Campaign or Random Map?

If you've not played before start off playing the original Sorcerer King campaign. You can do this in rivals too - it's easier and more fun than the Rivals campaign map.

If you've played the campaign map and you're bored with it, you can move on to playing random maps. But if you soon find you're on a small island at the start, or have no good city sites or iron mines and wild horses within a reasonable distance, quit and start a new random map.


Choosing Your Lord

If you just want to get started fast just choose Commander and go without customising and skip to the next section of this guide. You can win with this configuration fine.

But if you want to take the time to choose a lord and customise them you can get some extra advantages.

The two best lords are without a doubt the Commander (this is the default choice if you don't change it) and the Tinkerer. All the other lords are inferior by comparison (short story - snipers are almost useless due to low initiative and having no area effect shot making the Warden's main special units and garrisons useless ; priestess and wizard just have nothing much good).

Here are the pros and cons of the Commander and the Tinkerer.

The Commander has the advantages of being able to recruit Knights, the heaviest armoured cavalry in the game - and doesn't even need to build any building to be able to recruit them from a city.

He can also later on get all kinds of buildings that increase the defence and attack and initiative of units recruited in a city. Most of these are of limited use because by the time you've built them you've recruited and levelled a fair number of knights - but the Training building is very useful because it gives garrison units experience every turn, so they level without having to fight battles. And the others can be useful for the odd late game unit.

The Commander also gets some awsome Sovereign skills that apply to all units (e.g rush - i.e two moves per turn for all units).

The only downsides to being the Commander are 1) it's almost too easy so can get dull; and 2) He can't get as good items or as many crafting materials to make as many weapons, armour, jewellery etc as the Tinkerer.

The Tinkerer doesn't get any of this - but he does get all kinds of skills that let you get better loot from battles and clearing locations. And skills that let you get chests full of extra crafting materials for making armour ,weapons etc from mines. Plus other skills that work along with these - ones that mean every time you open a chest you get 2 Sovereign Skill points and 2 Lore points towards unlocking new Sovereign Skills and spells.

Best of all his top skills unlock recipes to craft Legendary Weapons, Legendary Jewellery and Legendary Armour for your heroes which are better than any other gear you can get in the game (only downside - all require radiant diamonds - though there is a mini-mod in the Sorcerer King website forums that can help with that)

Customising starting units

If you just want starting units that are best in combat , Varda and Varda's brigade (default for Commander) are the best at that , BUT there are good reasons for taking Peregan The Ranger, with Ben the bear and Bill the spider instead. The main one is that Peregan gets a hero skill 'Hawkmaster' at level 2 which gives you a hawk that can fly about the entire map, over seas and mountains, at 6 move per turn, opening chests and going to any inns , libraries, battlefields or temples marked 'weak' strength. This is a great way to get extra spell research, crafting recipes, crafting ingredients and units throughout most of the game. Peregan can also become pretty good at higher levels.

And if you watch your sovereign skill carefully, save the game often - and especially the turn before you're going to choose 'Hero' as your next sovereign skill to unlock, you can reload till you get the hero you want (best ones are Drogon The Dwarf, Varda The Slayer, Tandis The Warrior and The Mage (i forget his name - but there's only one mage so you'll know him if you see him)

Customising Spells

You only get to choose how many books of each kind of spell you'll get, not specific spells. One book of Summoning spells is plenty as there are very few summoning spells you need. Take at least one book of Chaos (because the Curse Spell is so good) but not more than that (because a lot of chaos spells are kind of useless). Take at least two books of Enchanting (i'd recommend three) as these allow you to cast buffs on units on the campaign map, including heroes, or on cities (buffing all units recruited in them, or giving them extra food so they grow faster, extra production, or bonus damage to all units in their zone of control in battles). Take at least two books of Wrath - as these get you various direct damage spells for use in battles , some of which are area effect, or reduce enemies initiative as well as damaging them, plus some for damaging entire enemy armies on the campaign map.

Starting question choices

If you're the commander answering that you trained as many troops as you could is likely the best option.

If you're the tinkerer, say you crafted an artifact that let the wearer see further. This will give you one scout's ring and the recipe to make more if you want to.

In the first turn you want to attack any roving bandit group or bandit lair that isn't too tough right away. (SAVE THE GAME FIRST THOUGH)

If you took the Tinkerer also equip your starting hero with the Scout's Ring.

The first spells you research should be any of Summon Bear, Heal, Ice Bolt, or Cloud Walk.

(This last one - Cloud Walk - is very important as it allows you to teleport any army to anywhere in your territory instantly for 10 mana - meaning you can defend all your cities with just one army. But until you have more than one city just getting some Return Home scrolls - which you have the recipe for at the start - will do. You don't have all the ingredients at the start, but can find them from chests or as loot from battles).

Other good spells include Haste, Curse, Fireball, Lightning bolt, Tireless March and Bountiful Harvest (and if you have Peregan as a hero , Marksman's boon).

Obviously build the Shard next to your city into a shard shrine as your city's first building project.

As your second building project for your city build soldiers. Whether after that you build more soldiers or a Pioneer depends on whether you've been lucky and got any units from inns or other buildings.

If you are down to 1 manpower left you should always build a pioneer ready to found a new city - and then get a barracks built in your starting city to get more manpower

If you have Peregan the ranger, as soon as he levels up, choose Hawkmaster as his first skill. Then select the hawk, and move it off to pick up chests, scout and go to any Inns, Temples , Battlefields or Libraries that show up as "weak" when you left click on them.

Everything is left click to select/view and right click to move to / attack. Be careful if you have selected one unit to view or equip that you click again to deselect it, then select the whole army, before moving/ attacking with an army - otherwise it'll move/attack with only that one unit.

When you get to choose new Sovereign Skills choose the ones that let you have larger armies/ more units in an army - these will also lead to unlocking a new hero. Save the game the turn before you are about to be able to unlock a new hero in case you get one you don't want, so you can reload till you get one you do want.

How To Fight Your First Battles

If you have Peregan as your starting hero then you want to get Bill the Spider to use his Web ability to tie down the toughest enemy unit.

If you have Varda and Varda's brigade you're relying at the start on skills like cleave (can hit more than one enemy at a time without them counter-attacking) and shield bash.

Either way in melee you want ideally to have more than one of your units next to one of the enemy's units whenever attacking.

If you have the Tinkerer as your lord you can summon the Vorpal Sword and Vorpal Spear as your two spells in battle. Place them next to enemies (though not the webbed one at first) and use their special abilities - cleave and impale. When you get to fire with Peregan use his area effect 'rain of arrows' ability on the same units the sword and spear attacked. Finish them off with Ben the bear (who has maul) and, if necessary, the weaker Bill the spider too.

For tough enemies don't fight them in close combat with anything but the summoned sword and spear until they are on low hits from Peregan shooting them and the spear and sword fighting them. Not making normal attacks with sword and spear can mean they don't take counterattack damage so can tie down an enemy longer.

Crafting your first items

Minor healing potions will likely be the first thing you can craft and you'll need them. You can use them in battle or on the campaign map.

Make studded leather helms for any units or heroes you can - starting with Ben the bear or Varda's brigade. Hunter's short swords are the best early game swords (useable by level 1 units). Next are Assassin's blades for level 3 and up

If you have Peregan, make a Hunter's bow for him as soon as you can.

Chain boots or coifs or shirts for melee units help. Don't bother with leather gloves or leather tunics or boots, nor chain gauntlets - not worth if for the ingredients they use.

You can also try going to any building (inn, village, library etc) that says 'Weak' or 'Medium' on it - but save the game before you do. They often get you special rewards like additional units.

Don't go to any location marked anything but 'Weak' or 'Medium' early on.

Tip on Clearing Lairs to Get More Good Recipes

Once you kill all the bandits or whatever defending a lair, save the game before you move onto it to clear it. If you get a recipe from it look at what it is. If it's useful to you, keep it. If not reload till you get a recipe that is useful. Useful recipes early on include chain coif, chain boots, chain shirt, hunter's short sword, assassin's blade, minor mana potion.

Vital recipes that you'll need in the mid to late game are Amulet of Sorcery (20 spell resist - NOT amulet of warding which is only 3 spell resist), Ring of Extreme Haste (5 initiative), Ring of Life (required to make Ring of Extreme Haste), Refreshing Potion (lets an army move another time that turn), Drake Hide Cloak (fire resist to fight the Fire Demon lieutenant), and Cloak of Winter/Wolfhide cloak ( i forget exact names - but cold resist to fight the Sorcerer King's Ice Demon lieutenant - though Drogon The Dwarf hero can get a skill called 'Beardsmith' that gives him and the army he's in 50% cold resistance)

Other useful recipes include most shield recipes - especially Shield of the Sentinel and Impenetrable Tower Shield (both give big bonuses to Defence and Dodge), Band of the Vanguard (+1 Moves) , Boots of the Wayfarer (+2 Moves) , Cleric's ring (extra heal spell in battle) ,Cloak of the Night (6 spell resist, 15 dodge skill), Ring of Mastery (boosts the power of a spell in battle when you have the unit or hero wearing it selected when you cast a spell in battle - especially useful for the mage hero), Ring of Nullification (arcane damage resistance and 10 magic resistance)

If you have Peregan the Ranger then Guiding Longbow is very nice to have - and only requires level 4 for him to be able to equip it.

Nicest higher level swords are probably Serrated Short Sword (and if you don't have the tinkerer for Legendary Swords then maybe Heartseeker).

Nice axes for Drogon include Fiery Axe at low levels, then the Dwarven Axe.

Don't always make items just because you can. Look at the ingredients needed and how good they are, and what else you could make with those ingredients to see if it's worth it

Enchanting

You can also enchant any items you craft or get as loot to make them more powerful - but this uses up crafting ingredients which may mean you can craft less other items in future. So think before using any rare ingredients for enchanting.

Once you have the recipes for some chain armour though, you could enchant hunters' short swords or Assassins' blades with some wolf pelts to add extra Attack

What to Build With Pioneers - outposts or cities? And Where?

The best option, if you can get it, is to build a city where it has a shard right next to it. Failing that a shard with iron or horses within 4 tiles from it, with the outpost built so it covers both (outposts have a territory going 2 tiles in every direction from where they're built).

City sites should ideally have at least two food and three or more hammers on them. Forest nearby is good - forest tiles can give 5 production each as the city grows. You want to get at least three cities and a few shards turned into shard shrines , either by outposts or by having cities next to shards. You also want to get control of iron mines and horses as soon as you can - because the core of your army needs to become Riders and/or Knights. Don't recruit archers or pikemen - manpower costs are too high and initiative too low.

Don't upgrade outposts - manpower cost is too high

Once you've unlocked your second hero and have any army with at least 3 or 4 riders and/or knights in it, and you have the Cloud Walk spell, and enough shards or cities producing mana, you can start to think about destroying any strongholds/cities the Sorcerer King has built, go further from your starting cities to expand your number of cities and outposts, and even think about killing the Sorcerer King's lieutenants (avoid these like the plague early on if you possibly can).

Tip On Building New Cities and Outposts further out

Remember that with the Cloud Walk spell you can teleport any unit to anywhere in your territory. That means that once you have an outpost or city further out you can just teleport new Pioneers to there to make it faster for them to get out to other sites you want to settle or build outposts on.

If you have more than one pioneer it can help to rename the one you want to teleport to make sure you teleport the right one.

Tips on mana

Remember that cities that aren't building anything else can be set to produce mana equal to the level of the city every turn. Also that if you are short of mana you can craft minor mana potions (ten mana produced by each), or click on the coloured globe to change the balance of how your magic is used between producing mana, Sovereign Skill points and Lore (spell research) points.

Auto-calcing battles

Never auto-calc a battle unless the predicted result is 'Overwhelming Victory'. If it's that then you can safely autocalc and know you'll not lose any units and no heroes will die. If it's only 'Victory' then if you autocalc you may well lose veteran units or heroes, which could be a disaster. If it's 'Uncertain' you will lose half your army if you win at all. Playing out these battles, by using the right tactics you can win easily enough.

Tips on cities - and manpower

Cities with a Garden can Produce Food - which increases how fast they grow (gain levels) - and each time they level if they have a forest tile they haven't expanded onto yet that's 5 more Production. A garden also allows you to build a Granary - and a Granary lets you build a Library - which unlocks common recipes. So if you're having trouble e.g getting the Hunters Short Sword, Assassins blade, or Chain Coif, boots or shirt recipes, getting libraries built in cities can help.

Also always be planning ahead on expanding your manpower - you will always need more manpower till very late in the game - and more cities with more barracks and other manpower buildings can help with that.

Small garrisons

It can be worth leaving a small garrison in your cities of troops to defend them - but a big garrison is not worth it. Better making that a moving field army that can cloud walk around. Between one and three swordsmen /dwarves/ sentinels and units replaced by riders in your field army (e.g Ben the bear) can form these garrisons. These are just to stop very weak SK or marauding bandits etc over-running cities. If stronger armies come near your heroes' army or your patrol armies (see below) need to Cloud Walk back and deal with them.

Getting allies and allied heroes

Even from quite early in the game you can get quests from the other factions in the game / rivals , just by talking to them. By completing these quests you can get them to be more friendly to you until they ally to you and send one of their heroes to your capital - who will become one of your heroes. You can also after that talk to them to get things like extra crafting ingredients from them.

Sorcerer King Garrisons

Don't bother with trying to destroy Sorcerer King garrisons unless your army is strong enough first and you've saved the game first - or unless they're blocking the only route between two of your cities and you don't have Cloud Walk. If SK garrisons are inside the Zone of Control of a city or outpost your defences will very slowly kill them anyway.

Making patrol armies

If you have a fair number of cities now and don't want to have to keep teleporting your main army with your heroes back to fight relatively weak marauding bandits / SK armies etc, recruit some more Riders and/or knights - plus maybe a Paladin too (Paladins cost 2 manpower, but unlike archers and spearmen can be worth it). To make sure you don't end up teleporting your main army when you're meaning to TP your second/patrol army , you can rename one of the riders or the Paladin in it so you know you're teleporting the right group.

This allows you to keep exploring and expanding with one army while you can defend against incursions with the other. Of course if a really strong SK or marauding army turns up you may still have to TP your heroes back to fight it, but it won't be as often - and if it is you can make the weaker 2nd army the exploring one for a while.

Defeating the Sorcerer King's Lieutenants

You need to kill the Lieutenants eventually to stop them destroying shards and your cities - and in order to get the keys that will let you enter the Sorcerer King's palace at the end of the game to kill him.

To defeat the Fire Demon Lieutenant you will need Drake Hide cloaks, or other armour enchanted with drake hides for fire resistance. You also need the Curse and Haste and Ice Bolt spells. Ideally you want some Rings of Extreme Haste enchanted with Cedar Oil to give 6 or more extra initiative to your best heroes and highest level riders or knights, plus some Amulets of Sorcery for spell resist.

For the Ice Demon ditto, but Cold Resist gear instead (e.g Shield of Summer, Drogon The Dwarf's Beardsmith skill , Arctic Wolf pelt cloaks etc)

There's also one quest you can get from talking to the Pariden faction that can get you the recipes of Boots of Ice and Boots of Fire, which give resistance against fire and ice.

Even with all these advantages the lieutenants are tough to beat so always save the game before fighting them - and you may need to reload and refight several times tell you get the combination of luck and making the right decisions to beat one of them.

Even before that you may need all of this geat except fire / cold resist to fight any Harbingers the SK has sent.

Don't Build outposts right up to the Sorcerer King's Palace

You want to avoid building outposts too close to the Sorcerer King's palace, as these will result in roads going right from where his armies spawn and form up to your cities. Instead you want to scout with the hawk, scouts and your heroes' army to find the routes SK armies can come to your cities' by. Then have scouts or the hawk with scouts' rings watching those routes, Once a tough army gets too close, your stronger or strongest armies Cloud Walk to the city under threat and kill the enemy.

Finishing Off the Sorcerer King

Your heroes' army can however march right towards to the SK's palace once they're strong enough. Then they can kill SK armies in the darklands and get lots of levels and loot. Once you've got a strong enough army and high enough level heroes, with good enough equipment, you can try storming the Sorcerer King's palace to finish the game.

Also forgot to mention extra tips for using Peregan's hawk.To guarantee the hawk doesn't get caught bye nemies there are two methods. To be ultra-safe you can make sure you end its turn on sea or mountains and click 'pass' on its remaining move points. But since enemies rarely attack it, it has "escape" as a skill, and even if killed, comes back, this isn't that necessary.

And to use the hawk to get new heroes from statues, save the game before moving it to a statue. If you've found any Summon Wolf tokens as loot, you can use one on the map before going to the statue and wherever else it sends you next to fight the Guardians to free the hero. If you have Summon Bear you can use that in battle and it does good damage and has Maul, even if it has almost no Defence. If you've found a Dark Candle even better once you're in the battle you can summon a Fire Elemental.Once you've freed the hero select him separately from the hawk, move him one tile, then select him again, and craft a Return Home scroll or use the Cloud Walk spell to send him to join one of your existing armies.

There are even some quests to get favour from other factions that can be done with just the hawk and no fighting if you ask the right questions and give the right answers (e.g the 'Grisly Politics' one for the Imperium if you allow Grilok to live and just take his ring).

If the hawk ends up somewhere far from where you want it to scout, and you want to get it quickly to some other unscouted part of the map to scout there instead, you can use Cloud Walk to teleport it to anywhere in your territory, the same as any other unit (assuming you have the 10 mana to spare - don't let your mana get too low - below 50 and you may not have enough for battles and emergency Cloud Walks.)

Tactics in battles

Always try and move units and heroes so that you can make attacks where more than one of your units is next to the enemy unit you're attacking - with normal (i.e not special skill button) attacks this seems to increase the damage you do with the attack a lot.

For the same reason you generally want to end each of your units or heroes moves where they won't be next to too many enemy units - because if they are those enemy units can attack them with a big bonus to attack and damage.

You want to kill enemy units with the highest initiative and the most dangerous special abilities first (e.g darklings while they don't do much damage can swap places with one of your support units like Peregan, a mage, archers or a cleric and put them next to lots of enemy melee units, so kill them first ; Harbingers have a special ability that can make all your units afraid and lose their turn unless they save on Spell Resist - and have insane ranged damage attacks too ; shadow wargs have an ability that can boost the initiative of their whole army ; wolves and dire wolves have a howl ability that can boost the Attack of their whole army - so kill any of these first if possible).

Peregan's 'Rain of Arrows' skill is useful for taking out e,g large numbers of darklings even before he has a really good bow. Archers much less useful as their initiative is just too low - though very late game if you have Enchanted Rings of Extreme Haste to spare and he has his skills that boost the initiative and accuracy of archers in his army, one or two archer units with Guiding Longbows in his army along with riders/knights and other heroes - plus a paladin - can become viable.

Generally you want to use special attacks first wherever possible, as these usually hit more than one enemy unit, and because the enemy don;t get counter-attacks against most special attacks - cleaves with sword armed units - and making sure three units get hit by the cleave.

Shield Bash is generally less useful as it may knock units back to where your other units can't move to attack them that turn, but can be useful where fighting a very tough enemy whose counter-attacks would wipe your units out otherwise.

Spearmen's Impale , Slay Beast and Slay Mounted are great especially against animals or mounted units. But since spearmen cost 2 manpower it's not usually worth recruiting them - you may get some from inns, villages, or Imperial Guards from an alliance with the Imperium if you ask them if they can provide you with any troops, Imperial guards are even better than normal spearmen, though unfortunately there are pretty much no spears you can craft or get as loot in the game, You can get a Vorpal Spear left over from summoning one in battle you can equip them with, but it is two handed, so means they can't equip a shield.

Mounted troops have all kinds of great attacks. Mounted charge allows them to charge through up to three enemy units in a line (plus ridiculously through any obstacles in the same line, and any friendly units without doing any damage to them). Riders' 'True Strike' ability is especially useful against enemies with high Dodge skill like Shadow wargs, Dire Wolves or Harbingers. The 'Flank' ability that Riders and Knights get is good against enemies with a high Defence rating.

And remember both Riders and Knights have Rush - so can use it to move a second time before attacking.

If you're faced with a big army blocking your riders' or knights way through to get at Harbingers before they can Fear your whole army, a fireball spell or flamewave or fireball scroll can clear the way. Or if you have enough mounted troops you can use the first few to charge through several units to clear a route for the others, then use Rush and then True Strike with the others. A curse spell on any very high Defence enemies can help a lot.

Probably the easiest tactic is to get Drogon the Dwarf the Rampage skill and those leading to it - plus Cold Snap, put a couple of Rings of Extreme Haste and an Amulet of Sorcery on him (or whatever spell resist gear you've got as loot). Enchant the Haste rings with more cedar oil for extra initiative - and make your first spell casting Haste on him.

If you choose enemies you can kill in a single blow for at least some of the targets of his first cleave, and a dwarven fury when you're in the middle of the enemy, you can slaughter most of the enemy army before they get to do anything much as soon as he gets initiative (and with the rings and haste he may get the initiative to act a lot).

Of course you'll also need a Dwarven Axe or Fiery Axe to do enough damage - plus maybe some other item that adds cold or fire damage - but he can also get skills later that add tonnes of cold damage.

Keplen the mage gets one skill that lets him do damage to all enemy units in battle - and the damage increases for each shard you control, plus you can boost it by 25% for each Ring of Mastery you get or craft and give him. But it costs 10 mana each time you cost it, so you can't really use it much until you control a lot of shards and/or a lot of lvl 5 plus cities producing magic.

He does get a skill that lets him add so much Defence per shard you control to a friendly unit or hero though.

Tandis The Warrior can get a skill at pretty low level that lets him use it in battle to add 15 dodge to all your units - and that can be pretty helpful. As can his 'Sweep' (attack all adjacent enemies) and Smite skills (Sentinels can be useful early on as they get Smite and Cleave).

Generally the skills that get a hero a bonus per shard you control are very powerful, whether to hit points, attack , damage , initiative whatever.

Peregan the ranger is the one exception - he gets none - and you want to avoid taking his 'Ranged Captain' skill until you've got pretty much all the rest, as it's a disadvantage in some ways (it ends up making his first attack of a battle just an ordinary shot on a random enemy unit - though any other archer units in his army will get to make similar attacks at the same time - and these attacks come before any unit gets to make any other attack or move in the battle)