alias-hw
Heroes 5 Frequently Asked Questions.
As much help as the find button is, about some things there have been so many posts that it's almost impossible to find ˜that' one post between the hundreds of posts that don't answer the question. To make it a little easier, here you will find the questions asked most often so that people can find the answers to their questions more easily.
Please note that these Q and A are things I picked up over the forum, I don't claim to actually know all of this.
My thanks go to the people that did find the solutions to problems and shared them with the rest of the forum.
The Q&A in this post are in the following order:
About manuals.
About unseen buttons.
About the troops.
About the campaign maps.
About fan made maps.
About the map editor.
About the patches.
About the installation CDs/DVD.
About (re)installation problems.
About playing online.
About manuals.
Q. I find the information that came with the game a bit lacking, where can I find more info?
A. There are two fan manuals ˜out there.' Both are very detailed, and the first one mentioned carries the Ubi seal of approval.
You can find them here.
And here.
About unseen buttons.
Q. I realize that you can't show EVERY button on the screen and that keyboard shortcuts are used for them instead. But what are those ˜Unseen buttons?'
A. The most commonly asked for button is the W button for ˜wait.'
There are however a lot more keyboard functions.
For Heroes 5 you will find all of them described on page 40 to 42 in the manual that came with the game.
For the HoF expansion you will find these keyboard functions on page 10 to 13 of the manual.
For the TotE expansion you will find these keyboard functions on page 45 to 47 of the manual.
(For all three I'm talking about the English language manual, I have no idea about manuals in other languages.)
About the troops.
Q. How do I spit stacks of creatures in the game?
A. Simply click on the creature stack, then hold down the ˜shift' key and click on an empty creature slot. This will bring up the ˜split stack' screen. Obviously, this only works as long as you have an empty creature slot.
Q. How do I split creatures while on the battlefield?
A. You can't split creatures once the battle has begun, but in the tactical stage (after you entered the arena, but before you can see the enemy forces) you can split your creatures. What you need to do is take the creatures off the battlefield. Then you can split the troops in the same way as described in the question above. Once you have split the troops you can put both stacks on the battlefield.
Q. I have some creatures that I don't want on the battlefield in the coming battle; is this possible?
A. Yes. In the tactical stage (after you entered the battle, but before you see the enemy troops) you can click on the stack of creatures in the status bar at the bottom. This removed the troops of the battlefield. Be warned. If you take troops of the map and you loose the battle, you will loose those troops as well.
Q. Is there a way to use the caravans (available only in Hammers of Fate and Tribes of the East) to also move already bought creatures around?
A. Yes. It requires a little bit of a workaround though. At the town where you are caravanning the creatures from you need to have a Hero, and at least one creature for hire. Hire the creature with creating a caravan. Then use the Hero to intercept the caravan and transfer the already bought creatures to the caravan. Now the caravan will continue on to its original destination, with the newly placed creatures.
About the campaign maps.
My game is crashing at the end of a completed campaign mission. "Mission accomplished" appears and then the game crashes. My Hero did also not carry over to the next mission.
A. This seems to be a bug that was introduced with patch 5.
The short, quick solution to the "mission completed" crash seems to be to restart the mission but at a DIFFERENT difficulty level. For instance ˜hard' instead of the ˜normal' you were playing at. People who did this were able to complete the mission and have the hero carry over to the next mission. It also seems that once that mission is over you can set back the difficulty level to the one you prefer to play at.
Q. In mission 3 of the Inferno campaign (The Ship) every turn some creatures disappear from my army. Is there a reason for this?
A. Yes, there is a reason. It is explained to you in a cutscene at the beginning of day 2. The elves don't accept a demon lord as their leader, so every turn a couple of them desert Agrael.
Two possible solutions:
1. Use only Inferno troops from the city in the underground as Agrael's army.
2. Have another hero escort Agrael all of the time and give all elves to that hero before you end your turn. At the beginning of the next turn, give the elves back to Agrael. They only desert Agrael, your troops are safe even with other demon lords (the script/event only applies to Agrael).
Q. In the Haven campaign map "The Trap" I am supposed to get the boots to cross the bridge. Its even in my objectives with a green check mark. Yet I can't cross the bridge. What did I do wrong?
A. This was a small bug that made it into the game with patch 3. There are two options; first, the obvious one, install patch 4. The problem was fixed in patch 4.
Second, if for some reason you don't want to install patch 4 know that the problem is that you don't get the boots after beating the crypt *IF* you are wearing anything in your foot slot. You have to take anything off that you're wearing in your foot slot.
As long as your foot slot is empty, you will get the boots. The boots also don't have a working graphic, so your foot slot will look empty. But if you right-click on it, the Boots of Levitation will be there, and you can cross the water.
About fan made maps.
Q. Where do I have to place the fan made maps?
A. Once you opened the map editor (just opening and immediately closing the editor is enough)it created a folder in the Heroes 5 dir called ˜maps.' If you don't have this folder called Maps in your Heroes folder; make it. Fan made maps have to be placed there. To clarify, I'm talking about the heroes folder on your main drive, not the heroes folder in the ˜my documents' folder; that one is only where your profile and safe-games are stored.
Q. I downloaded some multiplayer, and also some single player maps. Should I make sub folders in the ˜maps' folder to keep them separate?
A. No. All maps, regardless of being single or multiplayer, should be placed directly in the Maps folder. In fact, if you do make sub folders the maps you place in them won't show up in the game.
Q. I just Downloaded some maps and now I suddenly have sub folders in the maps folder, but I thought there weren't supposed to be any sub folders.
A. There are indeed not supposed to be any subfolders. If you do have sub folders it means that you made a little mistake; namely unpacking a map that shouldn't be unpacked. What you need to do is NOT unpack the map you downloaded. Instead you need to rename it to give it the .h5m extension, or the .PAK extension. (My personal preference is .h5m so that I still remember later on just what exactly the file is.)
Also, be advised. If you do have sub folders, it also means that the maps that created those sub folders won't show up in the game; you need to rename the extension for the map to show up, but not unpack the map.
Q. What extension do the maps need to have to work?
A. The maps have to be in the .h5m or .PAK format. Please note, if you downloaded a map and it's a ZIP file you can either unpack the map (which is enough in most cases, but in some cases causes the problem above of creating sub folders), or you can simply rename the .zip extension to a .h5m extension.
Q. The map I downloaded doesn't show up while other maps I downloaded do. Why?
A. Most maps work just fine when you unpack them into the maps folder, as long as they have the .h5m or .pak expansion. But some maps don't show up in the game if they are unpacked. What you need to do is rename the zip file you downloaded from a .zip to a .h5m expansion.
About the map editor.
Q. I just installed Heroes 5 and wanted to try my hand at the map editor, but I can't find it. Where is it?
A. The map editor is added to the game through the patches; you need to install the patches. The best option is to install patch 4; that way you DO NOT have to install the first 3 patches, and you will have the improved version of the map editor.
Q. Wasn't a Random Map Generator supposed to come with the map editor?
A. No. Heroes 5 was only ever supposed to have the Map editor. The Random Map Generator has been introduced with the first Heroes V expansion called ˜Hammers of Fate.'
Q. I got Hammers of Fate installed but every time I do ˜generate map' in the game I get maps where I can't chose which faction I play. Why not, and how do I change this so that I can play as the faction I want?
A. Since the first release of the RMG in Heroes was basically a first draft, you will notice that there are a few bugs in it. If you want to play as a specific faction you have to make a random map by using the Map editor. Simply open the map editor and lick ˜Create random map' in there. If this way you still cannot chose the faction you want, simply open the map again with the editor and change the town of player one to the faction you want to play as.
Or, install the HoF patch, that fixed the problem.
Q. Is there a way how I can turn my single player map into a multiplayer map once I have already started to make it?
A. Yes. Here is what you need to do step by step:
1. unpack the map *.h5m file with winzip, winrar or any other program. If you do not manage to do it otherwise, change the .h5m extension manually to .zip
2. There is now a new Maps directory with a subdirectory called SingleMissions or Multiplayer depending on map type. Rename it to the version you want. Check the case sensitive spelling!
3. pack the Map directory and everything within it back to a *.zip file
4. Rename the .zip to .h5m
In summary, all you have to do is to rename a directory inside the *.h5m file. h5m files themselves are renamed zip archives.
Q. Is there a way make/change a map into a team map, or can you only play teams on maps that were team maps to begin with?
A. Yes. Setting teams for a map is pretty easy.
1. Double click the map in the maps folder to open it in the map editor.
2. Select view/map properties
3. From this menu click teams and then the checkbox teams.
4. Insert the desired team arrangements (1vs.3 etc.)
5. From the map properties menu (where you selected teams) go to general map properties and in the map name insert 1vs.3 into the title so that it shows up that way in the game.
6. Save and exit.
About the patches.
Q. Where can I find the patches?
A. For H5 the best option is to install patch 4 which includes all correction made in the previous patches. It also adds a ˜check for updates' button to the start menu of Heroes. If you click that it checks for update and installs any patches that came out after patch 4. (You might have to check for several times since it might install a patch one at a time, I don't know for sure.)
Otherwise the patches, including the old ones, can be found (amongst other places) at the following sites. My personal suggestion would be FileFront and Celestial Heavens. This because the patches are the easiest to find there, while at the other places you have to hunt to find them.
Ubisoft
Nival
FileFront
Celestial Heavens
Other links to the patches can be found in these forum posts:
Patch 1
Patch 2
Patch 3
Patch 4
Patch 5
Patch 1 for HoF
And that is the last link to patches that I'm going to put in because all versions (once H5 is been patched with at least patch 1) have an update button you can access from the start menu. Use that to check for updates. (You might want to check several times to make sure you have gotten all the patches.)
Q. Do I need to install all patches, or is installing the last patch enough?
A. For H5, patch 4 includes all corrections made in the previous patches, so to cover the patches until patch 4 you only need to install patch 4. Patch 4 is compatible with all previous version of Heroes 5. From version 1.0 to 1.3. Patch 5 is once again a patch that first needs the other patches installed.
To simplify the patching process I would strongly recommend that you install either patch 1 or patch 4 and then use the ˜check for updates' option in the Heroes 5 folder in the start menu. The same goes for the Hammers of Fate expansion. It came with an auto updater option; simply click that one and downloading and installing goes automatically.
Q. When I try to install the patch I get the message that Heroes 5 is not installed; but it is. Now what?
A. There are several different versions of the patch and which one you need depends on A, where you bought the game, and B, what version of the game you have. For instance, a standard version of the game bought in the U.S. needs the standard U.S. patch, while a Collector's edition of the game that was bought in Europe will need the European collectors edition patch. If you try to install the wrong patch you will get the message that Heroes is not installed.
Two things to remember. 1, nowadays with Internet stores, you might have bought the game online in Europe, but you might actually have the American edition. 2 There are a lot of countries that don't have their own version of the patch. Australia and Thailand come to mind.
Q. I don't know which version of the game I have. How do I find out?
A. Go to the Windows Start button.
Click it, and then click on the ˜run' option.
Type: regedit
Hit enter.
Go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Ubisoft\Heroes of Might and Magic V (may differ).
IN that folder you will see another folder and the name of that is the version of the game you have; for instance ˜European.'
Q. I tried the above, but I still can't install the patches.
A. 90% of the time the above is the reason why you are not able to install the matches, so please try that first. However, if that still doesn't help you, take a look at this topic.
Q. People suggest that I update using the auto updater, but I don't have an auto updater, how come?
A. The auto updater is a feature that is introduced in H5 with patch 1. So you first need to download and install patch 1 or 4 (which has all fixes of the previous patches) manually. After that you will have the auto update function.
HoF and TotE both came with an update button. You can access that from your start menu and then going to where you have your game.
Q. When I want to use the auto update to install the patches I get a ˜CRC' error. What is this, and what do I do now?
A. The what it is, is not exactly known. My guess is that it is mainly caused by installed mods. But that's not important. The solution to it is to download the patch manually and then install that patch. This takes care of the problem. Remember to DL the right version of the patch.
About the installation CDs/DVD.
Q. I just installed my games from CDs, and I was never asked for disc 2. Just what exactly is disc 2 good for?
A. The second CD is the language CD. If you install the game in English you won't be asked for this disc; it is only asked for if you install in a different language than English.
About (re)installation problems.
Q. I uninstalled the game for a very good reason. Now I want to reinstall it but when I try I get a message asking me if I want to UN-install the game, and no matter how often I try to uninstall fully, I cannot do it, yet I also cannot reinstall the game because it says it's already installed. Now what?
A. When you deleted the game some of the game keys were left behind. To fix this do the following:
Go to start and pick ˜run.'
Type regedit.
Press enter.
In that program look for the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Uninstall
Under that key look for any keys related to heroes 5 (use f3 to search).
Delete all the keys found.
You should be able to install after this.
About playing online.
Q. I want to play online at Ubi.com, but I'm being asked for the ˜online key.' What is this, where do I find it?
A. The online key is the registration number you find printed on the front of the manual that came with the game.
Be advised, the key has to be entered in the way it is shown; including the dashed. So if it is printed in the 1234-5678 format, you have to indeed type 1234-5678, and NOT 12345678. Also, I heard, but don't know for sure, that letters in they key are CASE sensitive.
Q. How can I play multiplayer, and are there actually different ways of playing multiplayer games?
A. There are 3 different kinds of multiplayer; through ubi.com, over local area network, in hotseat.
Use Ubi.com if you want to play over a server against people all over the world.
Use Local Area Network is you want to play against specific friends.
Use Hotseat if you and some friends are in the same place and want to play on ONE computer.
To play through Ubi.com:
After loading the game:
1. Select multiplayer
2. Select Ubi.com
3. Enter the online key (which is the serial number printed on the manual you got with the game, INCLUDING the dashed, so, in the 1234-5678 format.)
4. Log in with your account and select a place to play.
To play over Local Area Network:
After loading the game:
If you want to host the game:
1. Select multiplayer
2. Select a name you want to play as
3. Click Create
4. Select a map
5. Click create
5. Click ˜start game' when you friends have joined the game
If you want to join a LAN game hosted by a friend:
1. Select multiplayer
2. Select a name you want to play as
3. Click Join
4. Select a game to join
If you want to play hotseat:
1. Select multiplayer
2. Select Hotseat
3. Select a mode
4. Select a map
5. Click Create
6. Select a faction for all human players and make sure the rest is set to computer.
7. Select Start game
About Q&As at other places.
Q. I hate to tell you, but I didn't find an answer to my question. Where else can I look for answers?
A. There are two Q&As in the forums at Celestial Heavens. here and
here.
And let us most definitely not forget the Ubisoft solution center
here.
Did you find a mistake in the FAQ?
Please let me know so that I can correct it and keep this FAQ up to date.
For instance, was a problem fixed with a patch?
Do you know a FAQ WITH answer that is not listed? Please let me know that as well so that I can add it.
H.W.
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