beginner help guide

[Saridu]

The above poster's third point is very true, you should jump on a boat as soon as you can (there is a boat for free) and cruise the maps picking up flags/runes. But the rest of my advice would be completely different

Kill as few weak troops as possible, keep the fodder alive! Strange advice you say? (They're not worth xp to us alive!)

Well yes but there are three important reasons.

Firstly they give piddly exp, secondly you may be unlucky to find a victory item later in the game (requires 50 victories before giving bonus runes) or alternately you may find the pain skull which requires you to go through 50 fights in a weakened state before evolving into one of the best items in the game, trust me you don't want to get to the end game only to find you have nothing to fight except hard fight and have to make it through the last areas penalised.

Last important reason is the pure cheese of the sacrifice spell, you can always return to earlier areas and use those weak monster battles to replenish your troops

Also I disagree with holding off the first boss battle, you want to take it as earlier as possible because the xp it gives is directly related to your level (same goes for all boss battles) There's a huge difference between the exp he gives if you are 5, 6 or 7. Level a bit with the quests, do the swamp quest (for access to Beholders and Royal snakes, very useful for taking down the boss) but I'd leave the cemetery and the other harder quests in the first areas (Frog quest,Spider bite quest,Castle assault etc) level to maybe 5 then take the boss on with +10% exp (+15 if you can afford it).

As soon as you've killed the boss go to the pirate islands and spend some time sailing around and picking up sweet leadership, do the pardon quest - the reward is a ring with +300 leadership... and if you're a mage maybe do the inheritance quest to shop for good spells (the young brother has given me sacrifice before) and the ghost ship (he almost always carries a high tier spell (phantom or on a very good day firerain!) and some undead)

You can do all of this without fighting a single battle and little shinobi ninja dodging

If you're the planning kind you could push on, finish the islands and run through the dwarf lands for Lina and more spells My mage hit the elven lands at level 11 (on normal) and no dryads

[s2now]

Originally Posted by Saridu

Kill as few weak troops as possible, keep the fodder alive! Strange advice you say? (They're not worth xp to us alive!)

Well yes but there are three important reasons.

Firstly they give piddly exp, secondly you may be unlucky to find a victory item later in the game (requires 50 victories before giving bonus runes) or alternately you may find the pain skull which requires you to go through 50 fights in a weakened state before evolving into one of the best items in the game, trust me you don't want to get to the end game only to find you have nothing to fight except hard fight and have to make it through the last areas penalised.

wow great advice thanx, wish i saw this earlier
now i killed a lot of the weak stuff

im about to attack the bogachio castle, looks pretty tough, does anyone have any tips on how to win that fight with as little casualties as possible?
also, about the time back ability on the reaper, i heard a lot of good things about it, can someone tell me how to use it properly to gain advantage?
also which skills on the spirits of rage did you guys find most helpful?
thanks

[Elwin]

The most helpful are of course crowd control ones. Stone wall,ice thorns,ice ball,time back are the key. ON normal you can use damage ones and they can help but on impossible they are worthless

[Vilk]

Originally Posted by Elwin

The most helpful are of course crowd control ones. Stone wall,ice thorns,ice ball,time back are the key. ON normal you can use damage ones and they can help but on impossible they are worthless

The question is about Normal mode, but even at normal mode as the game progress the Spirits attack skills become less interesting.

Time back is certainly the more powerful for using it in very special tactic. Myself I don't like it much because I feel it a bit too much unbalanced and it restrains too much my choices.

It works in this way: At beginning of turn n your unit is a full pack. During this turn it fights lost some units. At turn n+1 it fights again and lost more units then at end of turn n+1 ie take care of your last unit in the turn and before use it then use callback then the unit came back at its position unit size it had at beginning of turn n. So two full fights with no lost at the end. Points to take care are: that the original position is still free of any unit. The there's a unit level limit depending of the power to use. That is the Reaper spirits is in rest because you used another of his skill then you lost the opportunity. Very powerful but tedious to use that again and again. There's quite more application of this skill like to use it in combination with sacrifice or with hypnotize and to make a spell effect last longer on a unit and so on.

Myself, for the first parts of the game:

• During a long time in the beginning of the game the best spirit skill is Evil Shoal, particularely because this spirit is quite easy to get with Zerock too.
• Poisonous Spit and Smashing are cool during a long beginning of the game to train those Spirits and if you don't have much better to do with your spirits.
• Underground Blades is cool during the beginning and the first part of the middle game, particularly when there's many opponent units.
• Otherwise, Ice Orb is great to attract enemy attacks and not only from archer, Glot's Armor has many interesting application, Chargers and Rage draining are quite cool in many case and often the best option during middle game than any attack skill but those of the Reaper.
• Ice Torns and Stone Wall have many interesting context of application.
• Gizmo is a very special skill, fun to use if you don't bother to increase the random part in your fights. Excellent choice to train the spirit and often in middlegame worth more than attack skills. A choice to think of for a battle that is long.

For the middle game:

• Ice Orb, Glot's Armor, Ice Torns and Stone Wall continue to be very interesting options with many possibilities.
• Gizmo can be still a weird but interesting choice.
• Underground Blades continue to be interesting during some time but less and less as middlegame progress.
• Black Hole and Soul Draining continue to be interesting as attack during a large part of the middlegame. Black Hole is is when there are many enemy packs and Soul Draining when there's one big pack but also living (no undead).

For the End game, it would be more:

• Ice Orb, Glot's Armor, Ice Torns, Stone Wall, Soul Draining and obviously Time Back.
• Gizmo if you feel ok to be weird and perhaps for long battles.
• Black Hole in some rare case, clearly not at all if you abuse of Time Back.

I never trained much Rockfall and Poison Cloud. I quote Rockfall can cover a large area and won't hurt your units in this area so it could be an interesting option attack up to the first part of the middlegame.

[Saridu]

Originally Posted by s2now

wow great advice thanx, wish i saw this earlier
now i killed a lot of the weak stuff

im about to attack the bogachio castle, looks pretty tough, does anyone have any tips on how to win that fight with as little casualties as possible?
also, about the time back ability on the reaper, i heard a lot of good things about it, can someone tell me how to use it properly to gain advantage?
also which skills on the spirits of rage did you guys find most helpful?
thanks

It's okay about slaying the weaklings just try to limit your slaughter

The castle can be tricky, depends on what spawns (it's usually a large bunch of thorns or two stack of skellie archers) but there is always two stacks of Royal snakes and a large stack of normal snakes. Also depends on what you've managed to pick up and your class.

Generally it helps if you have royal snakes yourself (not the end of the world), you can substitute swordsmen if you don't, also a good stack of archers helps.

If you're a mage and manage to get initiaitve (the above mentioned Royal snakes or some other fast unit) you know what to do super fireball (or double if you're being eating all your runes), they're nicely packed together.

If you're a warrior, it helps if you left a mob around the castle around to get your rage up (or quaff a potion of rage) and hammer them with an evil shoal or smashing sword or rockfall whatever works best. Get one or two tanks up front to deal with the snakes, (if you have trap might want to slow those snakes down, the map often has obstacles that you can use as choke points). A lot depends on your setup but it definitely doable (on normal!!!)

Like Elwin said on normal most of the spirits are very useful but later game (and hard plus) the non damage ones and the crowd control become more important. I personally like the ice ball, it has two uses, one as crowd control - drop it right next to archers, ai hates that and will almost always shoot if first before your meaty units

Second use is the wrecking ball mode, wait for an large stack of archers or mage to go, or wait one of your fast units (like snakes or dragons), when it comes to the end of the turn, summon the ball at the other side of the map in a straight line (as many hexes apart as possible) and fire away, the ball has a charge effect and can do thousands of damage at a good distance, great for taking out turrets.

I'm not a fan of time back, never used it but soul draining does a percent of enemy's health as damage, very useful end game when the ai send thousands of fire dragonflies your way...