Thanks for the reply. I'm on an impossible paladin game right now, goal is 7 days no-loss, and looking into saving a couple of hours early on by initially skipping Bolo and doing Scarlet-Rusty-Verona. But coming from Scarlet and going to Rusty all I see are Lethal and Invincible enemies. :rolleyes:

Just trying to see my options on how to make this path easier, but kiting doesn't seem to be an out for me.

I didn't realize Transmute gives you mana when you kill any units in a stack with your army. You don't need to destroy the entire stack to gain mana?! It seems overpowered like this, I had originally read it like the Trapper medal.

Transmute is great for massive mana income, which is useful when you are using a phantom resurrect strategy and really need a ton of mana.

I still however think AS A MAGE, concentration is great early game for farming medals and saving your might runes for dragon Training-- until you start using Phantoms and other mana intensive spells, at which point Transmute is awesome! I'm also sure if I played a warrior or paladin I would definitely pick this up early instead of concentration.

I totally agree that Concentration is better for a pure caster mage.

In the game I'm doing now, I'm trying to see just how far a mage can go on a spellbook alone. I did some basic kiting (Debir-Scarlet-Bolo-Rusty-Verona-Umkas-Uzala-Elon-Sheterra-Debir) to Elon to get Moro (I need his freaking Splinter ASAP, so that I can start working on his purification straight away), got 1 Black dragon egg, a little cash and a few spells.

Well, suffice it to say, I'm still using that single Black Dragon (backed up by a ton of Black Knights that simply remain in the reserve and have never seen a battle yet) as my army and I've gotten Amelie close to lvl 41 - and she's still going and beating up armies and heroes like crazy :)

The bottom line - a pure caster mage does not utilize Transmute properly, as you need your troops to deliver the final blow (killed by a trap also works). As such, for that kind of hero, Concentration is much better, even if it's a little hard to get to it.

You do need to knock off the whole stack to get mana from Transmute.

This question is going to sound noobish. I have no pride....

How do you use the Paladin Resurrect ability? Is it automatic? A learned skill? Or is there an icon somewhere that I'm not aware of that gives me a free cast? thanks!

Paladin unit resurrection is in the lower right corner where all unit abilities are.

Paladin Class resurrection I *think* is automatic after battle, but I have never played one so I can't say for sure.

Yes, it is automatic.

what does kite mean?

It means that you lure enemies, guarding maps a few inches away, so that you can snatch the map without engaging a fight.
This way you'll be able to travel to other islands and solve non-fighting quest, visit shrines, collect treasures etc.

There's alot of mixed oppinions about this technique, since the enemy guarding maps are supposed to be immobile. Luring them away with lots of quick-saving and loading is really exploiting a small glitch, and can give you a tremendous advantage. Being level 20ish kinda makes no-loss fights on Debir a blitz.

However since it requires no bot or cheat codes it can't really be considered cheating... Can it?

Actually DGD, I'm just using black dragons in my current mage run through with the new gift pack and I still find transmute very useful. I'm tending to use the dragons to collect the chests and spamming demon portal level 3 on the first round. I have the scaly set and twinkling boots, so once i just stone skin and then mana spring every round on whatever has come out of the portal! All of the enemy stacks surround the demons and generally from Montero onwards, by round 10 when mana regeneration starts halving, the summoned demons start finishing the remaining stacks off.
Combined with the Wanderer's gloves and level 1 Teleport, this sure beats the old mana spring-poison shower combo!
So, in this way I'm finding Transmute more useful than Mana Regeneration as the multiple attacks on the demon stacks generate more mana than i can use in the first 10 rounds!