Dragon Level Up information

[Zechnophobe]

Also, given there are larger leadership stacks on higher difficulties, the penalty to dragon experience on those difficulties is further alleviated. It ends up just not being as big of a problem as you expect.

[dashcunning]

An interesting thing to note is that there is no modifier for length of combat and that your pet doesn't level up inside of combat. Put these together and you have an intriguing thought.

If one wanted to game the system, they could create a situation where a high lvl hero (say 14, easily done with map kiting) with a low lvl pet (1, even more easily done) with 1 troll and 1 inquisitor enters into a fight, at evening or night, with at least 20 royal snakes (or equivalent no retaliation troop). Phantom the inquisitor (15 mana), use holy anger (6.5 average rage per turn, 19.5 per phantom), use lvl 1 mana accelerator (8 rage > 7 mana), repeat ad nauseam. This more than breaks even over time, but not by much. Use bigger rage and mana pools to lessen the chance of bad luck screwing things up.

Each accelerator would earn 70(!) experience per cast and per turn as long as you could handle the tedium. This compares quite favorably to experience earned later in the game.

One could argue playing the game, having fun, and earning levels naturally is better. They are probably right, but that's not particularly interesting to talk about.

[Zechnophobe]

Yes, I have somewhere around here talked about the above strategy. You'll need more than one inquisitor however, since you can't phantom just one (Unless you have ridiculous intelligence).