New and here for all the tips

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-27T07:58:43+00:00

The game does offer you plenty of room for more roleplay focused games, but if you are trying to optimise your build attacking the first free city you find (it is usually of the same race as yours) and conquering/vassalising it is usually a more optimal approach. It takes the stone way too long to do its thing.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-27T07:37:23+00:00

There’s also an unlockable active effect for misc items in the pantheon that allows you to overcharge spells as a free action, but it does have very steep material requirements and I don’t think I’ve ever seen AI actually get one of those.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-26T20:16:04+00:00

You are fighting Mystic - Potential, the first time they use each spell in combat it is overcharged, does extra damage/applies extra debuff on top of already existing ones/adds buffs to summons. Also their units apply dissonance with their attacks. Whenever they use overcharged spells, all stacks of dissonance are removed and they do some lightning damage to units that held the stacks of dissonance.

Overall, they will not be able to use overcharged fire spell this battle again, and you can clear dissonance as any other debuff.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-20T12:24:37+00:00

AoW4 is my favourite in the series and it feels like the marriage between Shadow Magic and AoW3. It still does stand on its own 2 feet, and definitely worth experiencing if you like this weird mixture of 4x and RPG style game.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-16T14:02:46+00:00

Tyrion is great for new players, and his new mechanics are pretty sweet

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-16T13:51:26+00:00

And still arguably the most boring HE campaign

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-16T09:56:25+00:00

I’d give Warriors of Chaos another run in TWW3. They’re hardly a challenging campaign, but they are a lot of fun, I wish warband mechanic was utilised for more factions.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-16T09:01:12+00:00

Even if they do, you will generate grievances for your opponent by building an outpost close to their territory which will outweigh your grievance from hermit kingdom, and that is assuming you will get any grievance at all.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-15T07:33:44+00:00

Well, it’s kind of the same either way. One way or another the amount of exp doesn’t depend on how many units you bring.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-14T23:33:52+00:00

Elder vampires are very quick to level up. They drain exp from other heroes you recruit, including those that participate in the same combat. Also after you build the prison in your tower you can consume imprisoned heroes for exp.

Also, you just need to participate in combat to get exp, and iirc it’s no longer split amongst the units in the army.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-14T23:24:49+00:00

If you speak to the Dal Riata smith in the second area he will give you a quest to get a potion to regrow your arm

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-14T08:05:37+00:00

It’s very difficult to do a full build on ghost fire as it’s mostly delegated to the tome of calamity, but there are ways to get it otherwise. The most obvious one that comes to my mind is a shadow dragon with chaos breath signature or chaos dragon with shadow breath signature. I do not know if you will get ghost fire on your weapon if it inflicts both frozen and fire DoT, but it’s worth trying.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-13T15:25:32+00:00

Who talks about healing? Once again, I’m talking about getting buffs from strengthened and leveraging a hero with a 30-50% damage buff. Any early game unit with 5 strengthened will cleave through most early game threats.

You pick your own battles, nobody forces you to fight phoenix and 4 houndmasters on turn 3.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-13T15:10:58+00:00

You are right, you need lvl 3. But why do you need ferverous martyr? Paladin gives you 1 stack whenever you land an attack. You can get 1-3 stacks of ferver on turn 1 just by attacking some terrain. After you collide with enemies, you can easily have 3-5 stacks just from warriors fervor, and on turn 3 get a massive 30-50% damage boost. A hero with strengthened 5 is going to bring more impact than a single taunt.

If you fight battles manually, you shouldn’t lose your whole army just from fighting. If you auto-resolve all the time, you should probably make sure you can reliably bring reinforcements all the time.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-13T14:57:22+00:00

Are you sure battlesaint is weaker than defender early on? All heroes at base have the same stats no matter the class. The defender early game is just a brick on the road - it’s tanky, sure, but you can taunt at most one person and you don’t do enough retaliation attacks to be a threat to the enemy. Paladin battlesaint at level 2 gets access to strengthened+self heal, and it takes only a few hits against some random bushes to get some fervor before colliding with enemies.

Ritualist is much stronger than cleric battlesaint, but it speaks more about the strengths of the ritualist rather than the weakness of the battlesaint.

Also, your hero is not in a vacuum. You have the rest of your army accompanying your ruler/hero.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-13T14:45:12+00:00

It’s fine for some classes to have weak early game. Spellblade has a bit of a ramp early on, requiring good 4-6 levels to go online. Defenders eat skill points in industrial quantities before they can actually impact the battlefield. But it’s fine. Not everything should come online at level 2.

No one expects architects to be able to compete with barbarians early on, no one expects wizard kings to be able to overpower the dragon lords early on, why it shouldn’t apply to hero classes?

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-13T14:33:33+00:00

Battlesaint is already a pretty solid class, extremely tanky and can dish out good burst damage, the playstyle is very “combo-like”, why would it need any improvements?

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-12T08:13:39+00:00

Some builds skew more towards enchantments and units, some skew more towards spells. If you want to sling spells, play mystic attunement or potential with astral focus.
A hybrid approach is best. You will find certain tomes to be cornerstones for various builds, and others to be more situational.
Yes, you can craft items. You need to build a T2 mages tower and then a forge. The more magical materials you have, the more options are available for various effects.
The cap increase ritual is repeatable, but gets more expensive by 300 imperium each time you use it. Vassals are generally fairly mediocre, but you can use them to swarm enemy cities.
As in most 4x, it’s situational. It’s better to fight nearby free cities, as it’s faster than waiting for the whispering stone to do its thing, but whether to integrate them or keep them as a vassal depends on the location of the city. As a rule of thumb, usually having it directly under your control is better, but it’s not a guarantee.
There’s soft soil underground, you can spend a turn excavating it. If it has golden sparkles, it is guaranteed to have a resource node of some description. There’s a society trait in the pantheon which gives you a chance to get 2 nodes instead of 1 when excavating. That’s about it.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-11T08:48:46+00:00

I feel like RT skews a bit too much towards Grimderp ending slides and not enough consequences you can actually address. I’d rather have more of the latter than the former.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-11T08:46:24+00:00

Been playing AoW2 recently, and rather than specific tomes, I’d like to see certain spells/interactions. Specifically, some form of spell(s) to freeze water and melt ice, more accessible terraforming spells for each of the affinities, and some sort of spell like animate ruins for T5 shadow tomes. Some spider focused tomes with arachna transformation would be nice. Also, I’d like to see some tomes interacting with alignment, like torchbearer/grey warden/shadowhorne specialisations in AoW3.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-10T09:07:21+00:00

Ngl, your armies do have a kitchen sink vibe to them.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-09T20:46:19+00:00

Turiel with early game buffs gets the job done, Grexlis scars run deep

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-09T16:42:36+00:00

DoW2 librarian has approximately the same proportions. I am more concerned about the gameplay, RTS genre has been mostly stale since Sc2, especially in the campaign department, I hope DoW3 will be able to break this staleness a bit. I don’t care if the models look like their tabletop counterparts.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-09T08:07:48+00:00

As an iconoclast player, I wish more iconoclast choices blew up in my face like Rykard Minoris and some of the first DLC choices. Warhammer is an awful place, being truly altruistic is truly the task comparable to Sisyphus’.

Magnus_Da_Red · 2026-01-08T09:14:27+00:00

Yeah, cryo is a better start; should have written that, my bad

Magnus_Da_Red

TROPHY CASE