Olden Era Beginner Guide - First Week, Factions, Heroes, and Core Mechanics

1. Hero types: Might or Magic

Most heroes can be roughly divided into two broad categories:

Might heroes

Might heroes rely more on army strength, attack, defense, tempo, and efficient battles. Your stacks can one-shot or higher tiers can survive counterattacks not losing a single unit. They usually want to preserve units, snowball early fights, and win through stronger creature stacks.

Might heroes are usually easier for beginners because their power is more straightforward: better army, better trades, better map tempo.

Magic heroes

Magic heroes rely more on spells, mana, spell power, control, and specific combinations. They can sometimes win fights that look impossible for a Might hero, but they are also easier to misplay if you waste mana pool.

Magic heroes often require better understanding of spell value, mana management, positioning, and timing.

Simple beginner rule

If you are new, start with a hero or faction that can fight reliably with army strength. Magic can be extremely powerful, but it usually becomes stronger when you already understand the flow of battles and the map.

2. The general first-week plan

The first week is about tempo. You want to reveal and assess the map, collect resources, build your city correctly, gain hero experience for leveling up, and prepare for the first important creature growth to break zone.

A simple first-week plan looks like this:

Day 1–2: Scout and assess area, identify resources for easy collect, e.g. gold piles, chests, wood & ore.

Your first goal is to collect free resources and fight only easy battles. The default UI shows the fight complexity with easy, normal, hard, make sure to keep this setting ON. Do not lose or risk important army stacks early for small rewards.

Day 3–5: Build your fighting base

By the middle of the week, you should start turning your economy and town into real power. This usually means building corecreature dwellings, preparing upgrades, and choosing which army stack will carry your early fights. Think of having about 70-100 T1 creatures, 30-50 T2 creatures, 20-40 T3 creatures.

You should also start identifying which fights are worth taking and which ones should be delayed. Rule of thumb is avoiding many ranged fights, especially those versus ranged T3 units.

Day 6–7: Prepare for the weekly power spike

Day 7 is important because creature growth happens at the start of the next week. Your town development before the week ends affects how strong your next week will be. You might want to finish your end of Day 6 in the castle to restore mana, replenish army and start new week with maximum movement points.

3. City build order: what matters most

There is no universal build order for every faction, you can check detailed Fraction guides later. But the logic is usually similar.

In the first week, your build order should answer three questions:

1. What gives me more core army?
2. What lets me take more fights safely?
3. What do I need before Day 7?

A common beginner priority:

Priority 1: Core creature dwellings

You need units. Without units, your hero cannot clear the map efficiently. Early creature dwellings are usually more important than greedy economy buildings.

Priority 2: Key upgrades

Some units become much stronger after upgrade. If an upgrade changes the unit from “average” to “main carry”, it should be prioritized. Prioritize any units that transform from melee to ranged.

Priority 3: Economy, but not at the cost of tempo

Economy is important, but too much greed can ruin your first week. If you build economy while skipping the army you need for clearing, you may actually become poorer because you cannot take map rewards.

The best economy is often the economy you can actually defend and convert into tempo. Think of having 3 creature dwellings. 1 creature upgrade, and 3 economy buildings

4. Key army upgrades

Not every upgrade is equally important. Some upgrades are nice, but not urgent. Others completely change how your faction fights.

When choosing upgrades, ask yourself:

• Does this unit become my main damage dealer?
• Does it help me take fights with fewer losses?
• Does it help against ranged stacks or fast melee enemies?
• Can it tank or retaliate effectively without loosing stack?

Beginner advice: upgrade the unit that helps you clear the map with the lowest losses. Early snowball is more important than having a perfectly balanced army.

5. Why Day 7 matters

Day 7 is the last day before new weekly creature growth. This makes it a key planning point.

A common beginner mistake is reaching Week 2 with gold but without enough dwellings, or with dwellings but no gold to buy units. Try to balance both.

6. Choosing fights: easy, normal, and dangerous

Not every fight is worth taking immediately.

Easy fights

These are fights where you expect minimal or no losses. Take them early, especially if they guard resources, chests, or important map objects.

Sometimes if you face big ranged T1 stack you can let them run - this will save your army power stack from losses.

Normal fights

These are fights where you may lose a few units, but the reward is worth it. These fights are acceptable if they help your tempo. Think of having a Pandora Chest, Core artefact, creature dwelling or many resources that you really need at the moment.

Dangerous fights

These are fights where you risk losing your main stack, key units, or too much tempo. Skip them until you have more army, better spells, or an important upgrade.

Special warning: ranged stacks

Ranged enemy stacks can punish beginners hard. They deal damage immediately and can force losses before your army reaches them.

Against ranged stacks, it is often better to delay the fight, bring more army, use spells, or accept that the fight is not worth it yet.

Sometimes you can let them run totally saving possible army losses in exchange of lacking some XP gained.

If the fight goes badly and the losses are too high, escaping can be better than ruining your entire first week, not acceptable for Single Hero mode tho.

7. Laws points

Laws points are an important long-term progression system. Beginners should not choose them randomly. Beginners MUST choose and invest them.

During Week 1 you can choose to invest in those that increase army growth and creature damage. There are 2 economy boosters that grands gold, wood and ore.

As a beginner avoid situational choices and stick to creature growth, creature strength, economy boost and core mechanic boost like Necromancery, Morale, Luck, etc.

8. Astrology points

Astrology points are another important layer of progression and planning. Like Laws, they should support your strategy instead of being picked randomly. Beginners MUST choose and invest them.

The rule of thumb here is invest into Second Wind spell which will grant you a movement points in exchange for some mana.

Common mistake driven by lack of experience and UI - you can actually upgrade them even more, just click icon and you will see how much astrology points needed.

Astrology should make your plan stronger, not replace the plan.

9. Simple beginner checklist

If the answer is mostly yes, your early game is probably on the right track.

Final advice

Olden Era is a tempo game. Beginners often lose not because of one big mistake, but because of many small delays: bad fights, wrong build order, skipped dwellings, wasted movement, or random progression choices.

Your first goal is simple: build enough army, take efficient fights, preserve your key stacks, and enter Week 2 stronger than your opponent.