WIP


Go see my other Lizardmen guide for general details about the faction.

When Oxyotl was released, apparently there was a 5 turn time limit to complete the quest or you failed it.

This was insane because you don't get a warning that once you complete your 11th "Visions of the Old Ones" mission from the quest "The Search for Darkness", Heart of Darkness becomes available. This will happen even if you have not completed 5 "Hard" missions (similar situation to Grom the Paunch's campaign, you can beat the final battle before you can actually win because you have to destroy Yvresse faction as Grom). So even if you beat Heart of Darkness, you still need to beat 5 "Hard" vision missions to win the Short Campaign.


As of Patch 1.12.1, Heart of Darkness no longer has a time limit or expires.


Which is so needed, because where the Final Battle as Taurox is faceroll your keyboard easy if you bring Doombull heroes and Minotaurs but you could probably still win with just Taurox, Oxyotl's battle is HARD unless you bring a stack of Ancient Stegadons. So I recommend you bring a full stack of Ancient Stegadons.

Oxyotl needs to reach Level 15 in order to unlock Lord Kroak's first quest in his quest chain.

The first quest is to complete a "Rite of Awakening"

Note that I had just performed my second Rite of Awakening two turns prior at Turn 18, so I will have to wait until Turn 28 to complete that quest.


The next step in the chain is to send any unit to the Xhotl region in Lustria (just southwest of Itza).


Final step is to fight the quest battle, and then you get Lord Kroak, who is a game-changer once leveled.


Note that you might want a Stegadon doomstack for Lord Kroak's batlle, it was easy with them but I did not try it with his Chameleon Skink army. I did his battle after I already won the campaign.

I did not need Lord Kroak for my campaign, but now that you know how to get him, if you can get him early and start leveling him then it may be worth it.

You can only build one Silent Sanctum per turn, so if you have 2+ ready to go, build one where you need it most.

You can only travel once per turn (but you can travel and then do Oxyotl's quest for his weapon in the same turn)




Visions of the Old Ones will teleport you to the mission area for free, you don't need the capstone for them. They will teleport you near the army or settlement you are supposed to defeat, from there you can decide how to proceed. For example, if the mission is to defeat an army but the enemy army is right next to an enemy settlement, you can defeat the army then attack the settlement.

Once you have discovered a settlement, if you have a Silent Sanctum token available, you can put a Silent Sanctum in that settlement.

So you can send a hero across the map to Ulthuan or Itza and place a Silent Sanctum there.

Then...





Vision missions will teleport you to places, but if you want to go back, you need to establish a Silent Sanctum and then build the "Capstone of Tepok". You can only build one of these at a time, if have it built then build it elsewhere, it will move to the new build site (presumably destroying the old one? So I would demolish the old one for money before or as you build the new one).

The brilliant thing about the Capstone of Tepok is that you can send a hero to discover, say, The Galleon's Graveyard, build a Silent Sanctum there (and you'll be able to see if Count Noctilus is home or not), build the Capstone of Tepok, and teleport Oxyotl there to take it all for yourself.

This is particularly excellent on the Mortal Empires map, if you say want to create a new area to campaign from across the map, or set up a bug out shelter in case you get overrun (Galleon's Graveyard is NOT an excellent place for this because you cannot build anything in Galleon's Graveyard).




You get 3 slots in a Silent Sanctum but effectively only 2 because the "Unearthed Sanctum" will always be built (like a main settlement building). It can be upgraded to a "Grand Sanctum" if you need line of sight over a large area (example of a great place to build that would be Itza).

Wherever you don't plan to build a Capstone of Tepok but you do plan on having a Silent Sanctum, the best 2 buildings to build would be:

"Unearthed Column of Xokha"
"Excavated Chamber of Huanchi"

And upgrade them.

Xokha reduces upkeep if an army is there (nice but not essential) but more importantly, it boosts Post-Battle loot by 50% if upgraded.

The Sanctum Patrol army that spawns from Huanchi benefits from that Post-Battle Loot...

Which means if you plop those 2 buildings down in the center of a warzone, declare war on everyone around, Huanchi will proc 1/3rd of the time, and if you win the battle, you can get thousands of gold from the victory and choosing post-battle loot option.

Seriously, I'm on Turn 17 as I write this and already have 27,000 gold partially because of the Spawn Patrol victories.



"Unearthed Chamber of Xhotl" is excellent to place where you intend to recruit. Important to note though, it only affects the "Local Region", not the entire province. So for example if you build it in The Frozen City, it won't affect recruitment in Dargoth. Which sucks.





"Xokha" -upkeep and +loot is "all forces in local and adjacent regions" but "Xhotl" and "Huanchi" are Local only.

So the question is, does "Xokha" stack, so that if you had a 4 region province and put a Silent Sanctum in each settlement, and built "Xokha" and "Huanchi" in each one, if Spawn Patrol procs in any of them and wins the battle, will that be a 100% increase in post-battle loot?


Knowing this now, I would have a max "Xhotl" -Recruitment Cost building in The Frozen City because you can teleport Oxyotl home and recruit more troops at any time, and while you can run Chameleon Skinks most of the campaign, you are gonna want to give those C-Skinks to another lord and give Oxyotl Ancient Stegadons or Carnosaurs for the Heart of Darkness final battle, and -50% cost reduction on that will be sweet.

And then I'd probably put "Huanchi" in every region of your starting Deadwood province, and put "Xokha" in your 3 minor settlements.

I played on Very Hard campaign, Normal Battle Difficulty. I won on Turn 84.

You want to put the Oracle of the Sacred Plaques in your army for the whole campaign. You should be able to get a Skink Chief pretty quickly that you can put in your army, get him a Terradon mount ASAP, make sure to get him the Stegadon and Ancient Stegadon mounts when you can (all 3 mounts are useful in different scenarios, get them all, you can fully unlock every single Yellow skill and also max out "Replenish Troops" and a final Blue skill of your choice, I chose "Specialist").

Strike that, you should send your first Skink Chief to go explore the map, particularly to meet the High Elves so you can get trade agreements with them.

Secure your starting province Deadwood first, then I'd probably capture "The Road of Skulls" province to your left as well, Har Ganeth can defend it from the west once you get walls in it. You can use "Mung Encampment" as a sack city if you want to to level up Oxyotl or a 2nd lord. It is also excellent to send your Skink Priests to "Steal Research" to get through your tech tree faster.

In your Silent Sanctum in The Frozen City, I'd build the Gallery of Xhotl and then probably a Scrying Pool of Huanchi for defense until you can get walls built.

If you are going to go further west, take out Throt the Unclean ASAP and secure your northern border.

The first Vision mission I did caused me to encounter Rakarth, and even though he was not the target, he declared war on me, and then as I was going west, he would send full stacks to attack Shagrath, which was a pain. Because of this, I'd recommend going east and wiping out the Aghol Norscans and then Rakarth as well. Once you secure Aghol Wastelands and Albion provinces, you should be pretty safe building them up and leaving them alone, no one else wants them because they are hostile climates.

Don't bother with Saurus or their building at all, you want Oxyotl to have his Skink Oracle, maybe a Skink Chief (if you didn't send him to explore the map), and the rest be Chameleon Skinks. Once you get a 2nd Lord, put Chameleon Skins in his army as well. I was able to do really well using a 2nd Lord (Ancient Kroxigor) with Skink Cohorts (Javelins) along with some Blessed Kroxigors and Ogre Mournfang Cavalry and Terradon Riders (Fireleech Bolas), but I only raised the Ancient Kroxigor due to an emergency and then kept going with him because I didn't want to disband the Blessed Kroxigors.

If you are able to plan out your 2nd Army, I'd get a Red Crested Skink Chief (RCSC) lord and give him a full stack of Chameleon Skinks as well and have him buff them (3 points into their Red Skill). When he is able to, give him the skills "Dextrous Warrior" and "Skink Leader". "Spawn-Brothers" is awesome if you are going to build a Heroes-only stack but I found that I had beaten the campaign before I got more than 6 heroes so I wouldn't go that route, at least in the Vortex campaign. Why the RCSC lord? Because if you make it to Level 21 with him you can put him on an Ancient Stegadon.

You do not need to get "Rally" or go into the 2nd Tier of the Red Skill Line, "Spawn-Kin" is a joke so don't bother. This is nice because you can put the 4 points into the Red Line that you need and then spend the rest on your Yellow and Blue lines.

NOTE - if you have to raise a Lord for an emergency defense, the Ancient Kroxigor is probably the best one, they are tanks. Problem is, they don't have the great unique skills that the Saurus Oldblood or the RCSC have.

The difficulty of the campaign is balancing expanding your empire while making sure not to fail any Vision missions. You want to plan out what the last mission will be so that Oxyotl ends where you want him to be, otherwise you will have to Teleport home to The Frozen City or to the Capstone of Tepok if you prepared a location with one.

You also want to pay attention to the rewards for the Vision missions, some reward -50% construction cost or time and some reward 10,000 gold. You want to do the mission that gives you gold first and then the one that makes building your empire easier so that you actually have the money to take advantage of those 5 turns of reduced construction cost or time.


By the time Heart of Darkness becomes available, your Chameleon Skins will all probably be Rank 9. I would recruit a new lord and give him all those Rank 9 C-Skinks, and then I would give Oxyotl a full stack of Ancient Stegadons (Skink Chief and/or Skink Priest heroes on Ancient Stegadons go nicely with this plan as well). A few Skink Oracles or "The Pale Death" Regiment of Renown wouldn't hurt either. But 14+ Ancient Stegadons would be the minimum for Heart of Darkness.

If you have a full stack of Ancient Stegadons, the final battle will be much easier.

The first Hard Vision mission showed up at Turn 52, two of them at the same time. Note that "Hard" vision mission are required for victory.


I confirmed that if a Vision mission pops up near one of your non-Oxyotl armies, that army can complete the Vision mission, you do not need Oxyotl to travel to the mission to do it.