This is gonna be a rough mission. It's the last one of the game and it's supposed to be that way. Inside your base are some treasures. The eastern crates contain a manual of health (+50 hp permenant) and the northwestern have mana/health minor treasures. Also to the southeast is a goblin merchant. Hippogryph riders are available for the first time but I'm a bit unimpressed with them. I don't feel they warrant the cost in food. I prefer to build two archers. Now we'll discuss how this chapter is going to play out.

The undead will construct a base in the southwestern corner of the map. They are going to send waves of units to assault the human base first, then the orcs and finally your base. So you need to make each base last. It's very hard to make your base last 15 minutes at the end so you shouldn't be going for a third of the time for each. The ultimate goal would be 22.5 minutes for the human and 22.5 minutes for the orc! It'll be nearly impossible to protect your base. There are some things we can do to help the bases defend longer.

One of your first priorities should be to get a wisp to the second gold mine to the west of your base. One of the key limiting factors here is going to be not enough resources to keep pumping out the units you need. Get control of that mine and set your 5 wisps to controlling it. Now you can take some wisps to the human base and get them transformed into ancient protectors. Focus their construction on the western side of the base where the humans have set up defenses. You can help the towers or choose to make a second defensive area past that should the towers fall. I chose to do a mix of both. Even one extra defensive structure here can make a world of difference.

Your heroes should be helping the humans at their base at all times. The auras can stack and the human units can benefit from Furion's thorns aura and Tyrande's archery aura. Also your heroes will benefit from Jaina proudmoore's brilliance aura (improving mana regen). On the unit end you will want to have plenty of huntresses, dryads, archers and druids of the claw. Perhaps you should make an extra ancient of lore and ancient of war. Make huntresses, archers, dryads and druids of the claw. Buy all the unit armor upgrades first as having units that can last is the most important thing here. If you get a nice army of huntresses going perhaps consider building a ballista or two with the impaling bolt upgrade. They'll work well against hordes, like the huntresses and you'll be dealing with many of them.

Keep your heroes busy. They should both have their level 6 upgrades now. Your druid can cast tranquility in the middle of a battle and help some unit survive while Tyrande casts her starfall ability and weakens the enemy. This will really tip the balance. Seriously, these are the most important skills of this entire mission. Masses of units healed by tranquility backed up by starfall! You can seriously tip the scales and though these skills have a big cooldown it's not all that much. Save it for the big battles. The huntresses' owls can warn you of what's coming. Watch the enemies build up. Use starfall on hordes. Use tranquility (most effectively) after a big battle to fully heal everything that's left, including your allies!

It's likely the human base will eventually fall and you should prepare for this. If you see it as inevitable begin building ancient protectors at the orc base. Make your heroes fall back so they don't get swarmed when the human base falls. Above all keep a nice army ready to rock at all times. That's why you have that second gold mine. But it hurts when you lose as hero as they take a long time to come back. Don't fret if they do just don't dilly dally waiting on them to return. Use your non-hero units to do some defending even without the backup of heroes. For, if the orcish and human bases fall you're screwed in the end most likely. That's why you have two gold mines. Keep up the good fight and remember, you're out to save the world. When it's over sit back and watch the ending. You've earned it!

And by the way. Wasn't that one of the funnest chapters in the entire game? Warcraft 3 rocks for letting you go back and replay these missions. Play it again! If you find a good strategy, let me know! I'll give you credit right here at the end of the walkthrough.

Klas Mattsson had this to submit as an alternate strategy for beating the final mission. Note that this is for hard mode. Guess that means it should work pretty well on normal, too!

Thanks for the submission, Klass. This can be a tough one and your input will surely help someone out there.