Skills & Attribute Analysis
 

Here's my skill analysis. Not everyone will agree (I find mage skills to offer the most, knights next, and paladins the least), but I hope the information here is helpful.

-Falconhurst

King’s Bounty: The Legend
Skills Analysis by Falconhurst

Skills
Might
Training
1: 2/0/0 swordsman skill smashing blow
2: 3/1/0 bowman: flaming arrow
3: 4/2/0 knights: circle attack
Only has value if your army is composed primarily of humans.
Swordsmen and bowmen you will use only in the early game; knights are very slow. IMO there are better options. Get 1 level only to meet prerequisites.

Rage Control
1: 4/1/0 rage maximum +10
2: 7/2/0 rage maximum +20
3: 10/3/0 rage maximum +30
A useful skill to max out

Combat readiness: troops receive less physical attack damage in the first round
1: 2/2/0 -10%
2: 3/2/0 -15%
3: 4/2/0 -20%
Diminishing returns and the first round only impact of this restrict its use. Furthermore, only limited physical damage is dished out in the first round because troops are too far away except for missile attacks or very fast units. Get this only at level 1 as a prerequisite and save higher levels for later if you need them at all.

Master of Spirits: increases experience of spirit of rage in combat
1: 4/1/0 +10%
2: 5/1/0 +20%
3: 6/1/0 +30%
Useful once you actually get the spirits of rage.

Tactics:
1: 10/2/0 Allows troops to be arranged on the battlefield before combat
2: 14/4/0 allows troops to be arranged in a broader area
Expensive and of limited benefit.

Iron Fist (Knight only)
Decreases leadership requirements for swordsmen, guardsmen, knights, and horsemen
1: 3/0/0 -10%
2: 4/1/0 -15%
3: 5/2/0 -20%

All of these kinds of troops except for knights will be obsolete quickly, and knights are very slow. Skip it unless these troops make up the bulk of your armies.

Frenzy – increases attack bonus for hero’s troops
1: 4/1/0 +2 attack
2: 6/2/0 +4 attack
3: 8/3/0 +6 attack
A great skill, everyone should get this ASAP as attack makes a big difference. These are big bonuses to an attribute that is hard to raise by other means

Onslaught
Hero’s troops receive initiative bonus in first turn
1: 5/0/0 +1 initiative
2: 6/0/0 +2 initiative
3: 7/0/0 +3 initiative
This is a puzzling and largely worthless skill, since it works only during the first turn (even at level 3) when only missile troops typically have the range to engage the enemy. If it worked all the time it would be worthwhile, but as a first-round only bonus it does not warrant any serious investment.

Nighttime operations:
Attack and defense bonus during nighttime combat
1: 3/0/0 +2 attack and defense
2: 3/0/0 +4 attack and defense
3: 3/0/0 +6 attack and defense
A great skill, and very cheap.

Dark Commander
Undead fight more effectively
1: 3/1/1 +3 attack
2: 4/2/2 attack +5, initiative +1
3: 5/3/3 attack +7, initiative +2
This skill with its powerful all-the-time bonuses makes a good argument for an undead army. It is also relatively cheap while offering large all-the-time bonuses. On the other hand, undead can lower the morale of other troops (unless you spend many points on the MIGHT skill tree to get the tolerance skill), and there is no reason to get it if your army does not consist primarily of undead.

Anger (Knight only): rage increases when troops exchange strikes
1: (free) +25%
2: 5/0/0 +50%
3: 7/0/0 +100%
A great skill, but limited only to knights

Mind
Mind skills are by far the worst on the skill tree. There are fewer skills; many go only to level 2 instead of 3, and skills are less useful.

Scouting
1: 0/1/0 allows the hero to see what creatures compose enemy troops on the adventure map
2: 0/2/0 allows hero to approximate number of enemy troops
3: 0/3/1 allows hero to determine precise number of enemy troops
Level 1 is nice and is a prerequisite for other skills. Beyond that, scouting is less useful, as you can see with level 1 the army’s relative strength to yours and the precise numbers are not very important. Higher levels are cheap, but offer little.

Glory: increased leadership
1: 2/5/0 +100
2: 3/6/0 +250
3: 4/7/0 +500
A nice boost, but expensive. Still one of the better skills in the Mind skill tree.

Reserve: allows the hero to keep a reserve troop which does not participate in combat
1: 3/3/0 1 reserve troop
2: 3/3/0 2 reserve troops
A nice convenience that can save some running around, but it does not offer any advantages in power or combat that can help you perform better. Save the points unless you have runes to burn.

Trophies:
Increases gold received by the hero after combat
1: 1/3/1 +10%
2: 1/5/1 +20%
3: 1/7/1 +30%
If you play well as a mage or fighter, you will have so much gold you won’t know what to do with it. Much gold comes from treasure rather than fighting monsters too, so a +30% combat gold increase is more like just +15% total gold. As gold is in abundance as long as you can protect your troops and don’t have to continually replace them, this skill is fairly worthless. There is not enough stuff to spend gold on to make this worthwhile. Its only real use is as prerequisite for the tolerance skill.

Learning
1: 1/5/1 +10% combat experience
2: 1/6/1 +15% combat experience
3: 2/7/2 +20% combat experience
Level 1 is useful; 2 and 3 reach diminishing returns. This skill helps you get levels faster, but levels are still capped at 30 and so this won’t necessarily change the end-game dynamics. Stick with level 1 unless you have lots of useless might runes and nothing else to do with them.

Diplomacy
Entice away enemy troops if you have enough leadership and the same troops in your army
1: 1/6/0 entice 5%\
2: 2/7/0 entice 10%
3: 3/8/0 entice 15%
You are rarely going to have spare leadership, and enemies will rarely have the same troop types. And it’s expensive for only a small boost. Skip it.

Trade:
Sell items and scrolls for higher price
1: 0/1/0 items 50%, scrolls 30%
2: 0/2/0 items 75%, scrolls 40%
3: 0/3/0 items 100%, scrolls 50%
Given the great abundance of cash if you play well and the relative scarcity of items and scrolls, this skill has little use. Its only upside is that the rune cost is low.

Tolerance
1: 2/8/2 troops can tolerate undead in army without decreasing morale
2: 2/8/2 troops can tolerate undead and demons without decreasing morale
Has some use if you want to run around with demonic or undead hordes. However it is expensive, and all the prereqs you need for this skill (scouting, glory, trophies, reserve, diplomacy) make it unattractive.

Keeper of the light:
Extra gold and experience after eliminating undead
1: 1/4/1 +20% gold, +5% experience
2: 2/6/2, +30% gold, +10% experience
3: 3/8/3 +40% gold, +15% experience
Undead are only a small fraction of foes placed in the game, and gold as previously noted is abundant. The skill is expensive and basically a waste of time to try to fill out the very weak paladin skill chart.

Inquisition: Can upgrade priests to inquisitors
1: 1/5/1
Since you can buy inquisitors anyway, and can replace them if numbers run down through “sacrifice,” this skill is almost completely worthless.

Holy Anger (Paladin Only)
Increases attack against demons and undead
1: free (+5 attack)
2: 5/8/0 +10 attack
3: 5/8/0 +15 attack
A nice bonus; however, demons and undead are only a fraction of the enemies in the game. These targeted bonuses against selected enemies are not as useful as the all-the-time bonuses of knights (rage) or mages (magic power & damage).


Runic Stone
Each mind rune gives additional might and magic runes to the hero
1: 0/10/0 + 10 runes of might and magic
2: 0/10/0 +10 runes of might and magic
3: 0/10/0 +10 runes of might and magic
This trait is almost the only redeeming value of the paladin class, essentially allowing one to trade low-value mind runes for higher-value might and magic runes, essentially doubling the number of runes in the process. You can trade 30 mind runes for a net gain of 30 different runes (30 mind + 30 magic), and given the scarcity of runes in the game, this is clearly a good trade.

The problem however is that the investment needed to effect this trade is considerable. To get the prerequisites, you have to invest points in scouting and learning (both worthwhile at level 1), 2 mind runes in the virtually worthless trade skill, and 2/6/2 in the similarly poor “keeper of the light” skill. This knocks the net pick up of runes from 30 down to 18, which is still significant. This is equal to about 2 levels worth of free runes. But the Paladin will never get as many mind or might runes as the mage or knight, and even with this modest boost will still have difficulty getting to the end of the high-demand magic tech tree in particular. This skill restores at least some credibility to the Paladin class, but it still fails to balance the class on par with the others.

Magic

Wisdom 1: (free at start for mage) Mana +10, scrolls +2
Wisdom 2: 0/0/7 Mana +20, scrolls +4
Wisdom 3: 0/1/10 Mana +30, scrolls +6
The “scroll” part is virtually worthless, as the scrolls you want you will scribe into your spellbook, and those that you don’t should be sold. This trait offers a significant mana boost, but it is expensive. Wait until late game to go beyond level 1


Alchemy
1: 0/1/3 magic crystals needed for upgrade -15%
2: 0/1/5 crystals -30%
3: 0/1/7 crystals -50%

Alchemy skill can be acquired only by mages. This skill is, in my opinion, nearly worthless because of the abundance of magic crystals. Only a small number of crystals are needed to scribe or upgrade spells. I find that I have vast numbers of magic crystals and nothing to do with them even by level 8 or 9 after having upgraded all the spells I want. This skill might have value if you want to upgrade ALL the magic spells to 3rd level, but I find that only a portion of the spells are genuinely useful. Even then, it seems that there are more than enough crystals to go around for nearly universal spell upgrades. The skill points are better spent elsewhere.

Meditation
1: (free at start for mage) +30% mana regeneration per minute on adventure map
2: 0/1/2 +60% mana regeneration
3: 0/1/3 +100% mana regeneration
Useful and fairly inexpensive.

Order Mage
1: 0/2/2 allows hero to learn order spells from scrolls
2: 0/4/4 allows spell upgrade to level 2
3: 0/8/8 allows spell upgrade to level 3
You need at least one point of this to qualify for healer and archmage skills.
One level is good at the beginning. The later spells, like resurrection, aren’t available in the early game.

Healer
Increases effectiveness of divine spells (healing, resurrection, bless, god armor, light of life)
1: 0/1/1 +15%
2: 0/2/2 +20%
3: 0/3/3 +25%
One level is useful and needed for archmage and the skill is fairly cheap. However the increase from level 1 to level 3 is small; I recommend holding off on higher levels until endgame unless you are playing as a warrior or paladin and use magic mainly for healing.

Distortion Magic:
1: 1/1/4 allows hero to learn distortion spells from scrolls
2: 2/2/7 upgrade to level 2
3: 3/3/10 upgrade to level 3

I don’t find distortion magic all that useful, but you need 1 level to get Chaos Magic. Get one level and save further upgrades until later in the game as points are better spent elsewhere.

Concentration:
Allows hero to restore mana during combat
1: 0/3/8 +2 mana/combat turn
2: 0/3/9 +4 mana/turn
3: 0/3/10 +6 mana/turn
Very useful, but also quite expensive. Get one level (needed for chaos magic) at start and upgrade later as you can. You won’t need to invest as much in mana if your mana regenerates at a high rate during combat.

Chaos Magic:
1: 0/2/6 allows hero to learn chaos spells from scrolls
2: 0/4/8 allows upgrade to level 2
3: 0/6/12 allows upgrade to level 3
Chaos magic has the best are damage spells, fireball and ice dragon. Getting to level 3 and upgrading spells as fast as possible should be a priority.

Necromancy:
1: 0/2/4 Resurrects 15-20% of slain soldiers after a battle, necro call + 10%
2: 0/3/5 raises 20-30% of soldiers, necro call +20%
3: 0/4/6 raises 30-40% of slain soliders, necro call +30%
Offers some useful bonuses, but once you get the “sacrifice” spell along with inquisitors (resurrect) and order magic (resurrect), it becomes less helpful. Investing 0/9/15 points to get 30-40% of soldiers back after battle may be worthwhile, but there are other ways to keep your troops healthy in most circumstances. Unless you are playing with a lot of undead, it is likely better to wait on this.

Archmage
1: 0/0/3 reduces leadership requirements for priests, inquisitors, druids, shamans, necromancers, archmages by 10%
2: 0/1/4 reduces leadership requirements by 15%
3: 0/2/5 reduces leadership requirements by 20%

You need one level of this to get higher magic and destroyer, but after that diminishing returns occur. I recommend sticking with level 1 unless your army consists primarily of mage types.

Destroyer:
1: 0/1/5 +15% spell power to damage spells
2: 0/2/7 +30% spell damage
3: 0/3/9 +50% spell damage
+50% spell damage is a huge boost for a mage. Upgrade this all the way once you get level 3 chaos spells.

Higher Magic (Mages Only Special skill):
1: 5/5/20 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn once during combat
2: 5/5/15 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn twice during combat
3: 5/5/10 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn three times during combat
Very expensive, but great. If you can blast your opponent with two fully upgraded big damage spells before he even moves, you will have a big advantage in combat. Get at least level 1; 2 or 3 if you need them.

Level-up attributes:
At each level, the hero will have options between two different upgrades. Possible upgrades are listed below. I have listed them in the order that I think is most effective, but obviously others may have different opinions.

Attack/Defense +1
When higher or lower than enemy’s defense/attack, offers attack bonuses up to 300% or reduced damage down to 1/3. These are therefore highly important skills. They should be maxed out as much as possible with the might skill tree, but these are also useful skills at any level.

Intellect +1: Every 7 levels give +10% to spell power, and 15 levels increases spell duration by one turn. This can also be increased with items. I recommend shooting for 15 in intellect, as higher levels require greater increases than attack/defense to meaningfully increase skills. To be useful you will need multiples of 7 or 15, so it is a lot of work to raise this skill beyond that point.

Leadership (varying amounts): leadership is important, but it scales with level. At level 20 you will get a much bigger leadership increase than level 2, whereas other attribute increases offered will stay at +1 at low and high levels alike. Therefore I recommend adding attributes at low levels (Attack and Defense particularly), and picking up more leadership at higher levels. This makes the early game somewhat harder, but the late game easier. Some players like leadership the most; higher leadership at the beginning does make the game easier to start but does not increase the abilities of your troops in any way. As late game leadership can reach 20,000+, I think the attack/defense skills offer more long-term value.

Mana +7: You can get good increases in mana and its regeneration with concentration and wisdom, so you shouldn’t need too much of this.

Rage +5: nice, but not as universally useful as attack/defense.

Agreed for the most part. I have a few questions about experience (I'm only level 8 on first playthrough). Nothing ever respawns and there are no battles that can be repeated, right? So given that, will characters still reach level 30 w/o investing in Learning and Keeper of the Light?

My comments in bold. I think you are selling the Mind tree a little short. Mind you, I thought the same thing when I first looked through it (See my thread 'Does anyone rate the Paladin?') Playing on Hard, money is much more of an issue than it appears to be on Medium. So people should bear this in mind when thinking about the vale of various skills. Good job otherwise though. I look forward to playing the game a second time as a Mage.

Great guide! I'm currently playing a Paladin on Hard.

A couple of comments:
Scouting isn't that important because you can just quick save before a fight and see what the stack has. :P

As for the anti-undead or anti-demon skills, they aren't all that bad in my opinion. These skills allow you to fight stacks stronger than your army.

Is Inquisition that bad? Thankfully I haven't invested too much into that yet (only went down to Runic Stone on the Mind tree).

I'd also like to say that I think you're selling the Paladin a bit short. His greatest strength I think is that he starts with a Resurrection scroll. I'm abusing the hell out of the spell right now and it's a great life saver.

My post assumed normal difficulty setting.

On HARD, many of the paladin skills assume greater value. I think most mage and knight skills offer the best value on NORMAL difficulty setting, but on HARD where gold is scarcer, paladin (mind) skills excel.

I have gone through and added grades or scores to the different skills. This is admittedly somewhat subjective; others with different playing styles may rate some skills higher or lower.

-Falconhurst

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King’s Bounty: The Legend
Skills Analysis by Falconhurst

Skills
Might

Training
Grade: 2/5 (all levels)
1: 2/0/0 swordsman skill smashing blow
2: 3/1/0 bowman: flaming arrow
3: 4/2/0 knights: circle attack
Only has value if your army is composed primarily of humans.
Swordsmen and bowmen you will use only in the early game; knights are very slow. IMO there are better options. Get 1 level only to meet prerequisites.

Rage Control
Grade: 5/5 (all levels)
1: 4/1/0 rage maximum +10
2: 7/2/0 rage maximum +20
3: 10/3/0 rage maximum +30
A useful skill to max out

Combat readiness:
Grade: 3/5 (level 1), 2/5 (level 2/3)
Troops receive less physical attack damage in the first round
1: 2/2/0 -10%
2: 3/2/0 -15%
3: 4/2/0 -20%
Diminishing returns and the first round only impact of this restrict its use. Furthermore, only limited physical damage is dished out in the first round because troops are too far away except for missile attacks or very fast units. Get this only at level 1 as a prerequisite and save higher levels for later if you need them at all.

Master of Spirits
Grade: 5/5 (all levels)
increases experience of spirit of rage in combat
1: 4/1/0 +10%
2: 5/1/0 +20%
3: 6/1/0 +30%
Useful once you actually get the spirits of rage.

Tactics
Grade: 3/5
1: 10/2/0 Allows troops to be arranged on the battlefield before combat
2: 14/4/0 allows troops to be arranged in a broader area
Expensive and of limited benefit.

Iron Fist (Knight only)
Grade: 3.5/5 level 1, 2.5 level 2/3
Decreases leadership requirements for swordsmen, guardsmen, knights, and horsemen
1: 3/0/0 -10%
2: 4/1/0 -15%
3: 5/2/0 -20%
All of these kinds of troops except for knights will be obsolete quickly, and knights are very slow. Skip it unless these troops make up the bulk of your armies.

Frenzy – increases attack bonus for hero’s troops
Grade: 5/5 all levels
1: 4/1/0 +2 attack
2: 6/2/0 +4 attack
3: 8/3/0 +6 attack
A great skill, everyone should get this ASAP as attack makes a big difference. These are big bonuses to an attribute that is hard to raise by other means

Onslaught
Grade: 2-3/5
Hero’s troops receive initiative bonus in first turn
1: 5/0/0 +1 initiative
2: 6/0/0 +2 initiative
3: 7/0/0 +3 initiative
This is a puzzling and largely worthless skill, since it works only during the first turn (even at level 3) when only missile troops typically have the range to engage the enemy. If it worked all the time it would be worthwhile, but as a first-round only bonus it does not warrant any serious investment.

Nighttime operations:
Grade: 4.5/5
Attack and defense bonus during nighttime combat
1: 3/0/0 +2 attack and defense
2: 3/0/0 +4 attack and defense
3: 3/0/0 +6 attack and defense
A great skill, and very cheap.

Dark Commander
Grade: 5/5 if you use undead armies; worthless for everyone else.
Undead fight more effectively
1: 3/1/1 +3 attack
2: 4/2/2 attack +5, initiative +1
3: 5/3/3 attack +7, initiative +2
This skill with its powerful all-the-time bonuses makes a good argument for an undead army. It is also relatively cheap while offering large all-the-time bonuses. On the other hand, undead can lower the morale of other troops (unless you spend many points on the MIGHT skill tree to get the tolerance skill), and there is no reason to get it if your army does not consist primarily of undead.

Anger (Knight only): rage increases when troops exchange strikes
Grade: 5/5
1: (free) +25%
2: 5/0/0 +50%
3: 7/0/0 +100%
A great skill, but limited only to knights

Mind
Mind skills are by far the worst on the skill tree. There are fewer skills; many go only to level 2 instead of 3, and skills are less useful.

Scouting
Grade: 4.5/5 (level 1), 3 (level 2/3)
1: 0/1/0 allows the hero to see what creatures compose enemy troops on the adventure map
2: 0/2/0 allows hero to approximate number of enemy troops
3: 0/3/1 allows hero to determine precise number of enemy troops
Level 1 is nice and is a prerequisite for other skills. Beyond that, scouting is less useful, as you can see with level 1 the army’s relative strength to yours and the precise numbers are not very important. Higher levels are cheap, but offer little.

Glory
Grade: 3.5/5 (all levels)
increased leadership points
1: 2/5/0 +100
2: 3/6/0 +250
3: 4/7/0 +500
A nice boost, but expensive. Good in early game but impact wanes in late game. Still one of the better skills in the Mind skill tree.

Reserve
Grade: 3.5/5
allows the hero to keep a reserve troop which does not participate in combat
1: 3/3/0 1 reserve troop
2: 3/3/0 2 reserve troops
A nice convenience that can save some running around, but it does not offer any advantages in power or combat that can help you perform better. Still this can save time and potentially improve your final score by minimizing pointless trips when you have reserve cadres.

Trophies:
Grade: 3/5 (level 1), 2.5/5 (level 2/3)
Increases gold received by the hero after combat
1: 1/3/1 +10%
2: 1/5/1 +20%
3: 1/7/1 +30%
If you play well as a mage or fighter, you will have so much gold you won’t know what to do with it. Much gold comes from treasure rather than fighting monsters too, so a +30% combat gold increase is more like just +15% total gold. As gold is in abundance as long as you can protect your troops and don’t have to continually replace them, this skill is fairly worthless. There is not enough stuff to spend gold on to make this worthwhile. Its only real use is as prerequisite for the tolerance skill.

Learning
Grade: 4.5/5 (level 1), 3/5 (level 2/3)
1: 1/5/1 +10% combat experience
2: 1/6/1 +15% combat experience
3: 2/7/2 +20% combat experience
Level 1 is useful; 2 and 3 reach diminishing returns. This skill helps you get levels faster, but levels are still capped at 30 and so this won’t necessarily change the end-game dynamics. Stick with level 1 unless you have lots of useless might runes and nothing else to do with them.

Diplomacy
Grade: 3/5
Entice away enemy troops if you have enough leadership and the same troops in your army
1: 1/6/0 entice 5%
2: 2/7/0 entice 10%
3: 3/8/0 entice 15%
You are rarely going to have spare leadership, and enemies will rarely have the same troop types. And it’s expensive for only a small boost. Skip it.

Trade:
Grade: 2/5
Sell items and scrolls for higher price
1: 0/1/0 items 50%, scrolls 30%
2: 0/2/0 items 75%, scrolls 40%
3: 0/3/0 items 100%, scrolls 50%
Given the great abundance of cash if you play well and the relative scarcity of items and scrolls, this skill has little use. Its only upside is that the rune cost is low.

Tolerance
Grade: 4.5/5 if you have undead or demons in your army, otherwise useless
1: 2/8/2 troops can tolerate undead in army without decreasing morale
2: 2/8/2 troops can tolerate undead and demons without decreasing morale
Has some use if you want to run around with demonic or undead hordes. However it is expensive, and all the prereqs you need for this skill (scouting, glory, trophies, reserve, diplomacy) make it unattractive.

Keeper of the light
Grade: 2.5/5 (level 1), 2/5 (level 2/3)
Extra gold and experience after eliminating undead
1: 1/4/1 +20% gold, +5% experience
2: 2/6/2, +30% gold, +10% experience
3: 3/8/3 +40% gold, +15% experience
Undead are only a small fraction of foes placed in the game, and gold as previously noted is abundant. The skill is expensive and basically a waste of time to try to fill out the very weak paladin skill chart.

Inquisition
Grade: 0/5. Absolutely worthless
Can upgrade priests to inquisitors
1: 1/5/1
Since you can buy inquisitors anyway, and can replace them if numbers run down through “sacrifice,” this skill is almost completely worthless.

Holy Anger (Paladin Only)
Grade: 4/5
Increases attack against demons and undead
1: free (+5 attack)
2: 5/8/0 +10 attack
3: 5/8/0 +15 attack
A nice bonus; however, demons and undead are only a fraction of the enemies in the game. These targeted bonuses against selected enemies are not as useful as the all-the-time bonuses of knights (rage) or mages (magic power & damage).


Runic Stone
Grade: 5/5
Each mind rune gives additional might and magic runes to the hero
1: 0/10/0 + 10 runes of might and magic
2: 0/10/0 +10 runes of might and magic
3: 0/10/0 +10 runes of might and magic
This trait is almost the only redeeming major skill of the paladin class, essentially allowing one to trade low-value mind runes for higher-value might and magic runes, essentially doubling the number of runes in the process. You can trade 30 mind runes for a net gain of 30 different runes (30 mind + 30 magic), and given the scarcity of runes in the game, this is clearly a good trade.

The problem however is that the investment needed to get this trade is considerable. To get the prerequisites, you have to invest points in scouting and learning (both worthwhile at level 1), 2 mind runes in the virtually worthless trade skill, and 2/6/2 in the similarly poor “keeper of the light” skill. This knocks the net pick up of runes from 30 down to 18, which is still significant. This is equal to about 2 levels worth of free runes. But the Paladin will never get as many mind or might runes as the mage or knight (most have about 200 of their specialty runes and 100 of the non-specialty runes, so dropping specialty to 170 and boosting non-specialty to 130 will still not make the paladin a good mage or a good knight. This skill restores at least some credibility to the Paladin class, but it still fails to balance the class on par with the others.

Magic
Grade: 4/5 (for mages), 3/5 for others
Wisdom 1: (free at start for mage) Mana +10, scrolls +2
Wisdom 2: 0/0/7 Mana +20, scrolls +4
Wisdom 3: 0/1/10 Mana +30, scrolls +6
The “scroll” part is virtually worthless, as the scrolls you want you will scribe into your spellbook, and those that you don’t should be sold. This trait offers a significant mana boost, but it is expensive. However, +30 mana is worth a lot – that’s more than 4 level-ups at +7 mana/level. This is therefore a good mid and late game skill for mages to allow level-up points to go elsewhere. Wait until late game to go beyond level 1

Alchemy
Grade: 2/5
1: 0/1/3 magic crystals needed for spell scribing or upgrade -15%
2: 0/1/5 crystals -30%
3: 0/1/7 crystals -50%

Alchemy skill can be acquired only by mages. This skill is, in my opinion, nearly worthless because of the abundance of magic crystals. Only a small number of crystals are needed to scribe or upgrade spells. I find that I have vast numbers of magic crystals and nothing to do with them even by level 8 or 9 after having upgraded all the spells I want. This skill might have value if you want to upgrade ALL the magic spells to 3rd level, but I find that only a portion of the spells are genuinely useful. Even then, it seems that there are more than enough crystals to go around for nearly universal spell upgrades. The skill points are better spent elsewhere.

Meditation
Grade: 5/5
1: (free at start for mage) +30% mana regeneration per minute on adventure map
2: 0/1/2 +60% mana regeneration
3: 0/1/3 +100% mana regeneration
Useful and fairly inexpensive.

Order Mage
Grade: 4/5
1: 0/2/2 allows hero to learn order spells from scrolls
2: 0/4/4 allows spell upgrade to level 2
3: 0/8/8 allows spell upgrade to level 3
You need at least one point of this to qualify for healer and archmage skills.
One level is adequate at the beginning. The later spells, like resurrection, aren’t available in the early game.

Healer
Grade: 4/5 (level 1), 3/5 (level 2/3)
Increases effectiveness of divine spells (healing, resurrection, bless, god armor, light of life)
1: 0/1/1 +15%
2: 0/2/2 +20%
3: 0/3/3 +25%
One level is useful and needed for archmage and the skill is fairly cheap. However the increase from level 1 to level 3 is small; I recommend holding off on higher levels until endgame unless you are playing as a warrior or paladin and use magic mainly for healing.

Distortion Magic:
Grade: 4/5 (level 1), 3/5 (level 2/3)
1: 1/1/4 allows hero to learn distortion spells from scrolls
2: 2/2/7 upgrade to level 2
3: 3/3/10 upgrade to level 3
I don’t find distortion magic all that useful, but you need 1 level to get Chaos Magic. Get one level and save further upgrades until later in the game as points are better spent elsewhere.

Concentration
Grade: 4.5/5 (all levels)
Allows hero to restore mana during combat
1: 0/3/8 +2 mana/combat turn
2: 0/3/9 +4 mana/turn
3: 0/3/10 +6 mana/turn
Very useful, but also quite expensive. Get one level (needed for chaos magic) at start and upgrade later as you can. You won’t need to invest as much in mana if your mana regenerates at a high rate during combat. Of course, if you have a high baseline mana, you may not need this skill.

Chaos Magic
Grade: 5/5 (all levels)
1: 0/2/6 allows hero to learn chaos spells from scrolls
2: 0/4/8 allows upgrade to level 2
3: 0/6/12 allows upgrade to level 3
Chaos magic has the best are damage spells, fireball and ice dragon. Getting to level 3 and upgrading spells as fast as possible should be a priority.

Necromancy
Grade: 3/5 for most play styles; 4/5 if using undead minions
1: 0/2/4 Resurrects 15-20% of slain soldiers after a battle, necro call + 10%
2: 0/3/5 raises 20-30% of soldiers, necro call +20%
3: 0/4/6 raises 30-40% of slain soliders, necro call +30%
Offers some useful bonuses, but once you get the “sacrifice” spell along with inquisitors (resurrect) and order magic (resurrect), it becomes less helpful. Investing 0/9/15 points to get 30-40% of soldiers back after battle may be worthwhile, but there are other ways to keep your troops healthy in most circumstances. Unless you are playing with a lot of undead, it is likely better to wait on this.

Archmage
Grade: 4/5 (level 1); 3/5 (level 2/3)
1: 0/0/3 reduces leadership requirements for priests, inquisitors, druids, shamans, necromancers, archmages by 10%
2: 0/1/4 reduces leadership requirements by 15%
3: 0/2/5 reduces leadership requirements by 20%

You need one level of this to get higher magic and destroyer, but after that diminishing returns are achieved. I recommend sticking with level 1 unless your army consists primarily of mage types.

Destroyer
Grade: 5/5 (for mages), 3/5 for warriors
1: 0/1/5 +15% spell power to damage spells
2: 0/2/7 +30% spell damage
3: 0/3/9 +50% spell damage
+50% spell damage is a huge boost for a mage. Upgrade this all the way once you get level 3 chaos spells.

Higher Magic (Mages Only Special skill):
Grade: 5/5 (for mages)
1: 5/5/20 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn once during combat
2: 5/5/15 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn twice during combat
3: 5/5/10 Allows spells to be cast twice in a turn three times during combat
Very expensive – in fact, the most expensive skill of all. It is well worthwhile, but requires careful planning to save up enough points and avoid frittering them on unnecessary skills. If you can blast your opponent with two fully upgraded big damage spells before he even moves, you will have a big advantage in combat. Get at least level 1; 2 or 3 if you need them.

Level-up attributes:
At each level, the hero will have options between two different upgrades. Possible upgrades are listed below.

Attack/Defense +1
Grade: 5/5
When higher or lower than enemy’s defense/attack, offers attack bonuses up to 300% or reduced damage down to 1/3. These are therefore highly important skills. They should be maxed out as much as possible with the might skill tree, but these are also useful skills at any level.
Warriors may find attack more useful; mages who rely largely on spells for damage dealing may find defense more useful.

Intellect +1
Grade: 4/5 for mages, 2-3/5 for warriors/paladins
Every 7 levels give +10% to spell power, and 15 levels increases spell duration by one turn. This can also be increased with items. I recommend shooting for 15 in intellect, as higher levels require greater increases than attack/defense to meaningfully increase skills. To be useful you will need multiples of 7 or 15, so it is a lot of work to raise this skill beyond that point.

Leadership (varying amounts)
Grade: depends on amount
leadership is important, but it scales with level. At level 20 you will get a much bigger leadership increase than level 2, whereas other attribute increases offered will stay at +1 at low and high levels alike. Therefore I recommend adding attributes at low levels (Attack and Defense particularly), and picking up more leadership at higher levels. This makes the early game somewhat harder, but the late game easier. Some players like leadership the most; higher leadership at the beginning does make the game easier to start but does not increase the abilities of your troops in any way. As late game leadership can reach 20,000+, I think the attack/defense skills offer more long-term value.

Mana +7: You can get good increases in mana and its regeneration with concentration and wisdom, so you shouldn’t need too much of this. Somewhat useful for mages; less useful for knights and paladins.

Rage +5: nice, but not as universally useful as attack/defense, and you can pick up 30 points of rage from might skills. Fighters or paladins who don’t need or care for INT and MANA may consider it. Skip this is you are a mage.

I just wanted to say that order and distortion magic is really nice to have both at lvl 3, why?

mass haste (troops moves alot further, you can never go wrong there) and that order skill that is mass initiative meaning your troops will almost always move first... added with haste, can reach (with horsemen) the enemy the first turn :)

The mass portion of these spells you only get when the magic skill is at lvl 3

I don't find chaos ,agic that good. Maybe in the begining of the game, but even then i prefer the trap spell which does more damage than expert magic arrow/fireball and takes away rest of enemies action points. Even in late game it can be nice when it stops an enemy from attacking and give you a little more time to cast new spells and use rage box

A few things to note:

Intelligence is actually more useful than the stat description reads. It boosts base spell effect by 10% for every single point (not 7 points). 7 points may, however, provide a bonus 10%.

Money talents, even in hard, seem rather useless.

I now think that alchemy is one of the most useful talents. You'll need it if you want to have a decent variety of level 3 spells as a mage. Crystals aren't that common.

When you level up and have a choice, the Leadership increases are as follows:
Warrior: 60 x Level
Paladin: 50 x Level
Mage: 40 x Level

So if you are a Paladin turning level 10 it might offer +500 Leadership and something else.

Same here, I find I use Trap alot, saves my troops massive damage from huge stacks that rush before my troops.

Thanks. I didn't realize INT was +10% magic power/level + 10% more for every 7 levels. That makes it a LOT more worthwhile.

Good feedback on the skills and thanks for the leadership formula - much appreciated.

as i am playing a mage the schools of magic have diffenrt importance depending whut spellbooks and scroll i find in game. as i have foundout they are random it all depends.

in my game i got fireball and firerain early and decided to be good at chaos. if finding other damage spells scrolls early (lvl 7-12) had mayby made be go an another school.

i saved for earlier magic lvl 1 and found it very usefull. altough upgrading to lvl 2 cost more then many other skills that gives way more benefit to my magic couse they are cheaper.

The skill that allows you to place units before combat is one of the best skills in warrior tree. It allows you to position your army to use terrain and, combined with initiative bonus from another skill, allows your melee units to strike first.
I played a paladin and went mostly melee from about lvl 15. Used low level mobs and Inquisitors for Rez(have not got sacrifice, so had to be carefull). gotta love those chain sea devil crits for 50k+ (using magic to give them 1 more attack and glot's armor to prevent losses). Only ranged mobs were skeletons.

I also think that pally is best choice for higher levels. Has more Leadership and rage than mage and can CC just as good. (And magic damage dealing does not scale well with levels.)

One thing to note about the Frenzy skill. It only gives that bonus after your unit kills a complete stack of units. So it's pretty much useless IMO.

On the topic Hints and Tips, it is said that High end game spells are very crystal expensive, so is is better to spare them
On the other hands, in this topic , it is said that Alchemy is pretty useless because magic crystal are abundant.

So who should I trust ? I cannot decide if Alchemy is a good choice or not.

Late-game spells are incredibly expensive to upgrade and magic crystals are not that abundant. So yeah, Alchemy is useful.

Oh later on in the game it is harder and harder to upgrade spells, some great spells require like 20 crystals or so... You will not have enough crystals to have all spells at level 3

Indeed most spells end up costing a lot when you reach that area. Also i noticed that smashing blows also becomes available for guardsmen with that skill.. so just a small note there, would be interesting to see if other units get affected by that skill, for example if black knights also get the circle attack or if elven archers perhaps get fire arrows ? Otherwise it would be an interesting addition to them as some skills are definately lack luster.

But i don't agree with the note on inquisition, as it is i have a hard time finding them so i tend to mostly upgrade priests which are more available, not to say it wouldn't be nice if the inquisition skill was improved upon a bit, perhaps skills or abilities imparted would be nice.

I'm now using a mage and am finding the 50% less crystals used to be awesome. Now I can actually have every spell learned and more than a select few spells at level 3. Also, some requirements seem to be rounded down. Spells that cost 3 crystals to learn are only 1 crystal w/ this skill maxed.

Yeah, inquisition is a very weak skill. It needs to supply a bonus, like +2 Initiative and +50% res power for Inquisitors.

Most if not all of my points are already made by other posters, but what the hell.

Tactics, in my opinion, is an excellent skill alongside onslaught. My tactics usually revolve around taking out all the rangers and dragons before the enemy even gets a shot or a flap of a wing off. Tactics typically lets you use a creature with a movement of only 5 get the jump on the enemy. Gotta love griffins, I always send them to furiously attack almost anything they can reach cos they have unlimited retaliations and then resurrect them later.

Frenzy, as pointed out, only kicks in when a creature finishes a monster stack, so at least to me it seems you get the +attack bonus when you've already secured the victory.

Nighttime operations is, for me at least, all but useless. The reason night seems to be shorter is because every time you use the zeppelin or boat to other continents, it's daytime again.

The most puzzling thing about the skills is the harhness of diminishing returns. Typically for the first lvl of a skill you get a 10% or 15% bonus for a small amount of runes. The next levels only offer 5% bonuses but still cost more! It seems to me that it's a smart idea to take one of each and max em out much later.

Frenzy is a God-send fighting the spider boss.

It works in the dungeons and caves [as stated in the skill description].

I don't remember reading that! Hmm, after slogging my way through the dwarves, it may actually be worthwhile, could someone (who's not at work) confirm that it works underground?

Apparently they didn't bother to translate that part. :rolleyes:

Walked into the undersea cavern on Islands of Freedom and as soon as I attacked resident vampires there, Ork Shaman attack rating went from 31/24 to 37/24 and then back to 31/24 as battle ended. Night Ops level 3, works as advertised.

Great, thanks for that Amamake, I was sure I hadn't read the underground part but now it makes the skill very useful (esp since it's so cheap)

what magic tree do u guys tend to use with warriors?

the green one with haste or resurection thing i would go for. depending on whut scroll u get early in game wich can be used untill end game

is this actually supposed to resurrect creaturs, or is it a mis translation and more compairable to the actuall necromancy skills of the HoMM games. it's not bringing back any of my living armies back from the dead, but i haven't really played much with undead troops to see if brings them back.

I also want to know if the Necromancy is only for unded troops... it doesn't say that in the skill description - it implies you can resurrect normal troops, but I haven't really seen that happen.... will regret wasting the ruins if it is only for undead.

I took Necro on my first toon but made a blunder elsewhere so I restarted. Anyhow, it worked on my Swordsmen, but at 15%, you have to lose at least 7 guys in a battle to get one rez'd. That only happened to me once by level 6 so I'm not sure if I'd take it again.

It works for living creatures (griffins, elves, etc), haven't tried on undeads :)

It only seems to resurrect one type of monsters per fight tho, for example if you lose 50 knights and 50 griffins, you could for example get 15 knightsa and that's it. I don't know how the type is determined (the one with most hp or leadership perhaps?)

well there might be a bug with my version then, i've had battles where i've lost only, a bunch of dragonflies, but didn't recieve any of them back afterwards, unless it's only supposed to work on humanoid troops. which is very annoying.

I like diplomacy. It is nice when you have some common units like pirates on islands. You are bound to lose some every now and then and diplomacy gets your army filled in next fight. It is also nice when you use some hard to replace units that are quite common foes like evil beholders or inquisitors. For more efficiency you can use maxed scouting, check how many of same unit enemy has and split 5% of that to reserve.

But it is fairly expensive skill so I don't see much use to take more than 1 point.

I had griffins in my army most of the time on my first playthrough and I can say for a fact that altho their class is 'neutral' (same as dragonflies) they do indeed get resurrected after the battle. Perhaps you are bugged.

Is it automatic?

Yes. After the battle ends and you're back to world map, a little window just pops up saying X of creature Y were resurrected.

it doesn't occur for me, so i'm guessing the GG DD version is bugged, both the 1.6.4 and 1.6.5 versions. and going through the skills files it doesn't have any scripts designated to the skill which means it's hardcoded, so GG users are curently SOL.

It worked for me. I have the atari version...

Yep, I played my first game with the Necro skill tagged, and I never saw this popup at all. And I downloaded from Gamersgate. :confused:

does it only work if your entire troop dies? that's the way the skill reads. I've not invested points in it to check b/c it doesn't seem very useful if your troop has to die completely.

Well, if that's the case then it's not worth having, bman. There are much better skills to invest in.

In terms of the three spell classes, I am thinking now that Distortion is the best discipline of them all. It has very useful spells like Haste, Slow, Trap, Phantom and perhaps Pain Mirror too. By contrast I am finding Order to be less important. Chaos is poor early (except for level 1 fireball which owns everything at the beginning of the game as a Mage). However, Chaos becomes very important in the endgame. Therefore I would put the order of priority for upgrading, when playing as a Mage, as this:

1. Distortion

2. Chaos (hard to get to in the early game)

3. Order

Thoughts on the above? Am I selling Order short?

About order spells.

I haven't played past dwarves so don't really know later spells... But Phoenix is really great at least until that. What I do is summon phoenix as first move in battle and send it attack enemy.

It has attack that hits 3 targets so damage is decent. At level 3 it also got 800 hp. It ties most if not all enemy units hitting it for round while I shoot them with my spells, rage and ranged. When they finally kill it next round it resurrects. Then they waste another round hitting it while I keep bombarding them. It has given me many victories without single lost unit.

For me, Phoenix began to wear quickly, esp as a paladin, later game monsters can easily do 800hp dmg in one hit and there are better spells to cast (mass haste, geyser etc) first round.

I think order is a must but I don't think its neccessary to max it, resurrection lv 1 or 2 are fine for the early game and later game you'll most probably be abusing sacrifice, I don't like the mass initiative spell (you get first round from the warrior tree and that's the most important) I'd rather have mass haste and get that all important first strike in.

So far I haven't found haste that useful. My aim is to slow enemy getting to me rather than rushing to it. Of course because of that I use lot of ranged units. And when enemy gets close I can see how far they can move next turn so I just leave my melee outside their attack range and hit them next round when I can be first.

Of course if enemies later have enough movement to get to me with one move then haste will be much more useful.

I find chaos the worst but thats probs cos the only good chaos spells i have are DOOM and weakness..not sure if weakness lvl 3 is mass? i have sacrifice but doesnt seem to work for me..tried it on a load of peasants to give me some more black dragons but it wouldnt let me..

I,ve got some decent order spells...divine armor, demon/dragon slayer, dragon arrows..but my fave is easily distortion. Beserk is insane and Phantom is the best spell in the game that ive used so far. slow would be good if it was mass at lvl 3..but i guess that would be too good.

Yeah... Black Dragons are pretty much immune to all magic and any special abilities or beneficial spells that other troops might have. Use Sacrifice to resurrect other troops.

Yeah I used to think Chaos was the worst too, but they have some excellent lategame stuff. Distortion owns everything though - quite often I find myself only having the Distorion spellbook open during a fight.

Magic Spring is also Distortion I think...but I agree that Phantom is close to the most useful spell later in the game.

Sacrifice is best spell ever, and it is Chaos Magic. If not this single spell, I'd vote for Distortion.

Well, I haven't actually used Sacrifice yet. I totally missed out on it in my first game and now I read everywhere that people rely on it etc. I'm a bit confused about it - if you raise the stack above the limit through sacrifice, doesn't that mean that it will attack your own units? How is this used effectively?

BTW, Distortion also has a couple more excellent spells, Geyser and one of my favourites, Ghost Blade, which my Mage can do 2000 damage with for 10 mana.

If stack is only a bit above the limit, it will not attack other units (IDK how it works exactly). Best used at the end of fight.
One more great spell - Pain Mirror. Sometimes waaay stronger than anything else.

So true. Works great with my barbarians going berserk. I also find "trap" really useful. Not only it has very high damage it additionally ends opponents move and works with black dragons, great stuff.

And about sacrifice - it's awesome for replenish your army. You can take one low level unit (so it could be resurrected) in your army and keep huge replacement of them in reserve. You will have always something to sacrifice so rest of your units would be covered. No more need to run between shops. It is usable on nearly every unit in game except for black dragons. But hey, you can't have everything right?

Thanks for your detailed analysis Falconhurst, I only disagree with a couple of points. I had misunderstood what Reserve was during my first few games that I started but this time around I got it and I think it is one of the most essential skills to get for the enjoyment of the game. There is so much less running back and forth for troops when you have it, especially if you have Sacrifice.

Also as someone who is trying to make it through a Normal game without reloading, maxed Scouting is essential.

If you're a mage specializing in more than one school, alchemy is essential and I would recommend maxing it out as early as possible. I like having lots of options so I'm really burning through my crystals even with alchemy maxed.

Agreed. Slow is far better than haste.

Think: to slow an enemy troop for 4 turns, causing it to move just 1 single square per turn giving you virtually endless time to kill it off in whatever way you like or to completely and utterly ignore it. Doesn't it sound sweet? :)

Also there's the trick that you can simply place your units 2 squares away from the slow moving enemy unit, wait for it to move 1 square towards you , than simply attack it without it being able to retaliate at all. Best done with Royal Snakes. (no retaliation + easy to get early game)
Thanks for the tip.
Didn't think about using it vs. Black Dragons. :)

Sacrifice doesn't work on undead either.
Agreed.

Also, using 2 Reserve slots you can even go beyond your leadership max and let them "run free" in the battlefield, than after game you can keep the extra troops you can't control in your reserve until you need them or the space in the reserve, whichever comes first. :)

Also, using the "Peacefulness" spell you can increase the troops hit points by a factor of %30 to %50 more - thus you can resurrect a LOT more troops using the same group of Fodder. Best used on Dwarfs which have a huge amount of hit points and are relatively cheap to come by. (Just check the ratio of Leadership per Hit Point and you'll be set to go).

Also, when you don't have any "fodder" troops but you really, REALLY need more troops and you played smart and have the Mana to spare in battle, arm yourself with a full troop of Inquisitors, Sacrifice at Level 1 one of your best troops that has lots of Hit Points, than Resurrect it with the Inquisitors, than on the next turn use the Gift spell (Order) to re-equip the Inquisitors with the resurrect skill - and resurrect, than gift them again and resurrect - until you have all your "first line" troops back - and you don't even need fodder anymore. :)

Also use Hypnosis if/when you can and than Sacrifice their lives for your own troops. :) The very best way to kill off enemy troops by far!

I also use Shaman Totems to keep my newly sacrificed units at top health before I resurrect them with the weak Inquisitors - easily saves me that extra troop.

I even resurrect the "Fodder" troop if my Inquisitors got it available, so I will have max troops. :)

I %100 agree and would demand to know where is the "Target" spell in the list of best spells? :) and what about Hypnosis...

Don't you just hate Archers? now imagine you can tell them to only shoot at the unit who has the best defenses and hit points in your army + a Healing Totem standing right behind him... isn't it worth at least a mention? :)

And has anyone tried setting up a Target+Magic Fountain Combo going in a +3 archers battle for some great free Mana boosting? :) I have. It is amazing fun to see the Mana going up for a change!

Besides all that, I just had a battle with "Magic Shackles" at Level 3, and it was my second time against an army of Devils. DAMN! did you know that at Level 3 and for 40 Mana (10 Mana for Levels 1 and 2 ) the ENTIRE enemy's army can't use their annoyingly powerful talents in battle? :) (Imps - Fireballs, Seductress - "switch" trick etc. ) Not worth mentioning, ha? ;-) I also fought once against 2 Fairies with their annoying "sleep" crapiola who had half my army snoring! 2 quick "Magic Shackles" and BYE BYE! :)

You also didn't mention the "Teleport" spell! shame on you! :)
If I didn't have the spell at full power, my Inquisitors would have been mints meat after a seductress-she devil switched places with him. :) Or the trick where you take a group of huge Giants, plant them right in the face of a group of archers and have him Stump his boots really hard on the ground right next to them! :) Or the trick where you Teleport your Royal Snakes from one end to another in the ever hard Guardian Battle Screen (where you fight Gremlin towers) having them destroy Tower after Tower - with a single Blow! :)

And you didn't mention the Stone Skin spell that gives %40 resistance to everything and %40 defense for only 7 Mana at Level 3... I just put them on my Giants which originally have 58 Defense and it turns to 78 for 5 turns!!!

Nope.
All these spells are not even worth mentioning.
:)
To a degree, but should I get started on Peacefulness, Fit of Energy and Phoenix, and even the "lame" Healing spell? :)

In your opinion as a Chaos-only mage. :)

Can you say that you beat a Hero Level 26 when you were Level 17 and had half your army at the end? :) I sure can. (I will start as a warrior on Impossible after this easy run though)

Sacrifice is so important that it moves Chaos before Order but Distortion takes the cake - hands down. :)

Chaos magic offers one great damaging spell. Armageddon. With Glot's Armor and hight Int it works wonders. I do almost 9k dmg with one hit of this baby. Black Dragons die easily. It's not fire damage, which is a bit confusing looking at its description. First round, Armageddon, rage fills up, Glot's Armor on my only stack of units, then Armageddon again. Next round, ressurection/some damaging spells. Could be repeated in few (2-3) turns. I wonder how to use Time Back with Armageddon.
One thing with Stone Skin - it takes one initiative point, and AFAIK it only gives physical resistance. There is a nice Order spell, God's Armor, on level 3 gives 51% resistance to all.

Just a few notes:
- On Necromancy skill, it does work, but you need to lose more than 5 or 6 of a unit for it to work.
- Tactics, I find the level 1 version very convenient to play my troops where I want them. If the enemy has area damage spells, then spread my units around, if they don't, then place the 'tanks' in front and the ranged units behind.
- I don't know about you, but my fire rain spell was my bread&butter for pretty much my whole game. Cast this twice in the beginning of the fight (as a mage) and the battle is all but won. This stopped working near the end, with the fire-resistant demons and fire immune dragons.
- Reserve (1) is a must have. You can either use it as an alternate unit to use for different situations, or to have infinite backup for one of your units.

Trying to play my second game as a warrior without chaos magic (i.e. no Sacrifice), think it'll be tough? :)

First of all: Thanks all to all your contributions, thanks also topicstarter. i don't agree with quite some things, but most are said already.

What isn't said though is something I find VERY usefull and just noticed like 2 hours ago:

Never take the rage nor the mana upgrade! This is my first playthrough so I didn't know and I took the mana twice and the rage once, but now I regret it. Why? Rats-on-a-stick!

Yessir and yes ladies! In the mines of Lucky James you can buy rats on a stick from the dwarven slaves. As many as you like (I already ate 5...).

Why?

Easy!

It gives +2 mana and +2 rage PERMANENT for 50 leadership.

So choosing between 7 mana or 200 leadership is already no choice since you get for 200 leadership +8 mana and +8 rage. If only I knew sooner :P

Well you do now ;)

Greets!

sorry to bust your bubble but there are a limited number of rats available, I believe it is five or six

I would love if necromancy would work differently on undead - like I would normally expect - x% of dead enemy # in conjuction with y% of dead enemy HP (or leadership) is transformed after battle into one pre-set undead stack (based on necromancy level) - on basic you could choose from skells/zombies, on level 2 would be ghosts and vamps added on level 3 dark knights and necromancers ... + special artifact you could also select bone dragon. + the ammount of max Leadership of gained units will raise with your level

It would work like : with the same skill but on level 5 you would be able to raise one vampire and 0,6 of necromancer... but on 30 level 5 vampires or 3 necromancers...

for the "regaining" of lost units - I would use other skill, (if there is spell called ressurection, than the skill name would be tricky to find) but still I would like to have it the other way around :
instead of % - I would like to have Leadership of replenishable lost units.
If it would be 2000 Leadership - you would be able to regain after each battle either 80 archers or one green dragon (where one should be able to choose if he would like to go for specific unit, strongest/weakest, or random)

I remember of getting five (5) rats - could be six but I am not fully sure :)

I tried to play the same scenario (warrior w/o chaos magic) - realized it is not very much possible (really) but I still wish you more luck than I had

Haha, whoops!
Well, it's actually better else it would be too easy to choose and too easy to abuse.

Anyway thanks for the heads up, I will now start my game up again and eat the last one then ;) (Yuck!)

Since this thread now seems to be more about which spells are useful ;): I feel one spell should be mentioned as well: Fear.
If you only use level 3 and up units, it's really nice to cast fear on those huge stacks of low level creatures. I don't think I would have survived that stack of 2000+ fireflies (when fighting that dragon at the Orc's castle) at level 11 without that spell. Well, not without losses anyway ;)

I've only just started using Inquisitors with Sacrifice, and even while playing on Impossible (mage, now lvl 12), it feels a bit like cheating :(. Sacrifice that giant, and resurrect him for free units.. It's a bit too easy.

So far, important components were:
low level mage: mana spring & fireball, pain mirror in heavy fights
low-mid level mage: fear & slow, sacrifice if I must, damage spells if I have the time

Sacrifice cheating? Then I guess I "cheat" a lot.

I have been using Ancient Vampire and Vampire to fill up one another and the rest of my army using Sacrifice most of the time. Rarely did I buy any units in game except like Dryad/Black Dragon.

Same here - just with the difference that I tried to use Undead units (for that I had Zombie Rina and called my own hero "Undead LORD" :) ) ... but also I gone for Emerald Dragons ASAP ...

But having normal and ancient (blue/red) vamps in my army - I either had zero losses or even gained units. (on Impossible this strategy is not so cool :) but still working... )

On Impossible I used mostly gloth's armom on my one and only unit ancient vamps + armageddon.
If mage, second spell was iron skin ... if the battle was too hard, I tried to survive in corner of the battlefield, lettin in second round "CLONED" vamps to get all damage from shooters/ flyers...
after my swamp guy rested enough and I still had enough mana... again gloth's armor and armageddon ... (mostly I didn't had enough mana, only if I used charges/ magic spring... )

But the fact that the unit itself could "steal life" nearly in each battle - so all you need is to let such stack live till the bitter end to use it as "ressurection unit" - vamps are the unit to go for (having undead commander skill - you will start in each round... getting the right artefacts - you can kick ass even on impossible... )

For the elven undead underground - full of undead creatures - hide your vamps in backup slot and hire black/red dragons ... after you defeat Korador, swap back to vamps

WARNING! - most spells like GOD ARMOR do not work on vamps... so if you don't especialy like undead like I do - just go for green dragons (fast, fly, gods armor + magic spring + iron skin + GIZMO = you won't lose a battle ... the hardest of hardest you lose few units... again you can get in such battles other units and use them as sacrifice :) )
Second option - much more harder to play : Griffins... WHY?
you can cast on them BERZERK, god's armor, ressurection... why are these so cool?
1.) have more HP than leadership
2.) make unlimited retalations - can wipe out the battlefield in crazy speed just by retaliating
3.) easy to get in huge numbers (stock up your back up slot) and are easy to maintain in battle (ressurection)
4.) have not few but very good Griffin only specific artefacts
NEGATIVE:
a.) There is no specific skill for them (there are skills for human army, for undead army, for archers... not for griffins... SAD!)
b.) level 3 only + not mind immune (tricky in some battles - very tricky indeed :) )
c.) initiative 5 is BAD - with the master skill in MIGHT you can start the battle as first, but not continue to be first... still if you are good in strategy - you can turn this "bug" in "feature"

"b.) level 3 only + not mind immune (tricky in some battles - very tricky indeed )"

Those beholders from dwarf mines gived me a hard time with this strategy - now I HATE beholders more than any other unit :)

That is why I value undead army so much :)

Admin, please *Sticky* this!

As long as you're not a mage(Who has huge -40% Spirit xp nerf) and you're summoning Spirits first round each combat(Which you should) you won't need more than level 1 to keep the Spirits at your Hero's level. Incindentally, you can get that level before you even get the Chest, so just do that and forget about it.

One level in this and you can re-position your units so that enemy dragons won't get a free hit on the very first turn(usually). Quite worth it, even with the hefty cost. Level 2 seems useless, unless you're playing with all-melee army.

As someone pointed out, the bonus only applies once the troop killed something; still, the hardest battles in the game are the longest, so yeah, it's worth it.

This is the skill about which I disagree with you the most - in case of two troops having same initiative, the enemy will always go first. And in combat, you want to be able to use a Spirit and cast a spell before the enemy moves. This skill allows you to do just that.

I always take level 1 of this before I fight anyone(After the Trials of course). This gives me one "free" level in mid-game, and two late-game. The difference can be pretty big because the leadership bonuses you get scale to your level.

I think this skill is good, but only for Paladins(Too expensive for other classes). Getting through battles with no losses at all is hard and you find the banners everywhere so you will usually have some spare leadership, so the skill allows you to keep your troops at maximum strenght. This gives you free units at the same time reducing the number of enemy units. The enemy troops are varied enough so you will find what you want sooner or later, and it's a great source of otherwise rare stuff(Griffins, Inquisitors, Faeries, Dryads, etc.).

The cost is absolutely pathetic(I think it's cheapest skill in the whole game) and it practically doubles your income from items and scrolls, and you'll find a lot of both. And money = runes. I always get level 3, and I never even sell anything before I get it(Your inventory is unlimited anyway).

I have absolutely no idea what they were thinking putting this at the top of Paladin skill tree. Inquisitors are good, but how can this compare to things like Higher Magic? Should be swapped with Holy Anger or something.

On the other hand, both undead and demons are "imba", receiving big race bonuses(such as immunity to mind spells), and both have good units and innate abilities as well(especially demons). Adding the fact that you will meet most of the demons in Demonis(where they get Def bonus because of the lava terrain) and undead at cemeteries(Where they get morale bonus), I'd say this skill is pretty awesome for what it does and it's cost(no prereqs).

Even with Necro Call boos this skill is kinda bad - if you lost entire troop during battle(which is about only time when the skill is useful), you were either prepared for it(Because it was hard battle), or you messed up and are about to reload.

I'm new here but apparently NO ONE has ever told you that the word "WHAT" is actually spelled "W-H-A-T", not "whut".

I'm curious as to how and where you learned to write since (this is fascinating to me and find it as an incredible or stupid phenomenon) you actually still use 4 letters to spell the word but yet STILL manage to mispell it. I can see if you're trying to abbreviate or shorten the word but, you're not.

The kicker being English is not my first language but I could still seem like an English PHD at age 8 compared to you. :evil::confused:

Seriously, is this you trying to be cool or you think that sounding stupid makes it cool? Or your english is not too good because it's your second language? Then this becomes extremely useful to believe being that the word "what" is possibly one of the first words that one learns in the English language.

By the way if this offends you then trust me it's for your own good. No one likes to be stupid and you might want to thank me so that you don't experience a bigger embarrasment in the future.

Hmm.. given this, if you can swing it, aren't you a LOT better off pushing leadership gains off, as your option doesn't scale with level [right]?

Is there ever a point you're sitting on silly leadership, so this wouldn't be as big a factor as it first appears? It would seem at least hard/impossible difficulties pushing it off - if you can - would almost be essential.

My pick of the useless skills:

(A) Might Tree. For warriors you will end up maxing them anyway.

- Training (lv 1 required) There are much better units than archers very soon. Knights are good against dragons but you don't need the circle attack to hit them effectively.

- Combat Readiness (lv 1 required). Turn One is the least likely turn that you will be hit by anything. For dragons you can use Trap / Glot's armor.

- Frenzy (lv 1 required). When you can wipe out 1 stack you can wipe out 10 stacks.

- Tactics (lv 2). It is always better to wait on turn 1 so you can wipe out the faster units first.

- Spirits of Rage (lv 1 enough). The best rage spirits spells are all available quite early. You don't need to push from level 28 to 30.

(B) Mind Tree. For paladins you will end up maxing most of them anyway.

- Scouting (Lv 1 required). I don't know why people keep recommending them. This is a single player game and you are supposed to reload like crazy. :grin:

- Anything that gives extra money (Trade, Trophy, Keeper of the light). Even on Impossible you will run a large profit, if you know how to conserve troops properly and know the right troop to buy.

- Diplomacy (Lv 1 is enough). Your troop count should be always maxed, or close to max since you just pulled a flag.

- Inquisition (Paladin only) - Useful if you don't have sacrifice. Useless if you have it. In my game I didn't. Great skill.

(C) Magic Tree - for mages you will end up maxing many of them anyway

There is no useless skill here!

- Alchemy (Mage only). You can leave this as the lowest priority since 80% of spells are simply not worth learning. Plus the most expensive upgrades only come in end game - so there is no point investing in this early-mid game.

- Necromancy - useful if you like undead and combine it with the might skill Dark Commander. There are so many good living units, though.

about debate - magic school....

distortion too much underestimated, true that battle is much longer if using distortion/order but in fact I think that is quite much more fun to beat enemy with those spells than destructive chaos... (as a mage of course)

more than a half of the game a went through mostly with combination target/magic spring/stone skin/trap and order gift on inquisitors, when enemy has at least one ranged unit. that way looses are in most part of game insignificant. if enemy doesnt have ranged unit, then i use trap a lot, of course in combination with mentioned spells. trap is one of the greatest spell, it does good damage and take away action points. also, black dragons can be beaten that way more easily (with emerald dragons). in difficult fights with significant looses, i used rage potion before fight so i could use glots armour on unit with big HP (mostly Giants) and move him in first turn as a decoy. even glots armour mostly dies quickly, sometimes in difficult battles it gives significant positive state on battlefield even Giants are not good in damage, coz their high leadership and few in numbers. but, with Giants as a decoy and mentioned combination of spells, i cleared that way all freedom islands, hard part of darion (rezo, undead boy, tent, deserted castle, mage trial), mines, up&low haddar, tarion, ardan peaks, and most of elves and undead land. there were very few battles with different strategies (bosses - same spells, except target on tank unit). if lucky, best spells could come more and more and player has more good combinations of not loosing troops.

Mind Skills are Pretty Good
 

Thanks to the OP for this extensive write-up. I disagree with a lot of his comments on the Mind tree, though. I think it is at least as useful as the Might tree.

I may disagree. The Flaming Arrow is a very nice bonus to Bowmen, especially against plants.
Diminishing returns, yes. Still, this skill is amazing! It is best if your force uses mostly melee units, but also helpful vs archers. If you have ranged units and your enemy is melee then it is useless.
I find this to be a total waste. It's pretty easy to level up SoR. I can't understand how you can give this a more positive review than Learning.
As others have noted, this only kicks in after killing an enemy stack. I still find it useful.
I disagree wholeheartedly! Part of the problem may be the OP never played a Paladin to the end and therefore never had an abundance of Mind runes. (Pure speculation.) Many of the Mind skills work well together, at a few of the skills at the top are only useful if you get them early in the game.
This skill is only useful if you take it early. If it allows you to pass on leadership when advancing through the low levels it's worth the runes.
I very much disagree again. So cheap and so useful. Recruit a full stack, put them in reserve, then recruit another full stack. Instant reinforcements!
This is another skill that is most useful early. Even with the diminishing returns the upper levels are worthwhile. Level cap is 31 not 30.
When I read the OP I was convinced that he was probably correct on this score. However, this skill is wonderful!

First of all, the OP doesn't seem to change his armies up much. That's fine, but it heavily colors his opinion of skills like this and Dark Commander and Training. But I like to use the armies that I can recruit locally.

Second, 5% or even 15% doesn't sound like much, but think of how many armies you kill that are roughly equal in number to your own! This turns out to be way, way, way better than Necromancy to do basically the same thing - keep your stacks refreshed.

Works great with the cheap and useful Reserve skill. It helps you pick up hard to find units like Evil Beholders, though you have to have some to start. Put your half-stack of Beholders in reserve and bring them out before fighting an enemy with Beholders in it. Obviously, you'd only do this in regions where you anticipate coming across Beholders.

I wonder if it decreases your XP, though. If so I might have to change my opinion.
Depending on what difficulty you are playing and your level of savefile abuse, you might be right. However, since it's so cheap I maxed it out. The 100% items clause has the benefit of allowing you to buy everything a vendor sells. This can also save you a lot of money when you get divorced since your wife takes 1/5th of your money on hand, not your net worth. But if you've got more money than you know what to do with, what's the difference? Nevertheless, you don't need to max it out right away... You can buy up everything knowing that for a few runes you can sell it all at max should you need to.
This is the very first skill a Paladin needs to target since he starts with the Resurrection scroll. Level 1 only allows rez of level 1-2 units. If you are disciplined and can wait to use higher level units then you can hold off on the higher levels. Still, it seems advisable to get level 2 here so you can rez level 3 troops (inquisitors).
This is a nice bonus for Rez and Mass Bless (+1 duration per level). First level is a no brainer at 2 runes.
A lot of people abuse Magic Spring instead of leveling this up.
Sucks. Very disappointing. My first game I played as a Mage and went straight for this skill. I thought it would be more like HOMM.
I agree, and that's why Glory can be useful early on.

Thanks again to the OP for giving us something to debate over!