Level-up: It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite remember it.
Champion: "I faced death with renewed strength!"
Bounty: "That's death's reward."
Fighting: Another one I can't quite recall.
Fleeing: "Another day, Krypta!"
Dead: "At laaaaaaaaast!'
Treasure: Exists, but I don't think I know it.
Bonus: "This game is to die for!"
Cultist:
Wandering: I can't recall.
Level-up: "Ooh, pretty star!"
Champion: It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't recall what.
Bounty: "What a pretty flag!'
Fighting: I should remember this, but I don't.
Fleeing: "Run...run run run run run run!"
Dead: "Pretty bright light deaaaaaaa......"
Treasure: Not sure I know this one.
Bonus: Definitely don't know this one.
Barbarian:
Wandering: I can't remember this one.
Level-up: "Krolm makes me stronger!"
Champion: "I am Krolm's champion!"
Bounty: I've heard this one but I can't recall it.
Fighting: "Hmmm..." (More of a growl.)
Fleeing: "I'll be back!"
Dead: "YARRRRRG!"
Treasure: Exists, but I don't remember it.
Bonus: Ditto.
Crit: "Take that!"
Adept:
Wandering: Honestly I don't think it exists for adepts.
Level-up: "The wind lord blesses me!"
Champion: "I can outrun the winds!"
Bounty: "Swift action is required". (Well I know he says "Swift Action", but after that it's kinda muffled often so I can't quite be sure.)
Fighting: "An ill wind blows in the air..."
Fleeing: "Give me speed, Lunord!"
Dead: "Wind has failed me."
Treasure: Probably exists, but is pretty rare; I certainly don't know it.
Bonus: I don't have it memorized.
Solarus:
Wandering: It exists but I don't remember it.
Level-up: I honestly can't recall.
Champion: Similarly, kinda close to remembering, but I can't.
Bounty: "This call blazes brightly for me!"
Fighting: "You're playing with fire!"
Fleeing: "Darkness has won the day..."
Dead: "I...am...extinguished......"
Treasure: Probably exists, but I don't know it.
Bonus: I also don't have this memorized.
...You can usually tell which heroes I use more often, I think, though I am ashamed to say I use Rangers more often than my memory would indicate. Still, this gives you a fair idea for their personalities, even without seeing all of them in action. It's just from memory. Were I to go try, I'd fill most of these out pretty well, with only one or two gaps here and there. (Mostly the treasures, possibly the wanders.)
I didn't quite ramble as much as I thought I would, but oh well.
I think this is sufficient for one day.