[MrBlister]

Thanks for the advice guys, it helped a lot.

I have a few questions though:

1. This skill eviln. Does it really suck or something? I can only use it on dead bodies, and it only seems to do anything if an enemy unit steps directly on it, then it acts like a trap and kills a lot of them. Otherwise, it doesn't do anything, though the skill description seems to suggest otherwise. Kind of expensive if that's all it does.
   
2. I got this ring that gives me +3 int. It says, on use it will give fuse or something and give me +3 int (after 50 won battles or something). So, I win the battles and use the ring, but it doesn't give me +3 int, it just turns into a ring that gives +3 mana.
   
3. I have items with race names on them. Some of these items have morale as well, and after a certain number of battles it drops to zero and I have to fight the item to restore it back to 100. I can't ever afford to test this by like restocking my entire army with nothing but the race of the item to see if it won't lose morale, so I'm just asking if that's the case; would these items stop losing morale if my entire army was of the same race as the item? Right now I have 3 items, all of different races, all losing morale after fights. I mean, it is the only way I've found to farm some extra gold and experience.
   
4. Is there a guide or list somewhere of all the units, and where to buy them? I just lost a bunch of my demonologists, and can't remember where I bought them from. Those guys are just too useful.
   
5. Is there a way/mod to speed up animations or cancel them? Especially the pet dragon--it just makes fights take so much longer than necessary.
   
6. Trophies--as a mage, do I need them? I can honestly say I've only once upgraded a unit with them early on. I unequipped the parchment early on in favor of a different item. Am I hurting myself in the long run? I mean, like, lategame am I going to find some dude who's like "Hey, wanna buy this sweet golden dragon of the gods? No problem, just hand over 50,000 trophies."

Anyway, I started a new mage and went and ran around islands grabbing whatever loot I possibly could, and then stayed with fighting the easy mobs. I skilled to get the multi-cast thing earlier too; that helped a lot. Also, I took the red dragon pet this time. Because mana is so scarce early on, the mana accelerator skill is mostly what kept me going. Also, having the dragon an active part of every fight is so important since I was so limited in mana that I couldn't rely on my army as much, so having the +5 rage was extremely handy as the game forces you to level up your dragon skills (starting with only 20 max rage is rough, especially since you have to invest outside the magic skill tree to get more rage). Honestly, I tried several of the other pets that seemed better suited for a mage, but the red one just worked best for me.

And man, it took a lot of tedious scavenging, but I managed to beat the first few areas. Kiting the islands is pretty tough, and required a lot of reloading of savegames, but I found you could get to some of the juicy, guarded chests and scrolls by leading the monster a long distance (so long as they have sight of you, they'll follow for a long time), and you can do things like lead them to areas where you can run around, and then ditch them so you have time to grab the stash. Also, the boat is handy when you're somewhat near the shore, as you can lead a mob to your boat, hop in, move up the shore a little, then hop out to pass the monster. lol, this wasn't exactly the game I thought I was going to be playing, you know?

The advice about focusing on summons really helped as well. They also made great fodder for the suicide bomber skill, which did great damage for its relatively low mana cost. Mostly it was oil fog thing, fire arrows, and fire balls. I'd use stone walls to mess with the monster pathing to get them to cluster up, and then nuke the group down. I always have one meatsack unit in my group that I tried to put out ahead of my other units to keep my squishy casting/ranged units safer. However, going against enemy heroes and enemies with strong ranged attacks was extremely hard. It's easy to get to the point to where there are nothing but lethal and invincible mobs left to fight. Buying expensive items almost cost me the game a couple of times, as I was too broke to restock my army. I've had to return to save games that were like 3 fights previous. But, later I got the pirana spell, and man, that thing is beautiful.

One thing I wish I had known early on was how important it was to save your crystals to upgrade your better skills. Early on, I decided to learn as many scrolls as possible, since learning them cost very few crystals and it is nice to have the versatility. However, it delayed upgrading some of the key spells when I ran out of crystals. I have so many spells that seem good on the surface, but that I never use. Kinda frustrating.

I'm doing pretty well now. I'm level 24; I've unlocked like 2/3rds of the map, and I'm sitting on over 200k gold. I'm working my way through some mines--can't remember what the name of that area is. A big help has been getting black dragons. There was some land where there's this black unicorn guarding a cave. I managed to drag the unicorn away from the cave and slip in and buy 2 black dragons. Oh man, they are such badasses. Also, the rune mages can resurrect black dragons even though they're magic immune. I have enough leadership now to get a 3rd one, but I just haven't gone to pick it up yet.

My biggest complaint about the game is that it wastes a lot of time. Not just the painfully long animations, but also, having to wander around and wait for your mana to recharge is honestly so stupid. There should be a rest skill that you can use on the main map that lets your hero sit down and regain all their mana and lose all their rage. I found some cheat codes that help with that now; after a fight, I just do "mana" then "rage -x". Really, though, there should just be a button to do that in the game. I mean, I'm not going to waste skill runes to upgrade the recharge skill since the skill doesn't actually give any in-game benefit besides saving you from having to stand around in between fights. Pretty dumb, tbh.

If I had some advice for other new players after playing this game myself for the first time, it'd be "don't pick mage unless you really really really want to play a mage." But, if you are just a big nerd like me who loves playing mages, then here's what I've found that helped (obviously disregard any of this if a more experienced player says otherwise):

• Get a pet with the mana accelerator ability. Obviously, you can wait till it comes up as an option when you upgrade your pet, but I found it's a very painful game until you get that option, and it's definitely the skill you want to start the game with.
  
• Get transmute early. You only get half-mana from summons that die, though.
  
• Get higher-magic as early as possible as well. The sweet spot for this skill is level 2.
  
• Accept the battle training even if you already know how to fight, because you'll get gold, crystals, scrolls, and equipment from it, and all you lose is time.
  
• Actively start working on those achievment bonuses once you hit level 5 or so. The first couple of levels of them are usually very easy to get, and they make a big difference. You don't want to wait until you're so far ahead of the game that they don't matter.
  
• Prioritize item choices in this order, mana, intelligence, leadership, defense. The only time I didn't was when it meant having my intelligence be a multiple of 7 (since you get the +15% damage). So, if you got 20 int, and you have to choose between +5 mana or +1 int, get the +1 int because it'll bring you to 21 int, which is +20% damage. Obviously, this isn't a hard rule; I mean, don't give up an item that gives you +300 leadership for an item that gives you +2 mana. And, as the game progresses and you have a larger pool of mana and more reliable regen in battle, you can swap some mana items for int items. Others have recommended getting defense, but I haven't found it to be useful. Better to have a unit or two with very high HP and then bless them with stone skin and stuff.
  
• Inquisitors. This was the bread-and-butter unit for me (I still use them a lot too, since I have a bunch in my reserve) and you can buy them from a lot of places, so you're not likely to run out of them. Also, you can upgrade priests to them if you're desperate enough. Early game they're crucial for their bless ability which increases your rage, which means more mana accelerators or pet attacks (pets default kick skill will get a lot of use for like your first 8 hero levels). Their bless does also make units deal more damage, and much more damage to undead and demons, but really, use it whenever you can to increase rage.
  
• AoE damage. I probably don't need to say this at all, but you want to do as much total damage as possible as early as possible in battles. The smaller the enemy units, the less likely they are to obliterate one of your units before you can resurrect them.
  
• Shift and Control to cast a lower level spell. Honestly, I missed this note all like 5 times I did that battle tutorial thing.
  
• Spells I have found to be useful (note, of the spells I've found so far, and just the best ones) and worth the crystal investment (up to the level indicated):

Fire Rain 3 - good bang-for-buck.

Flaming arrow 3 - amazing bang for buck as the mana cost stays at 5. Early on, it's great for picking off priority targets.

Fireball 2 - you will probably use fireball 3 if you don't find fire rain in time, but the bang-for-buck on it is pretty bad. Still, if you're working on the 3rd-level firemaster achievement, this is one of the qualifying spells.

Oil Shroud 3 - (but you can wait as, though the upgrade points are worth it, they're not top priority) not just for the crowd control, I use this a lot for the added damage. It reduces fire resistance, and can take it into the negative for added damage (so you can use it on targets that have zero fire resist to start with). Oil Mist + fire rain is so much damage for such a low cost it's ridiculous.

Kamikaze 1 - situational usage, but great bang for buck when the opportunity arises. Later on, though, you'll have better, more reliable spells which offer comparable damage without wasting crystals.

Piranas 3 - this is a monster of a skill, doing massive physical damage to an enormous AoE. This is what you want to use early--first 2 rounds, really, before you have too many of your units in the mix. But, you have to hit a lot of units to make this skill worth the mana cost. If you can tag 5+ units, it'll likely provide the greatest damage-to-mana cost possible. Otherwise, you'll need to fall back on your other smaller AoE skills.

Teleport 1 - I have this maxed, unfortunately, but wish I hadn't wasted the crystals early on. 4 spaces at level one is a lot, and it has an extremely low mana cost. I almost never use level 2, and have never used level 3. But, this is a great skill to position your low-mobility, high-hp heroes, or to save your squishy unit when it gets trapped with some big, ugly, baddy.

Slow 1 - useful early game to slow down those heavy-hitters.

Trap 1 - the best use of trap is to slow an enemy advance through a choke, and since it stops the enemy cold at level 1, it's really not worth any more points than that. I know there's a trap achievement and all, but I really can't see investing much in this skill.

Dispel 1 - there aren't a ton of buffs I'm afraid of seeing on an enemy that I'd waste an entire spell-cast to remove from an enemy, so I've never bothered to upgrade this. But, at level 1, it's very useful to keep your tank unit moving around, or to unsilence your summoning unit.

Magic Pole Axe 2 - very solid single-target damage. When you need to target a fire-resistant enemy. I never upgraded this to level 3 because then I found ghost blade.

Ghost Blade 3 - the best, single-target damage skill I've found. I don't get the downside to this this skill. The only time I use flame arrow ahead of it is if the target is weak to fire, or I'm totally strapped for mana and need immediate burst damage.

Summon Phoenix 3 - I mean, it comes back alive--what else could you ask for?

Call of Nature 1 - A clutch skill early game, but really not worth upgrading. I upgraded this and regretted it, but it's a skill I stopped using a while ago. The cost is just too high (40 mana) at level 3, and because the unit is random, you can end up with a lot of garbage you just don't need. This might be a more useful skill for like a paladin or someone with large attack and defense bonuses who can make great use out of it, but since, as a mage, you want skill-less summons mostly as battle-field distractions to buy you time to nuke down your enemy. I mean, you waste 40 mana to summon 150 dragon flies...ok, um...now what?

Chaos Dragon 3 - I don't know if this guy is really worth the 60 mana if you were to do all the theory-crafting, but he's just such a party. If it looks like it's going to be a long battle, I'll usually have 2-3 oil shrouds on the battle field, and like to summon this guy right in the middle of one. You probably get more damage out over 2 turns with fire rain, but he just makes such an entrance it's hard not to use him.

Anyway, hope that helps anyone else who is struggling with a mage like I was.

Thanks again for all the advice.