15 Olden Era Tips and Tricks Every New Player Should Know

Most of what trips up new Olden Era players isn’t hard once someone points it out. It’s just stuff the game never bothers to teach you. Here are fifteen tips and tricks I wish I’d known on day one, the kind that turn a frustrating loss into a clean win. These are written for the current Early Access build, so a balance patch could shift a detail here or there, but the fundamentals hold.

1. Split a Single Unit Off to Bait Retaliation

This is the single biggest skill jump for new players. Each enemy stack only retaliates once per round. So peel one lone creature off a stack, throw it at the enemy to soak that retaliation, then hit with your real stack for free. To split, CTRL + click a stack and it drops to a single creature. Use CTRL + SHIFT + click to instead fill a slot to its maximum. Master this and your damage output roughly doubles in tough fights.

2. Keep Your Whole Army One Faction for +1 Morale

An army made entirely of one faction’s creatures earns +1 Morale. Every extra faction you add subtracts 1. High morale means stacks occasionally get a bonus turn; low morale means they freeze up. Resist the urge to slot in that cool off-faction creature. The morale is almost always worth more.

3. Finish Dwellings Before the Weekend

Creature stocks refresh on the weekly tick at week’s end. A dwelling built before the weekend produces creatures that same week. Build it one day late and you’ve burned a full week of recruitment. When the weekend’s close, prioritize finishing the dwelling over starting anything new.

4. Use Wait to Control the Turn Order

Hitting Wait sends a stack to the back of the current round’s turn order instead of acting now. It’s not a wasted turn, it’s a timing tool. Wait with your hitters so they strike after the enemy commits and repositions, then punish. Great for letting an enemy stack walk into your reach before you swing.

5. Win the Early Game With Ranged Units

Early fights are decided by ranged damage more often than not. Shooters chip enemy stacks down before they ever reach your line, which means fewer of your melee creatures die. Build toward your ranged dwelling early, protect those stacks, and let them do the work while your map army is still small.

6. Run Two Heroes With Clear Roles

A second hero is cheap leverage. Give one the main army and the fighting; use the other as a shuttle that scouts, grabs resources, picks up reinforcements, and ferries them to the front. Splitting map duties from combat duties means your fighting hero never wastes days running errands.

7. Don’t Force a Subclass That Won’t Cooperate

Subclasses unlock when you grind five specific skills to Expert, and some of the required skill rolls show up at brutally low odds — a few as low as 2%. Chasing one of those across a whole game usually means passing up better picks along the way. If the skills aren’t coming, take the strong options the game is offering and let the subclass go.

8. Visit the Mage Guild Every Time You Build It Up

New Mage Guild levels stock new spells, and a single good spell can swing a fight harder than a stack of creatures. Every time you upgrade the guild, check what’s available and learn it. A buff or crowd-control spell at the right moment beats raw stats.

9. Don’t Sleep on Law and Astrology Points

These two resource systems are easy to forget and quietly powerful. Law Points buy Faction Laws (passive bonuses, capped at 100 per game) through Faction Seals. Astrology Points fuel global map spells from the Observatory. Both compound over a long game. Set up the buildings early and bank the points.

10. Initiative Is Not Speed

Two different stats, and confusing them gets your stacks killed. Initiative decides when a stack acts in the turn order; ties break on Speed. Speed is just how far a stack moves across the board. A high-initiative stack acts early even if it’s slow on its feet. Read both numbers when you plan a fight.

11. Pick the Right Upgrade Branch for the Fight

Most creatures have two upgrade paths, usually one favoring damage and the other favoring initiative or speed. You can switch between them freely in town, so don’t agonize. Going up against fast enemies? Take the initiative branch. Need to delete a tanky stack? Take damage. Adapt per matchup.

12. Use Long Reach to Hit Without Getting Hit Back

Some creatures attack with Long Reach, striking from one hex away and taking no retaliation. That’s a free hit. Position these stacks so they can poke at enemies across an empty hex rather than wading in for a melee that triggers a counterattack. It adds up fast over a long fight.

13. Mind the Ranged Penalties

Shooters aren’t always great. Firing point-blank into an adjacent enemy costs you -50% damage, the same penalty as shooting through an obstacle. Range hurts too: beyond three hexes you lose 10% per extra hex, down to a -50% floor. Keep your shooters at a comfortable middle distance and clear of melee, not jammed against the enemy.

14. Bank Focus Charges for the Moment That Matters

Focus builds up during a fight and powers special abilities. Don’t dump charges the instant you have them. Hold for the swing moment — the big enemy stack lining up, or the buff that wins the exchange. And remember Grove starts every battle with a free charge already in the bank thanks to its faction skill.

15. Keep Moving, Don’t Let the AI Snowball

Olden Era punishes passivity. Camp in your corner and the AI out-builds and out-armies you until it steamrolls your map. Keep clearing neutral stacks, keep expanding, keep your hero leveling. You don’t need to be reckless — you need to never waste a week. Momentum is the quiet win condition.

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None of these are advanced tricks, they’re just the things experienced players do on autopilot. Drill the stack-splitting from tip one until it’s muscle memory, keep your army single-faction, time your weekend builds, and you’ll already be ahead of most people learning the game right now. The rest comes with reps.