Tips for a new player?

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

Hello! I'm new to the game, and so far, it seems alright, but I'm not sure what to do exactly.

For example, what is the point of building buildings? Will this be explained later in the game, or should I start building stuff immediately?

Is there a limit on how many turns I can take? I like to explore the maps fully and find all the hidden stuff, so is that okay to do?

When units die in battle, are they gone forever?

Is there a way to recruit better units at the very beginning of the game? All the units besides the werewolf are weak.

And do I have any skills to use in battle at the start of the game? If so, how do I use them?

Any tips greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!

[Chronoja]

Are you new to the Disciples series completely or just Disciples III? Regardless of either for the purposes of Disciples III, If you haven't played Disciples III: Renaissance first I'd strongly advise playing it first simply because it has a tutorial and it is a tad easier in some ways due to the way they changed some of the mechanics for Resurrection, like the changes to initiative. Plus for story purposes it happens before Resurrection.

Anyways, with that out of the way I'll just bring you up to speed on a few things and answer your questions.

The purpose of the buildings is to allow your units to "evolve". In the disciples series there are two types of units, party leaders and basic units. The party leaders you hire them from the left side of a city when it's empty and they serve as the unit you control around the map. You are given special hero units, like Salaar who serve as the driving force behind the campaigns.

The basic units like the skeleton fighters etc.are the ones you place in your parties to help fight your battles. These units, like the party leaders, gain experience when they are victorious in battle, and they can level up just like your party leaders gaing a set amount increase in their stats. However, the buildings, if constructed, allow your unit to change into an entirely different unit once it levels up and typically allows them to become much more poweful or gain new abiliies or it can severely change how the unit functions. The thing to be aware of here is that only one building path can be chosen for any unit so you must choose carefully because the upgrade path will apply to every unit of that type that you buy for the remaining act. As soon as you finish an act your will typically start the next act completely fresh with the campaign hero retain the level and skills they earned from the previous one, all buildings and basic unit levels are not carried over.

There are 3 special buildings on the last tab that are rather important. Well 2 of them are the other not so much. The Temple allows your parties to heal and revive at cities / your capitl. The Mage Tower allows you to research and cast 1 spell per day (cast 2 spells if you chose the Mage Lord leadership at the start of the campaign). The Guild allows you to purchase "Thief" party leaders however most of their functionality was lost from previous Disciples games so it is pretty much a waste of money to buy this upgrade so don't bother unless you really want to.

Regarding when to build. Typically only build just before your you need to, i.e. If you have a unit that will evolve soon have their upgrade building built ready for them to evolve straight away. You can only build one upgrade per day so it can take some planning. You don't have to worry if you don't have an upgrade building up in time, the unit will gain a little icon on their portrait and once the building is up they will automatically evolve at the end of the next battle they survive. Overall you don't want to build too early just incase you need valuable gold for a quick heal at a city. Temples you can usually leave until you *really* need them, mage towers, wait until you have secured an income of mana then build relatively early so you can research ahead of time. If you have a large map control or have a lot of early resources though there's nothing worry just build anything you want whenever you want.

Units that die in battle are not lost completely, and this is true for party leaders as well. So long as at least 1 unit survives a battle, either through victory or retreat, the entire party may live another day. When they are "dead" though they cannot participate in battles so it is extremely important that you find a way to revive your fallen party members. You can do this either through the use of potions or by moving your party to a city and if you have built the temple upgrade you will then be able to revive and/or heal any wounded party members.

If all your party members die, the entire party is lost, if this happens to the campaign hero's party, then you will game over.

I've said this in other threads but the first level in Resurrection is by far the hardest and this is simply because you have no money, few resources and the experience required to level your units is extortionately high while enemies give really low experience. You're free to find any solution you want to it but it really is just a bit of "grin and bear it". After that act 2 onwards things start to become a bit more interesting.

When your party leaders level up they gain 2 things, 5 attribute points for endurance, strength etc, and 2 skill points to allocate on their talent boards. It's worth looking over these talent boards ahead of time and planning how you will spend these skill points because they offer some very, very unique skills and upgrades to your hero. The most important ones by far are the "Leadership" nodes increase your party size by +1. It goes without saying how valuable extra units in your party can be.

You are not wrong in that Werewolves are probably the most valuable basic unit available for the undead and this is true for the entire campaign. While it takes a large effort to accumulate the wealth in order to purchase them on early missions, as you explore maps you will find many many valuable items and relics like sky diamonds and potions and armour for the various party leaders. My best advice here is not to sell them but hold onto them and use them as quick cash injections at the start of each new act when you need to get your buildings built and your werewolves bought relatively quickly in order to start gaining map control.

Once your hero starts getting levels and has a bigger party limit you will start finding a place for other basic units, mages etc. to compliment your army of werewolves or skeletons. If you find mercenary camps, of which there are a few dotted throughout the campaign, these allow you to purchase rare and exotic units. Some of them are better than others so it's always worth stopping and checking out what they have on offer.

Aside from mercenary camps and specialist shops on the map (that sell either potions or runes) there are training camps that allow you to convert gold into experience for a unit at a rate of 1 exp per 1 gold. They will only accept the money if you have the exact amount or more required to gain a complete level, so, if a unit needs 100 exp before it levels, you need 100+ gold before you can train that unit. It's worth noting here that the heroes, Salaar and one you will meet later on in the campaign have a maximum level that increases by 5 every act, so, in Act 1 they can reach level 5 before they no longer gain experience. In act 2, they can react level 10 before they no longer gain experience. I bring this up because as I mentioned you will come across a 2nd hero part way through the campaign and they will be under levelled so it is highly recommended that you either level them up or train them if you get the chance since you will be expected to go solo with them and you will encounter much trouble if you leave them under their max level.

Generally you have as much time as you want to complete maps, provided that the current mission objects are not time based Off the top of my head I can't think of any missions that really required me to rush to complete the map, but there is generally always a point where you will be able to gain more or less complete map control which enables you to search around the map are your leisure. As a point though it's always a good practice to save before stepping into a quest marker just incase it teleports you to a different location that you weren't expecting. This does happen and it can be a bit frustrating if you had a few more places to explore before you got teleported.

In battles outside of moving or attacking you can use skills if the unit has them. They appear as a little icon beside the defend and wait buttons, but as I said not every unit has them. Heroes gain abilities through their talent grids if you allocate skill points to them when they level up, some basic units inherently have these, like golems earthquake or the Black Naga's petrify. Additionally one thing they added to Resurrection was passive abiliies, some of which can be devastating if you are no prepared. Level 3 Legions of the Damned node guardians for example have the passive ability to polymorph your units (all of them in a single attack) into imps, so be very careful about how and when you attack.

You also have your inventory in battle that allows you to use potions or runes. Runes are magic spells that can only be cast in battle while potions boost your stats for a few turns or heal/revive or whatever. The inventory is along the top row of buttons on the battle screen and any unit can access it but using an item consumes their turn but they can for example use a potion on another unit.

If you are having trouble with a battle always consider researching an overworld spell and casting it on them before going into battle. Also consider researching heal spells and if you can only cast spells when you are certain you need to. You may for example end a battle on low health, end your turn and get ambushed by an enemy party which finish you off completely, at that point a heal spell might just mean the difference between success and defeat. Also, before you cast a damaging spell on a party check their resistance to the spells damage type, there is nothing worse than wasting precious mana and a spell cast on an enemy for it to do next to no damage.

Finally, I'm sure you've read the other threads but it's worth repeating here is the changes to Initiative or the "why is the enemy getting a million his before I do" question. The initiative was changed from Renaissance so that at the end of each units turn in battle, the lowest value of any unit alive in combat is subtracted from the units current initiative. So for example, a wolf with 60 initiative is attacking, the lowest unit has initiative 20, The wolf will attack at iniative 60, subtract 20, attack at initiative 40, subtract 20 and attack finally at initiative 20. Raising your lowest value initiative will prevent fast enemies getting more hits in, but, later in the game when your party is stronger and faster finding ways to lowering an enemy units initiative will allow you to get multiple more hits in before they do so it becomes a huge advantage to you.

edit: A couple of other things I thought off. 1: Cover. Cover is extremely important in Resurrection since they changed how it functioned and made it very powerful. A unit with cover, like Werewolves, will automatically intercept any unit that attempts to do *anything* within the 6 tiles surrounding them. If your unit "covers" an enemies action, again it could be anything from attacking you to simply moving away, you will be allowed to attack that unit and you will also taunt a hit from the enemy. Cover is limited in that each unit has a set amount of cover points, so the werewolf has 2 meaning it can cover 2 enemy actions per battle and then no more. These reset at the start of each new battle and can only be replenished in battle by use of special skills, e.g., the Man-of-Arms "vigilance" skill. This makes a team of werewolve rather powerful since they can cover multiple hits / enemies at the same time while typically taking 0 damage from the taunted hit due to their weapon immunity.

2: The Armour stat reduces all damage you take from all sources and it is a percentage reduction capped at 90. You can upgrade any town you capture along your way once per day with the gold required increasing each turn. For the most part this isn't that important but in a few places you will find that upgrading a city will have a strategic importance, having your party visit in a town will provide them with a passive armour bonus,(and I can't remember if does in D3 but I will assume it does but I think it regens a % of your parties health at the end of each turn). I'm not completely certain on this last point about armour so someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

This has been a huge post, sorry for that, but hopefully it explains anything you were unsure about. If not or if you have other questions just let us know and hopefully we'll get it clarified

Good luck :)

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

That was very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to post all that. I do appreciate it, especially since the game doesn't offer much of a tutorial (although I did read the in-game help section, it still left me with a bunch of questions).

I guess my follow-up would be, how many parties should I be making? I now understand building buildings, upgrading units, etc., so I'm wondering if there is a limit to the amount of parties I can create? Is it better to create as many as possible? Or, maybe it's better to focus on better buildings upgrades and only roll with one or two parties? Just something I was wondering once I figured out how to purchase units.

I noticed the game is quite difficult, even on Easy. I fought 2 giant spiders that wiped out my whole party except for the werewolf. So, it sounds like I should get the Temple upgrade so I can heal in cities. Which cities will I be able to rest in? I don't even think I've discovered any cities yet, although I have been in little towns and searched the various buildings for loot and gold. Are those the cities that I can heal in?

[Chronoja]

It's really up to your personal playstyle but I find that the fewer parties created the better you likely will do. Most maps do not have a training camp on them, and the level cap on heroes per act means that you really want to maximize the experience coming from these enemies since they are a finite resource unless you camp outside the enemy capital and farm the low level parties they send out once you gain complete map control (which is something you might want to do in some levels should you wish to cap your hero and have run out of enemies to kill)

The problem with forming new parties is that the leaders will always be level 1, have the minimum party size of 3 meaning they will be horrifically weak in everything but the earliest acts. If you end an Act any party leaders that survived can be purchased again as "veteran" units, they will be level 1 again but will have increased stats but they will also cost significantly more to rehire which makes this a bit of a waste of money.(One trick I did use though was having one veteran unit hold all my valuable items. Since in Resurrection you will not always follow the same hero through the campaign, you will not always have access to items left in their inventory, however, these items will be retained on your veteran who can be hired at any town in any of the Acts regardless of the active hero meaning they can act as a sort of bank giving you access to the items he's holding)

What I do is I sweep around the map with the campaign hero's party using them to fight as many battles as possible and to become as strong as possible and then create new parties just to serve as scouts or as defenders in any towns that hold strategic value. To that end I may even transfer a few of my highly evolved "basic units" to a low level newly created party leader just to help them defend their area and then train up a new basic units in the party with my much stronger main hero.

If I have gold to spare, on a few occassions I have created new parties just to suicide them on a tougher enemy in order to soften them up. It's a tactic I'll usually reserve for a particularly bad ambush because by placing a weak, throwaway party between them and a valuable target it will waste their turn for the day since they will either have to attack them or avoid them altogether. Using suicide parties on a tough static enemy like a tough troll/orc party though isn't a great idea mainly because experience gain is tied to the damage your party does in battle, so if your main party goes into a battle and you've already reduced their hp, your main party will therefore gain less experience. It's also risky to use on the enemy parties because you are effectively giving them experience if they win and you risk them levelling up and getting stronger.

The towns / cities you'll usually know them when you see them, each town shows up on the minimap as a red or white dot depending on who controls it. You will pass through ruined towns etc. hopefully you are making use of the various buffs from pubs and churches and searching for loot in carts etc. Just note that to revive and heal using the temple requires gold the cost increasing for evolved units and higher health pools. The percentage based health regen will only apply to units who are alive each day but is otherwise free. Also remember your capital counts as a city, the best city you have access to, so if you need to spend a few days regenerating health in your capital it might be worth it.