Keeping up mana in battles

[loreangelicus]

Originally Posted by iregev

So when in freedom isles first time do explore and pick up all the flags or just rush to lucky James, will u have time to explore demonis and pick up everythig on freedom in one day ?

Day 2 18:55 level 10 to Islands of Freedom 12 hours to spare
Day 3 14:48 level 13 to Darion
Day 4 05:33 level 17 to Islands of Freedom 1.5 hours to spare
Day 4 12:40 level 18 to Darion
Day 4 23:58 level 20 to Ellinia 7 hours to spare

There is tons of time to clear Darion, Islands of Freedom, dwarven lands, and take a scenic tour of Demonis.

I did leave Demonis pretty much intact, except I did these time-saving tasks in my initial visit:

1) complete Issarah's quest
2) kill off the enemy on the platform where you initially find Issarah
3) kill off the enemy on the low ridge that could only be accessed via the "floating elevator" behind the merchant
4) picked up all items and bought from stores that could only be accessed via more "floating elevator" travel

I figured what would slow you down in Demonis is the use of the "floating elevators", and doing Issarah's quest early saves you time later on when you sweep Demonis.

In hindsight, Demonis is just one area (not counting the very small area of the dragons) and I'm sure 24 hours to take it out is overkill, but its always nice to have a lot of time to spare.

To answer your question I spent close to 8 hours (Day 3 07:00 to Day 3 14:4 on the initial visit to Islands of Freedom. I basically killed as much enemies as I could (I even killed off all the pirate ships as well as Bart), except for these:

1) Kraken
2) underground of undead
3) Head of the Family quest (it was better for me item-wise to kill 2 out of the 3 brothers (for more XP), but that would have been tough to do on my initial visit)
4) Cursed Treasure quest
5) Pirate's Crops
6) Lucky James and his whole cave
7) orc embassy
enemy near the initial castle (would be the only enemy left alive in Islands of Freedom as it would be used twice for the no-army-suicide trick)

Admittedly, I got lucky and picked up Sacrifice in a battle in Marshan Swamps. This allowed me to multiply my 2 Royal Thorns into a full stack. That and the initial castle of Scott Thompson was selling a Crown of Blackthorns, hehe...

Note that this is a no-casualties run; you could probably kill them all if casualties are not a problem. But since I knew I was going back anyways, I left most of the "tough" battles for the return trip.

On a side note, pre-Ellinia, you should kill off everything (Rezo's Tower, Castle Karmag, Magic Range, Haunted Castle, etc.) except for your double battles in the dwarven lands. Killing them off later when you have a higher level and more leadership would give you more XP. As such, it might not be advisable to do the no-army suicide trick to travel from Ellinia back to Darion. Just kill as much as you can in Ellinia before Day 6 06:45 so that you have the highest level/leadership possible when you fight your double. Also, if you do the no-army suicide trick, you won't be able to bring back to Darion the secret weapon for killing your double: Dryads.