The Guide for Imrik, Knights of Caledor, on Mortal Empires

This is a guide to playing Imrik (the Knights of Caledor) on the Mortal Empires campaign.

I have played this faction on every difficulty, from Normal to Legendary. For the most part, this guide works for every difficulty. Where difficulty levels make a significant difference, I will try to point this out in the guide.

Why play Imrik and the Knights of Caledor Faction?

Imrik is by far my favorite High Elf legendary lord.

He's got a huge, powerful pet dragon mount, and he can obtain 5 other legendary dragons for his regiments of renown.

His starting position is precarious and challenging and therefore a lot of fun.

He can be turned into one of the tankiest lords in the game, singlehandedly wreckinig whole armies.

Imrik's Starting Position

Imrik begins far from the Ulthuan High Elf doughnut.

He's surrounded by hostile factions, most dangerous of which is Clan Eshin, led by Deathmaster Snikch. Just surviving the first 20 turns can be a challenge.

You begin with a Sun Dragon and a unit of Dragon Princes, which are good beginning units.

Even more importantly, you start with a Fire mage, Mikaela.

Her starting trait is random, and I've seen all of the following:

"Flammable" Phoenix Ward Save 5%

"Dampener" -8 Enemy Winds of Magic

"Thinker" Research rate +5% Hero action successs +3%

"Builder" -10% construction cost for local buildings

"Resistant" 15% magic resistance

"Spry" Speed +10%

"Dealer" Local Province income +10%

"Primed" Miscast base chance -10%; Winds of Magic +5

"Fortuitous" Missile Resistance +10%


Of these traits, my favorites are Fortuitous and Primed.

The higher tier traits (i.e. "Incendiary") are not available to start.

Turn by Turn Guide to the Early Game

First Order of Business: Defeat the Dwarves and Consolidate The Plain of Bones

Turn 1:
Attack Darkhold. Occupy settlement (don't sack or loot.)

Level up: Imrik with Route Marcher for extra movement speed, Mage with Fireball

Recruit 3 Archer units.

Build Darkhold to level III.

Why are we building Darkhold to Level III, when we could improve our capital, The Fortress of Vorag to level III instead? Two reasons: Fortress of Vorag already has defensive walls. Darkhold does not, and we want our major settlements to be defensible, so we need to get Darkhold to Tier III.

Darkhold has a unique building chain, Graves of the Dragons, that, when upgraded, gives us access to Dragon Princes at tier III.

Dragon Princes are decent cavalry, and being able to access them at tier III is useful.

Turn 2:

Move your army as close to Ash Ridge as you can, while still remaining in your territory so you can recruit.

Recruit 2 Rangers (Anti-infantry units that will be good for fighting Skaven later on) and recruit another Archer unit.

Start researching Archery Prowess in the Tech Tree.

Turn 3:

Attack Ash Ridge. If you're lucky, Clan Helhein's leader, Gilbert Helhein, will be in Ash Ridge. If he's there, the battle will be more difficult, but you will be able to get better peace terms after you win this battle.

When you win, ask Clain Helhein for peace. If Gilbert was present in Ash Ridge, and you defeated his army too, you can get a non-aggression pact and a trade agreement as well as peace.

Recruit 3 more archer units. Level up Imrik with the Dragon Horn skill (the fear effect is useful against low-tier enemies like Skaven) Give your Mage the Burning Head skill.

Time to Fight the Skaven

With the Dwarves sorted, it's time to turn our attention towards Clan Eshin. Deathmaster Skikch and his skaven are our biggest threat in the early game. We need to wipe them out as soon as possible. This is especially important when playing at higher campaign difficulties, as they spawn units at an extremely high rate, and you can easily become overwhelmed if you don't eliminate them early.

Get into march stance, and head east toward the mountain pass north of Pigbarter.

Turn 6

Change back into your normal stance (so you can recruit) and stop right on the edge of your territory, and recruit 3 final Archer units.

Turns 7 to 12

This is where things get really dicey. Your goal is to kill Deathmaster Snikch. You don't have the lightning strike skill, so you're going to have to rely on some luck and planning to get his army alone.

At this point of the game, I often find Snikch near the Haunted Forest, so I tend to angle south-east down in that direction. With any luck, you will see Snikch there. If he's not there, and the Haunted Forest is still held by the Red Cloud Orcs, then I will generally head towards Flayed Rock, the Clan Eshin capital. If the Haunted Forest is showing as a ruin, then it's a good bet that Snikch has already taken it and is there with his army.

You may have to fight Snikch along with another army. This is a tough fight. Use your mage's burning head spell as often as you can to kill and demoralize the enemy. Snikch himself is very tough and will wreck Imrik or your Mage in a duel, so keep away from him if you can. I try to beat him by just killing his army as opposed to trying to take out Snikch himself.

If you have to fight two armies, use your Dragon Princes to harass and delay the reinforcing army so you can defeat them sequentially instead of all at once. Occasionally, you can get lucky when fighting two armies, and the enemy reinforcements will spawn on your side of the map. In this case, just set up your forces to fight the enemy reinforcements as they enter the map edge. You can often rout the entire reinforcing army before the main army gets to you.

Ultimately, you need to eliminate the Skaven armies and take their settlements. Luckily, Flayed Rock is a very simple settlement to siege. The blind spot on the left hand side is a Skaven death trap, and you can wipe out the defenders with a combination of archery and burning head casts.

As a result of fighting, you will raise some money in loot. Spend some of it to build walls at Darkhold.

Crush the Red Cloud Orcs

Somewhere around Turn 9-12, you should have eliminated Clan Eshin. Now it's time to turn your attention to eliminating the Red Cloud faction. They are easy, even on Legendary difficulty. Their low tier armies get mowed down by your High Elven archers. Before fighting the Red Cloud faction, I tend to disband the White Lions and Spearmen units that you begin the game with.

The only real challenge is that they can sometimes decide to try to take your settlements on the Plain of Bones. This is why you want to build walls in Darkhold.

Public order can become a problem when conquering Gnoblar County. Do what you can to minimize unrest by stopping taxation and building entertainment buildings. On Legendary difficulty settings, a revolt at Flayed Rock may be inevitable before you're done conquering and stabilizing the entire province.

If all goes well, by turn 15-17, you should have eliminated Red Cloud and taken all of the Gnoblar County province.

The First Dragon Encounter

Around this point in the game, you will have your first dragon encounter.

Although for every other encounter, you should pick the "ritual of war" option, for this first one, it's generally best to choose the "Bargain with the Dragon" option to gain influence. In a few turns, when you confederate with Caledor, you will need some influence to get good relations with the High Elves of Ulthuan. Without manipulating relations with them you will likely end up at war with Tyrion and the other High Elf factions.

Taking out Malus Darkblade

At this point, you've eliminated the Clan Eshin skaven and the Red Cloud orcs.

You control the entirety of the Plain of Bones and Gnoblar County.

It's time to look south to the Dragon Isles, controlled by the Dark Elves.

Malus Darkblade is the leader of the Hag Graef faction. He doesn't like High Elves and will eventually declare war on you, so it's better to strike first.

Hag Graef is allied with Nagarond, and is generally at war with the Court of Lybaras. It's best to use the "Join War" diplomacy option with Lybaras when declaring war on Hag Graef so you can go to war with Hag Graef and not automatically go to war with Nagarond, Hag Graef's ally.

If you haven't encountered Lybaras, it's very easy to do, by just swinging over to within sight of Lahmia on your way to attack Malus.

Malus is not too difficult to eliminate, provided you don't prolong the conflict too long. If you mess around too much, you run the risk of Malus utilizing the Rite of the Warmaster, which will spawn a large army of very high level monsters. I found this out the hard way when I was farming XP by repeatedly sieging and sacking the last Hag Greaf settlement.

Killing Malus Darkblade gives you a very nice +30 armor piercing damage kill trait.

The Dragon Isles are a great province because they are relatively isolated. Generally, you don't need to defend them because nobody ever shows up to invade you. Once in a very great while, Kroq-Gar and the Last Defenders will show up, but that's very rare.

Confederation with Caledor: Welcome to Ulthuan

About the time you take the first settlement in the Dragon Isles, you will get the option to confederate with the Caledor Faction in Ulthuan.

If you have any desire to play in Ulthuan, this is your chance, as the Caledor faction generally gets wiped out by Tyrion/Lothern sometime between turns 18-25.

When you confederate, choose the "Favors Abound" option, and immediately try to get non-agression pacts with your neighbors (usually Etain and Tiranoc.) Spend influence using the Intrigue at the Court mechanic to improve relations with your neighboring High Elves. Your new holdings in Ulthuan are also the reason that I advise declaring war with Hag Graef through the :"join war" diplomacy mechanic, so you don't end up at war with Nagarond.

Sometimes, when you confederate, you will find that the Dark Elves (usually Cult of Pleasure) have already invaded the Ulthuan "doughnut." You may find that your neighbors are Dark Elves. If this is the case, you stand a good chance of losing your newly gained Ulthuan territories, as you will likely not have enough money to maintain an army in Ulthuan. Because of this financial constraint, you're going to have to rely on diplomacy and intrigue, rather than military might.

I've had games where my Ulthuan holdings got wiped out immediately, either by High Elves or Dark Elves. I've also had games where I was able to keep my initial holdings and ultimately expand them throughout Ulthuan. Unless you decide to abandon your initial holdings and commit all of your resources to Ulthuan, a lot of what happens will come down to luck.

If you're lucky, when you confederate with Caledor, you will inherit some lords and heroes with some interesting items.

Caledor will often have an Elven Gardens building already constructed (usually in Tor Sethi.)
If you don't already have a Noble hero, recruit one. Then, send your noble down south to encounter Teclis (so you can possibly confederate with him later on.)

Army Composition: From Early Game through Mid Game

For early to mid game, while you are still fighting the various quest dragons and before Imrik has become a Chad death tank, you want to rely on mostly ranged units.

My early game army is a couple of Rangers for holding the line and fighting enemy infantry, and the rest made up of Archers. The Dragon Prince unit you big with is useful as well.

As the game progresses, I replace about half of my Archers with Lothern Sea Guard (with shields if possible) and I replace the Spearmen and White Lions starting units with a couple more Dragon Princes. Dragon Princes are a decent cavalry choice for Imrik because you can recruit them from a Tier III building. Dragon Princes also seem to be weighted heavily in the auto-resolve algorithm, so they help speed things up when you're fighting less challenging battles.

By mid game, I will try to add a couple of bolt thrower artillery pieces to round things out.

Generally, my mid-game Imrik army consists of:
Imrik
Mikaela the Mage
7 Lothern Sea Guard with shields
6 Archers
Sun Dragon
2 Dragon Princes
2 Eagle Claw Both Throwers.

This is a pretty versatile army that can perform well in sieges and in field battles.

The Dragon Quest Battles and the Quest Battle for the Armor of Caledor

Dragon Encounters

Your first dragon encounter happens at turn 10. Thereafter, every 15 turns you will have another encounter.

There are 5 legendary dragons in total.

For each encounter (other than the first) you want to pick the Ritual of War.

The Ritual of War creates a quest battle where you have to fight the dragon and its accompanying army. Winning the battle gives you access to the legendary dragon in your Regiments of Renown pool, It also gives you a permanent character trait and a unique magical item. There is also a temporary army buff that affects all armies in your faction.

Some of these dragon quest rewards are very powerful, providing things like perfect vigor, regeneration, extra damage, speed, etc.

These legendary dragon quest battles can all be won with a standard mid-game army made up of Lothern Sea Guard and Archers. If you have hit level 14 and obtained Imrik's dragon mount, it's generally a good idea to dedicate Imrik to fighting the legendary dragon right away, as the legendary dragons tend to buff their allies as long as they are alive.

After you have exhausted all of your legendary dragon encounters, every 20 turns you will have encounters with ordinary dragons. Unlike the legendary dragon encounters, choosing to fight the regular dragon will instantly transport you to the battle, rather than creating a quest battle that you can fight when you want to.

The ordinary dragon encounters can drop some very good loot, including an arcane item called, "the Amplifier" which provides +20 Winds of Magic and -30% cooldown to all spells.

The Armor of Caledor

This armor is extremely powerful, providing both healing and reset of ability cool-downs.

The quest battle for this armor requires fighting several armies at once, including an artillery heavy Vampire Counts army. While the quest is available quite early, I tend to wait until I have reached level 14 with Imrik and can mount him on his star dragon mount. Having the ability to fly over and jump on the vampire artillery is a very good option for reducing casualties.

When the enemy boss joins the fight, focus fire on him, because his army will crumble very soon after he dies. Kill him as quick as you can to make the battle end sooner.

The Imrik 3 Person Doom Stack

It's not difficult to turn Imrik into an extremely tough and durable tank and wrecking ball.

While it's possible to make Imrik into a literal one man army, it's more efficient and easier to make him part of a three man army: Imrik, a fire mage, and a life mage. For this to work, you need to get your fire mage to level 22 so that she can get her fire dragon mount, and you need the life mage to get to level 7 to get the horse mount.

The traits and equipment you receive for defeating the legendary dragons, combined with the Armor of Caledor make Imrik very durable and tanky. He can jump onto an enemy (often their leader,) and when they start blobbing him, can use AOE damage abilities (piercing bolts from the Dragonpact skill, and the chain lightning from the Shooting Star enchanted item.)

With your dragon mounted fire mage orbiting above him raining down fire spells, there are very few enemies that can withstand the massive amount of damage that can be dished out. The best trait for the fire mage is the "Protected" trait. This trait gives the mage 20% magic and 20% missile resistance. It also provides any lord within a 40 meter radius +15% physical resistance. Hovering over Imrik while he's on the ground therefore makes him even more of a tank.

The third member of this triad is a life mage to provide some healing and to give your army a grounded unit. (Armies made up of all flying units start losing morale unless they are in combat.) My favorite trait for the life mage is the "Limber" trait, which provides extra speed. The life mage's job is to stay out of combat, and run in close every now and then to do some healing. A horse mount is faster than the chariot mount, so that's what I choose.

One of the most rare item drops in the game is an enchanted item called Moranion's Wayshard. This grants the wearer the "stalk" ability, which makes them invisible to the enemy unless they are very close. Putting this item on your life mage makes her pretty much invulnerable. Without this stalking ability, you will need to rely solely on your speed to stay out of trouble.

This three man doomstack will handle any fighting all the way up to the end game. Multiple armies of high tier troops can be taken down by Imrik and these two mages.

However, if you are encountering armies that have large numbers of big flying monsters, you may want to add a few dragons to act as bodyguards for your dragon mounted fire mage.

A fully leveled and kitted out Imrik can also perform very well in auto-resolve.

How to Level Up Imrik

Imrik has a host of choices for leveling up.

However, as he is perfectly capable of wreaking havoc without an army, I don't typically bother pursuing any of the "red line" skills which provide army buffs.

Without the need for any of the red line skills (other than Dragon Horn, which is useful for decreasing enemy morale) you can focus on the skills that turn Imrik into a better fighter.

Here's my typical level 40 skill list.

Imrik's Hobbled Economic Situation and What to Do About It

Imrik has a big economic disadvantage in that he is unable to trade with most friendly factions.

In order to trade, you have to be able to trace a path of owned provinces from your capital to the trading partner's capital. You can also connect through ports.

What this means for Imrik is that if you want to trade with Ulthuan or the Empire or Bretonnia, you need to conquer provinces to connect to the ports of Barak Var or Stonemine Tower. These lands are held by Grimgor and Wurzag, so you will be fighting your way westward. Once you get this trade route set up, use influence to increase your relations with the larger factions so you can get them to trade with you.

If you can create and maintain this trade route, you can easily make thousands of gold per turn trading.

Best Heroes, Lords, and Traits

Lord Traits
For lords, I prefer Archmages, either from the lore of Life or the lore of Fire.

The "Incendiary" trait is seriously overpowered, providing a +100% weapon strength, +100 charge bonus, +10 melee attack, +10 melee defense, and enables flaming attacks. Archmages can get dragon mounts, so with this incendiary trait, they become serious damage dealing machines.

I choose the incendiary trait for all of my archmages.

For other lords, a Prince with the Adept trait provides +250 XP for all units in his army. This is good for "training" armies.

The Prince's "Dragon Willed" trait gives a 20% decrease in the upkeep cost of maintaining dragons.

The Princess "Punitive" trait gives bonuses to archery.

For the most part, I just use Incendiary Archmages. They are just too good.



Heroes and their Traits

Here are my favorite hero traits:

Handmaidens:
The Fecund trait provides 50 growth in the local province and +5 growth factionwide. I like putting these in slower growth provinces like Vaul's anvil or fortresses.

The Medic trait gives +10 army replenishment rate, along with regeneration for the Handmaiden

Nobles:
Emolient provides +5 public order in the local province and +1 public order factionwide. This is especially important on higher campaign difficulty levels, where the player is dealing with significant public order penalties.

Frugal gives a 15% discount to an army's upkeep costs.

Mages:
Incendiary trait for Fire Wizards (because they get fire dragon mounts and can become good melee fighters.)

Limber trait for life wizards (because it helps them stay out of melee combat.)

Loremaster of Hoeth:

Conductor provides +10 winds of magic and Arcane Conduit

Exhilarated is an odd trait that increases magic item drop chance, increases chance of intercepting underground enemy armies, +25% post battle loot, and +12 melee defense for Phoenixes.

Campaign Directions in the Mid and Late Game

The direction of an Imrik campaign will most often be dictated by your neighbors.

Unlike Ikit Claw or Count Noctilus, where your home territory can go unmolested for most of the game, as Imrik, you will almost inevitably be attacked by Grimgor Ironhide and/or Queek Headtaker.

Both Grimgor and Queek have the potential to become very strong, so you can find yourself fending off waves and waves of angry orcs or skaven. Your big choice is to decide to wait for them to attack, or to initiate the attack yourself. I've found that my Imrik campaigns have very little down time, and I'm often swatting back enemy invasions from multiple directions. The Chaos invasion will generally work its way through the mountain chain to the north, so you will eventually have to deal with that too, particularly on Legendary invasion difficulty.

Trying to keep everything under control around your capital, while also trying to juggle possessions in Ulthuan can be a real challenge. Such a far-flung empire creates some logistical difficulties. Some of my more successful playthroughs have been those where I got kicked out of Ulthuan, or else when I abandoned my starting position in favor of Ulthuan.

On occasion, I have used the Intrigue at the Court mechanic to increase relations with Grimgor and delay his declaration of war. If you go this route and don't have to worry about Grimgor, you can expand to the South and West and take the lands of the Lizardmen and Tomb Kings.

The Best Item Drops and Crafted Items

Here are my favorite item drops I've encountered in my Imrik campaigns.

Some of them are extremely rare.


For Imrik, the most important random item drop is the Talisman of Preservation. This talisman provides +17% ward save. This really helps Imrik' survive when surrounded by mobs of enemies.

The best weapon I've found for Imrik (and really the best weapon in the game for any melee focused character) is Massa-Moone's Pride. It provides a massive +100 armor piercing damage, provides 5% weapon strength, and has a bound Wind Blast spell. This weapon is extremely rare, and you can often go through an entire campaign and not see it.

Much more easy to obtain is the Blade of Sea Gold, which can show up as an item reward for the Invocation of Vaul rite. It has +100 armor piercing damage, a charge bonus of +45, and -10 regular weapon damage.


One of the most useful of all items is Moranian's Wayshard.
It provides the stalk ability to the holder, which is perfect for equipping on your Life Wizard.

The Tormentor sword is another great item that is relatively common. It freezes enemies around you, allowing you to easily hit them with an AOE damage spell and/or to escape.


Khaine's Ring of Fury is a great damage dealing item. It gives you the bound spell Firely Convocation, which is a nasty damage dealing spell that summons a phoenix. Great for equipping on a flying spell caster for a bit of extra damage dealing capability.

[Sima Qian]

I am reading this guide like the bible

[Ancalagon_]

Not a pet, Druchi have pet dragons, because those dragons are tortured and broken.

[Tower32er]

How do you get rangers on turn 2?

[shaunkoh]

Fantastic guide. The three man Imrik army is almost unstoppable, especially with lighting strike. I wouldn’t have thought to try it if you hadn’t suggested it!

How did you end up dealing with a super massive Grimgor though? He’s been steamrolling everyone around him and has 40 odd settlements. Imrik can’t be everywhere at once. And he’s the only lord I have that can deal with waaagh stack spam.

[FEd]

Pretty cool guide man, really useful. It's my first time playing Imrik and i'm having a blast, even tho i had to give up on Ulthuan eventually