Top 10 tips for everybody starting the game! (non-spoiler)

[alon]

Originally Posted by hawker

* You can increase combat animation speed in Options! It's a dropdown among the technical graphics options, so it's really easy to miss. Everybody should do this.

* You'll get the Rage Spirits by doing the King's quests (the ones marked in the list with a little crown). Once you have the box, talk to the spirits on the Hero screen to get them to work for you.

* Right-click and hold to move the camera, both on adventure and combat screen. (Limited to 180 degrees in combat)

* Right-click and hold on an unit or unit picture for a quick reference of its statistics. Shift/Ctrl click, with left mouse button, on an unit or unit picture for the info popup to stay, so that you can hover the mouse over the numbers and icons and see what all that means.

* Alt key shows turn order in combat.

* Scribe scrolls into the magic book by clicking the button next to them in the book.

* ... but don't waste magic crystals and runes on useless spells and skills; spend them only on things you really want or need, as they're not plentiful at all, particularly later in the game. High end spells may take some 50 magic crystals to scribe and upgrade.

* There's a limit on the unscribed spells in the spellbook. If you see for sale a spell you want, but can't buy for some reason, either scribe or right-click on some of your extra scrolls and chuck them out to make room (or just use them in combat).

* Once you have an upgraded spell in your spellbook, you can still cast the cheaper, lower level versions by holding Shift or Ctrl while the spellbook is open.



* F5 key quicksaves the game. Thoughtfully, the game keeps not one but three of your last quicksaves. The game also auto-saves in castles.

* Always check enemy strength before combat, by right-clicking them while adventuring. Always save before entering a battle whose difficulty you can't judge firsthand, such as creatures in castles, or upgrading/pacifying items. The Scouting skill under Soul gives additional info about enemies and is a prerequisite for many others, so it's useful to have at least on level 1.

* You can right-click and Use the Thorn sprouts, spider/snake/griffon/dragon eggs and other such items to summon creatures of that type.

* You can upgrade some items by right-clicking them and choosing Upgrade. You'll then fight the gremlins that inhabit the item. Warning: depending on the item those fights may be very difficult, so save first.

* Some items can form item sets which give additional bonuses if you're wearing all its members. Right-click on an item and choose Info. If it belongs to a set, then it's written there.

* Enemies, treasures, available items and troops etc are randomized. There's no single strategy for anything.

* It's possible to run the game in windowed mode by editing the .INI

(will add more as I think of them )

thank you very much for all the tips - especially the first one! - would save me tons of time.

[Gina S.]

Thanks Hawker! Great post and great tips. It helped me a lot.

[battaile]

Is there some way to display health bars but not turn order? I could swear my UI was setup like this at some point, but ALT toggles both and I can't find any other key that affects either one.

[Keneth]

Ctrl or Shift, not sure which is which, Alt displays all info.

[taltamir]

Originally Posted by GreyBeard

When you put 3 points into it you get a full idea of how many and what kind of troops the enemy has well worth 2 more points imo.

GB

the costs are:
lvl1: 1 rune
lvl2: 2 runes
lvl3: 3 runes

And once you have lvl1 it tells you if the enemies are stronger or weaker... I have never found it to be wrong yet. Strong enemies give me a run for my money, weak enemies I can wipe the floor with. So investing more runes to get even more accurate details seems superfluous.

[taltamir]

Originally Posted by ALLiED

Not sure if this was mentioned yet but when I was first able to go to freedom island I got my a** handed to me real fast lol. My lvl was not yet high enough to start their yet, so I bought a boat and sailed around the western and eastern islands and found many many items and didn't have to fight once. I found around 1000+ leadership flag points, lots and lots of gold, items etc...etc. I then went back to the first island and it made completing all of the side quest much easier.

that is a big thing about the entire game, this is not a linear game. And fighting a tough battle can result in a net loss of resources. So run around and collect stuff to upgrade yourself, kill the weaker monsters first, then finally backtrack and fight the (previously) tough fights...

I am now trying to look around to see if there is any XP penalty to doing that or not. but so far I am level 10 and it hasn't bit me yet.

[es253]

At round 10 of a battle i got a message in battle log: -Extended combat has sapped the strength of your warriors and decreased their capacity to channel magical energy. Mana restore and rage increase are HALVED.-

[WhiteMage]

This game appears to be great, but a suspected major deficiency:
1. Is there a way to estimate castle defenders?
2. Is there a way to estimate item keepers' strength?

These are major leaps of faith, which do not fit my personal style of playing, where defeat is a defeat and reload due to failure is not in my personal honor code. I simply lose interest playing on.

Ps. The original King’s Bounty had a feature to estimate castle defenders, which was the main point of the whole game in capturing villains. In this game getting quests to attack castle defenders when my hero is level 4 and still losing when my hero is level 14 due to unknown castle defenders is very disappointing.
I already searched 2 hours on Google and in this forum, but I gave up, so I ask here now.
I suspect that the answers are no (or something close to that), but please confirm or enlighten me. Thanks.

[Vulture]

Get Scouting in the Mind tree and hold down right mouse button over the castle.

[WhiteMage]

It did not work for me. It states “The castle is covered with slime and swamp grass” and “Castle Karmag”. What patch version do I need?