I have no idea what I'm doing

[Vulture]

Well, if you're completely dead-beat without anything then you should consider rerolling. But unless you tell us which of all the zillions of starting stips you considered and which not and you neither tell us what class or level and what kinds of spells and spirits you unlocked and/or found already and on what difficulty level you play... well then we can't help you but copy/paste 20 threads of "how do I do this or that?"

I'll try to list what I would advise anybody being in trouble early in the game besides starting over:

- explore the map and avoid fights. Gather chests, flags, money and everything you can take without fighting. You can take practically everything displayed on the adventure map without fighting. Lure the enemy, let him chase you to a place where you can curve him, lose him and grab what you wanted. Always use F5 and F8 (Quicksave/load) before you attempt to do that.

- Losing a battle is practically your death warrant because it's a pain in the ass to regather troops with low or no money. Save regularly. If you lose a battle, load and avoid it or consider tactics to win.

- This is not an arcade "go and slash" game. It's a tactical round-based combat rpg. If you run into the enemy mindlessly you WILL fail. This is intended.

- Depending on where you are in the game you practically always have an option to sail one or up to 3 lands with a boat and grab tons of goodies (mentioned above) along the shores. Always do that before you lay a hand on an enemy in a new land (unless unavoidable)

- Read tactical advise threads to minimize losses. Spells such as "resurrection", "sacrifice" or the rage ability "timeback" are major players in restoring lost units during combat. They are discussed to death around here. Other than restoring lost units you should always have a plan to avoid damage. Spells like "Magic Shackles", "Trap", "Target" ... pretty much the whole range of Distortion Magic is based on controlling the outcome of the battle. Depending on enemy troop compilation some of those spells win the battle on their own.

That's the most basic things to know. If you DID explore the lands by horse AND ship and there's NOTHING at all to grab that gives you the money to restore a decent army to keep going, restart a new game or load a previous savegame. But something tells me you didn't

Regards,
Vulture