"The problem with doing solo unit fights (black knights excluded) is that you don't generate enough rage, probably just enough to do the 3 treasure digs. This also means you don't get to level up your pet dragon too much."
Yeah, you'd think that, but my play style makes my dragon level fast, atm the moment I'm level 19 and my pet dragon is 20. I went hard on order magic, so I send my dragon in, and put on guardian angel, then heal the red dragon after most turns with 1 mana. Guardian angel seems to make a fair chunk of rage, it's like 5~6 free attacks. All the hitting, zapping, healing etc makes rage gen. fairly good.
Free Dragon egg units I usually try to send to there death, and they can sometimes pay there rage cost, I even occasionally cook them with my red dragon to get the rage happening. I usually go the ball of lightning though.
My big issue right now is ancient knowledge scrolls, I've got none
. and the save game scan says there are none available. The replay the game to get better chests things give me more scrolls, runes, etc, but still no ancient knowledge scrolls. I wish could do that with wanderer scrolls that you "swap" when you have the continent map.
I just got +50% to XP from items +learning skill atm, so maybe that will help, but i suspect I have to find a lot more ancient knowledge scrolls. I have found about 15 wanderer scrolls so far, so it sux that none are ancient knowledge.