general tips n tricks for new players

[KongMysen]

It means that you lure enemies, guarding maps a few inches away, so that you can snatch the map without engaging a fight.
This way you'll be able to travel to other islands and solve non-fighting quest, visit shrines, collect treasures etc.

There's alot of mixed oppinions about this technique, since the enemy guarding maps are supposed to be immobile. Luring them away with lots of quick-saving and loading is really exploiting a small glitch, and can give you a tremendous advantage. Being level 20ish kinda makes no-loss fights on Debir a blitz.

However since it requires no bot or cheat codes it can't really be considered cheating... Can it?

[travelingoz]

Actually DGD, I'm just using black dragons in my current mage run through with the new gift pack and I still find transmute very useful. I'm tending to use the dragons to collect the chests and spamming demon portal level 3 on the first round. I have the scaly set and twinkling boots, so once i just stone skin and then mana spring every round on whatever has come out of the portal! All of the enemy stacks surround the demons and generally from Montero onwards, by round 10 when mana regeneration starts halving, the summoned demons start finishing the remaining stacks off.
Combined with the Wanderer's gloves and level 1 Teleport, this sure beats the old mana spring-poison shower combo!
So, in this way I'm finding Transmute more useful than Mana Regeneration as the multiple attacks on the demon stacks generate more mana than i can use in the first 10 rounds!

[oody]

To quickly recap the huge wall of text I removed earlier:

I believe Glory is a waste of Mind Runes if you can get by without it. It's only powerful very early in the game and Learning will yield much greater results in the long run.

I think Concentration is far better than Transmute for Mages who can't afford the Might runes anyway. Instead, I recommend Mages get Rage Control, Training, Anger, and of course Chaos Magic with their Might Runes.

Edit: You need Might runes to get Higher Magic Prerequisites also, which nearly doubles your medal progress rate early game.

Edit2: The Real power of Concentration lies in extending battles early on, even to round 20, to max your mana so you can go into the next battle with full rage and mana.

[Zechnophobe]

Medal progress rate doesn't equal game win rate. Also, didn't you say you hadn't tried transmute in that wall of text you deleted? (I actually know you did, because I had half replied to you when I noticed you edited it out).

If all you want is medals, sure, concentration, and higher magic are great! But I wouldn't call that 'effective'. It's like the 4 mage stack army is great for boosting the resistance medal, but isn't exactly strong otherwise. My paladin on impossible often spends 125 mana in a 5 round combat.. and only starts with like 35. You just can't do that with concentration.

[sh4dow]

erm... what exactly is map kiting? tried to figure it out but everyone just keeps talking about it like it's something as basic as clicking on the screen to make your character move there

[Zechnophobe]

It is where you run near to a bad guy defending a map, and get him to chase you for a while. And then once he has chased you for a while, you steal the map he was guarding without fighting him.

Or

A way to make the game a lot easier without triggering the 'cheater' flag. Since you get to Islands you aren't strong enough to actually fight on, but that have free xp, gold, runes etc, it makes the game substantially easier until very far in. Some Kiting players claim to get to level 15 before fighting even a single battle.

[oody]

Originally Posted by Zechnophobe

Medal progress rate doesn't equal game win rate. Also, didn't you say you hadn't tried transmute in that wall of text you deleted? (I actually know you did, because I had half replied to you when I noticed you edited it out).

If all you want is medals, sure, concentration, and higher magic are great! But I wouldn't call that 'effective'. It's like the 4 mage stack army is great for boosting the resistance medal, but isn't exactly strong otherwise. My paladin on impossible often spends 125 mana in a 5 round combat.. and only starts with like 35. You just can't do that with concentration.

I didn't realize Transmute gives you mana when you kill any units in a stack with your army. You don't need to destroy the entire stack to gain mana?! It seems overpowered like this, I had originally read it like the Trapper medal.

Transmute is great for massive mana income, which is useful when you are using a phantom resurrect strategy and really need a ton of mana.

I still however think AS A MAGE, concentration is great early game for farming medals and saving your might runes for dragon Training-- until you start using Phantoms and other mana intensive spells, at which point Transmute is awesome! I'm also sure if I played a warrior or paladin I would definitely pick this up early instead of concentration.

[DGDobrev]

I totally agree that Concentration is better for a pure caster mage.

In the game I'm doing now, I'm trying to see just how far a mage can go on a spellbook alone. I did some basic kiting (Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Rusty-Verona-Umkas-Uzala-Elon-Sheterra-Debir) to Elon to get Moro (I need his freaking Splinter ASAP, so that I can start working on his purification straight away), got 1 Black dragon egg, a little cash and a few spells.

Well, suffice it to say, I'm still using that single Black Dragon (backed up by a ton of Black Knights that simply remain in the reserve and have never seen a battle yet) as my army and I've gotten Amelie close to lvl 41 - and she's still going and beating up armies and heroes like crazy

The bottom line - a pure caster mage does not utilize Transmute properly, as you need your troops to deliver the final blow (killed by a trap also works). As such, for that kind of hero, Concentration is much better, even if it's a little hard to get to it.

[TemjinGold]

Originally Posted by oody

I didn't realize Transmute gives you mana when you kill any units in a stack with your army. You don't need to destroy the entire stack to gain mana?! It seems overpowered like this, I had originally read it like the Trapper medal.

You do need to knock off the whole stack to get mana from Transmute.