The Best Olden Era Faction for Beginners (And Why It's Not That Simple)
Which faction should you pick first in Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era? An honest beginner-friendliness ranking of all six factions for the Early Access build, with clear picks for safe, flexible, and aggressive players.
You just installed Olden Era, you’re staring at six factions, and you want to know which one won’t make your first ten hours miserable. Fair question. The honest answer is that all six can win, so this isn’t about which faction is “best” in some absolute sense. It’s about which ones are easiest to learn on. Those are different things, and conflating them is how new players end up frustrated.
A heads-up on tier lists before we start: they disagree, sometimes wildly. One outlet has Temple near the top, another parks it in the middle. Unfrozen is actively patching the game in Early Access, so the meta isn’t settled. I’m leaning on the GamesRadar Early Access read for raw strength, but I’m weighting this guide toward forgiveness — how badly a faction punishes the mistakes new players actually make. Strength matters less than you’d think when you’re still learning the ropes.
The Short Answer
- Want to win while you learn? Pick Dungeon.
- Want flexibility and room to experiment? Pick Temple.
- Want aggression and don’t mind a learning curve? Pick Hive.
Now the reasoning, plus where the other three land.
Dungeon — The Safest Place to Start
Dungeon sits at the top of the current strength rankings, and it happens to be forgiving too, which is a rare combo. The reason it’s so beginner-friendly is structural: most Dungeon units have two attack modes. New players constantly get stacks stuck in the wrong position, holding a melee unit when they needed range or vice versa. Dungeon shrugs that off because its creatures can usually do both.
It also has a standout early unit in the Onyx Dancers, ranged attackers that carry the early game hard, and a hero (Motley) who can open with an army of them. The faction skill, Triumvirate’s Strength, lets your hero pick one of three stances each fight to pump Attack, Defense, or Spell Power. So even your hero choices are flexible and low-stakes.
The roster runs Troglodyte, Infiltrator, Onyx Dancer, Minotaur, Medusa, Hydra, up to the Cave Dragon. If you want to win games while you’re still figuring out the fundamentals, this is the pick.
Temple — Flexible Fundamentals, No Gimmicks
Temple is the cleanest “good at everything” faction, and it teaches you the game properly because it has no tricks to lean on. It’s the Sun Church human army, balanced between melee and ranged, built around buffs. The faction skill, Righteousness, feeds your hero stats whenever an allied creature dies or scores a kill, so your hero grows stronger across a long fight without you doing anything special.
The roster covers every role you need: Swordsman, Crossbowman, Griffin, Lightweaver, Cavalry, Inquisitor, Angel. The early plan is straightforward — establish ranged output, stack Law Points, and don’t lose key units. It’s not an aggression-window faction, which suits a careful new player just fine. The Zenith hero, who opens with Lightweavers, gives you a strong start.
Temple’s one demand is patience. It rewards solid fundamentals rather than flashy plays, which is exactly what you want to be drilling early. If you’d rather understand the game than exploit a gimmick, start here.
Hive — Aggressive and Fun, but Demanding
Hive is a blast to play and quietly strong (it ranks just below the top), but I won’t pretend it’s a relaxing first faction. It’s the fast insect-swarm army that fights cheap and sustains through Corpse Eater, healing off corpses so every death feeds the swarm. The faction skill, Summon Swarm, plants eggs that hatch into free Fire Larvae mid-battle.
The catch is that Hive wants you to play aggressively and lean hard on split-stack retaliation baiting. Pilot it passively and it falls flat. The Zoran the Self-Founded opener (starting with two near-unkillable Waurms) is genuinely powerful, but the faction asks more of you than Dungeon or Temple do. Pick Hive if you’ve got some strategy-game instincts already and want a faction that pays off aggression.
The Other Three
These aren’t bad. They’re just trickier to learn on.
Necropolis has a fantastic long-game hook in Necromancy — you resurrect part of your fallen army after each win, so a snowball that gets rolling never really stops. The downside for beginners is that you have to avoid early losses to bank that value, and avoiding losses is exactly the skill new players lack. Powerful once you’re past the learning curve.
Grove is strong but expensive. Its ranger-druid roster leans on costly, powerful ranged and elemental units, and the faction skill Murmuring hands you a free Focus charge at the start of every fight. The trap is the economy: if your gold can’t keep pace, you’re fielding too few of those pricey units and you lose on numbers. Manage money badly and Grove punishes you hard, which makes it a rough beginner pick.
Schism is the deep-mechanics faction — abyssal monsters built around magic denial, control, and a snowball skill (Abyssal Communion) that grows your deployable unit count on a winning streak. It’s the most demanding faction to learn, with the most moving parts. Save it for once you know what you’re doing.
My Honest Recommendation
Start with Dungeon if you mainly want to win, or Temple if you mainly want to learn the game well. Both are forgiving, neither has a gimmick that’ll sandbag you, and you’ll come out of your first few maps understanding the fundamentals that carry over to every other faction.
And don’t overthink the tier list. The numbers shift with every Early Access patch, and a faction you enjoy playing will always serve you better than a “stronger” one you find a chore. Pick something that clicks, learn the core loop, and branch out from there.