TheReincarnation - User contributions [en]

Indulgence of God

2009-06-26T07:41:54Z

Xhlonewolfhx: New page: {{spellnav}} The gods in their mercy will cover a kingdom that has their favor, removing all enchantments that might do harm upon the kingdom. {| cellspacing="0" |Magic Spe...

{{spellnav}}
 
The gods in their mercy will cover a kingdom that has their favor, removing all enchantments that might do harm upon the kingdom. 
 
{| cellspacing="0"
|Magic Specialty:
|{{plain}}
|-
|Rank:||[[:Category:Ultimate Spells|Ultimate]]
|-
|Type:||[[Enchantment]] [[:Category:SelfOnly|SelfOnly]]
|-
|Cast Turn:||0
|-
|Cast M.P.:||0
|-
|Research Cost:|| 0
|-
|Upkeep:||None
|-
|Related Unit:||None
|}
==Note==
* New God Spell in Beta Server.
* Removes all harmful enchantments and [[Epidemics]].
* Cast by favor at a slightly higher rate than [[Serenity]] was previously cast by disfavor (offsets the greater geld requirement/less chances).

==See Also==
[[Spell Strike]]

Spell Strike

2009-06-26T07:41:51Z

Xhlonewolfhx: New page: {{spellnav}} The gods in their wrath will strike out at the enchantments that aid your kingdom, obliterating them in the blink of an eye. {| cellspacing="0" |Magic Specialt...

{{spellnav}}
 
The gods in their wrath will strike out at the enchantments that aid your kingdom, obliterating them in the blink of an eye. 
 
{| cellspacing="0"
|Magic Specialty:
|{{plain}}
|-
|Rank:||[[:Category:Ultimate Spells|Ultimate]]
|-
|Type:||[[Enchantment]] [[:Category:SelfOnly|SelfOnly]]
|-
|Cast Turn:||0
|-
|Cast M.P.:||0
|-
|Research Cost:|| 0
|-
|Upkeep:||None
|-
|Related Unit:||None
|}
==Note==
* New God Spell in Beta Server.
* Removes all beneficial enchantments.
* Cast by disfavor/hatred at same rate as [[Serenity]] was cast previously.

==See Also==
[[Indulgence of God]]

Fallen Angel

2009-06-22T10:23:21Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Fallen Angels are corrupted angels who have been casted out from the heaven. They look like ordinary angel except their wings are pitch black instead of the white feathery.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Nether}}
| color = [[Nether]]
| race = [[Angel]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]] [[UNDISBANDABLE]] [[NOMARKET]]
| power = 193
| ap = 2,400
| type = [[MAGIC]]
| init = 2
| counter = 400
| xap = -
| xtype = -
| xinit = -
| hp = 1,500
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 1.00 Mana
| ability = [[BEAUTY]], [[FLYING]], [[HEALING]]
| spell = [[Corruption]]
| item = -
| white = 50
| green = 25
| red = 25
| black = 50
| blue = 25
| missile = 50
| fire = 50
| poison = 25
| breath = 25
| magic = 50
| melee = 50
| ranged = 50
| cold = 50
| lightning = 50
| paralyze = 25
| psychic = 50
| holy = 25
| image = [[Image:Unit_Fallen_Angel.png]]
| picmargin = 150
}}

[[Category:Units]]
[[Category:Nether Units]]
[[Category:Flying Units]]
[[Category:Magic Units]]
[[Category:Angels]]
[[Category:Fallen Units]]
[[Category:Undisbandable]]

Fallen Dominion

2009-06-22T10:22:46Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Fallen Dominions are corrupted dominions that were cast out from the heaven. Their outer appearance is very similar to normal dominions except that their wings are pitch black instead of glittering white. Although they have been cast out from the heaven, they still keep most of their original power. In fact, they are even empowered after their transformation. Fallen Dominions radiate a strong aura of awe and power.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Nether}}
| color = [[Nether]]
| race = [[Angel]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]] [[UNDISBANDABLE]] [[NOMARKET]]
| power = 59,020
| ap = 600,000
| type = [[MAGIC]]
| init = 2
| counter = 60,000
| xap = 800,000
| xtype = [[MAGIC]]
| xinit = 3
| hp = 120,000
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 290.00 Mana
| ability = [[BEAUTY]], [[FEAR]], [[FLYING]], [[HEALING]]
| spell = [[Corruption]]
| item = -
| white = 80
| green = 50
| red = 80
| black = 80
| blue = 50
| missile = 85
| fire = 85
| poison = 85
| breath = 85
| magic = 85
| melee = 85
| ranged = 85
| cold = 85
| lightning = 85
| paralyze = 85
| psychic = 85
| holy = 80
| image = [[Image:Unit_Fallen_Dominion.png]]
| picmargin = 150
}}

[[Category:Units]]
[[Category:Nether Units]]
[[Category:Magic Units]]
[[Category:Flying Units]]
[[Category:Angels]]
[[Category:Fallen Units]]
[[Category:Undisbandable]]

Fallen Archangel

2009-06-22T10:18:57Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Fallen Archangels are corrupted archangels that was casted out from the heaven. Their outer appearances are very similar to normal a rchangel except they have pitch black wings rather than the white feathery.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Nether}}
| color = [[Nether]]
| race = [[Angel]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]] [[UNDISBANDABLE]] [[NOMARKET]]
| power = 750
| ap = 12,000
| type = [[MAGIC]]
| init = 2
| counter = 800
| xap = -
| xtype = -
| xinit = -
| hp = 7,500
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 5.00 Mana
| ability = [[BEAUTY]], [[FLYING]], [[HEALING]]
| spell = [[Corruption]]
| item = -
| white = 70
| green = 35
| red = 35
| black = 70
| blue = 35
| missile = 75
| fire = 75
| poison = 25
| breath = 25
| magic = 75
| melee = 75
| ranged = 75
| cold = 75
| lightning = 75
| paralyze = 25
| psychic = 75
| holy = 50
| image = [[Image:Unit_Fallen_Archangel.png]]
| picmargin = 150
}}

[[Category:Units]]
[[Category:Nether Units]]
[[Category:Magic Units]]
[[Category:Angels]]
[[category:Flying Units]]
[[Category:Fallen Units]]
[[Category:Undisbandable]]

Fallen Angel

2009-06-22T10:18:54Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Fallen Angels are corrupted angels who have been casted out from the heaven. They look like ordinary angel except their wings are pitch black instead of the white feathery.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Nether}}
| color = [[Nether]]
| race = [[Angel]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]] [[UNDISBANDABLE]] [[NOMARKET]]
| power = 193
| ap = 2,400
| type = [[MAGIC]]
| init = 2
| counter = 400
| xap = -
| xtype = -
| xinit = -
| hp = 1,500
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 1.00 Mana
| ability = [[BEAUTY]], [[FLYING]], [[HEALING]]
| spell = [[Corruption]]
| item = -
| white = 50
| green = 25
| red = 25
| black = 50
| blue = 25
| missile = 50
| fire = 50
| poison = 25
| breath = 25
| magic = 50
| melee = 50
| ranged = 50
| cold = 50
| lightning = 50
| paralyze = 25
| psychic = 50
| holy = 25
| image = [[Image:Unit_Fallen_Archangel.png]]
| picmargin = 150
}}

[[Category:Units]]
[[Category:Nether Units]]
[[Category:Flying Units]]
[[Category:Magic Units]]
[[Category:Angels]]
[[Category:Fallen Units]]
[[Category:Undisbandable]]

Fallen Archangel

2009-06-22T10:13:42Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Fallen Archangels are corrupted archangels that was casted out from the heaven. Their outer appearances are very similar to normal a rchangel except they have pitch black wings rather than the white feathery.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Nether}}
| color = [[Nether]]
| race = [[Angel]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]] [[UNDISBANDABLE]]
| power = 750
| ap = 12,000
| type = [[MAGIC]]
| init = 2
| counter = 800
| xap = -
| xtype = -
| xinit = -
| hp = 7,500
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 5.00 Mana
| ability = [[BEAUTY]], [[FLYING]], [[HEALING]]
| spell = [[Corruption]]
| item = -
| white = 70
| green = 35
| red = 35
| black = 70
| blue = 35
| missile = 75
| fire = 75
| poison = 25
| breath = 25
| magic = 75
| melee = 75
| ranged = 75
| cold = 75
| lightning = 75
| paralyze = 25
| psychic = 75
| holy = 50
| image = [[Image:Unit_Fallen_Archangel.png]]
| picmargin = 150
}}

[[Category:Units]]
[[Category:Nether Units]]
[[Category:Magic Units]]
[[Category:Angels]]
[[category:Flying Units]]
[[Category:Fallen Units]]
[[Category:Undisbandable]]

Devil Prince

2009-06-19T06:14:31Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Heronav}}
 
Commander of infernal cohorts, eternal warrior of darkness, one of many sons of Satan, was sent to your country to watch over your execution of the Contract. Although as mighty as dozens of most powerful devils, he will not aid you in your conquest. Instead, he'll be just sitting behind your throne carefully observing your actions, occasionally draining your magic power for his own purposes.
{|
|Magic Speciality: ||{{black}}
|-
|Attribute: ||SUMMON EVENT NOLEAVE NOBATTLE LIMIT_TURN
|-
|Race: ||DEMON
|-
|Gender: ||MALE
|-
|Attack Power: ||6 + 20*level
|-
|Attack Type: ||FIRE
|-
|Counter Attack: ||6 + 20*level
|-
|Hitpoints: ||66 + 200*level
|-
|Upkeep Costs: ||
|-
|Abilities: ||[[Contract]] (1)
|}
[[category:heroes]] [[category:nonbattle heroes]] [[category:nether Heroes]]

IRC

2009-05-05T03:11:37Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* IRC networks used by TR players */

=Internet Relay Chat (IRC)=

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It allows to communicate over networks of servers. People connect to the network as 'clients' using a program on their PC. People who own servers can run IRC serverprograms and setup networks where any person can connect to. TR staff has become that kind of people.

=IRC networks used by TR players=
By the TR's player community, two IRC networks are traditionally used
* since 1997: GalaxyNet [http://www.galaxynet.org] IRC service
:: Server: [irc://irc.galaxynet.org irc.galaxynet.org] and many others | [[Guides#GalaxyNet and TR IRC|Connection setup help]]
:: Main channel for TR players: <nowiki>#reincarnation</nowiki>

* since 2008: The Reincarnation is setting up it's own IRC service.
:: Server: [irc://www.the-reincarnation.com:6697 www.the-reincarnation.com], Port: 6697 | [[IRC mIRC|Connection setup help]]
:: Main channel for TR players: <nowiki>#reincarnation</nowiki>
::Note: 'irc.the-reincarnation.com' is in deep hibernation nowadays

=Some very basic things to know about IRC=
* names of connected people are known as ''nicks''
:: Typically you want to reserve a permanent name for yourself by registering the nick you are using. So that others may identify who your are from the other users around. Usually nick registration is done through Nickserv. Type the command "/msg nickserv help"
* chatrooms / chatboxes etc. are called ''channels'' on IRC, and have a <nowiki>#</nowiki> in front of their <nowiki>#name</nowiki>.
* channel moderators are called ops/chanops/ChOps , and have an @ prefix on their nicks; or "~" and "&".
:: The "~", "&" and "%" prefixes are modified ChOp prefixes granting more or less channel access. Basically it means they are still ChOps.
:: The "+" nickname prefix means the user is voiced. This is functionally used for "moderated" channels, mostly is it used to signify preferred users.
:: These are common "Channel User" modes. Take note that channel modes, user modes, and Channel User modes are 3 different things.
* some connected nicks are not people but ''bots'', i.e. computer programs. You can give them commands, such as invite me to <nowiki>#mysecretchannel</nowiki>
:: some people like programming their own bots, with varying success. Example: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYQUsp-jxDQ This clip on YouTube]
* if you type in text and press enter... you have chatted
* if you start a chatline with a /, you are giving a command to the IRC server.
:: if the command makes sense and you have the right access levels, it works.
:: otherwise the IRC server will echo back that it did not understand you and points you to help
* On start up, the regular IRC user lets the program perform a series of commands automatically, such as ''identify me'' and ''join my favorite channels''.

=Installing and setting up IRC chatsoftware=
* There are several options, but most players use [http://www.mirc.com mIRC].
:: Here is an [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMvquyLVst8 instruction video]
:: See the guides [[Guides#GalaxyNet_and_TR_IRC|here]]!

* '''I use mIRC all the time, I just want to connect to the new server'''
:: [[IRC mIRC|See this page for that!]]

* '''I used Galaxynet all the time, I need to know some commands for TR's server'''
:: [[IRC_NickCommands | Nick commands]] for creating a nick and authenticating it 
:: [[IRC_ChanCommands | Channel commands]] for creating a channel and maintaining it

* '''I kinda dont want to download anything though'''
:: [http://www.mibbit.com/ Mibbit]
:: [http://pinky.ratman.org/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi/ Pinky.Ratman]
:: [http://www.axenhammer.com/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi/ Axehammer]
:: [http://fenrir.stelth2000inc.com/cgi-bin/irc.cgi/ Fenrir]
:: [http://www.irc.rovno.ua/cgi-bin/cgiirc/irc.cgi/ Rovno]
:: [http://www.chatden.net/cgi-bin/irc.cgi/ Chatden]
:: [http://www.octavia-forum.de/cgi-bin/irc.cgi?/ Octavia]
:: [http://91.121.76.77/cgi-bin/cgi-irc/irc.cgi/ 91.121.76.77]
:: [http://mauled-in-motion.co.uk/cgi-bin/irc/irc.cgi/ Mauled]
[[Category:guides]]

Nature's Favor

2009-04-17T08:47:19Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Effects */

{{spellnav}}
 
The mage will be granted the favour of nature after this spell is chanted. The population will grow faster, your people will generate more gold, and creatures will come and join your army. 
 

{| cellspacing="0"
|Magic Specialty:
|{{green}}
|-
|Rank:||[[:Category:Ultimate Spells|Ultimate]]
|-
|Type:||[[Enchantment]] [[SelfOnly]]
|-
|Cast Turn:||8
|-
|Cast M.P.:||100,000
|-
|Research Cost:|| 30,000
|-
|Upkeep:||500 MP
|-
|Related Unit:||None
|}

==Effects==
* At base spell level Summons 15 Treants, 200 Dryads and 75 nymph per turn and gives a bonus to population.
* Summoning increases at higher spell level
* Summoning is affected by [[Luck|Lady Luck]] and [[GodFavour|Lucifer Favoured status]]
* +(0.224 x Spell Level) food per farm.
* At base SL pop income is changed from 1.5% to 1.9%

[[Category:Spells]]
[[Category:Verdant Spells]]
[[Category:Enchantments]]
[[Category:Ultimate Spells]]
[[Category:Summoning Spells]]

Call Venus Flytraps

2009-04-17T06:07:13Z

Xhlonewolfhx: New page: This spell calls Venus Flytraps to join your army.

This spell calls [[Venus Flytrap]]s to join your army.

Venus Flytrap

2009-04-04T03:32:27Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{Unitstats

| description = Venus Flytraps are the assassins of the forest. They move slowly, preferring to lure their prey with guile and deception. When a target is in sight the Venus Flytrap uses its tentacles to entangle and hold it tight while poisons immobilize it. For targets further away the Venus Flytrap has deadly spines that can be shot with expert precision.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Verdant}}
| textcolor = #000000
| color = [[Verdant]]
| race = [[TREEFOLK]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]]
| power = 380
| ap = 1044
| type = [[RANGED]] [[POISON]]
| init = 1
| counter = 200
| xap = 3,000
| xtype = [[RANGED]] [[POISON]]
| xinit = 3
| hp = 900
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 2.85 Gold, 0.41 M.P.
| ability = [[CHARM]], [[REGENERATION]], [[WEAKNESS TO ATTACKTYPE]] [[FIRE]]
| spell = [[Call Venus Flytraps]]
| item = -
| green = 40
| white = 40
| missile = 67
| poison = 90
| breath = 20
| magic = 50
| melee = 67
| ranged = 67
| lightning = 40
| cold = 40
| paralyze = 75
| psychic = 85
| holy = 60
| image = [[Image:Unit Venus Flytrap.png]]
}}

Venus Flytrap

2009-04-04T03:31:45Z

Xhlonewolfhx: New page: {{Unitstats | description = Venus Flytraps are the assassins of the forest. They move slowly, preferring to lure their prey with guile and deception. When a target is in sight the Venus...

{{Unitstats

| description = Venus Flytraps are the assassins of the forest. They move slowly, preferring to lure their prey with guile and deception. When a target is in sight the Venus Flytrap uses its tentacles to entangle and hold it tight while poisons immobilize it. For targets further away the Venus Flytrap has deadly spines that can be shot with expert precision.

| infoboxcolor =
| labelcolor = {{Color Verdant}}
| textcolor = #000000
| color = [[Verdant]]
| race = [[TREEFOLK]]
| attrib = [[SUMMON]]
| power = 380
| ap = 1044
| type = [[RANGED]] [[POISON]]
| init = 1
| counter = 200
| xap = 3,000
| xtype = [[RANGED]] [[POISON]]
| xinit = 3
| hp = 900
| recruit = -
| upkeep = 2085 Gold, 0.41 M.P.
| ability = [[CHARM]], [[REGENERATION]], [[WEAKNESS TO ATTACKTYPE]] [[FIRE]]
| spell = [[Call Venus Flytraps]]
| item = -
| green = 40
| white = 40
| missile = 67
| poison = 90
| breath = 20
| magic = 50
| melee = 67
| ranged = 67
| lightning = 40
| cold = 40
| paralyze = 75
| psychic = 85
| holy = 60
| image = [[Image:Unit Venus Flytrap.png]]
}}

Merchant

2009-04-03T07:54:20Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Usage */

{{Heronav}}
 
A skilled merchant is one of the greatest types of people to have around if you are in need of a good economy. Able to sell things no one wants and buy those things desired by everyone, the merchant is able to manipulate the economy of your country in various ways.
{|
|Magic Speciality: ||{{plain}}
|-
|Attribute: ||MERCENARY NOBATTLE
|-
|Race: ||HUMAN
|-
|Gender: ||MALE
|-
|Attack Power: ||-
|-
|Attack Type: ||-
|-
|Counter Attack: ||-
|-
|Hitpoints: ||-
|-
|Upkeep Costs: ||50 + 5*level m.p. 1000 + 1000*level gold
|-
|Abilities: ||[[Trading]] (9)
|}

= Usage =

The amount of cash that a merchant makes may seem small compared to the price you pay - but it comes all the time, no matter if you keep [[towns]] and [[farms]]. This makes your mage invulnerable to death, very nice for mages fighting in the low ranks.
[http://www.the-reincarnation.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=22082 UBB discussion]
[[category:heroes]] [[category:nonbattle heroes]] [[category:plain Heroes]]

Iron Golem (Item)

2009-03-17T08:47:10Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

[[Unique Items|Unique Item]], not to be confused with the unit [[Iron Golem]]

The Iron Golem creates 1-5 acres of new [[farms|farmland]] every turn. You can destroy farmland and build other buildings on it. If you don't attack but gain land, you are rather suspicious, so many mages that farm the iron golem also attack a bit, to make their chronicles look less suspicious.

The Golem has a hidden upkeep ([[mana]] reduction) that starts at 4k acres.

*at 4k acres, 10% m.p. reduction
*at 5k acres, 20% m.p. reduction
*at 6k acres, 30% m.p. reduction
*at 7k acres, 40% m.p. reduction
*at 8k acres, 50% m.p. reduction

Reductions apply to base mana income, opposite to what [[GodFavour|moon favour]] does.
[[Black Sabbath]] can help you to keep the Iron golem longer.

== Typical sale price ==

I paid 2.9B for it on Guild (7 minute) server, six days before geddon. It would have gone for 2.0B if I hadn't bid. [[User:Carltsai|Carltsai]] 31 August 2008 
On Solo, one week before geddon, it sold for 1.0B [[User:Carltsai|Carltsai]] 19:52, 15 November 2008 (CET)

I sold it for 3.6B on Solo, a wekk before Armaggedon.. Only received around 1.8B, but it was worth it as I couldn't handle it anymore. [[User:Dskzero|Dskzero]]

[[Category:Items]] [[Category:Unique Items]]

HalfDoneWikiStartupGuide

2008-04-27T03:47:04Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Population and Geld */

=GUIDE FOR NEW MAGES=
A hands-on introduction to The Reincarnation
(edited May-June 2004, starting from an version by Darren, dd. 26 March 2004)

This guide introduces new players to the game The Reincarnation. It helps you navigating through The Reincarnation and answers the many questions new players may have.

You can use this guide as a turn-by-turn crash course (especially the parts in blue) and as reference. Please note that there are other resources to help you play the game too. The Game Manual documents the game’s various features, and the game’s Encyclopedia documents all the creatures, magic and buildings that occur in the game. This guide refers to the Game Manual and the Encyclopedia where applicable.

=Guide Outline and Reading times=
_______ Reading time Game turns Topics

'''PART I: QUICK INTRODUCTION'''
* Chapter 1 Day 1 – 0’05
** Turn 0 Making a new mage, Different servers, Different mage specialities (colours)
* Chapter 2 Day 1 – 0’15
** Turn 1 Introducing the game concept: Turns, land, geld, population, magic power, items, troops

'''PART II: QUICK START'''
* Chapter 3 Day 1 – 0’40 Turn 2-60
** Exploring, building farms, towns, workshops,
** Reading your Status Report
** Turn 61-119 Explore more, build nodes, barracks, guilds

''Total reading time Day 1: about 1 hour = Take a break here and continue the next day!''
----------------------------

* Chapter 4 Day 2 – 0’30 next 150 200
** Importance of Forts,
** Researching, basic defence

''Total reading time Day 2: about ½ hour = After that only general advice follows!''

----------------------------

PART III: QUICK REFERENCE
* Chapter 6 Day 3 and after
** War: offence and defence
** War: composing your army
* Chapter 7 Up to you!
** General tips for each speciality

--------------------

=PART I – QUICK INTRODUCTION=
==CHAPTER 1 Reincarnating your mage==

Creating a mage

Good! You have decided to start playing The Reincarnation, by reincarnating a mage.
To create a mage you have to make the following choices:
* 1. Decide what server you want to play
* 2. Decide what name you want to use for you character (your ‘Mage name’)
* 3. Decide what speciality (colour) you want your mage to be

===Choosing a server===

You have selected a server from the portal-page ‘http://www.the-reincarnation.com’, and selected ‘Create a Mage’ on that server’s entry-screen. Remember which server you choose! Depending on the server, some restrictions exist. The ‘Apprentice’ server is a mild version of the game, where turns generate slow (1 turn / 12 minutes), and where the most powerful (‘ultimate’) spells are not in use. On other servers turns generate more rapidly (normal server, 1 turn /7 minutes; ‘Blitz’ server, 1 turn / 5 minutes); these servers have the ‘ultimate’ spells in the game. ‘Guilds allowed’ means that players are allowed to form groups and play cooperatively; ‘Solo’ obviously means that this is not allowed.

===Choosing a name===
That is totally up to your imagination! Don’t use foul or insulting (e.g. racist, sexist) names. Many players use a different name for their mage than they use as their own nick-name (on bulletin boards like http://ubb.the-reincarnation.com; in game-related chatting like IRC, MSN, ICQ).
Choosing a mage speciality (colour)
Perhaps the hardest choice – this is a good time to introduce the 5 schools of magic (colours) in the game. Choosing the speciality, determines to what units (specifically more advanced units) and to what spells you will have access to (the Game Manual explains this in detail).
Each speciality has its own magic spells and units, mages have access to all units and spells of their own speciality, to most units and spells of adjacent specialities and to the more basic units and spells of their opposite specialities. There are also units in the game, that are of no speciality at all (‘plain’), to which all specialities have equal access.
The game is well balanced, any colour is equally strong. Read the information below, see what you like and if you can’t make up your mind: choose random!

===The Ascendant Order (white)===
Ascendant magic is based on piety and holiness. Ascendant mages prefer magic that heals rather than harms. Nevertheless they are fearsome in battle as they call down a host of divine beings from the heavens to fight together with their more basic human units. They are particularly strong in defence. They despise the destructive nature of their opposing specialities Eradication (red) and Nether (black).

===The Verdancy Tribe (green)===
Verdant mages channel the powers of the wild. They harness the forces of nature to enhance their countries and armies, which include plant folk, forest animals and elves. Some would consider their reliance on woodland creatures a weakness, but those who have experienced the full power of nature have learned otherwise. Verdancy’s opposing specialities are Nether (black) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Eradication League (red)===
Eradication mages believe in creation by destruction, leaving paths of scorched earth everywhere in its wake. Only Eradication mages can control the mighty red dragons, the most feared and destructive single units in the game, whose offence is awesome. Masters of fire and chaos, their brutal nature is opposite to Ascendancy (white) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Nether Convent (black)===
Practicing their dark arcane arts, the Nether school spills hordes of foul demons and undead over the lands of Terra. Nether mages often are despised mages: not only does their magic draw upon their kingdom’s population violently, these mage also sell their souls to unleash the full fury of hell upon their mortal enemies. Their opposites are the Ascendancy (white) and Verdant (green) schools.

===The Phantasm School (blue)===
Phantasm mages are beyond the physical earth: they rely on magic and psychic attacks to gradually beat their enemies down, and rarely use physical assault to defeat their enemies. Some phantasm mages believe that all other specialities are merely corrupted forms of their higher, purer magic. They despise the primitive nature of their opposites Verdancy (green) and Eradication (red).

===Your mage is created!===
After the above choices are made, and you confirmed your input, your mage will be created immediately. You should check your email, and you’ll have received an email from the game with your mage name and password. You can proceed and log in to play your mage for the first time. To do so:
* 1. go to http://www.the-reincarnation.com portal page;
* 2. choose your server’s entry screen. It is a good idea to bookmark it as one of your favourites: you need it each time you login;
* 3. choose ‘Play the Reincarnation’ by typing your mage name and its password.

If successful, you enter the Main menu of the game and can continue reading chapter 2.
If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

Validation (not in current beta mode)
The second time you login, you will need to ‘validate’ your mage. You do not need to validate until after you’ve spent your 99-th turn. You can choose to validate earlier. Validation involves a code that you receive on the email-address that you used when creating your mage. If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

==Chapter 2: Your Resources, your main menu and the status report ==
===The aim of the game===
You begin The Reincarnation with only a very small kingdom and knowing only a few simple spells. You must explore or engage in war to gain more land. You must research your spell books to be able to control powerful army units and magically enhance your performance. The ultimate goal is to be the most powerful mage on the server (a fully researched mage with thousands of acres of land controlling an incredible army!). Power comes primarily from the land that makes up your kingdom and the army that defends it. You have to manage your land-use in such a way that you can support an army to defend your kingdom against land loss and to attack other kingdoms for more land!

However, before you start expanding your kingdom, you must first understand how to manage your kingdom and learn to navigate through the game. You can manage your kingdom using the information of your ‘Main Menu’ and your ‘Status Report’ screens.

===Measuring your powers===
Your ‘Main menu’ screen indicates the powers of your mage is measured in several ways:
* [[Net Power]]
This reflects a combination of the size of your kingdom (acres of land), the size of your army (your battle power), the number of forts you maintain and a number of generally less important smaller contributions (e.g. your stocks of geld). Your net power also determines which mages you can attack and which mages can attack you.

* Ranking
Your ranking is based on your net power.

* [[Spell level]]
Your spell level is determined by the spells that you have successfully researched. For new mages it is very low (spell level 5), for fully researched mages (they’ve learned all the spell books available to them) it is much higher.

Generally, the first mission for new mages, is to research all their spell books, and become ‘fully’ researched. This generally takes up ~1500 to 3000 turns (depending on efficiency and a bit of luck) i.e. at least a week of playing. A high spell level comes first – worrying about Net power and rank comes later!

===Managing your resources===
There are quite a few resources available to you in The Reincarnation: turns, land, population, money (‘geld’), magic power (usually abbreviated as m.p.) and items. Any action in the game draws upon these resources. In addition, you may consider your land and item inventory as additional resources. This includes managing your Interior, practising your Magic and leading your army. Therefore, they are introduced below.

===[[Turns]]===
This is the only resource that all mages get in equal quantities. A new created mage will have 180 turns available (on the Apprentice server, 200 on a normal server or Blitz server – this amount we call ‘max. turns’). If a new competition has just restarted you may find you have less turns, because at the moment the game restarts, a reincarnating mage still has 0 turns. As time passes by, you will receive new turns (once every 12 minutes on Apprentice Server, once every 7 minutes on a normal server, once every 5 minutes on a Blitz server), but only if you have not already the maximum number of turns available. This means you have to login and play your mage almost every daily to spend all the turns you can possibly get.

* FAQ: When and how do I spend turns?
You can spend turns when you are logged in to the server. Login in and checking the status of your kingdom by browsing through the games menus do not cost turns. Most actions in the game do take turns (exploring land, constructing buildings, getting army units, researching spells, casting spells, using an item, attacking other mages, buying items, destroying buildings amongst others). Casting more complex magic (powerful spells starting enchantments or summoning strong units) takes multiple turns. Some actions take no turns (disbanding army units, managing your defence assignments) and neither does messaging other mages.

* FAQ: What happens when I spend a turn?
Supposing, you just reincarnated your mage – just try and spend 1 turn. A good idea is to so by exploring (click Explore, type ‘1’ for the number of turns, and click on the confirm button. The game will tell you, you have found 18-26 acres of new land (without any buildings, i.e. 18-26 acres of wilderness). Proceed to the Main Screen. At the bottom of the screen, the game will notify you what has happened while you spend your first turn.

> EXAMPLE TO BE PUT HERE <

Note that the game counts the number of turns that you have spent since creating your mage. During your first 120 turns your mage enjoys a special protected status for new mages. After spending turn 120 you’ll fully take part in competition on the server. It is wise to take notice of this now and not spent turns too ruthlessly! A decent way to use your first 120 turns is provided in the next chapters. Following this will guide you along the basic features in the game.

===Land===
Your land can also be viewed as a resource. The more land you have, the more powerful your army can be, the more population, geld and m.p. and items you can generate/maintain. You use this resource by building structures. There are different types of structures that you can build on your land. Some of these building you may want to have loads of at one phase of the game, and much less during another phase of the game – i.e. depending on your strategy, you decide what to build.

* FAQ: How do I get more land?
There are several ways to get more land, most importantly (1) by exploring and (2) by warring other kingdoms, called ‘land grabbing’. In your first 120 turns exploring is the only way to get land, and you can not be attacked yet, so you can’t lose land. After that exploring remains a possibility, but you will find that the more land you get, the less new wilderness a turn of exploration will give you. On some servers, exploration is limited to a maximum amount of land (3500 acres), thereafter common exploring gains 0 acres/turn and is useless.
Land grabbing is a more challenging way to get land. It is less save than exploring, because the mage that you attack to try to grab some land may successfully defend its territory, or if you happen to win land, may decide to try to grab it back in a counter attack!.

* FAQ: How do I lose land?
The most common way to lose land is when you are unable to defend your country. The maximum amount of land that you can lose in a single battle is proportional to your total amount of land. There are protection mechanisms in the game that stop new mages attacking you for a while, so you are not likely to lose all your land over night. The amount of land lost when you fail to defend is usually more than you can win in a single attack (after a battle the attacker only gets 1/3 of the battle ground, while 2/3 of the returns to unexplored wilderness).
You can first be attacked after you’ve spent your 120est turn. Don’t worry about it yet, and keep reading this guide, in the next chapters we’ll set you up so you have a decent chance in the game!

* FAQ: What do I do with my land?
You need to find a proper way to use your land (numbers of farms, towns, barracks, etc. etc. etc.) and manage the other resources (population, geld, magic power, items) to maintain your army and defend your kingdom. We will guide you doing that in the next chapter.
Getting more land and spending turns!
Getting land is central in the game. It is generally unwise, to spend your very last saved-up turns to gain a lot of land: you need additional turn spending bringing newly gained land in to use, other wise chances are that you will not be able to defend it! This is why after you’ve read up to chapter 4, we advice you to log off and continue playing the next day, starting with maximum turns again.

===[[Population]] and [[Geld]]===
These two resources are very closely linked. Generally, the more population you have, the more productive your economy and the greater your geld income. Your population lives in towns, but their food occurs on farms. Hence a significant part of your land should be occupied by farms and towns. Your army units are also part of your population and have to be fed using the same farms.

* Checking your population and geld status
Your ‘Main menu’ screen tells you how many people your farms and towns can potentially support, and how many people currently inhabit your country. However, you’ll find much more detailed information in the ‘Status Report’ screen, in its ‘Residential Info’ section. So have a look at your status report! The ‘Residential Info’ section gives information on:

* Max. Residential Space – the total population space available from all buildings.
* Food Production - the number of people your farms can support with their food.

To manage your land in the best possible way, these two numbers should be in balance (it is a waste of land to produce to much food when it is not used; it is a waste of land to have to much residential space when nobody lives there because there isn’t food enough). In practice this means from time to time, you’ll have to check your status report, and decide if you need more or less towns or farms. It is not needed to get the numbers exactly equal – approximately equal is good enough. Build or destroy towns to change Max Residential Space, and build or destroy farms to change Food Production (we’ll do that in the next chapter).

The amount of population that you actually can maintain may be lower than the maximum determined by Residential Space and Food Production. This is because the troops in your army rely on the same food production, and some troops occupy residential space too. Once you’ve reached your maximum amount of population, you will notice that your population will no longer grow (i.e. no/very few new population is created each turn).

* FAQ: What are geld and population used for?
Geld and population are used to maintain buildings, to maintain certain enchantments and to maintain certain army units during every turn that you spend (we’ll do that in the next chapters). You may also use geld to acquire items, spells and heroes on the Black Market and even donate it to the gods at the Altar of Darkness (we’ll do that later in the game).

* FAQ: Can I lose population?
In the game, it is possible to lose your population, for example, because you summoned population-consuming units, or because you contracted the epidemic [[Black Death]] in one of your wars). It may take quite a couple of turns to recover your population, so if you can avoid losing your population – avoid it! It is also possible to have more population than you can house – in that case you will lose the excess population within a few turns.

* FAQ: Can I lose geld other than spending it?
A result of losing population is that your geld income drops too. This will make your geld reserves shrink drastically, since the upkeep for buildings and army will draw upon it. If there is not enough geld in reserve to supply your country while your population and economy recover, you will begin losing summoned and recruited units that require geld upkeep and eventually may even lose your buildings. In the worst case, you’ll start to lose fortresses – and when you’ve lost the last one, your kingdom has collapsed and your mage is defeated. That means it is ‘Game Over’ and you can only reincarnate a new mage and start all over.
Another way to lose geld is by attacks (pillages) or by magic (spells, items) released on you by other mages.

* FAQ: What do I do if I am losing geld?
If you find you are running out of geld, you may sell a few items on the black market (but it takes a while before you get your money) or pillage another country to gain more resources (but you may be countered for that). Gelding only works when there is some geld income left, and when upkeep is demanding less than twice your geld income. If you find you lose geld because you have too many troops, you may disband a number of your troops, but not all units are disbandable!

So basically: avoid running bankrupt and maintain a healthy population in your kingdom. When you are learning the basics of the game: take small steps, don’t build too many buildings at once and don’t recruit or summon too many units at once. Leave experiments and living on the edge of population and geld for later times! Learning how to recover from population loss or geld bankruptcy is certainly worth it, but it is stuff for more experienced players and not something new mages should trouble themselves with.

Further reading: you could check-out the Chapter INTERIOR in the Game Manual and the Book of buildings of the Encyclopedia.

===[[mana|Magic Power (m.p.)]]===
Magic power (m.p.) is your resource to cast spells, for example to summon units to your army or to unleash a spell over another kingdom. Many actions in the game consume m.p., either instantaneously (casting spells, dispelling enchantments) or turn-by-turn continuously (maintaining enchantments, upkeep of army units, heroes and magic-barriers). Magic power is related to the nodes built on your land: nodes both generate m.p. and store m.p..

You may run a negative m.p. income (e.g. have to little m.p. generated each turn by your nodes, in comparison with the m.p. your kingdom consumes each turn), permitted that you have saved up enough before. Many mages do this, because it allows them to have an oversized army for a while, which is be beneficial during attack or defence. The M.P. charge action allows you to focus on generating m.p., which causes your nodes to generate significant extra amounts of m.p. (in exchange for turns ofcourse!). Alternatively, there are items that give a quick extra dose of m.p.. If you run out of M.P. you will not be able to sustain enchantments on your kingdom, and summoned or recruited units and building that have a m.p. upkeep will disappear: not just a few but complete divisions (‘stacks’) of your army – so beware!.

===Items===
A last resource are items that you may generate, buy or steal. Items will generate occasionally when you have build amounts of ‘guilds’ on your land. You buy items by spending ‘geld’ on the ‘Black Market’. Stealing items is possible by attacking (‘pillage’) or by using certain magic (spells, items). There are many different items. Some are very popular and hence their price on the ‘black market’ may be high. Instead of using those items, you can also decide to sell them. When used in this way, you may consider items an extra form of cash.

* FAQ: What do I use items for?
Items can be very valuable in battles and in-between battles. Knowing about the exact effect of each item is an advanced mage skill. The descriptions in the encyclopedia gives an indication for each item, but does not tell exactly you how each items works, nor is it specific for what unit or against what unit it is most effective! The types of things items can do:
** Battle-use items may modify the performance of troops (yours, your enemies) in battles
** Non-Battle items benefit your kingdom (give resources, give troops), and/or
harm your enemy’s kingdom (reveal tactics, destroy resources)

When not yet used, normal items (‘lesser items’) do not have any impact on your own kingdom: you just have them. For ‘Unique items’ this is different. Unique items are so powerful that while in your kingdom, they may have an effect on your kingdom each turn they are in your possession. Dealing with unique items is stuff for advanced mages, so don’t mess about it while learning the basics of the game.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘Magic’ in the Game Manual.

===Troops===
The last asset discussed here are your troops themselves. They make up your army and contribute a lot to your net power (similar as land does). In someway, all the other resources are used to upkeep and regenerate troops for your army. They determine your offensive and defensive capacities (together with your spell level, enchantments and your forts and barrier buildings).

* FAQ: How do I get troops
You can get troops for your army in various ways. You can train part of your population to using the barracks that you may have built. These units are called ‘Recruits’. These are troops that come relatively cheap and in large numbers, but in small numbers they are not that strong. When you just reincarnated, you’ll find a basic number of recruits are already in your army, for example at the bottom of your ‘Status Report’. We’ll introduce you to recruiting in the next chapters. Another way to get troops is to use your magic. As you learn more and more spells, you’ll gain access to more and more powerful units that you can ‘Summon’ into your army by casting a spell. In general, the more powerful these units are, the smaller their number is and the higher their price (in amount of m.p. and number of turns needed to cast the summon spell, as well as in their upkeep once you have them). Some items also summon troops. We’ll introduce you to summoning in the next chapters. A third way to get troops is by hiring them on the Black Market. Heroes are a special kind of troops that you hire individually. We’ll introduce you to hiring troops and heroes in the last chapters.

* FAQ: What troops do I use?
That is totally up to you! Each type of troops in your army we refer to as a ‘stack’. You may choose to use just one type of troops (a mono-stack), or have multiple troops composing your army (a mage can command 10 stacks in his army). All troops have different strengths and weaknesses that can be modified by enchantments, battle spells and items. Battles can be won in different ways: depending on the types of troops involved, a lot of troops may die at both sides, or hardly any unit may die. So there is no single answer to this question, but there are some typical combinations that a lot of people tend to use. We’ll introduce you to composing an army in the last chapters.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘War’ and ‘Black Market’ in the Game Manual, and the Book of Units and Book of Heroes of the Encyclopedia.

=PART II - QUICK START=
==Chapter 3: Your First Turns ==
===Different phases in the game===
Most mages try to research their spell books reasonably fast, to reach their ‘fully researched’ spell level. This takes about 2000-3000 turns (about two weeks of play, login in every day). Only the first 120 turns you enjoy some protection, so during most of your research time you have to defend your land. The problem is that during research, parts of your resources (land, turns, etc.) are used for your research. Guild-buildings have to be accommodated (they need land) and have to paid for (their upkeep) and researching a complex spell takes many turns. Only when you finish researching, you can drop part of your guilds and can start using your turns and land to maintain a bigger army that can grab more land and defend against more powerful other mages.

Most mages therefore lay low with less than 2500 land, most of it filled with guilds to research as turn-efficiently as possible, until they have learned all their spell books. Mean while they have to defend, but these are less ‘big’ battles than the mages with more land fight, and the losses are equally less. For your first try, in this guide for new mages we advise at least to learn parts of your spell book before you start attacking other mages, and try to learn all your spells, before you try to really climb the ranks. Of course there are many other strategies (like attacking from the first moment that it is possible, or concentrating on getting a lot of geld first), specifically when the server has just restarted and all mages on the server still have low spells levels, simply because not enough turns have been generated yet.

===The very first 60 turns (turns 1-60)===
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.
More land, building, using workshops
There are several key structures that are important to building and maintaining your country at this time. You will need plenty farms and towns (for geld and population), quite a lot of guilds (for research), some forts (you have to have forts, if your last fort falls it’s game over!), some nodes (for m.p.), some barracks (to recruit army units)….. but most of all: you need to build all these buildings and to do that reasonably efficient you need a nice amount of workshops.

* The more workshops you have, the more buildings you can build in a turn:
** If you have XX workshops, you can build XX farms per turn
** If you have XXX workshops, you can build XXX farms per turn

This also goes for building workshops themselves: the more you have, the more you can build the next turn. As you build extra workshops and then go to the build screen again, you may see the amounts of buildings that you can build per turn increase.So build workshops step-by-step (in amounts worth one/two turns at a time), rather than building a few hundred in one huge step (over many turns) – because you will build more workshops in less turns in the first way. We are going to use this in our first 60 turns.

===Turn 1-10===
Our aim is explore some extra land, and build a nice amount of farms, towns and workshops on it, so we have a basis for the next 60 turns. We will not worry about troops: each mage has received a basic amount on reincarnation that we’ll just keep. Also, we will not worry about researching spells: we’ll set up our kingdom so we can start researching later on.

Check your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have 200 land (220 land if you already explored 1 turn), with a basic amount of most buildings and some wilderness.

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Your income of m.p., of geld and of population is all positive, so at this moment there is nothing to worry about. Let’s explore a little bit more land. Go back to your main menu, choose Explore and explore for 9 more turns (10 if you didn’t already explore a first turn).
You will have increased you kingdom with about 200 acres of wilderness.

===Turn 10-20===
Check your ‘Main Screen’ and your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have about

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Let’s build some farms and towns for more population, and let’s start to build some workshops, in preparation of major building in the next turns. Hereto you go back to the Main Screen, choose Interior and type in the following:

===Turn 11-60===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

How many workshops you keep at what phase in the game, depends on your strategy. If you (plan to) have a lot of wilderness to build on, you may want to build more workshops (in advance, during or immediately after exploring/warring for land). For a new mage, who will get his first land from exploring this is the case.

* Are workshops only important at the beginning of the game?
It is wise to always maintain at the very least have some (100) workshops. If you find your kingdom heavily attacked, it may be wise to have workshops to be able to rebuild your country quickly! As a rule of thumb: a reasonable amount to keep is ~300; a fairly good amount to have is >599 (that way you can rebuild 1 fort in 1 turn...)

==Your second 60 turns (turns 60-119)==
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.

===Guilds===
Your ‘Guild’ buildings generate items and allow you to research spells. The more guilds you have, the faster your research goes. You should try to keep at least 1000 guilds while researching. Many mages try to maintain 1500-1600 guilds or more during the research phase of their country. Some mages also like to keep a few hundred guilds present for item generation after research. This may not always be a very efficient use of land unless items on the market are very expensive. Often it is better to just buy items you need rather than rely on random generation from guilds.

Note: to confuse you a bit, the same word ‘Guild’ is used for this building and for groups of mages that play cooperatively – our apologies!

===Barracks===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

'''See you tomorrow!'''

During your first 120 turns you could not be attacked, but as soon as you have spend turn 120, you will be exposed to other players. It makes little sense to expose yourself, when you have only 60-80 turns to spend: you can only make limited progress and can hardly set up your defences. So: let’s not spent turn 120 right now, but wait a bit. You can calculate at about what time you will reach max turns on your server. On apprentice server, 120 turns will accumulate in 30 hours (about one day). So you if you have spent 120 turns in the last hour, tomorrow at about this time will be a good time to continue reading this guide.

=Chapter 4: The next 150-200 turns following turn 120=
==Login again (select server, and enter mage name and password)==

If you had not spend more your 120 turns, you’ll find your kingdom exactly as you left it, with the only difference that you have accumulated extra turns (150-200 may be available, depending on server and time since last login).

Remember, that soon as you spend your 120 turn, you lose your apprentice status and other mages are allowed to attack you. Let’s take a look at the mages around you before we start moving! Click ‘Ranking’ on the Main Screen, to display the mages in your direct vicinity. You’ll probably see that some mages are marked ‘A’ in the Ranklist. These are apprentice mages just like you are/were. Mages without the ‘A’ have spend more than 120 turns and in principle can attack you. Don’t worry: they will not be all online at the same moment as you. Chances are it will take a few hours before someone will notice you and decides to hit you but nevertheless – let’s make the most of our turns before that time and see if we can research some spells and set up some basic defence using our turns!

If you follow our guide line – don’t stop half way – that would leave you very vulnerable! There is a small chance someone may attack you while you are trying to follow our guide lines – in that case – don’t panic. If it is just one hit, and you lost land: try to restore the damage by exploring a few turns and rebuild farms, towns, workshops and guilds, and proceed (you will just have a few spells less researched). If you find that someone hits you a couple of times: sit it out - eventually you will be ‘in protection’ (check your ranking and see if a ‘P’ appears. After that, no-one can hit you anymore for 24 hours. See it as a blessing… it means you don’t have to worry about defense for 23 hours, can spend all your turns recovering an researching, and just have to log in the day after, at a slightly earlier time, to research some more and set up the basic army. Let’s not think about these doom scenarios.

Let’s get in to gear and spend a good amount of turns building guilds and researching, and meanwhile let’s work on a bit of an army.

* FAQ: Why fortresses?
You must have fortresses to defend your country, however they are expensive. If you lose all your fortresses, your country will collapse. Having many fortresses gives your troops a hit point bonus when defending (see Game Manual). Fortresses also add significantly to your net power and thus your ranking. Too many fortresses will boost you high up in the ranking among mages with much more powerful armies that will be difficult to defend against (despite your defence bonuses). Many mages keep about fifteen to twenty fortresses. In war-times (repetitive battles with the same enemies) you may need more, if you have a lot of land, you may want more.

==Your first 150/200 turns after turn 120==

-------------------------------------------

NEVER FINISHED

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'''Part III - QUICK REFERENCE'''
=Chapter 5: Raising your defences: your army=
==The dilemma of numbers versus power==
To win a battle, an attacker needs (A) to cause a minimum amount of damage to the enemy army and (B) not suffer more damage with its own army. The damage is calculated based on the power of your army. The minimum amount of damage to win a battle is 5% for a regular attack and 10% for a siege).
To win land (including a fort) after a battle, the winner needs enough surviving troops to claim the acres of won land. The maximum amount that a defender can lose is 5% in a regular battle, and 10% in a siege battle. For a regular attack this happens when the attacker has at least 5,000 surviving units in his army. For a siege attack this happens when the attack has at least 12,500 surviving units. In the latter case, at least 2,500 troops are needed to win the fort.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am attacking?
So just having a few tens to 100’s very powerful units is not enough if you want to grab land with them: you need to bring in larger numbers of troops. However, troops of which you can afford large numbers are not that powerful. Mages have to solve this dilemma when they compose their army for attacking. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am defending?
For defending armies, it may seem smart to only have small stacks of very powerful, very hard to kill units. However, that will make you vulnerable for pillages: you only ward off pillaging armies if you have a sufficient number of troops in your army. Their power doesn’t matter that much. Another way to deal with it, is to try to kill off large numbers of less powerful enemy troops. As long as that is successful, even if you lose the battle, there is still a good chance you don’t lose that much land, since so little attacking troops survive. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

==The dilemmas of Flying versus Non-Flying units and Ranged versus Non-Ranged units==

Stack pairing, unable to counter etc.

==The dilemmas of [[Initiative]] and [[Accuracy]]==
Base accuracy, [[Marksmanship]]
[[Fatigue]],[[Endurance]]

=Chapter 6: Raising your defences – non army=
Apart from composing a strong army

Forts

===Barriers===
For new mages: don’t worry too much about barriers, while you are not yet researched. Only when you start to grab large amounts of land and start climbing the ranks, you will need the barriers as part of your defence.

Barriers are magical structures that ward off harmful spells and items that other mages may attempt to use against you. However, it is usually not efficient to build barriers until you have finished researching all your spells. Barriers are magic buildings, that require a significant amount of m.p. for their upkeep. Once you finish researching spells, building barriers on 2.5% of your land will provide maximum barrier protection from spells and items. That percentage will give you the maximum resistance of 75% (i.e. you’ll block 3 out of 4 incoming spells and items). You may be able to further increase your resistance to spells of specific speciality by casting certain enchantments on your country.

Barriers are the only buildings for which the building rate is not influenced by workshops: it is always 1 turn per barrier. This means that if you work yourself to 4000 land without barriers, you will need 100 turns to build the 100 barriers that would give you maximum resistance against incoming magic… 100 turns is a lot of turns – it may be wise to start slowly build barriers earlier, as a rule of thumb, they are worth it (and you’ll be able to afford decent numbers) as soon as you climb over 2,500 land.

===Enchantments===

===Heroes===

=Chapter 7: Raising your defences – stack tips=
==Nether==

==Verdancy==

==Phantasm==

==Eradication==

==Ascendancy==

==Nether==

-------------------------------------
=OLD STUFF FROM ORIGINAL VERSION==

CHAPTER IV: How to Start Your Initial Build-up and Research

Since you cannot attack when you first reincarnate, explore a few turns to gain some extra land. Start building your workshops. When you are about half finished with your workshops, build a few towns and farms to keep your population and geld increasing. You may need to explore several times. Continue exploring and building workshops until you have as many as you want. Now many mages will build 100-150 nodes and more towns and farms. You should have taken about 70-80 turns by now. If you wish to continue expanding through warfare, select a unit to recruit and begin building barracks. Popular recruitable units include archers, militia, knight templars, high priests, faerie dragons, elven magicians, elven archers, fire giants, troglodytes, wolf raiders, and dark elf magicians. You may want to experiment with others. Continue exploring and building barracks until you have about 1200-1300 acres.

Keep watching your geld and mp income. If either become negative, you should probably build more nodes or towns and farms. At the end of 120 turns you should have about 10,000-20,000 troops. You may also wish to include some summoned units. However, your summoning power is very limited at this stage due to your low spell level. Now you can begin attacking other mages in your power range. It is usually best to wait until you have all your turns before you begin attacking. When you have enough land, build guilds and research spells beginning with your own color. Summon a defense. Archangels, unicorns, efreeti, griffins, wraiths, horned demons, djinnis, and mind rippers are popular choices for defense as this stage, but you may want to try other units. Also remember to set a defensive spell and item assignment.

A. During Research
Expect to be attacked occasionally during research and to lose some land. It is difficult to defend well at this time. You may attempt to explore your land back or attack other mages to gain land. Some mages prefer to keep a small amount of land with no army during research. If you attempt this, be sure you have enough forts that you will not lose them all to attacks. Also, cast Concentration on yourself, and dispel and recast occasionally. It is a phantasm spell that can significantly help speed up research. You should research all spells of each magic specialty that are available to you. When you are finished researching all the different magic specialties' spells, you will have the opportunity to learn Armageddon. However, researching Armageddon will not help your spell level or spell casting abilities.

B. After Research
After you have completed researching spells, destroy most or all of your guilds and begin converting your kingdom to prepare for warfare.

3. Nodes
Depending on the kind of magic you play, you will need different amounts of nodes. The following amounts are approximate; you may need more or less:
Nether: 25%-35% nodes
Verdant: 40%-50% nodes
Phantasm: 40%-50% nodes
Ascendant: 35%-50% nodes
Eradication: 25%-35% nodes

3. Other Buildings
Most of the rest of your land should be farms and towns. You need some barracks if you want to use barracks units and keep about 299 workshops.

3. Enchantments
Cast enchantments at your full spell level after research. If you already casted them during research, like concentration, you have to dispell them first. Some enchantments worth considering are:
Nether: Shroud of Darkness, Concentration, Black Sabbath
Verdant: Sunray, Plant Growth, Concentration, Nature's Favor, Weather Summoning
Phantasm: Concentration, Mind Bar, Weather Summoning
Ascendant: Protection from Evil, Concentration, Weather Summoning, Resist Elements
Eradication: Concentration, Weather Summoning

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CHAPTER V: War

Eventually you will need to go to war, either to defend your country, retaliate against your enemies, or to conquer new land. When you are attacking, you are most likely to win battles against foes that are at 80% of your net power and who have more land than you. When you are defending, you should be oversummoned to the point that you have a significant negative net MP or geld income. Having a larger army than your resources could normally support will help you defend better if you are attacked. When using your turns for warfare, there is a basic sequence that allows you to use your turns most efficiently. Generally, this is to wait until you have full turns and then use them all at once to: attack / disband / build / MP charge or geld / summon / attack

The attacks at the beginning and end of the sequence are optional. If you are using recruited units, you should be recruiting them while you are MP charging or gelding. It is often more efficient to disband some of your units before MP charging or gelding and then to summon them back when you are finished than to MP charge or geld with your full army in place.

A. Conquering Land

1. Regular Attack

In a regular attack you can conquer up to 5% of another mage's land. Approximately 2/3 of this land will be destroyed in the fighting, leaving the other 1/3 as structures and wilderness that is added to your country. This is the easiest kind of attack to win.

2. Siege Attack

Siege attacks allow you to conquer up to 10% of another mage's land. Again, approximately 2/3 of this will be destroyed in the fighting. In a siege attack, the defender gets several defensive bonuses. This makes siege attacks much more difficult to win than regular attacks.

3. Occupying Land After War

In order to keep the land you win, you must have an army large enough to occupy the land. It is not possible to use only your most powerful units and take any significant amount of land. Although powerful units are necessary to win battles, weaker units must be present in large numbers - and survive the battle - in order for you to have enough troops to occupy the land you win. Generally you should have at least 5,000 surviving troops for each 1,000 acres of enemy land you are sieging.

B. Building an Army
There is no one single correct way to build an army for each magic type. Experience, experiment, and personal playing styles all play significant roles in the types of armies mages create. To create a successful army, you need to become aware of your own units' strengths and weaknesses. You also need to become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the units often used by mages you most often attack and who most often attack you.

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CHAPTER VI: Units

A. Ultimate
Ultimate units are the most powerful units in The Reincarnation. Ultimate units are capable of defeating most other units in the game. However, their upkeep is very high, so most mages cannot afford to keep very many of them in their armies.

B. Complex
Complex units provide the bulk offensive power in many mages' armies. There is at least one complex unit that can attack each ultimate unit with relatively good success. Liches fare well against eradication ultimate units, for example, but they do not do well against ascendant ultimates. Ascendant ultimates can be beaten by the treants many verdants use, but treants are in turn harmed by the eradication ultimates. Many complex units also do well against certain other complex units as well as the weaker units.

C. Average
Average units are often used to protect weaker units or sometimes appear in large numbers to challenge complex and even ultimate units. Most average units do well against only a few other units and must be carefully placed in an army to avoid being attacked by more powerful units. There are some exceptions to this. The nether average units (ghouls, wraiths, and horned demons) are sometimes used in very large numbers to fight ascendant mages, for example.

D. Simple
Ranged simple units such as soul speakers and psychic wisps are often used at the back of an army to make ranged attacks against more powerful units while avoiding being directly attacked. Units such as dryads and zombies are often used to build up the total number of troops attacking so that maximum land is gained. However, almost all simple units will die very badly if attacked by more powerful units.

E. Barracks
Using barracks units is usually an efficient way to acquire part of your army while using turns for other things such as MP charging and summoning ultimate and complex units. The most popular barracks units to use are probably the ranged units like archers, catapults, high priests, elven magicians, and dark elf magicians. Others such as faerie dragons can be very powerful in large numbers, as can knight templars. In this way barracks units serve the same purpose as simple units: boosting the total number of troops surviving a battle in order to occupy full land.

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CHAPTER VII: Ordering Your Troops for Battle

Ordering you troops for battle, or 'stacking,' is one of the more complex aspect of playing The Reincarnation because it affects which of your units attack which enemy units during battle You can send up to 10 different kinds of units into battle. Each group of units is called a stack. The order the units will appear in battle is the same as the order given in your status report. The percentages in your status report give you the percent of a unit's net power in your entire army. If you have more than 10 stacks, only the first 10 will engage in battle. In the simplest terms, if you want a unit higher in your stacking, summon more of it or disband other units that are above it in your stacking. Likewise, if you want a unit lower, disband it or summon more of a lower-stacked unit above it. Be careful when working with units with population upkeep like liches and wraiths. These cannot be disbanded.

A. Stacking Details
The net power of a stack is determined by multiplying the unit's power rank (listed in the unit's entry in the encyclopedia) by the number of units in the stack. The order of stacking is determined by the stacking modifier applied to each stack. These modifiers are 1.00 for all ranged units, 2.25 for all flying units, and 1.50 for all other units. The modifiers are multiplied by each stack's net power percentage to get the battle power. So if you happen to be an ascendant mage, for example, and the net power of your army consists of
25% knight templar (a melee unit)
20% archangel (a flying unit)
20% unicorn (a melee unit)
15% high priest (a ranged unit)
10% mind ripper (a ranged unit)
10% dominion (a flying unit)
The battle power is
Knight Templar: 25*1.50 = 37.5 battle power
Archangel: 20*2.25 = 45 battle power
Unicorn: 20*1.50 = 30 battle power
High Priest: 15*1.00 = 15 battle power
Mind Ripper: 10*1.00 = 10 battle power
Dominion: 10*2.25 = 22.5 battle power
And your stacks would appear in battle in the following order:
Archangel
Knight Templar
Unicorn
Dominion
High Priest
Mind Ripper

B. Attack Pairing

There are three general rules that determines which of your units will attack enemy units. First, melee units do not engage flying units; they engage the first available unpaired unit on the ground. If there is no unit on the ground for them to attack, they will not participate in the battle. Second, flying and ranged units will attack the first unpaired flying unit available to them; if there is no flying unit, they will attack a ground-based unit. Third, unpaired units tend to attack top stacks if ranged or flying, or a lower ranked ground-based unit if melee.

C. Attack Pairing Details

If the ascendant above were to attack a nether with the following stack, what would be the pairings?
Horned Demon (melee)
Lich (ranged)
Wraith (flying)
Zombie (melee)
Efreeti (ranged)
Ghoul (melee)
Dark Elf Magician (ranged)
vs
Archangel (flying)
Knight Templar (melee)
Unicorn (melee)
Dominion (flying)
High Priest (ranged)
Mind Ripper (ranged)

The top stacks are archangels and horned demons. The archangels will attack the horned demons, but the horned demons cannot reach the archangels. They will attack the first available ground unit, the knight templars, instead.

The next stacks are the knight templars and liches. The liches are on the ground, so the knight templars will attack them. The ranged liches will attack the archangels because no unit has been paired to the archangels yet.

Next are the unicorns and wraiths. The wraiths will attack the unicorns, but the unicorns cannot reach the wraiths. The unicorns will attack the next available ground stack instead, which is the zombies.

The flying dominions will attack the wraiths since the wraiths have not been paired yet. The zombies cannot reach the dominions, so they will attack the high priests.

The efreetis are ranged, so they can attack the dominions. The high priests are also ranged, but there are no flyers that have not been paired, so they will go ahead and attack the efreetis.

The ghouls and mind rippers will attack each other since both are on the ground and there are no flyers for the mind rippers to attack.

There is no unit left in the ascendant army to attack the dark elf magicians, so they will not be attacked. The dark elf magicians are an unpaired ranged unit, and unpaired ranged units tend to attack top stacks, so the dark elf magicians will attack the archangels.

So on the ascendant side,
Archangels attack horned demons
Knight templars attack liches
Unicorns attack zombies
Dominions attack wraiths
High priests attack efreetis
Mind Rippers attack ghouls
no unit attacks Dark Elf Magicians

and on the nether side,
Horned demons attack knight templars
Liches attack archangels
Wraiths attack unicorns
Zombies attack high priests
Efreetis attack dominions
Ghouls attack mind rippers
Dark Elf Magicians attack archangels

D. What You Really Need to Know About War

You do not need to try to go through a complex analysis of the possible pairings before each battle, although in higher ranks the ability to guess an oponent's stacking and to create a stacking specifically to defeat it becomes more important. Both experience and luck play a part in successful attacks. You will soon find that certain units tend to appear in certain places in opponents' stackings. For example, eradication mages almost always have red dragons as their top stack. Nether mages attacking eradication mages often put liches as their top stack to directly attack the dragons. Phantasm mages frequently have unicorns and mind rippers near the top of their stackings, and both are weak to treants. However, a verdant attacking a phantasm mage could end up taking a serious amount of damage if the mind rippers are stacked such that they attack phoenixes or simpler units like nymphs or dryads. There is always such an unknown element involved in any attack. However, after you play The Reincarnation for a little while, you will begin to develop an intuitive idea of where enemy units are most likely to be stacked and can begin to better match your own units against them. Concentrate on attacking the magics you are most likely to win against with a good variety of powerful units, and you will have a decent chance of winning..

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CHAPTER VIII: Basic Strategy

Each of the five magic specialties has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easy to conquer land from certain mages and more difficult to gain land from others.

A. Nether
Nether has wide access to units with cold and magic attacks that eradication units are typically weak to. Nethers may also attack other nether mages, verdants, and sometimes phantasm mages. Nether is generally weak to ascendant. One of the key enchantments for nether is Black Sabbath. This powerful enchantment generates zombies and skeletons and increases MP income at the expense of population growth rate. Shroud of Darkness is an enchantment that adds additional protection from the holy spells of ascendant mages. Nether's most important resource is population. Population is necessary for the many undeads and demons that nethers generally keep in their armies, and it also powers Black Sabbath. If you lose your population, you lose most of your good units and one of your key enchantments, so be careful with your population. Concentration is a phantasm spell that many nethers also use because they often cast phantasm and eradication spells. Having Concentration reduces the chance of failure when casting these spells. Liches are one of the most powerful units in the game. They stand up well to most forms of attack except holy, especially from dominions or treants with Sword of Light. Wraiths are another popular unit because they usually do good damage to angel-type units that ascendants often use. Horned Demons have a very powerful attack that can be modified with the Flame Blade spell to give them an additional fire attack type. They can be very useful against treefolk and most other average, simple, and barracks units. Zombies and Skeletons are generated from Black Sabbath. Zombies are relatively good at absorbing damage from ascendant units, but they lack a good attack and tend to die badly to verdant units. Many nethers also keep efreeti, mind rippers, salamanders, and dark elf magicians in their armies. Hydras and Chimeras can be useful against verdants and sometimes ascendants, but they can be a defensive liability in many situations. Vampires are useful against most complex and weaker units, but they tend to die badly to most common ultimate units. Contract of the Soul will summon many Devil units into your army. They are nearly unstoppable in large numbers, but the price for calling on them is very high....

B. Verdant
Verdants have access to many powerful melee units. However, they suffer from low initiative and a general weakness to fire. Verdants often attack other verdants, ascendants, nethers, and sometimes phantasm mages. Eradication mages, with their access to many fire-based units, are sometimes very difficult for verdant mages to defeat. Plant Growth is an important enchantment for many verdant mages because it significantly increases the size of treefolk units. Other enchantments such as weather summoning and nature's favor greatly increase farm production. Verdant is often an MP-intensive magic to play, but their enchantments allow their farms to be incredibly productive. Treants form the heart of many verdant armies. Their only real weakness is to fire. They have a very powerful melee attack that can be enhanced with such spells as Sword of Light or Flame Blade to give them an extra holy or fire attack type. Concentration is a useful enchantment to have if non-verdant spells such as these are cast often. Using the item Vial of Venom will give melee units a poison attack. Verdants can also weaken the melee resistance of enemy units by casting the spell Rust Armor in battle. Mandrakes, werebears, and griffins are commonly used to supplement treants. Another popular verdant unit is the phoenix. Phoenixes are a high-damage magic unit that are immune to fire and have a powerful fire burst when attacked. However, they can be beaten by liches, mind rippers, and large numbers of wraiths. Verdant's barracks units are quite useful, particularly elves and faerie dragons. Some verdants like to use eradication units such as efreeti, salamander, and hydra, or ascendant units from the spell Gate. However, verdants can do very well using just their own units.

C. Phantasm
Phantasm is perhaps the most versatile and unpredictable magic specialty. Phantasm mages have broad access to many different kinds of units and spells and can build many diverse kinds of armies. However, phantasm is often a turn- and MP-intensive magic to play. Phantasm mages often attack other phantasm mages, eradication mages, and nether mages. Ascendant and sometimes verdant can be difficult for phantasm to defeat. Concentration is an enchantment that every phantasm mage should use because it significantly reduces the time it takes to research spells and also reduces the chances of failure when casting spells from the other magic specialties. Phantasm usually relies on the magic of other specialties more than any of the other magics do. They often use ascendant units from the spell Gate and nether units as well. Some mages like to gather their nether units from the spell Night of the Living Dead, but you should use this only if you want a variety of undisbandable units. If you want a particular nether unit, it is best to summon it directly. Horned Demons and wraiths also frequently appear in phantasm armies. Phantasm's most powerful unit is probably the mind ripper. Mind rippers are excellent used against any unit that does not have strong resistance to magic and psychic attacks. Leviathans are ultimate units that have powerful defensive abilities but rather weak offensive abilities. Phantasm's other ultimate units come from the spell Conjure Elemental. The spell gives air, ice, and water elementals randomly. Water elementals are dangerous to many ascendant units, and ice elementals are harmful to many eradication units. Air elementals can sometimes be used effectively against ascendant units. All phantasm elemental ultimates are difficult to maintain in a small country, and many phantasm mages do not use them at all until they have 5,000 acres or more of land.

D. Ascendant
Ascendants use many holy, magic, and melee units. They often attack nether, phantasm, and sometimes eradication mages. Other ascendants and especially verdants can be very difficult to defeat. Ascendant mages have many healing spells that enhance the healing abilities of many of their units and have perhaps the broadest selection of useful barracks units of all the magic specialties. Protection from Evil is an enchantment that many ascendant mages use to help ward off harmful nether magic from their countries. Ascendants also have access to two other very powerful enchantments. Love and Peace greatly increases geld income at the expense of battle attack power, and The Holy Light increases attack power and accuracy at the expense of MP income. Archangels are one of the best defensive units in the game, so much so that even many phantasm mages use them as their top stack. Unicorns are another commonly used unit. Unicorns have two major weaknesses: treants and mind rippers. Both archangels and unicorns can be obtained from the spell Gate or summoned directly. Knight templars, high priests, and catapults are very useful barracks units. However, they are rather expensive. Most mages who use them rely on the extra geld income from Love and Peace to pay for them. Dominions are a very powerful angel unit, but they can die easily on defense. However, they resurrect extremely well when the spell Resurrection is cast on them. Some ascendants like to supplement their armies with units from other magic specialties. Mind rippers, nymphs, werebears and sirenes are the most commonly used. Treants are rarely used by ascendants because plant growth cast by an ascendant is not strong enough to be worthwhile.

E. Eradication
Eradication is the most destructive of the magic specialties. Eradication mages most frequently attack other eradication mages and verdant mages. Sometimes they target ascendant mages. Nether and Phantasm mages can be difficult for an eradication mage to defeat. Battle Chant is an enchantment that some eradication mages like to use. It increases unit attack power at the expense of unit hit points. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a geld deficit since many of their units rely heavily on geld for upkeep. Eradications also have access to Red Dragons, one of the most powerful offensive units in the game. Many eradication mages keep almost all their army power in their dragons. Many eradication mages often rely heavily on the spell Stun and the item Oil Flasks. In addition to red dragons, chimeras and efreetis are commonly used in eradication armies. Chimeras have very powerful offensive capabilities when given a melee-fire attack by the spell Flame Blade, but they are weak defensively, especially to mind rippers and phoenixes. Efreetis are strong both offensively and defensively. They have few weaknesses except to fire and psychic attacks. Some eradication mages will supplement their units with nether or verdant units. The most common way of stacking for eradication mages usually involves a very large stack of red dragons and then a moderate stack of chimeras or efreetis. After this average and simple units are placed so that there are ten stacks in the army. Most damage will be caused by the top two stacks, and the rest are meant to simply survive in enough numbers to take a large amount of land. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a positive MP income and negative geld income. Red dragons are very geld and population intensive to maintain, but require very little MP compared to other ultimate units.

F. Other Sources of Information
Joining a guild or searching The Reincarnation's Universal Bulletin Board (UBB) are both good ways of learning how to play better. Many guilds are willing to take in new members and help them learn more advanced war and resource utilization strategies. Many players also enjoy the comradery that comes from being in a guild. Strategic and technical aspects of the game are also discussed in the UBB's Hall of Sages. Search first before asking your question - it may have already been asked and answered before.
[[Category:guides]]

HalfDoneWikiStartupGuide

2008-04-27T03:36:55Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Turns */

=GUIDE FOR NEW MAGES=
A hands-on introduction to The Reincarnation
(edited May-June 2004, starting from an version by Darren, dd. 26 March 2004)

This guide introduces new players to the game The Reincarnation. It helps you navigating through The Reincarnation and answers the many questions new players may have.

You can use this guide as a turn-by-turn crash course (especially the parts in blue) and as reference. Please note that there are other resources to help you play the game too. The Game Manual documents the game’s various features, and the game’s Encyclopedia documents all the creatures, magic and buildings that occur in the game. This guide refers to the Game Manual and the Encyclopedia where applicable.

=Guide Outline and Reading times=
_______ Reading time Game turns Topics

'''PART I: QUICK INTRODUCTION'''
* Chapter 1 Day 1 – 0’05
** Turn 0 Making a new mage, Different servers, Different mage specialities (colours)
* Chapter 2 Day 1 – 0’15
** Turn 1 Introducing the game concept: Turns, land, geld, population, magic power, items, troops

'''PART II: QUICK START'''
* Chapter 3 Day 1 – 0’40 Turn 2-60
** Exploring, building farms, towns, workshops,
** Reading your Status Report
** Turn 61-119 Explore more, build nodes, barracks, guilds

''Total reading time Day 1: about 1 hour = Take a break here and continue the next day!''
----------------------------

* Chapter 4 Day 2 – 0’30 next 150 200
** Importance of Forts,
** Researching, basic defence

''Total reading time Day 2: about ½ hour = After that only general advice follows!''

----------------------------

PART III: QUICK REFERENCE
* Chapter 6 Day 3 and after
** War: offence and defence
** War: composing your army
* Chapter 7 Up to you!
** General tips for each speciality

--------------------

=PART I – QUICK INTRODUCTION=
==CHAPTER 1 Reincarnating your mage==

Creating a mage

Good! You have decided to start playing The Reincarnation, by reincarnating a mage.
To create a mage you have to make the following choices:
* 1. Decide what server you want to play
* 2. Decide what name you want to use for you character (your ‘Mage name’)
* 3. Decide what speciality (colour) you want your mage to be

===Choosing a server===

You have selected a server from the portal-page ‘http://www.the-reincarnation.com’, and selected ‘Create a Mage’ on that server’s entry-screen. Remember which server you choose! Depending on the server, some restrictions exist. The ‘Apprentice’ server is a mild version of the game, where turns generate slow (1 turn / 12 minutes), and where the most powerful (‘ultimate’) spells are not in use. On other servers turns generate more rapidly (normal server, 1 turn /7 minutes; ‘Blitz’ server, 1 turn / 5 minutes); these servers have the ‘ultimate’ spells in the game. ‘Guilds allowed’ means that players are allowed to form groups and play cooperatively; ‘Solo’ obviously means that this is not allowed.

===Choosing a name===
That is totally up to your imagination! Don’t use foul or insulting (e.g. racist, sexist) names. Many players use a different name for their mage than they use as their own nick-name (on bulletin boards like http://ubb.the-reincarnation.com; in game-related chatting like IRC, MSN, ICQ).
Choosing a mage speciality (colour)
Perhaps the hardest choice – this is a good time to introduce the 5 schools of magic (colours) in the game. Choosing the speciality, determines to what units (specifically more advanced units) and to what spells you will have access to (the Game Manual explains this in detail).
Each speciality has its own magic spells and units, mages have access to all units and spells of their own speciality, to most units and spells of adjacent specialities and to the more basic units and spells of their opposite specialities. There are also units in the game, that are of no speciality at all (‘plain’), to which all specialities have equal access.
The game is well balanced, any colour is equally strong. Read the information below, see what you like and if you can’t make up your mind: choose random!

===The Ascendant Order (white)===
Ascendant magic is based on piety and holiness. Ascendant mages prefer magic that heals rather than harms. Nevertheless they are fearsome in battle as they call down a host of divine beings from the heavens to fight together with their more basic human units. They are particularly strong in defence. They despise the destructive nature of their opposing specialities Eradication (red) and Nether (black).

===The Verdancy Tribe (green)===
Verdant mages channel the powers of the wild. They harness the forces of nature to enhance their countries and armies, which include plant folk, forest animals and elves. Some would consider their reliance on woodland creatures a weakness, but those who have experienced the full power of nature have learned otherwise. Verdancy’s opposing specialities are Nether (black) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Eradication League (red)===
Eradication mages believe in creation by destruction, leaving paths of scorched earth everywhere in its wake. Only Eradication mages can control the mighty red dragons, the most feared and destructive single units in the game, whose offence is awesome. Masters of fire and chaos, their brutal nature is opposite to Ascendancy (white) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Nether Convent (black)===
Practicing their dark arcane arts, the Nether school spills hordes of foul demons and undead over the lands of Terra. Nether mages often are despised mages: not only does their magic draw upon their kingdom’s population violently, these mage also sell their souls to unleash the full fury of hell upon their mortal enemies. Their opposites are the Ascendancy (white) and Verdant (green) schools.

===The Phantasm School (blue)===
Phantasm mages are beyond the physical earth: they rely on magic and psychic attacks to gradually beat their enemies down, and rarely use physical assault to defeat their enemies. Some phantasm mages believe that all other specialities are merely corrupted forms of their higher, purer magic. They despise the primitive nature of their opposites Verdancy (green) and Eradication (red).

===Your mage is created!===
After the above choices are made, and you confirmed your input, your mage will be created immediately. You should check your email, and you’ll have received an email from the game with your mage name and password. You can proceed and log in to play your mage for the first time. To do so:
* 1. go to http://www.the-reincarnation.com portal page;
* 2. choose your server’s entry screen. It is a good idea to bookmark it as one of your favourites: you need it each time you login;
* 3. choose ‘Play the Reincarnation’ by typing your mage name and its password.

If successful, you enter the Main menu of the game and can continue reading chapter 2.
If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

Validation (not in current beta mode)
The second time you login, you will need to ‘validate’ your mage. You do not need to validate until after you’ve spent your 99-th turn. You can choose to validate earlier. Validation involves a code that you receive on the email-address that you used when creating your mage. If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

==Chapter 2: Your Resources, your main menu and the status report ==
===The aim of the game===
You begin The Reincarnation with only a very small kingdom and knowing only a few simple spells. You must explore or engage in war to gain more land. You must research your spell books to be able to control powerful army units and magically enhance your performance. The ultimate goal is to be the most powerful mage on the server (a fully researched mage with thousands of acres of land controlling an incredible army!). Power comes primarily from the land that makes up your kingdom and the army that defends it. You have to manage your land-use in such a way that you can support an army to defend your kingdom against land loss and to attack other kingdoms for more land!

However, before you start expanding your kingdom, you must first understand how to manage your kingdom and learn to navigate through the game. You can manage your kingdom using the information of your ‘Main Menu’ and your ‘Status Report’ screens.

===Measuring your powers===
Your ‘Main menu’ screen indicates the powers of your mage is measured in several ways:
* [[Net Power]]
This reflects a combination of the size of your kingdom (acres of land), the size of your army (your battle power), the number of forts you maintain and a number of generally less important smaller contributions (e.g. your stocks of geld). Your net power also determines which mages you can attack and which mages can attack you.

* Ranking
Your ranking is based on your net power.

* [[Spell level]]
Your spell level is determined by the spells that you have successfully researched. For new mages it is very low (spell level 5), for fully researched mages (they’ve learned all the spell books available to them) it is much higher.

Generally, the first mission for new mages, is to research all their spell books, and become ‘fully’ researched. This generally takes up ~1500 to 3000 turns (depending on efficiency and a bit of luck) i.e. at least a week of playing. A high spell level comes first – worrying about Net power and rank comes later!

===Managing your resources===
There are quite a few resources available to you in The Reincarnation: turns, land, population, money (‘geld’), magic power (usually abbreviated as m.p.) and items. Any action in the game draws upon these resources. In addition, you may consider your land and item inventory as additional resources. This includes managing your Interior, practising your Magic and leading your army. Therefore, they are introduced below.

===[[Turns]]===
This is the only resource that all mages get in equal quantities. A new created mage will have 180 turns available (on the Apprentice server, 200 on a normal server or Blitz server – this amount we call ‘max. turns’). If a new competition has just restarted you may find you have less turns, because at the moment the game restarts, a reincarnating mage still has 0 turns. As time passes by, you will receive new turns (once every 12 minutes on Apprentice Server, once every 7 minutes on a normal server, once every 5 minutes on a Blitz server), but only if you have not already the maximum number of turns available. This means you have to login and play your mage almost every daily to spend all the turns you can possibly get.

* FAQ: When and how do I spend turns?
You can spend turns when you are logged in to the server. Login in and checking the status of your kingdom by browsing through the games menus do not cost turns. Most actions in the game do take turns (exploring land, constructing buildings, getting army units, researching spells, casting spells, using an item, attacking other mages, buying items, destroying buildings amongst others). Casting more complex magic (powerful spells starting enchantments or summoning strong units) takes multiple turns. Some actions take no turns (disbanding army units, managing your defence assignments) and neither does messaging other mages.

* FAQ: What happens when I spend a turn?
Supposing, you just reincarnated your mage – just try and spend 1 turn. A good idea is to so by exploring (click Explore, type ‘1’ for the number of turns, and click on the confirm button. The game will tell you, you have found 18-26 acres of new land (without any buildings, i.e. 18-26 acres of wilderness). Proceed to the Main Screen. At the bottom of the screen, the game will notify you what has happened while you spend your first turn.

> EXAMPLE TO BE PUT HERE <

Note that the game counts the number of turns that you have spent since creating your mage. During your first 120 turns your mage enjoys a special protected status for new mages. After spending turn 120 you’ll fully take part in competition on the server. It is wise to take notice of this now and not spent turns too ruthlessly! A decent way to use your first 120 turns is provided in the next chapters. Following this will guide you along the basic features in the game.

===Land===
Your land can also be viewed as a resource. The more land you have, the more powerful your army can be, the more population, geld and m.p. and items you can generate/maintain. You use this resource by building structures. There are different types of structures that you can build on your land. Some of these building you may want to have loads of at one phase of the game, and much less during another phase of the game – i.e. depending on your strategy, you decide what to build.

* FAQ: How do I get more land?
There are several ways to get more land, most importantly (1) by exploring and (2) by warring other kingdoms, called ‘land grabbing’. In your first 120 turns exploring is the only way to get land, and you can not be attacked yet, so you can’t lose land. After that exploring remains a possibility, but you will find that the more land you get, the less new wilderness a turn of exploration will give you. On some servers, exploration is limited to a maximum amount of land (3500 acres), thereafter common exploring gains 0 acres/turn and is useless.
Land grabbing is a more challenging way to get land. It is less save than exploring, because the mage that you attack to try to grab some land may successfully defend its territory, or if you happen to win land, may decide to try to grab it back in a counter attack!.

* FAQ: How do I lose land?
The most common way to lose land is when you are unable to defend your country. The maximum amount of land that you can lose in a single battle is proportional to your total amount of land. There are protection mechanisms in the game that stop new mages attacking you for a while, so you are not likely to lose all your land over night. The amount of land lost when you fail to defend is usually more than you can win in a single attack (after a battle the attacker only gets 1/3 of the battle ground, while 2/3 of the returns to unexplored wilderness).
You can first be attacked after you’ve spent your 120est turn. Don’t worry about it yet, and keep reading this guide, in the next chapters we’ll set you up so you have a decent chance in the game!

* FAQ: What do I do with my land?
You need to find a proper way to use your land (numbers of farms, towns, barracks, etc. etc. etc.) and manage the other resources (population, geld, magic power, items) to maintain your army and defend your kingdom. We will guide you doing that in the next chapter.
Getting more land and spending turns!
Getting land is central in the game. It is generally unwise, to spend your very last saved-up turns to gain a lot of land: you need additional turn spending bringing newly gained land in to use, other wise chances are that you will not be able to defend it! This is why after you’ve read up to chapter 4, we advice you to log off and continue playing the next day, starting with maximum turns again.

===[[Population]] and [[Geld]]===
These two resources are very closely linked. Generally, the more population you have, the more productive your economy and the greater your geld income. Your population lives in towns, but their food occurs on farms. Hence a significant part of your land should be occupied by farms and towns. Your army units are also part of your population and have to be fed using the same farms.

* Checking your population and geld status
Your ‘Main menu’ screen tells you how many people your farms and towns can potentially support, and how many people currently inhabit your country. However, you’ll find much more detailed information in the ‘Status Report’ screen, in its ‘Residential Info’ section. So have a look at your status report! The ‘Residential Info’ section gives information on:

* Max. Residential Space – the total population space available from all buildings.
* Food Production - the number of people your farms can support with their food.

To manage your land in the best possible way, these two numbers should be in balance (it is a waste of land to produce to much food when it is not used; it is a waste of land to have to much residential space when nobody lives there because there isn’t food enough). In practice this means from time to time, you’ll have to check your status report, and decide if you need more or less towns or farms. It is not needed to get the numbers exactly equal – approximately equal is good enough. Build or destroy towns to change Max Residential Space, and build or destroy farms to change Food Production (we’ll do that in the next chapter).

The amount of population that you actually can maintain may be lower than the maximum determined by Residential Space and Food Production. This is because the troops in your army rely on the same food production, and some troops occupy residential space too. Once you’ve reached your maximum amount of population, you will notice that your population will no longer grow (i.e. no/very few new population is created each turn).

* FAQ: What are geld and population used for?
Geld and population are used to maintain buildings, to maintain certain enchantments and to maintain certain army units during every turn that you spend (we’ll do that in the next chapters). You may also use geld to acquire items, spells and heroes on the Black Market and even donate it to the gods at the Altar of Darkness (we’ll do that later in the game).

* FAQ: Can I lose population?
In the game, it is possible to lose your population, for example, because you summoned population-consuming units, or because you contracted the epidemic Black Death in one of your wars). It may take quite a couple of turns to recover your population, so if you can avoid losing your population – avoid it! It is also possible to have more population than you can house – in that case you will lose the excess population within a few turns.

* FAQ: Can I lose geld other than spending it?
A result of losing population is that your geld income drops too. This will make your geld reserves shrink drastically, since the upkeep for buildings and army will draw upon it. If there is not enough geld in reserve to supply your country while your population and economy recover, you will begin losing summoned and recruited units that require geld upkeep and eventually may even lose your buildings. In the worst case, you’ll start to lose fortresses – and when you’ve lost the last one, your kingdom has collapsed and your mage is defeated. That means it is ‘Game Over’ and you can only reincarnate a new mage and start all over.
Another way to lose geld is by attacks (pillages) or by magic (spells, items) released on you by other mages.

* FAQ: What do I do if I am losing geld?
If you find you are running out of geld, you may sell a few items on the black market (but it takes a while before you get your money) or pillage another country to gain more resources (but you may be countered for that). Gelding only works when there is some geld income left, and when upkeep is demanding less than twice your geld income. If you find you lose geld because you have too many troops, you may disband a number of your troops, but not all units are disbandable!

So basically: avoid running bankrupt and maintain a healthy population in your kingdom. When you are learning the basics of the game: take small steps, don’t build too many buildings at once and don’t recruit or summon too many units at once. Leave experiments and living on the edge of population and geld for later times! Learning how to recover from population loss or geld bankruptcy is certainly worth it, but it is stuff for more experienced players and not something new mages should trouble themselves with.

Further reading: you could check-out the Chapter INTERIOR in the Game Manual and the Book of buildings of the Encyclopedia.

===[[mana|Magic Power (m.p.)]]===
Magic power (m.p.) is your resource to cast spells, for example to summon units to your army or to unleash a spell over another kingdom. Many actions in the game consume m.p., either instantaneously (casting spells, dispelling enchantments) or turn-by-turn continuously (maintaining enchantments, upkeep of army units, heroes and magic-barriers). Magic power is related to the nodes built on your land: nodes both generate m.p. and store m.p..

You may run a negative m.p. income (e.g. have to little m.p. generated each turn by your nodes, in comparison with the m.p. your kingdom consumes each turn), permitted that you have saved up enough before. Many mages do this, because it allows them to have an oversized army for a while, which is be beneficial during attack or defence. The M.P. charge action allows you to focus on generating m.p., which causes your nodes to generate significant extra amounts of m.p. (in exchange for turns ofcourse!). Alternatively, there are items that give a quick extra dose of m.p.. If you run out of M.P. you will not be able to sustain enchantments on your kingdom, and summoned or recruited units and building that have a m.p. upkeep will disappear: not just a few but complete divisions (‘stacks’) of your army – so beware!.

===Items===
A last resource are items that you may generate, buy or steal. Items will generate occasionally when you have build amounts of ‘guilds’ on your land. You buy items by spending ‘geld’ on the ‘Black Market’. Stealing items is possible by attacking (‘pillage’) or by using certain magic (spells, items). There are many different items. Some are very popular and hence their price on the ‘black market’ may be high. Instead of using those items, you can also decide to sell them. When used in this way, you may consider items an extra form of cash.

* FAQ: What do I use items for?
Items can be very valuable in battles and in-between battles. Knowing about the exact effect of each item is an advanced mage skill. The descriptions in the encyclopedia gives an indication for each item, but does not tell exactly you how each items works, nor is it specific for what unit or against what unit it is most effective! The types of things items can do:
** Battle-use items may modify the performance of troops (yours, your enemies) in battles
** Non-Battle items benefit your kingdom (give resources, give troops), and/or
harm your enemy’s kingdom (reveal tactics, destroy resources)

When not yet used, normal items (‘lesser items’) do not have any impact on your own kingdom: you just have them. For ‘Unique items’ this is different. Unique items are so powerful that while in your kingdom, they may have an effect on your kingdom each turn they are in your possession. Dealing with unique items is stuff for advanced mages, so don’t mess about it while learning the basics of the game.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘Magic’ in the Game Manual.

===Troops===
The last asset discussed here are your troops themselves. They make up your army and contribute a lot to your net power (similar as land does). In someway, all the other resources are used to upkeep and regenerate troops for your army. They determine your offensive and defensive capacities (together with your spell level, enchantments and your forts and barrier buildings).

* FAQ: How do I get troops
You can get troops for your army in various ways. You can train part of your population to using the barracks that you may have built. These units are called ‘Recruits’. These are troops that come relatively cheap and in large numbers, but in small numbers they are not that strong. When you just reincarnated, you’ll find a basic number of recruits are already in your army, for example at the bottom of your ‘Status Report’. We’ll introduce you to recruiting in the next chapters. Another way to get troops is to use your magic. As you learn more and more spells, you’ll gain access to more and more powerful units that you can ‘Summon’ into your army by casting a spell. In general, the more powerful these units are, the smaller their number is and the higher their price (in amount of m.p. and number of turns needed to cast the summon spell, as well as in their upkeep once you have them). Some items also summon troops. We’ll introduce you to summoning in the next chapters. A third way to get troops is by hiring them on the Black Market. Heroes are a special kind of troops that you hire individually. We’ll introduce you to hiring troops and heroes in the last chapters.

* FAQ: What troops do I use?
That is totally up to you! Each type of troops in your army we refer to as a ‘stack’. You may choose to use just one type of troops (a mono-stack), or have multiple troops composing your army (a mage can command 10 stacks in his army). All troops have different strengths and weaknesses that can be modified by enchantments, battle spells and items. Battles can be won in different ways: depending on the types of troops involved, a lot of troops may die at both sides, or hardly any unit may die. So there is no single answer to this question, but there are some typical combinations that a lot of people tend to use. We’ll introduce you to composing an army in the last chapters.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘War’ and ‘Black Market’ in the Game Manual, and the Book of Units and Book of Heroes of the Encyclopedia.

=PART II - QUICK START=
==Chapter 3: Your First Turns ==
===Different phases in the game===
Most mages try to research their spell books reasonably fast, to reach their ‘fully researched’ spell level. This takes about 2000-3000 turns (about two weeks of play, login in every day). Only the first 120 turns you enjoy some protection, so during most of your research time you have to defend your land. The problem is that during research, parts of your resources (land, turns, etc.) are used for your research. Guild-buildings have to be accommodated (they need land) and have to paid for (their upkeep) and researching a complex spell takes many turns. Only when you finish researching, you can drop part of your guilds and can start using your turns and land to maintain a bigger army that can grab more land and defend against more powerful other mages.

Most mages therefore lay low with less than 2500 land, most of it filled with guilds to research as turn-efficiently as possible, until they have learned all their spell books. Mean while they have to defend, but these are less ‘big’ battles than the mages with more land fight, and the losses are equally less. For your first try, in this guide for new mages we advise at least to learn parts of your spell book before you start attacking other mages, and try to learn all your spells, before you try to really climb the ranks. Of course there are many other strategies (like attacking from the first moment that it is possible, or concentrating on getting a lot of geld first), specifically when the server has just restarted and all mages on the server still have low spells levels, simply because not enough turns have been generated yet.

===The very first 60 turns (turns 1-60)===
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.
More land, building, using workshops
There are several key structures that are important to building and maintaining your country at this time. You will need plenty farms and towns (for geld and population), quite a lot of guilds (for research), some forts (you have to have forts, if your last fort falls it’s game over!), some nodes (for m.p.), some barracks (to recruit army units)….. but most of all: you need to build all these buildings and to do that reasonably efficient you need a nice amount of workshops.

* The more workshops you have, the more buildings you can build in a turn:
** If you have XX workshops, you can build XX farms per turn
** If you have XXX workshops, you can build XXX farms per turn

This also goes for building workshops themselves: the more you have, the more you can build the next turn. As you build extra workshops and then go to the build screen again, you may see the amounts of buildings that you can build per turn increase.So build workshops step-by-step (in amounts worth one/two turns at a time), rather than building a few hundred in one huge step (over many turns) – because you will build more workshops in less turns in the first way. We are going to use this in our first 60 turns.

===Turn 1-10===
Our aim is explore some extra land, and build a nice amount of farms, towns and workshops on it, so we have a basis for the next 60 turns. We will not worry about troops: each mage has received a basic amount on reincarnation that we’ll just keep. Also, we will not worry about researching spells: we’ll set up our kingdom so we can start researching later on.

Check your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have 200 land (220 land if you already explored 1 turn), with a basic amount of most buildings and some wilderness.

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Your income of m.p., of geld and of population is all positive, so at this moment there is nothing to worry about. Let’s explore a little bit more land. Go back to your main menu, choose Explore and explore for 9 more turns (10 if you didn’t already explore a first turn).
You will have increased you kingdom with about 200 acres of wilderness.

===Turn 10-20===
Check your ‘Main Screen’ and your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have about

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Let’s build some farms and towns for more population, and let’s start to build some workshops, in preparation of major building in the next turns. Hereto you go back to the Main Screen, choose Interior and type in the following:

===Turn 11-60===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

How many workshops you keep at what phase in the game, depends on your strategy. If you (plan to) have a lot of wilderness to build on, you may want to build more workshops (in advance, during or immediately after exploring/warring for land). For a new mage, who will get his first land from exploring this is the case.

* Are workshops only important at the beginning of the game?
It is wise to always maintain at the very least have some (100) workshops. If you find your kingdom heavily attacked, it may be wise to have workshops to be able to rebuild your country quickly! As a rule of thumb: a reasonable amount to keep is ~300; a fairly good amount to have is >599 (that way you can rebuild 1 fort in 1 turn...)

==Your second 60 turns (turns 60-119)==
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.

===Guilds===
Your ‘Guild’ buildings generate items and allow you to research spells. The more guilds you have, the faster your research goes. You should try to keep at least 1000 guilds while researching. Many mages try to maintain 1500-1600 guilds or more during the research phase of their country. Some mages also like to keep a few hundred guilds present for item generation after research. This may not always be a very efficient use of land unless items on the market are very expensive. Often it is better to just buy items you need rather than rely on random generation from guilds.

Note: to confuse you a bit, the same word ‘Guild’ is used for this building and for groups of mages that play cooperatively – our apologies!

===Barracks===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

'''See you tomorrow!'''

During your first 120 turns you could not be attacked, but as soon as you have spend turn 120, you will be exposed to other players. It makes little sense to expose yourself, when you have only 60-80 turns to spend: you can only make limited progress and can hardly set up your defences. So: let’s not spent turn 120 right now, but wait a bit. You can calculate at about what time you will reach max turns on your server. On apprentice server, 120 turns will accumulate in 30 hours (about one day). So you if you have spent 120 turns in the last hour, tomorrow at about this time will be a good time to continue reading this guide.

=Chapter 4: The next 150-200 turns following turn 120=
==Login again (select server, and enter mage name and password)==

If you had not spend more your 120 turns, you’ll find your kingdom exactly as you left it, with the only difference that you have accumulated extra turns (150-200 may be available, depending on server and time since last login).

Remember, that soon as you spend your 120 turn, you lose your apprentice status and other mages are allowed to attack you. Let’s take a look at the mages around you before we start moving! Click ‘Ranking’ on the Main Screen, to display the mages in your direct vicinity. You’ll probably see that some mages are marked ‘A’ in the Ranklist. These are apprentice mages just like you are/were. Mages without the ‘A’ have spend more than 120 turns and in principle can attack you. Don’t worry: they will not be all online at the same moment as you. Chances are it will take a few hours before someone will notice you and decides to hit you but nevertheless – let’s make the most of our turns before that time and see if we can research some spells and set up some basic defence using our turns!

If you follow our guide line – don’t stop half way – that would leave you very vulnerable! There is a small chance someone may attack you while you are trying to follow our guide lines – in that case – don’t panic. If it is just one hit, and you lost land: try to restore the damage by exploring a few turns and rebuild farms, towns, workshops and guilds, and proceed (you will just have a few spells less researched). If you find that someone hits you a couple of times: sit it out - eventually you will be ‘in protection’ (check your ranking and see if a ‘P’ appears. After that, no-one can hit you anymore for 24 hours. See it as a blessing… it means you don’t have to worry about defense for 23 hours, can spend all your turns recovering an researching, and just have to log in the day after, at a slightly earlier time, to research some more and set up the basic army. Let’s not think about these doom scenarios.

Let’s get in to gear and spend a good amount of turns building guilds and researching, and meanwhile let’s work on a bit of an army.

* FAQ: Why fortresses?
You must have fortresses to defend your country, however they are expensive. If you lose all your fortresses, your country will collapse. Having many fortresses gives your troops a hit point bonus when defending (see Game Manual). Fortresses also add significantly to your net power and thus your ranking. Too many fortresses will boost you high up in the ranking among mages with much more powerful armies that will be difficult to defend against (despite your defence bonuses). Many mages keep about fifteen to twenty fortresses. In war-times (repetitive battles with the same enemies) you may need more, if you have a lot of land, you may want more.

==Your first 150/200 turns after turn 120==

-------------------------------------------

NEVER FINISHED

----------------------------------------------

'''Part III - QUICK REFERENCE'''
=Chapter 5: Raising your defences: your army=
==The dilemma of numbers versus power==
To win a battle, an attacker needs (A) to cause a minimum amount of damage to the enemy army and (B) not suffer more damage with its own army. The damage is calculated based on the power of your army. The minimum amount of damage to win a battle is 5% for a regular attack and 10% for a siege).
To win land (including a fort) after a battle, the winner needs enough surviving troops to claim the acres of won land. The maximum amount that a defender can lose is 5% in a regular battle, and 10% in a siege battle. For a regular attack this happens when the attacker has at least 5,000 surviving units in his army. For a siege attack this happens when the attack has at least 12,500 surviving units. In the latter case, at least 2,500 troops are needed to win the fort.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am attacking?
So just having a few tens to 100’s very powerful units is not enough if you want to grab land with them: you need to bring in larger numbers of troops. However, troops of which you can afford large numbers are not that powerful. Mages have to solve this dilemma when they compose their army for attacking. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am defending?
For defending armies, it may seem smart to only have small stacks of very powerful, very hard to kill units. However, that will make you vulnerable for pillages: you only ward off pillaging armies if you have a sufficient number of troops in your army. Their power doesn’t matter that much. Another way to deal with it, is to try to kill off large numbers of less powerful enemy troops. As long as that is successful, even if you lose the battle, there is still a good chance you don’t lose that much land, since so little attacking troops survive. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

==The dilemmas of Flying versus Non-Flying units and Ranged versus Non-Ranged units==

Stack pairing, unable to counter etc.

==The dilemmas of [[Initiative]] and [[Accuracy]]==
Base accuracy, [[Marksmanship]]
[[Fatigue]],[[Endurance]]

=Chapter 6: Raising your defences – non army=
Apart from composing a strong army

Forts

===Barriers===
For new mages: don’t worry too much about barriers, while you are not yet researched. Only when you start to grab large amounts of land and start climbing the ranks, you will need the barriers as part of your defence.

Barriers are magical structures that ward off harmful spells and items that other mages may attempt to use against you. However, it is usually not efficient to build barriers until you have finished researching all your spells. Barriers are magic buildings, that require a significant amount of m.p. for their upkeep. Once you finish researching spells, building barriers on 2.5% of your land will provide maximum barrier protection from spells and items. That percentage will give you the maximum resistance of 75% (i.e. you’ll block 3 out of 4 incoming spells and items). You may be able to further increase your resistance to spells of specific speciality by casting certain enchantments on your country.

Barriers are the only buildings for which the building rate is not influenced by workshops: it is always 1 turn per barrier. This means that if you work yourself to 4000 land without barriers, you will need 100 turns to build the 100 barriers that would give you maximum resistance against incoming magic… 100 turns is a lot of turns – it may be wise to start slowly build barriers earlier, as a rule of thumb, they are worth it (and you’ll be able to afford decent numbers) as soon as you climb over 2,500 land.

===Enchantments===

===Heroes===

=Chapter 7: Raising your defences – stack tips=
==Nether==

==Verdancy==

==Phantasm==

==Eradication==

==Ascendancy==

==Nether==

-------------------------------------
=OLD STUFF FROM ORIGINAL VERSION==

CHAPTER IV: How to Start Your Initial Build-up and Research

Since you cannot attack when you first reincarnate, explore a few turns to gain some extra land. Start building your workshops. When you are about half finished with your workshops, build a few towns and farms to keep your population and geld increasing. You may need to explore several times. Continue exploring and building workshops until you have as many as you want. Now many mages will build 100-150 nodes and more towns and farms. You should have taken about 70-80 turns by now. If you wish to continue expanding through warfare, select a unit to recruit and begin building barracks. Popular recruitable units include archers, militia, knight templars, high priests, faerie dragons, elven magicians, elven archers, fire giants, troglodytes, wolf raiders, and dark elf magicians. You may want to experiment with others. Continue exploring and building barracks until you have about 1200-1300 acres.

Keep watching your geld and mp income. If either become negative, you should probably build more nodes or towns and farms. At the end of 120 turns you should have about 10,000-20,000 troops. You may also wish to include some summoned units. However, your summoning power is very limited at this stage due to your low spell level. Now you can begin attacking other mages in your power range. It is usually best to wait until you have all your turns before you begin attacking. When you have enough land, build guilds and research spells beginning with your own color. Summon a defense. Archangels, unicorns, efreeti, griffins, wraiths, horned demons, djinnis, and mind rippers are popular choices for defense as this stage, but you may want to try other units. Also remember to set a defensive spell and item assignment.

A. During Research
Expect to be attacked occasionally during research and to lose some land. It is difficult to defend well at this time. You may attempt to explore your land back or attack other mages to gain land. Some mages prefer to keep a small amount of land with no army during research. If you attempt this, be sure you have enough forts that you will not lose them all to attacks. Also, cast Concentration on yourself, and dispel and recast occasionally. It is a phantasm spell that can significantly help speed up research. You should research all spells of each magic specialty that are available to you. When you are finished researching all the different magic specialties' spells, you will have the opportunity to learn Armageddon. However, researching Armageddon will not help your spell level or spell casting abilities.

B. After Research
After you have completed researching spells, destroy most or all of your guilds and begin converting your kingdom to prepare for warfare.

3. Nodes
Depending on the kind of magic you play, you will need different amounts of nodes. The following amounts are approximate; you may need more or less:
Nether: 25%-35% nodes
Verdant: 40%-50% nodes
Phantasm: 40%-50% nodes
Ascendant: 35%-50% nodes
Eradication: 25%-35% nodes

3. Other Buildings
Most of the rest of your land should be farms and towns. You need some barracks if you want to use barracks units and keep about 299 workshops.

3. Enchantments
Cast enchantments at your full spell level after research. If you already casted them during research, like concentration, you have to dispell them first. Some enchantments worth considering are:
Nether: Shroud of Darkness, Concentration, Black Sabbath
Verdant: Sunray, Plant Growth, Concentration, Nature's Favor, Weather Summoning
Phantasm: Concentration, Mind Bar, Weather Summoning
Ascendant: Protection from Evil, Concentration, Weather Summoning, Resist Elements
Eradication: Concentration, Weather Summoning

(back to top)

CHAPTER V: War

Eventually you will need to go to war, either to defend your country, retaliate against your enemies, or to conquer new land. When you are attacking, you are most likely to win battles against foes that are at 80% of your net power and who have more land than you. When you are defending, you should be oversummoned to the point that you have a significant negative net MP or geld income. Having a larger army than your resources could normally support will help you defend better if you are attacked. When using your turns for warfare, there is a basic sequence that allows you to use your turns most efficiently. Generally, this is to wait until you have full turns and then use them all at once to: attack / disband / build / MP charge or geld / summon / attack

The attacks at the beginning and end of the sequence are optional. If you are using recruited units, you should be recruiting them while you are MP charging or gelding. It is often more efficient to disband some of your units before MP charging or gelding and then to summon them back when you are finished than to MP charge or geld with your full army in place.

A. Conquering Land

1. Regular Attack

In a regular attack you can conquer up to 5% of another mage's land. Approximately 2/3 of this land will be destroyed in the fighting, leaving the other 1/3 as structures and wilderness that is added to your country. This is the easiest kind of attack to win.

2. Siege Attack

Siege attacks allow you to conquer up to 10% of another mage's land. Again, approximately 2/3 of this will be destroyed in the fighting. In a siege attack, the defender gets several defensive bonuses. This makes siege attacks much more difficult to win than regular attacks.

3. Occupying Land After War

In order to keep the land you win, you must have an army large enough to occupy the land. It is not possible to use only your most powerful units and take any significant amount of land. Although powerful units are necessary to win battles, weaker units must be present in large numbers - and survive the battle - in order for you to have enough troops to occupy the land you win. Generally you should have at least 5,000 surviving troops for each 1,000 acres of enemy land you are sieging.

B. Building an Army
There is no one single correct way to build an army for each magic type. Experience, experiment, and personal playing styles all play significant roles in the types of armies mages create. To create a successful army, you need to become aware of your own units' strengths and weaknesses. You also need to become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the units often used by mages you most often attack and who most often attack you.

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CHAPTER VI: Units

A. Ultimate
Ultimate units are the most powerful units in The Reincarnation. Ultimate units are capable of defeating most other units in the game. However, their upkeep is very high, so most mages cannot afford to keep very many of them in their armies.

B. Complex
Complex units provide the bulk offensive power in many mages' armies. There is at least one complex unit that can attack each ultimate unit with relatively good success. Liches fare well against eradication ultimate units, for example, but they do not do well against ascendant ultimates. Ascendant ultimates can be beaten by the treants many verdants use, but treants are in turn harmed by the eradication ultimates. Many complex units also do well against certain other complex units as well as the weaker units.

C. Average
Average units are often used to protect weaker units or sometimes appear in large numbers to challenge complex and even ultimate units. Most average units do well against only a few other units and must be carefully placed in an army to avoid being attacked by more powerful units. There are some exceptions to this. The nether average units (ghouls, wraiths, and horned demons) are sometimes used in very large numbers to fight ascendant mages, for example.

D. Simple
Ranged simple units such as soul speakers and psychic wisps are often used at the back of an army to make ranged attacks against more powerful units while avoiding being directly attacked. Units such as dryads and zombies are often used to build up the total number of troops attacking so that maximum land is gained. However, almost all simple units will die very badly if attacked by more powerful units.

E. Barracks
Using barracks units is usually an efficient way to acquire part of your army while using turns for other things such as MP charging and summoning ultimate and complex units. The most popular barracks units to use are probably the ranged units like archers, catapults, high priests, elven magicians, and dark elf magicians. Others such as faerie dragons can be very powerful in large numbers, as can knight templars. In this way barracks units serve the same purpose as simple units: boosting the total number of troops surviving a battle in order to occupy full land.

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CHAPTER VII: Ordering Your Troops for Battle

Ordering you troops for battle, or 'stacking,' is one of the more complex aspect of playing The Reincarnation because it affects which of your units attack which enemy units during battle You can send up to 10 different kinds of units into battle. Each group of units is called a stack. The order the units will appear in battle is the same as the order given in your status report. The percentages in your status report give you the percent of a unit's net power in your entire army. If you have more than 10 stacks, only the first 10 will engage in battle. In the simplest terms, if you want a unit higher in your stacking, summon more of it or disband other units that are above it in your stacking. Likewise, if you want a unit lower, disband it or summon more of a lower-stacked unit above it. Be careful when working with units with population upkeep like liches and wraiths. These cannot be disbanded.

A. Stacking Details
The net power of a stack is determined by multiplying the unit's power rank (listed in the unit's entry in the encyclopedia) by the number of units in the stack. The order of stacking is determined by the stacking modifier applied to each stack. These modifiers are 1.00 for all ranged units, 2.25 for all flying units, and 1.50 for all other units. The modifiers are multiplied by each stack's net power percentage to get the battle power. So if you happen to be an ascendant mage, for example, and the net power of your army consists of
25% knight templar (a melee unit)
20% archangel (a flying unit)
20% unicorn (a melee unit)
15% high priest (a ranged unit)
10% mind ripper (a ranged unit)
10% dominion (a flying unit)
The battle power is
Knight Templar: 25*1.50 = 37.5 battle power
Archangel: 20*2.25 = 45 battle power
Unicorn: 20*1.50 = 30 battle power
High Priest: 15*1.00 = 15 battle power
Mind Ripper: 10*1.00 = 10 battle power
Dominion: 10*2.25 = 22.5 battle power
And your stacks would appear in battle in the following order:
Archangel
Knight Templar
Unicorn
Dominion
High Priest
Mind Ripper

B. Attack Pairing

There are three general rules that determines which of your units will attack enemy units. First, melee units do not engage flying units; they engage the first available unpaired unit on the ground. If there is no unit on the ground for them to attack, they will not participate in the battle. Second, flying and ranged units will attack the first unpaired flying unit available to them; if there is no flying unit, they will attack a ground-based unit. Third, unpaired units tend to attack top stacks if ranged or flying, or a lower ranked ground-based unit if melee.

C. Attack Pairing Details

If the ascendant above were to attack a nether with the following stack, what would be the pairings?
Horned Demon (melee)
Lich (ranged)
Wraith (flying)
Zombie (melee)
Efreeti (ranged)
Ghoul (melee)
Dark Elf Magician (ranged)
vs
Archangel (flying)
Knight Templar (melee)
Unicorn (melee)
Dominion (flying)
High Priest (ranged)
Mind Ripper (ranged)

The top stacks are archangels and horned demons. The archangels will attack the horned demons, but the horned demons cannot reach the archangels. They will attack the first available ground unit, the knight templars, instead.

The next stacks are the knight templars and liches. The liches are on the ground, so the knight templars will attack them. The ranged liches will attack the archangels because no unit has been paired to the archangels yet.

Next are the unicorns and wraiths. The wraiths will attack the unicorns, but the unicorns cannot reach the wraiths. The unicorns will attack the next available ground stack instead, which is the zombies.

The flying dominions will attack the wraiths since the wraiths have not been paired yet. The zombies cannot reach the dominions, so they will attack the high priests.

The efreetis are ranged, so they can attack the dominions. The high priests are also ranged, but there are no flyers that have not been paired, so they will go ahead and attack the efreetis.

The ghouls and mind rippers will attack each other since both are on the ground and there are no flyers for the mind rippers to attack.

There is no unit left in the ascendant army to attack the dark elf magicians, so they will not be attacked. The dark elf magicians are an unpaired ranged unit, and unpaired ranged units tend to attack top stacks, so the dark elf magicians will attack the archangels.

So on the ascendant side,
Archangels attack horned demons
Knight templars attack liches
Unicorns attack zombies
Dominions attack wraiths
High priests attack efreetis
Mind Rippers attack ghouls
no unit attacks Dark Elf Magicians

and on the nether side,
Horned demons attack knight templars
Liches attack archangels
Wraiths attack unicorns
Zombies attack high priests
Efreetis attack dominions
Ghouls attack mind rippers
Dark Elf Magicians attack archangels

D. What You Really Need to Know About War

You do not need to try to go through a complex analysis of the possible pairings before each battle, although in higher ranks the ability to guess an oponent's stacking and to create a stacking specifically to defeat it becomes more important. Both experience and luck play a part in successful attacks. You will soon find that certain units tend to appear in certain places in opponents' stackings. For example, eradication mages almost always have red dragons as their top stack. Nether mages attacking eradication mages often put liches as their top stack to directly attack the dragons. Phantasm mages frequently have unicorns and mind rippers near the top of their stackings, and both are weak to treants. However, a verdant attacking a phantasm mage could end up taking a serious amount of damage if the mind rippers are stacked such that they attack phoenixes or simpler units like nymphs or dryads. There is always such an unknown element involved in any attack. However, after you play The Reincarnation for a little while, you will begin to develop an intuitive idea of where enemy units are most likely to be stacked and can begin to better match your own units against them. Concentrate on attacking the magics you are most likely to win against with a good variety of powerful units, and you will have a decent chance of winning..

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CHAPTER VIII: Basic Strategy

Each of the five magic specialties has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easy to conquer land from certain mages and more difficult to gain land from others.

A. Nether
Nether has wide access to units with cold and magic attacks that eradication units are typically weak to. Nethers may also attack other nether mages, verdants, and sometimes phantasm mages. Nether is generally weak to ascendant. One of the key enchantments for nether is Black Sabbath. This powerful enchantment generates zombies and skeletons and increases MP income at the expense of population growth rate. Shroud of Darkness is an enchantment that adds additional protection from the holy spells of ascendant mages. Nether's most important resource is population. Population is necessary for the many undeads and demons that nethers generally keep in their armies, and it also powers Black Sabbath. If you lose your population, you lose most of your good units and one of your key enchantments, so be careful with your population. Concentration is a phantasm spell that many nethers also use because they often cast phantasm and eradication spells. Having Concentration reduces the chance of failure when casting these spells. Liches are one of the most powerful units in the game. They stand up well to most forms of attack except holy, especially from dominions or treants with Sword of Light. Wraiths are another popular unit because they usually do good damage to angel-type units that ascendants often use. Horned Demons have a very powerful attack that can be modified with the Flame Blade spell to give them an additional fire attack type. They can be very useful against treefolk and most other average, simple, and barracks units. Zombies and Skeletons are generated from Black Sabbath. Zombies are relatively good at absorbing damage from ascendant units, but they lack a good attack and tend to die badly to verdant units. Many nethers also keep efreeti, mind rippers, salamanders, and dark elf magicians in their armies. Hydras and Chimeras can be useful against verdants and sometimes ascendants, but they can be a defensive liability in many situations. Vampires are useful against most complex and weaker units, but they tend to die badly to most common ultimate units. Contract of the Soul will summon many Devil units into your army. They are nearly unstoppable in large numbers, but the price for calling on them is very high....

B. Verdant
Verdants have access to many powerful melee units. However, they suffer from low initiative and a general weakness to fire. Verdants often attack other verdants, ascendants, nethers, and sometimes phantasm mages. Eradication mages, with their access to many fire-based units, are sometimes very difficult for verdant mages to defeat. Plant Growth is an important enchantment for many verdant mages because it significantly increases the size of treefolk units. Other enchantments such as weather summoning and nature's favor greatly increase farm production. Verdant is often an MP-intensive magic to play, but their enchantments allow their farms to be incredibly productive. Treants form the heart of many verdant armies. Their only real weakness is to fire. They have a very powerful melee attack that can be enhanced with such spells as Sword of Light or Flame Blade to give them an extra holy or fire attack type. Concentration is a useful enchantment to have if non-verdant spells such as these are cast often. Using the item Vial of Venom will give melee units a poison attack. Verdants can also weaken the melee resistance of enemy units by casting the spell Rust Armor in battle. Mandrakes, werebears, and griffins are commonly used to supplement treants. Another popular verdant unit is the phoenix. Phoenixes are a high-damage magic unit that are immune to fire and have a powerful fire burst when attacked. However, they can be beaten by liches, mind rippers, and large numbers of wraiths. Verdant's barracks units are quite useful, particularly elves and faerie dragons. Some verdants like to use eradication units such as efreeti, salamander, and hydra, or ascendant units from the spell Gate. However, verdants can do very well using just their own units.

C. Phantasm
Phantasm is perhaps the most versatile and unpredictable magic specialty. Phantasm mages have broad access to many different kinds of units and spells and can build many diverse kinds of armies. However, phantasm is often a turn- and MP-intensive magic to play. Phantasm mages often attack other phantasm mages, eradication mages, and nether mages. Ascendant and sometimes verdant can be difficult for phantasm to defeat. Concentration is an enchantment that every phantasm mage should use because it significantly reduces the time it takes to research spells and also reduces the chances of failure when casting spells from the other magic specialties. Phantasm usually relies on the magic of other specialties more than any of the other magics do. They often use ascendant units from the spell Gate and nether units as well. Some mages like to gather their nether units from the spell Night of the Living Dead, but you should use this only if you want a variety of undisbandable units. If you want a particular nether unit, it is best to summon it directly. Horned Demons and wraiths also frequently appear in phantasm armies. Phantasm's most powerful unit is probably the mind ripper. Mind rippers are excellent used against any unit that does not have strong resistance to magic and psychic attacks. Leviathans are ultimate units that have powerful defensive abilities but rather weak offensive abilities. Phantasm's other ultimate units come from the spell Conjure Elemental. The spell gives air, ice, and water elementals randomly. Water elementals are dangerous to many ascendant units, and ice elementals are harmful to many eradication units. Air elementals can sometimes be used effectively against ascendant units. All phantasm elemental ultimates are difficult to maintain in a small country, and many phantasm mages do not use them at all until they have 5,000 acres or more of land.

D. Ascendant
Ascendants use many holy, magic, and melee units. They often attack nether, phantasm, and sometimes eradication mages. Other ascendants and especially verdants can be very difficult to defeat. Ascendant mages have many healing spells that enhance the healing abilities of many of their units and have perhaps the broadest selection of useful barracks units of all the magic specialties. Protection from Evil is an enchantment that many ascendant mages use to help ward off harmful nether magic from their countries. Ascendants also have access to two other very powerful enchantments. Love and Peace greatly increases geld income at the expense of battle attack power, and The Holy Light increases attack power and accuracy at the expense of MP income. Archangels are one of the best defensive units in the game, so much so that even many phantasm mages use them as their top stack. Unicorns are another commonly used unit. Unicorns have two major weaknesses: treants and mind rippers. Both archangels and unicorns can be obtained from the spell Gate or summoned directly. Knight templars, high priests, and catapults are very useful barracks units. However, they are rather expensive. Most mages who use them rely on the extra geld income from Love and Peace to pay for them. Dominions are a very powerful angel unit, but they can die easily on defense. However, they resurrect extremely well when the spell Resurrection is cast on them. Some ascendants like to supplement their armies with units from other magic specialties. Mind rippers, nymphs, werebears and sirenes are the most commonly used. Treants are rarely used by ascendants because plant growth cast by an ascendant is not strong enough to be worthwhile.

E. Eradication
Eradication is the most destructive of the magic specialties. Eradication mages most frequently attack other eradication mages and verdant mages. Sometimes they target ascendant mages. Nether and Phantasm mages can be difficult for an eradication mage to defeat. Battle Chant is an enchantment that some eradication mages like to use. It increases unit attack power at the expense of unit hit points. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a geld deficit since many of their units rely heavily on geld for upkeep. Eradications also have access to Red Dragons, one of the most powerful offensive units in the game. Many eradication mages keep almost all their army power in their dragons. Many eradication mages often rely heavily on the spell Stun and the item Oil Flasks. In addition to red dragons, chimeras and efreetis are commonly used in eradication armies. Chimeras have very powerful offensive capabilities when given a melee-fire attack by the spell Flame Blade, but they are weak defensively, especially to mind rippers and phoenixes. Efreetis are strong both offensively and defensively. They have few weaknesses except to fire and psychic attacks. Some eradication mages will supplement their units with nether or verdant units. The most common way of stacking for eradication mages usually involves a very large stack of red dragons and then a moderate stack of chimeras or efreetis. After this average and simple units are placed so that there are ten stacks in the army. Most damage will be caused by the top two stacks, and the rest are meant to simply survive in enough numbers to take a large amount of land. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a positive MP income and negative geld income. Red dragons are very geld and population intensive to maintain, but require very little MP compared to other ultimate units.

F. Other Sources of Information
Joining a guild or searching The Reincarnation's Universal Bulletin Board (UBB) are both good ways of learning how to play better. Many guilds are willing to take in new members and help them learn more advanced war and resource utilization strategies. Many players also enjoy the comradery that comes from being in a guild. Strategic and technical aspects of the game are also discussed in the UBB's Hall of Sages. Search first before asking your question - it may have already been asked and answered before.
[[Category:guides]]

HalfDoneWikiStartupGuide

2008-04-27T03:28:41Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Choosing a server */

=GUIDE FOR NEW MAGES=
A hands-on introduction to The Reincarnation
(edited May-June 2004, starting from an version by Darren, dd. 26 March 2004)

This guide introduces new players to the game The Reincarnation. It helps you navigating through The Reincarnation and answers the many questions new players may have.

You can use this guide as a turn-by-turn crash course (especially the parts in blue) and as reference. Please note that there are other resources to help you play the game too. The Game Manual documents the game’s various features, and the game’s Encyclopedia documents all the creatures, magic and buildings that occur in the game. This guide refers to the Game Manual and the Encyclopedia where applicable.

=Guide Outline and Reading times=
_______ Reading time Game turns Topics

'''PART I: QUICK INTRODUCTION'''
* Chapter 1 Day 1 – 0’05
** Turn 0 Making a new mage, Different servers, Different mage specialities (colours)
* Chapter 2 Day 1 – 0’15
** Turn 1 Introducing the game concept: Turns, land, geld, population, magic power, items, troops

'''PART II: QUICK START'''
* Chapter 3 Day 1 – 0’40 Turn 2-60
** Exploring, building farms, towns, workshops,
** Reading your Status Report
** Turn 61-119 Explore more, build nodes, barracks, guilds

''Total reading time Day 1: about 1 hour = Take a break here and continue the next day!''
----------------------------

* Chapter 4 Day 2 – 0’30 next 150 200
** Importance of Forts,
** Researching, basic defence

''Total reading time Day 2: about ½ hour = After that only general advice follows!''

----------------------------

PART III: QUICK REFERENCE
* Chapter 6 Day 3 and after
** War: offence and defence
** War: composing your army
* Chapter 7 Up to you!
** General tips for each speciality

--------------------

=PART I – QUICK INTRODUCTION=
==CHAPTER 1 Reincarnating your mage==

Creating a mage

Good! You have decided to start playing The Reincarnation, by reincarnating a mage.
To create a mage you have to make the following choices:
* 1. Decide what server you want to play
* 2. Decide what name you want to use for you character (your ‘Mage name’)
* 3. Decide what speciality (colour) you want your mage to be

===Choosing a server===

You have selected a server from the portal-page ‘http://www.the-reincarnation.com’, and selected ‘Create a Mage’ on that server’s entry-screen. Remember which server you choose! Depending on the server, some restrictions exist. The ‘Apprentice’ server is a mild version of the game, where turns generate slow (1 turn / 12 minutes), and where the most powerful (‘ultimate’) spells are not in use. On other servers turns generate more rapidly (normal server, 1 turn /7 minutes; ‘Blitz’ server, 1 turn / 5 minutes); these servers have the ‘ultimate’ spells in the game. ‘Guilds allowed’ means that players are allowed to form groups and play cooperatively; ‘Solo’ obviously means that this is not allowed.

===Choosing a name===
That is totally up to your imagination! Don’t use foul or insulting (e.g. racist, sexist) names. Many players use a different name for their mage than they use as their own nick-name (on bulletin boards like http://ubb.the-reincarnation.com; in game-related chatting like IRC, MSN, ICQ).
Choosing a mage speciality (colour)
Perhaps the hardest choice – this is a good time to introduce the 5 schools of magic (colours) in the game. Choosing the speciality, determines to what units (specifically more advanced units) and to what spells you will have access to (the Game Manual explains this in detail).
Each speciality has its own magic spells and units, mages have access to all units and spells of their own speciality, to most units and spells of adjacent specialities and to the more basic units and spells of their opposite specialities. There are also units in the game, that are of no speciality at all (‘plain’), to which all specialities have equal access.
The game is well balanced, any colour is equally strong. Read the information below, see what you like and if you can’t make up your mind: choose random!

===The Ascendant Order (white)===
Ascendant magic is based on piety and holiness. Ascendant mages prefer magic that heals rather than harms. Nevertheless they are fearsome in battle as they call down a host of divine beings from the heavens to fight together with their more basic human units. They are particularly strong in defence. They despise the destructive nature of their opposing specialities Eradication (red) and Nether (black).

===The Verdancy Tribe (green)===
Verdant mages channel the powers of the wild. They harness the forces of nature to enhance their countries and armies, which include plant folk, forest animals and elves. Some would consider their reliance on woodland creatures a weakness, but those who have experienced the full power of nature have learned otherwise. Verdancy’s opposing specialities are Nether (black) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Eradication League (red)===
Eradication mages believe in creation by destruction, leaving paths of scorched earth everywhere in its wake. Only Eradication mages can control the mighty red dragons, the most feared and destructive single units in the game, whose offence is awesome. Masters of fire and chaos, their brutal nature is opposite to Ascendancy (white) and Phantasm (blue).

===The Nether Convent (black)===
Practicing their dark arcane arts, the Nether school spills hordes of foul demons and undead over the lands of Terra. Nether mages often are despised mages: not only does their magic draw upon their kingdom’s population violently, these mage also sell their souls to unleash the full fury of hell upon their mortal enemies. Their opposites are the Ascendancy (white) and Verdant (green) schools.

===The Phantasm School (blue)===
Phantasm mages are beyond the physical earth: they rely on magic and psychic attacks to gradually beat their enemies down, and rarely use physical assault to defeat their enemies. Some phantasm mages believe that all other specialities are merely corrupted forms of their higher, purer magic. They despise the primitive nature of their opposites Verdancy (green) and Eradication (red).

===Your mage is created!===
After the above choices are made, and you confirmed your input, your mage will be created immediately. You should check your email, and you’ll have received an email from the game with your mage name and password. You can proceed and log in to play your mage for the first time. To do so:
* 1. go to http://www.the-reincarnation.com portal page;
* 2. choose your server’s entry screen. It is a good idea to bookmark it as one of your favourites: you need it each time you login;
* 3. choose ‘Play the Reincarnation’ by typing your mage name and its password.

If successful, you enter the Main menu of the game and can continue reading chapter 2.
If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

Validation (not in current beta mode)
The second time you login, you will need to ‘validate’ your mage. You do not need to validate until after you’ve spent your 99-th turn. You can choose to validate earlier. Validation involves a code that you receive on the email-address that you used when creating your mage. If not successful: see the Game Manual for details and troubleshooting instructions.

==Chapter 2: Your Resources, your main menu and the status report ==
===The aim of the game===
You begin The Reincarnation with only a very small kingdom and knowing only a few simple spells. You must explore or engage in war to gain more land. You must research your spell books to be able to control powerful army units and magically enhance your performance. The ultimate goal is to be the most powerful mage on the server (a fully researched mage with thousands of acres of land controlling an incredible army!). Power comes primarily from the land that makes up your kingdom and the army that defends it. You have to manage your land-use in such a way that you can support an army to defend your kingdom against land loss and to attack other kingdoms for more land!

However, before you start expanding your kingdom, you must first understand how to manage your kingdom and learn to navigate through the game. You can manage your kingdom using the information of your ‘Main Menu’ and your ‘Status Report’ screens.

===Measuring your powers===
Your ‘Main menu’ screen indicates the powers of your mage is measured in several ways:
* [[Net Power]]
This reflects a combination of the size of your kingdom (acres of land), the size of your army (your battle power), the number of forts you maintain and a number of generally less important smaller contributions (e.g. your stocks of geld). Your net power also determines which mages you can attack and which mages can attack you.

* Ranking
Your ranking is based on your net power.

* [[Spell level]]
Your spell level is determined by the spells that you have successfully researched. For new mages it is very low (spell level 5), for fully researched mages (they’ve learned all the spell books available to them) it is much higher.

Generally, the first mission for new mages, is to research all their spell books, and become ‘fully’ researched. This generally takes up ~1500 to 3000 turns (depending on efficiency and a bit of luck) i.e. at least a week of playing. A high spell level comes first – worrying about Net power and rank comes later!

===Managing your resources===
There are quite a few resources available to you in The Reincarnation: turns, land, population, money (‘geld’), magic power (usually abbreviated as m.p.) and items. Any action in the game draws upon these resources. In addition, you may consider your land and item inventory as additional resources. This includes managing your Interior, practising your Magic and leading your army. Therefore, they are introduced below.

===[[Turns]]===
This is the only resource that all mages get in equal quantities. A new created mage will have 150 turns available (on the Apprentice server, 180 on a normal server, 200 on a Blitz server – this amount we call ‘max. turns’). If a new competition has just restarted you may find you have less turns, because at the moment the game restarts, a reincarnating mage still has 0 turns. As time passes by, you will receive new turns (once every 15 minutes on Apprentice Server, once every 10 minutes on a normal server, once every 5 minutes on a Blitz server), but only if you have not already the maximum number of turns available. This means you have to login and play your mage almost every daily to spend all the turns you can possibly get.

* FAQ: When and how do I spend turns?
You can spend turns when you are logged in to the server. Login in and checking the status of your kingdom by browsing through the games menus do not cost turns. Most actions in the game do take turns (exploring land, constructing buildings, getting army units, researching spells, casting spells, using an item, attacking other mages, buying items, amongst others). Casting more complex magic (powerful spells starting enchantments or summoning strong units) takes multiple turns. Some actions take no turns (disbanding army units, destroying buildings, managing your defence assignments) and neither does messaging other mages.

* FAQ: What happens when I spend a turn?
Supposing, you just reincarnated your mage – just try and spend 1 turn. A good idea is to so by exploring (click Explore, type ‘1’ for the number of turns, and click on the confirm button. The game will tell you, you have found 18-26 acres of new land (without any buildings, i.e. 18-26 acres of wilderness). Proceed to the Main Screen. At the bottom of the screen, the game will notify you what has happened while you spend your first turn.

> EXAMPLE TO BE PUT HERE <

Note that the game counts the number of turns that you have spent since creating your mage. During your first 120 turns your mage enjoys a special protected status for new mages. After spending turn 120 you’ll fully take part in competition on the server. It is wise to take notice of this now and not spent turns too ruthlessly! A decent way to use your first 120 turns is provided in the next chapters. Following this will guide you along the basic features in the game.

===Land===
Your land can also be viewed as a resource. The more land you have, the more powerful your army can be, the more population, geld and m.p. and items you can generate/maintain. You use this resource by building structures. There are different types of structures that you can build on your land. Some of these building you may want to have loads of at one phase of the game, and much less during another phase of the game – i.e. depending on your strategy, you decide what to build.

* FAQ: How do I get more land?
There are several ways to get more land, most importantly (1) by exploring and (2) by warring other kingdoms, called ‘land grabbing’. In your first 120 turns exploring is the only way to get land, and you can not be attacked yet, so you can’t lose land. After that exploring remains a possibility, but you will find that the more land you get, the less new wilderness a turn of exploration will give you. On some servers, exploration is limited to a maximum amount of land (3500 acres), thereafter common exploring gains 0 acres/turn and is useless.
Land grabbing is a more challenging way to get land. It is less save than exploring, because the mage that you attack to try to grab some land may successfully defend its territory, or if you happen to win land, may decide to try to grab it back in a counter attack!.

* FAQ: How do I lose land?
The most common way to lose land is when you are unable to defend your country. The maximum amount of land that you can lose in a single battle is proportional to your total amount of land. There are protection mechanisms in the game that stop new mages attacking you for a while, so you are not likely to lose all your land over night. The amount of land lost when you fail to defend is usually more than you can win in a single attack (after a battle the attacker only gets 1/3 of the battle ground, while 2/3 of the returns to unexplored wilderness).
You can first be attacked after you’ve spent your 120est turn. Don’t worry about it yet, and keep reading this guide, in the next chapters we’ll set you up so you have a decent chance in the game!

* FAQ: What do I do with my land?
You need to find a proper way to use your land (numbers of farms, towns, barracks, etc. etc. etc.) and manage the other resources (population, geld, magic power, items) to maintain your army and defend your kingdom. We will guide you doing that in the next chapter.
Getting more land and spending turns!
Getting land is central in the game. It is generally unwise, to spend your very last saved-up turns to gain a lot of land: you need additional turn spending bringing newly gained land in to use, other wise chances are that you will not be able to defend it! This is why after you’ve read up to chapter 4, we advice you to log off and continue playing the next day, starting with maximum turns again.

===[[Population]] and [[Geld]]===
These two resources are very closely linked. Generally, the more population you have, the more productive your economy and the greater your geld income. Your population lives in towns, but their food occurs on farms. Hence a significant part of your land should be occupied by farms and towns. Your army units are also part of your population and have to be fed using the same farms.

* Checking your population and geld status
Your ‘Main menu’ screen tells you how many people your farms and towns can potentially support, and how many people currently inhabit your country. However, you’ll find much more detailed information in the ‘Status Report’ screen, in its ‘Residential Info’ section. So have a look at your status report! The ‘Residential Info’ section gives information on:

* Max. Residential Space – the total population space available from all buildings.
* Food Production - the number of people your farms can support with their food.

To manage your land in the best possible way, these two numbers should be in balance (it is a waste of land to produce to much food when it is not used; it is a waste of land to have to much residential space when nobody lives there because there isn’t food enough). In practice this means from time to time, you’ll have to check your status report, and decide if you need more or less towns or farms. It is not needed to get the numbers exactly equal – approximately equal is good enough. Build or destroy towns to change Max Residential Space, and build or destroy farms to change Food Production (we’ll do that in the next chapter).

The amount of population that you actually can maintain may be lower than the maximum determined by Residential Space and Food Production. This is because the troops in your army rely on the same food production, and some troops occupy residential space too. Once you’ve reached your maximum amount of population, you will notice that your population will no longer grow (i.e. no/very few new population is created each turn).

* FAQ: What are geld and population used for?
Geld and population are used to maintain buildings, to maintain certain enchantments and to maintain certain army units during every turn that you spend (we’ll do that in the next chapters). You may also use geld to acquire items, spells and heroes on the Black Market and even donate it to the gods at the Altar of Darkness (we’ll do that later in the game).

* FAQ: Can I lose population?
In the game, it is possible to lose your population, for example, because you summoned population-consuming units, or because you contracted the epidemic Black Death in one of your wars). It may take quite a couple of turns to recover your population, so if you can avoid losing your population – avoid it! It is also possible to have more population than you can house – in that case you will lose the excess population within a few turns.

* FAQ: Can I lose geld other than spending it?
A result of losing population is that your geld income drops too. This will make your geld reserves shrink drastically, since the upkeep for buildings and army will draw upon it. If there is not enough geld in reserve to supply your country while your population and economy recover, you will begin losing summoned and recruited units that require geld upkeep and eventually may even lose your buildings. In the worst case, you’ll start to lose fortresses – and when you’ve lost the last one, your kingdom has collapsed and your mage is defeated. That means it is ‘Game Over’ and you can only reincarnate a new mage and start all over.
Another way to lose geld is by attacks (pillages) or by magic (spells, items) released on you by other mages.

* FAQ: What do I do if I am losing geld?
If you find you are running out of geld, you may sell a few items on the black market (but it takes a while before you get your money) or pillage another country to gain more resources (but you may be countered for that). Gelding only works when there is some geld income left, and when upkeep is demanding less than twice your geld income. If you find you lose geld because you have too many troops, you may disband a number of your troops, but not all units are disbandable!

So basically: avoid running bankrupt and maintain a healthy population in your kingdom. When you are learning the basics of the game: take small steps, don’t build too many buildings at once and don’t recruit or summon too many units at once. Leave experiments and living on the edge of population and geld for later times! Learning how to recover from population loss or geld bankruptcy is certainly worth it, but it is stuff for more experienced players and not something new mages should trouble themselves with.

Further reading: you could check-out the Chapter INTERIOR in the Game Manual and the Book of buildings of the Encyclopedia.

===[[mana|Magic Power (m.p.)]]===
Magic power (m.p.) is your resource to cast spells, for example to summon units to your army or to unleash a spell over another kingdom. Many actions in the game consume m.p., either instantaneously (casting spells, dispelling enchantments) or turn-by-turn continuously (maintaining enchantments, upkeep of army units, heroes and magic-barriers). Magic power is related to the nodes built on your land: nodes both generate m.p. and store m.p..

You may run a negative m.p. income (e.g. have to little m.p. generated each turn by your nodes, in comparison with the m.p. your kingdom consumes each turn), permitted that you have saved up enough before. Many mages do this, because it allows them to have an oversized army for a while, which is be beneficial during attack or defence. The M.P. charge action allows you to focus on generating m.p., which causes your nodes to generate significant extra amounts of m.p. (in exchange for turns ofcourse!). Alternatively, there are items that give a quick extra dose of m.p.. If you run out of M.P. you will not be able to sustain enchantments on your kingdom, and summoned or recruited units and building that have a m.p. upkeep will disappear: not just a few but complete divisions (‘stacks’) of your army – so beware!.

===Items===
A last resource are items that you may generate, buy or steal. Items will generate occasionally when you have build amounts of ‘guilds’ on your land. You buy items by spending ‘geld’ on the ‘Black Market’. Stealing items is possible by attacking (‘pillage’) or by using certain magic (spells, items). There are many different items. Some are very popular and hence their price on the ‘black market’ may be high. Instead of using those items, you can also decide to sell them. When used in this way, you may consider items an extra form of cash.

* FAQ: What do I use items for?
Items can be very valuable in battles and in-between battles. Knowing about the exact effect of each item is an advanced mage skill. The descriptions in the encyclopedia gives an indication for each item, but does not tell exactly you how each items works, nor is it specific for what unit or against what unit it is most effective! The types of things items can do:
** Battle-use items may modify the performance of troops (yours, your enemies) in battles
** Non-Battle items benefit your kingdom (give resources, give troops), and/or
harm your enemy’s kingdom (reveal tactics, destroy resources)

When not yet used, normal items (‘lesser items’) do not have any impact on your own kingdom: you just have them. For ‘Unique items’ this is different. Unique items are so powerful that while in your kingdom, they may have an effect on your kingdom each turn they are in your possession. Dealing with unique items is stuff for advanced mages, so don’t mess about it while learning the basics of the game.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘Magic’ in the Game Manual.

===Troops===
The last asset discussed here are your troops themselves. They make up your army and contribute a lot to your net power (similar as land does). In someway, all the other resources are used to upkeep and regenerate troops for your army. They determine your offensive and defensive capacities (together with your spell level, enchantments and your forts and barrier buildings).

* FAQ: How do I get troops
You can get troops for your army in various ways. You can train part of your population to using the barracks that you may have built. These units are called ‘Recruits’. These are troops that come relatively cheap and in large numbers, but in small numbers they are not that strong. When you just reincarnated, you’ll find a basic number of recruits are already in your army, for example at the bottom of your ‘Status Report’. We’ll introduce you to recruiting in the next chapters. Another way to get troops is to use your magic. As you learn more and more spells, you’ll gain access to more and more powerful units that you can ‘Summon’ into your army by casting a spell. In general, the more powerful these units are, the smaller their number is and the higher their price (in amount of m.p. and number of turns needed to cast the summon spell, as well as in their upkeep once you have them). Some items also summon troops. We’ll introduce you to summoning in the next chapters. A third way to get troops is by hiring them on the Black Market. Heroes are a special kind of troops that you hire individually. We’ll introduce you to hiring troops and heroes in the last chapters.

* FAQ: What troops do I use?
That is totally up to you! Each type of troops in your army we refer to as a ‘stack’. You may choose to use just one type of troops (a mono-stack), or have multiple troops composing your army (a mage can command 10 stacks in his army). All troops have different strengths and weaknesses that can be modified by enchantments, battle spells and items. Battles can be won in different ways: depending on the types of troops involved, a lot of troops may die at both sides, or hardly any unit may die. So there is no single answer to this question, but there are some typical combinations that a lot of people tend to use. We’ll introduce you to composing an army in the last chapters.

Further reading: you could check out the Chapter ‘War’ and ‘Black Market’ in the Game Manual, and the Book of Units and Book of Heroes of the Encyclopedia.

=PART II - QUICK START=
==Chapter 3: Your First Turns ==
===Different phases in the game===
Most mages try to research their spell books reasonably fast, to reach their ‘fully researched’ spell level. This takes about 2000-3000 turns (about two weeks of play, login in every day). Only the first 120 turns you enjoy some protection, so during most of your research time you have to defend your land. The problem is that during research, parts of your resources (land, turns, etc.) are used for your research. Guild-buildings have to be accommodated (they need land) and have to paid for (their upkeep) and researching a complex spell takes many turns. Only when you finish researching, you can drop part of your guilds and can start using your turns and land to maintain a bigger army that can grab more land and defend against more powerful other mages.

Most mages therefore lay low with less than 2500 land, most of it filled with guilds to research as turn-efficiently as possible, until they have learned all their spell books. Mean while they have to defend, but these are less ‘big’ battles than the mages with more land fight, and the losses are equally less. For your first try, in this guide for new mages we advise at least to learn parts of your spell book before you start attacking other mages, and try to learn all your spells, before you try to really climb the ranks. Of course there are many other strategies (like attacking from the first moment that it is possible, or concentrating on getting a lot of geld first), specifically when the server has just restarted and all mages on the server still have low spells levels, simply because not enough turns have been generated yet.

===The very first 60 turns (turns 1-60)===
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.
More land, building, using workshops
There are several key structures that are important to building and maintaining your country at this time. You will need plenty farms and towns (for geld and population), quite a lot of guilds (for research), some forts (you have to have forts, if your last fort falls it’s game over!), some nodes (for m.p.), some barracks (to recruit army units)….. but most of all: you need to build all these buildings and to do that reasonably efficient you need a nice amount of workshops.

* The more workshops you have, the more buildings you can build in a turn:
** If you have XX workshops, you can build XX farms per turn
** If you have XXX workshops, you can build XXX farms per turn

This also goes for building workshops themselves: the more you have, the more you can build the next turn. As you build extra workshops and then go to the build screen again, you may see the amounts of buildings that you can build per turn increase.So build workshops step-by-step (in amounts worth one/two turns at a time), rather than building a few hundred in one huge step (over many turns) – because you will build more workshops in less turns in the first way. We are going to use this in our first 60 turns.

===Turn 1-10===
Our aim is explore some extra land, and build a nice amount of farms, towns and workshops on it, so we have a basis for the next 60 turns. We will not worry about troops: each mage has received a basic amount on reincarnation that we’ll just keep. Also, we will not worry about researching spells: we’ll set up our kingdom so we can start researching later on.

Check your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have 200 land (220 land if you already explored 1 turn), with a basic amount of most buildings and some wilderness.

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Your income of m.p., of geld and of population is all positive, so at this moment there is nothing to worry about. Let’s explore a little bit more land. Go back to your main menu, choose Explore and explore for 9 more turns (10 if you didn’t already explore a first turn).
You will have increased you kingdom with about 200 acres of wilderness.

===Turn 10-20===
Check your ‘Main Screen’ and your ‘Status Report’. You will see you have about

>> STATUS REPORT INTERIOR << >> INCOME <<

Let’s build some farms and towns for more population, and let’s start to build some workshops, in preparation of major building in the next turns. Hereto you go back to the Main Screen, choose Interior and type in the following:

===Turn 11-60===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

How many workshops you keep at what phase in the game, depends on your strategy. If you (plan to) have a lot of wilderness to build on, you may want to build more workshops (in advance, during or immediately after exploring/warring for land). For a new mage, who will get his first land from exploring this is the case.

* Are workshops only important at the beginning of the game?
It is wise to always maintain at the very least have some (100) workshops. If you find your kingdom heavily attacked, it may be wise to have workshops to be able to rebuild your country quickly! As a rule of thumb: a reasonable amount to keep is ~300; a fairly good amount to have is >599 (that way you can rebuild 1 fort in 1 turn...)

==Your second 60 turns (turns 60-119)==
During your first 120 turns you cannot attack or be attacked (amongst some other restrictions – see Game Manual). You should use this time to prepare your country for expansion.

===Guilds===
Your ‘Guild’ buildings generate items and allow you to research spells. The more guilds you have, the faster your research goes. You should try to keep at least 1000 guilds while researching. Many mages try to maintain 1500-1600 guilds or more during the research phase of their country. Some mages also like to keep a few hundred guilds present for item generation after research. This may not always be a very efficient use of land unless items on the market are very expensive. Often it is better to just buy items you need rather than rely on random generation from guilds.

Note: to confuse you a bit, the same word ‘Guild’ is used for this building and for groups of mages that play cooperatively – our apologies!

===Barracks===

>> WRITE THIS OUT AS A STEP BY STEP EXAMPLE <<

'''See you tomorrow!'''

During your first 120 turns you could not be attacked, but as soon as you have spend turn 120, you will be exposed to other players. It makes little sense to expose yourself, when you have only 60-80 turns to spend: you can only make limited progress and can hardly set up your defences. So: let’s not spent turn 120 right now, but wait a bit. You can calculate at about what time you will reach max turns on your server. On apprentice server, 120 turns will accumulate in 30 hours (about one day). So you if you have spent 120 turns in the last hour, tomorrow at about this time will be a good time to continue reading this guide.

=Chapter 4: The next 150-200 turns following turn 120=
==Login again (select server, and enter mage name and password)==

If you had not spend more your 120 turns, you’ll find your kingdom exactly as you left it, with the only difference that you have accumulated extra turns (150-200 may be available, depending on server and time since last login).

Remember, that soon as you spend your 120 turn, you lose your apprentice status and other mages are allowed to attack you. Let’s take a look at the mages around you before we start moving! Click ‘Ranking’ on the Main Screen, to display the mages in your direct vicinity. You’ll probably see that some mages are marked ‘A’ in the Ranklist. These are apprentice mages just like you are/were. Mages without the ‘A’ have spend more than 120 turns and in principle can attack you. Don’t worry: they will not be all online at the same moment as you. Chances are it will take a few hours before someone will notice you and decides to hit you but nevertheless – let’s make the most of our turns before that time and see if we can research some spells and set up some basic defence using our turns!

If you follow our guide line – don’t stop half way – that would leave you very vulnerable! There is a small chance someone may attack you while you are trying to follow our guide lines – in that case – don’t panic. If it is just one hit, and you lost land: try to restore the damage by exploring a few turns and rebuild farms, towns, workshops and guilds, and proceed (you will just have a few spells less researched). If you find that someone hits you a couple of times: sit it out - eventually you will be ‘in protection’ (check your ranking and see if a ‘P’ appears. After that, no-one can hit you anymore for 24 hours. See it as a blessing… it means you don’t have to worry about defense for 23 hours, can spend all your turns recovering an researching, and just have to log in the day after, at a slightly earlier time, to research some more and set up the basic army. Let’s not think about these doom scenarios.

Let’s get in to gear and spend a good amount of turns building guilds and researching, and meanwhile let’s work on a bit of an army.

* FAQ: Why fortresses?
You must have fortresses to defend your country, however they are expensive. If you lose all your fortresses, your country will collapse. Having many fortresses gives your troops a hit point bonus when defending (see Game Manual). Fortresses also add significantly to your net power and thus your ranking. Too many fortresses will boost you high up in the ranking among mages with much more powerful armies that will be difficult to defend against (despite your defence bonuses). Many mages keep about fifteen to twenty fortresses. In war-times (repetitive battles with the same enemies) you may need more, if you have a lot of land, you may want more.

==Your first 150/200 turns after turn 120==

-------------------------------------------

NEVER FINISHED

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'''Part III - QUICK REFERENCE'''
=Chapter 5: Raising your defences: your army=
==The dilemma of numbers versus power==
To win a battle, an attacker needs (A) to cause a minimum amount of damage to the enemy army and (B) not suffer more damage with its own army. The damage is calculated based on the power of your army. The minimum amount of damage to win a battle is 5% for a regular attack and 10% for a siege).
To win land (including a fort) after a battle, the winner needs enough surviving troops to claim the acres of won land. The maximum amount that a defender can lose is 5% in a regular battle, and 10% in a siege battle. For a regular attack this happens when the attacker has at least 5,000 surviving units in his army. For a siege attack this happens when the attack has at least 12,500 surviving units. In the latter case, at least 2,500 troops are needed to win the fort.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am attacking?
So just having a few tens to 100’s very powerful units is not enough if you want to grab land with them: you need to bring in larger numbers of troops. However, troops of which you can afford large numbers are not that powerful. Mages have to solve this dilemma when they compose their army for attacking. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

* FAQ: what does this mean when I am defending?
For defending armies, it may seem smart to only have small stacks of very powerful, very hard to kill units. However, that will make you vulnerable for pillages: you only ward off pillaging armies if you have a sufficient number of troops in your army. Their power doesn’t matter that much. Another way to deal with it, is to try to kill off large numbers of less powerful enemy troops. As long as that is successful, even if you lose the battle, there is still a good chance you don’t lose that much land, since so little attacking troops survive. The way to do it is by ‘stacking’ (ordering your army) in the right way. Have multiple stacks, some very powerful but few in numbers and some not that powerful but large in numbers.

==The dilemmas of Flying versus Non-Flying units and Ranged versus Non-Ranged units==

Stack pairing, unable to counter etc.

==The dilemmas of [[Initiative]] and [[Accuracy]]==
Base accuracy, [[Marksmanship]]
[[Fatigue]],[[Endurance]]

=Chapter 6: Raising your defences – non army=
Apart from composing a strong army

Forts

===Barriers===
For new mages: don’t worry too much about barriers, while you are not yet researched. Only when you start to grab large amounts of land and start climbing the ranks, you will need the barriers as part of your defence.

Barriers are magical structures that ward off harmful spells and items that other mages may attempt to use against you. However, it is usually not efficient to build barriers until you have finished researching all your spells. Barriers are magic buildings, that require a significant amount of m.p. for their upkeep. Once you finish researching spells, building barriers on 2.5% of your land will provide maximum barrier protection from spells and items. That percentage will give you the maximum resistance of 75% (i.e. you’ll block 3 out of 4 incoming spells and items). You may be able to further increase your resistance to spells of specific speciality by casting certain enchantments on your country.

Barriers are the only buildings for which the building rate is not influenced by workshops: it is always 1 turn per barrier. This means that if you work yourself to 4000 land without barriers, you will need 100 turns to build the 100 barriers that would give you maximum resistance against incoming magic… 100 turns is a lot of turns – it may be wise to start slowly build barriers earlier, as a rule of thumb, they are worth it (and you’ll be able to afford decent numbers) as soon as you climb over 2,500 land.

===Enchantments===

===Heroes===

=Chapter 7: Raising your defences – stack tips=
==Nether==

==Verdancy==

==Phantasm==

==Eradication==

==Ascendancy==

==Nether==

-------------------------------------
=OLD STUFF FROM ORIGINAL VERSION==

CHAPTER IV: How to Start Your Initial Build-up and Research

Since you cannot attack when you first reincarnate, explore a few turns to gain some extra land. Start building your workshops. When you are about half finished with your workshops, build a few towns and farms to keep your population and geld increasing. You may need to explore several times. Continue exploring and building workshops until you have as many as you want. Now many mages will build 100-150 nodes and more towns and farms. You should have taken about 70-80 turns by now. If you wish to continue expanding through warfare, select a unit to recruit and begin building barracks. Popular recruitable units include archers, militia, knight templars, high priests, faerie dragons, elven magicians, elven archers, fire giants, troglodytes, wolf raiders, and dark elf magicians. You may want to experiment with others. Continue exploring and building barracks until you have about 1200-1300 acres.

Keep watching your geld and mp income. If either become negative, you should probably build more nodes or towns and farms. At the end of 120 turns you should have about 10,000-20,000 troops. You may also wish to include some summoned units. However, your summoning power is very limited at this stage due to your low spell level. Now you can begin attacking other mages in your power range. It is usually best to wait until you have all your turns before you begin attacking. When you have enough land, build guilds and research spells beginning with your own color. Summon a defense. Archangels, unicorns, efreeti, griffins, wraiths, horned demons, djinnis, and mind rippers are popular choices for defense as this stage, but you may want to try other units. Also remember to set a defensive spell and item assignment.

A. During Research
Expect to be attacked occasionally during research and to lose some land. It is difficult to defend well at this time. You may attempt to explore your land back or attack other mages to gain land. Some mages prefer to keep a small amount of land with no army during research. If you attempt this, be sure you have enough forts that you will not lose them all to attacks. Also, cast Concentration on yourself, and dispel and recast occasionally. It is a phantasm spell that can significantly help speed up research. You should research all spells of each magic specialty that are available to you. When you are finished researching all the different magic specialties' spells, you will have the opportunity to learn Armageddon. However, researching Armageddon will not help your spell level or spell casting abilities.

B. After Research
After you have completed researching spells, destroy most or all of your guilds and begin converting your kingdom to prepare for warfare.

3. Nodes
Depending on the kind of magic you play, you will need different amounts of nodes. The following amounts are approximate; you may need more or less:
Nether: 25%-35% nodes
Verdant: 40%-50% nodes
Phantasm: 40%-50% nodes
Ascendant: 35%-50% nodes
Eradication: 25%-35% nodes

3. Other Buildings
Most of the rest of your land should be farms and towns. You need some barracks if you want to use barracks units and keep about 299 workshops.

3. Enchantments
Cast enchantments at your full spell level after research. If you already casted them during research, like concentration, you have to dispell them first. Some enchantments worth considering are:
Nether: Shroud of Darkness, Concentration, Black Sabbath
Verdant: Sunray, Plant Growth, Concentration, Nature's Favor, Weather Summoning
Phantasm: Concentration, Mind Bar, Weather Summoning
Ascendant: Protection from Evil, Concentration, Weather Summoning, Resist Elements
Eradication: Concentration, Weather Summoning

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CHAPTER V: War

Eventually you will need to go to war, either to defend your country, retaliate against your enemies, or to conquer new land. When you are attacking, you are most likely to win battles against foes that are at 80% of your net power and who have more land than you. When you are defending, you should be oversummoned to the point that you have a significant negative net MP or geld income. Having a larger army than your resources could normally support will help you defend better if you are attacked. When using your turns for warfare, there is a basic sequence that allows you to use your turns most efficiently. Generally, this is to wait until you have full turns and then use them all at once to: attack / disband / build / MP charge or geld / summon / attack

The attacks at the beginning and end of the sequence are optional. If you are using recruited units, you should be recruiting them while you are MP charging or gelding. It is often more efficient to disband some of your units before MP charging or gelding and then to summon them back when you are finished than to MP charge or geld with your full army in place.

A. Conquering Land

1. Regular Attack

In a regular attack you can conquer up to 5% of another mage's land. Approximately 2/3 of this land will be destroyed in the fighting, leaving the other 1/3 as structures and wilderness that is added to your country. This is the easiest kind of attack to win.

2. Siege Attack

Siege attacks allow you to conquer up to 10% of another mage's land. Again, approximately 2/3 of this will be destroyed in the fighting. In a siege attack, the defender gets several defensive bonuses. This makes siege attacks much more difficult to win than regular attacks.

3. Occupying Land After War

In order to keep the land you win, you must have an army large enough to occupy the land. It is not possible to use only your most powerful units and take any significant amount of land. Although powerful units are necessary to win battles, weaker units must be present in large numbers - and survive the battle - in order for you to have enough troops to occupy the land you win. Generally you should have at least 5,000 surviving troops for each 1,000 acres of enemy land you are sieging.

B. Building an Army
There is no one single correct way to build an army for each magic type. Experience, experiment, and personal playing styles all play significant roles in the types of armies mages create. To create a successful army, you need to become aware of your own units' strengths and weaknesses. You also need to become aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the units often used by mages you most often attack and who most often attack you.

(back to top)

CHAPTER VI: Units

A. Ultimate
Ultimate units are the most powerful units in The Reincarnation. Ultimate units are capable of defeating most other units in the game. However, their upkeep is very high, so most mages cannot afford to keep very many of them in their armies.

B. Complex
Complex units provide the bulk offensive power in many mages' armies. There is at least one complex unit that can attack each ultimate unit with relatively good success. Liches fare well against eradication ultimate units, for example, but they do not do well against ascendant ultimates. Ascendant ultimates can be beaten by the treants many verdants use, but treants are in turn harmed by the eradication ultimates. Many complex units also do well against certain other complex units as well as the weaker units.

C. Average
Average units are often used to protect weaker units or sometimes appear in large numbers to challenge complex and even ultimate units. Most average units do well against only a few other units and must be carefully placed in an army to avoid being attacked by more powerful units. There are some exceptions to this. The nether average units (ghouls, wraiths, and horned demons) are sometimes used in very large numbers to fight ascendant mages, for example.

D. Simple
Ranged simple units such as soul speakers and psychic wisps are often used at the back of an army to make ranged attacks against more powerful units while avoiding being directly attacked. Units such as dryads and zombies are often used to build up the total number of troops attacking so that maximum land is gained. However, almost all simple units will die very badly if attacked by more powerful units.

E. Barracks
Using barracks units is usually an efficient way to acquire part of your army while using turns for other things such as MP charging and summoning ultimate and complex units. The most popular barracks units to use are probably the ranged units like archers, catapults, high priests, elven magicians, and dark elf magicians. Others such as faerie dragons can be very powerful in large numbers, as can knight templars. In this way barracks units serve the same purpose as simple units: boosting the total number of troops surviving a battle in order to occupy full land.

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CHAPTER VII: Ordering Your Troops for Battle

Ordering you troops for battle, or 'stacking,' is one of the more complex aspect of playing The Reincarnation because it affects which of your units attack which enemy units during battle You can send up to 10 different kinds of units into battle. Each group of units is called a stack. The order the units will appear in battle is the same as the order given in your status report. The percentages in your status report give you the percent of a unit's net power in your entire army. If you have more than 10 stacks, only the first 10 will engage in battle. In the simplest terms, if you want a unit higher in your stacking, summon more of it or disband other units that are above it in your stacking. Likewise, if you want a unit lower, disband it or summon more of a lower-stacked unit above it. Be careful when working with units with population upkeep like liches and wraiths. These cannot be disbanded.

A. Stacking Details
The net power of a stack is determined by multiplying the unit's power rank (listed in the unit's entry in the encyclopedia) by the number of units in the stack. The order of stacking is determined by the stacking modifier applied to each stack. These modifiers are 1.00 for all ranged units, 2.25 for all flying units, and 1.50 for all other units. The modifiers are multiplied by each stack's net power percentage to get the battle power. So if you happen to be an ascendant mage, for example, and the net power of your army consists of
25% knight templar (a melee unit)
20% archangel (a flying unit)
20% unicorn (a melee unit)
15% high priest (a ranged unit)
10% mind ripper (a ranged unit)
10% dominion (a flying unit)
The battle power is
Knight Templar: 25*1.50 = 37.5 battle power
Archangel: 20*2.25 = 45 battle power
Unicorn: 20*1.50 = 30 battle power
High Priest: 15*1.00 = 15 battle power
Mind Ripper: 10*1.00 = 10 battle power
Dominion: 10*2.25 = 22.5 battle power
And your stacks would appear in battle in the following order:
Archangel
Knight Templar
Unicorn
Dominion
High Priest
Mind Ripper

B. Attack Pairing

There are three general rules that determines which of your units will attack enemy units. First, melee units do not engage flying units; they engage the first available unpaired unit on the ground. If there is no unit on the ground for them to attack, they will not participate in the battle. Second, flying and ranged units will attack the first unpaired flying unit available to them; if there is no flying unit, they will attack a ground-based unit. Third, unpaired units tend to attack top stacks if ranged or flying, or a lower ranked ground-based unit if melee.

C. Attack Pairing Details

If the ascendant above were to attack a nether with the following stack, what would be the pairings?
Horned Demon (melee)
Lich (ranged)
Wraith (flying)
Zombie (melee)
Efreeti (ranged)
Ghoul (melee)
Dark Elf Magician (ranged)
vs
Archangel (flying)
Knight Templar (melee)
Unicorn (melee)
Dominion (flying)
High Priest (ranged)
Mind Ripper (ranged)

The top stacks are archangels and horned demons. The archangels will attack the horned demons, but the horned demons cannot reach the archangels. They will attack the first available ground unit, the knight templars, instead.

The next stacks are the knight templars and liches. The liches are on the ground, so the knight templars will attack them. The ranged liches will attack the archangels because no unit has been paired to the archangels yet.

Next are the unicorns and wraiths. The wraiths will attack the unicorns, but the unicorns cannot reach the wraiths. The unicorns will attack the next available ground stack instead, which is the zombies.

The flying dominions will attack the wraiths since the wraiths have not been paired yet. The zombies cannot reach the dominions, so they will attack the high priests.

The efreetis are ranged, so they can attack the dominions. The high priests are also ranged, but there are no flyers that have not been paired, so they will go ahead and attack the efreetis.

The ghouls and mind rippers will attack each other since both are on the ground and there are no flyers for the mind rippers to attack.

There is no unit left in the ascendant army to attack the dark elf magicians, so they will not be attacked. The dark elf magicians are an unpaired ranged unit, and unpaired ranged units tend to attack top stacks, so the dark elf magicians will attack the archangels.

So on the ascendant side,
Archangels attack horned demons
Knight templars attack liches
Unicorns attack zombies
Dominions attack wraiths
High priests attack efreetis
Mind Rippers attack ghouls
no unit attacks Dark Elf Magicians

and on the nether side,
Horned demons attack knight templars
Liches attack archangels
Wraiths attack unicorns
Zombies attack high priests
Efreetis attack dominions
Ghouls attack mind rippers
Dark Elf Magicians attack archangels

D. What You Really Need to Know About War

You do not need to try to go through a complex analysis of the possible pairings before each battle, although in higher ranks the ability to guess an oponent's stacking and to create a stacking specifically to defeat it becomes more important. Both experience and luck play a part in successful attacks. You will soon find that certain units tend to appear in certain places in opponents' stackings. For example, eradication mages almost always have red dragons as their top stack. Nether mages attacking eradication mages often put liches as their top stack to directly attack the dragons. Phantasm mages frequently have unicorns and mind rippers near the top of their stackings, and both are weak to treants. However, a verdant attacking a phantasm mage could end up taking a serious amount of damage if the mind rippers are stacked such that they attack phoenixes or simpler units like nymphs or dryads. There is always such an unknown element involved in any attack. However, after you play The Reincarnation for a little while, you will begin to develop an intuitive idea of where enemy units are most likely to be stacked and can begin to better match your own units against them. Concentrate on attacking the magics you are most likely to win against with a good variety of powerful units, and you will have a decent chance of winning..

(back to top)

CHAPTER VIII: Basic Strategy

Each of the five magic specialties has its own particular strengths and weaknesses. This makes it easy to conquer land from certain mages and more difficult to gain land from others.

A. Nether
Nether has wide access to units with cold and magic attacks that eradication units are typically weak to. Nethers may also attack other nether mages, verdants, and sometimes phantasm mages. Nether is generally weak to ascendant. One of the key enchantments for nether is Black Sabbath. This powerful enchantment generates zombies and skeletons and increases MP income at the expense of population growth rate. Shroud of Darkness is an enchantment that adds additional protection from the holy spells of ascendant mages. Nether's most important resource is population. Population is necessary for the many undeads and demons that nethers generally keep in their armies, and it also powers Black Sabbath. If you lose your population, you lose most of your good units and one of your key enchantments, so be careful with your population. Concentration is a phantasm spell that many nethers also use because they often cast phantasm and eradication spells. Having Concentration reduces the chance of failure when casting these spells. Liches are one of the most powerful units in the game. They stand up well to most forms of attack except holy, especially from dominions or treants with Sword of Light. Wraiths are another popular unit because they usually do good damage to angel-type units that ascendants often use. Horned Demons have a very powerful attack that can be modified with the Flame Blade spell to give them an additional fire attack type. They can be very useful against treefolk and most other average, simple, and barracks units. Zombies and Skeletons are generated from Black Sabbath. Zombies are relatively good at absorbing damage from ascendant units, but they lack a good attack and tend to die badly to verdant units. Many nethers also keep efreeti, mind rippers, salamanders, and dark elf magicians in their armies. Hydras and Chimeras can be useful against verdants and sometimes ascendants, but they can be a defensive liability in many situations. Vampires are useful against most complex and weaker units, but they tend to die badly to most common ultimate units. Contract of the Soul will summon many Devil units into your army. They are nearly unstoppable in large numbers, but the price for calling on them is very high....

B. Verdant
Verdants have access to many powerful melee units. However, they suffer from low initiative and a general weakness to fire. Verdants often attack other verdants, ascendants, nethers, and sometimes phantasm mages. Eradication mages, with their access to many fire-based units, are sometimes very difficult for verdant mages to defeat. Plant Growth is an important enchantment for many verdant mages because it significantly increases the size of treefolk units. Other enchantments such as weather summoning and nature's favor greatly increase farm production. Verdant is often an MP-intensive magic to play, but their enchantments allow their farms to be incredibly productive. Treants form the heart of many verdant armies. Their only real weakness is to fire. They have a very powerful melee attack that can be enhanced with such spells as Sword of Light or Flame Blade to give them an extra holy or fire attack type. Concentration is a useful enchantment to have if non-verdant spells such as these are cast often. Using the item Vial of Venom will give melee units a poison attack. Verdants can also weaken the melee resistance of enemy units by casting the spell Rust Armor in battle. Mandrakes, werebears, and griffins are commonly used to supplement treants. Another popular verdant unit is the phoenix. Phoenixes are a high-damage magic unit that are immune to fire and have a powerful fire burst when attacked. However, they can be beaten by liches, mind rippers, and large numbers of wraiths. Verdant's barracks units are quite useful, particularly elves and faerie dragons. Some verdants like to use eradication units such as efreeti, salamander, and hydra, or ascendant units from the spell Gate. However, verdants can do very well using just their own units.

C. Phantasm
Phantasm is perhaps the most versatile and unpredictable magic specialty. Phantasm mages have broad access to many different kinds of units and spells and can build many diverse kinds of armies. However, phantasm is often a turn- and MP-intensive magic to play. Phantasm mages often attack other phantasm mages, eradication mages, and nether mages. Ascendant and sometimes verdant can be difficult for phantasm to defeat. Concentration is an enchantment that every phantasm mage should use because it significantly reduces the time it takes to research spells and also reduces the chances of failure when casting spells from the other magic specialties. Phantasm usually relies on the magic of other specialties more than any of the other magics do. They often use ascendant units from the spell Gate and nether units as well. Some mages like to gather their nether units from the spell Night of the Living Dead, but you should use this only if you want a variety of undisbandable units. If you want a particular nether unit, it is best to summon it directly. Horned Demons and wraiths also frequently appear in phantasm armies. Phantasm's most powerful unit is probably the mind ripper. Mind rippers are excellent used against any unit that does not have strong resistance to magic and psychic attacks. Leviathans are ultimate units that have powerful defensive abilities but rather weak offensive abilities. Phantasm's other ultimate units come from the spell Conjure Elemental. The spell gives air, ice, and water elementals randomly. Water elementals are dangerous to many ascendant units, and ice elementals are harmful to many eradication units. Air elementals can sometimes be used effectively against ascendant units. All phantasm elemental ultimates are difficult to maintain in a small country, and many phantasm mages do not use them at all until they have 5,000 acres or more of land.

D. Ascendant
Ascendants use many holy, magic, and melee units. They often attack nether, phantasm, and sometimes eradication mages. Other ascendants and especially verdants can be very difficult to defeat. Ascendant mages have many healing spells that enhance the healing abilities of many of their units and have perhaps the broadest selection of useful barracks units of all the magic specialties. Protection from Evil is an enchantment that many ascendant mages use to help ward off harmful nether magic from their countries. Ascendants also have access to two other very powerful enchantments. Love and Peace greatly increases geld income at the expense of battle attack power, and The Holy Light increases attack power and accuracy at the expense of MP income. Archangels are one of the best defensive units in the game, so much so that even many phantasm mages use them as their top stack. Unicorns are another commonly used unit. Unicorns have two major weaknesses: treants and mind rippers. Both archangels and unicorns can be obtained from the spell Gate or summoned directly. Knight templars, high priests, and catapults are very useful barracks units. However, they are rather expensive. Most mages who use them rely on the extra geld income from Love and Peace to pay for them. Dominions are a very powerful angel unit, but they can die easily on defense. However, they resurrect extremely well when the spell Resurrection is cast on them. Some ascendants like to supplement their armies with units from other magic specialties. Mind rippers, nymphs, werebears and sirenes are the most commonly used. Treants are rarely used by ascendants because plant growth cast by an ascendant is not strong enough to be worthwhile.

E. Eradication
Eradication is the most destructive of the magic specialties. Eradication mages most frequently attack other eradication mages and verdant mages. Sometimes they target ascendant mages. Nether and Phantasm mages can be difficult for an eradication mage to defeat. Battle Chant is an enchantment that some eradication mages like to use. It increases unit attack power at the expense of unit hit points. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a geld deficit since many of their units rely heavily on geld for upkeep. Eradications also have access to Red Dragons, one of the most powerful offensive units in the game. Many eradication mages keep almost all their army power in their dragons. Many eradication mages often rely heavily on the spell Stun and the item Oil Flasks. In addition to red dragons, chimeras and efreetis are commonly used in eradication armies. Chimeras have very powerful offensive capabilities when given a melee-fire attack by the spell Flame Blade, but they are weak defensively, especially to mind rippers and phoenixes. Efreetis are strong both offensively and defensively. They have few weaknesses except to fire and psychic attacks. Some eradication mages will supplement their units with nether or verdant units. The most common way of stacking for eradication mages usually involves a very large stack of red dragons and then a moderate stack of chimeras or efreetis. After this average and simple units are placed so that there are ten stacks in the army. Most damage will be caused by the top two stacks, and the rest are meant to simply survive in enough numbers to take a large amount of land. Eradication mages are the most likely mages to run a positive MP income and negative geld income. Red dragons are very geld and population intensive to maintain, but require very little MP compared to other ultimate units.

F. Other Sources of Information
Joining a guild or searching The Reincarnation's Universal Bulletin Board (UBB) are both good ways of learning how to play better. Many guilds are willing to take in new members and help them learn more advanced war and resource utilization strategies. Many players also enjoy the comradery that comes from being in a guild. Strategic and technical aspects of the game are also discussed in the UBB's Hall of Sages. Search first before asking your question - it may have already been asked and answered before.
[[Category:guides]]

Umbra's Nether Guide

2008-04-25T07:41:51Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* '''Nether Essentials: Over Summoning & Black Sabbath''' */

'''Playing Nether by Umbra'''
Taken from UBB:)

='''Introduction'''=
I made this guide using BLITZ server as a base. I’ve never played S1 or APP as Nether so I don’t know if it will work outside a 5 minute server. But the concept of playing Nether is there so just read and try to get the idea on how to play it. If Blitz server does ever come back up, hopefully this will help new Nether mages in the near future.

People say Nether (black) is hard to play. One of reason I have heard is Nether has too many pop eating units and you get pop spiral too fast. Another is that it is hard to play Nether because Ascendants (whites) feeds on Nethers. The answer to those may vary, it depends on how you play Nether. This guide was made with inputs from how I play Nether based on my experience in game. So it is my style and there are certainly others better ways to play Nether.

='''Units'''=
Every guide I write I always say this, do not mono stack until 3.5k land. There will be people out there who would recommend that you Mono Zombie until 3.5k land, which is basically exploring until the explore limit. The reason why I do not adhere to this kind of playing style is that, if you cannot defend your land below explore limit, you will have a hard time defending it EVEN MORE when you get over explore limit. Losing land may suck, but it is through losing that you will learn what a good unit to use is; why they are good stacked above or stacked below or why you shouldn't use this unit. Fight your way up from low lands, do not mono stack.
 

To this point what would be the good units to use for Nether? 
Let me start of with the on color (Nether) units a Nether can summon.

'''Nether Units'''

[[Skeleton]]
The most basic of all Nether units. You get it free from Black Sabbath (see what it is below) and basically a unit which really has no use but for fodder. People usually disband them and leave some (around 10k less) as additional fodder for pillage protection. When you play Nether, never stack these above always put this below as fodder, last stack always. If you do stack many of these, more than 20k and you lose land, then blame your stupidity for it.

[[Zombie]]
Second lousiest unit of Nether. You also get these free from Black Sabbath. But the difference between Zombies and Skeletons is that Zombies have actually good use. Zombies are good damage soakers. A lot of Nethers use zombies as top stack at the beginning but in the middle of the reset they then to lose their luster as the top ground stack for Nether. They aren't bad and they aren't good in a sense. The good thing about them is they are FREE and saves you the turns needed to summon them. 130k zombies can kill around 120 unicorns or 300 horned demons. That isn't really bad for the second lousiest unit of Nether isn't it? (more about zombies in the stacking part.)

[[Ghoul]]
They are a better version of Zombies. I cannot really comment on these because I have never used them in my stacks. The reason why I do not use them is because they are not disband able. I really do not need another unit that I cannot disband. But based on experience from what I've encountered, Ghouls has its use. Some people mass stack Ghouls at the top. They can stackwipe Ultimate units like Unholy Reavers and Titans if they can attack first. (not disbandable)

[[Shadow]]
A unit I seldom see Nethers use. I use them as fodder killers. Why shadows you ask? They are good for killing units that are weak against magic (Elementals) and as fodder killers. Their attack is magic and they have an attack initiative of 2. The problem with them is if you stack a lot of them and they get hit by something that kills them effectively, they can lose you battles. Good thing about them is they have 100 percent resist on missile, paralyze and melee.

[[Wraith]]
A decent flying unit for Nether, they are cheap to summon and maintain. Problem with them they die too easily to ranged attack. Sometimes will lose the battle for you because of this but they are decent killers if they can attack first. i love these even with its weakness. Their attack of magic paralyze is awesome because the enemy cannot counter attack. (not disbandable)

[[Horned Demon]]
No Nether can live without them in my opinion. They are one of the best pound for pound melee units in the game, can hit the enemy unit twice and have an attack of poison melee. Same as Wraiths, cheap to summon and maintain but also do die easily from ranged attacks. One of the best units that isn't an Ultimate unit in my opinion. The downside of Horned Demons is they have an initiative of one. (undisbandable)

[[Vampire]]
Second greatest of the pop suckers of Nether units. It has a upkeep of 5 pop per unit. Do not summon too many of them or else you will be in big time trouble. They are really good units to use in my opinion. Their only noticeable weakness is against holy attacks, which really isn't a problem (will explain why in the bottom). They have a decent defense against ranged attacks and are really good melee blockers. Someone using a mono Horned Demon or Mono Leviathan stack with flight won't do ***** if you stack Vampires top. They are that good against the best melee units. One advantage they have is they can fly. They have Steal Life as an attribute with magic ranged and magic paralyze as attacks means you cannot counter them. (not disbandable)

[[Lich]]
One of the best defensive units in the game. Its only noticeable weakness is from holy attacks. It can take a beating from hard hitting melee units like Horned Demons, Treants and Leviathans and still survive with little losses. Most Nether use these as top stack when they are at the top ranks. Their attack attributes of magic ranged and cold ranged makes them decent attackers also. Liches are the reason why Erad mages are afraid of hitting Nethers in the latter part of the game. People stack so many Liches at the top that Red Dragons or Chimeras tend to get slaughtered in mass numbers when they meet up. (not disbandable)

[[Demon Knight]]
If you look at the people who know how to play Nether, you will never see Demon Knights in their stacks. I've only used them once when I was first played Nether and frankly I didn't like them. Costs 6 turns to summon and compared to Liches its pop upkeep is even worse. The only visible use of them is to block Ascendant attacks (something which a Nether shouldn't be afraid). I've seen people stacking them top. Can block Nether and Ascendant attacks but against a Blue, Green and Erad mages, Demon Knights really do not survive that long. Maybe one of these days I'll revisit these and try them out again. (not disbandable)

[[Unholy Reaver]]
The only Ultimate unit of Nether. They are damn good killers with psychic range and melee paralyze as its attacks. One of my favorite Nether units but sucks your pop like crazy if you use them. One problem with Unholy Reavers is they are not disbandable and when you cast them they usually end up top stack. It is hard to get units above Unholy Reavers except for Zombies but Zombie top isn't feasible when you are at the top ranks. Unholy Reavers I noticed is weak in defense that is why you should never stack them top stack if you are at high lands and high rank. You have to make them hit first in order for them to be effective. Usually Nethers who use them use Ash in defense. At low rank and lands, you can get away with stacking them at the top. (not disbandable)

[[Dark Elf Magician]]
These are barrack troops, with ranged magic with an initiative of three makes them a very good unit to use. You can save turns using them because you do not have to summon them but recruit them. The thing about barrack troops is they cost a lot to summon and maintain. I can say I am a bit biased against barrack troops. It is something I think I can live without as a Nether.

If you look at the above units I have mentioned. You would say only four units are disbandable? How am I going to survive without my population plummeting like crazy? The trick to playing Nether is to use and mix off color units into your stacking. So usually your stacking would be half disbandable, half not disbandable. That is one way of keeping your pop in check.

So which are the good off color units should one use as Nether? I will mention only those that I have used.

'''Phantasm Units'''

[[Djinni]]
They are real cheap to summon in my opinion. 60k mana with 4 turns only and makes your NP go up higher with it being a flying and a complex unit. Nethers use it as top stack just like Ascendants use Archangels top stack. Djinni has decent defense and offense. Not bad not good depending on where you stack them. But being off color complex units, there is a chance you will fail when summoning them once in awhile.

[[Medusa]]
Cheap to summon also in my opinion. I like its attack which has ranged poison and paralyze which makes it uncounterable. One of the off color units that is always in my stack when I start climbing. They die horribly if paired with something that can kill them effectively like Horned Demons or any hard hitting melee units. Good to stack as third or fourth ground.

[[Psychic Wisp]]
This unit have an initiative of three and ranged psychic as its attack. Most Nethers prefer dryads (magic ranged) over wisps.

[[Sirene]] Have psychic and magic as its attack. Usually used as a fodder killer or as an elemental killer. Have attributes of Charm (makes attacks less effective) and Beauty (-5 percent penalty when attacking that unit) makes it a good damage soaker if one goes for defensive kind of stack. A unit mostly used in specialty stacks.

'''Eradication Units'''

[[Efreeti]] Erad version of Liches. They are weaker though than Liches but have an attribute of marksmanship (hits better) and has a ranged attack of fire (initiative 4) and magic ranged (initiative 2). Basically used by most nether who do DOS/CARPET on defense as a unit below Liches. As a complex off color unit it has a summoning failure tendency.

[[Salamander]] Very good fodder killers with fire as its attack. Its downside is has an initiative of one and dies horribly against most melee and flying units.

[[Hell Hound]]s Very good fodder killer with an initiative of 3 fire breath and melee (initiative 1). It actually has the same use as Sirenes which is used to kill Elementals or for specialty stacks.

[[Chimera]] A flying unit which has fire breath (initiative 3) as its attack coupled with melee attack. Pretty hard to summon and has a bigger summoning failure rate than Djinni and Efreeti based on my experience. Weak to ranged attacks but a nice fodder killer.

[[Wyvern]] Has melee and poison melee as its attack. I tried using them but they do not do much damage in my opinion. But people who use nether flying stacks say they are good units to use.

'''Verdant Units'''

[[Dryad]] Ranged magic but has better defense than psychic wisps with attributes of Beauty and Charm. You get less of them compared to wisps.

'''Ascendant Unit'''

[[Soul Speaker]] Ranged psychic. Advantage is a portion of the units resurrect after getting killed. You also get less of them compared to wisps.

='''Defensive & Offensive Nethers'''=
So now we have gone through the units one can use a Nether, your next question would be, with that much units being mentioned, which unit will you choose to make a good stacking?

It really depends on how you want to play Nether. 
You can be defensive or offensive. With that said you also have to have premium items for defense. What are the good items one can use as defense?

'''Defensive''' 

If you want to be as defensive as possible in low lands, use satchel of mist paired with fog cloud. With that said you need to use good units which are defensive. How do you look at units to see if they are defensive or not? Look at its attribute: namely attack resistance and abilities. Satchel/Fog combination makes the invaders accuracy lesser. So if you use a dryad which as beauty and charm as its attributes, it would even make the invaders accuracy lower. Liches are good defensive units that is why people like to stack it at the top. Take time to look at the attributes of each unit. In time you will understand why using these units along with this particular type of item/spell is suitable to each other.

One of the best defenses in the game that a Nether can use only is called Dreams of Seduction plus Carpet of Flying or commonly called DOS/Carpet. DOS is a spell that makes you summon succubi to aid you when an invader attacks. Succubi are great because even if it dies in droves, the net power (NP) loss won't be included in the computation of the battle outcome. To you who might be reading it the first thought that would go in your mind is, isn't that great? DOS/carpet isn't really advisable to use below 4k land. The main ingredient for DOS is your population. The more population you have the more Succubi that will come to you. If you compute your population incorrectly, your succubi will have a tendency not to be top stack, which would defeat the purpose of using DOS/Carpet in the first place. DOS cost 80k mana which is a lot in my opinion at low lands (5k down). Carpets are also expensive items. So it is more advisable to use Dos/Carpet above explore limit or preferably above 4k to 5k land. During times of war it isn’t advisable to use DOS. The enemy can just confuse you to stop you from summoning DOS or they can kill of your population to make your Succubi go lower.

How do you compute how much Succubi will come to aid you in battle? This website will compute it for you [[http://hinux.hin.no/~gisljgra/refs/test/succubi.php]].

DOS/Carpet gets harder to crack as a Nether gains land. It is hard to crack but not impossible. A Phantasm mage with a flying/ranged stack with items/spell getting through can beat a DOS/Carpet. An Ascendant or a Verdant can do Call Hurricane and try to pull down your units. As it is said, no matter how good your defense is, it is still breakable.

One problem with Nether units is their low initiative. Units like Horned Demons have an initiative of 1 only. How does initiative affect game play? A unit moves first when its initiative is higher so higher the initiative the better. There is also a fatigue factor in the game mechanics. If a unit gets hit his fatigue factor goes up and he is less effective in offense and defense.

Some Nethers use Fog/ Spiders Web or Giant strength/Spiders Web in defense. The logic of this kind of defense is for the initiative 1 units not able to move. It is effective against Verdant and Nether attackers but doesn’t really guarantee you can make the enemy unable to move. Why? As you go higher in rank and land, Spiders Web loses its luster. People in the top 100 will be using Ash for offense. People at the top are rich to afford the best items for offense. Carpets, Candle of Sleeping, Ash you name it. Remember it is much cheaper to buy good items to use for offense than to buy one Magical Compass to gain land. Well for me it is more fun to attack and gain land than using a Magical Compass to gain land.

'''Offensive''' 
My way of playing defense is by being offensive. 
The best defense is offense. Ash/Giant Strength and Ash/Battle Lust would be the item/spell for my kind of stacking. Basically I want my units to attack first. The logic of it is when you hit the invader first hard enough; you hope you can damage his army enough for it to be ineffective. His attack on you would be lessened in might and would not deal enough damage to you. With that said I also use offensive units in great numbers.

My stack would look something like this in the beginning.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*Skeletons

As you go higher in rank you can afford to disband your Skeletons and change it into other units. If you notice I have a ten unit stacking. 
Why ten units? 
It is to prevent fatigue on your top stack. If you have less than 10 kinds of units in a stack lets say 7 only. Your top stack will get hit more than once. If you had 10 kinds of units, each unit would have been hit once only. Remember the fatigue factor I mentioned. The more times a unit gets hit, fatigue sets in and It becomes weaker each hit. The logic of having a ten unit stack is to spread out the damage.

='''Nether Essentials: Over Summoning & Black Sabbath'''=

'''Over Summoning'''

So how do you build a stack that is offensive enough for defense and offense? There are several important things to be a successful Nether you should learn.

Why should you over summon? That is the common question I hear from people. Over summoning has its advantage. When people look for targets, people often look for mages with fat lands and an under summoned army. How do you know if that mage is fat and under summoned? You look at your land and your NP. Let us say you are 3k land and have an NP of 14 mil. While someone below you is 3k land also while only having 11 mil NP. So he is under summoned right? Yes and no. Really depends also on what people are stacking. Some people who stack defensively (Lich/Efreeti heavy) tend to be under summoned yet good enough to block attacks. But most are under summoned that you can easily take land. Remember there are always better and lesser players in any game. I am an over summoning advocate and there will be people who don’t want to over summon. As I said this is the way I play.

You have to set a benchmark also for being over summoned. Me for instance I can summon to 11 million NP on 2k land. Yes it is possible to do so. Your next question would be what is the most effective way to over summon? Three important things you should consider.

''' Black Sabbath '''

Black Sabbath is a Nether only spell that gives your three things when you cast it, gives your free zombies and skeletons every turn, give you some protection against Ascendants and the most important thing is it gives you 3k extra mana in your income. 3k extra mana. In low lands that 3k extra mana is like a mana from heaven. You can summon more stuff with it. If you are Nether, the first thing you do when you start making a stack is to run black Sabbath. Black Sabbath alone cannot make you over summoned if you do not know another important part of over summoning.

Mana Charge… Summon …. Mana Charge Tactic.

When you look at your status report you will see a part like this.

Interior Info. 
Gold M.P. Pop 
Income 1,048,323 15,954 7,978 
Unit Upkeep 222,010 -10,000 7,900 
Building Upkeep 134,310 5,650 0 
Hero Upkeep 15,000 230 0 
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666 
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0 
Net Income 677,003 -5,954 - 588 

If you look at the above status report you will notice in the MP part you have a income of 15,954 and a net income of negative 5,954. The funny thing is that when some people see a negative income in the net income section of the MP, they think you should not mana charge anymore because it is negative. Wrong! It actually works this way, every time you mana charge you get 15,954 less the -5,954 in the net income section which would come out around 10k mana added to your mana pool each time you charge (actually the income MP part fluctuates around 1k to 2k at times).

The trick to the mana charge summon tactic is this way, count the no. of times you need to summon your units. After full mana charge, summon a unit, mana charge then summon again mana charge and so on until you finish. There will come a time when the your income (MP) would be lets say 15954 and your net income (MP) -14000. So it comes out your getting only around 2k mana net. Around that time you have to stop doing the mana charge summon tactic and just finish up summoning.

I guarantee if you do that your NP would increase. The 3k extra mana Black Sabbath gives helps a lot when you are doing the mana charge summon tactic. 3k in ten turns is already 30k additional mana. 50 turns is 150k mana. It will be a bit slow doing this kind of tactic and you might get onlined for moving so slow. Well those are the breaks of the game. But as you get more lands around 5k up, the 3k extra mana you get from Black Sabbath won’t be as good as it was when it was in lower lands.

When you are over summoned there are a lot of other advantages. Let us say you are at 3k land at 17 mil NP. And someone at 5k land with 19 Mil NP whacks you. The one at 19 mil np is under summoned compared to you. Even if you lose a lot more NP in the battle it will go out in the end he lost the more power than you because your army has a higher NP than the invader.

Another advantage is when you are choosing targets. Lets say you do not like the potential targets in your range. Since you are over summoned, you can afford to disband some units to make you go lower to fish for targets. One example is when you are running zombie fodder so you can just disband around 500k NP worth of zombies, go down and whack somebody. Since you are oversummoned you can afford to disband some of your units. Sometimes over summoning is just a mirage you do to leapfrog some players who are under summoned.

Mages will choose to hit an under summoned mage rather than an over summoned mage in most cases. Over summoned means harder to win against. Of course you need to stack well also in order to defend.

The next thing you need to learn is what units you summon first. 
Usually the rule of thumb is summoning the units that have no pop upkeep and have lesser summoning cost.

Example of a stack that has these units.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*skeletons
 

First would be either Shadows or Hell Hounds. Next you can either summon Medusa or Horned Demons or Wraiths. Horned demons and wraiths have cheap upkeep so it really doesn’t matter if you summon them that early by preferably summon Medusas first. Next would be Liches as compared to Vampires coz Vampires have a higher pop upkeep than lich. You need to watch your pop situation on the main page. If your pop keeps going down negative like this -700 -600 -500 that means you are okay but if it starts to go like this -500 -600 -700 going up then you must hurry and finish summoning before your pop goes spiral. Last summon always should be Unholy Reavers which have a very big pop upkeep.

='''Population Woes'''=

Yes, when you first play Nether, there will be a big chance when your new the first 600 turns you run when you have a full stacking you will get pop spiral. It is because you summoned too much pop eating units and they didn’t die when you did your attack run or you ran to few towns/farms to support your pop eating army. 

How do you know if you have enough towns to support your pop eating army? A Nether mage normally runs around 30 to 35 percent or less of his lands used for nodes. Rest is used for towns and farms. It is hard to give you exact numbers of each unit to summon so try summoning yourself. If you pop spiral then you will know the numbers you summoned are too much. Experience is the best teacher, soon you will know how much to summon.

Keep [[Wine of Three Whips]] in stock for emergency population. 
It gives you 10 percent of your current pop so if your pop is like this already 100,000/500,000 it is more efficient to pillage than to use the Wine.

One way to kill of your pop eating units is to suicide them against an Ascendant mage. It is really effective. Sometimes I deliberately siege an Ascendant mage just to kill off my units if I see I can’t seem to kill them off from the attacks before.

Of course you have to leave land for barriers also. You do not have to have full bars right away when you start climbing. Slowly build them up but build them up fast.
Barriers is a must for Nethers. 
By the time you reach around 2.7k land you should have at least 70 percent bars already.

='''Personal Playing Style'''=

One common thing I hear from some Nethers is that they are afraid of Ascendants. That is quite laughable. If you know how to over summon properly, you can get up higher and faster in rank than most Ascendants. White mages needs more land to rank up compared to Nethers. You can leapfrog most Ascendants in the beginning if you just over summon and gain land. At the top 100 you will seldom see 10 whites in the top ten by the time you reach the top. So your Ascendant problem is solved. So it is a MYTH that Nethers are food for whites. At the top the ones that hunt you more are Nethers, Verdants and Phantasms. You will seldom get hit by a Ascendant and even more seldom by Erads.

And yes it is possible to hunt Ascendants also though it isn’t advisable; it is fun to win against Ascendants.

Honestly different people like different units for their stacking. Even if you copy every unit of my stack there will be a tendency that you won’t like the unit I am using. Based on the units I mentioned above, pick and choose the units you like.

The next part is the stacking I used in 11 days to reach 4k land starting from 2k land. Take note this was in the middle of a reset. I lost land during this time also so you can see how fast a Nether can rank if he just knows what he is doing.

'''Day 1.'''

Rank 276 Power 11,598,282 
Land 2,167 Fortress 13

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 127251 22.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 950 23.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4410 8.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 282 7.0%
*Wyvern 0 20.00/0.35/0.00 2993 6.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3501 8.4%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 17285 8.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 3806 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2150 4.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 26452 3.2%

Used Ash/Giant Strength on defense but failed miserably in defense because I didn’t have URs to do enough damage. Went down to 1.7k land. Usually the first day when you start making a stack to rank, you will usually lose. Don’t give up just take it as beginning blues.

'''Day 2'''

Rank 210 Power 12,972,656 
Land 2,213 Fortress 14

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 137616 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 41 21.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4638 7.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 747 15.8%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5543 9.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3912 8.2%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16902 7.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3500 5.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 54 1.2%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15372 1.6%

Used ash/giant strength still blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 3.'''

Rank 286 Power 11,791,740 
Land 2,499 Fortress 17

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 141644 26.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 819 20.7%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4381 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4612 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5057 10.7%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 19347 9.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3851 7.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 57 1.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 3 1.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10444 1.3%

I summoned one shot of URs actually. Ash/giant strength. Blocked 1 attack.

'''Day 4.'''

Rank 143 Power 14,843,982 
Land 2,737 Fortress 19

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 163555 22.7%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 19.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 987 18.5%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 5037 7.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5545 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4240 7.9%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18152 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3752 5.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 53 1.0%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15624 1.4%

Ash/giant strength still. Lost 1 blocked 2. Lost 100 land.

'''Day 5.'''

Rank 198 Power 13,335,207 
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 124175 20.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 892 19.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4689 8.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5201 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5800 10.9%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.8%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16072 7.1%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2539 4.4%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 13916 6.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 22630 2.5%

Ash/battle lust. Was so damaged the day before one hit went into damage status again. Blocked 1.

'''Day 6.'''

Rank 181 Power 13,965,189
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130838 20.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 963 20.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4594 7.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4611 9.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5257 9.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.3%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18978 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3772 6.2%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 14487 6.0%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 401 5.0%

Ash/Giant Strength still. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 7.'''

Rank 204 Power 13,192,751 
Land 3,062 Fortress 26

Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 106757 18.7%
Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 886 20.9%
Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4200 7.8%
Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3724 8.7%
Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4193 8.3%
Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 695 9.7%
Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3264 6.0%
Sirene 0 0.00/0.30/0.00 2711 5.6%
Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 15937 7.4%
Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.7%
Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 18648 2.2%

Running Satchel/Fog. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 8'''

Rank 181 Power 13,947,270 
Land 3,174 Fortress 27

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 105228 17.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1002 22.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4400 7.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 343 6.4%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3970 8.7%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4547 8.4%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 719 9.4%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3474 6.0%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 16596 7.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.4%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 23310 2.5%

Fog/Mist blocked more than 3 attacks.

'''Day 9'''

Rank 117 Power 15,664,415 
Land 3,493 Fortress 30

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130357 18.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 34 16.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1092 21.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5370 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5205 8.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3412 5.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 242 4.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 220 3.6%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 590 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2581 3.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 14642 1.4%

Blocked 5 attacks with Ash/Giant strength.

'''Day 10'''

Rank 82 Power 17,655,519 
Land 3,821 Fortress 33

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 173296 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 47 19.4%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 891 14.9%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6012 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4643 6.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6538 9.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 207 3.5%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 763 7.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3469 4.6%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 161 2.3%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 11978 1.0%

'''Day 11'''

Rank 82 Power 17,669,175 
Land 4,072 Fortress 35

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 159464 20.3%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 18.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1061 18.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5898 10.0%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4878 6.6%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6179 8.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 770 7.8%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 241 3.5%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2449 3.3%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 119 2.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10424 0.9%
 

11 days to get to 4k if you know what you are doing. And my stacks weren’t even that over summoned. Could have over summoned even more but there was war in the guild during the time.

='''Why Rush to the Top?'''=

The reason why people like to rush to the top after researching is obvious. 
When you break the top 100, you get lesser attacks. You earn geld better at the top. Not as much as whorers but decent enough to buy the items you need for defense. At 4k land I can earn at least 650k to 800k per turn. That’s quite good in my opinion. Nethers have the potential to jump that fast up the ranks even faster than what I did. Stacking is really the key, whether you are Nether, Blue or Erad. If you stack well enough with good items used in defense, even without uber heroes you can still rank up.

Nether is so versatile that you can change from a defensive stacking to an offensive stacking in just a matter of hours. Here is an example of it.

After I did my 200 turns, I was running a dos/carpet defense at this rank.

Rank 120 Power 15,344,735 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

I had this much population and mana left

Population 858,215/895,290
Magic Power 1,210,714 / 1,436,000

My stack was:

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 98017 16.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 948 21.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 7.2%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4105 9.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4708 9.1%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 13.3%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 5.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3181 5.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4147 7.5%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 28796 3.3%

I could have stopped there or summoned up a bit more but I did this after 5 hours when I had enough turns.

Rank 59 Power 19,504,301 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

Population 838,784/895,290 
Magic Power 532,671 / 1,436,000

Ash/giant strength

*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1447 22.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 38 14.6%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 113205 13.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6635 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7540 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4552 5.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 4.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 9.0%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 4.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4137 5.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 12816 1.0%

From 15 mil np defensive stack it became a 19 mil np offensive stack. Isn’t that amazing? Or I could have not summoned up but cast devils instead…. Evil yumyum. So many choices.

'''Anti-Devil'''

Or I can run an anti Devil stack like an Ascendant runs. The concept of anti Devil top is use flying units to block devils so in an Ascendants case it would be using Archangels. In a blacks case the best unit to use would be Djinni. I’ve never lost against a Devil counter with Djinni top. If I remember right I’ve blocked around 10 Devil counters with Djinni top.

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

Blue and Nethers are the best colors to do over summoning with less land. The difference though is Phantasm uses fliers and Elementals and Levs to over summon thereby giving it a ridiculous upkeep in mana after summoning. Nether in the other hand has only one Ultimate unit and yet it can also over summon like hell also but have lesser upkeep on mana compared to blue mages.

='''Stacking: Units and Where to Stack them'''=

I like to push my good offensive units down the stack. Which means if I have a way to push my Medusas and Horned Demons down I will do it. How do you push them down? By using flying units. Using my anti devil stack as example:

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

I pushed my Medusas and Horned Demons down to 6th and 7th stack. The reason why I do that is for them to kill the fodder and middle stacks of the invader. By using ash, they can be really deadly down low. The logic behind it is that usually people stack the top three stacks really solid. So why should you waste time trying to find a way to whack the top three stacks when you can whack the lower stacks silly. Though it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, I can say around 60 percent of the time it works.

Someone higher than you theoretically has a good chance of beating you. He is at the top of the food chain and your below him so you are his food per say. Pushing the good melee units down is only one way to defend your land. Sometimes you have to change units or reorder where you stack them. It is to confuse the enemy. If you stack the same units at the same place every time, soon the attacker will know you noticed my 11 day run I sometimes run Fog/Satchel, it is to keep the enemy guessing. Running different types of defense also helps a bit.

When you are below explore limit (3.5k down) it isn’t a bad idea to stack Zombies as top stack. Zombies are sturdy enough down the ranks to use. Very good damage soakers. If you run a ten unit stack, they won’t die in droves unless you are really unlucky a spell or item goes through.

Liches are normally stacked top or second. The problem with Liches if you are having a hard time ranking is they will die horribly to Ascendants if you top stack them. So if you are having a hard time getting up to rank 150 or higher. Stack something above your Liches for protection against Ascendants.

At first you can get away with stacking Unholy Reavers at the top. But as you gain land, it really is not advisable to stack them as top stack. They aren’t the best defenders of Nether units. More often if someone is allied with top mages, the reins their allies sends will be a big factor in killing a lot of your URs. When you are planning to use URs, use ash in defense. URs hitting first is pretty awesome but if it gets hit first it dies like flies at times.

Stacking Wraiths as top stack isn’t advisable also. Wraiths are weak to ranged attacks which is the first attack that usually hits the top stack.

Even Djinni as top stack has its problems. More often if Phantasm keeps visiting you, their Elementals can kill Djinnis effectively. Dominions own Djinnis also. After playing a Phantasm mage for half a reset, even I am afraid of stacking Djinnis top nowadays. I’ve seen so many ways to kill Djinni top. Even mass Sprites top stack can kill Djinni.

Another problem of stacking Djinni top is it often gets sent as reins to allies killing some of them off in the process and making them go second stack. It also isn’t really turn effiecient to summon that much Djinni to make them top stack. There will be days your summoning failure rate is really horrible.

Efreeti people like to push them below Liches. Problem with that it is really not advisable to do so when you have so little land with Efreetis costing so much to cast and have a chance of failure. So Efreetis in large numbers are advisable when you have more land. Above explore limit would be good.

So in a way each unit has its good and bad points. You just have to stack according to what color is hitting you often. As I said improvise, change your units and stacking order once in awhile. Being creative is the key to a successful defense.

=='''Lands'''=
Land is easier lost than gained. That is why high level Nethers like to use DOS/Carpet as defense. It really depends on how you play, I like being offensive, raw offensive hitting power whacking the enemy silly is how I play. So it is up to you to choose how you play Nether. Hopefully this little guide will help you appreciate the beauty of playing a Nether mage.

Addendum:

At the time I was writing the above guide, I really hadn’t seriously delved into trying out DOS/Carpet on defense. I just ran it before one or two days to see how it works. Before writing this guide I had never broken 6k land as Nether so I decided to see what really makes DOS/Carpet work.

My comment on DOS/Carpet after trying it out? It simply is awesome. It is not only in defense where it shines but also on offense let me explain.

This would be my Status report as a nether running DOS/Carpet.

Rank 40 Power 24,063,058 
Land 6,930 Fortress 38 
Geld 154,423,131 Item 182 
Units 229,296 Turns left 2 

Spell Level 470 
Population 1,341,502/1,398,360 
Magic Power 1,965,754 / 2,449,000 

Gold M.P. Pop 
Income 1,688,057 25,084 8,219 
Unit Upkeep 367,300 30,536 9,114 
Building Upkeep 171,950 8,750 0 
Hero Upkeep 0 0 0 
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666 
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0 
Net Income 1,148,807 -15,802 -1,561 

If you noticed I have that much mana leftover after summoning. It is because with DOS/carpet you can afford to make a stack, look undersummoned for your land base and yet your defense is good enough to block most attacks. A mage attacking me would usually lose at least times two NP than what I lose.

This is what I do usually, since I can run my mage only once a day, I make it a point to use up all my turns that by the time I come home I would have max 200 turns without any turns unused go to waste. After I finish my run, I make a stack that is pretty solid enough in defense. After that I simply mana charge to full. Then if I find I can insert a few more units in the lower stacks I do so.

You can simply just geld and mana charge if you want running DOS/Carpet if you are not in the mood for an attack run. Just disband some of your units when you are doing so to save mana and resummon them after. At 6k land up you should be getting at least 1 mil geld each turn so it is really profitable running DOS/Carpet.

With DOS/Carpet stacking, you will probably have so much extra mana leftover that you can use DOS in every attack you make. I tried using DOS every attack run for 3 days and I still had 1 mil mana left over after. I usually hit only 5 to 8 mages each attack run when I am at high land.

Or when you are doing your attack run and you see a mage you would like to hit but your stack seems in disarray, you can always summon units since you have so much extra mana and do an additional hit. That is what DOS/Carpet stacking offers you.

='''Attacking at Higher Lands'''=
So when you are at high lands (5.5k up) which target would you hit? I hit those oversummoned mages with low lands (4k down). I usually go in with regular attacks (to avoid siege penalty for my ground units).

You would be wondering why hit those oversummoned mages when at the first part of the guide I would say oversummoning is very good? Well after running DOS/Carpet I seem to notice one thing. Oversummoned mages usually use Ultimate units in their stacks especially Phantasm Mages. If you are lucky and get DOS through, you can win around more than 50 to 80 percent of your attacks for sure. I use DOS/Ash on offense not DOS/Carpet. I will avoid at all cost those mages running carpets on defense.

The thing about some oversummoned mages is that they seem to forget running Ultimates above isn’t safe. Even running them second stack isn’t safe also at times. One lucky pairing and you would surely win against most oversummoned mages. I would hit Verdants and Erads (which I would normally not hit) and with Dos getting through, I could win against them.

As one nether said, running DOS/Carpet on defense is simply lame but yet it makes your stack stronger in offense since you can make all your stacks stronger by slowly inserting more units in each stack. Your stack will become quite balanced in strength and each unit can be a force to reckon with when you are attacking.

In the end I only lost one attack since running DOS/Carpet in defense at 4.7k land and managed to reach 7.1k land before losing to a devil counter finally.

So if you want to be a safe Nether run DOS/Carpet at high lands because it really is good or you can always oversummon as a Nether, the choice is up to you.
----
[[Guides|Back to Guides]]

[[Category:guides]]

Umbra's Nether Guide

2008-04-25T07:34:28Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

'''Playing Nether by Umbra'''
Taken from UBB:)

='''Introduction'''=
I made this guide using BLITZ server as a base. I’ve never played S1 or APP as Nether so I don’t know if it will work outside a 5 minute server. But the concept of playing Nether is there so just read and try to get the idea on how to play it. If Blitz server does ever come back up, hopefully this will help new Nether mages in the near future.

People say Nether (black) is hard to play. One of reason I have heard is Nether has too many pop eating units and you get pop spiral too fast. Another is that it is hard to play Nether because Ascendants (whites) feeds on Nethers. The answer to those may vary, it depends on how you play Nether. This guide was made with inputs from how I play Nether based on my experience in game. So it is my style and there are certainly others better ways to play Nether.

='''Units'''=
Every guide I write I always say this, do not mono stack until 3.5k land. There will be people out there who would recommend that you Mono Zombie until 3.5k land, which is basically exploring until the explore limit. The reason why I do not adhere to this kind of playing style is that, if you cannot defend your land below explore limit, you will have a hard time defending it EVEN MORE when you get over explore limit. Losing land may suck, but it is through losing that you will learn what a good unit to use is; why they are good stacked above or stacked below or why you shouldn't use this unit. Fight your way up from low lands, do not mono stack.
 

To this point what would be the good units to use for Nether? 
Let me start of with the on color (Nether) units a Nether can summon.

'''Nether Units'''

[[Skeleton]]
The most basic of all Nether units. You get it free from Black Sabbath (see what it is below) and basically a unit which really has no use but for fodder. People usually disband them and leave some (around 10k less) as additional fodder for pillage protection. When you play Nether, never stack these above always put this below as fodder, last stack always. If you do stack many of these, more than 20k and you lose land, then blame your stupidity for it.

[[Zombie]]
Second lousiest unit of Nether. You also get these free from Black Sabbath. But the difference between Zombies and Skeletons is that Zombies have actually good use. Zombies are good damage soakers. A lot of Nethers use zombies as top stack at the beginning but in the middle of the reset they then to lose their luster as the top ground stack for Nether. They aren't bad and they aren't good in a sense. The good thing about them is they are FREE and saves you the turns needed to summon them. 130k zombies can kill around 120 unicorns or 300 horned demons. That isn't really bad for the second lousiest unit of Nether isn't it? (more about zombies in the stacking part.)

[[Ghoul]]
They are a better version of Zombies. I cannot really comment on these because I have never used them in my stacks. The reason why I do not use them is because they are not disband able. I really do not need another unit that I cannot disband. But based on experience from what I've encountered, Ghouls has its use. Some people mass stack Ghouls at the top. They can stackwipe Ultimate units like Unholy Reavers and Titans if they can attack first. (not disbandable)

[[Shadow]]
A unit I seldom see Nethers use. I use them as fodder killers. Why shadows you ask? They are good for killing units that are weak against magic (Elementals) and as fodder killers. Their attack is magic and they have an attack initiative of 2. The problem with them is if you stack a lot of them and they get hit by something that kills them effectively, they can lose you battles. Good thing about them is they have 100 percent resist on missile, paralyze and melee.

[[Wraith]]
A decent flying unit for Nether, they are cheap to summon and maintain. Problem with them they die too easily to ranged attack. Sometimes will lose the battle for you because of this but they are decent killers if they can attack first. i love these even with its weakness. Their attack of magic paralyze is awesome because the enemy cannot counter attack. (not disbandable)

[[Horned Demon]]
No Nether can live without them in my opinion. They are one of the best pound for pound melee units in the game, can hit the enemy unit twice and have an attack of poison melee. Same as Wraiths, cheap to summon and maintain but also do die easily from ranged attacks. One of the best units that isn't an Ultimate unit in my opinion. The downside of Horned Demons is they have an initiative of one. (undisbandable)

[[Vampire]]
Second greatest of the pop suckers of Nether units. It has a upkeep of 5 pop per unit. Do not summon too many of them or else you will be in big time trouble. They are really good units to use in my opinion. Their only noticeable weakness is against holy attacks, which really isn't a problem (will explain why in the bottom). They have a decent defense against ranged attacks and are really good melee blockers. Someone using a mono Horned Demon or Mono Leviathan stack with flight won't do ***** if you stack Vampires top. They are that good against the best melee units. One advantage they have is they can fly. They have Steal Life as an attribute with magic ranged and magic paralyze as attacks means you cannot counter them. (not disbandable)

[[Lich]]
One of the best defensive units in the game. Its only noticeable weakness is from holy attacks. It can take a beating from hard hitting melee units like Horned Demons, Treants and Leviathans and still survive with little losses. Most Nether use these as top stack when they are at the top ranks. Their attack attributes of magic ranged and cold ranged makes them decent attackers also. Liches are the reason why Erad mages are afraid of hitting Nethers in the latter part of the game. People stack so many Liches at the top that Red Dragons or Chimeras tend to get slaughtered in mass numbers when they meet up. (not disbandable)

[[Demon Knight]]
If you look at the people who know how to play Nether, you will never see Demon Knights in their stacks. I've only used them once when I was first played Nether and frankly I didn't like them. Costs 6 turns to summon and compared to Liches its pop upkeep is even worse. The only visible use of them is to block Ascendant attacks (something which a Nether shouldn't be afraid). I've seen people stacking them top. Can block Nether and Ascendant attacks but against a Blue, Green and Erad mages, Demon Knights really do not survive that long. Maybe one of these days I'll revisit these and try them out again. (not disbandable)

[[Unholy Reaver]]
The only Ultimate unit of Nether. They are damn good killers with psychic range and melee paralyze as its attacks. One of my favorite Nether units but sucks your pop like crazy if you use them. One problem with Unholy Reavers is they are not disbandable and when you cast them they usually end up top stack. It is hard to get units above Unholy Reavers except for Zombies but Zombie top isn't feasible when you are at the top ranks. Unholy Reavers I noticed is weak in defense that is why you should never stack them top stack if you are at high lands and high rank. You have to make them hit first in order for them to be effective. Usually Nethers who use them use Ash in defense. At low rank and lands, you can get away with stacking them at the top. (not disbandable)

[[Dark Elf Magician]]
These are barrack troops, with ranged magic with an initiative of three makes them a very good unit to use. You can save turns using them because you do not have to summon them but recruit them. The thing about barrack troops is they cost a lot to summon and maintain. I can say I am a bit biased against barrack troops. It is something I think I can live without as a Nether.

If you look at the above units I have mentioned. You would say only four units are disbandable? How am I going to survive without my population plummeting like crazy? The trick to playing Nether is to use and mix off color units into your stacking. So usually your stacking would be half disbandable, half not disbandable. That is one way of keeping your pop in check.

So which are the good off color units should one use as Nether? I will mention only those that I have used.

'''Phantasm Units'''

[[Djinni]]
They are real cheap to summon in my opinion. 60k mana with 4 turns only and makes your NP go up higher with it being a flying and a complex unit. Nethers use it as top stack just like Ascendants use Archangels top stack. Djinni has decent defense and offense. Not bad not good depending on where you stack them. But being off color complex units, there is a chance you will fail when summoning them once in awhile.

[[Medusa]]
Cheap to summon also in my opinion. I like its attack which has ranged poison and paralyze which makes it uncounterable. One of the off color units that is always in my stack when I start climbing. They die horribly if paired with something that can kill them effectively like Horned Demons or any hard hitting melee units. Good to stack as third or fourth ground.

[[Psychic Wisp]]
This unit have an initiative of three and ranged psychic as its attack. Most Nethers prefer dryads (magic ranged) over wisps.

[[Sirene]] Have psychic and magic as its attack. Usually used as a fodder killer or as an elemental killer. Have attributes of Charm (makes attacks less effective) and Beauty (-5 percent penalty when attacking that unit) makes it a good damage soaker if one goes for defensive kind of stack. A unit mostly used in specialty stacks.

'''Eradication Units'''

[[Efreeti]] Erad version of Liches. They are weaker though than Liches but have an attribute of marksmanship (hits better) and has a ranged attack of fire (initiative 4) and magic ranged (initiative 2). Basically used by most nether who do DOS/CARPET on defense as a unit below Liches. As a complex off color unit it has a summoning failure tendency.

[[Salamander]] Very good fodder killers with fire as its attack. Its downside is has an initiative of one and dies horribly against most melee and flying units.

[[Hell Hound]]s Very good fodder killer with an initiative of 3 fire breath and melee (initiative 1). It actually has the same use as Sirenes which is used to kill Elementals or for specialty stacks.

[[Chimera]] A flying unit which has fire breath (initiative 3) as its attack coupled with melee attack. Pretty hard to summon and has a bigger summoning failure rate than Djinni and Efreeti based on my experience. Weak to ranged attacks but a nice fodder killer.

[[Wyvern]] Has melee and poison melee as its attack. I tried using them but they do not do much damage in my opinion. But people who use nether flying stacks say they are good units to use.

'''Verdant Units'''

[[Dryad]] Ranged magic but has better defense than psychic wisps with attributes of Beauty and Charm. You get less of them compared to wisps.

'''Ascendant Unit'''

[[Soul Speaker]] Ranged psychic. Advantage is a portion of the units resurrect after getting killed. You also get less of them compared to wisps.

='''Defensive & Offensive Nethers'''=
So now we have gone through the units one can use a Nether, your next question would be, with that much units being mentioned, which unit will you choose to make a good stacking?

It really depends on how you want to play Nether. 
You can be defensive or offensive. With that said you also have to have premium items for defense. What are the good items one can use as defense?

'''Defensive''' 

If you want to be as defensive as possible in low lands, use satchel of mist paired with fog cloud. With that said you need to use good units which are defensive. How do you look at units to see if they are defensive or not? Look at its attribute: namely attack resistance and abilities. Satchel/Fog combination makes the invaders accuracy lesser. So if you use a dryad which as beauty and charm as its attributes, it would even make the invaders accuracy lower. Liches are good defensive units that is why people like to stack it at the top. Take time to look at the attributes of each unit. In time you will understand why using these units along with this particular type of item/spell is suitable to each other.

One of the best defenses in the game that a Nether can use only is called Dreams of Seduction plus Carpet of Flying or commonly called DOS/Carpet. DOS is a spell that makes you summon succubi to aid you when an invader attacks. Succubi are great because even if it dies in droves, the net power (NP) loss won't be included in the computation of the battle outcome. To you who might be reading it the first thought that would go in your mind is, isn't that great? DOS/carpet isn't really advisable to use below 4k land. The main ingredient for DOS is your population. The more population you have the more Succubi that will come to you. If you compute your population incorrectly, your succubi will have a tendency not to be top stack, which would defeat the purpose of using DOS/Carpet in the first place. DOS cost 80k mana which is a lot in my opinion at low lands (5k down). Carpets are also expensive items. So it is more advisable to use Dos/Carpet above explore limit or preferably above 4k to 5k land. During times of war it isn’t advisable to use DOS. The enemy can just confuse you to stop you from summoning DOS or they can kill of your population to make your Succubi go lower.

How do you compute how much Succubi will come to aid you in battle? This website will compute it for you [[http://hinux.hin.no/~gisljgra/refs/test/succubi.php]].

DOS/Carpet gets harder to crack as a Nether gains land. It is hard to crack but not impossible. A Phantasm mage with a flying/ranged stack with items/spell getting through can beat a DOS/Carpet. An Ascendant or a Verdant can do Call Hurricane and try to pull down your units. As it is said, no matter how good your defense is, it is still breakable.

One problem with Nether units is their low initiative. Units like Horned Demons have an initiative of 1 only. How does initiative affect game play? A unit moves first when its initiative is higher so higher the initiative the better. There is also a fatigue factor in the game mechanics. If a unit gets hit his fatigue factor goes up and he is less effective in offense and defense.

Some Nethers use Fog/ Spiders Web or Giant strength/Spiders Web in defense. The logic of this kind of defense is for the initiative 1 units not able to move. It is effective against Verdant and Nether attackers but doesn’t really guarantee you can make the enemy unable to move. Why? As you go higher in rank and land, Spiders Web loses its luster. People in the top 100 will be using Ash for offense. People at the top are rich to afford the best items for offense. Carpets, Candle of Sleeping, Ash you name it. Remember it is much cheaper to buy good items to use for offense than to buy one Magical Compass to gain land. Well for me it is more fun to attack and gain land than using a Magical Compass to gain land.

'''Offensive''' 
My way of playing defense is by being offensive. 
The best defense is offense. Ash/Giant Strength and Ash/Battle Lust would be the item/spell for my kind of stacking. Basically I want my units to attack first. The logic of it is when you hit the invader first hard enough; you hope you can damage his army enough for it to be ineffective. His attack on you would be lessened in might and would not deal enough damage to you. With that said I also use offensive units in great numbers.

My stack would look something like this in the beginning.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*Skeletons

As you go higher in rank you can afford to disband your Skeletons and change it into other units. If you notice I have a ten unit stacking. 
Why ten units? 
It is to prevent fatigue on your top stack. If you have less than 10 kinds of units in a stack lets say 7 only. Your top stack will get hit more than once. If you had 10 kinds of units, each unit would have been hit once only. Remember the fatigue factor I mentioned. The more times a unit gets hit, fatigue sets in and It becomes weaker each hit. The logic of having a ten unit stack is to spread out the damage.

='''Nether Essentials: Over Summoning & Black Sabbath'''=

'''Over Summoning'''

So how do you build a stack that is offensive enough for defense and offense? There are several important things to be a successful Nether you should learn.

Why should you over summon? That is the common question I hear from people. Over summoning has its advantage. When people look for targets, people often look for mages with fat lands and an under summoned army. How do you know if that mage is fat and under summoned? You look at your land and your NP. Let us say you are 3k land and have an NP of 14 mil. While someone below you is 3k land also while only having 11 mil NP. So he is under summoned right? Yes and no. Really depends also on what people are stacking. Some people who stack defensively (Lich/Efreeti heavy) tend to be under summoned yet good enough to block attacks. But most are under summoned that you can easily take land. Remember there are always better and lesser players in any game. I am an over summoning advocate and there will be people who don’t want to over summon. As I said this is the way I play.

You have to set a benchmark also for being over summoned. Me for instance I can summon to 11 million NP on 2k land. Yes it is possible to do so. Your next question would be what is the most effective way to over summon? Three important things you should consider.

''' Black Sabbath '''

Black Sabbath is a Nether only spell that gives your three things when you cast it, gives your free zombies and skeletons every turn, give you some protection against Ascendants and the most important thing is it gives you 3k extra mana in your income. 3k extra mana. In low lands that 3k extra mana is like a mana from heaven. You can summon more stuff with it. If you are Nether, the first thing you do when you start making a stack is to run black Sabbath. Black Sabbath alone cannot make you over summoned if you do not know another important part of over summoning.

Mana Charge… Summon …. Mana Charge Tactic.

When you look at your status report you will see a part like this.

Interior Info.
Gold M.P. Pop
Income 1,048,323 15,954 7,978
Unit Upkeep 222,010 -10,000 7,900
Building Upkeep 134,310 5,650 0
Hero Upkeep 15,000 230 0
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0
Net Income 677,003 -5,954 - 588

If you look at the above status report you will notice in the MP part you have a income of 15,954 and a net income of negative 5,954. The funny thing is that when some people see a negative income in the net income section of the MP, they think you should not mana charge anymore because it is negative. Wrong! It actually works this way, every time you mana charge you get 15,954 less the -5,954 in the net income section which would come out around 10k mana added to your mana pool each time you charge (actually the income MP part fluctuates around 1k to 2k at times).

The trick to the mana charge summon tactic is this way, count the no. of times you need to summon your units. After full mana charge, summon a unit, mana charge then summon again mana charge and so on until you finish. There will come a time when the your income (MP) would be lets say 15954 and your net income (MP) -14000. So it comes out your getting only around 2k mana net. Around that time you have to stop doing the mana charge summon tactic and just finish up summoning.

I guarantee if you do that your NP would increase. The 3k extra mana Black Sabbath gives helps a lot when you are doing the mana charge summon tactic. 3k in ten turns is already 30k additional mana. 50 turns is 150k mana. It will be a bit slow doing this kind of tactic and you might get onlined for moving so slow. Well those are the breaks of the game. But as you get more lands around 5k up, the 3k extra mana you get from Black Sabbath won’t be as good as it was when it was in lower lands.

When you are over summoned there are a lot of other advantages. Let us say you are at 3k land at 17 mil NP. And someone at 5k land with 19 Mil NP whacks you. The one at 19 mil np is under summoned compared to you. Even if you lose a lot more NP in the battle it will go out in the end he lost the more power than you because your army has a higher NP than the invader.

Another advantage is when you are choosing targets. Lets say you do not like the potential targets in your range. Since you are over summoned, you can afford to disband some units to make you go lower to fish for targets. One example is when you are running zombie fodder so you can just disband around 500k NP worth of zombies, go down and whack somebody. Since you are oversummoned you can afford to disband some of your units. Sometimes over summoning is just a mirage you do to leapfrog some players who are under summoned.

Mages will choose to hit an under summoned mage rather than an over summoned mage in most cases. Over summoned means harder to win against. Of course you need to stack well also in order to defend.

The next thing you need to learn is what units you summon first. 
Usually the rule of thumb is summoning the units that have no pop upkeep and have lesser summoning cost.

Example of a stack that has these units.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*skeletons
 

First would be either Shadows or Hell Hounds. Next you can either summon Medusa or Horned Demons or Wraiths. Horned demons and wraiths have cheap upkeep so it really doesn’t matter if you summon them that early by preferably summon Medusas first. Next would be Liches as compared to Vampires coz Vampires have a higher pop upkeep than lich. You need to watch your pop situation on the main page. If your pop keeps going down negative like this -700 -600 -500 that means you are okay but if it starts to go like this -500 -600 -700 going up then you must hurry and finish summoning before your pop goes spiral. Last summon always should be Unholy Reavers which have a very big pop upkeep.

='''Population Woes'''=

Yes, when you first play Nether, there will be a big chance when your new the first 600 turns you run when you have a full stacking you will get pop spiral. It is because you summoned too much pop eating units and they didn’t die when you did your attack run or you ran to few towns/farms to support your pop eating army. 

How do you know if you have enough towns to support your pop eating army? A Nether mage normally runs around 30 to 35 percent or less of his lands used for nodes. Rest is used for towns and farms. It is hard to give you exact numbers of each unit to summon so try summoning yourself. If you pop spiral then you will know the numbers you summoned are too much. Experience is the best teacher, soon you will know how much to summon.

Keep [[Wine of Three Whips]] in stock for emergency population. 
It gives you 10 percent of your current pop so if your pop is like this already 100,000/500,000 it is more efficient to pillage than to use the Wine.

One way to kill of your pop eating units is to suicide them against an Ascendant mage. It is really effective. Sometimes I deliberately siege an Ascendant mage just to kill off my units if I see I can’t seem to kill them off from the attacks before.

Of course you have to leave land for barriers also. You do not have to have full bars right away when you start climbing. Slowly build them up but build them up fast.
Barriers is a must for Nethers. 
By the time you reach around 2.7k land you should have at least 70 percent bars already.

='''Personal Playing Style'''=

One common thing I hear from some Nethers is that they are afraid of Ascendants. That is quite laughable. If you know how to over summon properly, you can get up higher and faster in rank than most Ascendants. White mages needs more land to rank up compared to Nethers. You can leapfrog most Ascendants in the beginning if you just over summon and gain land. At the top 100 you will seldom see 10 whites in the top ten by the time you reach the top. So your Ascendant problem is solved. So it is a MYTH that Nethers are food for whites. At the top the ones that hunt you more are Nethers, Verdants and Phantasms. You will seldom get hit by a Ascendant and even more seldom by Erads.

And yes it is possible to hunt Ascendants also though it isn’t advisable; it is fun to win against Ascendants.

Honestly different people like different units for their stacking. Even if you copy every unit of my stack there will be a tendency that you won’t like the unit I am using. Based on the units I mentioned above, pick and choose the units you like.

The next part is the stacking I used in 11 days to reach 4k land starting from 2k land. Take note this was in the middle of a reset. I lost land during this time also so you can see how fast a Nether can rank if he just knows what he is doing.

'''Day 1.'''

Rank 276 Power 11,598,282 
Land 2,167 Fortress 13

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 127251 22.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 950 23.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4410 8.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 282 7.0%
*Wyvern 0 20.00/0.35/0.00 2993 6.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3501 8.4%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 17285 8.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 3806 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2150 4.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 26452 3.2%

Used Ash/Giant Strength on defense but failed miserably in defense because I didn’t have URs to do enough damage. Went down to 1.7k land. Usually the first day when you start making a stack to rank, you will usually lose. Don’t give up just take it as beginning blues.

'''Day 2'''

Rank 210 Power 12,972,656 
Land 2,213 Fortress 14

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 137616 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 41 21.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4638 7.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 747 15.8%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5543 9.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3912 8.2%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16902 7.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3500 5.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 54 1.2%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15372 1.6%

Used ash/giant strength still blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 3.'''

Rank 286 Power 11,791,740 
Land 2,499 Fortress 17

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 141644 26.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 819 20.7%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4381 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4612 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5057 10.7%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 19347 9.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3851 7.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 57 1.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 3 1.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10444 1.3%

I summoned one shot of URs actually. Ash/giant strength. Blocked 1 attack.

'''Day 4.'''

Rank 143 Power 14,843,982 
Land 2,737 Fortress 19

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 163555 22.7%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 19.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 987 18.5%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 5037 7.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5545 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4240 7.9%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18152 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3752 5.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 53 1.0%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15624 1.4%

Ash/giant strength still. Lost 1 blocked 2. Lost 100 land.

'''Day 5.'''

Rank 198 Power 13,335,207 
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 124175 20.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 892 19.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4689 8.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5201 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5800 10.9%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.8%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16072 7.1%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2539 4.4%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 13916 6.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 22630 2.5%

Ash/battle lust. Was so damaged the day before one hit went into damage status again. Blocked 1.

'''Day 6.'''

Rank 181 Power 13,965,189
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130838 20.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 963 20.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4594 7.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4611 9.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5257 9.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.3%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18978 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3772 6.2%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 14487 6.0%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 401 5.0%

Ash/Giant Strength still. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 7.'''

Rank 204 Power 13,192,751 
Land 3,062 Fortress 26

Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 106757 18.7%
Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 886 20.9%
Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4200 7.8%
Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3724 8.7%
Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4193 8.3%
Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 695 9.7%
Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3264 6.0%
Sirene 0 0.00/0.30/0.00 2711 5.6%
Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 15937 7.4%
Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.7%
Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 18648 2.2%

Running Satchel/Fog. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 8'''

Rank 181 Power 13,947,270 
Land 3,174 Fortress 27

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 105228 17.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1002 22.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4400 7.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 343 6.4%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3970 8.7%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4547 8.4%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 719 9.4%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3474 6.0%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 16596 7.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.4%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 23310 2.5%

Fog/Mist blocked more than 3 attacks.

'''Day 9'''

Rank 117 Power 15,664,415 
Land 3,493 Fortress 30

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130357 18.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 34 16.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1092 21.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5370 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5205 8.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3412 5.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 242 4.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 220 3.6%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 590 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2581 3.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 14642 1.4%

Blocked 5 attacks with Ash/Giant strength.

'''Day 10'''

Rank 82 Power 17,655,519 
Land 3,821 Fortress 33

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 173296 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 47 19.4%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 891 14.9%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6012 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4643 6.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6538 9.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 207 3.5%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 763 7.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3469 4.6%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 161 2.3%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 11978 1.0%

'''Day 11'''

Rank 82 Power 17,669,175 
Land 4,072 Fortress 35

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 159464 20.3%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 18.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1061 18.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5898 10.0%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4878 6.6%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6179 8.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 770 7.8%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 241 3.5%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2449 3.3%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 119 2.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10424 0.9%
 

11 days to get to 4k if you know what you are doing. And my stacks weren’t even that over summoned. Could have over summoned even more but there was war in the guild during the time.

='''Why Rush to the Top?'''=

The reason why people like to rush to the top after researching is obvious. 
When you break the top 100, you get lesser attacks. You earn geld better at the top. Not as much as whorers but decent enough to buy the items you need for defense. At 4k land I can earn at least 650k to 800k per turn. That’s quite good in my opinion. Nethers have the potential to jump that fast up the ranks even faster than what I did. Stacking is really the key, whether you are Nether, Blue or Erad. If you stack well enough with good items used in defense, even without uber heroes you can still rank up.

Nether is so versatile that you can change from a defensive stacking to an offensive stacking in just a matter of hours. Here is an example of it.

After I did my 200 turns, I was running a dos/carpet defense at this rank.

Rank 120 Power 15,344,735 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

I had this much population and mana left

Population 858,215/895,290
Magic Power 1,210,714 / 1,436,000

My stack was:

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 98017 16.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 948 21.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 7.2%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4105 9.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4708 9.1%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 13.3%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 5.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3181 5.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4147 7.5%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 28796 3.3%

I could have stopped there or summoned up a bit more but I did this after 5 hours when I had enough turns.

Rank 59 Power 19,504,301 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

Population 838,784/895,290 
Magic Power 532,671 / 1,436,000

Ash/giant strength

*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1447 22.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 38 14.6%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 113205 13.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6635 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7540 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4552 5.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 4.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 9.0%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 4.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4137 5.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 12816 1.0%

From 15 mil np defensive stack it became a 19 mil np offensive stack. Isn’t that amazing? Or I could have not summoned up but cast devils instead…. Evil yumyum. So many choices.

'''Anti-Devil'''

Or I can run an anti Devil stack like an Ascendant runs. The concept of anti Devil top is use flying units to block devils so in an Ascendants case it would be using Archangels. In a blacks case the best unit to use would be Djinni. I’ve never lost against a Devil counter with Djinni top. If I remember right I’ve blocked around 10 Devil counters with Djinni top.

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

Blue and Nethers are the best colors to do over summoning with less land. The difference though is Phantasm uses fliers and Elementals and Levs to over summon thereby giving it a ridiculous upkeep in mana after summoning. Nether in the other hand has only one Ultimate unit and yet it can also over summon like hell also but have lesser upkeep on mana compared to blue mages.

='''Stacking: Units and Where to Stack them'''=

I like to push my good offensive units down the stack. Which means if I have a way to push my Medusas and Horned Demons down I will do it. How do you push them down? By using flying units. Using my anti devil stack as example:

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

I pushed my Medusas and Horned Demons down to 6th and 7th stack. The reason why I do that is for them to kill the fodder and middle stacks of the invader. By using ash, they can be really deadly down low. The logic behind it is that usually people stack the top three stacks really solid. So why should you waste time trying to find a way to whack the top three stacks when you can whack the lower stacks silly. Though it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, I can say around 60 percent of the time it works.

Someone higher than you theoretically has a good chance of beating you. He is at the top of the food chain and your below him so you are his food per say. Pushing the good melee units down is only one way to defend your land. Sometimes you have to change units or reorder where you stack them. It is to confuse the enemy. If you stack the same units at the same place every time, soon the attacker will know you noticed my 11 day run I sometimes run Fog/Satchel, it is to keep the enemy guessing. Running different types of defense also helps a bit.

When you are below explore limit (3.5k down) it isn’t a bad idea to stack Zombies as top stack. Zombies are sturdy enough down the ranks to use. Very good damage soakers. If you run a ten unit stack, they won’t die in droves unless you are really unlucky a spell or item goes through.

Liches are normally stacked top or second. The problem with Liches if you are having a hard time ranking is they will die horribly to Ascendants if you top stack them. So if you are having a hard time getting up to rank 150 or higher. Stack something above your Liches for protection against Ascendants.

At first you can get away with stacking Unholy Reavers at the top. But as you gain land, it really is not advisable to stack them as top stack. They aren’t the best defenders of Nether units. More often if someone is allied with top mages, the reins their allies sends will be a big factor in killing a lot of your URs. When you are planning to use URs, use ash in defense. URs hitting first is pretty awesome but if it gets hit first it dies like flies at times.

Stacking Wraiths as top stack isn’t advisable also. Wraiths are weak to ranged attacks which is the first attack that usually hits the top stack.

Even Djinni as top stack has its problems. More often if Phantasm keeps visiting you, their Elementals can kill Djinnis effectively. Dominions own Djinnis also. After playing a Phantasm mage for half a reset, even I am afraid of stacking Djinnis top nowadays. I’ve seen so many ways to kill Djinni top. Even mass Sprites top stack can kill Djinni.

Another problem of stacking Djinni top is it often gets sent as reins to allies killing some of them off in the process and making them go second stack. It also isn’t really turn effiecient to summon that much Djinni to make them top stack. There will be days your summoning failure rate is really horrible.

Efreeti people like to push them below Liches. Problem with that it is really not advisable to do so when you have so little land with Efreetis costing so much to cast and have a chance of failure. So Efreetis in large numbers are advisable when you have more land. Above explore limit would be good.

So in a way each unit has its good and bad points. You just have to stack according to what color is hitting you often. As I said improvise, change your units and stacking order once in awhile. Being creative is the key to a successful defense.

=='''Lands'''=
Land is easier lost than gained. That is why high level Nethers like to use DOS/Carpet as defense. It really depends on how you play, I like being offensive, raw offensive hitting power whacking the enemy silly is how I play. So it is up to you to choose how you play Nether. Hopefully this little guide will help you appreciate the beauty of playing a Nether mage.

Addendum:

At the time I was writing the above guide, I really hadn’t seriously delved into trying out DOS/Carpet on defense. I just ran it before one or two days to see how it works. Before writing this guide I had never broken 6k land as Nether so I decided to see what really makes DOS/Carpet work.

My comment on DOS/Carpet after trying it out? It simply is awesome. It is not only in defense where it shines but also on offense let me explain.

This would be my Status report as a nether running DOS/Carpet.

Rank 40 Power 24,063,058 
Land 6,930 Fortress 38 
Geld 154,423,131 Item 182 
Units 229,296 Turns left 2 

Spell Level 470 
Population 1,341,502/1,398,360 
Magic Power 1,965,754 / 2,449,000 

Gold M.P. Pop 
Income 1,688,057 25,084 8,219 
Unit Upkeep 367,300 30,536 9,114 
Building Upkeep 171,950 8,750 0 
Hero Upkeep 0 0 0 
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666 
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0 
Net Income 1,148,807 -15,802 -1,561 

If you noticed I have that much mana leftover after summoning. It is because with DOS/carpet you can afford to make a stack, look undersummoned for your land base and yet your defense is good enough to block most attacks. A mage attacking me would usually lose at least times two NP than what I lose.

This is what I do usually, since I can run my mage only once a day, I make it a point to use up all my turns that by the time I come home I would have max 200 turns without any turns unused go to waste. After I finish my run, I make a stack that is pretty solid enough in defense. After that I simply mana charge to full. Then if I find I can insert a few more units in the lower stacks I do so.

You can simply just geld and mana charge if you want running DOS/Carpet if you are not in the mood for an attack run. Just disband some of your units when you are doing so to save mana and resummon them after. At 6k land up you should be getting at least 1 mil geld each turn so it is really profitable running DOS/Carpet.

With DOS/Carpet stacking, you will probably have so much extra mana leftover that you can use DOS in every attack you make. I tried using DOS every attack run for 3 days and I still had 1 mil mana left over after. I usually hit only 5 to 8 mages each attack run when I am at high land.

Or when you are doing your attack run and you see a mage you would like to hit but your stack seems in disarray, you can always summon units since you have so much extra mana and do an additional hit. That is what DOS/Carpet stacking offers you.

='''Attacking at Higher Lands'''=
So when you are at high lands (5.5k up) which target would you hit? I hit those oversummoned mages with low lands (4k down). I usually go in with regular attacks (to avoid siege penalty for my ground units).

You would be wondering why hit those oversummoned mages when at the first part of the guide I would say oversummoning is very good? Well after running DOS/Carpet I seem to notice one thing. Oversummoned mages usually use Ultimate units in their stacks especially Phantasm Mages. If you are lucky and get DOS through, you can win around more than 50 to 80 percent of your attacks for sure. I use DOS/Ash on offense not DOS/Carpet. I will avoid at all cost those mages running carpets on defense.

The thing about some oversummoned mages is that they seem to forget running Ultimates above isn’t safe. Even running them second stack isn’t safe also at times. One lucky pairing and you would surely win against most oversummoned mages. I would hit Verdants and Erads (which I would normally not hit) and with Dos getting through, I could win against them.

As one nether said, running DOS/Carpet on defense is simply lame but yet it makes your stack stronger in offense since you can make all your stacks stronger by slowly inserting more units in each stack. Your stack will become quite balanced in strength and each unit can be a force to reckon with when you are attacking.

In the end I only lost one attack since running DOS/Carpet in defense at 4.7k land and managed to reach 7.1k land before losing to a devil counter finally.

So if you want to be a safe Nether run DOS/Carpet at high lands because it really is good or you can always oversummon as a Nether, the choice is up to you.
----
[[Guides|Back to Guides]]

[[Category:guides]]

Umbra's Nether Guide

2008-04-25T07:30:38Z

Xhlonewolfhx: Undo revision 16410 by Xhlonewolfhx (Talk)

'''Playing Nether by Umbra'''
Taken from UBB:)

='''Introduction'''=
I made this guide using BLITZ server as a base. I’ve never played S1 or APP as Nether so I don’t know if it will work outside a 5 minute server. But the concept of playing Nether is there so just read and try to get the idea on how to play it. If Blitz server does ever come back up, hopefully this will help new Nether mages in the near future.

People say Nether (black) is hard to play. One of reason I have heard is Nether has too many pop eating units and you get pop spiral too fast. Another is that it is hard to play Nether because Ascendants (whites) feeds on Nethers. The answer to those may vary, it depends on how you play Nether. This guide was made with inputs from how I play Nether based on my experience in game. So it is my style and there are certainly others better ways to play Nether.

='''Units'''=
Every guide I write I always say this, do not mono stack until 3.5k land. There will be people out there who would recommend that you Mono Zombie until 3.5k land, which is basically exploring until the explore limit. The reason why I do not adhere to this kind of playing style is that, if you cannot defend your land below explore limit, you will have a hard time defending it EVEN MORE when you get over explore limit. Losing land may suck, but it is through losing that you will learn what a good unit to use is; why they are good stacked above or stacked below or why you shouldn't use this unit. Fight your way up from low lands, do not mono stack.
 

To this point what would be the good units to use for Nether? 
Let me start of with the on color (Nether) units a Nether can summon.

'''Nether Units'''

[[Skeleton]]
The most basic of all Nether units. You get it free from Black Sabbath (see what it is below) and basically a unit which really has no use but for fodder. People usually disband them and leave some (around 10k less) as additional fodder for pillage protection. When you play Nether, never stack these above always put this below as fodder, last stack always. If you do stack many of these, more than 20k and you lose land, then blame your stupidity for it.

[[Zombie]]
Second lousiest unit of Nether. You also get these free from Black Sabbath. But the difference between Zombies and Skeletons is that Zombies have actually good use. Zombies are good damage soakers. A lot of Nethers use zombies as top stack at the beginning but in the middle of the reset they then to lose their luster as the top ground stack for Nether. They aren't bad and they aren't good in a sense. The good thing about them is they are FREE and saves you the turns needed to summon them. 130k zombies can kill around 120 unicorns or 300 horned demons. That isn't really bad for the second lousiest unit of Nether isn't it? (more about zombies in the stacking part.)

[[Ghoul]]
They are a better version of Zombies. I cannot really comment on these because I have never used them in my stacks. The reason why I do not use them is because they are not disband able. I really do not need another unit that I cannot disband. But based on experience from what I've encountered, Ghouls has its use. Some people mass stack Ghouls at the top. They can stackwipe Ultimate units like Unholy Reavers and Titans if they can attack first. (not disbandable)

[[Shadow]]
A unit I seldom see Nethers use. I use them as fodder killers. Why shadows you ask? They are good for killing units that are weak against magic (Elementals) and as fodder killers. Their attack is magic and they have an attack initiative of 2. The problem with them is if you stack a lot of them and they get hit by something that kills them effectively, they can lose you battles. Good thing about them is they have 100 percent resist on missile, paralyze and melee.

[[Wraith]]
A decent flying unit for Nether, they are cheap to summon and maintain. Problem with them they die too easily to ranged attack. Sometimes will lose the battle for you because of this but they are decent killers if they can attack first. i love these even with its weakness. Their attack of magic paralyze is awesome because the enemy cannot counter attack. (not disbandable)

[[Horned Demon]]
No Nether can live without them in my opinion. They are one of the best pound for pound melee units in the game, can hit the enemy unit twice and have an attack of poison melee. Same as Wraiths, cheap to summon and maintain but also do die easily from ranged attacks. One of the best units that isn't an Ultimate unit in my opinion. The downside of Horned Demons is they have an initiative of one. (undisbandable)

[[Vampire]]
Second greatest of the pop suckers of Nether units. It has a upkeep of 5 pop per unit. Do not summon too many of them or else you will be in big time trouble. They are really good units to use in my opinion. Their only noticeable weakness is against holy attacks, which really isn't a problem (will explain why in the bottom). They have a decent defense against ranged attacks and are really good melee blockers. Someone using a mono Horned Demon or Mono Leviathan stack with flight won't do ***** if you stack Vampires top. They are that good against the best melee units. One advantage they have is they can fly. They have Steal Life as an attribute with magic ranged and magic paralyze as attacks means you cannot counter them. (not disbandable)

[[Lich]]
One of the best defensive units in the game. Its only noticeable weakness is from holy attacks. It can take a beating from hard hitting melee units like Horned Demons, Treants and Leviathans and still survive with little losses. Most Nether use these as top stack when they are at the top ranks. Their attack attributes of magic ranged and cold ranged makes them decent attackers also. Liches are the reason why Erad mages are afraid of hitting Nethers in the latter part of the game. People stack so many Liches at the top that Red Dragons or Chimeras tend to get slaughtered in mass numbers when they meet up. (not disbandable)

[[Demon Knight]]
If you look at the people who know how to play Nether, you will never see Demon Knights in their stacks. I've only used them once when I was first played Nether and frankly I didn't like them. Costs 6 turns to summon and compared to Liches its pop upkeep is even worse. The only visible use of them is to block Ascendant attacks (something which a Nether shouldn't be afraid). I've seen people stacking them top. Can block Nether and Ascendant attacks but against a Blue, Green and Erad mages, Demon Knights really do not survive that long. Maybe one of these days I'll revisit these and try them out again. (not disbandable)

[[Unholy Reaver]]
The only Ultimate unit of Nether. They are damn good killers with psychic range and melee paralyze as its attacks. One of my favorite Nether units but sucks your pop like crazy if you use them. One problem with Unholy Reavers is they are not disbandable and when you cast them they usually end up top stack. It is hard to get units above Unholy Reavers except for Zombies but Zombie top isn't feasible when you are at the top ranks. Unholy Reavers I noticed is weak in defense that is why you should never stack them top stack if you are at high lands and high rank. You have to make them hit first in order for them to be effective. Usually Nethers who use them use Ash in defense. At low rank and lands, you can get away with stacking them at the top. (not disbandable)

[[Dark Elf Magician]]
These are barrack troops, with ranged magic with an initiative of three makes them a very good unit to use. You can save turns using them because you do not have to summon them but recruit them. The thing about barrack troops is they cost a lot to summon and maintain. I can say I am a bit biased against barrack troops. It is something I think I can live without as a Nether.

If you look at the above units I have mentioned. You would say only four units are disbandable? How am I going to survive without my population plummeting like crazy? The trick to playing Nether is to use and mix off color units into your stacking. So usually your stacking would be half disbandable, half not disbandable. That is one way of keeping your pop in check.

So which are the good off color units should one use as Nether? I will mention only those that I have used.

'''Phantasm Units'''

[[Djinni]]
They are real cheap to summon in my opinion. 60k mana with 4 turns only and makes your NP go up higher with it being a flying and a complex unit. Nethers use it as top stack just like Ascendants use Archangels top stack. Djinni has decent defense and offense. Not bad not good depending on where you stack them. But being off color complex units, there is a chance you will fail when summoning them once in awhile.

[[Medusa]]
Cheap to summon also in my opinion. I like its attack which has ranged poison and paralyze which makes it uncounterable. One of the off color units that is always in my stack when I start climbing. They die horribly if paired with something that can kill them effectively like Horned Demons or any hard hitting melee units. Good to stack as third or fourth ground.

[[Psychic Wisp]]
This unit have an initiative of three and ranged psychic as its attack. Most Nethers prefer dryads (magic ranged) over wisps.

[[Sirene]] Have psychic and magic as its attack. Usually used as a fodder killer or as an elemental killer. Have attributes of Charm (makes attacks less effective) and Beauty (-5 percent penalty when attacking that unit) makes it a good damage soaker if one goes for defensive kind of stack. A unit mostly used in specialty stacks.

'''Eradication Units'''

[[Efreeti]] Erad version of Liches. They are weaker though than Liches but have an attribute of marksmanship (hits better) and has a ranged attack of fire (initiative 4) and magic ranged (initiative 2). Basically used by most nether who do DOS/CARPET on defense as a unit below Liches. As a complex off color unit it has a summoning failure tendency.

[[Salamander]] Very good fodder killers with fire as its attack. Its downside is has an initiative of one and dies horribly against most melee and flying units.

[[Hellhound]]s Very good fodder killer with an initiative of 3 fire breath and melee (initiative 1). It actually has the same use as Sirenes which is used to kill Elementals or for specialty stacks.

[[Chimera]] A flying unit which has fire breath (initiative 3) as its attack coupled with melee attack. Pretty hard to summon and has a bigger summoning failure rate than Djinni and Efreeti based on my experience. Weak to ranged attacks but a nice fodder killer.

[[Wyvern]] Has melee and poison melee as its attack. I tried using them but they do not do much damage in my opinion. But people who use nether flying stacks say they are good units to use.

'''Verdant Units'''

[[Dryad]] Ranged magic but has better defense than psychic wisps with attributes of Beauty and Charm. You get less of them compared to wisps.

'''Ascendant Unit'''

[[Soul Speaker]] Ranged psychic. Advantage is a portion of the units resurrect after getting killed. You also get less of them compared to wisps.

='''Defensive & Offensive Nethers'''=
So now we have gone through the units one can use a Nether, your next question would be, with that much units being mentioned, which unit will you choose to make a good stacking?

It really depends on how you want to play Nether. 
You can be defensive or offensive. With that said you also have to have premium items for defense. What are the good items one can use as defense?

'''Defensive''' 

If you want to be as defensive as possible in low lands, use satchel of mist paired with fog cloud. With that said you need to use good units which are defensive. How do you look at units to see if they are defensive or not? Look at its attribute: namely attack resistance and abilities. Satchel/Fog combination makes the invaders accuracy lesser. So if you use a dryad which as beauty and charm as its attributes, it would even make the invaders accuracy lower. Liches are good defensive units that is why people like to stack it at the top. Take time to look at the attributes of each unit. In time you will understand why using these units along with this particular type of item/spell is suitable to each other.

One of the best defenses in the game that a Nether can use only is called Dreams of Seduction plus Carpet of Flying or commonly called DOS/Carpet. DOS is a spell that makes you summon succubi to aid you when an invader attacks. Succubi are great because even if it dies in droves, the net power (NP) loss won't be included in the computation of the battle outcome. To you who might be reading it the first thought that would go in your mind is, isn't that great? DOS/carpet isn't really advisable to use below 4k land. The main ingredient for DOS is your population. The more population you have the more Succubi that will come to you. If you compute your population incorrectly, your succubi will have a tendency not to be top stack, which would defeat the purpose of using DOS/Carpet in the first place. DOS cost 80k mana which is a lot in my opinion at low lands (5k down). Carpets are also expensive items. So it is more advisable to use Dos/Carpet above explore limit or preferably above 4k to 5k land. During times of war it isn’t advisable to use DOS. The enemy can just confuse you to stop you from summoning DOS or they can kill of your population to make your Succubi go lower.

How do you compute how much Succubi will come to aid you in battle? This website will compute it for you [[http://hinux.hin.no/~gisljgra/refs/test/succubi.php]].

DOS/Carpet gets harder to crack as a Nether gains land. It is hard to crack but not impossible. A Phantasm mage with a flying/ranged stack with items/spell getting through can beat a DOS/Carpet. An Ascendant or a Verdant can do Call Hurricane and try to pull down your units. As it is said, no matter how good your defense is, it is still breakable.

One problem with Nether units is their low initiative. Units like Horned Demons have an initiative of 1 only. How does initiative affect game play? A unit moves first when its initiative is higher so higher the initiative the better. There is also a fatigue factor in the game mechanics. If a unit gets hit his fatigue factor goes up and he is less effective in offense and defense.

Some Nethers use Fog/ Spiders Web or Giant strength/Spiders Web in defense. The logic of this kind of defense is for the initiative 1 units not able to move. It is effective against Verdant and Nether attackers but doesn’t really guarantee you can make the enemy unable to move. Why? As you go higher in rank and land, Spiders Web loses its luster. People in the top 100 will be using Ash for offense. People at the top are rich to afford the best items for offense. Carpets, Candle of Sleeping, Ash you name it. Remember it is much cheaper to buy good items to use for offense than to buy one Magical Compass to gain land. Well for me it is more fun to attack and gain land than using a Magical Compass to gain land.

'''Offensive''' 
My way of playing defense is by being offensive. 
The best defense is offense. Ash/Giant Strength and Ash/Battle Lust would be the item/spell for my kind of stacking. Basically I want my units to attack first. The logic of it is when you hit the invader first hard enough; you hope you can damage his army enough for it to be ineffective. His attack on you would be lessened in might and would not deal enough damage to you. With that said I also use offensive units in great numbers.

My stack would look something like this in the beginning.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*Skeletons

As you go higher in rank you can afford to disband your Skeletons and change it into other units. If you notice I have a ten unit stacking. 
Why ten units? 
It is to prevent fatigue on your top stack. If you have less than 10 kinds of units in a stack lets say 7 only. Your top stack will get hit more than once. If you had 10 kinds of units, each unit would have been hit once only. Remember the fatigue factor I mentioned. The more times a unit gets hit, fatigue sets in and It becomes weaker each hit. The logic of having a ten unit stack is to spread out the damage.

='''Nether Essentials: Over Summoning & Black Sabbath'''=

'''Over Summoning'''

So how do you build a stack that is offensive enough for defense and offense? There are several important things to be a successful Nether you should learn.

Why should you over summon? That is the common question I hear from people. Over summoning has its advantage. When people look for targets, people often look for mages with fat lands and an under summoned army. How do you know if that mage is fat and under summoned? You look at your land and your NP. Let us say you are 3k land and have an NP of 14 mil. While someone below you is 3k land also while only having 11 mil NP. So he is under summoned right? Yes and no. Really depends also on what people are stacking. Some people who stack defensively (Lich/Efreeti heavy) tend to be under summoned yet good enough to block attacks. But most are under summoned that you can easily take land. Remember there are always better and lesser players in any game. I am an over summoning advocate and there will be people who don’t want to over summon. As I said this is the way I play.

You have to set a benchmark also for being over summoned. Me for instance I can summon to 11 million NP on 2k land. Yes it is possible to do so. Your next question would be what is the most effective way to over summon? Three important things you should consider.

''' Black Sabbath '''

Black Sabbath is a Nether only spell that gives your three things when you cast it, gives your free zombies and skeletons every turn, give you some protection against Ascendants and the most important thing is it gives you 3k extra mana in your income. 3k extra mana. In low lands that 3k extra mana is like a mana from heaven. You can summon more stuff with it. If you are Nether, the first thing you do when you start making a stack is to run black Sabbath. Black Sabbath alone cannot make you over summoned if you do not know another important part of over summoning.

Mana Charge… Summon …. Mana Charge Tactic.

When you look at your status report you will see a part like this.

Interior Info.
Gold M.P. Pop
Income 1,048,323 15,954 7,978
Unit Upkeep 222,010 -10,000 7,900
Building Upkeep 134,310 5,650 0
Hero Upkeep 15,000 230 0
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0
Net Income 677,003 -5,954 - 588

If you look at the above status report you will notice in the MP part you have a income of 15,954 and a net income of negative 5,954. The funny thing is that when some people see a negative income in the net income section of the MP, they think you should not mana charge anymore because it is negative. Wrong! It actually works this way, every time you mana charge you get 15,954 less the -5,954 in the net income section which would come out around 10k mana added to your mana pool each time you charge (actually the income MP part fluctuates around 1k to 2k at times).

The trick to the mana charge summon tactic is this way, count the no. of times you need to summon your units. After full mana charge, summon a unit, mana charge then summon again mana charge and so on until you finish. There will come a time when the your income (MP) would be lets say 15954 and your net income (MP) -14000. So it comes out your getting only around 2k mana net. Around that time you have to stop doing the mana charge summon tactic and just finish up summoning.

I guarantee if you do that your NP would increase. The 3k extra mana Black Sabbath gives helps a lot when you are doing the mana charge summon tactic. 3k in ten turns is already 30k additional mana. 50 turns is 150k mana. It will be a bit slow doing this kind of tactic and you might get onlined for moving so slow. Well those are the breaks of the game. But as you get more lands around 5k up, the 3k extra mana you get from Black Sabbath won’t be as good as it was when it was in lower lands.

When you are over summoned there are a lot of other advantages. Let us say you are at 3k land at 17 mil NP. And someone at 5k land with 19 Mil NP whacks you. The one at 19 mil np is under summoned compared to you. Even if you lose a lot more NP in the battle it will go out in the end he lost the more power than you because your army has a higher NP than the invader.

Another advantage is when you are choosing targets. Lets say you do not like the potential targets in your range. Since you are over summoned, you can afford to disband some units to make you go lower to fish for targets. One example is when you are running zombie fodder so you can just disband around 500k NP worth of zombies, go down and whack somebody. Since you are oversummoned you can afford to disband some of your units. Sometimes over summoning is just a mirage you do to leapfrog some players who are under summoned.

Mages will choose to hit an under summoned mage rather than an over summoned mage in most cases. Over summoned means harder to win against. Of course you need to stack well also in order to defend.

The next thing you need to learn is what units you summon first. 
Usually the rule of thumb is summoning the units that have no pop upkeep and have lesser summoning cost.

Example of a stack that has these units.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*skeletons
 

First would be either Shadows or Hell Hounds. Next you can either summon Medusa or Horned Demons or Wraiths. Horned demons and wraiths have cheap upkeep so it really doesn’t matter if you summon them that early by preferably summon Medusas first. Next would be Liches as compared to Vampires coz Vampires have a higher pop upkeep than lich. You need to watch your pop situation on the main page. If your pop keeps going down negative like this -700 -600 -500 that means you are okay but if it starts to go like this -500 -600 -700 going up then you must hurry and finish summoning before your pop goes spiral. Last summon always should be Unholy Reavers which have a very big pop upkeep.

='''Population Woes'''=

Yes, when you first play Nether, there will be a big chance when your new the first 600 turns you run when you have a full stacking you will get pop spiral. It is because you summoned too much pop eating units and they didn’t die when you did your attack run or you ran to few towns/farms to support your pop eating army. 

How do you know if you have enough towns to support your pop eating army? A Nether mage normally runs around 30 to 35 percent or less of his lands used for nodes. Rest is used for towns and farms. It is hard to give you exact numbers of each unit to summon so try summoning yourself. If you pop spiral then you will know the numbers you summoned are too much. Experience is the best teacher, soon you will know how much to summon.

Keep [[Wine of Three Whips]] in stock for emergency population. 
It gives you 10 percent of your current pop so if your pop is like this already 100,000/500,000 it is more efficient to pillage than to use the Wine.

One way to kill of your pop eating units is to suicide them against an Ascendant mage. It is really effective. Sometimes I deliberately siege an Ascendant mage just to kill off my units if I see I can’t seem to kill them off from the attacks before.

Of course you have to leave land for barriers also. You do not have to have full bars right away when you start climbing. Slowly build them up but build them up fast.
Barriers is a must for Nethers. 
By the time you reach around 2.7k land you should have at least 70 percent bars already.

='''Personal Playing Style'''=

One common thing I hear from some Nethers is that they are afraid of Ascendants. That is quite laughable. If you know how to over summon properly, you can get up higher and faster in rank than most Ascendants. White mages needs more land to rank up compared to Nethers. You can leapfrog most Ascendants in the beginning if you just over summon and gain land. At the top 100 you will seldom see 10 whites in the top ten by the time you reach the top. So your Ascendant problem is solved. So it is a MYTH that Nethers are food for whites. At the top the ones that hunt you more are Nethers, Verdants and Phantasms. You will seldom get hit by a Ascendant and even more seldom by Erads.

And yes it is possible to hunt Ascendants also though it isn’t advisable; it is fun to win against Ascendants.

Honestly different people like different units for their stacking. Even if you copy every unit of my stack there will be a tendency that you won’t like the unit I am using. Based on the units I mentioned above, pick and choose the units you like.

The next part is the stacking I used in 11 days to reach 4k land starting from 2k land. Take note this was in the middle of a reset. I lost land during this time also so you can see how fast a Nether can rank if he just knows what he is doing.

'''Day 1.'''

Rank 276 Power 11,598,282 
Land 2,167 Fortress 13

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 127251 22.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 950 23.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4410 8.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 282 7.0%
*Wyvern 0 20.00/0.35/0.00 2993 6.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3501 8.4%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 17285 8.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 3806 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2150 4.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 26452 3.2%

Used Ash/Giant Strength on defense but failed miserably in defense because I didn’t have URs to do enough damage. Went down to 1.7k land. Usually the first day when you start making a stack to rank, you will usually lose. Don’t give up just take it as beginning blues.

'''Day 2'''

Rank 210 Power 12,972,656 
Land 2,213 Fortress 14

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 137616 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 41 21.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4638 7.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 747 15.8%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5543 9.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3912 8.2%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16902 7.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3500 5.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 54 1.2%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15372 1.6%

Used ash/giant strength still blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 3.'''

Rank 286 Power 11,791,740 
Land 2,499 Fortress 17

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 141644 26.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 819 20.7%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4381 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4612 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5057 10.7%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 19347 9.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3851 7.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 57 1.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 3 1.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10444 1.3%

I summoned one shot of URs actually. Ash/giant strength. Blocked 1 attack.

'''Day 4.'''

Rank 143 Power 14,843,982 
Land 2,737 Fortress 19

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 163555 22.7%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 19.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 987 18.5%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 5037 7.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5545 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4240 7.9%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18152 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3752 5.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 53 1.0%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15624 1.4%

Ash/giant strength still. Lost 1 blocked 2. Lost 100 land.

'''Day 5.'''

Rank 198 Power 13,335,207 
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 124175 20.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 892 19.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4689 8.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5201 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5800 10.9%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.8%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16072 7.1%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2539 4.4%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 13916 6.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 22630 2.5%

Ash/battle lust. Was so damaged the day before one hit went into damage status again. Blocked 1.

'''Day 6.'''

Rank 181 Power 13,965,189
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130838 20.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 963 20.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4594 7.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4611 9.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5257 9.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.3%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18978 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3772 6.2%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 14487 6.0%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 401 5.0%

Ash/Giant Strength still. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 7.'''

Rank 204 Power 13,192,751 
Land 3,062 Fortress 26

Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 106757 18.7%
Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 886 20.9%
Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4200 7.8%
Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3724 8.7%
Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4193 8.3%
Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 695 9.7%
Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3264 6.0%
Sirene 0 0.00/0.30/0.00 2711 5.6%
Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 15937 7.4%
Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.7%
Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 18648 2.2%

Running Satchel/Fog. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 8'''

Rank 181 Power 13,947,270 
Land 3,174 Fortress 27

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 105228 17.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1002 22.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4400 7.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 343 6.4%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3970 8.7%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4547 8.4%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 719 9.4%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3474 6.0%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 16596 7.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.4%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 23310 2.5%

Fog/Mist blocked more than 3 attacks.

'''Day 9'''

Rank 117 Power 15,664,415 
Land 3,493 Fortress 30

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130357 18.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 34 16.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1092 21.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5370 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5205 8.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3412 5.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 242 4.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 220 3.6%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 590 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2581 3.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 14642 1.4%

Blocked 5 attacks with Ash/Giant strength.

'''Day 10'''

Rank 82 Power 17,655,519 
Land 3,821 Fortress 33

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 173296 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 47 19.4%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 891 14.9%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6012 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4643 6.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6538 9.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 207 3.5%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 763 7.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3469 4.6%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 161 2.3%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 11978 1.0%

'''Day 11'''

Rank 82 Power 17,669,175 
Land 4,072 Fortress 35

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 159464 20.3%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 18.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1061 18.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5898 10.0%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4878 6.6%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6179 8.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 770 7.8%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 241 3.5%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2449 3.3%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 119 2.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10424 0.9%
 

11 days to get to 4k if you know what you are doing. And my stacks weren’t even that over summoned. Could have over summoned even more but there was war in the guild during the time.

='''Why Rush to the Top?'''=

The reason why people like to rush to the top after researching is obvious. 
When you break the top 100, you get lesser attacks. You earn geld better at the top. Not as much as whorers but decent enough to buy the items you need for defense. At 4k land I can earn at least 650k to 800k per turn. That’s quite good in my opinion. Nethers have the potential to jump that fast up the ranks even faster than what I did. Stacking is really the key, whether you are Nether, Blue or Erad. If you stack well enough with good items used in defense, even without uber heroes you can still rank up.

Nether is so versatile that you can change from a defensive stacking to an offensive stacking in just a matter of hours. Here is an example of it.

After I did my 200 turns, I was running a dos/carpet defense at this rank.

Rank 120 Power 15,344,735 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

I had this much population and mana left

Population 858,215/895,290
Magic Power 1,210,714 / 1,436,000

My stack was:

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 98017 16.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 948 21.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 7.2%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4105 9.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4708 9.1%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 13.3%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 5.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3181 5.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4147 7.5%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 28796 3.3%

I could have stopped there or summoned up a bit more but I did this after 5 hours when I had enough turns.

Rank 59 Power 19,504,301 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

Population 838,784/895,290 
Magic Power 532,671 / 1,436,000

Ash/giant strength

*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1447 22.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 38 14.6%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 113205 13.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6635 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7540 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4552 5.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 4.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 9.0%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 4.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4137 5.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 12816 1.0%

From 15 mil np defensive stack it became a 19 mil np offensive stack. Isn’t that amazing? Or I could have not summoned up but cast devils instead…. Evil yumyum. So many choices.

'''Anti-Devil'''

Or I can run an anti Devil stack like an Ascendant runs. The concept of anti Devil top is use flying units to block devils so in an Ascendants case it would be using Archangels. In a blacks case the best unit to use would be Djinni. I’ve never lost against a Devil counter with Djinni top. If I remember right I’ve blocked around 10 Devil counters with Djinni top.

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

Blue and Nethers are the best colors to do over summoning with less land. The difference though is Phantasm uses fliers and Elementals and Levs to over summon thereby giving it a ridiculous upkeep in mana after summoning. Nether in the other hand has only one Ultimate unit and yet it can also over summon like hell also but have lesser upkeep on mana compared to blue mages.

='''Stacking: Units and Where to Stack them'''=

I like to push my good offensive units down the stack. Which means if I have a way to push my Medusas and Horned Demons down I will do it. How do you push them down? By using flying units. Using my anti devil stack as example:

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

I pushed my Medusas and Horned Demons down to 6th and 7th stack. The reason why I do that is for them to kill the fodder and middle stacks of the invader. By using ash, they can be really deadly down low. The logic behind it is that usually people stack the top three stacks really solid. So why should you waste time trying to find a way to whack the top three stacks when you can whack the lower stacks silly. Though it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, I can say around 60 percent of the time it works.

Someone higher than you theoretically has a good chance of beating you. He is at the top of the food chain and your below him so you are his food per say. Pushing the good melee units down is only one way to defend your land. Sometimes you have to change units or reorder where you stack them. It is to confuse the enemy. If you stack the same units at the same place every time, soon the attacker will know you noticed my 11 day run I sometimes run Fog/Satchel, it is to keep the enemy guessing. Running different types of defense also helps a bit.

When you are below explore limit (3.5k down) it isn’t a bad idea to stack Zombies as top stack. Zombies are sturdy enough down the ranks to use. Very good damage soakers. If you run a ten unit stack, they won’t die in droves unless you are really unlucky a spell or item goes through.

Liches are normally stacked top or second. The problem with Liches if you are having a hard time ranking is they will die horribly to Ascendants if you top stack them. So if you are having a hard time getting up to rank 150 or higher. Stack something above your Liches for protection against Ascendants.

At first you can get away with stacking Unholy Reavers at the top. But as you gain land, it really is not advisable to stack them as top stack. They aren’t the best defenders of Nether units. More often if someone is allied with top mages, the reins their allies sends will be a big factor in killing a lot of your URs. When you are planning to use URs, use ash in defense. URs hitting first is pretty awesome but if it gets hit first it dies like flies at times.

Stacking Wraiths as top stack isn’t advisable also. Wraiths are weak to ranged attacks which is the first attack that usually hits the top stack.

Even Djinni as top stack has its problems. More often if Phantasm keeps visiting you, their Elementals can kill Djinnis effectively. Dominions own Djinnis also. After playing a Phantasm mage for half a reset, even I am afraid of stacking Djinnis top nowadays. I’ve seen so many ways to kill Djinni top. Even mass Sprites top stack can kill Djinni.

Another problem of stacking Djinni top is it often gets sent as reins to allies killing some of them off in the process and making them go second stack. It also isn’t really turn effiecient to summon that much Djinni to make them top stack. There will be days your summoning failure rate is really horrible.

Efreeti people like to push them below Liches. Problem with that it is really not advisable to do so when you have so little land with Efreetis costing so much to cast and have a chance of failure. So Efreetis in large numbers are advisable when you have more land. Above explore limit would be good.

So in a way each unit has its good and bad points. You just have to stack according to what color is hitting you often. As I said improvise, change your units and stacking order once in awhile. Being creative is the key to a successful defense.

=='''Lands'''=
Land is easier lost than gained. That is why high level Nethers like to use DOS/Carpet as defense. It really depends on how you play, I like being offensive, raw offensive hitting power whacking the enemy silly is how I play. So it is up to you to choose how you play Nether. Hopefully this little guide will help you appreciate the beauty of playing a Nether mage.

Addendum:

At the time I was writing the above guide, I really hadn’t seriously delved into trying out DOS/Carpet on defense. I just ran it before one or two days to see how it works. Before writing this guide I had never broken 6k land as Nether so I decided to see what really makes DOS/Carpet work.

My comment on DOS/Carpet after trying it out? It simply is awesome. It is not only in defense where it shines but also on offense let me explain.

This would be my Status report as a nether running DOS/Carpet.

Rank 40 Power 24,063,058 
Land 6,930 Fortress 38 
Geld 154,423,131 Item 182 
Units 229,296 Turns left 2 

Spell Level 470 
Population 1,341,502/1,398,360 
Magic Power 1,965,754 / 2,449,000 

Gold M.P. Pop 
Income 1,688,057 25,084 8,219 
Unit Upkeep 367,300 30,536 9,114 
Building Upkeep 171,950 8,750 0 
Hero Upkeep 0 0 0 
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666 
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0 
Net Income 1,148,807 -15,802 -1,561 

If you noticed I have that much mana leftover after summoning. It is because with DOS/carpet you can afford to make a stack, look undersummoned for your land base and yet your defense is good enough to block most attacks. A mage attacking me would usually lose at least times two NP than what I lose.

This is what I do usually, since I can run my mage only once a day, I make it a point to use up all my turns that by the time I come home I would have max 200 turns without any turns unused go to waste. After I finish my run, I make a stack that is pretty solid enough in defense. After that I simply mana charge to full. Then if I find I can insert a few more units in the lower stacks I do so.

You can simply just geld and mana charge if you want running DOS/Carpet if you are not in the mood for an attack run. Just disband some of your units when you are doing so to save mana and resummon them after. At 6k land up you should be getting at least 1 mil geld each turn so it is really profitable running DOS/Carpet.

With DOS/Carpet stacking, you will probably have so much extra mana leftover that you can use DOS in every attack you make. I tried using DOS every attack run for 3 days and I still had 1 mil mana left over after. I usually hit only 5 to 8 mages each attack run when I am at high land.

Or when you are doing your attack run and you see a mage you would like to hit but your stack seems in disarray, you can always summon units since you have so much extra mana and do an additional hit. That is what DOS/Carpet stacking offers you.

='''Attacking at Higher Lands'''=
So when you are at high lands (5.5k up) which target would you hit? I hit those oversummoned mages with low lands (4k down). I usually go in with regular attacks (to avoid siege penalty for my ground units).

You would be wondering why hit those oversummoned mages when at the first part of the guide I would say oversummoning is very good? Well after running DOS/Carpet I seem to notice one thing. Oversummoned mages usually use Ultimate units in their stacks especially Phantasm Mages. If you are lucky and get DOS through, you can win around more than 50 to 80 percent of your attacks for sure. I use DOS/Ash on offense not DOS/Carpet. I will avoid at all cost those mages running carpets on defense.

The thing about some oversummoned mages is that they seem to forget running Ultimates above isn’t safe. Even running them second stack isn’t safe also at times. One lucky pairing and you would surely win against most oversummoned mages. I would hit Verdants and Erads (which I would normally not hit) and with Dos getting through, I could win against them.

As one nether said, running DOS/Carpet on defense is simply lame but yet it makes your stack stronger in offense since you can make all your stacks stronger by slowly inserting more units in each stack. Your stack will become quite balanced in strength and each unit can be a force to reckon with when you are attacking.

In the end I only lost one attack since running DOS/Carpet in defense at 4.7k land and managed to reach 7.1k land before losing to a devil counter finally.

So if you want to be a safe Nether run DOS/Carpet at high lands because it really is good or you can always oversummon as a Nether, the choice is up to you.
----
[[Guides|Back to Guides]]

[[Category:guides]]

Umbra's Nether Guide

2008-04-25T07:29:22Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

'''Playing Nether by Umbra'''
Taken from UBB:)

='''Introduction'''=
I made this guide using BLITZ server as a base. I’ve never played S1 or APP as Nether so I don’t know if it will work outside a 5 minute server. But the concept of playing Nether is there so just read and try to get the idea on how to play it. If Blitz server does ever come back up, hopefully this will help new Nether mages in the near future.

People say Nether (black) is hard to play. One of reason I have heard is Nether has too many pop eating units and you get pop spiral too fast. Another is that it is hard to play Nether because Ascendants (whites) feeds on Nethers. The answer to those may vary, it depends on how you play Nether. This guide was made with inputs from how I play Nether based on my experience in game. So it is my style and there are certainly others better ways to play Nether.

='''Units'''=
Every guide I write I always say this, do not mono stack until 3.5k land. There will be people out there who would recommend that you Mono Zombie until 3.5k land, which is basically exploring until the explore limit. The reason why I do not adhere to this kind of playing style is that, if you cannot defend your land below explore limit, you will have a hard time defending it EVEN MORE when you get over explore limit. Losing land may suck, but it is through losing that you will learn what a good unit to use is; why they are good stacked above or stacked below or why you shouldn't use this unit. Fight your way up from low lands, do not mono stack.
 

To this point what would be the good units to use for Nether? 
Let me start of with the on color (Nether) units a Nether can summon.

'''Nether Units'''

[[Skeleton]]
The most basic of all Nether units. You get it free from Black Sabbath (see what it is below) and basically a unit which really has no use but for fodder. People usually disband them and leave some (around 10k less) as additional fodder for pillage protection. When you play Nether, never stack these above always put this below as fodder, last stack always. If you do stack many of these, more than 20k and you lose land, then blame your stupidity for it.

[[Zombie]]
Second lousiest unit of Nether. You also get these free from Black Sabbath. But the difference between Zombies and Skeletons is that Zombies have actually good use. Zombies are good damage soakers. A lot of Nethers use zombies as top stack at the beginning but in the middle of the reset they then to lose their luster as the top ground stack for Nether. They aren't bad and they aren't good in a sense. The good thing about them is they are FREE and saves you the turns needed to summon them. 130k zombies can kill around 120 unicorns or 300 horned demons. That isn't really bad for the second lousiest unit of Nether isn't it? (more about zombies in the stacking part.)

[[Ghoul]]
They are a better version of Zombies. I cannot really comment on these because I have never used them in my stacks. The reason why I do not use them is because they are not disband able. I really do not need another unit that I cannot disband. But based on experience from what I've encountered, Ghouls has its use. Some people mass stack Ghouls at the top. They can stackwipe Ultimate units like Unholy Reavers and Titans if they can attack first. (not disbandable)

[[Shadow]]
A unit I seldom see Nethers use. I use them as fodder killers. Why shadows you ask? They are good for killing units that are weak against magic (Elementals) and as fodder killers. Their attack is magic and they have an attack initiative of 2. The problem with them is if you stack a lot of them and they get hit by something that kills them effectively, they can lose you battles. Good thing about them is they have 100 percent resist on missile, paralyze and melee.

[[Wraith]]
A decent flying unit for Nether, they are cheap to summon and maintain. Problem with them they die too easily to ranged attack. Sometimes will lose the battle for you because of this but they are decent killers if they can attack first. i love these even with its weakness. Their attack of magic paralyze is awesome because the enemy cannot counter attack. (not disbandable)

[[Horned Demon]]
No Nether can live without them in my opinion. They are one of the best pound for pound melee units in the game, can hit the enemy unit twice and have an attack of poison melee. Same as Wraiths, cheap to summon and maintain but also do die easily from ranged attacks. One of the best units that isn't an Ultimate unit in my opinion. The downside of Horned Demons is they have an initiative of one. (undisbandable)

[[Vampire]]
Second greatest of the pop suckers of Nether units. It has a upkeep of 5 pop per unit. Do not summon too many of them or else you will be in big time trouble. They are really good units to use in my opinion. Their only noticeable weakness is against holy attacks, which really isn't a problem (will explain why in the bottom). They have a decent defense against ranged attacks and are really good melee blockers. Someone using a mono Horned Demon or Mono Leviathan stack with flight won't do ***** if you stack Vampires top. They are that good against the best melee units. One advantage they have is they can fly. They have Steal Life as an attribute with magic ranged and magic paralyze as attacks means you cannot counter them. (not disbandable)

[[Lich]]
One of the best defensive units in the game. Its only noticeable weakness is from holy attacks. It can take a beating from hard hitting melee units like Horned Demons, Treants and Leviathans and still survive with little losses. Most Nether use these as top stack when they are at the top ranks. Their attack attributes of magic ranged and cold ranged makes them decent attackers also. Liches are the reason why Erad mages are afraid of hitting Nethers in the latter part of the game. People stack so many Liches at the top that Red Dragons or Chimeras tend to get slaughtered in mass numbers when they meet up. (not disbandable)

[[Demon Knight]]
If you look at the people who know how to play Nether, you will never see Demon Knights in their stacks. I've only used them once when I was first played Nether and frankly I didn't like them. Costs 6 turns to summon and compared to Liches its pop upkeep is even worse. The only visible use of them is to block Ascendant attacks (something which a Nether shouldn't be afraid). I've seen people stacking them top. Can block Nether and Ascendant attacks but against a Blue, Green and Erad mages, Demon Knights really do not survive that long. Maybe one of these days I'll revisit these and try them out again. (not disbandable)

[[Unholy Reaver]]
The only Ultimate unit of Nether. They are damn good killers with psychic range and melee paralyze as its attacks. One of my favorite Nether units but sucks your pop like crazy if you use them. One problem with Unholy Reavers is they are not disbandable and when you cast them they usually end up top stack. It is hard to get units above Unholy Reavers except for Zombies but Zombie top isn't feasible when you are at the top ranks. Unholy Reavers I noticed is weak in defense that is why you should never stack them top stack if you are at high lands and high rank. You have to make them hit first in order for them to be effective. Usually Nethers who use them use Ash in defense. At low rank and lands, you can get away with stacking them at the top. (not disbandable)

[[Dark Elf Magician]]
These are barrack troops, with ranged magic with an initiative of three makes them a very good unit to use. You can save turns using them because you do not have to summon them but recruit them. The thing about barrack troops is they cost a lot to summon and maintain. I can say I am a bit biased against barrack troops. It is something I think I can live without as a Nether.

If you look at the above units I have mentioned. You would say only four units are disbandable? How am I going to survive without my population plummeting like crazy? The trick to playing Nether is to use and mix off color units into your stacking. So usually your stacking would be half disbandable, half not disbandable. That is one way of keeping your pop in check.

So which are the good off color units should one use as Nether? I will mention only those that I have used.

'''Phantasm Units'''

[[Djinni]]
They are real cheap to summon in my opinion. 60k mana with 4 turns only and makes your NP go up higher with it being a flying and a complex unit. Nethers use it as top stack just like Ascendants use Archangels top stack. Djinni has decent defense and offense. Not bad not good depending on where you stack them. But being off color complex units, there is a chance you will fail when summoning them once in awhile.

[[Medusa]]
Cheap to summon also in my opinion. I like its attack which has ranged poison and paralyze which makes it uncounterable. One of the off color units that is always in my stack when I start climbing. They die horribly if paired with something that can kill them effectively like Horned Demons or any hard hitting melee units. Good to stack as third or fourth ground.

[[Psychic Wisp]]
This unit have an initiative of three and ranged psychic as its attack. Most Nethers prefer dryads (magic ranged) over wisps.

[[Sirene]] Have psychic and magic as its attack. Usually used as a fodder killer or as an elemental killer. Have attributes of Charm (makes attacks less effective) and Beauty (-5 percent penalty when attacking that unit) makes it a good damage soaker if one goes for defensive kind of stack. A unit mostly used in specialty stacks.

'''Eradication Units'''

[[Efreeti]] Erad version of Liches. They are weaker though than Liches but have an attribute of marksmanship (hits better) and has a ranged attack of fire (initiative 4) and magic ranged (initiative 2). Basically used by most nether who do DOS/CARPET on defense as a unit below Liches. As a complex off color unit it has a summoning failure tendency.

[[Salamander]] Very good fodder killers with fire as its attack. Its downside is has an initiative of one and dies horribly against most melee and flying units.

[[Hellhounds]] Very good fodder killer with an initiative of 3 fire breath and melee (initiative 1). It actually has the same use as Sirenes which is used to kill Elementals or for specialty stacks.

[[Chimera]] A flying unit which has fire breath (initiative 3) as its attack coupled with melee attack. Pretty hard to summon and has a bigger summoning failure rate than Djinni and Efreeti based on my experience. Weak to ranged attacks but a nice fodder killer.

[[Wyvern]] Has melee and poison melee as its attack. I tried using them but they do not do much damage in my opinion. But people who use nether flying stacks say they are good units to use.

'''Verdant Units'''

[[Dryad]] Ranged magic but has better defense than psychic wisps with attributes of Beauty and Charm. You get less of them compared to wisps.

'''Ascendant Unit'''

[[Soul Speaker]] Ranged psychic. Advantage is a portion of the units resurrect after getting killed. You also get less of them compared to wisps.

='''Defensive & Offensive Nethers'''=
So now we have gone through the units one can use a Nether, your next question would be, with that much units being mentioned, which unit will you choose to make a good stacking?

It really depends on how you want to play Nether. 
You can be defensive or offensive. With that said you also have to have premium items for defense. What are the good items one can use as defense?

'''Defensive''' 

If you want to be as defensive as possible in low lands, use satchel of mist paired with fog cloud. With that said you need to use good units which are defensive. How do you look at units to see if they are defensive or not? Look at its attribute: namely attack resistance and abilities. Satchel/Fog combination makes the invaders accuracy lesser. So if you use a dryad which as beauty and charm as its attributes, it would even make the invaders accuracy lower. Liches are good defensive units that is why people like to stack it at the top. Take time to look at the attributes of each unit. In time you will understand why using these units along with this particular type of item/spell is suitable to each other.

One of the best defenses in the game that a Nether can use only is called Dreams of Seduction plus Carpet of Flying or commonly called DOS/Carpet. DOS is a spell that makes you summon succubi to aid you when an invader attacks. Succubi are great because even if it dies in droves, the net power (NP) loss won't be included in the computation of the battle outcome. To you who might be reading it the first thought that would go in your mind is, isn't that great? DOS/carpet isn't really advisable to use below 4k land. The main ingredient for DOS is your population. The more population you have the more Succubi that will come to you. If you compute your population incorrectly, your succubi will have a tendency not to be top stack, which would defeat the purpose of using DOS/Carpet in the first place. DOS cost 80k mana which is a lot in my opinion at low lands (5k down). Carpets are also expensive items. So it is more advisable to use Dos/Carpet above explore limit or preferably above 4k to 5k land. During times of war it isn’t advisable to use DOS. The enemy can just confuse you to stop you from summoning DOS or they can kill of your population to make your Succubi go lower.

How do you compute how much Succubi will come to aid you in battle? This website will compute it for you [[http://hinux.hin.no/~gisljgra/refs/test/succubi.php]].

DOS/Carpet gets harder to crack as a Nether gains land. It is hard to crack but not impossible. A Phantasm mage with a flying/ranged stack with items/spell getting through can beat a DOS/Carpet. An Ascendant or a Verdant can do Call Hurricane and try to pull down your units. As it is said, no matter how good your defense is, it is still breakable.

One problem with Nether units is their low initiative. Units like Horned Demons have an initiative of 1 only. How does initiative affect game play? A unit moves first when its initiative is higher so higher the initiative the better. There is also a fatigue factor in the game mechanics. If a unit gets hit his fatigue factor goes up and he is less effective in offense and defense.

Some Nethers use Fog/ Spiders Web or Giant strength/Spiders Web in defense. The logic of this kind of defense is for the initiative 1 units not able to move. It is effective against Verdant and Nether attackers but doesn’t really guarantee you can make the enemy unable to move. Why? As you go higher in rank and land, Spiders Web loses its luster. People in the top 100 will be using Ash for offense. People at the top are rich to afford the best items for offense. Carpets, Candle of Sleeping, Ash you name it. Remember it is much cheaper to buy good items to use for offense than to buy one Magical Compass to gain land. Well for me it is more fun to attack and gain land than using a Magical Compass to gain land.

'''Offensive''' 
My way of playing defense is by being offensive. 
The best defense is offense. Ash/Giant Strength and Ash/Battle Lust would be the item/spell for my kind of stacking. Basically I want my units to attack first. The logic of it is when you hit the invader first hard enough; you hope you can damage his army enough for it to be ineffective. His attack on you would be lessened in might and would not deal enough damage to you. With that said I also use offensive units in great numbers.

My stack would look something like this in the beginning.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*Skeletons

As you go higher in rank you can afford to disband your Skeletons and change it into other units. If you notice I have a ten unit stacking. 
Why ten units? 
It is to prevent fatigue on your top stack. If you have less than 10 kinds of units in a stack lets say 7 only. Your top stack will get hit more than once. If you had 10 kinds of units, each unit would have been hit once only. Remember the fatigue factor I mentioned. The more times a unit gets hit, fatigue sets in and It becomes weaker each hit. The logic of having a ten unit stack is to spread out the damage.

='''Nether Essentials: Over Summoning & Black Sabbath'''=

'''Over Summoning'''

So how do you build a stack that is offensive enough for defense and offense? There are several important things to be a successful Nether you should learn.

Why should you over summon? That is the common question I hear from people. Over summoning has its advantage. When people look for targets, people often look for mages with fat lands and an under summoned army. How do you know if that mage is fat and under summoned? You look at your land and your NP. Let us say you are 3k land and have an NP of 14 mil. While someone below you is 3k land also while only having 11 mil NP. So he is under summoned right? Yes and no. Really depends also on what people are stacking. Some people who stack defensively (Lich/Efreeti heavy) tend to be under summoned yet good enough to block attacks. But most are under summoned that you can easily take land. Remember there are always better and lesser players in any game. I am an over summoning advocate and there will be people who don’t want to over summon. As I said this is the way I play.

You have to set a benchmark also for being over summoned. Me for instance I can summon to 11 million NP on 2k land. Yes it is possible to do so. Your next question would be what is the most effective way to over summon? Three important things you should consider.

''' Black Sabbath '''

Black Sabbath is a Nether only spell that gives your three things when you cast it, gives your free zombies and skeletons every turn, give you some protection against Ascendants and the most important thing is it gives you 3k extra mana in your income. 3k extra mana. In low lands that 3k extra mana is like a mana from heaven. You can summon more stuff with it. If you are Nether, the first thing you do when you start making a stack is to run black Sabbath. Black Sabbath alone cannot make you over summoned if you do not know another important part of over summoning.

Mana Charge… Summon …. Mana Charge Tactic.

When you look at your status report you will see a part like this.

Interior Info.
Gold M.P. Pop
Income 1,048,323 15,954 7,978
Unit Upkeep 222,010 -10,000 7,900
Building Upkeep 134,310 5,650 0
Hero Upkeep 15,000 230 0
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0
Net Income 677,003 -5,954 - 588

If you look at the above status report you will notice in the MP part you have a income of 15,954 and a net income of negative 5,954. The funny thing is that when some people see a negative income in the net income section of the MP, they think you should not mana charge anymore because it is negative. Wrong! It actually works this way, every time you mana charge you get 15,954 less the -5,954 in the net income section which would come out around 10k mana added to your mana pool each time you charge (actually the income MP part fluctuates around 1k to 2k at times).

The trick to the mana charge summon tactic is this way, count the no. of times you need to summon your units. After full mana charge, summon a unit, mana charge then summon again mana charge and so on until you finish. There will come a time when the your income (MP) would be lets say 15954 and your net income (MP) -14000. So it comes out your getting only around 2k mana net. Around that time you have to stop doing the mana charge summon tactic and just finish up summoning.

I guarantee if you do that your NP would increase. The 3k extra mana Black Sabbath gives helps a lot when you are doing the mana charge summon tactic. 3k in ten turns is already 30k additional mana. 50 turns is 150k mana. It will be a bit slow doing this kind of tactic and you might get onlined for moving so slow. Well those are the breaks of the game. But as you get more lands around 5k up, the 3k extra mana you get from Black Sabbath won’t be as good as it was when it was in lower lands.

When you are over summoned there are a lot of other advantages. Let us say you are at 3k land at 17 mil NP. And someone at 5k land with 19 Mil NP whacks you. The one at 19 mil np is under summoned compared to you. Even if you lose a lot more NP in the battle it will go out in the end he lost the more power than you because your army has a higher NP than the invader.

Another advantage is when you are choosing targets. Lets say you do not like the potential targets in your range. Since you are over summoned, you can afford to disband some units to make you go lower to fish for targets. One example is when you are running zombie fodder so you can just disband around 500k NP worth of zombies, go down and whack somebody. Since you are oversummoned you can afford to disband some of your units. Sometimes over summoning is just a mirage you do to leapfrog some players who are under summoned.

Mages will choose to hit an under summoned mage rather than an over summoned mage in most cases. Over summoned means harder to win against. Of course you need to stack well also in order to defend.

The next thing you need to learn is what units you summon first. 
Usually the rule of thumb is summoning the units that have no pop upkeep and have lesser summoning cost.

Example of a stack that has these units.

*Zombie
*Unholy Reaver
*Lich
*Wraith
*Medusa
*Horned Demon
*Vampire
*Shadow
*Hell Hounds
*skeletons
 

First would be either Shadows or Hell Hounds. Next you can either summon Medusa or Horned Demons or Wraiths. Horned demons and wraiths have cheap upkeep so it really doesn’t matter if you summon them that early by preferably summon Medusas first. Next would be Liches as compared to Vampires coz Vampires have a higher pop upkeep than lich. You need to watch your pop situation on the main page. If your pop keeps going down negative like this -700 -600 -500 that means you are okay but if it starts to go like this -500 -600 -700 going up then you must hurry and finish summoning before your pop goes spiral. Last summon always should be Unholy Reavers which have a very big pop upkeep.

='''Population Woes'''=

Yes, when you first play Nether, there will be a big chance when your new the first 600 turns you run when you have a full stacking you will get pop spiral. It is because you summoned too much pop eating units and they didn’t die when you did your attack run or you ran to few towns/farms to support your pop eating army. 

How do you know if you have enough towns to support your pop eating army? A Nether mage normally runs around 30 to 35 percent or less of his lands used for nodes. Rest is used for towns and farms. It is hard to give you exact numbers of each unit to summon so try summoning yourself. If you pop spiral then you will know the numbers you summoned are too much. Experience is the best teacher, soon you will know how much to summon.

Keep [[Wine of Three Whips]] in stock for emergency population. 
It gives you 10 percent of your current pop so if your pop is like this already 100,000/500,000 it is more efficient to pillage than to use the Wine.

One way to kill of your pop eating units is to suicide them against an Ascendant mage. It is really effective. Sometimes I deliberately siege an Ascendant mage just to kill off my units if I see I can’t seem to kill them off from the attacks before.

Of course you have to leave land for barriers also. You do not have to have full bars right away when you start climbing. Slowly build them up but build them up fast.
Barriers is a must for Nethers. 
By the time you reach around 2.7k land you should have at least 70 percent bars already.

='''Personal Playing Style'''=

One common thing I hear from some Nethers is that they are afraid of Ascendants. That is quite laughable. If you know how to over summon properly, you can get up higher and faster in rank than most Ascendants. White mages needs more land to rank up compared to Nethers. You can leapfrog most Ascendants in the beginning if you just over summon and gain land. At the top 100 you will seldom see 10 whites in the top ten by the time you reach the top. So your Ascendant problem is solved. So it is a MYTH that Nethers are food for whites. At the top the ones that hunt you more are Nethers, Verdants and Phantasms. You will seldom get hit by a Ascendant and even more seldom by Erads.

And yes it is possible to hunt Ascendants also though it isn’t advisable; it is fun to win against Ascendants.

Honestly different people like different units for their stacking. Even if you copy every unit of my stack there will be a tendency that you won’t like the unit I am using. Based on the units I mentioned above, pick and choose the units you like.

The next part is the stacking I used in 11 days to reach 4k land starting from 2k land. Take note this was in the middle of a reset. I lost land during this time also so you can see how fast a Nether can rank if he just knows what he is doing.

'''Day 1.'''

Rank 276 Power 11,598,282 
Land 2,167 Fortress 13

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 127251 22.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 950 23.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4410 8.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 282 7.0%
*Wyvern 0 20.00/0.35/0.00 2993 6.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3501 8.4%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 17285 8.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 3806 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2150 4.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 26452 3.2%

Used Ash/Giant Strength on defense but failed miserably in defense because I didn’t have URs to do enough damage. Went down to 1.7k land. Usually the first day when you start making a stack to rank, you will usually lose. Don’t give up just take it as beginning blues.

'''Day 2'''

Rank 210 Power 12,972,656 
Land 2,213 Fortress 14

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 137616 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 41 21.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4638 7.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 747 15.8%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5543 9.8%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3912 8.2%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16902 7.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3500 5.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 54 1.2%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15372 1.6%

Used ash/giant strength still blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 3.'''

Rank 286 Power 11,791,740 
Land 2,499 Fortress 17

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 141644 26.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 819 20.7%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4381 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4612 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5057 10.7%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 19347 9.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3851 7.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 57 1.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 3 1.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10444 1.3%

I summoned one shot of URs actually. Ash/giant strength. Blocked 1 attack.

'''Day 4.'''

Rank 143 Power 14,843,982 
Land 2,737 Fortress 19

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 163555 22.7%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 19.9%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 987 18.5%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 5037 7.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5545 8.7%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4240 7.9%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18152 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3752 5.5%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 53 1.0%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 15624 1.4%

Ash/giant strength still. Lost 1 blocked 2. Lost 100 land.

'''Day 5.'''

Rank 198 Power 13,335,207 
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 124175 20.5%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 892 19.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4689 8.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5201 11.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5800 10.9%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.8%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 16072 7.1%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2539 4.4%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 13916 6.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 22630 2.5%

Ash/battle lust. Was so damaged the day before one hit went into damage status again. Blocked 1.

'''Day 6.'''

Rank 181 Power 13,965,189
Land 2,880 Fortress 22

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130838 20.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 963 20.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4594 7.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4611 9.5%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5257 9.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 16 8.3%
*Shadow 0 0.00/0.15/0.00 18978 7.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3772 6.2%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 14487 6.0%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 401 5.0%

Ash/Giant Strength still. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 7.'''

Rank 204 Power 13,192,751 
Land 3,062 Fortress 26

Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 106757 18.7%
Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 886 20.9%
Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4200 7.8%
Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3724 8.7%
Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4193 8.3%
Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 695 9.7%
Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3264 6.0%
Sirene 0 0.00/0.30/0.00 2711 5.6%
Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 15937 7.4%
Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.7%
Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 18648 2.2%

Running Satchel/Fog. Blocked 2 attacks.

'''Day 8'''

Rank 181 Power 13,947,270 
Land 3,174 Fortress 27

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 105228 17.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1002 22.1%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4400 7.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 343 6.4%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 3970 8.7%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4547 8.4%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 719 9.4%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3474 6.0%
*Psychic Wisp 0 0.00/0.06/0.00 16596 7.2%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 8 4.4%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 23310 2.5%

Fog/Mist blocked more than 3 attacks.

'''Day 9'''

Rank 117 Power 15,664,415 
Land 3,493 Fortress 30

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 130357 18.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 34 16.2%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1092 21.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5370 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 5205 8.4%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3412 5.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 242 4.7%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 220 3.6%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 590 6.7%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2581 3.9%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 14642 1.4%

Blocked 5 attacks with Ash/Giant strength.

'''Day 10'''

Rank 82 Power 17,655,519 
Land 3,821 Fortress 33

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 173296 21.5%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 47 19.4%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 891 14.9%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6012 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4643 6.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6538 9.2%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 207 3.5%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 763 7.6%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 3469 4.6%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 161 2.3%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 11978 1.0%

'''Day 11'''

Rank 82 Power 17,669,175 
Land 4,072 Fortress 35

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 159464 20.3%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 43 18.3%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1061 18.3%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 5898 10.0%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4878 6.6%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 6179 8.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 770 7.8%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 241 3.5%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 2449 3.3%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 119 2.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 10424 0.9%
 

11 days to get to 4k if you know what you are doing. And my stacks weren’t even that over summoned. Could have over summoned even more but there was war in the guild during the time.

='''Why Rush to the Top?'''=

The reason why people like to rush to the top after researching is obvious. 
When you break the top 100, you get lesser attacks. You earn geld better at the top. Not as much as whorers but decent enough to buy the items you need for defense. At 4k land I can earn at least 650k to 800k per turn. That’s quite good in my opinion. Nethers have the potential to jump that fast up the ranks even faster than what I did. Stacking is really the key, whether you are Nether, Blue or Erad. If you stack well enough with good items used in defense, even without uber heroes you can still rank up.

Nether is so versatile that you can change from a defensive stacking to an offensive stacking in just a matter of hours. Here is an example of it.

After I did my 200 turns, I was running a dos/carpet defense at this rank.

Rank 120 Power 15,344,735 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

I had this much population and mana left

Population 858,215/895,290
Magic Power 1,210,714 / 1,436,000

My stack was:

*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 98017 16.7%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 948 21.8%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 7.2%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 4105 9.3%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 4708 9.1%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 13.3%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 5.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 3181 5.8%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4147 7.5%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 28796 3.3%

I could have stopped there or summoned up a bit more but I did this after 5 hours when I had enough turns.

Rank 59 Power 19,504,301 
Land 4,445 Fortress 39

Population 838,784/895,290 
Magic Power 532,671 / 1,436,000

Ash/giant strength

*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1447 22.6%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 38 14.6%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 113205 13.1%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6635 10.2%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7540 9.9%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 4552 5.6%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 310 4.9%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 979 9.0%
*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 305 4.0%
*Hell Hound 0 30.00/0.18/0.00 4137 5.1%
*Skeleton 0 0.00/0.01/0.00 12816 1.0%

From 15 mil np defensive stack it became a 19 mil np offensive stack. Isn’t that amazing? Or I could have not summoned up but cast devils instead…. Evil yumyum. So many choices.

'''Anti-Devil'''

Or I can run an anti Devil stack like an Ascendant runs. The concept of anti Devil top is use flying units to block devils so in an Ascendants case it would be using Archangels. In a blacks case the best unit to use would be Djinni. I’ve never lost against a Devil counter with Djinni top. If I remember right I’ve blocked around 10 Devil counters with Djinni top.

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

Blue and Nethers are the best colors to do over summoning with less land. The difference though is Phantasm uses fliers and Elementals and Levs to over summon thereby giving it a ridiculous upkeep in mana after summoning. Nether in the other hand has only one Ultimate unit and yet it can also over summon like hell also but have lesser upkeep on mana compared to blue mages.

='''Stacking: Units and Where to Stack them'''=

I like to push my good offensive units down the stack. Which means if I have a way to push my Medusas and Horned Demons down I will do it. How do you push them down? By using flying units. Using my anti devil stack as example:

*Djinni 0 0.00/5.00/0.00 1401 15.8%
*Unholy Reaver 0 0.00/125.00/70.00 67 22.2%
*Wraith 0 0.00/0.30/0.20 7204 7.6%
*Lich 0 0.00/5.00/2.50 1194 16.1%
*Vampire 0 0.00/2.50/5.00 480 6.6%
*Medusa 0 0.00/0.25/0.00 6849 9.1%
*Horned Demon 0 0.00/0.25/0.20 7930 8.9%
*Zombie 0 0.00/0.02/0.00 73582 7.3%
*Dark Elf Magician 360.00 10.00/0.10/0.00 10848 3.7%
*Efreeti 0 100.00/2.50/0.00 343 2.7%

I pushed my Medusas and Horned Demons down to 6th and 7th stack. The reason why I do that is for them to kill the fodder and middle stacks of the invader. By using ash, they can be really deadly down low. The logic behind it is that usually people stack the top three stacks really solid. So why should you waste time trying to find a way to whack the top three stacks when you can whack the lower stacks silly. Though it doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, I can say around 60 percent of the time it works.

Someone higher than you theoretically has a good chance of beating you. He is at the top of the food chain and your below him so you are his food per say. Pushing the good melee units down is only one way to defend your land. Sometimes you have to change units or reorder where you stack them. It is to confuse the enemy. If you stack the same units at the same place every time, soon the attacker will know you noticed my 11 day run I sometimes run Fog/Satchel, it is to keep the enemy guessing. Running different types of defense also helps a bit.

When you are below explore limit (3.5k down) it isn’t a bad idea to stack Zombies as top stack. Zombies are sturdy enough down the ranks to use. Very good damage soakers. If you run a ten unit stack, they won’t die in droves unless you are really unlucky a spell or item goes through.

Liches are normally stacked top or second. The problem with Liches if you are having a hard time ranking is they will die horribly to Ascendants if you top stack them. So if you are having a hard time getting up to rank 150 or higher. Stack something above your Liches for protection against Ascendants.

At first you can get away with stacking Unholy Reavers at the top. But as you gain land, it really is not advisable to stack them as top stack. They aren’t the best defenders of Nether units. More often if someone is allied with top mages, the reins their allies sends will be a big factor in killing a lot of your URs. When you are planning to use URs, use ash in defense. URs hitting first is pretty awesome but if it gets hit first it dies like flies at times.

Stacking Wraiths as top stack isn’t advisable also. Wraiths are weak to ranged attacks which is the first attack that usually hits the top stack.

Even Djinni as top stack has its problems. More often if Phantasm keeps visiting you, their Elementals can kill Djinnis effectively. Dominions own Djinnis also. After playing a Phantasm mage for half a reset, even I am afraid of stacking Djinnis top nowadays. I’ve seen so many ways to kill Djinni top. Even mass Sprites top stack can kill Djinni.

Another problem of stacking Djinni top is it often gets sent as reins to allies killing some of them off in the process and making them go second stack. It also isn’t really turn effiecient to summon that much Djinni to make them top stack. There will be days your summoning failure rate is really horrible.

Efreeti people like to push them below Liches. Problem with that it is really not advisable to do so when you have so little land with Efreetis costing so much to cast and have a chance of failure. So Efreetis in large numbers are advisable when you have more land. Above explore limit would be good.

So in a way each unit has its good and bad points. You just have to stack according to what color is hitting you often. As I said improvise, change your units and stacking order once in awhile. Being creative is the key to a successful defense.

=='''Lands'''=
Land is easier lost than gained. That is why high level Nethers like to use DOS/Carpet as defense. It really depends on how you play, I like being offensive, raw offensive hitting power whacking the enemy silly is how I play. So it is up to you to choose how you play Nether. Hopefully this little guide will help you appreciate the beauty of playing a Nether mage.

Addendum:

At the time I was writing the above guide, I really hadn’t seriously delved into trying out DOS/Carpet on defense. I just ran it before one or two days to see how it works. Before writing this guide I had never broken 6k land as Nether so I decided to see what really makes DOS/Carpet work.

My comment on DOS/Carpet after trying it out? It simply is awesome. It is not only in defense where it shines but also on offense let me explain.

This would be my Status report as a nether running DOS/Carpet.

Rank 40 Power 24,063,058 
Land 6,930 Fortress 38 
Geld 154,423,131 Item 182 
Units 229,296 Turns left 2 

Spell Level 470 
Population 1,341,502/1,398,360 
Magic Power 1,965,754 / 2,449,000 

Gold M.P. Pop 
Income 1,688,057 25,084 8,219 
Unit Upkeep 367,300 30,536 9,114 
Building Upkeep 171,950 8,750 0 
Hero Upkeep 0 0 0 
Spell Upkeep 0 1,600 666 
Unit Recruit Cost 0 0 0 
Net Income 1,148,807 -15,802 -1,561 

If you noticed I have that much mana leftover after summoning. It is because with DOS/carpet you can afford to make a stack, look undersummoned for your land base and yet your defense is good enough to block most attacks. A mage attacking me would usually lose at least times two NP than what I lose.

This is what I do usually, since I can run my mage only once a day, I make it a point to use up all my turns that by the time I come home I would have max 200 turns without any turns unused go to waste. After I finish my run, I make a stack that is pretty solid enough in defense. After that I simply mana charge to full. Then if I find I can insert a few more units in the lower stacks I do so.

You can simply just geld and mana charge if you want running DOS/Carpet if you are not in the mood for an attack run. Just disband some of your units when you are doing so to save mana and resummon them after. At 6k land up you should be getting at least 1 mil geld each turn so it is really profitable running DOS/Carpet.

With DOS/Carpet stacking, you will probably have so much extra mana leftover that you can use DOS in every attack you make. I tried using DOS every attack run for 3 days and I still had 1 mil mana left over after. I usually hit only 5 to 8 mages each attack run when I am at high land.

Or when you are doing your attack run and you see a mage you would like to hit but your stack seems in disarray, you can always summon units since you have so much extra mana and do an additional hit. That is what DOS/Carpet stacking offers you.

='''Attacking at Higher Lands'''=
So when you are at high lands (5.5k up) which target would you hit? I hit those oversummoned mages with low lands (4k down). I usually go in with regular attacks (to avoid siege penalty for my ground units).

You would be wondering why hit those oversummoned mages when at the first part of the guide I would say oversummoning is very good? Well after running DOS/Carpet I seem to notice one thing. Oversummoned mages usually use Ultimate units in their stacks especially Phantasm Mages. If you are lucky and get DOS through, you can win around more than 50 to 80 percent of your attacks for sure. I use DOS/Ash on offense not DOS/Carpet. I will avoid at all cost those mages running carpets on defense.

The thing about some oversummoned mages is that they seem to forget running Ultimates above isn’t safe. Even running them second stack isn’t safe also at times. One lucky pairing and you would surely win against most oversummoned mages. I would hit Verdants and Erads (which I would normally not hit) and with Dos getting through, I could win against them.

As one nether said, running DOS/Carpet on defense is simply lame but yet it makes your stack stronger in offense since you can make all your stacks stronger by slowly inserting more units in each stack. Your stack will become quite balanced in strength and each unit can be a force to reckon with when you are attacking.

In the end I only lost one attack since running DOS/Carpet in defense at 4.7k land and managed to reach 7.1k land before losing to a devil counter finally.

So if you want to be a safe Nether run DOS/Carpet at high lands because it really is good or you can always oversummon as a Nether, the choice is up to you.
----
[[Guides|Back to Guides]]

[[Category:guides]]

God Favour

2008-04-02T17:08:44Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Hero testing */

= How to get Favour =
You do that by donating, a nice amount of your geld on the Altar of Darkness, found in the [[Black Market]].

You need to donate a significant amount to stand a chance.
* Minimum is 10% of your total geld. Total geld includes what geld you have temporarily on black market, in the form of bids.

on top of that,
* minimum for Beta server (1 turn/5 min) is 20,000,000,
* minimum for Guild/Solo Server (1 turn/7 min) 15,000,000,
* minimum for Arch Server (1 turn/12 min) is 10,000,000.
* You need to have spend at least 300 turns (all servers, no trial-and-error reincarnating/rushing)

if the above is satisfied,
* then you have a 50% chance to get that favour (i.e. bidding 20,000,000 2-3 times usually gives you favour, sometimes you get it the first time...).

It is harder to get favour right after recovering from disfavour.

== What god to get favour from? ==
It depends what bonus you are looking for

== What does each god give their favoured then? ==
===Standard Favour Effects===
Each god has a standard favor effect that lasts for 48 hours:
* Nature gives.......... +10% geld generation by farms/towns and pop income
* Sun gives............. +3% accuracy in battles
* Moon gives............ +10% node m.p. generation
* Magic gives.............. +20 SL and decreases casting cost by 10%
* Science gives........... increased item generation - usually too little to notice. Also increases the effectiveness of using items +10% (like the [[skills|skill]] [[Legendary Artificer]]).
** Note: [Science' protection of items such as [[Magical Compass]], [[Minor Indulgence]], and [[Unique Items|Uniques]], is not in any way linked to favor status]
* Satan gives........... lowered unit upkeep by 10%
* Lucifer gives.................. +10% summoning yields/attack power

===Random reward for getting God's favour===
On top of that, you also gain one of the following (random)
* 45% chance on an enchantment for 15 turns
** You pay NO upkeep for this enchantment
** The enchantment is cast as if it was on-color, and at godly [[spell level]] (777).
*** Your speciality for the particular God you donated too has anything to do with chances of the type of enchantment.
** God-enchantment effects stack on top of your own enchantments.
*** Only gods can place an enchantment on a mage if another copy of the spell is currently active -
*** so remember to cast up your own enchantments BEFORE donating, or you'll have to wait for it to expire to cast your own.
** Possible enchantments to receive:
*** Phantasm: [[Concentration]], [[Mind Bar]], [[Hallucination]]
*** Verdant: [[Nature's Lore]], [[Weather Summoning]], [[Sunray]],
*** Ascendant: [[The Holy Light]], [[Love and Peace]], [[Protection from Evil]], [[Resist Elements]],
*** Nether: [[Black Sabbath]], [[Shroud of Darkness]].
* 5% a random [[heroes|hero]] of up to level 17
* 20% one [[items|lesser item]]
* 15% small [[mana|m.p.]] refill (kinda like what [[Wish]] does)
* 5% that the [[Luck|Star of Luck]] will shine upon you
* 10% a group of [[Fanatic]]s ('Zealots') joins your army
* x% the God will test a hero of yours. Failure brings death, success adds one level to your hero. The chances of this are very * small, but it happens.

(estimated chances - feel free to correct)
* [Correction]: Although its good to have your own enchantment casted beforehand i was able to cast my own concetration AFTER receiving god concetration in order to benefit from the 1 turn research of ultimate spells ( i lost 10 turns of the god's spell to do so - but it was possible )

== Can I get favour from more than one god ? ==

Yes you can but when you try to get a second favour, the first god can become jealous. Read the encyclopedia to get hints who hates who. Some gods are more jealous for other gods than other gods.

===Jealousy table===
'''As of January 2007, the Moon/Lucifer God Favor combination is no longer safe.'''

if you have favour from (god in top row) and want to add favour from (god in left colum),
there is a xxx (number in crosstable) chance the first god gets jealous.

<table>
<tr>
<td> </td>
<td>'''Nature'''</td>
<td>'''Sun'''</td>
<td>'''Moon'''</td>
<td>'''Magic'''</td>
<td>'''Science'''</td>
<td>'''Satan'''</td>
<td>'''Lucifer'''</td>
</tr>

<tr><td>'''Nature''' </td>
<td>--</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>50%</td><td>50%</td><td>50%</td><td>25%</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Sun''' </td>
<td>25%</td><td>--</td><td>75%</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>50%</td><td>25%</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Moon''' </td>
<td>25%</td><td>75%</td><td>--</td><td>25%?</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>25%?</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Magic''' </td>
<td>25%?</td><td>25%</td><td>25%?</td><td>--</td><td>75%</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Science''' </td>
<td>50%</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>75%</td><td>--</td><td>50%</td><td>25%</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Satan''' </td>
<td>50%</td><td>50%</td><td>50%</td><td>25%</td><td>50%</td><td>--</td><td>75%</td>
</tr>
<tr><td>'''Lucifer'''</td>
<td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>25%?</td><td>25%</td><td>25%</td><td>75%</td><td>--</td>
</tr></table>

===Jealousy remarks===
* the table dates back to [[History_of_Terra|Archmage]] and may no longer be 100% accurate.
* It is harder to get favour right after recovering from disfavour.When you have got hatred, and you pay it off, dont try to get a 2nd gods' favour right after, it will result in jealousy again.
* Nature is the god on its own, Sun-Moon, Science-Magic and Satan-Lucifer can be seen as eachother's opposites. Their combo's are the hardest to achieve.
* First Nature then Magic is considered better odds than other way around. First Magic then Moon, same story (but other way around still a fair chance)

= Disfavour and Hatred status =
This you get from making gods jealous and donating puny 1 geld amounts.
* you get the opposite effect as their favour gives you for Disfavour. There are random 'short term' penalties associated with disfavor (Offensive Enchantments, [[Battle Chant]], [[Serenity]], [[Destroy Artifacts]], [[Fool's Gold]], [[heroes|Hero]] death, Bad Luck, No Damaged Protection, etc. are all possible).
* you get double the opposite effect for Hatred. (e.g. -40 spell level for Magic Hatred). There are random 'short term' penalties associated with hatred (some more fatal than others), typically much more severe than disfavor penalties. (Offensive Enchantments, [[Battle Chant]], [[Serenity]], [[Destroy Artifacts]], [[Fool's Gold]], [[Volcano Eruption]], a 'Super' [[Atomic Bomb]], Hero Death, Bad Luck, No Damaged Protection, etc. are all possible)

= Hero testing =
When a god turns from favour to disfavour, one of your heroes may be tested by a God.
The possible outcomes are: your hero gains one level, your hero stays, your hero loses one level, or your hero dies.

:: ''Example: Gaining Sun's favour right while having Moon's favour. Get a hero, and get it leveled right after.''
<center>
You offered 30,000,000 gold to Sun, the Father of the Sky. 
Sun, the Father of the Sky seems to be very pleased by your generous donation. 
Inner strength filled your spirit. 
Your action has gained you the favour of Sun, the Father of the Sky. 
The hero Vendu Clatian Berserker came to you and offered to serve under your command. 
You sense a heavenly conflict between Sun, the Father of the Sky and Moon, the Light in the Night. 
You hear roar in anger. You are now disfavoured by Moon, the Light in the Night. 
Moon, the Light in the Night tested your hero Vendu Clatian Berserker. 
Vendu Clatian Berserker passed Moon, the Light in the Night's test. 
Moon, the Light in the Night is pleased with Vendu Clatian's performance. 
 
Sat Mar 15 18:24:43 2008 
Vendu Clatian Berserker became level 18. 
</center>

= Most Favoured =

== Yeah, you can get that too. ==
* You need to be a top10 donator
* You need to donate almost all of your geld (over 90%)
* the amount you donate needs to be at least 10x the normal (minimum) donation amount.
* You need to have special kinds of things in your army (Race/colour/Attacktype units) - differs per god
* You need special kinds of things with your country / play style - differs per god
** For Science, it is said that you need at least 1000 lesser items and 1 unique (e.g. a [[Holy Grail]]).
** For Nature, it is said that you have to be peaceful, non-attacking for days.
* You need special kind of relationship with another god (e.g. HATRED with at least one other god, all neutral, etc) - differs per god
* The requirements for most favoured sometimes change

* If all the above is satisfied, then you have a 50% (?) chance to get that most favour.

== What does it bring? ==
Double what normal favour brings for double the time (48 hours)

Plus special goodies:
* Nature: [[Plant Growth]] or [[Nature's Favor]] or [[Nature's Lore]] level 777 for 300 turns (with upkeep)
* Sun: 100 [[Red Dragon]]s (with upkeep)
* Moon: Full mana charge and 70,000 [[werewolf|werewolves]] (with upkeep).
* Magic: 777 [[Concentration]] for 200/300 turns, 500 nodes.
* Science: Random [[Unique Items|unique item]], yes you can get Holy Grails.
* Satan: 50 turns of [[Contract of the Soul|CoS]] (no upkeep, no Devil Prince)
* Lucifer: a level 18-24 random [[:Category:Heroes|hero]] (with upkeep)

===Tactics===
Pull off a Moon Most Favoured at Armageddon, have the biggest power boost with no turns spending possible, and secure yourself a surprise Hall of Sages spot that way.

Fire Elementalist

2008-03-23T14:31:06Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{NeedsCleanup}} 
Flinging fire and destruction in their path, the wizard wields incredible magical power, able to decimate an army with nothing more than a few words. The wizard draws their power from the fire element, which is one of the element of the nature itself.
 
(encyclopedia description)
{|
|Magic Speciality: ||{{red}}
|-
|Attribute: ||MERCENARY
|-
|Race: ||ELEMENTAL
|-
|Gender: ||MALE
|-
|Attack Power: ||6000 + 3000*level
|-
|Attack Type: ||FIRE MAGIC
|-
|Counter Attack: ||-
|-
|Hitpoints: ||1600 + 800*level
|-
|Upkeep Costs: ||50 + 5*level m.p. 1000 + 100*level gold
|-
|Abilities: ||[[Arcfire]] (9), [[Firestorm]] (16)
|}
----
The Fire Elementalist has mediocre HP and attack; however, its spells is where it really shines. [[Arcfire]] will heavily damage one random enemy stack, while [[Firestorm]] does moderate damage to all enemy stacks. At a high level, a Fire Elementalist can easily take away four or five ultimates with a [[Firestorm]], and if [[Arcfire]] happens to hit the ultimate stack, even more can be expected to fall. This makes the task of whittling away 10% of your enemy's power considerably easier. However, because a Fire Elementalist uses Eradication magic in his spells, he can be countered with [[Scroll of Protection from Fire]].

Note that your chances of hurting ultimates with either Arcfire or Firestorm are relatively low, as most ultimates have very high spell resists. What Fire Elementalist does is clean away low health fodder stacks and put a dent in complex/average units. He is especially potent against units with a weakness to fire such as Ice Elemental and green units.

As another point, units in general that have pre-attack spells, such as Fire Elementalist, are very valuable as their damage is pure spell. 80K damage might seem small compared to a stack of even complex units, but remember that stack has to face Accuracy (30% for regular 20% for siege), Efficiency, Random modifier (20%-80%) and then the enemy's resist to that damage type.

Be warned that FE will lead any red elementals in your army. This includes [[Fire Elemental]]s, [[Efreeti]] and [[Salamander]]s.

[[category:heroes]] [[category:battle heroes]] [[category:Eradication Heroes]]

Fire Elementalist

2008-03-23T14:30:40Z

Xhlonewolfhx:

{{NeedsCleanup}} 
Flinging fire and destruction in their path, the wizard wields incredible magical power, able to decimate an army with nothing more than a few words. The wizard draws their power from the fire element, which is one of the element of the nature itself.
 
(encyclopedia description)
{|
|Magic Speciality: ||{{red}}
|-
|Attribute: ||MERCENARY
|-
|Race: ||ELEMENTAL
|-
|Gender: ||MALE
|-
|Attack Power: ||6000 + 3000*level
|-
|Attack Type: ||FIRE MAGIC
|-
|Counter Attack: ||-
|-
|Hitpoints: ||1600 + 800*level
|-
|Upkeep Costs: ||50 + 5*level m.p. 1000 + 100*level gold
|-
|Abilities: ||[[Arcfire]] (9), [[Firestorm]] (16)
|}
----
The Fire Elementalist has mediocre HP and attack; however, its spells is where it really shines. [[Arcfire]] will heavily damage one random enemy stack, while [[Firestorm]] does moderate damage to all enemy stacks. At a high level, a Fire Elementalist can easily take away four or five ultimates with a [[Firestorm]], and if [[Arcfire]] happens to hit the ultimate stack, even more can be expected to fall. This makes the task of whittling away 10% of your enemy's power considerably easier. However, because a Fire Elementalist uses Eradication magic in his spells, he can be countered with [[Scroll of Protection from Fire]].

Note that your chances of hurting ultimates with either Arcfire or Firestorm are relatively low, as most ultimates have very high spell resists. What Fire Elementalist does is clean away low health fodder stacks and put a dent in complex/average units. He is especially potent against units with a weakness to fire such as Ice Elemental and green units.

As another point, units in general that have pre-attack spells, such as Fire Elementalist, are very valuable as their damage is pure spell. 80K damage might seem small compared to a stack of even complex units, but remember that stack has to face Accuracy (30% for regular 20% for siege), Efficiency, Random modifier (20%-80%) and then the enemy's resist to that damage type.

Be warned that FE will lead any red elementals in your army. This includes Fire Elementals, Efreeti and Salamanders.

[[category:heroes]] [[category:battle heroes]] [[category:Eradication Heroes]]

Heroes2

2008-03-22T06:47:01Z

Xhlonewolfhx: /* Experience gain */

{{Navigation}}
= Getting Heroes =
There are a number of ways to gain heroes and these are listed below
* They can be bought from the Tavern in the Black Market
* They can be given by getting favor from a [[God_Favour | God]] (small % chance)
* A high level hero (20+) can be obtained by getting into [[God_Favour#Most_Favoured | Lucifer's Most Favored]] List
* [[Love Potion #9]], [[Lipstick of Enslavement]] and [[The Magic Mirror]] are unique items that can grant you one hero

= Joining the Battle =
Heroes will lead stacks according to their power, so the highest level hero in your army will lead your most powerful stack and so on; however, heroes will lead units that are the same race and color (for instance, even if you only have a Berserker, it will lead Dwarven Deathseekers even if Red Dragons are your top stack). Heroes will die in battle when the stack that they command is completely destroyed and the damage dealt is sufficient to completely take off the hitpoint of the hero.
e.g.
level 17 Illusionist leads Phoenix.
A stack of Red Dragon deals a final blow of 226000 damage to the remaining 3 Phoenix(with 70000 hp).
The stack will be wiped off but the hero survives as a level 17 Illusionist has a hp of 18000 while 3 Phoenix have a total of 210000 hp. So the total amount of damage needed to clear the stack and kill that hero should be 228000. Therefore, with only 226000, the hero survives.

== Leading a Stack ==
* On DEFENSE ([[Regular]] and [[Siege]]), heroes will lead any stack (even 1 [[militia]] or 1 [[sheep]]).
* On OFFENSE ([[Regular]] and [[Siege]]),
** If you send a very small stack (less then 10% of your total power), the hero will ''not'' lead it.
** If you send a big stack in company with small stacks, heroes can lead all stacks.
*** Note that very small stacks may not be targeted if they are under a certain % of your NP.

* When color ''AND'' [[:category:races|race]] of a stack match that of the hero, a hero will prefer to lead that stack.
* In any other case (no match, only color matches, only race matches), the hero prefers to lead the highest powerranked stack
** If you have two heroes of the same Race and Color, the highest level hero chooses stack preference first.
** If you have several heroes, the most experienced (highest level) hero is matched first.

* If there are more battle heroes than stacks,
** the not-preferred stack hero stays home (if there is a preferred hero-stack match in the army send to battle),
** the lowest level hero stays home.
*** long ago multiple heroes could jointly lead one and the same stack - that was abandoned in TR.

= When In the Battle =

===Efficiency Bonus===
If a Hero commands a stack of the same colour and race as the hero this stack receives a bonus to [[efficiency]] equal to the heros level in percent. This goes for the start of the battle. Soon as the unit hits and or is hit, the [[Fatigue]] effect comes in to play.
* Example: Level 16 [[Fire Elementalist]] commands stack of [[Efreeti]].
** Efreeti start with 100% efficiency + 16% bonus = 116% efficiency (100% default)
** After their primary attack (init 4) they lose 15% as normal = 101% efficiency (85% default)
** After one hit they again lose 15% = 86% efficiency (70% default)

==Attack of the hero==
* Right after the primary attack of the stack, to the same stack.

===Heroes' spells and resistance===
* If one of your heroes casts a [[Spells#Heroes' spells|spell]] or uses an [[#Hero Abilities|ability]], that can be resisted, just as any other spell.
* Hero colour determines the colour of the spell/skill.

===How Heroes are Lost in Combat:===
* [[Stack wiping]] the hero led stack will usually kill a hero
** but... for the hero to die, there needs to be enough damage left over after the stack is killed, to kill the hero also.
** In a close call, it thus ''is'' possible to have a hero-lead stack completely die, while the hero manages to survive.

= Hero Experience =
With every turn you spend, your hero gains experience points. When you collected enough experience, your hero raises a level. The latter may switch on new abilities and increase the effect of already acquired abilities.

== Experience gain ==
'''Battle Heroes:'''
* Slow servers (Arch 1/12 min): 12 experience per turn + 24 experience for leading a stack in a battle (win or not)
:: ''arch changed from 1/15 to 1/12 min, experience needs confirmation''
* Normal servers (Guild, Solo 1/7min): 6 experience per turn + 11 experience for leading a stack in a battle (win or not)
* Fast servers (Beta 1/5 min): 4 experience per turn + 8 experience for leading a stack in a battle (win or not)

'''Non-Battle Heroes:'''
* Slow servers (Arch 1/12 min): 18 experience per turn
:: ''arch changed from 1/15 to 1/12 min, experience needs confirmation''
* Normal servers (Guild, Solo 1/7min): 8.4 experience per turn
* Fast servers (Beta 1/5 min): 6 experience per turn

== Leveling ==
* For a hero to go up a level, it requires 1000*current level in experience.

 
[[Section 7 - Heroes and Heroins]] of [[Alzorath's General FAQ| Alzorath's FAQ v0.2]] shows a table format of the hero levels from zero up to 40; however, the lowest level heroes available start from level 8 as most heroes have thier first abilities when they reach level 9. 

== Gods testing heroes ==
When a god turns from favour to disfavour, one of your heroes may be tested by a God.
The possible outcomes are: your hero gains one level, your hero stays, your hero dies.

:: ''Example: Gaining Sun's favour while having Moon's favour. Get a hero, and get it leveled right after.''
<center>
You offered 30,000,000 gold to Sun, the Father of the Sky. 
Sun, the Father of the Sky seems to be very pleased by your generous donation. 
Inner strength filled your spirit. 
Your action has gained you the favour of Sun, the Father of the Sky. 
The hero Vendu Clatian Berserker came to you and offered to serve under your command. 
You sense a heavenly conflict between Sun, the Father of the Sky and Moon, the Light in the Night. 
You hear roar in anger. You are now disfavoured by Moon, the Light in the Night. 
Moon, the Light in the Night tested your hero Vendu Clatian Berserker. 
Vendu Clatian Berserker passed Moon, the Light in the Night's test. 
Moon, the Light in the Night is pleased with Vendu Clatian's performance. 
 
Sat Mar 15 18:24:43 2008 
Vendu Clatian Berserker became level 18. 
</center>

= Hero Abilities =
<center>''Note'': The '''[[Hero Abilities|annotated list]]''' of hero abilities has moved.</center>

Above some minimum level of experience, heroes unlock their [[:Category:Hero abilities|abilities]]. When the hero increases in level, the unlocked ability also becomes more powerful. Most heroes have two abilities, one unlocking in the level 8-10 range, and one unlocking in the level 13-17 range. The abilities are briefly described in the [[Hero Abilities|encyclopedia]]. Two types of hero abilities exist: battle and non-battle. Non-battle heroes only have non-battle abilities, battle heroes can have both.

Note that some hero abilities can be turned off (click ''audience'' in the main menu) - this cuts down on your hero upkeep.

{{navigation}}