So I started a (small or average) shard with two Masters, me in the south-western corner. Was slowly exploring, minding my own business, then Erdu shows up and cuts me off from the rest of the map. But I had 15 or so provinces to play around with, so I didn't mind. And I even had the basic resources covered - iron, wood, horses, even marble & mithril from my own provinces, and a trade with Erdu for mandrake (9 crystals/turn.) Two of my provinces bordered water, and I built a lighthouse to see if there was any empty space there - just saw a single province which was Oinor's.

But whatever, I kept exploring, levelling my heroes. My primary, a Warrior as usual, was having a blast with a labyrinth in Ring 4, which refused collapse, which was working out great with the Large Crystal I just built which kept giving Minotaur quests (turns out there were a couple small Minotaur sites in Ring 1).

Oinor's one province I could see was conquered by Erdu, so I kept waiting for him to take care of Oinor and declare war on me. Didn't happen, and I got tired of waiting, and was about to declare war myself when I noticed ... all of Erdu's neighboring provinces had Monster Guard.... Oops.

So I explored my 15 or so provinces completely, no poison res. I knew my level 30 Warrior could handle Monster Guard with green recruit backup - but the backup would have to be rehired almost 100% after every battle. None of my other heroes would fare any better. Did find a pretty good chain shop though (see attachment.)

But I had 60k gold reserve at this point, so I could afford this, as well as Monster-Guarding my own provinces. But it was an annoying and long road to Erdu's Stronghold.

And then I had to do the whole thing again to Oinor's Stronghold, this time without even knowing which provinces had monster guard, so equipping for each one just in case.

Half-way there, I realized I had a Phoenix egg, decided to try it out - OMG what a difference 1 unit makes! Still couldn't autocombat the fights, but my Warrior could round-attack to take out 2 spiders, Phoenix handles 3rd spider, then I just needed to make sure Phoenix doesn't die twice before warrior mops up the remainder :D

Edit: Also interestingly, when I finally declared war on Erdu, it turns out he had an alliance with Oinor. Now it seems he actually only left Oinor his Stronghold before the alliance. I now wonder how long he would have gone before finally declaring war on me, considering it doesn't look like he really wanted to kill Oinor. Or maybe his heroes just didn't know how to deal with Oinor's guard yet (White Order IIRC.)

My Wizard was my 5th hero, and only level 6 at the time, so I did what I knew and stuck with the first Warrior.

I'm also playing a good guy, so no cloud of terror or similar.

While you can't autocombat a monsters guard with a solo warrior (without poison immunity), it's still quite beatable as long as you're smart about the battle. As you already seem to understand, you just have to make sure your warrior doesn't get webbed. The manticores can usually be taken out while the spiders are still trying to make their way across the screen, then it's just a matter of out-maneuvering the spiders to take them out without being webbed. Once that's done then you can autocombat the rest of it. The two main things required are plenty of movement (throw haste on yourself for good measure), and the ability to pass through rough terrain without penalty (the chainmail that gives flying is great for this, otherwise there's other equipment that can get you through certain types of terrain).

The problem is that in my experience, the spiders relatively rarely get into the position of allowing all 3 to be round-attacked at once. And, at least without flying, the manticores could potentially hold you back long enough to be webbed.

From watching one of those off-line championship videos, I've been thinking about giving my warrior some burn ammo spells so he could neutralize 1 spider's web before round-attacking the other two.... I'll have to look up their magic resistance to see how well this could work, might need to use some +spellpower items.

BTW, another great neutral shop on the next shard, this time a tanner. My 2nd hero is about to get deadlier...

For the manticores you want to position your warrior so that all three can attack him on their first turn. The counterattack should drop them pretty close to death, then a round attack on the warrior's next action finishes all of them off. Manticores taken care of and spiders have only moved once. As for taking out the spiders, you don't need to take all of them out in one go, you just need to make sure that they're never in web range while picking them off. Between terrain and the other units the spiders will almost always split themselves up so you can take out two at once while the third is far enough away to be unable to web you. Just be careful if the battlefield has hills since that increases the range that they can web (since it counts as a ranged attack). If the spiders really just stick together then another option is to take out the slugs first, then take out two spiders and allow the third to web you. With only the lone spider around to do poison damage it will at best be able to knock a high-level warrior down to perhaps 75% health before web wears off and you can finish off whatever is left. Using Burn Ammo (as you mentioned) is another option for neutralizing one spider before taking out the other two (spiders don't have much ammo, so Burn Ammo doesn't need to hit them all that hard).

This is the main reason my Wizard is always 90% of the time my first Hero. There is no real good way to "fast level" on them really. Unless ofc you take a veteran T1 guy that can slaughter and even then depending on how many troops Hero not getting much exp.

Warriors and Scout can quite easily level if you find good gear since they never have level requirements like in some other games. Even the Commander can do quite well in this fashion.

Wizard on the other hand does not really gain that much from using most items. Even higher level items/spells are not that good right off since you need the spell slots for them to be useful not to mention power.

Also odd side note, Cloud of Terror spell does NOT reduce your Karmatic rating at all for some odd reason. Although it's not that odd when I think about it since Fear does not either and this is just a Mass Fear spell. Disease and Mass Disease both reduce Karma by 1 so seeing as how Fear doesn't then it makes sense that CoT doesn't as well even though it's name kind of says it should.

Deadly Terror Ritual also only costs -1 Karma as well. That is quite cheap considering how effective it is imho, I think it should be at least -2 considering you have to wait quite a bit between uses.


Not really on topic but how come you keep so many T1 spell scrolls in your inventory? I mean the only ones I usually keep are thing like Fear if I was not going to build necro or Burn Ammo and Cure wounds as I never build those schools anymore sadly.

Usually my mage is the third hero, and I give him artifact level dagger like assassin's one, 2 veteran T1, Healer, HP items in all other slots, then farm arena. With dagger mage can lasthit pretty well, items grant good amount of hp, spells save healer, healer holds everyone else. This way once I won with 0 level mage against level 7 commander in champion arena. Though arena can go nuts and give level 5 wizard Summon phoenix or troll/minotaur for low level commander.

I keep at least 1 of each scroll I find for potential Mage Tower quests :)

Good to know Cloud of Terror doesn't reduce karma - I'll have to look into that. How does the dagger help the mage stay alive?

I'm also no good at arenas, or tactics for that matter. And I've had my first appearance in an arena be up against commanders with full complement of units (2 T4s, etc) so no clue how that works.

BTW, just because I feel like pointless bragging, just had my most "glorifying" shard so far. I can't take any credit for it though because the 3 opponents (Master level Oinor & Bethel and 1 Local Lord) were completely pathetic, and past turn 100 (past 170 for Oinor since I found him last) had each barely made it past Ring 2. Honestly, it was as if they were below Beginner level...

And now I'm going to finally back up my campaign game because it seems I only have 1 Key left to find, and if I win I want to try for a different ending without having to start over.

Dagger helps with finishing blows (which mean a lot of exp), HP items +healer help with staying alive.
Arena is level based. Novice - lower than hero, middle - equal, veteran - I have seen enemy with level 7 while I had 0.
Slots fulfilled at random, so anyone can have nasty things, like red items, ultrarare units, spells, and so on.

Is it possible to loot items from arena (not as a reward but as spoil)? I can't remember any occasion i did but I have never tried arena with a high level ranger.

I don't know for sure. Problem with high level arena - you need army like this to safely farm it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWE7HCDUHTE

Even with HP items, I just don't see how the healer can heal enough - Wizard has little to no armor, so any non-magical attack is likely to deal more damage than a healer can heal.

depends on battle, but 1-2 fears +fatigue would make even from T3 unit something laughable in the line of 8 damage.