A few questions from a new player

[Zechnophobe]

Originally Posted by Loopy

Thanks for the responses guys.

Regarding the pet: is there any way to affect the upgrades available when the dragon levels? Is it completely random or does it change based on what you use most? Ball lightning seemed really useless early on since it just didn't have the initial "wow" factor of killing off 1/3rd of the enemy troops instantly, but I can see how % based damage to a stack would get ridiculously powerful late game when you could be facing an ungodly stack size. Trouble is, I don't think I've seen the option to upgrade it for a long time.

As a side note, I've noticed the extra XP for lower armies and have exploited it a bit. Notice how my pet is several levels ahead of me . It seems odd though that the class which is supposed to have the most pet-focused build (warrior) is also the one whose pet levels the slowest because they have the largest army.

ckdamascus, does your goblin build work with mages? Or should I save that for another playthrough with warrior? Being able to abuse the shamans myself would be a nice change.

Unfortunately, the only information on beating shamans I can find on the forums here seems to boil down to "hope you incapacitate them or kill them before their first round or you die", which isn't exactly inspiring advice. I can't imagine how overpowered they must have been BEFORE the patch that nerfed them, just how high was whoever created them? For the damage they put out it seems as if their leadership requirement should be at least doubled if not tripled.

Also I've figured out how to search for scrolls, and apparently there are no resurrect scrolls in my game . Is this really unlucky or fairly normal? How good are my chances of digging one up?

The top tier spells are not consistently available in the game:

Distortion doesn't always have timeback (I think that is the only super rare spell here actually)
Chaos doesn't always have Death star or Armageddon
Life doesn't always have resurrection or Call Phoenix

It is conceivable that most any spell can be missing from the game (sometimes Trap or even Target can be missing) but those are much less likely to be not found.

You will get most or all in most games. But now and then, one goes missing. Kinda like Cyclopses on Bolo .