WARNING! LATEST UPDATE BROKE SEVERAL STRATEGIES

• Bonepiles are now guarded so you no longer can gather souls with only 1 wisp. You need to get your tower to Regan and Uram Gor and clear the Bone Piles yourself to gather souls.
  
• Wildlife now hunts your tower so you can't just go 4 workers 1 hero 1 soldier and mine the map. You need a functioning army at all times
  
• Guide will be updated later

Hello. I will be teaching you on how to play each class and how to beat Impossible Difficulty with all of them.

I will also be teaching you on how to beat Impossible Difficulty WITHOUT any crafting class or grimoire spells as well so if you're also looking to beat Impossible Difficulty without crafting anything at all, you have come to the right place as well.

Before I begin, I just wanted to warn you that my personal preferences are heavily at play here. I am someone who hates rushing, hates microing, hates multitasking, hates relying on luck, loves taking his sweet time, loves having the most powerful endgame stack, loves defeating the enemy at their strongest, and loves Golems. So needless to say, this guide is terrible for speedrunners so if you're someone looking to beat the game in record time you should look elsewhere.

If you're following this guide you should expect to take it slow, have only 1 stack, do only 1 thing at a time, auto-resolve the vast majority of your fights, spend 0 effort trying to get more grimoire pages, spend the majority of your turns with your 1 stack sitting in your tower doing nothing while your tower travels the map, use mostly Golems, and fight the Circle Mages when they're at their strongest.

In other words, following my guide is easy mode even on Impossible Difficulty, but slow. Kind of. In real time I think my way of playing is actually faster than most people because despite my high turn count my turns take only like 5-10 seconds each.

Please note that the guide is unfinished. Main Scenario is done but the extra scenarios are unfinished. I am releasing this guide in its unfinished state because I'm going to be taking a long break from the game so rather than have this sit in darkness during all that time I thought I'd make it public.

If you have any questions or comments please post here: https://steamproxy.net/app/1581770/discussions/0/4693406471885432409/

All classes play pretty much identically which is why they're all in the same guide here instead of their own separate guides. Every single class...

• 1. Completes the Tower quest line a.s.a.p.
  
• 2. Flies around the map to unlock their super crafting room
  
• 3. Flies around the map until they fully craft their full endgame army
  
• 4. Completes the Power quest line
  
• 5. Flies over to Audale and reach max reputation with them to unlock the Warrior's Hall
  
• 6. Flies around the map until they get most if not all the Allfire Nodes
  
• 7. Flies around the map to complete 3 of the 6 victory objectives and win the game.

The literal sole difference between all the classes is the exact specifics of 2 and 3. That's it. Everything else is literally the same.



Research is generally completely worthless until the very endgame. I'd say a good 90% of your strength comes from Units, Crafting, and Tower Rooms and generally all of these are completely independent of research. Generally you get these from completing quests or having maxed out relationships with specific cities. So unlike other 4x games, in this 4x game you completely neglect your research in its entirety until you have your full endgame setup. Then you start putting an effort into research to make your units a little bit stronger.



Heroes are worthless in combat because they're just too frail and they got nothing going for them. A single endgame Circle Mage unit will kill your heroes and apprentices in one turn. There are only 4 benefits of heroes.

• First, they use the hero exclusive slot in your stack so having one is strictly better than not having one.
  
• Second, they usually get an ability called Command which gives one of your other units 2 extra action points so having your extremely frail hero at the back of the battlefield giving a single unit an extra 2 actions per turn is good and is the only way heroes can contribute without dying in the endgame.
  
• Third, some of the heroes' perks for completing their quest are absolute game changers.
  
• Fourth, completing their quest and getting them to level 15 is a win condition.

So these are the only reasons why you use a hero. You literally got nothing to lose for using them, some heroes' quest completion perks are awesome, and they're a win condition.



Damage is incredibly important in this game. You gotta fully max out your damage to have a shot at beating the Circle Mage towers even on Explorer Difficulty. A full stack of Shaper Golems without any damage boosts gets completely annihilated by Circle Mage Tower fights even on Explorer difficulty.

All the classes have their own way of increasing damage be it Glyphs, Bathe in Blood, or Tower Room Extensions but one thing they all have in common is building the -50% resistance Tower Room Extensions in the Crystal Chamber.

The Crystal Chamber has room extensions that reduces all enemies' resistance to an element by 50% if they're in your domain. Seeing how your Tower is mobile, you can make it so that 100% of fights take place in your domain, including the Circle Mage Towers.

The damage boost these Extensions provide is MASSIVE.

When I first started out I completely neglected these Extensions because I thought these were purely defensive as in I only receive the benefits against enemies fighting in my own tower and I didn't think -50% was a big deal and I was catastrophically wrong on both counts.

So to prevent you from making the same mistake I did I am emphasizing the importance all of this right now right here.



Lets talk about Promotions. At levels 5, 10, and 15 you have a chance of getting a really good promotion but there is not a chance in hell you can rely on them because it's impossible to get the one you want on purpose. Therefore the only promotions you can rely on are the ones that appear at all levels.

This is my promotion priority list:

• Good one-off skills (Motivate, Triage, Eery Overlord, Elemental Familiar, etc.)
  
• Health I, II, and III
  
• Speed I, II, and III
  
• Bad one-off skills (Brutal, Exploit Burn, etc.)
  
• Resistance I, II, and III
  
• Armor & Willpower I, II, and III
  
• Damage I, II, and III
  
• Focus I, II, and III

Health is just way, way, way too important so it's 2nd highest priority. If you neglect health your units are gonna die during the enemy's AoE alpha strikes. If you get all three + health promotions you'll have +30 hp so always get all three +health promotions.

Speed I, II, and III makes a HUGE difference in a fight because it's the difference between letting the AI get the first strike off because you have to let them come to you because you can only move 4 tiles a turn v.s. traveling half the map with one action leaving 2 actions left to deal some serious damage.

Bad one-off skills show up as an option during levels 5, 10, and 15. So if you want to maximize your chances of getting a great skill at level 5, 10, or 15 then you gotta remove the bad one-off skills from the pool by grabbing them at non-levels 5, 10, and 15.

Armor & Willpower are just absolutely inconsequential. It does not matter whether the enemy is gonna do 25 damage a hit or 22 damage a hit. That's why I prioritize Resistance over Armor & Willpower because having 75% damage reduction to one element is more impactful than having 3 flat damage reduction against everything.

Your damage after boosts is gonna be like 50+. The difference between 50 and 53 is truly negligible.

Focus I, II, and III are worthless because you're going to be building Crytalline Gardens in every empty space in the Tower Room and they provide +4 focus to all units each. You're gonna have more focus than you know what to do with.

Lets talk about Daily Regeneration. Early game it's fantastic. Lategame it's obsolete. So never get Daily Regeneration promotions on your final endgame units, but priortize them even over Health for early game units you plan on ditching after the early game.



It is my opinion that you are guaranteed to get all 4 Grimoire pages of your primary school in every game but not your secondary school. So all my strategies will only rely on 1 spell school and the starting page of the secondary school. That's it. You will not see me trying to obtain any grimoire pages other than my primary school.

Shaper Ruins with multiple choices give different pages depending on the choices you make so I recommend you make a save before delving into a ruin and reloading if you don't get the page you want. You cannot save scum, the pages you get for each choice is set in stone so keep that in mind.

NEVER VISIT A SHAPER RUIN UNTIL AFTER YOU RESEARCH BOTH RECALL AND TELEPORT. These two spells are mandatory to defend all of your Allfire nodes and if you clear Shaper Ruins before you get them then there's a very good chance that you're not gonna have either of these spells available for research until the endgame.



Generally, NEVER KILL ENEMY SPAWNERS. They are most often your sole method of increasing reputation with cities so NEVER KILL ENEMY SPAWNERS.



Undergast the Weaver is by far the the strongest Circle Mage in the game. By far. Unlike others he has 2 Titans and a **** ton of AoE and an army of Medusae stunning half your units every turn. Strategies that roflstomp most other Circle Mages will die to Undergast.

Having said that he is rather passive so if you want the hardest game possible have Undergast and 3 hyper aggressive Circle Mages like Hokan Ashir in the game.



Finally here's a map of Eo so you know where Regan Gor (Northwest Corner), Uram Gor (Bottom of the map), and Audale (Lower East) are. I take no credit for this map. It was made by Gamers Heroes and I found it on google. This map served me very well so I advise you to use it as well.

Misty Coast is the hardest start in the game but it's actually not that hard and as the hardest start in the game it gives you the most amount of Allfire and Gold so I recommend you start in Misty Coast with all classes for both the challenge and the rewards.

1. Choose "I know exactly what to do" to skip all the beginner stuff when you first reach your tower.

2. Immediately start building your class's unique crafting building

3. Immediately hire 4 Goblin Brawlers. 2 at a time. If you can't recruit goblins because they're inside the enemy's domain, just restart. This guide is for new players and rather than go into great detail on how to handle this unlikely situation, I say just restart.

4. Get the Orc Brute by paying 10 gold at the Militia Outpost Watchtower.

5. Set Allfire to Proficiency until 10 Mastery. Then set to research until Summon Wisp is researched. And then set it to pure mana and build the Study Tower Room when you can. Set research to Aid.

6. Let your Tower be ransacked for a few turns by the Demon + 4 Lesser Fire Golems stack until all 4 Goblin Brawlers are finished recruiting.

7. Build a Lodge with your Apprentice while you wait for your 4 Goblin Brawlers to finish recruiting. You HAVE to place your lodge in a way that a Construction Site is within its domain. So find the Construction Site near your Tower and build a Lodge near it. Be sure to visit it and the Hamlet in your domain for loot.

8. Once you finally get your 4 Goblin Brawlers out suicide them all into the Demon + Lesser Fire Golem stack with auto-resolve to soften them.

9. Kill the Demons + Lesser Fire Golems ransacking your Tower with your Main Stack using auto-resolve.

10. Recruit 2 more Goblin Brawlers.

11. Once your stack is fully healed up and you finished recruiting 2 more Goblin Brawlers (for a total of 4 including the 2 Goblin Brawlers you started with) clear the Stolen Pages Spire of the Circle by first suiciding your 4 Goblin Brawlers into it via auto-resolve to soften it up and then attacking with your main stack via auto-resolve. If any units in your main stack dies, replace them with either Warg Riders or your class's summonable minion.

12. Clear the nearby Mines for more money.

13. Build a Workshop.

14. Clear the Allfire node of hostiles and then summon a Wisp and meld it with the node.

15. Set your Allfire to pure Proficiency now until 25 Mastery. After you achieve 25 mastery, set your Allfire to either mana if you need the mana or keep it at Proficiency.

14. Once all gold sources near your tower are fully exhausted get your main stack into your Tower and fly your Tower towards the 2 Lost Pages quests and clear them to obtain your 2nd Apprentice Spell Page.

15. Fly towards the nearest Academy to get yourself a 2nd Apprentice but do NOT press Continue in the Power quest line. I repeat do NOT press continue. Pressing continue spawns the Crystal quest location near you but the mob there is too strong for your current army. Getting an army strong enough to clear it requires you to fly all over the map and if you press continue now then you'll be forced to fly all the way back here afterwards. Please note that once you get your 2nd apprentice the continue button will not disappear even if the Demon Lord Sa'Hrul takes your apprentice away. I don't fire my 2nd apprentice but I just leave him for dead. You only have the 1 apprentice/hero slot in your stack so a 2nd one is completely worthless and I ditch my starting apprentice once I get my Hero too because the Hero is a victory condition while the starting apprentice is not.

16. After obtaining your 2nd Apprentice fly your Tower north to Alluvyan. You need 2 Workers to continue the Tower quest line and Orgash is a TERRIBLE and I mean TERRIBLE source of workers. Just terrible. I've seen 7 weeks in a row without a single worker being offered. So we go to the nearby city of Alluvyan instead and raise our reputation there to get your Workers.

17. Complete the Alluvyan quest or kill enemies to raise your reputation so that you can buy workers from Alluvyan and then buy 2 workers to advance the Tower quest line. If a Circle Mage completely envelops Alluvyan in his/her domain then simply fly to another city like Lyraine.

18. Once you get your 2 workers build a Troop Quarters and a Crystalline Garden.

19. With the Tower Quest now finished, build one Crystal Growth extension in the Crystalline Garden. Only one. If you're short of (AA) or (DD) materials go harvest Dwarven Windweed (AA), Orcish Redcaps (EDD), or Bonepiles (DD).

20. Build 3 more Crystalline Gardens and fill all remaining Crystalline Garden Extension Room Slots (should be 7) with Focus Channels. Eventually. They're not a priority so don't use crafting materials you need to build your endgame army with.

And that's the Misty Coast start. You are now going to spend 100% of your effort into obtaining your full endgame army and the specifics of what to do now from here is completely dependent on your class.

The Wizards of Might and Magic scenario is really, really hard because enemy stacks containing 2 Titans arrive at your tower by turn 45. That's way too quick to get any Titans up yourself so in order to find a solution to this I sought out an army you can make without any crafting or grimoire pages that can take out all the Circle Mages and I succeeded. And that army is Galtrak the Orc Hero, 6 Orcs Shamans, and 1 enslaved Mentalist.

Orcs get a promotion called Motivate which restores 3 action points of an enslaved unit as a FREE ACTION. You heard me. FREE. As in using Motivate to give an enslaved unit an entire extra turn does not cost any action points.

So if you have 7 Orcs with Motivate and 1 Slave, instead of having 8 full unit actions on your turn you will have 15. Because all 7 Orcs can perform their own full action and then restore the slave's action 7 times in that same turn for free resulting in 7 more full unit actions by the enslaved unit.

But that still leaves the problem of damage. Your Orcs and Mentalists are only going to do like 3 damage a turn against the endgame Circle Mage armies. 3 x 15 = 45. If you can only do 45 damage a turn then you're gonna get absolutely slaughtered. And the solution I found to this is Bathe in Blood.

Galtrak the Orc hero, being an Orc, can get Motivate. And once you finish his quest line which is really, really easy, you unlock the Altar of Blood Tower Room which gives Bathe in Blood to every single spellcaster unit under your control.

Orc Shamans are spellcasters and they can summon spiders.
Enslaved Mentalists are spellcasters.

So put everything together with Galtrak, 6 Orc Shamans, and 1 enslaved Mentalist...
1. Your Mentalist moves in and attacks
2. An Orc Shaman moves in, summons a spider, and motivates your enslaved Mentalist
3. Your Mentalist attacks a second time
4. A second Orc Shaman moves in, summons a spider, and motivates your enslaved Mentalist
5. Your Mentalist attacks a third time
6. Repeat repeat repeat until you're out of Orc Shamans.
7. Next turn your enemy is going to kill all of your summoned spiders while keeping your Orc Shamans and enslaved Mentalist untouched boosting everyone's damage by 12.
8. And then you once again summon 6 spiders and have your Mentalist attack 8 times
9. And repeat until everything is dead.

I have personally confirmed that this setup is capable of taking out all the Circle Mages in the game including Undergast without taking any losses, but Undergast was really, really hard. Had to redo the fight several times.

So add in all the crafting stuff that can win games all on their own on top of this setup which can also win the game all on its own and you get the point. GG you win.

I just want to point out that Motivate is a promotion obtainable at any level and not just at level 5, 10, or 15. I have gotten 12 Orc Shamans, 8 Warg Riders, and 2 Galtraks across 2 playthroughs while developing this strategy and out of the 22 Orcs, only 1 failed to get Motivate by level 15. So it's safe to say that trying to get Motivate on all of your Orc units is a reliable strategy and not one based on RNG.

The best Grimoire Pages for this setup is, I think, Death IV or Guardian IV. Because both have a Tower Room that reduces all enemies in your domain's resistance to Death/White by 50% which stacks with Crystal Chamber's Death Ray/Light Beam Tower Room extension for a grand total of -100% Death/White Resistance, and Death III/Guardian I has a spell that turns all of your units' damage to Death/White. Death IV has Plague which reduces Death Resistance by another 25%, Torture Room that increases damage of undead units by 20%, and a spell that can turn all your units undead, and Guardian III has Deus Vault which increases white damage by 5. Guardian IV also has invulnerability which increases a units' physical resistance to 100%. Having said that I beat all the Circle Mages without using any Grimoire pages at all so this is not mandatory. It just makes your life a hell of a lot easier.

I just want to point out that I usually don't have the enslaved Mentalist attack anything on his first turn. I wait until next turn after my first batch of spiders get killed because the enslaved Mentalist's damage is truly nothing without getting a couple stacks of Blood Charge first.

I recommend building a 2nd Troop Quarters and Workshop to manage all the unit upkeeps. I also recommend building the Orc Barracks since you have max reputation with Orgash anyways and filling all 3 room extension slots with Trappers to reduce all enemies in your domain's max hp by 30%.


Return to Orgash and start doing its quests. Unlike Audale there are enough Orgash quests to get you to maximum reputation without grinding enemy spawners or camping nearby inns.

Get lots of Warg Riders and 1 enslaved Elven Ranger. Enslaved Mentalists are absolute trash and the only reason we use them is because they're spellcasters that benefit from the Altar of Blood. But since we don't have Altar of Blood yet there is 0 reason to use them right now. Physical damage is better than white damage at this stage in the game and Elven Rangers can get promotions that let them completely ignore line of sight and range making them the superior choice.

If you fight manually, you should be able to win 100% of the fights without loss even if the auto-resolve screen says you'll get wiped.

Once you raise Orgash's reputation high enough replace all of your Warg Riders with Orc Shamans and once you get the Altar of Blood replace your enslaved Elven Ranger with an enslaved Mentalist. Use the Transmutation spell to pay for your Orc Shamans.

And that's it, you have your endgame setup. The only thing left to do now is to increase your stack size by befriending Audale and getting to 100 Mastery by capturing and holding a lot of Allfire nodes.

Remember to build the both the Elemental Ray and Light Beam Tower Room Extensions in the Crystal Chamber to beef up both your Orc Shaman and enslaved Mentalist's damage. With only 1 Magnetic Resonator your Tower is gonna be slow but that's the price you pay for not utilizing any crafting or grimoire pages.

The Alchemist in this game doesn't feel like an Alchemist to me. When you think of Alchemists, you think of a guy who harvests materials from all over the place and brew really powerful potions. That's not what happens in this game. You don't harvest any materials at all.

No, what the Alchemist feels like to me in this game is a Wizard. Specifically, a Fire Golem Summoner who has the ability to summon 6 Fire Golems for free every week. That's it, just a pure Fire Golem Summoner and nothing else. And any unused Fire Golem summon that week transfers over to next week.

Allow me to explain.

• Once you unlock the Alchemist's super crafting Tower Room, the Alembic Chamber, you get 3 Potent Water and 6 Aria per week for free.
  
• A Potion of Firebreathing (EEE) takes 6 Elemental Dots to craft and yields 2 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE).
  
• So if you use 2 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE) as materials, you can craft 2 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE) for a net profit/loss of 0 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE).
  
• Potent Water doubles the yield of a brew but reduces 1 dot of every type during crafting.
  
• So if you use 2 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE), 1 Potent Water, and 1 Ashes (E) as crafting materials, you will craft 4 Potions of Firebreathing.
  
• In other words, this means 1 Ashes (E) and 1 Potent Water results in 2 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE)
  
• Since you get 3 Potent Waters for free every week and since you're going to have tons and tons of single dot (E) materials like Ashes (E) just from playing the game, you essentially get 6 Fire-Breathing Potions (EEE) for free every week.
  
• This is true for all the other types of single triple dot potions. Poison Coating (DDD), Dancers Potion (LLL), and Focus Potion (AAA). So basically every week you get 6 triple dot crafting materials for free. Don't use Potent Water to create Focus Potions (AAA) though. Use Charged Crystals (AA) from the Crystalline Garden instead.
  
• Sealed Fire Golem, the consumable that summons a Fire Golem in combat, requires 3 Potions of Firebreathing (EEE) and 1 Poison Coating (DDD)
  
• 3 Aria can be crafted into 1 Distilled Aria which triples the yield of a brew.
  
• Since you get 6 Aria a week, you get 2 Distlled Aria a week
  
• Put all this together and you'll be creating 6 Sealed Fire Golems a week for free while doing nothing but sitting on your ass all week.

The math doesn't fully check out here. For example: you use 8 triple dot potions a week yet you only get 6 a week. And the use of Ashes (E) doesn't actually make the whole thing free, but in my experience the bottleneck of your Sealed Fire Golem production is Distilled Aria by far and nothing else therefore you will be making 6 Sealed Fire Golems a week.

If you want to make these potions truly free, there are a few tricks. With the Enchanted Cauldron Alchemy Lab Tower Room Extension 1 Potion of Firebreathing (EEE) can be brewed into 3 Dwarven Ignitions (E) and 1 Poison Coating can be brewed into 3 Berserk Shrooms (D) to be used with Potent Water. You can recruit Galtrak the Orc Hero to sacrifice a summoned Medusa for 3x Sacrificial Blood (DD). You can get various additional Tower Rooms that yield (E) and (D) materials. You can use 1 Distilled Aria to get 4 more triple dot potions during a week. And you can go Sealed Ice Golems instead of Sealed Fire Golems since Charged Crystals (AA) are ridiculously easy to mass produce every week from Crystalline Gardens and you only need 12 Charged Crystals (AA) to craft 6 Sealed Ice Golems, freeing up all your Potent Waters for Poison Coatings (DDD).

Some of the above tricks are VERY helpful in the extra scenario because resources are extremely limited and there is a very short time limit.

Fire Golems are superior to Ice Golems because they have Effortless Defense and Inferno while Ice Golems don't. I can't emphasize enough just how amazing Effortless Defense is. If an enemy attacks your Ice Golem then your Ice Golem on your turn will not be able to do anything at all because it spent all of its actions on your opponent's turn which means your Ice Golem was essentially disabled for a full turn by an enemy melee attacker where as a Fire Golem will have its full set of actions no matter how many times it was attacked. I'd say Effortless Defense easily doubles a melee units' damage output. Fire Golems also have Inferno which is also amazing. 5x attacks at long range for only 2 action points and doesn't end your turn either which is why I go the extra mile to mass produce Sealed Fire Golems and not Sealed Ice Golems every time.

Anyways you get the point. You get 6 Sealed Fire Golems a week just from sitting on your ass all day and Fire Golems alone can beat all the Circle Mages. So Alchemists just sit on their asses, waiting for their free 6 Sealed Fire Golems a week to stockpile and then just kills all the Circle Mages with them. And that's why I call them Fire Golem Summoners instead of Alchemists.

You do need a handful of Omni Vials which are consumables that reduce a single unit's resistance to all elements by 100% so that your Fire Golems can kill enemies with 100% resistance to Elemental damage.

Inferno is always better than attacking normally and it doesn't end your turn so you can both Inferno every turn and do a move or attack action. 2-3 turns of Infernos and you'll notice that the entire Circle Mage stack is microwaved to death.

I have personally confirmed that 6-9 Sealed Fire Golems alone whose damage is boosted by 40% from the Arcane Library and Buff Summons spell can defeat every Circle Mage including Undergast by themselves while using Omni Vials solely to break Elemental Immunity so once you stockpile about 5-6 weeks worth of Sealed Fire Golems and a handful of Omni Vials you can end the game. Also you can go any army you want. It doesn't matter. Going the Orc Army in the previous section is overkill. I personally just summon a bunch of Medusae because they're tier 3, very easy to obtain and replace, is boosted by the same +40% damage that boosts your Fire Golems, and can auto-resolve most fights and the fights they can't I just summon a few Fire Golems.

For Grimoire Pages, I recommend going Enchantment for both your primary and secondary school. Enchantment II and IV boosts all of your summons' damage by 20% each for a total of 40% and Enchantment III gives you Summon Medusae. Enchantment I also has Summon Jelly which helps you complete one of your Alchemy quests.

The only other Grimoire Page worth mentioning is Guardian II. Guardian II has the Wellspring of Life which increases your weekly Aria income by 1 at the cost of 2 mana per turn and Gift which increases a Town's reputation at the cost of gold, letting you easily obtain T3 units and unique Tower Rooms from all Towns by using the Apprentice II spell Transmutation to turn mana into gold. Please note that you need 9 Wellsprings of Life to increase your weekly production of Sealed Fire Golems or Omni Vials by 3.

Once you have 2 of each type of triple dot potion (Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE), Dancers Potion (LLL), Poison Coating (DDD), and Focus Potion (AAA)) you've pretty much won the game because you can craft anything and everything and mass produce Sealed Fire Golems so the challenge of this class is getting your hands on your first set of each triple dot potions.

Your first resort should be harvesting the right plants.
Plant Sap (D) is obtained from Pumpkin Patches, Orcish Redcaps, Lenyas, and Primordial Forests.
Infused Bark (AAL) is obtained from Primordial Forests.

Plants howerever are not always an option especially in the extra scenarios. If you cannot source the plants then you gotta source 5 one dot materials and refine them using Potions of Fire Breathing (EEE).
For example, to get your first set of Dancers Potion (LLL) with 5 Wheat (L):

• Craft 2 Eagle Spirits (ELL) using a Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE) and 3 Wheat (L)
  
• Craft 2 Dancers Potion (LLL) using 2 Eagle Spirits (ELL) and 2 Wheat (L)

Same thing with Poison Coating (DDD)

• Craft 2 Dark Feasts (EDD) using a Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE) and 3 Remains (D)
  
• Craft 2 Poison Coating (DDD) using 2 Dark Feasts (EDD) and 2 Remains (D)

To refine Arcane materials however, you have to use a Dancers Potion (LLL) instead of a Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE) because if you use a Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE), the resulting Mindnumbing Elixir (EEA) is double E and not double A. So we gotta use Sacred Water (AAL) instead

• Craft 2 Sacred Water using a Dancers Potion (LLL) and 3 Ectoplasm (A)
  
• Craft 2 Focus Potions (AAA) using 2 Sacred Water (AAL) and 2 Ectoplasm (A)

You always start with enough materials to craft a Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE) so no need to devise any tricks that let you tech up to Potions of Fire Breathing (EEE).

I will repeat it once again, these techniques are VERY important for the extra scenarios.

First, you need to craft 10 rations. Use 3 wheat (L) to craft 2 rations (L), and then use those 2 rations (L) and a chunk of meat (L) to craft 2 more rations (L) and keep doing this until you complete the quest.

Then you need to recruit 4 Warg Riders to advance your Alchemy quest and then fire all 4 of them immediately afterwards. 5 if you got your starting Jelly Critter killed. Do NOT levitate your Tower until you get all 4 Warg Riders. The moment you do your 2nd Hiring Slot goes bye bye so recruit all 4 Warg Riders first before you levitate your Tower. If you forgot about this quest and levitated your tower too early then you need to research Summon Jelly and summon 5 of them instead to complete the quest.

Harvest 3 Blackwood Forests while you're doing that for 9 Black Wood and then turn those 9 Black Wood into 3 Black Ashes. This is very important as you need these Black Ashes to unlock the Alembic Chamber.

Finally find a Primordial Forest nearby and land your Tower near it before immediately levitating it again to complete another Alchemy quest.

Alchemist probably have the easiest time in the game compared to other classes during this phase as they don't need to fly to Regan Gor or Uram Gor, or anywhere for that matter.

If you did everything I told you during the Misty Coast start, then...
1. Sit on your ass for 3 weeks after you build the Crystal Growth Extension to obtain 6 Charged Crystals (AA). Or if you're impatient harvest some Dwarven Windweed (AA) or a Primordial Forest for Infused Barks (AAL).
2. Craft 4 Focus Potions (AAA) with those 6 Charged Crystals (AA)
3. Craft 3 Philosophers Stones using this recipe: 1 Focus Potion (AAA), 1 Black Ash (EEEDD) and 1 Remains (D).
4. Build the Alembic Chamber
5. Build all the Tower Room extensions you want.
6. Sit on your ass for a few weeks while you accumulate a ton of Sealed Fire Golems and Omni Vials. Omni Vials are mandatory not just for Elemental Immune enemies, but for the Elemental Resistant Phantom Warriors that you need to kill to unlock the Crystal Chamber.
7. Win.

That's it, game won. You don't need additional stack size increase so Audale is purely optional and just grab the Crystal Chamber and Allfire Nodes to research Medusae, Arcane Library, and Buff Summons.

I like to build a 2nd Workshop as an Alchemist for 2 more crafting slots. 5 crafting slots is plenty and I fill out all my Alchemy Lab's extension slots with Minion.

There are a LOT glyphs in this game but in my opinion, only 2 are the best. The Slaver II Glyph and the Leader III Glyph.

The Slaver II Glyph bestows Follower onto the unit which removes their upkeep. Please note this only removes the unit upkeep and not spell upkeep. So summoned creatures do not benefit at all from this Glyph and this Glyph does not eliminate the upkeep of buff spells on the unit.

The Leader III Glyph gives +3 damage for every follower in the stack, excluding the Glyph holder himself. So using the Orc Army, if we give an enslaved Elven Ranger 3 Leader III Glyphs and everyone else 1 Slaver II Glyph each, the enslaved Elven Ranger will have +63 damage PER SHOT. And since the Elven Ranger can shoot 8 times a turn with promotions that let her ignore range and obstacle penalties, you get the point. GG you win. And you can give your Orc Shamans 2 Leader III Glyphs each as well so their damage gets buffed by +42 damage per shot. You do not need Bathe in Blood. I've beaten Undergast by my 2nd turn without Bathe in Blood the first time I did this. That's right it only takes 2 turns to wipe out any and all units including Titans in all battles with these Glyphs.

So the Artificer game plan is simple: after the Misty Coast start grab 4 Artificing Minions and mine Ore Veins like crazy until you have all the material you need to craft all the Slaver II Glyphs and Leader III Glyphs you need. And then you obtain your endgame units, put the Glyphs on them, and win.

Personally, instead of the Orc Army, I go Shaper Golems. Earth Lore has around a 25% chance of producing an Adamantinum Vein in Regan Gor and Uram Gor so if you Earth Lore every single harvestable location in just one of those locations you'll have enough Adamantinum to create a full stack of Shaper Golems with Build Golem.

Shaper Golems, with Niethalf's Blessing, have 5 Glyph slots. Slaver II Glyphs removes their colossal 10 mana per turn, 4 Leader III Glyphs boosts their damage by 84 damage per hit, and with their massive bulk and ability to reduce all damage by 90% and heal themselves to full health, it's a roflstomp.

If you're thinking this is brutal overkill, it's not. Undergast regularly kills a few of my Shaper Golems every time I fight him which is why instead of 4 Leader III Glyphs I give them only 3 and outfit the last Glyph slot with a Vampire III Glyph which bestows Defy Death onto them, reviving them after combat which lets me not give a damn whether a Shaper Golem dies in combat or not.

5 fully Glyphed out Shaper Golems are enough to beat the game so I don't bother with Audale or getting 100 Mastery. In addition you don't need the Elemental Ray Crystal Chamber Room Extension. 5 fully Glyphed out Shaper Golems can take out an entire stack of enemies that have 50% resistance against their damage so with 3 Magnetic Resonators you'll be zipping across the map in no time.

The best primary school for Artificers is obviously Earthmaster no contest. It provides both Earth Lore which is mandatory because there are not that many ore veins on the map by default and Build Golem which is how you get a full stack of Shaper Golems.

The best secondary school for Artificers is Guardian I for Holy Weapon. A lot of enemies are highly resistant or outright immune to both Physical and Elemental damage and Holy Weapon solves this problem by transforming all of your Shaper Golems' damage type to white. This is especially important in the other scenarios that have a time limit because you don't have the time to get Shaper Golems up which means you have to use Fire Golems to beat those scenarios and Fire Golems get annihilated by Elemental Immune enemies which is why Guardian I is a must.

The second best secondary school for Artificers is Nature I because Nature I allows you to create an infinite number of Ore Veins. If there is a perfect 7 hex cluster of forest tiles the Primordial Forest spell creates a Primordial Forest, a harvestable location, right in the middle of it. And as a harvestable location, Earth Lore will turn that Primordial Forest into an Ore Vein. And once you remove that Ore Vein either by mining it or casting Build Golem on it, the now empty center forest tile is a valid target for the Primordial Forest spell again letting you create an infinite amount of Ore Veins and therefore an infinite amount of Golems and crafting materials to craft Glyphs with.

The type of Ore Vein created depends on the location you are in.

• Regan Gor and Uram Gor creates Adamantinum Veins and Crystal Deposits
  
• Silverdrift Hollow creates Sky Iron, and Mountain Copper.
  
• Dark Vale creates Corrupted Adamantinum and Gold

The problem with Nature I however is that... you don't need it. You can get everything you need to max out 1 stack just from harvesting every Earth Lore-ed Ore Vein on the map so... what's the point of making more? Exactly. And that's why Guardian I is better. So why did I mention Nature I at all then? Because it removes the luck component of the Shaper Golem strategy. There is always a tiny chance you won't get enough Adamantinum Veins and for people like me removing that tiny chance is worth a secondary school slot.

Also I find it really cool that I can make an infinite number of super Shaper Golems out of literally nothing.

In addition to the Slaver II, Leader III, and Vampire III Glyphs, I'd like to also mention the Pathfinder IV Glyph, which lets your entire stack traverse any terrain, and the Lifegiver IV Glyph which heals your stack to full at the start of every turn even if they have No Regeneration so stick these Glyphs on your Hero since he's worthless in combat and call it a day.

Unlike other classes you do need to invest quite a bit in research. At the start keep Allfire to max research until you research Earth Lore. Then after achieving 25 Mastery instead of switching between Proficiency and Mana, switch between Research and Mana until you research Build Golem.

Do NOT get the 2nd Apprentice Grimoire Page. I repeat do NOT get the 2nd Apprentice Grimoire Page. For some reason build golem is always the last spell to reveal itself to me therefore if you get the 2nd Apprentice Grimoire Page, you're going to have to research some stupidly expensive spells before you can research Build Golem, delaying everything significantly so don't get it.

Harvest as much Fairy Grass as you can. They make your life a lot easier.

Load up your Tower with a stack of 4 Artificer Minions, 1 Apprentice or Hero, and 1 other unit and start heading north while Earth Lore-ing everything you see and mining every Ore Vein you come across.

When mining, create a wall with your Tower and your non-Artificer-Minion units around your 4 Artificer Minions so that if an enemy approaches, they'll attack your non-Artificer-Minion unit instead of your 4 Artificer Minions and therefore not interrupt your mining. And then next turn you can just pack everyone up and move onto the next Ore Vein.

You're mining for Heat Stones (ELL) rather than for Ore but you can never have enough Ore so just never stop mining. Wipe the map clean of all Harvestable Plants and Ore Veins including the easy areas because you need tons and tons of Mountain Copper. I mean it. Life is very hard if you only mine Sky Iron and no Mountain Copper.

Keep mining until you have everything you need to build the Adamantinum Forge and then keep mining until you have all the Slaver II Glyphs and Leader III Glyphs you need. And then make your way over to Regan Gor, Earth Lore every single harvestable thing in there, and turn all of the newly created Adamantinum Veins into Shaper Golems and you're good to go. Mine a couple of Crystal Deposits while you're at it too. Get at least 12+. You need 6 Crystalline Splinters (AAAL) for the Crystal Chamber Magnetic Resonators extension.

Be sure to visit every Bone Pile before casting Earth Lore on it. The souls you get from Bone Piles' are incredibly useful crafting materials. Especially Pure Vigorous Soul (LLL). You'll be crafting a Lifegiver IV Glyph (LLLL) using these souls. Trying to craft that with Wheat (L) requires 22 of them.

I can't emphasize enough that you need LOTS and LOTS of Heat Stones (ELL) and Gold and I mean a LOT. You can't ever have enough of these. These two crafting materials are gonna be 99% of your Leader III Glyphs' crafting materials.

Heat Stone (ELL) is the most valuable crafting material you have by far, much more valuable than Gold and Adamantinum, so fully exhaust your Gold and Adamantinum supply before utilizing the double Heat Stone (ELL) recipes. Remember you can use 5 of your weekly shipment of 6 Corrupted Adamantinum to craft 1 Adamantinum.

Craft yourself a Pathfinder IV Glyph and slap it on your hero so your Shaper Golems can traverse any terrain.

5 fully Glyphed out Shaper Golems are more than strong enough to win the game for you so Audale and 100 Mastery are not mandatory to win. So it's up to you whether you want to go the extra mile or not.

I grab 3 Expedition Extensions in my Adamantinum Forge but Mining Tools ain't bad either. It's just, 6 (L) is hard to achieve as Artificer, it's trivial to summon 4 Artificer Minions anytime you want, and most importantly, Artificer Minions have Mining Boost while your Hero and Shaper Golems do not. So I get 3 Expedition Extensions instead of Mining Tools.

4 Death Material without an Arcane component

• 4 for 2 Vampire III Glyphs (DDD) to craft the Ashen I Glyph

2 Bowman I Glyphs (EEE) and then 3 more after you build your Adamantinum Forge

• 2 for a Elementalist II Glyph
  
• 3 for Adamantinum Forge Expedition Tower Room Extensions, Wait until you finish the Adamantinum Forge to craft these to save on (E) materials.

2 Firewielder I Glyphs (EE), Flintstones (EE), Pumpkins (EE), or Blackwood (EED)

• 1 for a Elementalist II Glyph
  
• 1 for a Ashen I Glyph

1 Sky Iron (EL)

• 1 for Elementalist II Glyph

14 Corrupted Adamantinum (ADD)

• 1 for Mountain Goat III
  
• 4 for 2 Vampire III Glyphs (DDD) to craft the Ashen I Glyph
  
• 9 for 3x Expedition Extensions

2 Heat Stones (ELL)

• 1 for Mountain Goat III

1 Gold or Fairy Grass (EL)

• 1 for Mountain Goat III

12 Death materials without an Arcane component

• 12 for 6 Vampire III Glyphs (DDD)

13 Firewielder I Glyphs (EE), Flintstones (EE), Pumpkins (EE), or Blackwood (EED)

• 10 for Slaver II Glyphs
  
• 3 for Magnetic Resonator Extension for Crystal Chamber

6+ Sky Iron (EL)

• 5 for Slaver II Glyphs
  
• 1 for Adamantinum Forge
  
• 5 Sky Iron can be refined into 1 Adamantinum so get as many Sky Iron as you can.

16+ Wheat (L)

• 1 for Pathfinder IV
  
• 15 for Leader III Glyphs. Some recipes use more than 1 Wheat (L) so you probably need more than 15 for this.

6+ Crystalline Splinters (AAAL)

• 6 for the Magnetic Resonator Tower Room Extension

As many Heat Stones (ELL) and Gold as possible

Never forget that you can refine 5 Sky Iron and 5 Corrupted Adamantinum into 1 Adamantinum

27 Corrupted Adamantinum for 15 Leader III Glyphs and 6 Vampire III Glyphs (DDD) are not included because you'll be get those from the Expedition Extension.

These Glyphs are solely used as crafting materials, except for the Vampire III Glyph (DDD) which is also used as a final product.


Gives unit "Follower" (removes daily upkeep of unit)
Gives unit +3 damage for each unit in stack with the Follower trait.
These are the most important recipes in this section.

Pathfinder IV Glyph lets your entire stack traverse any and all terrain including lava.
Lifegiver IV Glyph heals your entire stack to full hp at the start of every turn even if they have No Regeneration.

The Necromancer is my 2nd least favorite class because it's awkward, clunky, frustrating, and heavily influenced by luck. If you want a class that doesn't get royally ****ed over by luck then I suggest you seek a different class.

The first problem with this class is its inability to refine crafting materials. Tier 3 Undead are very expensive to craft and certain Tower Room extensions are excessively expensive to craft and because this class cannot refine crafting materials this class must rely on getting really lucky with loot. If you don't get lucky you're ****ed. Also since the majority of your high quality loot comes from Circle Mage mobs the type of undead you can create is essentially random.

The second problem with this class is unlocking their super crafting room: the Soul Well. You need three tier 3 souls to unlock it: Pure Vigorous Soul, Pure Feral Soul, and Pure Pristine Soul. Pure Vigorous Soul is very easy to obtain but Pure Feral Soul and Pure Pristine Soul are an absolute b**** to obtain. The main strategy to unlock the Soul Well is to send wisps to both Regan Gor and Uram Gor and have them visit Bonepiles in hopes you get all three Tier 3 Souls from them. If you do then life is good. If you don't then life becomes a living hell.

The third problem with this class is that it can't traverse mountains. Ever since the latest patch the Flight spell is no longer an Apprentice spell. It's an Enchantment spell so unlike Alchemists who love grabbing Enchantment and Artificers who have Pathfinder IV Glyphs, Necromancers have literally no way of traversing mountains. Why is this significant you ask? Because from my experience Adamantinum is always on mountains and you need Adamantinum to unlock the Crystal Chamber. If you can't get your army to traverse mountains then you can't clear the Adamantinum Vein of monsters which means even if you get workers with Mountaineering you still won't be able to mine those Adamantinum Veins on the account of Demons and Fire Golems on top of them.

Lucky for you I solved all 3 problems and will be sharing my solutions with you in this guide.

In my opinion the strongest endgame Necromancer army is your starting Apprentice + 8 Pure Feral Soul Blood Golems + 1 Pure Vigorous Soul Lich with 2 Death Ray Tower Room Extensions from the Crystal Chamber and Well of Shadows, and the Rage Parasite Tower Room Extension from the Torture Room.

Blood Golems have Bathe in Blood and Defy Death built in.
Blood Golems explode upon death.
Blood Golems deal Death Damage and the 2 Death Ray Tower Room Extensions decrease all enemies' resistance to Death by 100%
Pure Feral Soul increases the Blood Golems' damage by 10
Rage Parasite increases the Blood Golems' damage by 20%
There's also the Deadly Weapons spell which increases your Blood Golems' damage by 3.

This is what your fights look like against the endgame Circle Mage mobs:

• Turn 1: Your Blood Golems fly across the map with their massive movment and ram into the enemy dealing 50 damage a hit. If any enemies die during this phase your Lich will reanimate them all as Walking Corpses with a single action. The enemy units will then retaliate on their turn and will probably kill 1-2 Blood Golems, blowing them up which deals about 50 damage to all enemies in a large area and increasing the damage of all of your other Blood Golems.
  
• Turn 2: Your Blood Golems will massacre any and all enemies near them. 100-150 damage against enemies who already lost 50-100 hp from the exploded Blood Golems is a sure kill. Every death will increase your Blood Golems' already high damage even further and then your Lich will cast Reanimation again creating a literal flood of Walking Corpses. The enemy will now attack your Walking Corpses instead of your Blood Golems, doing no damage to your Blood Golems and killing your Walking Corpses which in turn increases your Blood Golems' already high damage even further.
  
• Turn 3: Your Blood Golems should kill everyone left at this point. If not then your Lich's Reanimation will create an even bigger flood of Walking Corpses and you will see just how outmatched the endgame Circle Mage mobs are against your army.

In addition to being the best Undead unit in the game, Blood Golems are also very, very easily crafted from Corrupted Adamantinum and that is my strategy for removing luck from this class. I grab Earthmaster as my secondary school and then spam Earth Lore on every harvestable location in Orgash and Dark Vale and get all the Corrupted Adamantinum I need to craft all 8 Blood Golems from them completely independent of any Circle Mage mobs. Also since you can get Adamantinum doing this in Regan and Uram Gor problems 1 and 3 are fully solved.

Primary school is naturally Death to guarantee Death IV in the game for Wellspring of Shadows and Torture Chamber.

NEVER USE YOUR STARTING ETERNAL FLAME FOR CRAFTING OTHER THAN THE WAR ROOM TOWER ROOM EXTENSION. 3 (E) Crafting materials are ridiculously hard for you to obtain especially those without any (D) components so NEVER USE YOUR STARTING ETERNAL FLAME FOR CRAFTING OTHER THAN THE WAR ROOM TOWER ROOM EXTENSION.

You need to use Ghouls in as many fights as possible because you need a lot of Remains (D) to complete your quests and each Ghoul guarantees 1 Remains (D) after every fight. I use 2 Ghouls, my Necromancer Minion, the Orc Brute from the Watchtower, and my starting Apprentice.

You need to research Aid as soon as possible even before Summon Wisp because none of your units are capable of healing themselves after a fight and you need to do a LOT of fighting right now. Set your Allfire to mana as necessary to afford casting Aid. Summon Wisp and 10 Mastery are NOT a priority.

Tier 1 Souls and Remains (D) are fully worthless the entire game so don't be afraid to waste them all to complete your quests.

As soon as you meld with the Allfire Node summon 2 Wisps and send one to Regan Gor and the other to Uram Gor to get as many high tier souls as possible in hopes that you can complete your Soul Well quest from that. Keep your Wisps on Lava Tiles no matter how slow it is to travel on them. None of the mobs in Regan Gor and Uram Gor are capable of traversing Lava Terrain so this is how you keep your Wisps alive while scouring Bone Piles for souls. If a stack of demons is on top of a Bone Pile, place your Wisp so that there is a one hex space between it and the Bone Pile. The stack of demons will leave the Bone Pile to attack your wisp which should retreat and next turn your wisp should have enough movement to visit the now unguarded Bone Pile.

Some people like to create T3 undead units really early. Not me. The bottleneck of your T3 unit production is not souls. It's high quality crafting materials. You're going to be overflowing with tier 3 souls especially after you build your Soul Well and be very short on high quality crafting materials which is why I'm against wasting high quality crafting materials on T3 undead that aren't part of your final endgame stack especially since without the Soul Well you have 1 less crafting slot, meaning you have to waste even higher quality crafting materials to get a T3 undead early. Therefore I don't recommend you create any T3 undead at this time.

Harvest 1 Blackwood Forest. Very important.

I research Earth Lore before reaching 25 Mastery because I want to grab Apprentice II before I leave Orgash and it's unwise to grab Apprentice II before you research Earth Lore because you might end up being forced to research a ton of super expensive spells before you can research Earth Lore if you grab Apprentice II first and you need Earth Lore right NOW while you don't need Recall and Teleport until after you obtain your endgame army. So don't grab Apprentice II until Earth Lore is researched.

Grab 4 Workers from Alluvyan and start mining every Corrupted Adamantinum Vein you can find in Orgash. Earth Lore every harvestable location in Orgash. Once Orgash is completely barren ditch all but 1 of your military units, put a stack with 1 Apprentice/Hero, 1 military unit, and 4 workers in your Tower, and fly over to Dark Vale. You'll be doing the same exact thing as Artificers here which is use your Tower, 1 military unit, and 1 Apprentice/Hero to form a wall around your 4 workers while they mine a Corrupted Adamantinum vein in 1 turn.

You need 5 Living Skulls and 24 Corrupted Adamantinum/Living Skulls. So look at the number of Living Skulls you have, subtract 5, and add this number to the number of Corrupted Adamantinum you have and if this number is lower than 24 you need to mine more Corrupted Adamantinum. You should get all the Corrupted Adamantinum you need from Orgash and Dark Vale.

After you mined all the Corrupted Adamantinum you need, fly over to Uram Gor and start casting Earth Lore on harvestable locations until you generate an Adamantinum Vein. Mine it and mine a few Crystal Deposits for 4-10 Crystalline Splinters (AAAL). Then finally, harvest a Bone Pile or two for Bone Dusts (DD). You are now official done with mining and can safely ditch all 4 of your workers.

Once your Soul Well is finished crafting

• Craft a Soulstorm Generator
  
• Craft 3 Ritual Circles. 2 in your Soul Well and 1 in your Necromancer's Crypt. If you don't have enough Belongings of the Deceased (EAAD) to do this then fill the remaining empty slots with Soul Catchers.
  
• Craft a Lich using a Pure Vigorous Soul (Defy Death). Liches spend 100% of their actions casting reanimate so it's pointless to boost their damage and they die very often in auto-resolve hence why I recommend giving them Defy Death.
  
• Craft as many Pure Feral Soul (+10 damage) Blood Golems as you can
  
• Fill the rest of your slots with Greater Enraged Soul Vampire Acolytes.
  
• If you run out of Greater Enraged Souls (gain more damage the lower your health is), craft Plaguebearers using Greater Lost Souls (Bathe in Blood). Plaguebearers are your strongest ranged unit and Greater Lost Soul gives them Bathe in Blood so that if all of your Vampire Acolytes, Blood Golems, and reanimated Walking Corpses die, your Plaguebearers will be super strong.

If you're ever short of (DD) or (DDD) materials simply kill the undead mobs in Dark Vale. They drop a ton of Greater Lost Souls (DD) and Pure Lost Souls (DDD).

All souls other than the Pure Feral Soul are worthless so go ahead and use them all for crafting Focus Channels.

You're now capable of taking on all non-Circle Mage mobs with this setup but I'd say you're not strong enough to take out Circle Mage mobs that are resistant to Death damage like Hokan Ashir. So complete the Power questline now for Death Ray and Magnetic Resonators and avoid engaging the Circle Mage mobs for now even if they come after you.

Fly over to just south of Regan Gor and kill the tier 3 Trolls there for Pure Feral Souls and then replace your Vampire Acolytes with Blood Golems. You need a total of 8 Pure Feral Souls.

Once you have enough Pure Feral Souls replace all of your Vampire Acolytes with Blood Golems and then go over to Audale to get the Warrior's Hall.

If you get a Weekly Bonus that increases all of your crafting by 1 dot then build a War Room IMMEDIATELY in your Necromancer's Crypt with Adamantinum. If not you should go kill a Demon Lord to obtain their artifact to build your War Room with. If you don't want to use a Demon Lord artifact, shop around for either a (EEE) material or a (EEA) material. Without either of these or the Weekly Crafting Bonus you need to use a Demon Lord artifact.

And then that's it. Grab a ton of Allfire nodes, grab Shaper Ruins until you get Death III and IV, get 100 Mastery, and win the game. Cast Deadly Weapons on all of your units for +3 damage at the cost of 1 mana per turn. It's not like you have a use for mana after this so why not.

If you failed to get the souls you need to unlock the Soul Well from looting Regan Gor and Uram Gor, get max reputation with the correct city and cast Leech Soul on it for Pure Vigorous Souls and Pure Pristine Souls. For Pure Feral Souls you're gonna have to come up with a way to take out the Trolls south of Regan Gor somehow. This has never happened to me yet but my current plan would be to use a stack of Goblin High Muckaducks and Greater Enraged Soul Vampire Acolytes to fuel 1 or 2 Greater Lost Soul Plaguebearers' Bathe in Blood. Remember to cast Soul Cage on every T3 Troll before engaging them.

You have about a 20% chance of getting the non-Pure Vigorous Souls per cast.
Alluvyan (2x Greater Souls per cast)

• Greater Vigorous Soul
  
• Greater Pristine Soul
  
• Greater Arcane Soul

Audale

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Pristine Soul

Bastion

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Pristine Soul

Connach

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Pristine Soul

Followers of Mugwa

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Enraged Soul

Grey Dusk Vale

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Feral Soul
  
• Pure Arcane Soul
  
• Pure Greedy Soul
  
• Pure Pristine Soul

Lyraine (2x Greater Souls per cast)

• Greater Vigorous Soul
  
• Greater Pristine Soul

Orgash

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Enraged Soul

Sevenkeeps

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Pristine Soul

Silverdrift Hollow

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Greedy Soul

Uram Gor

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Lost Soul
  
• Pure Tormented Soul
  
• Pure Greedy Soul

Windholme

• Pure Vigorous Soul
  
• Pure Greedy Soul

To be frank, I don't have much motivation to play these classes because Demonologists only beef up mortals which I'm not interested in and Constellations just give minor stat boosts. So i won't be making dedicated sections for these two crafting systems.

My advice is just go the Orc Slave build I mentioned earlier and add these crafting systems on top of that. You should be fine.

Once you finished obtaining your endgame army click continue on your Power questline to spawn the Crystal quest location near you. Complete it. Then build the Crystal Chamber and all the -50% Resistance Tower Extensions you need and fill the rest of the extension room slots with Magnetic Resonators.

Afterwards fly all the way over to Audale and reach max reputation with them to unlock the Warrior's Hall which increases your stack size by 1.

Audale has 2 quests that give +40 reputation each, one in Tier 1 and one in Tier 3. Going from Tier 3 reputation (130) to Tier 4 reputation is easy (170), just complete the Tier 3 quest that gives +40 reputation. Reaching Tier 3 reputation from Tier I however is painful as ****. That one +40 reputation quest is not enough to get you from Tier I reputation to Tier 3 forcing you to park your tower near an Inn and grind enemy spawners until you reach Tier 3 reputation. This is easier said than done because Circle Mage mobs will be constantly destroying every Inn and enemy spawner in your vicinity which is why we do this first instead of grabbing Allfire Nodes because if we get most of the Allfire Nodes on the map first and then go to Audale, all the Inns and enemy spawners will most likely be destroyed by the time you get there permanently preventing you from unlocking the Warrior's Hall.

Do your absolute best to research Recall and Teleport while grinding Audale's reputation. All the Circle Mages are gonna attempt take all of your Allfire nodes simultaneously and spamming these two spells is how you're going to defend all of them. Do NOT clear even 1 Shaper Ruins until you unlocked both for research.

Once you unlock the Warrior's Hall fly around the map grabbing every Allfire Node and Shaper Ruin you can find. You are stronger than all the Circle Mage mobs now including those with Titans in their stack so getting into a full scale war with all of them shouldn't be an issue.

Get apprentices and have them build Lodges next to Landmarks like Hokan's Soulforge for the Proficiency to get to 100 mastery as quickly as possible.

Once you reach 100 mastery you should receive your final stack slot increase and you are now ready to win the game.

• Killing all 4 Circle Mages should be easy. Just remember to destroy all of their Spire Wards first.
  
• Researching 42 spells should also be really easy with your massive Allfire income.
  
• Completing your Hero quest should also be easy with your unbeatable doomstack
  
• With 100 Mastery you can get 5 Apprentices
  
• With 5 Apprentices you can build 5 lodges next to Landmarks which you should be able to trivially clear because of your Doomstack.

The only objective you probably can't complete unless you have Guardian II or Mentalist II is reaching max reputation with all the cities. But sitll, 5/6 objectives are trivially reached and you only need 3/6.

And that's it. Game over. You win.

The strategy for randomized maps are identical to the strategy for the normal map except for 1 caveat: you need to summon 4 wisps at the start and have them scout out the entire map. That's it. That's the only difference between a randomized map and a normal map. Everything else is literally the same.

My one and only advice is to zoom out to the overview map regularly and if your Wisp is in an area whose name is identical to one of the cities then scour that region with your wisp to find that city so you can complete your Tower Quest. This was probably the most difficult part of the game for me.

Alchemists probably have the easiest time in this scenario than other classes. Since you only need to win the 1 fight you can unload all your consumables in that one fight which means once you setup your Sealed Fire Golem mass production factory you've won. And since flooding the map with Fire Golems is completely independent of mastery and research you can just put all your Allfire into mana and call it a day.

Check out the Teching Up section in Alchemy part 2.

1. Have your starting stack start harvesting anything and everything nearby.

2. Set Allfire to max mana

3. Get 2 wisps and start scouting the map immediately. You are looking for Elven Healroots, Dwarven Windweeds, and Orcish Redcaps in that order.

4. Build the Alembic Chamber as quickly as possible

5. Reach 10 Mastery. Once you reach 10 Mastery you are completely done with Proficiency.

6. Research Levitate Tower. After Levitate Tower you are completely done with research.

7. Start mass producing Potions of Fire Breathing (EEE) as quickly as possible.

8. Build the Workshop and then the Troop Quarters and build an additional worktable in the Workshop a.s.a.p. Once you no longer need gold start recruiting Goblin High Muckaducks.

9. Once you get Healroot of 5 (L) materials start mass producing Dancers Potion (LLL). If there are no Elven Healroots buy a high (L) item from a nearby city. You need 11 Dancers Potion (LLL) for Tower Room Extensions and 1 for each Omni Vial you plan on making.

10. Build the Enchanted Cauldron Extension in the Alchemy Lab and use it to get all the 1 dot materials you need.

11. Once you get the Dwarven Windweed or 5 (A) materials start mass producing Focus Potions (AAA). You need 7 for each Tower Room extension and 1 for each Omni Vial you plan on making.

12. Get all 3 Aria Pool extensions in the Alembic Chamber as quickly as possible. Then build a Minion extension in the Alchemy Lab

13. Craft 0-6 Omni Vials depending on the Cursed Army you're facing.

14. Once you get your Orcish Redcaps or 5 (D) materials start mass producing Poison Coatings (DDD) immediately.

15. Start mass producing Sealed Fire Golems like crazy.

16. Relocate your Tower to as far away from the Cursed Army as possible.

17. Once time is up and the Cursed Army reaches your Tower flood the battlefield with Fire Golems and win.

Secondary Primary School has to be Guardian. I've done this scenario multiple times and Holy Weapon was absolutely invaluable each time due to Elemental Immune Cursed Armies and Lich Cursed Armies. There are a lot of different Cursed Armies but the hardest one imo was the Undead one with the 2 Liches reanimating everything.

I think 2 Fire Golems with 2 Leader III Glyphs are better than 3 Fire Golems with only 1 Leader III Glyph each.

Since you start with the Adamantinum Forge unlocked you don't need to mine any of the rarer Ore Veins. You can get all the Glyphs you need just from mining Mountain Copper which is very important because rarer Ore Veins are rare, hard to reach, and a lot of the times you don't have the time to reach them so you gotta use all of them to make Golems with instead of mining them. I try to mine at most 1 Corrupted Adamantinum Vein and save all my Sky Iron veins for Fire Golems.

So anyways, these are my instructions for you.
1. Get to 10 Mastery a.s.a.p. to get access to the 7 gold per turn Mine.

2. Set your Allfire to pure mana. Your research is gonna be literally 0 for a while.

3. Build a Troop Quarters and recruit Goblin High Muckaducks a.s.a.p. Goblin High Muckaducks are brutally awesome. They have an amazing ability called Bodyguards that spawns a free Goblin Brawler unit at the start in every battle for free.

4. Build a Study and Workshop a.s.a.p. and then an Adamantinum Forge afterwards.

5. Get 4 Wisps. 2 to scout the entire map and 2 to scout/merge with the Allfire Nodes nearby. There should be at least 2. It is very important that your Wisps scout and grab all the free stuff on the ground as that's your primary source of crafting materials because we don't have the luxury to harvest plants in this mode.

6. When your first 2 Goblin High Muckaducks pop out clear out both Allfire Nodes a.s.a.p. and then put your starter Artificer Minion on mining duty 24/7. FORGET HARVESTING PLANTS. Earth Lore every single harvestable location that your Artificer Minion can reach. Try not to mine Sky Iron Veins and focus on Mountain Copper and Gold Veins. You want 1-2 Corrupted Adamantinum Veins mined too.

7. Once all your buildings are built and all of your wisps summoned set your Allfire to pure research. The goal is both Crystalline Garden and Build Golem. You need to get Crystalline Garden before you start researching Build Golem. Once you research both you're completely done with research.

8. Once you get 2 more Goblin High Muckaducks clear the area of all enemies and enemy spawners so your Artificer Minion can mine nonstop even after your army leaves.

9. As soon as Crystalline Garden is finished building build a Crystal Growth a.s.a.p. You won't be able to craft any of your Slaver II or Leader III Glyphs without them Charged Crystals.

10. Complete the Artificer Minion quest and summon a 2nd one to start mining. You really want Niethalf's Blessing which requires you to mine 10 Ore Veins.

11. Relocate your Tower to an area with more Ore Veins and have your Goblin High Muckaduck army take out anything and everything in that area so your Artificer Minions can work in peace.

12. Get 3 additional work tables.

13. Start turning all your 1 E materials into Fire Wielder I Glyphs.

14. Once you research Build Golem start casting it immediately. Timing is really, really tight now. You might be forced to choose between getting Niethalf's Blessing on two Fire Golems or none of them in exchange for a 3rd Fire Golem. My opinion is the 2 Fire Golems with Niethalf's Blessing is better.

15. While you cast your first Build Golem, put your Allfire somewhere in between Mana and Proficiency. You NEED 25 Mastery before the end for the extra stack size. I set it so that I can get the most Proficiency per turn without delaying my Build Golem even by 1 turn.

16. Put your Glyph Smithy to work 24/7 making Slaver II Glyphs and Leader III Glyphs. All your Sky Iron should be from refining Mountain Copper. If you couldn't mine any Corrupted Adamantinum then craft them using 4 Mountain Copper. Get enough Slaver II Glyphs so that your entire stack has Follower. If none of your starting Follower units survived then you'll need 5 Slaver II Glyphs.

17. Once you have 2-3 Fire Golems fully Glyphed out time should be up and the Cursed Army should attack you and you should win.

The Alchemist strategy for this scenario is, like every other Alchemist strategy, get your Sealed Fire Golem mass production factory up a.s.a.p.

Orc is the best start for Alchemists simply because it has a lot of Blackwood Forests. 1 Blackwood Forest harvested by your Alchemy minion who has Gathering Boost yields 3 Black Wood. 3 Black Wood + 1 Potion of Fire Breathing (EEE) = 1 Sealed Fire Golem. So essentially every Blackwood Forest you find is a free Sealed Fire Golem and that's why this start is the best.

I immediately put Allfire to Mana right at the start and built the Alembic Chamber a.s.a.p. Then I put Allfire to Proficiency until 25 Mastery.

I started mass producing Potions of Fire Breathing (EEE) immediately and then used 3 of them to build 3 Additional Worktables in the Alchemy Lab and Workshop for a total of 5 crafting slots. I chose Additional Worktable over Minion because I needed an increase in production speed NOW and I have 0 Focus Potions. With all 5 crafting slots your Potent Water income becomes the bottleneck of your Sealed Fire Golem mass production so additional worktables are good enough.

Random nearby loot gave me enough (L) materials for my first batch of Dancers Potion (LLL) and harvesting Primordial Forests for Infused Barks (AAL) gave me enough (A) materials for my first batch of Focus Potions. Be aware that you cannot use 3 Infused Barks (AAL) to create Focus Potions.

And then once I got my Dancers Potion (LLL) and Focus Potion (AAA) mass production going I built 3 Aria Pools in my Alembic Chamber and started mass producing 6 Sealed Fire Golems a week by utilizing mostly Blackwood and then rushed my Tower to my enemy Circle Mage's Tower (Yria) and killed her with 11 Sealed Fire Golems.

Her Titan armies were dealt with by using 4 Sealed Fire Golems in each fight.

So the only issue that remains is surviving until you get your Aria pools up. I got lucky and Yria did not fight me until after turn 30. And that's why this strategy is a WIP.

I'm currently workshopping grabbing Occultism I for Demonic Weapons and making an effort to summon 5 Jelly Beasts with Enchantment I to get Pack Tactics on all my units for a total of +18 damage for each unit and have them somehow keep me alive until I get my Sealed Fire Golem mass production factory online and use the Blackwood near me to help me survive the first Titan wave at around turn 45. Once I confirm this lets me win against any and all Circle Mages I'll finish this section.