Assigning skill points tip

[Dragon Leftovers]

Be aware when assigning skill points that the max for each of the 4 stats is 10. And when you get the hero upgrade window, it will NOT reflect your artifacts or your spell buffs. For example, you may already have a defense of 10 due to your artifacts, but the upgrade window may only show you have 5 defense. If you assign more points into defense, they will be wasted. I keep track of my hero's 4 main stats on a piece of paper, so when it comes time to upgrade, I won't waste skill points.

The max hero level is 30, so when you get close to that level, be careful where you put skill points.

I always try to get the wall climbing ability soon. It only cost 5 skill points and keeps me from building and dragging around that slow moving wall-bashing equipment. But only your hero can get inside walls. Still, this works well, especially if you are traveling with no other units or with only ranged units. It's well worth 5 points spent. Hope this helps.

[a1_death]

Bump for useful info

[Brieg Skåld]

Basically, top tier upgrades you should get for your Heroes :
- 50 moves points (2 skill points / move point)
- Vision IV (cost 5 / level > 20 total > 2 levels)
-> Excellent for fast and deep recon

- Charge
- Parry
- Wall climbing
-> All of these cost 5 points and are very useful and effective especially associated with above for fast capturing

- Archery or Poison darts : Archery has more range but Poison darts can poison (-1 on each stat if applied but doesn't work on targets immune to Poison) - cost 10 !
- Markmanship IV (same cost as vision)
-> Extremely powerful since you can basically attack your ennemy without taking any damage back; M.IV will basically one shot any level 1 units (archers, swordsmen...)

I would not recommand Spell Casting since it costs 20 and requires 2 levels for each upgrade. If your Hero is 10 / 10 / 10 / 10 / 50 / 20 (stats / moves / hits), you may wipe entire armies with a single one anyway. Spells aren't that worth it at this stage.
Leadership is good early when your Hero is too weak yet to be on his own, I'd give it to the Leader of course but not on other Heroes that'll basically stick with the Leader until they can manage armies on their own.

Holy champion if you're facing Evil units, Unholy if you face Good units.
They are both useless if you face Neutral units (Human, Lizards, Azracs...).

That's usually it. These are useful and effective in every case.
Of course, you need to adapt according to your opponent and the situation.

[dtt.scanner]

I think it's important to note that these levels are only available in campaign or very large scenarios. You can still have a pretty fair chance of tanking 3 stacks with an 8/9/7/9/42/15, good spell casting (III-IV), Healing, and some kind of status effect that immobilizes. Gear/spells can give you status strikes and immunities, so a good fit is important for your extra points. You do need a ranged attack of some kind (not spell), range status strikes from rod/wand or skill buff so that you don't get trapped by a flying creature that you can't hit.

Note that with the balancing mod, the stat max is not 10/10/10/10. It may in fact be lower, even with spells and decent gear. If I'm not mistaken, you can only put 3-4 points into any stat with the balancing mod... so anything over that has to come from gear, skill boosts, or spells. Depending on your spell circles, that might make available limits much lower than in Vanilla, for instance with Death/Fire builds max defense might be around 6-8 (if you find good defensive gear).

One bonus with the balancing mod is that you can select any status strike, and you are not limited to only one (you can add any skill at any point), but they are expensive.

My favorite tank build is Earth/Life/Water 3/2/2. Entangle Strike. Multiple status strikes that freeze or weaken melee attackers. Wall Climbing/Parry/Round attack early in the build. Spell III or IV for quicker global spells and easier disenchants and spell locking. Vision II, and cave crawling if you have a large underground.

I prefer Poison Darts to other range weapons, because they have a chance for a really debilitating status effect... but you need another magic wand attack as a backup in case of poison immunitiy.

[myrkwood72]

Base game.
I have two builds.
Combat build starts with Lightning Strike and Regeneration, going up stats and Vision, adding Mountaineering and Wall Climbing, then the rest of the moves and whatever you'd like.
Call Flames and Leadership - sometimes adding Bard Skills - is another, going up the same moves and Vision trees.
Always Life 3/4. Usually Water 2.3. Sometimes Earth 1/2. Sometimes Fire 1, sometimes Air 1.