Cheatsheet to 35 : The fastest way to level to 35 in Saga

So my first army in 2008 was Light. I leveled 1-22 then stalled.

I know alot of people stall out, so if you are "rich" and want to know the ABSOLUTE best way to level the fastest in Saga, here's the cheatsheet.

Step 1: Pick any Army you like.

All of them are equally fast to level if you follow the rules. If you want to get the best, then pick War or Machine. Both of those armies have specific factional troops that make killing flying mobs easiest. This makes 27-35 faster.

Step 2: Buy Wargs

Honestly I could finish the guide with that statement. I decided to help my friend power through the 20s on his Magic army with my 35 Undead Army. I was opening Blasted Lands, and tanking while he power leveled killing Drakes. It wasn't bad, but I thought I could do better. I mailed him 36 Wargs, created 3 units, added tanks (Daemons), and proceeded to crush every mission with those Wargs. The wargs are so perfect for leveling they basically do your work for you.

Problem with Wargs? You basically have to open Rogue Factional packs to get them. $4 per pack, you need 36 Wargs. Horribly expensive. Sure I have them, like many others, but god, what a horrible price to play this game.

Step 3: Ignore the Economysim

One thing alot of players get all caught up in, is the economy simulation of this game.

IGNORE THE DAMN ECONOMY-SIM. Jesus, don't farm lumber raid for 10 days to build out your wooden walls, just level up. If you level, you can farm end game quests for 3-5k per quest, and buy the damn lumber if you want a pretty castle. If you want to play castle builder, I can show you several good free Ipod games to play.

Yes, yes, I know you want to open up your territories and get free stuff, but seriously, don't be that guy. Ignore the damn Economy (for now), and focus on getting to 27 asap.

Step 4: Early Levels - Win Trade

If you are at a point where you need more levels on your troops, then fight yourself on two accounts. If you have concerns about the legality of this: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/rating-means-nothing-pvp-for-fun.html (The linked article lists several posts from the developers that speak to what you can do with your accounts. )

Win trading is helpful. Because you can limit the damage of your new army by moving the troops around, you can level troops that level very slowly. For example, any melee troop.

There are many troops that you would love to use, but you only have a level 2, instead of a level 7. Well, just win trade yourself.

Step 5: Levels 1-20, Win Trade a high level army. (Or level quests).

Fight yourself, if you are killing high level troops, you can get level 1-10 in about 10 fights. If you don't have a high level 2nd army, fight a friend where they let you experience off them. If you don't have a friend, do quests. Low levels go by quickly.

Step 6: Level 20-27: Trial of the Gods quest.

This is a horribly annoying quest. Without Wargs and a normal 20ish army, I can beat it occasionally. With Wargs, you roll it everytime. Why do it? Because the waves are good experience, and doing this quest badly 1 time is faster then doing almost any other quest and winning.

Step 7: 27-35 Blasted Lands. Experience/Loot Farming.

This has been talked about in this blog. Blasted Lands makes solo leveling so fast, you shoot through these levels. Your Army should be 3 Warg packs, 2-3 human archer packs, and "Let Fly" spells. Start it with a heavy cav to run the stairs, or an Undead Knight, then flee him after the "Drakes are coming" step. 200k experience per run, 35 should come quickly.

Army Composition: Levels 1-35

Wargs X 3
Heavy Cav X 2
Human Archers X 3
Drakes X 2
Ice Drakes X 3
Rogue Hero X 1
Let Fly X 3

New fun Fact of this game is you don't really need to play with factional troops anymore. I personally only field Daemons when leveling Magic, and Humongous when leveling Undead.

Best tanking and damaging Armor

Looking over a couple days farming of items, I've been trying to figure out the new Items lottery design.

So far, these are my two favorite prefix/suffixs at this point for Plate:

For Damaging Troops, (ie glass dps cannons.):

"Martyr / of Ultimate Speed"

• This Prefix scales up to 90% damage with a higher level item

The negatives are the following:

• Bad DR - its glass
• Morale - who cares
• Light HP penalty. who cares, it's glass
• Decent Movement bonus
• Light ATR penatly. Not a problem if the weapon makes up for it.

For Tanking style Melee Troops:

"Raider's / of Lion's Pride"

• This item has 3 good stats + stamina
• I really like HP bonus on tanks. I've seen 11,000 hp tank units, and that really helps.
• Speed is important for melee troops, more time on target.
  

Quest: Mithril Mines, Melee Troop Leveling and Strategies

So since I've been back, I've been running lots of leveling quests.

One quest I did alot back in the day was Mithril Mines. Back in 2008 I did this quest differently. I would kill all the archers, then bug out all the mobs by sticking one of my units in a spot that would cause a pathing bug for all the mobs. This would get them all grouped up, then I would Fireball them down. As the fireball had a 1 minute refresh time, (unlike now, where you use it and its gone), I could rotate two sets of Fireballs to kill the mobs with no danger.

I wroteup the quest back in 2008 if you want to see even more info on it: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-loves-mithril-mines-everyone.html

So today's post is to talk about the differences, and why this quest is still excellent for leveling.

1. First of all this is not the experience farm the "Blasted Lands" quest is. Blasted is much better for leveling your Army from 27-35.
2. The problem with Blasted Lands, is it doesn't do a good job of leveling all your troops to troop level 10. It is best to run with Human Archers, or any troop that kills Drake easily.
3. If you need to level non-ranged troops, Mithril is better.
4. Blasted Lands runs faster, Mithril has a pause in the middle between waves, so if you are loot farming, Blasted is better

Strategies for Mithril Mines:

1. First of all, make sure you farm Blasted Lands first to get a good set of items for your troops in Mithril Mines. I personally like DR, hitpoints, movement for my melee that I level in Mithril Mines. This seems to make them survive long enough to get good experience.
2. I like to run mostly Melee troops in Mithril. Then, I stick them in Ranged Defense formation, and don't change that the entire fight. (Ranged of course increases their defense vs ranged attackers and gives a speed bonus, but penalizes them vs melee mobs.)
3. I hand select the target, and make all my units focus fire. Many of the mobs in Mithril have need 8000 hitpoints, so if you let your 400dps units attack them individually, it will take 20 secs to kill each unit, and you will get swamped.
4. The kill order is Melee troops, then ranged. Because you are running around in ranged Defense, the ranged archers shooting you are not doing very good damage. Kill those melee troops, they can hurt you the most. Fire your use abilities anytime you get to a pack of melee to quickly own them.

Overall this troop experience isn't great, but you end up leveling 6 troops at once. This is useful for getting your army to 10. In my last army, I ended up with alot of certain troops at 10, and alot at 5. I would rather take longer, and have a better balanced army at the end.

Territories and Free Super Cards:

So I was searching my blog for answers from back in the day. I forgot how to open up the territories on my new undead army. Well, it turns out I never posted the how/to on this, so here's the answers if you have the same question as a new, or returning player:

Territories:

Open at 6,13,17,20 level. You get only four total, even though your interface will show 8. (Room for future growth.)

The 17th level territory requires you finishing a certain number of quests. 20 Quests finished at the Silver level, with the color of gold. You don't have to beat them at the gold level, just the silver level.

Free Super Cards:

If you get high enough to open these up, you get a number of free cards:

- Rogue Olvir Jezrek (hero): Seriously good overpowered hero card. The 15% AR bonus is amazing for doign quests. He also has sick base stats for tanking. Wait, there's more... He grows everytime you use his ability. Grows HUGE. lol

- Ice Drake: Excellent as a Flyer tank. Just excellent for many missions. Requires 25,000 food to open.

- Armored Behemoth. Great for missions where you hit alot of Machine armies to fight. Requires 15,000 gold to open.

Rogue Warg Riders - Is this the new Overpowered Unit?

So Rogue Warg Riders might be the new PvP chase card.

• Ranged
• Can trigger the use ability to charge, or to tank something, tower, unit etc.
• Good for reacting vs a unit.
• Good stats

For PvE this troop unit is good too. Not many ranged units can survive an accidental attack as well as the Wargs.

Alot of people are looking for these to finish their sets.

If you do buy boosters, make sure you pick up the "Rogue Faction Packs". Every other booster, except maybe a free one, is much less useful.

Additionally, the card distribution in the Rogue packs is excellent. It seems to have many times better cards in it as well as the Rogue units.


Heading back to the Warg. Is it a required card if you prefer PvE? No, no, no. There are better cards. Unlike the Redeemer, which I feel is REQUIRED for easymode PvE.

Use it as a chase card to grab units you like.

Warlords of the East as good loot as Mithril Mines?

So someone on the boards is stating Warlords of the East is running for him/her as good loot as Mithril Mines.

I figured I haven't covered this quest that much, so here is a video, and a loot screen.








Overall I would say that Warlords is EASIER, although with a boss mob at the end that has a high hit rating, it seems slower to me then a fast Mithril. It does drop less loot, overall, but with the number of mobs, it seem decent enough.

If Mithril is causing you pain farming, then Warlords is definitely a good quest.

It also is good for leveling your flyers.

Selling items to market to buy with your alts?

So I tested this today.

I figured I could move a ton of Dragon's Might items and Boar's Teeth to my new undead alt when Undead is released.

I tested with an enhanted item of stamina, nothing that I really would miss.

After selling it on my main, I looked at all 655 pages of chain armor, and it did not appear.

I waited 10 mins, and tryed again.

Thus, my conclusion from this limited testing is that this idea won't work, and most likely I will have to refarm my items :(

Some Items are easier to get the others

So alot of the end-game grinding is training your troops to Level 9 or 10, and gathering powerful enough items to waste shards enchanting.

PvPing with level 6 troops vs a Nation with Level 10s with enchanted Dragon Might is an exercise in futility. Alot of the PvP constructed deck Nations play the game of run in attack, retreat and heal.

This is especially true if they have a special damaging attack like Phoenix's or Dark Elf Raven Riders.

They play as long as they can with a triad of flyers, and because of the healing retreating, your ability to damage these units is limited to the window in which you are attacking them, and your ability to snare/stun them as they run away.

Thank god for Undead. I literally jumped for joy when I read the Wight notes:

Wight
Attack Speed: Medium
Range: Medium
Movement: Medium - flyer
Armor: High
Health: High
Damage: Medium
Stamina: Medium
Maximum Unit Size: 4
Special: Chilling Winds - flying units in target radius (15m) suffer -25%
defense rating and -50% movement speed for 30 seconds. Cooldown: 60 seconds.

Wight's ability to snare a pack of flyers to let your ranged units attack them before they retreat back to their healers is an ability that is very useful for constructed deck PvP. And stripping them of DR is just a bonus.

Anyway, back to items:

The problem with gearing up, is that all items are not as easy to get as others.

The difference between a item suffix like "Dragon Might" and other is pretty significiant. Just having a great item can make certain troops just stronger then others.

Also, there are definitely mission/quests that drop the harder to get items, but the problem is their drop rate is so low that it is actually easier to level troops that can use the easy to find weapons instead.

Easy to get Endgame Items

Twelve Trials Part 3 - Boar's Tusk - Swords Spears Charms Axes
Twelve Trials Part 2- Dragon's Might Wards
Twelve Trials Part 3 - Deadly and Brutal Bows
Mithril Mines- Bows Swords Chain Hammers Weapon Enchants Leather Armor Xbows Guns Staves


Hard to Get End Game Items:

Polearms
Plating
Cloth
Platemail
Lances

One cavaet:

There are certain quests that spawn mobs that are Faction specific. For example "King of the Hill" at Gold level 30 drops good gear, but whoever STARTS the quest, all the enemies are your faction. Kheldara says farming lances in that mission is easy, but as a Nation army, I never fight a lance carrying mob, because all the enemies are Nature faction.

$17 level 35 leveling army?

This is a recycle of a forum answer, but it's a slow day for content.

So people ask how to level 1-35 without spending alot of cash: https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6751

I'd do it this way: (3 X is three FULL units of the particular troop, etc)

3 X Behemoth
5 X Heavy Cav
3 X Cav Archers
3 X factional common (elven archers etc)
3 X dragons
5+ fireball cards
5+ Hold Fast cards
= 527 CP worth of troops. Plenty enough for any mission.


Profit 1-35

Why?

• Heavy Cav plus archer units are great for leveling. Good synergys.
• If you need a tank Behemoth is easy to level and use.
• For Area Effect maps, the Fireball is a 1.25$ rare. Pretty easy to acquire. With a short cooldown, it is a useful cast.
• The best spell in the game right now is Hold Fast. It makes any unit able to tank off a ton of troops.
• You need flyers for some missions, dragons are the best flyer for cheapness. Most are easy to trade for.

This army costs about $40 or 250,000 gold and $17.

This is assuming you have no boosters.

To give a perspective, you can easily make about 50k to 100k per hour at level 35 if you are farming.

Leveling in Saga 1-35

I hit 35 today.

I started playing Saga May 30, 2008. Its now July 13th, so that puts me 1-35 in about a month and 1/2.

I'm sure my undead army will go much quicker.

Here's how I did it.

• 1-9 - Basic newby quests. Using one or more Heavy Cav units and some ranged.
• 10-26 - PvP'd fought my girlfriends account for 10% experience bonus. See - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/rating-means-nothing-pvp-for-fun.html - for more info. Also ran alot of Stalling Tactics Heroics.
• 26-35 - Mithril Mines. See - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-loves-mithril-mines-everyone.html - for more info. Sometimes solo with kite/fireballs, alot Coop to level troops. Co-op this is a great mission for getting exp for different troops.

It's simply that easy. You need no more then 400-600 or so CP of total units to go 1-35.

War Room - Part 1 - The RULES of War

We need to talk about War, and warring with your neighbors in Saga.

Firstly. You know you want to fight. Playing Saga to collect lumber is, well, - lame.

Yes the missions are great, yes, but seriously you are here to fight.

First step is admitting it. Next is learning how to do it.

1. PvP is Op-In. This means you have to CHOOSE to fight. You can't be raided unless you go wilderness, you can't go wilderness unless you build a Keep. You can't fight 1v1 unless you start a battle. If you aren't ready to fight then don't go wilderness. The ONLY thing someone can do for you is espionage you. And there is a limit on how many times a day they can espionage you.



2. If you BUILD a wilderness, expect to be raided. However, the raids aren't that bad really.



3. If you store alot of mana shards, then it becomes PROFITABLE to raid you. Raiding cost 5 shards and 1500 god favor. So a level 35 with a full tank of god favor can raid about 4 times without doing quests or donating to the church. They have to make more then 5 shards and about 500 resources to make the raid perceived as SUCCESSFUL.



4. If you make raiding unsuccessful for the raider you will limit the amount of times they WANT to raid you. They will continue to raid you ONLY if they have a personal issue with you. (ie they hate you and want to grief you.)

So how do you make raiding unsuccessful for the raider?

1. Firstly. Spend your shards. Don't hoard them, spend them on enchants.


2. Second. Make sure to have at least 10 mid-level troop units in your territories OR 20 level 1 common armies. If you have decent level troops, level 6+, you can get by with 10 full units. If you use commons, you will want many waves. Troops come out at 5 units at a time. Destroying 5 units takes about 30secs to 1min. Any of those units can interrupt a cap. You want to busy the raider for 5 mins, thus 4 waves of 5 units will work most of the time.


3. You do not NEED to repair anything but lumber/gold/ore/farms. House/mana mines/shrines/etc do not affect your daily production. Let them burn! Your normal build/repair will eventually fix them to full.


4. Bless your hurt building, its CHEAP.

I wanted to go through a couple of PvP definitions:

Going to War Footing:

Going to "war footing" is a concept that is pretty logical, and I figure, lets coin a phrase for it.

• War Footing is where you start a war, and fighting the war is most of your time spend. This involves taking most of your troops out of your main army, and sticking it into your territories. If you raid or level, you move them back into your army, then stick them on defense while you are offline. This also involves increasing your police, and perhaps even dumping your spare production on friends or alts.


• You want to go to war footing when you are getting raided, or when you decide to espionage the entire server.

An even more EXTREME tactic is to delete everything in your territory but mana mines and watchtowers. I will tell you this is VERY unprofitable for the attacker.

Shock Ryder is the first to do it, we now coin it the "Shock Ryder Defense Tactic".

Don't QQ:

QQ is the universal sign for crying or whining. This is QQ:

from - http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/ancestral-not-getting-point.html

I know you might be tempting to QQ, but here's why you don't do it.

1. It shows that PvP made you cry. Seriously why cry about PvP, its supposed to be fun?


2. It makes a pro PvP'r smile.


3. It may get you featured on a Internet website.


4. You won't intimidate a pro PvPr. We get QQd every day. It almost clique


5. The best response to a raid is a raid.


6. See above. QQing can make it personal for the raider. He likes to smile so he raids you to profit on your QQ.

Don't Nut-Cup:

Nutcupping is a PvP term that is somewhat adult in context. If you can't handle the terminology, please close the blog.



Nutcupping is defined as when you need someone else to hold your nuts while you have to urinate. In PvP its where you need a bunch of friends to help you fight someone 1v1.



If you nutcup, then you are admitting that you CAN NOT stand by yourself. You have to hide behind friends. You are afraid to stand by yourself:

"A Knight's Tale Movie Quotes (2001)
You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat me?"

So how do I stop Nut-Cupping?

So if you are fighting two people, you fight with a friend. You fight a guild, you bring a guild. Zerging is in just bad taste. First how hard is it to kill with a mob behind you. Second can you even count that as victory?



Let me leave with a final case-study reference. Illian raided a guy yesterday that sparked some drama. Guy wants to quit, alot of QQ. Click for a quick read https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6714

www.sagaunit.com and why we buy card from shops...

When you visit http://www.sagaunits.com/ you might see a banner for this blog site.

I'm really NOT a sponser. (Unless you count buying cards, then well, everyone is a sponser.)

So why do we all buy cards from these guys?

It's my opinion that us card buyers tend to use the following methodology in determining how to acquire cards for units.

1. Can we get it for free from Saga? This drives alot of us to refer friends and making up fan sites. (I still haven't gotten my boosters from building a fan site.)
2. Can we trade our extra cards from boosters for what we want? This only happens if you get a good chase uncommon like raven riders, eagles, treants, gryphons, snipers. And because you get so few good trade bait cards that often you want ALOT for a tradebait card. (An looking at the market most of you want TOO much in trade.)
3. Can we buy the card from the NPC market? This is nice for commons like Heavy Cav. As I have said before, spending 24,000 gold for a full troop of heavy cav is a BARGIN at level 30+. You could play the entire game with 10 units of Heavy Cav and 10 Elven Archer chicks. Illian and Kheldara would kick your butt in PvP, but honestly who beats them anyhow?
4. Finally we come to the card sellers. http://www.sagaunits.com/ and others. If you can't do any of the 1-3 methods, you have now to determine whether it is worth spending paypal money on. And this is based on how much money means to you, and how much you'd rather have that cool unit.

The best thing about Saga is you REALLY DON'T need a big army to play. You can get by leveling and gearing common troops and pretty much do anything you like in the game from PvE to PvP, raiding, espionage, tourneyments, World Conflict etc.

I bet you can even play for free.

• Now that I have EVERY unit for my faction, playing for free would be easy for me. I'd stick with Heavy Cav, Cav Archers, Human Xbow, Elven Archers, Behemoths. I'd have alot of those units and I bet I'd be able to have a blast even without my two favorites, Treants and Lightning Elementals.

But that's because I've already played with all the faction troops. I know I bought my first Treant unit when I watched someone play with them in Stalling Tactics. Playing Coop greatly increases the chance you will spend money on cards. If I were http://www.sagaunits.com/ , I would spend every day running Co-op missions with newbies, playing nothing but expensive units.

• We buy cards from online stores because we think that it will make us BETTER and the game more fun.

Does it? Well yes it really does!

Are they worth it?

• Just depends on how much money you care to spend on online gaming. I personally find gaming cheaper then going out to the movies or other outside fun. So instead of paying $60 in gas, I buy cards. The cost of a Treant units - (20$) is kinda crazy, but my MONTHLY fun budget is no higher playing Saga then going out.

• Sure I'm rationalizing the fact that I spent over 200-300$ with the card sellers. No doubt. But I also had five world of warcraft accounts at $14/month I paid for. I also spent more then $100/month buying DVDs and CDs. It's all just recreational money really.

And if you are looking for a deal, then look for the Undead army when it comes out. The Factional packs will GREATLY reduce the overall card cost for awhile. You will see very cheap uncommons based on what Silverlode is doing to help people collect that army. (Thank you Silverlode!)

Twelve Trial: Part 3

This is the quest people use for farming end-game weapons.

The boss is a boar rider. If you LOS him with flyers he will run away.

I do him with one pikeman because he's mounted and a stack of "Hold Fasts". I then use a ranged unit with alot of AR to dps him down. Too bad I'm not Machine, hunters would do great on him.

It takes about 5 mins to solo him.





I'll let the picture tell you how good his drop is.

Boar's Tusk drop every 4 kills or so.

Wards and Farming for Treasure from ex-broken heroics

So my 31 Nation army has alot of troops that use Elemental Wards for Armor.

Treants, Elementals, Cherbus, Dragons, etc.

Many of these troops are good in PvP, so one of the best thing you can do for your PvP troops is to get them great items.



THE best place to get Wards for your troops is the crazy spawn at Twelve Trials part 2.



This quest basically spawns hellish numbers of dragons, every one you kill, you get 2 more. With mostly level 10 troops you will live a very short time. With a friend and level 10 troops you MAY be able to kill 12 or so of the dragons before wiping, but good luck.




The ITEM you are farming for is a Ward of Dragon Might. If you get this item consider yourself successful with the mission. This has about a 1 in 10 chance of dropping, so you will have to try multiple times. (This USED to be bugged and it dropped every time, but it's been fixed for two weeks. I wasn't 30 when it was bugged, I am taking this out of conversations.)

This is what the mission looks like when started.

Notice one of the dragons is a different color then the rest of them? Wow, what does that mean??

You will get ALOT of the boobie-prizes for this. They are nice, but not as good as Dragon Might.

Good Luck Farming!

Peasants Happiness?

Peasants are useful creatures. They hang around town, and are easily moved from job to job.

However, how do you keep them happy? It's a pretty simple formula once you understand it:

• Base: Everyone gets 75 for this.

• Taxes: This is really the easiest way to deal with temporary peasant issues. Lower taxes, and like good republicians, they get happier. I like money, so I always leave this at +3 or 4 gold/peasant.

• Housing: You need 58 houses for your peasants. Once you have them you are done and you get the 5 happiness. Anything less you take a penalty.

• Food: All you have to do is have enough on the nation screen for them to eat. Anything less you get them unhappy.

• Espionage: This is important in case you are getting enemies attacking you through espionage. But as espionage is capped at only a couple successes per day per unhappy nation, this shouldn't be a problem for your happiness unless you piss off the entire server.

• Combat: At first I din't understand how this worked, but now I figure it out. Every time you lose a battle this goes down. Any time you SURRENDER this goes down by about -.3, to a maximum of -30 happiness. If you lose ALOT, you should do some low level quests until you recover. It isn't hard to raise up. It maxs out at +20 for winning alot in succession.

• Total: Anything BELOW 90 happiness you peasants stop reproducing at +4.00 Population growth. You will also lose peasants slowly as they leave for a better city. Stay above 90, and you are fine. Anything over 90 really DOESN'T MATTER. At once point I left my happiness at 140, and it did nothing for me.

Who loves Mithril Mines? Everyone!

There are certain Quests that start out really hard, that you end up running alot.

Mithril Mines is one of those quests. It's literally some of the best experience you will find from Nation level 26-30.


The loot is pretty much ranged, chain, leather, Weapon Enchants, and what you see above. The item level is excellent, and often you see 2-6 drops per run. It's the best loot from 26-30 that I've found.

Experience-wise, you get around 100,000 to 180,000 experience per run. A run is long, so this isn't as high as you would think. My average Mithril mines takes 5-10mins.

Although you use alot of direct damage spells, like fireballs in this quest, you do get alot of good troop experience. I do the first 2 waves with my troops, before falling back to kiting with fireballs, then finish with air units killing ground troops.

My special flyer that kites is my Eagle Rider with speed gear on. As you can see, with a 31 charging speed, there is little the AI can do to catch me as I four corners kite the ranged, while fireballing with level 5 fireballs.

Saga Guilds - Info and the Top Four Guilds

So there are alot of posts in the guild recruiting forums:
https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=28

I'm sure alot of people don't know what to think about all the recruiting. This blog is writen to clear up as much confusion as I can.

How do you know what guild that might fit your playstyle if you join the game by yourself?

Here are a couple things to think about:

1. The average Saga player is very causal. In most spam newby guilds you might have maybe one or two members online at once. So out of a 25 man guild you might see only a couple members in months online.
2. The main reason for most players to join guilds is resource sharing. Basically you can get an about 300 stone/gold/lumber per real day from the guild sharing. This is NOT ALOT in terms over overall production. You make more resource by finishing 1 or 2 quests. However if you have rank 3 university you get guild multiplier that turn your 300 a day into 500 or so. (But if you had enough gold to train up a level 3 university, then why do you need 500/day?)
3. Most players can solo quests pretty easily. I interviewed Vitaris on PvE, and he indicates that he solo's every mission except for the newest heroic: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/search/label/Vitaris You don't really need guildmates to help you level. It is fun to get someone to run heroics with, but honestly you don't need a good guild to level to 35.
4. If your guild members pissed people off, that could lead to guild wars or getting your nation pounded by a faction of understandably pissed off power-gamers. This is a real penalty for gaining 300 stone/day :) You do NOT want to join a guild with someone who you do not want to back in a war.

So where do you find guilds?

http://www.playsaga.com/guilds.php - Current realtime list of all guilds.

This list is multi-purpose. First you can find guilds that have open spots. Guilds cap out at 25 members, this is why you see so many guilds with 1, 2, 3 etc. This limit is to prevent every player to be in the same guild for resource farming.

If you find a guild that is less then full (25), then you should ask a member about joining.

If you cross-reference members of a certain guild vs the economics rating list you can see where the guild members are in terms of city size: https://www.playsaga.com/mn_rankings.php

If you /who NATION in game, you can see players levels.

• You most likely want to be in a guild where most members are 20+. Level 20 gives your 4th territory, this maximizes your resources for the most part. (Excluding wilderness bonuses.)
• Many guilds won't take members <>

Top Guilds:

I've rated the top four guilds (currently) to give people an idea who's the best based on the top 20 players and economic rating. The first number is the Nations rank, the second the Nation name, the third the rating as of 7/1/08.

NUMBER 1 - The Einherjar (Order)

• 1 TWONSTERMONSTER 9670 - The Einherjar
• 3 KELETHIN 5160 - The Einherjar
• 5 VITARIS 3790 - The Einherjar
• 11 XEGNUM XEUS 2710 - The Einherjar
• 14 FAIRHAVEN 2182 - The Einherjar
• 161 THE SHOWSTOPPER 1062 - The Einherjar (Guild Leader)

Number 2 - Crusaders (Order)

• 2 ILLIAN 7418 - Crusaders - (Guild Leader)
• 16 KHELDARA 2125 - Crusaders

Number 3 - TEIMPD

• 7 CHALWORTH 3102 - TEIMPD
• 8 SALDAEA 2940 - TEIMPD
• 17 JORALUM 2039 - TEIMPD

Number 4 - True Power (Order)

• 6 IRONFORGE 3180 - True Power - (Guild Leader)
• 19 TONEOFWAR 1910 - True Power
  

Weblinks to guild websites: (If you want me to advertise your guild here, send me a in game or forum email. I'm happy to help anyone who wants to recruit.)

New Player PvE Tricks - Tanking

So I read the manual, and the forums, the new user guild at Saga Units http://www.sagaunits.com/sagaguide/Guide.html, and even the www.freewebs.com/sagaironforge by Ironforge.

One thing they never discuss is how to proper tank mobs with your units at mid-levels.

Early level quests are easy. You field 2 units, they field 3, you attack.

Mid-Levels quests are you field 3 units they field 6. Then when you kill the first wave, they hit you again. This can make is so you burn your entire CP fighting off the waves.

Advanced players know about tanking. I'm not writing this for you. Every machine player I see that Coops with me rolls a couple Mech Giants and Iron Tanks. That's why everyone says Machine is good for PvE, they have a tank that naturally supports them. On the other hand Light always complains about not having a tank for PvE.

Anyway:

What is TANKING?

• Tanking is where you raise a units Defense Rating so high that the mobs fighting it miss alot.
• This allows you to stick archers behind the tank, then you take very little damage from the AI, while you farm them for troop and nation exp.
• The Tank wont live forever, as often you have a mix of ranged and melee hitting it. But it sure takes less damage then a regular damaging troop.
• Also if you have long ranged archery, you can do alot of damage to the AI as it runs to you, making your tank have to take very little damage before the AI units die.
  

Tricks on Tanking:

If you read many guides on Saga, most people will not recommend EVER buying anything from the Item store. Saga is pretty good about giving you upgrades from quest, you rarely need items for your troop units.

HOWEVER, when setting up a tank, this is the one time that you want to shop.

Why? Because the difference between 40DR and 70DR can be huge in mid-game leveling.

So in this screenshot you see that I found a tanking bow with 19% DR bonus and hitpoints.

I love that combination, DR and hitpoints is pretty much what you need for your tanks.

In this screenshot you can find another item I found, which I stuck a 80 shard enchant on. A 80 shard enchant also costs 5k gold, so more gold wasted on tanking.

How many tanks will I need?

The problem is leveling tanks is pretty hard unless you start early. You should think about using your tank in EVER mission that doesn't involve alot of running around. You need levels, every level for the tank is 5% more DR and hitpoints. By the time you need the tank, you will have it leveled to 7 or 8, which is perfect.

How do I use a tank?

Saga is pretty simple. Stick the tank or tanks between you and the melee enemy.

If there is alot of ranged stick it in ranged defense stance, alot of melee stick it in melee defense. Both? Stick it in normal stance.

If you have melee up from and ranged in the back, I like to tank the melee on my tank, and run Heavy Cav through the melee to circle around to the back of the ranged. This allows me to tank the ranged on my Heavy Cav and the melee up from on my tank.

Tanks are slow, so it takes forever to get them into position.

Can I heal the tank?

Not really, the heals in Saga are excellent for healing big troop units with 1CP or 2CP per unit, and bad at healing 20CP units. Too bad huh.

What tank should I use?

One of the highest base DR's in the game is the new Armored Behemoth. For a few more weeks I am sure you can still get one or more for cheap on the Market. It has a impressive 35 DR.

If not, check out your factional units, find any like the Cherbus that has a 34DR or higher. Starting base DR is important, as the item and level buffs are multiplicative. The higher the base DR, the more the bonuses add.

New Player Quest List

Welcome new players. I am one too. I was lucky enough to get Sauron to answer some questions for me from the Saga Forums, so I figured to pass them off here on the Blog.

What quest do people farm for peasants? - Slow as a Chersus Up a Hill (Level 7)

What quest do people farm for all general resources? - Mithril Mines (Level 26)

What quest do people farm for stone? - Captain Wham (Level 19)

What quest do people farm for lumber? - Lumber Shipment (Level 14)

What quest do people farm for gold? - Haunted Hills (Level 17) - Twelve Trials: Part 1 (Level 30) - Gold Thieves (Level 17) - Labor Camp Liberation also drops a ton of gold, but takes time to beat. (Level 23)

What quest do people farm to level ground troops? - Stalling Tactics (Level 10) - Angor's Arms (Level 12) - Labor Camp Liberation. (Level 23)

What quest do people farm to level air troops? - Hunka Hunka Burnin Love (Level 18.) - Temple Defilers (Level 20) - Warlords of the East (Level 26)

What quest do people farm to level archers? - Hijacked! (Level 10) - Ashes to Ashes (Level 11) - Firebirds (Level 12)

What quest do people farm to get general experience? - Stalling Tactics (Level 10) - Angor's Arms (Level 12) - Labor Camp Liberation (Level 23)

What quest do people farm for leveling friends? - Mithril Mines (Level 26) - Warlords of the East (Level 26) - Age of Kynan (Level 35) - Hunka Hunka Burnin Love (Level 18.) - Stalling Tactics (Level 10) - Angor's Arms (Level 12) - Labor Camp Liberation (Level 23)

What quest do people farm for items? - Mithril Mines (Level 26) - Warlords of the East (Level 26) - Age of Kynan (Level 35) - Frigid North (Level 20) - Temple Defilers (Level 20) - Hunka Hunka Burnin Love (Level 18.) - Sacred Statue (Level 24) - Some more high level quests.

Vitaris - Interviews Part 2

Vitaris is an admitted MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online) player, ex-Pro tour, now playing Saga due to frustration with the MTGO v3 engine.

He was unaware until recently that he was top 10 in terms of economies.

I decided to interview him to ask some question about PvE and impact on the end-game.

General Questions:

Q: How long have you played Saga, and what armies are you familiar with?

Vitaris: "I started May 20th, and Nature is my only army. I meant to play Machines but picked Nature accidentally."

Q: What is your favorite unit and why?

Vitaris: "My favorite unit is the Druid. It is under-rated and damn hard to level. In PvE when you have to cap stuff, I use Druids to heal the capping unit and use them to cap stuff. They are also fast."


PvE Questions:


Q: If you remember, what is the max experience you've seen from a single quest?

Vitaris: "I think about 120k experience."
Q: When your nation is max built out, what do you do with all your resources?

Vitaris: "I'm waiting for global conflict. I store it up, or give it to someone in guild that needs it."

Q: Do you find the max level quests fun to repeat?

Vitaris: "Yes. However you have to look up what to grind alot on the forums to find what items you need."

Q: Do you find yourself COOPing or soloing at max level?

Vitaris: "Mostly soloing. I can solo everything but the newest Heroic."

Q: Do you think end-game PvE is fun?

Vitaris: "PvE is a means to an end. I joined this guild to learn how to PvP... I still suck. However I do what I can for people that need help, as I got help. If I'm online and see someone needs territory help, I'll always help no matter what level."

Q: If you had to change one thing for PvE what would it be?

Vitaris: "The quests grinding for items is a pain. I think like MTGO we should have tourneyments for prizes."

Q: Would you like to do a shoutout to any other players?

Vitaris: Showstopper, Spookys, Kelethin.

Thanks Vitaris, good luck on your PvP. I also think you helped me with one of my territory quests early on :) Thanks again for that.