SegmentNextMechanics
Two systems here decide how much of a mistake you are allowed to unmake. One governs your own characters and is switched on or off before you have played a minute of the campaign. The other governs whole legions, arrives in Act 2, and gives things back on a schedule rather than on request. Our pages on retraining a character and on running the Crusader armies are best read as one subject: what is reversible, at what price, and how long you wait.
The switch you have to flip before the first cutscene
Enable Character Retrain lives in the settings menu, and our page is blunt about when to touch it: before the campaign begins. With it on, a bad spread stops being permanent. After the opening missions and the fight you are supposed to lose, you land at Defender's Rest, and Hilor is over in the left corner of the map. The line to pick in his conversation is the one about you and your companions needing good training, and from there you choose the commander or any companion and go back into skills, appearance and the rest.
Two details change how you plan. A companion does not come back as a blank sheet, his skill set reverts to what it was on the day you recruited him, so anything you have put into it since goes with the mistake. And at level 5 and above the conversation also offers to unlock the Prestige Class, which brings the Dodge and Toughness feats with it. If you are weighing up the two archer routes in our companions guide, this is the safety net that makes picking one of them low risk.
The crusade gives things back on a clock
Queen Galfrey hands you the Fifth Crusade in Act 2 and with it a second interface: a map of movable armies, tabs for resources, and a blue banner for your party against a red one for the legions. The number in the shield icon beside an army is its strength, and clicking it opens the units inside. A great deal of what happens on that screen is priced in days.
| Period | What it hands you | What it costs to waste it |
|---|---|---|
| One day | Around 40 points of movement across the map | Sleeping somewhere unsafe carries a penalty, and the skip day button is there for when the points run out |
| One week | A limited slate of recruits appears on the unit slider | What is on the slider is all there is until the next week comes round |
| Four days | One win over a demon army holds the victory banner green | Let it lapse and both recruitment and resource income tighten |
| Ten days | Beating the demon armies on the road leading to Drezen holds the banner far longer | The longest stretch of green on offer |
Free to rearrange: units, generals, whole legions
Merging takes a move and some dragging. Walk one army on top of another, look for the icon of two arrows facing each other beside the overlapping names, press it, and then drag units across by hand in whichever direction you want the survivor to face. A general can be moved over in the same operation, which is the neat way to consolidate a strong leader onto your main stack.
Generals are optional and worth having anyway, since they collect bonus skills by winning. You assign one from the "I" icon under the army tab, and if the offered candidates are poor you refresh for a new set. Four of their skills are worth steering towards: Cure Wounds patches up injured members of the army, Traveler stretches how far the legion moves, Leadership raises its standing in combat, and Master of Maneuver adds another unit to the number that general can lead, which is the one that changes army size rather than army quality.
Units themselves come from Finance and from conversations. Asking about equipping the scouts with horses opens up mercenaries, and helping Regill adds Hellknights to that pool, so the recruitment screen is partly a record of what you have agreed to elsewhere. New recruits show up at Kenabres during Act 2. Our page counts almost forty kinds of unit in the game and argues for six of them in particular: Barbarians for sheer persistence, Champions as armoured duellists, Archers to open at range, Assassins for the quiet kill, Bandits for the ambush and Clerics to put the wounded back together.
What the crusade does not give back
Each of the three resources has one job. Finance buys generals and units, Materials put up buildings, and Energy is what the largest buildings ask for on top of that. Morale is the other one, and it is the one people ruin by accident: it reports how well the crusade is going as green, orange or red, and it decides how many units you can raise and how much you gather, so a red banner makes every other problem worse at once.
The way to keep it green is simply not to lose, which means reading the estimated army power on anything in your path and going around whatever outranks you. That number can mislead, though. Gargoyles in particular look manageable and are not, because without the anti-air update your legion barely touches them.
A won battle is the closest thing to an undo button
Tactical battles start on contact with a hostile force, and winning one refunds most of what the week cost you: Finance, a rise in morale, bonus items, experience for the general, healing across the units, blocked roads reopened and, when it matters most, a new base of operations to camp at. That is why the tips on our army page all point at finishing fights rather than surviving them. Favour ranged units, since they can reach anything on the field while melee only reaches what is next to it. Watch the HP readout to see what your damage is actually doing. Lean on the special abilities, with Smite weakening a target and Clerics both casting and repairing. A recruited general adds an active spell every round. And do not try to grind an enemy legion down, because it does not run out; restore your own troops and take a day of rest instead.
Both of these systems reward knowing what is coming, which is the argument for reading the puzzle and quest lock guide before you walk into Drezen rather than after. Our other write-ups for the game are listed on the Wrath of the Righteous guide hub.