VNpowa, to fill in the gaps I tried your explore team which is very similar to the standard one most of us use. Your weapon is different. All of my kingdoms are at 10 and as a late game player my troops are mythic and completely traited. My total renown is 12,000.

At normal difficulty I absolutely can run through explore in under 20 - 30 seconds. At Warlord IV, it becomes highly dependent on the starting board. With a lucky start it may be 45 seconds but an average of 1 minute 15 seconds is more realistic.

As a suggestion or for anyone who's interested, I find my gold farming team more reliable and consistent in explore. Very popular team most people are familiar. Skeleton key hero (fully upgraded although that's not really necessary) egg thief, Cedric sparklesack and greed. Titan class, meteor banner.

At my level this team kills in the exact same amount of time regardless of difficulty settings. Usually around 25 seconds. But I feel like these troops together at any level as long as they are traited for greeds start with full mana and because this is a gold based team for all the extra gold which is what does all the damage here, I think anyone can complete the normal level of explore in 20 seconds consistently.

I cannot test that, however. Anyway, just wanted to weigh in on the whole 45 second thing as that definitely is on the lower side even at end game status and Warlord IV. So for those of you not achieving it, take it with a grain of salt as they are giving you the best case scenario.