Dawn of Fantasy/Beginner guide for Elves

Brief Introduction of the Elves
OK, so you just went in game, you are starting to enjoy the wonders of Mythador and you picked the elves as your race. That’s cool, except let me warn you, they are unique compared to the other races. Elves economy in general is based on trickles, which are resources accumulated in time depending on the number of creatures you have. Humans and Orcs cut wood, slaughter animals and mine stone and gold. Elves mine stone and gold, but our big income of food comes from trickles coming from the deer. The numbers of deer determine the increase in food production. More deer means faster food trickles, and since they don’t take population, I suggest you make as many as you can. The 2nd most important information is for the wood, which comes from trickles of the wood wisps. Those creatures take population though, so I suggest having around 8-9 in town for a fast trickle of wood. Also the humans have trading market, while elves have a converter so to say. Our market converts over time 3 of the resources for another we need, which makes us lose less resources, but it’s a slower process.

Another important hint to consider when picking Elves is the traits. Those abilities can’t be changed and are very important since they determine the progression of players. The traits I recommend are Alchemists and gatherers and Elven warriors. The first trait is related to resources. Deer produce more food trickles, wasps produce more wood, etc. The 2nd one gives a huge offensive boost to all the units, which is very important later in game.

First steps
So you just started your journey in Mythador and you passed the cinematic. As an elf you will have a few easy quests to resolve which will definitely help you with resources. One of the first steps which I recommend at the beginning is to level your hero only so you can use him to tank for the other battalions later. I recommend leveling the hero with defense stats first, preferably 5 on each, 2nd level stamina full, then going full defense followed by full stamina. You want you’re hero to be able to tank while the other units can finish the job. At the first levels the way to level hero is by the use of battle frenzy during the battle, retreat when low on stamina and followed by a heal. After finishing all the goblins, use the workers to ‘’bury’’ the corpses, which will bring you decent amount of gold. I will not go through all of quest steps, but following the quests is recommended since it rewards wealth which is needed for further development.

Something else which could speed things up faster would be to buy 100 wealth. It is not required, but it will speed things up dramatically because that wealth would be used on resources upgrades and would enable you to worry less about critical upgrades. It is not necessary, but it gives a nice boost. If not, we’ll go further.

When you don’t have resources to create something, there is a way to acquire gold in a nice way. By clicking on the map at the right you can view the world of Mythador. This map is a source for farming gold, pvp, npc castles seen and other areas. It’s very important because it’s here that you will be creating your first army. The number one thing to do is to left click on the city and create an army with the hero in it. Then you will move a bit in any direction until more buttons will show up and we will click on the one called Zoom. When you click on that button, you will be sent on a map where you will see units moving around, towns, enemy units and your army.

The reason why we do this is because we need gold to trade for resources in cities. This map will be grinded many times for resources, especially if you didn’t bought wealth earlier. The objective is simple. Kill as many enemy units as you can, loot their bodies, click on the map to go out and then repeat the same process many times. When you are finally full, you have choice between transporting the gold at your city and going in an npc town to trade it. The best thing to do is to also buy unicorns for the army since they don’t increase the army strength and can carry 300 resources. Our objective is to have the necessary resources to build at least the Sylvain Shrine, the Tree Symbiosis and the Tree dwelling. The Sylvain Shrine is the building producing Deer, the Tree Symbiosis is for the Wasps and the Tree Dwelling is for the rangers which will be your main units used to create.

After doing all those steps, you will have a decent economy as well as some nice leveled troops and a decent hero. The aggressive players can do more grinding for gold to level their hero and producing armies until they reach the cap (Remember, max population is 90) in the same time, while the casual players would wait for resources to pile up (after all, when logging out, resources are still being produced, but at a much slower rate) and will take the things slowly. The main objective after passing through those steps is the walls building, at least the wooden ones. The walls will give a nice boost for the players against invaders. Remember, you will always be attacked by a player with a similar strength army, which means those walls will give you a nice boost in term of protection, and since catapults are not used until later, you will always have the edge.

Conclusion
You are nearly there. All you have left is to build the rest of the buildings and get all the upgrades while also working on your stone walls. The wealth takes some time since you can earn it through pvp, questing and by buying it .It will be a slowly process, but there is nothing more rewarding then looking at the great city you created.

Economy
Starting a town economy initially is a little more complex than that of humans or orcs, but once you've begun production it becomes entirely automatic. The primary difference between this race and the others, is they have no dropoff point needed for gather resources. It's all transported by special elf magic.

Buildings: To kick-start your economy the first few buildings you will need to make is a Sylvan Shrine and tree symbiosis. The sylvan shrine has a few uses, it trains unicorns and has research upgrades for them. The shrine also stores goods and will increase your storage capacity, so later on in your game you will eventually build more and more of these. But to start out, one should do just fine. The tree symbiosis will train deer, tree spirits, and you can also spawn extra resources around it. Do not bother with extra resources as your forest should be abundant in already existing ones, instead, you want to spawn a few deer and at least 3 or 4 wood spirits.

Units:

Unicorns will generate gold if you unlock the right research. Unicorns will take up population space and if you spawn too many, their rate of gold gather will slow down.

Wood Spirits give you a dramatic increase to wood and they will be your only real method of generating large amounts of wood. Wood spirits also take up population space so be cautious not to overdo it when spawning them. DO NOT WORRY IF THE TREE SPIRITS WANDER OFF Most people freak out when they cant find their tree spirits, this is normal. the spirits will wander the woods around your city among the trees gathering wood, there is currently a bug where the wood generation does not appear on the wood counter but it is being added, trust the spirits.

Deer provide food (you do not slaughter them, they simply provide food when alive). The deer do not take up population space so feel free to spawn as many as you like, but they do have an initial food cost, so watch your resources.

Once you have all these units going and fully upgraded, you will have an almost fully automatic resource generation on everything except stone. For stone you have a few options the first and foremost is simply using wardens to mine it. This is a slow process and wardens take up population space, so I wouldn't recommend it being a permanent solution. When you get extra crowns you might want to invest in dwarf miners for they are more efficient and mine faster. Another solution is to simply trade for the stone you need at nearby trade towns. If you spawn many unicorns, spirits, and deer, you'll have no shortage of supplies and gold to trade for the stone you need. Alternatively if you do have an abundant supply of the other three resources, you can convert them into stone at an Alchemy Lab. Remember that your entire economy can be supplemented by doing some of the quests you are given, so keep yourself busy with quests to gain a few goodies while your production buildings and units are being made.

Military
Don't think that you have to be a hippy tree hugger with a love for peace just because your an elf. A good elf army with a strong strategy is one of the most deadly things you could hope to encounter. They are for the most part the most fragile race in the game, as many of their units will have less health than many orc or human units. They make up for this by having a fair amount of armor {more than orcs, less than humans} their own healer unit and arguably the strongest archers in the game. Make sure that you upgrade your army unit spawn buildings if you want to make an army of higher level quality early on.

Units before you can formulate a strategy you will need to know basic strengths of each battalion type. Different battles will require different resistances and army setups so i will be talking about the base level 1 ability of all units, you can work with them at higher levels to try and see what best fits you.

Sentry: Although the sentries are essentially the one of the first and most basic units an elf can get, they are the toughest and if you level them up correctly they are nearly impossible to kill. They are a shield type infantry and therefore they will be the ones holding the lines. They have a relatively low starting hp than other races shield infantry so you must make sure you watch their health carefully. An incredibly useful tool in the arsenal of a sentry is the tackle ability. tackle does a fairly large amount of blunt damage to anything the sentry hits for one attack. Blunt damage is normally one of the harder damage types to defend against so this is a devastating attack against those unprepared for it.

Bladestorm: For lack of a better term, ninja describes bladestorms quite nicely. The bladestorm is a fairly fragile, high speed, low health, very high damage sword wielder with a powerful area of effect attack that can decimate entire battalions in moments. Since all elves have the ability to hide, you can use this to your advantage by sneaking into an enemies ranks and letting rip a bladestorm area effect to one shot a unit. Emphasis must be placed on how fragile these units are and archers will obliterate them if they're given a clear shot.

Grandmaster: The grandmaster is the heavy hitting heavy infantry of the elves. It is a melee unit with a two handed sword. The grandmaster is effectively built for versatility, it strikes hard, moves decently fast (for a melee unit), and decent armor resists. The grandmaster health leaves something to be desired but it makes up for it with its special abilities. The grandmaster abilities include a self buff that increases resistances to all damage types for a few moments and a powerful self-heal. Because the grandmaster is so spread out in all areas, he doesnt fit in with most tactics at base level. A smart player can use a grandmaster for just about anything if it's leveled properly. However, be warned with such low health, the grandmasters survivability is almost entirely dependant on energy. if your grandmaster is low on energy, its best to let them fall back a bit to rest before continuing the charge.

Ranger: This is what you came for isn't it? The elf ranger is a classical homage to the elven archers in any type of fantasy world. They have extremely low health so protect them. They are a little bit more powerful than most races archers but their real magic lies in their accuracy. They can be extremely effective against dragons because of this, when all their arrows hit at once it makes for some intense instant damage.

Mounted Grandmaster: Essentially the calvalry variation of the grandmaster, even having the same skills in addition to a speed boost. The only downside is a fairly low health amount so if you intend to charge the front lines with a calvalry rush of these guys, prepare to lose a few good men. Their damage is incredible and if you can get close enough to archers without taking too much arrow fire, you can decimate them.

Mounted Ranger: effectively a more mobile version of a ranger with slightly reduced health and damage. Probably the most effective normal unit one could hope to use against a dragon aside from a dragonslayer, these units can keep pace with dragons while dodging fires and keeping out of range of their claws all while pelting the beast with some fairly strong piercing damage.

Enchanter: This is your spellcasting melee unit designed for minor support and healing. The primary role of an enchanter in an army is to give healing to the wounded, they are equipped with a mass heal spell with a fairly large radius so you dont actually need to send them onto the front lines for your heavy infantry to be given the effect. The elf trait "archmage" gives you a very potent boost to enchanter resistance, damage, and stamina amount, making them fairly viable frontline fighters if you choose it. The enchanter also has the ability to summon treants, man eating plant traps called Garviolas, and bolt throwers too. (provided you have the resources to build them)

Treant: The treant has a few uses. The first and most common one is as a cargo carrier, as the treant can store 500 resources each. The second is as an actual siege weapon. The treant can kick down doors it targets, having a tremendous amount of health means it can handle a fair amount of archer fire if you happen to be sieging a well fortified city. It can also latch onto walls and serve as a ladder for units to climb up it onto enemy battlements. A few things you need to remember about climbing walls, only melee infantry units can do so and once they do, they cannot descend the ladder or even leave the city until a door has been opened. Use this tactic to clear a wall of archers while your forces batter down a door or another wall. There is a third rather unique tactic to use (come in closer because it's an elf secret weapon...) The treant only costs 180 wood to build and has a gigantic amount of hp, so effectively you can simply use it in an open field as a tactical shield that your melee units can hide behind while you advance. the treant will attract arrow fire, leaving your soldiers free to move forward.

Bolt Thrower: The bolt thrower is a living ballista of magic wood that launches massive spikes into enemy troops or walls. It is also the only unit that can damage walls at all so if you're not a fan of going through the front door on a siege, bring a few of these. It is incredibly accurate at long range but has almost no vertical arc, take note of this as it is the only ranged siege weapon that really cant fly over walls. make sure you bring STONE to reload it with. the stone is needed to fire a bolt thrower and if you run out, the unit is entirely useless. Also remember that the bolt thrower is incredibly fragile and a single arrow volley can take it out if not protected.

Tactics
It's up to you to invent your own formations and battle methods when fighting. As the game is primarily pvp, you will no doubt fight many different and strange opponents in your travels. Here are a few basic things you want to know when formulating a battle tactic.

Hide: All elf units have the ability to hide, it is an interesting mechanic that lets you create many different types of sabotage strategies. Hide is effectively stealth and has interesting mechanics involved. First off, the enemy opponent (player, not npc) can still see your units if they hide, but they will appear partially invisible. Even though he can see you though, they wont be able to attack your stealth unit with their troops, only area effect attacks. however if you do press the hide button while within an enemy units field of few (the light area you can see around your battalion) they will be attacked. Move your units outside an enemy field of view before hiding if you want to not be hurt. Hiding does take a fairly large amount of stamina to maintain so try to restrict it to only certain units, a powerful tactic is to use hide to give your bladestorms cover so they can move into enemy ranks and let fly a whirlwind area of effect to obliterate them. A smart player will move their units back as to not get bladestormed (but not every player is smart now are they? :p).

Spike damage: When you fight against someone with very strong armor and health regeneration or a healing unit, you will want to damage them hard and fast. There is a way to level your units up and give them regenerating health, so if you cannot hurt them fast enough or hard enough, they will just keep coming. There are a few especially powerful spike damage techniques elves can use. First off, the bladestorm area of effect attack is the most powerful by far, because each person in a bladestorm battalion does their own area of effect, and it bounces off the other nearby members area of effect, the damage gets multiplied. Sometimes this isn't enough though, and if your enemy survives the AOE, they will most likely turn on the bladestorm and beat them into the dirt. A second tactic is to command your archer to hold their fire and turn on fire arrows. Fire arrows don't actually use fire but a magic attack damage type that is current impossible to resist. When you hold fire your archer wont attack until you press the button again, but ensuring that all of your archers fire at the exact same time will be a damage overload to any frontline units. Calvalry charges are quite an effective form of spike damage if timed correctly. Because the elf calvalry is a little more on the fragile side, you'll want to wait until the moment it seems that your enemy is falling back to recover (if your enemy has regeneration they will fall back if they take too much damage). Calvalry charges knock down and temporarily stun any units they trample in addition to dealing damage, so hitting a retreating unit will allow you to execute them with no mercy.

Formations Formations Formations: Because elves have only a few sturdy units that can handle damage, they rely heavily on building a formation that keeps the softer units protected. If your archers are on the front lines and your sentries are twenty feet behind them, you're asking to get cavalry rushed. Try to keep your archers and enchanters in the middle of your formation, if enchanters are in the middle, it increases their chance to hit everybody in the army with their mass heal. Protecting your flanks with high damage melee units can be a lifesaver if the enemy attempts to blitz past your frontline fighters.

Of course all these mentioned above are simply suggestions when starting out pvp or any fighting for that matter, it is entirely up to you if you wish to create something out of the ordinary or unique.