If you have trouble with first island no-loss

[sethmage]

Yup, that pretty much covers all, and don't bother loading the game from the bridge and expecting to find different items/spells in the cashes/stores because they are generated on the beginning of the game. So in total there are 3 vendors to look it up just from the start.
Hmm maybe I do few more starts see how i do.

[Loopy]

More important is to check that the two hard enemy heroes (ahriman and his necromancer boss) don't have uber huge forces. Their max size is 2x as large or more than their minimum size, if either of them spawns at max size then you can't no-loss the island, period. If both of them spawn small it isn't all that difficult at all. You'll need to use a scanner to see the second one though.

I was bashing my head against Ahriman for a while until I figured out I had a spawn that was just insane. Restarted and easily beat him in just a few tries since he was so much weaker the second time.