For map8 I have to choose other 2 spheres.
What do you suggest?
I have 1 life, 1 air, 3 water.
I guess I could add 1 water to max the element and 1 earth for Entangle and Stone Skin.
Earth2 seems quite interesting, though.

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I'd like to transfer 2 elven armor items that only cost 2x10, but I don't have enough points.
Do you know if such things will appear again in the next maps?

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The Anti Magic Shell protects agains altar strikes, right?

6 actually.

Elves, Keeper Highmen, Cult Highmen, Keeper Undead, Cult Undead, and Dark Elves.

The Elves and Dark Elves endings are only for the cult of storms and keepers respectively.

You can reach the Keeper Highmen ending either via the Dwarfs or via the Lizardmen, and you can reach the Cult Undead endings either via the Orcs or via the Lizardmen, but the ending is the same no matter what path you take.

The Lizardmen scenarios are also the same no matter if you started as Keeper or Cult, but the story is different.

You can read all the endings on Aowheaven, but I won't link it here because I wouldn't want to tempt Phaolo to read spoilers. :-)

You can't pick earth, because you have air. Each element has an opposite, and you can only pick the one or the other.

Earth magic IS pretty great, but it'll have to wait for another game.

So your options are:

* Air magic — As discussed, the mid-level air spells are pretty weak. Wouldn't pick any. Air Magic is at its best with either 1 sphere, or the full 4.
* Water Magic — Flood is amazing... but you won't be seeing many water maps at this stage of the campaign. The other level 4 water spells aren't that good. The elemental is strong, but slow. Water Mastery is pretty useless. Ice Storm is fun, though.
* Life Magic. — Offers some good buffing spells (Holy Champion & High Prayer) and the very powerful Sacred Wrath. That one also hits your own guys, of course, but you can just send your leader in alone against a horde of weaker foes and wipe half of them out in one go. Tranquility is also pretty useful if you want to keep neutral units in your army. And Holy Woods can be surprisingly useful, because the AI will rarely walk evil units through them, and get hurt if they do, which means you can often keep vulnerable cities safe or cut off bottlenecks.

So, right now I'd suggest 2 sphere for Life Magic, unless you really want to summon elementals and cast ice-storms, in which case you can pick 1 water and 1 life.

Oh, it's not a bad choice at all. In fact, it's a brilliant choice. Haste and Chain Lightning alone ensure that. For the investment of just 1 sphere, you get a lot of returns. 1 - No. Just raise Resistance. At 10 resistance, Entangle has a 20% chance of working, if I recall correctly.
There's a reason Nature Elementals and their Entangle Strike are known as hero-killers, though they at least need to hit you first.
2 - You kinda did. Dragon slaying doesn't apply to missile attacks. For better ranged attacks, you need Markmanship 1-4. Also, Poison Darts would probably be a better choice for ranged attack. Poisoned dragons become a lot easier to hit.
3 - You could use some more Resistance. That'd help with Entangle, at least. Also, don't neglect hitpoints. You want 12-15 by this stage of the game. 10 isn't enough.
4 - Most items are randomly determined upon game start. Some are placed specifically by the designer. Don't count on finding them again.

Further notes on dragons:

There are 4 types of dragon. Gold, Black, Red and the Ice Drake. Gold and Black are the strongest, but they also have to be summoned. Therefore, you can cast Dispel on them to make them go away. Do it before the enemy starts coming towards you, and you have as many attempts as you need.

Red breathes Fire. Annoying, but getting Fire Immunity is far from impossible. If you have the Fire Halo spell, that'll cancel out their fire breath completely. Your Highmen Titan is also fire-immune, as are creatures like Fire Elementals, Dwarf Firstborn, etc. There are also some items that offer Fire Immunity. When faced with fire immune foes, the Red Dragons will attack them in melee. Then, tough creatures like Titans or Firstborn or your leader can just beat them up.

Ice Drakes are the same except they breathe cold. You won't be facing many of these so don't need to deal with them specifically.

(Holy and Death immunity, respectively, will make Gold and Black dragons' breath stop working and make them attack you in melee, but the Dispel trick works better most of the time.)

Oh, and if you manage to get these immunities, *then* dragon slaying becomes very effective, because it boosts your attack AND damage by 3 when facing dragons in melee.

Further tricks include:

* Load an air-galley up with ballistas. Shoot all the dragons down like the overgrown gnats they are.
* Load a dragon ship up with ballistas. Cast Free Movement on it. Behold the cheesy wonder that is the Free Movement Dragon Ship, as your ship now sails over the plains, forests and hills to shoot dragons wherever they may go.

Of course, you need human cities and earth magic respectively for these tricks, so you may not have much success. But since you chose Dwarfs, you can load up a balloon with ballistas instead. Not quite as good, since the balloon can't shoot, but it should be effective anyway. Besides, I like the mental image of a hot air balloon stuffed full of artillery that shoots dragons.

Some people don't like when games show too many stats and numbers.
I'm not one of those +_+

Damn. But I'll probably need that wisp again.

Such important thing to know!

Mm ok.

Oh lol, does it really work?! Cool!

Why does a flying unit need Free Movement? O_o

A flying unit doesn't. The dragon ship, however, doesn't fly. It's a normal sailing ship.

Until you cast free movement on it. Then, it suddenly becomes able to move over land. Any land.

Bug? Feature? Cheat? You decide. I think quirks like these are fun. After all, this is the game that brought us the Dire Penguin. A bit of silliness isn't out of place.

Be aware that nearly every multiplayer game forbids this tactic as a house rule. While having a flying transport with a ranged attack is a lot of fun, many feel it is tremendously overpowered.

Ah ops, for some reason I read it again as air-galley.
Very cool discovery. It's probably an untested unbalanced feature, but in theory quite legit.

I still can't believe they added a Dire Penguin XD

Or me. Thanks for mentioning, thought. :)

Well... As funny as it is, I would say it was kinda aware choice. Remember, in this universe magic is Unlimited POWER~!!!. You can turn whole map into 'your' sfere... Isn't "it", logically, even 'worse' than making a water vessel 'swim' through land? :D

Oh? Are there any more 'common rules', that forbids or force some behaviour, then?

For AoW:SM, this is the "common rules" list.

Agreeing not to cast Magic sphere or whatever the spell is called that changes all the magic nodes to your flavor and control is also a usual one. Only cast it once in a MP game and immediately saw how ridiculously overpowered it was... (Vitek played that one with me along with some others here.)

Thanks! But looking at them now... I would say they are kinda logical, or as was it said - 'common'. Mostly about nout overusing the fact it's a PBEM game.

Uh.. why do poison clouds appear on level 8?
Map feature or what? The enemy is far away from some of those areas..
Can they be dispelled in any way?

Also, which are good map spells to harm the enemy?
With my current spheres I only found Vortex usable, but the damage is few and limited to boats.
EDIT: oh damn, they're level 4 spells. It would have been useful to strike the last enemy city from afar.
EDIT2: but maybe they'd need 5 turns of casting, just to do average damage..

Finally, does rejuvenating the lands cause some harm to undeads at all?
Even the Holy Woods don't seem to do anything..

Rejuvenation affects undead in small ways like reducing their movement and morale, or reducing income in their cities I think. It is much better for aiding your own morale and income though. Holy Woods is a very effective spell against evil units as it will do damage to any that walk through them. Since the AI refuses to walk through them for any reason, it means you can create a very effective temporary wall to block their armies.

An important part of economy and income is the little fields of grain you see around farms and cities. The may seem cosmetic, but they're not. Every field adds to your income. (You can see this in the city screen.)

So, a city that's in the middle of forests or mountains will generate less income than a city that's sitting in the middle of a fertile plain. Cutting down the trees with a builder would increase your income. (you can do this by building roads) So would casting Level Terrain on hills next to the city. (Earth Magic is lots of fun.)

You can also wage limited economic warfare: if you put an army on an enemy field, it will disappear, and the enemy's income will go down. This won't make a big difference, but it can let you harm the income of a city you can't besiege yet due to lack of troops or siege equipment.

But an even more effective form of economic warfare is climate. There are two races that get special economic bonuses. The Frostlings can have farms on frozen ground, whereas other races will not. And the Undead can have farms (their farms look like graveyards full of headstones) on any terrain, even cursed wastelands. (I think those are the only two. Do the Azracs get any bonuses in deserts?)

So, when the enemy is casting Death Storms or Ice Storms at your terrain, not only will your units get hurt, but your income will go down permanently. A Dread Reaper or a Frost Queen walking over your farmland will likewise hurt you even if they can't conquer cities. (Oh, and since you haven't played Frostlings yet: an even cooler feature is that Frost Queens can freeze water by walking over it, which will then let the rest of your army cross the sea. Your enemies will really regret spending money on a big fleet when that happens, since their ships will just get stuck in the ice and can't attack the Frost Queen.)

Which is where Rejuvenation comes in. It's a cheap way to restore terrain to fertile ground. Or to make a conquered Undead city provide a good income after you migrate it. It's a great spell to have, and one of those you'll really miss when you're playing without Life Magic.

Map feature.

Also, be aware that they drift.

Poison clouds that are cast by an enemy leader or come from an Altar of Pestilence will eventually go away, and can be disjuncted. Pre-placed ones can't, and may last forever. You just need to deal with them/avoid them.

Fortunately, you should have the Healing Showers spell by now. That should be enough to keep your troops alive when moving through a bit of poison.

Ah, then rejuvernating their ground from afar didn't harm their gold production at all.
Well, at least that saved me some time to fix the land after conquering each city.

Funny thing, I've just found that spell in the 6 mages towers map (together with Flood and Tremor).
About the builder, instead, I still haven't managed to create roads (the option is always disabled).

Pvp must be hell O_o

They were a bit annoying, but luckly not that harmful overall.

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Anyway, for map10 I've decided to transfer another hero, because she seems good.
At level3 she has healing + spellcasting1 + cave crawling + mountaneering. Stats are basic though: 4,4,4,5.
I wonder if some heroes could start stronger than others?