Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era – Complete Beginner Guide

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era launched into Early Access on April 30, 2026, and it does not ease you in gently. Developed by Unfrozen Studio and co-published by Ubisoft and Hooded Horse, this turn-based strategy game is set on the continent of Jadame and serves as a prequel to the classic series.

This guide covers everything a new player needs to get started. You will learn the economy fundamentals, three brand-new resource systems, how morale and native terrain shape every map decision, and the core principle most beginners ignore until it is already too late.

1. How Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era Works

Vampire Lord

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era is built around a repeating daily and weekly loop. Understanding its rhythm early is what makes the difference between a campaign that builds momentum and one that collapses by Week 3.

1. Move your hero across the adventure map to collect resources, capture mines, and clear neutral armies.
2. Visit map objects such as stat-boosting shrines, external dwellings, or artifact caches along your route.
3. Return to town periodically to construct buildings and recruit units that have accumulated in your dwellings.
4. End your turn. Every faction and neutral enemy on the map then takes their day simultaneously.

At the end of each week, all creature dwellings refresh with new unit growth. This weekly tick is one of the most important timing anchors in the game. Buildings constructed before the reset generate units immediately, so planning around the weekly cycle is a core part of early economy management.

On top of the familiar HoMM structure, Olden Era introduces three entirely new systems: Law Points, Astrology Points, and Focus Points. All three are easy to overlook when you are focused on gold and armies, but they shape the pace and direction of every run from day one.

2. The Economy Loop

The economy in Olden Era runs deeper than gold alone. Understanding its layers early is what separates a stable campaign from one that stalls out before the first month ends.

Gold and Rare Resources

Gold Deposit

Funding recruitment, buildings, and unit upgrades requires Gold. It is your most universal resource, but it is not the only one that matters. The four rare resources each gate higher-tier buildings and Tier 7 unit recruitment:

• Crystal: Required for several mid-tier dwellings and upgrades.
• Gems: Gates specific faction structures and Tier 6 to 7 unit unlocks.
• Mercury: Required for magic-oriented buildings and Mage Guild upgrades.
• Sulfur: Gates destructive unit types and advanced combat structures.

Identifying and capturing the matching mines on your side of the map is a priority in the opening days. A rare resource mine you do not hold is a bottleneck you will feel the moment you try to build past Tier 4.

Alchemical Dust

The Alchemical Dust is a secondary crafting resource unique to Olden Era. It feeds specific upgrades and faction mechanics, particularly for Schism. Picking up map deposits and securing Dust mines early prevents hard bottlenecks later when upgrades start demanding it in bulk.

A common early mistake is spending all available gold on buildings while units pile up unrecruited in your dwellings. Units sitting in a dwelling are an idle army strength not on the map. Build when your economy supports it, and recruit before your stacks cap out.

Building Priority

Fortification II upgrade

The best first buildings are the ones that improve your next few turns, not the ones that look most powerful on the town screen.

• Build a key unit dwelling or upgrade if your army cannot safely clear nearby camps.
• Build a gold income structure if your army can already clear, and you need sustained funding.
• Build a Mage Guild only when the spells it unlocks immediately change how you fight or move.
• Build a Marketplace only when it fixes a real resource bottleneck, not as a default utility building.

One timing rule many beginners miss is that a dwelling built before the weekly unit refresh generates a stack immediately. If the weekly reset is one or two days away, rushing that dwelling before the tick gives you an early recruit that would otherwise arrive a full week later.

When to Return for Recruitment

Traveling back to town costs movement points and turns. Many players delay returning too long, leaving recruited units sitting idle in their dwellings while they continue exploring.

Return when your gold allows recruitment and your army needs reinforcing. Do not wait until your hero is on the verge of being wiped out to seek reinforcements.

3. Law Points and Astrology Points

Olden Era introduces two passive progression systems, Law Points and Astrology Points, that many new players do not engage with until mid-game, often missing their compounding value in the opening weeks.

How Law Points Work

Law Points

Once enough Law Points accumulate, they convert automatically into Law Seals, the currency spent to enact Faction Laws. Laws function like a technology tree specific to your starting faction, unlocking passive bonuses to your economy, heroes, and army.

Law Points are generated through two sources:

• Town structure: Your faction’s main town building generates Law Points passively each day.
• Hero experience: Each time a hero gains experience from combat, Law Points are added to the pool.

There is a hard cap of 100 Law Points across an entire game. This is not enough to unlock everything, so every Law Seal investment is a meaningful choice. Use this priority order when spending Seals:

1. Daily income laws first: Laws granting recurring gold, Crystal, or resource bonuses compound across every remaining day of the campaign and consistently outperform one-time allotments.
2. Economic laws before army laws: The left side of most factions’ trees centers on the economy. Move to the army upgrade laws only once your unit production is stable.
3. Tier-unlock laws as needed: Enacting lower-tier Laws unlocks more powerful options further down the tree, so progress consistently rather than hoarding Seals for a single expensive unlock.

Access the Law screen at any time with the L hotkey. Law Seals do nothing until spent, so check the screen regularly and invest them rather than letting them sit idle.

How Astrology Points Work

Astrology Points

The Astrology Points feed into a constellation-based progression system for global map spells. These are adventure map abilities that change how your heroes move and operate between battles, not combat spells.

The three key Astrology unlocks are:

• Town Portal: Returns your hero home in a single action without burning a full day of movement. For any hero running deep map expeditions, this spell effectively doubles their operational range.
• Movement Recovery: Restores a portion of movement points spent, extending a hero’s reach in a single day.
• Terrain-Bypass Flight: Allows a hero to fly over terrain entirely, ignoring movement penalties and geographic obstacles.

Astrology Points are generated through buildings and hero experience, using the same accumulation method as Law Points. Prioritize Town Portal as your first Astrology investment on most maps. The movement economy it unlocks pays for itself within two or three uses.

4. Focus Points and Combat Abilities

Focus Points

The Focus Points are Olden Era’s most distinctive addition to the series combat mechanics and one of the most frequently misunderstood mechanics for new players.

How Focus Is Generated

Focus is a shared combat resource generated during battle. The core values to memorize:

• 1 Focus point generated each time a friendly creature attacks or is attacked.
• 6 Focus points convert into 1 Focus Charge, which powers creature abilities and hero skills.
• 18 Focus points maximum held at any time, equal to 3 Focus Charges.

Focus is shared across your entire army. Every creature that takes or deals damage contributes to the pool. A frontline that absorbs attacks is not just tanking damage. It is building ability resources for your heavy hitters in the back row to spend later in the fight.

Common Mistakes While Using Focus

The most important rule: do not sit on Focus Charges. They are meant to be spent within the current fight to shift momentum. Avoid these common mistakes:

• Waiting for the perfect moment: Holding back on Focus Charges means losing damage and utility. Spend it when the timing is good, not ideal.
• Missing the Focus Bar: The bar is easy to overlook on screen, especially in the early game. Check it at the start of every combat round.
• Ignoring Focus acceleration skills: Hero skills and spells that increase Focus generation rate are especially valuable for ability-heavy unit compositions. Build toward them early if your army relies on activated abilities.

Activate abilities quickly using the 1 to 0 hotkeys, mapped left to right along the Focus Bar.

5. Morale and Army Composition

Hive’s Units

Morale is one of the highest-impact stats in Olden Era. When positive, it wins fights. When negative, it loses them.

How Morale Works

A unit losing its turn in a tight fight can swing an entire battle. Conversely, a unit acting twice can chain devastating damage before the enemy has a chance to respond.

Each point of Morale grants a 4% chance to trigger one of two effects in combat:

• High Morale: The unit acts twice in a single round.
• Low Morale: The unit loses its turn entirely for that round.

How Army Composition Affects Morale

The number of factions represented in your army directly controls your Morale rating. Running a mixed “rainbow army” without morale compensation means your units will randomly skip turns throughout fights, often at the worst possible moment.

• Single faction army: +1 Morale bonus.
• Each additional faction mixed in: -1 Morale penalty.

When you have multiple heroes, use them to keep faction armies separate rather than stacking everything onto one hero for the sake of raw unit numbers. Give your Dungeon units to one hero and your Grove units to another.

How to Compensate for Mixed Armies

Advanced Leadership Skill

Some situations force mixed army compositions, such as capturing enemy towns, completing quest rewards, or filling gaps when your own faction’s growth is slow.

In these cases, compensate for the Morale penalty through the following methods:

• Leadership skill upgrades on your hero, which raise Morale directly.
• Morale-boosting Artefacts, which are worth equipping even at the cost of other stat bonuses.
• Faction Laws, such as Encouragement, increase the chance that Morale triggers for friendly creatures with each point of Morale they already have.

6. Native Terrain and Movement Penalties

Every faction in Olden Era has a native terrain tied to their homeland. Moving through non-native terrain costs extra movement points, and this directly affects how efficiently your hero explores and responds to threats across the map.

Native Terrain by Faction

Pathfinding tutorial

Each faction’s native terrain is fixed and does not change based on which towns you capture. Familiarize yourself with these environments to plan your expansion routes effectively.

• Temple: Grass
• Necropolis: Deathland
• Dungeon: Dirt
• Grove: Autumn
• Hive: Lava
• Schism: Snow

Heroes traveling through their native terrain suffer no movement penalties. This also applies if your hero carries a unit from a faction whose native terrain matches the tiles you are crossing. A Temple hero carrying a Grove unit, for example, does not take extra penalties when moving through Autumn terrain.

Terrain Hazards and Road Usage

Map Grids

Desert tiles carry a significantly higher movement penalty than most other terrain types, affecting any hero not native to that terrain. Hive is the only faction whose native terrain is Lava, not Desert, so all factions pay extra to cross desert tiles.

• Roads reduce the movement cost of traveling through wilderness by 33%. Stick to roads when crossing long distances between objectives.
• Logistics skill adds a flat movement bonus and is one of the most universally valuable skill picks in any hero build.

When planning your hero’s route, check what terrain lies between your current position and the next objective. A longer path through friendly or road-connected terrain is often faster than a straight line through hostile ground.

7. Hero Classes, Skills, and Subclasses

Notable Characters in Necropolis

Heroes are your primary tool for everything in Olden Era. How you develop them shapes combat effectiveness, map speed, and long-term campaign viability.

Might Heroes vs Magic Heroes

Each faction provides two distinct hero class types to choose from at the start of your campaign:

• Might heroes favor Attack and Defence stat gains on level-up, and have exclusive access to the Recruitment skill.
• Magic heroes favor Spellpower and Knowledge gains, and have exclusive access to Thaumaturgy.

For beginners, Might heroes are more forgiving because their combat bonuses translate directly into fewer army losses during early clearing. Magic heroes have a higher mid-game ceiling once the Mage Guild is built and spells become the deciding factor in fights, but they require more setup investment to pay off.

Core Skills to Prioritize

Motley

Every hero has 8 skill slots in total, including any skills they start with. Choose early picks carefully, as they permanently shape your hero’s effectiveness.

Prioritize these core skills when they appear during level-ups:

• Logistics: More daily movement points. The strongest universally consistent skill in the game because it compounds value across every single day of the campaign.
• Leadership: Raises Morale, turning it from a passive stat into a fight-winning engine.
• Offence: Increases creature damage output by 10%, 20%, or 30% at the three skill tiers.
• Defence: Reduces incoming physical damage by 10%, 20%, or 30%.
• Scouting: Increases the hero’s sight radius, revealing more of the fog of war per step.
• Diplomacy: Allows you to persuade some neutral stacks to join your army without fighting.

When leveling a skill to Advanced, you choose one of three available subskills. When reaching Expert, you choose one of the two remaining subskills. Two Expert Logistics heroes can have completely different bonuses depending on which subskills each player selected.

The Subclass System

Hero Skills

Subclasses are the most powerful long-term development system in Olden Era. Unlocking one requires five specific secondary skills, all upgraded to Expert level. This is a heavy investment that requires planning from the early levels.

Follow these two rules before committing to a subclass route:

1. Assess route viability early. If you do not have at least two or three of the required skills by the mid-early levels, the route is not firing. Do not spend further skill slots chasing prerequisites that do not help your current fights.
2. Build for immediate strength first. A hero with strong generalist skills who wins fights consistently is more valuable in the early game than a hero holding skill slots open for a subclass payoff that may never arrive.

Subclass routes are a long-term investment, not a default plan. Let the skill rolls guide the decision.

8. The Six Factions

The Schism

Olden Era launches into Early Access with six fully realized factions, each with a distinct identity, native terrain, unique mechanics, and 18 heroes to choose from. Picking the right faction for your first campaign is important because each one demands a different approach to army management, resource priorities, and Law tree investment.

Here is a brief overview of the six available factions and their core playstyles:

• Temple (Native Terrain: Grass): The classic human faction from Karigor Isle. Well-rounded troops that gain extra benefits from buffs, making Leadership and Morale investment especially powerful. Temple is the most beginner-friendly faction at launch, with straightforward units and a forgiving early economy.
• Necropolis (Native Terrain: Deathland): The undead faction based in Shadowspire. The Necromancy mechanic allows heroes to raise fallen enemy units as new stacks after each battle. Upgrading Skeletons into Skeletal Archers early turns Necropolis into a safer ranged clearing army from the opening days.
• Grove (Native Terrain: Autumn): The nature and fey faction from Murmurwoods. Grove features an abundance of ranged units, a mushroom teleporter network linking your owned towns, and Laws that boost external dwelling growth. The Tier 7 Phoenix is one of the most powerful units in the game.
• Dungeon (Native Terrain: Dirt): The Dark Elf faction from Alvar. Every Dungeon unit can use two attack types, and the Onyx Dancer at Tier 3 is considered one of the best early-to-mid game units at launch. Dungeon is widely regarded as the strongest faction in the current Early Access build, but its dual-attack flexibility requires active management.
• Hive (Native Terrain: Lava): The demonic insectoid faction operating out of the Ironsand Desert. Hive benefits from the Hivemind passive, where fielding more distinct Hive unit types in one army strengthens certain units at the start of battle. Ranged options are limited, so Hive plays at closer range than most other factions.
• Schism (Native Terrain: Snow): The deepest mechanics faction at launch, built around Abyssal Communion. At the start of each combat, your army size increases based on your hero’s Communion level. Communion decreases daily but rises with each victory. Best suited for players who already understand the core systems.

Temple

9. Do Not Fight Every Battle

Combat

One of the most important lessons Olden Era teaches through repeated punishment is that clearing every neutral camp on the map is not a winning strategy.

Overextending your army to take on fights that cost more than they return is one of the most common causes of early campaign failures. Every lost stack of Tier 3 or higher units represents both the cost of the units and the weekly growth you could have recruited in their place. Replacing troops is expensive and slow. Preserving them is free.

Identify the Right Fights

Map Borders

A fight is worth taking when the reward offsets the expected losses. Random treasure pickups guarded by a camp that will cost half a unit stack are usually not worth the trade.

• Gold and rare resource mines: Capturing and holding a mine generates income every day for the rest of the game.
• Map chokepoints and crossroads: Controlling them denies your opponent movement and forces detours.
• External creature dwellings: Capturing external dwellings adds weekly unit growth to your recruitment pool.
• Treasure caches with guaranteed rewards: Artifacts and resource piles tied to specific locations.

How to Absorb Hits Without Losing Core Units

The most effective early combat trick for preserving your army is the sacrifice stack technique. Execute it in this order before any dangerous fight:

1. Split your cheapest Tier 1 units into individual stacks of one before entering battle.
2. Send a single-unit stack to attack the most dangerous enemy first.
3. The enemy retaliates and kills the sacrifice, spending their one retaliation for that round.
4. Your main army attacks the same target without taking any return damage.

This technique preserves your valuable stacks through fights that would otherwise drain them significantly. Run it consistently in the first two weeks before your army is strong enough to absorb hits cleanly.

Use the retreat option freely in the early game. Retreating preserves your hero and all surviving units. A hero who retreats and returns with reinforcements is a better outcome than a hero who dies winning a fight that did not need to be won at full cost.

10. Essential Early Game Tips

Game Setup

These are the practical habits that separate a campaign that builds momentum from one that stalls out before Week 4.

1. Build a gold income structure early if your army can already clear nearby camps. Gold income compounds across every remaining day and outperforms any one-time lump sum over the length of a full run.
2. Recruit before the weekly reset. Units accumulate in dwellings every week. Build new dwellings before the weekly tick to get an immediate stack, then return to town to collect growth before it caps.
3. Check the Law tree regularly. Law Seals accumulate automatically but do nothing until spent. Open the screen with L and invest in daily income laws before pivoting to army upgrades.
4. Keep faction armies separated across heroes. Use secondary heroes for scouting and resource collection. Assign units to heroes by faction to avoid morale penalties dragging down both armies simultaneously.
5. Research unit upgrades before adding new tiers. Two upgrade paths exist per unit, and they are not always obvious improvements. Check stats and abilities carefully before committing your building investment.
6. Take the Logistics skill whenever it is offered. Movement is the most universally valuable resource in Olden Era. More daily movement means more resources, more cleared camps, and faster responses to threats.
7. Use roads whenever possible. Roads reduce the cost of wilderness movement by 33%. Plan routes around the road network when crossing long distances between objectives.
8. Watch the end-of-turn darkness indicator. When the screen dims slightly at the end of a turn, an enemy hero is moving somewhere on the map. Their position is visible while outside the fog of war.
9. Hold ALT to inspect map objects. If you are unsure what an object on the adventure map does, holding ALT displays its information without clicking it.
10. Start on Normal difficulty. Olden Era is genuinely punishing on higher settings. Higher difficulties require a full grasp of all six core systems simultaneously. Normal difficulty is the correct starting point.

Best Guides for Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

Week 1 Build Order Guide

Best Heroes in Each Faction

All Factions Tier List