WELCOME TO
SORCERERS & DRAGONS
In chapter X, the Mana we have been producing all throughout chapter IX has begun to attract Sorcerers and their magic!
You can read facts about the Sorcerers & Dragons and the buildings that come with this chapter in the Wiki.
This guide will provide a quick review of some Sorcerers & Dragons basics as well as some general strategic recommendations based on what we’ve learned from the Wiki, crunching some numbers, and playing through the chapter.
SUMMARY OF CONTENTS
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New buildings
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Wisdom Square
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Campus
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Production buildings
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Goods overview
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Apprentices
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Basic production goods
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Undergraduates
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Graduates
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Beginning the chapter
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First research
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First productions
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First upgrades
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Evolution of the settlement
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- Once the settlement is built
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Other upgrades
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Residences
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Workshops
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Armories
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Second-tier manufactories
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NEW BUILDINGS
In this chapter, we get not only new buildings, but the way the buildings work together is different from any other previous chapter.
There is a portal of sorts, but there is no road. The production buildings must be connected to the portal-like "Campus." As the Campus grows, there is more room to add more production buildings.
The new buildings for this guest race settlement (and the order to build/research them) are:
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Wisdom Square
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Campus
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Production buildings - "Faculties"
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Alchemy Faculty
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Necromancy Faculty
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Arcane Faculty
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WISDOM SQUARE
The first building to research and build is the Wisdom Square. This building is needed to connect the Campus to the Main Hall. It will also produce Apprentices.
The Wisdom Square cannot be upgraded, and it will never change in size or shape. It must be connected to a road, and it must touch at least one square of the Campus.
Apprentices are produced over time in the same way that residences produce coins; they accrue at a set rate up to a maximum amount, and can be collected early.
The Wisdom Square will grow in strength as you upgrade your production buildings and Campus up to a maximum production of 294 Apprentices per day.
CAMPUS
Next, you'll research and build the Campus. The Campus is a large building, and you'll want to ensure there's plenty of space around it to add the production buildings.
The Campus starts out as 7x7, and grows one full size on each upgrade all the way up to 10x10.
As it is upgraded, it adds a production boost to the faculties. Each level provides a higher boost.
If you have the Blooming Trader Ancient Wonder, the production is further boosted.
FACULTIES
Once the Campus is built, you'll research and build the faculties. Each faculty can be built with coins, supplies, and 2nd tier goods.
Each faculty has 4 production options:
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'Basic production resource' (5 hour production)
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'Undergraduate' (10 hour production)
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'Graduate' option 1 (20 hour production)
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'Graduate' option 2 (20 hour production)
More on these good types later.
ALCHEMY FACULTY
The Alchemy Faculty is 4x4 in size.
It can be upgraded to level 4. It does not change in size or shape as it is upgraded.
Start with 2 right away, adding more up to 4 as the Campus is upgraded to make more room.
NECROMANCY FACULTY
The Necromancy Faculty is 5x5 in size.
It can be upgraded to level 4. It does not change in size or shape as it is upgraded.
Start with 3 right away, adding one more up to 4 as the Campus is upgraded to make more room.
ARCANE FACULTY
The Arcane Faculty is 4x6 in size.
It can be upgraded to level 4. It does not change in size or shape as it is upgraded.
Start with 3 right away, adding one more up to 4 as the Campus is upgraded to make more room.
GOODS OVERVIEW
In the Sorcerers and Dragons chapter, goods production involves more layers or types of goods than any other previous chapter. It can seem rather confusing at first, as there are even more new buildings and options for producing goods than we're used to from previous chapters.
Here's a basic overview of how the various types of goods work together:
RESEARCH GOODS - "GRADUATES"
To unlock research in the Sorcerers & Dragons Chapter, you'll need "Graduates" trained in the faculties:
Mana from special culture buildings
Alchemy Necromancers from Alchemy Faculty or Necromancy Faculty
Arcane Alchemists from Arcane Faculty or Alchemy Faculty
Arcane Necromancers from Arcane Faculty or Necromancy Faculty
PRODUCTION GOODS - "UNDERGRADUATES"
To produce or "train" Graduates, you need Undergraduates! Using the Undergraduates along with Mana, you can send them back through another faculty, and this will turn your Undergraduates into Graduates.
The Undergraduates are:
Alchemists from Alchemy Faculty for Arcane Alchemists or Alchemy Necromancers
Necromancers from Necromancy Faculty for Arcane Necromancers or Alchemy Necromancers
Arcanologists from Arcane Faculty for Arcane Necromancers or Arcane Alchemists
UPGRADE GOODS
Each faculty type produces one type of basic production resource. These goods are used to upgrade the Campus and the faculties.
Crystal Flasks from Alchemy Faculty
Soul Catchers from Necromancy Faculty
Arcane Scrolls from Arcane Faculty
Each faculty can be upgraded using the two types of basic production resources that it does not produce.
♦ Alchemy Faculty is upgraded with Soul Catchers and Arcane Scrolls.
♦ Necromancy Faculty is upgraded with Crystal Flasks and Arcane Scrolls.
♦ Arcane Faculty is upgraded with Soul Catchers and Crystal Flasks.
Upgrading the Campus requires a fairly high amount of each of the 3 basic production resources.
BEGINNING THE CHAPTER
After completing the Woodelves chapter, just as in previous chapters, go ahead and sell off all of your Woodelves settlement, including the Forest Glade, the Fabrications, and the grafting sites.
You'll get a quest to have zero portals if you are current on your story quest progression. This quest will be declinable, though, so it is up to you if you want to wait for it or not. It won't come up until after completing the quest to research Advanced Scouts.
PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE
Use this time while you work through to researching the Advanced Scouts and Wisdom Square for any necessary re-arranging of your layout.
Make plenty of room for a very large square settlement area. Follow the 3 Keys to Space Optimization for best results!
Many buildings will get a shape change or will grow in size, or both; plan ahead when considering your layout. Residences will change size and orientation, so keep this in mind!
Assess your culture needs, and if you need to, shed some earlier culture items that aren't as valuable. You'll need the space, and only 2 expansions are available throughout the whole chapter. With province completions, you may be lucky to get an extra 4 total expansions by the end of the chapter.
You need space now though, so if you're having trouble coming up with it, it may be necessary to re-examine the number of other buildings you have to be sure you can make enough room.
FIRST RESEARCH
Recommended research path for the first part of the chapter:
First things first, work on the research for those settlement buildings. Wisdom Square, then Campus, then the faculties.
The order listed for the faculties is based on the order the story quests appear in. If you are caught up on your quest progress, the quests will guide you!
You may want to get researching on the next item though before you get the quest that calls for it since you'll have to wait for each new building to finish construction before you can progress through to the next quest.
Each research item past the first column of items requires the Graduates to complete. Fill them up with KP as you work on building up the guest settlement.
As in previous chapters, it is recommended to focus on upgrading before producing research goods. Our advice is mostly the same for this chapter, with a few exceptions.
CITY EXPANSION
If you have enough space to fit your full settlement without it, don't worry about that city expansion research quite yet.
We know it's tempting, fill it up with KP if you have nowhere better to put it, but prioritize your research goods for the Library and Broomstick research, first; this will unlock more blocks you can continue sinking KP into while you produce more Graduates so that you can avoid or reduce getting tech-locked.
If you are unable to fully upgrade your settlement without that expansion, then you really have no choice but to prioritize it.
FIRST PRODUCTIONS
As soon as you build each faculty type, start and keep producing plenty of the basic production resources, or 5 hour production goods.
You'll need plenty of these goods to upgrade the Campus and the faculty buildings.
For longer periods away, such as the overnight, get a head start on producing some of the Undergraduates as you can afford to based on how many Apprentices you've been able to accrue.
You'll likely want to wait until you have built at LEAST 2 of each faculty type and built up a nice stock of upgrade goods first before attempting this, however, or you can easily end up strapped for Apprentices early and often when it comes time to really start cranking out Undergraduates.
FIRST UPGRADES
You'll get some quests along the way asking you to have so many of each faculty at level 2 and so on before getting quests asking you to upgrade your Campus. You'll want to balance following these quests with focus on increasing the size of the portal before upgrading any more faculties than requested by the quests.
This is because the more buildings you can fit around the Campus, the faster you can produce the goods needed to upgrade it, so that you can fit more buildings around it and keep production increasing, THEN focus on upgrading the faculties when you have far more goods produced.
Upgrading the Campus first will not only allow you to have more space around which you can add buildings, but it will also give each of your faculties a production boost.
(You do want to not fall behind on the quests however, or you'll get stuck needing to produce goods you don't need to complete them. More on this later.)
EVOLUTION OF THE SETTLEMENT
Here are some examples of how your layout may change and grow as you upgrade your Campus and add buildings.
CAMPUS LEVEL 1
You can fit a total of 8 buildings around a level 1 Campus. As there is slightly more space than needed for 8, but not quite enough for 9, the precise layout and order isn't of much importance.
This means you can have 3 each of 2 faculty types, and 2 of the other.
Above are two examples based on choosing a 3rd Alchemy Faculty or Necromancy Faculty.
Our recommendation is the first picture: to have 3 each of Arcane and Necromancy faculties, and 2 Alchemy Faculties.
This is because the Alchemy Faculty is unlocked first. You can likely fit in several productions of Crystal Flasks while you work on researching and building the others.
This allows you to get a head start on producing more of these, therefore you can afford fewer of these to start than the other faculty types.
CAMPUS LEVEL 2
You can fit a total of 10 buildings around a level 2 Campus if you use the layout on the left. (The 4th Arcane could also be a 4th Necromancy.)
Any other layout, the maximum you'll be able to squeeze in will be more like the picture on the left, with 9 buildings.
CAMPUS LEVEL 3
You can fit a total of 11 buildings around a level 3 Campus.
This means once again you'll choose which faculty you'll have fewer of. You can fit 4 each of 2 Faculty types, and 3 of the third.
The one you choose not to add a 4th for at this stage might depend on how you've been going about research and upgrading tasks to this point.
Fewer Arcane Scrolls are needed for each Campus upgrade compared to Crystal Flasks and Soul Catchers, but more of the undergraduates and graduates from this building are used for the early research items.
Whichever of the basic resource goods that you have the most of, this is the building you'll likely want to choose to only build 3 of until you get the Campus up to level 4.
CAMPUS LEVEL 4
You can fit a total of 12 buildings around a level 4 Campus.
Once you've upgraded to level 4, add the 4th of whichever faculty you only have 3 of.
There are a few various combinations of layouts that can work to fit all 12 faculty buildings around a fully upgraded Campus.
ONCE THE SETTLEMENT IS BUILT
Now that you've got all of your production buildings built, keep producing the basic production resources, alternating with Undergraduates, until you have enough of them to upgrade all of your buildings to level 4. (If you've followed our advice, your Campus should already be level 4.)
1. UPGRADE & PRODUCE
You've got 4 of each building type. For each 1 of 4 within each set of 3, producing generally as follows will enable easy and steady progression:
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Upgrade
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Basic Production Good (if not already produced enough, otherwise)
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Undergraduate (if have enough apprentices, otherwise)
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Graduate (only if don't need basic production good or not enough apprentices for undergraduates.)
2. COMPLETING FURTHER RESEARCH
Here is our recommendation for completing the rest of the research for the first part of the chapter.
6 and 7 are required in order to gain access to 8. Further, 6 opens access to 10-11, and 7 opens access to 12-13.
Reaching 8 is an important milestone because it
a) allows you to get started on the challenging residence upgrades
b) allows access to the Main Hall research
c) helps you not get stuck on this jerk of a quest:
The above quest doesn't come until AFTER completing a quest to complete Sorcerer's style residences research.
If you are one to always upgrade before research as the usual order of things says is strategic to do, this quest is very inconveniently timed.
It is very annoying to have to waste so many productions on un-needed goods if you fall behind in your quests or otherwise complete all of your upgrades before this one comes up. But now you have been warned. So plan accordingly :)
The order you do 10 - 13 is really not of much consequence; go for what you prefer to have first, and what you can afford to unlock with the graduates you're able to train.
3. STOP PRODUCING BASIC RESOURCE GOODS
Once you’ve gotten past the quest referenced above, and have produced enough basic resource goods to upgrade all of your faculties, stop producing these. Here is a chart showing the costs of all of the settlement building upgrades:
4. FOCUS ON PRODUCING FOR RESEARCH
Now that you are done with the basic production resources, you can keep your faculties busy on Undergraduates and Graduates.
You'll be limited only by how many Apprentices you can accrue, but if you've followed our advice so far, you should have more than enough to keep up with your needs from here on out.
Now, for each of the 4 faculties of each type, use them accordingly for easy and steady progression:
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Undergraduate
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Undergraduate
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Graduate type 1
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Graduate type 2
5. MANA, DON'T FORGET MANA
Keeping enough Mana can get pretty complicated the more research you complete. It is needed in some pretty hefty quantities.
Yes, you did read that right. Yes, that is nearly 3 million Mana to complete just the research in the entire chapter.
This doesn't even count the Mana you'll need to upgrade your Main Hall, or run your productions in the faculties. It doesn't even begin to count the Mana you'll need if you plan to upgrade any roads.
Once you unlock the research for the Arcane Library (6th in our recommended research order) you may consider replacing some Weeping Willows with some (or several) as you can afford to with available builders and supplies. Of course, you'll get some supplies back from selling Weeping Willows to help with the replacement cost.
You can fit 5 Arcane Libraries into the same space as 3 Weeping Willows:
6. KEEP PRODUCING AND RESEARCHING
The order you complete the rest of the chapter in really just depends on your goals and your preferences. Try to always keep plenty of places open to put more KP while you work on research goods, and you should stay in relatively fine shape if you continue producing in even patterns.
OTHER BUILDING UPGRADES
Just like with previous chapters, you'll research and unlock 2 additional levels for each Residences, Workshops, and Main Hall. There is no upgrade to the Barracks for the Sorcerers and Dragons chapter.
Four additional levels will be added for Armories, and for one manufactory tier: for Sorcerers and Dragons chapter, this is tier 2 manufactories.
RESIDENCES
Upgrading residences is one of the primary challenges during the Sorcerers and Dragons chapter. Not only must one make enough room for the very large settlement, but one must also have some left over to be able to maneuver the upgrades for the residences.
Residences change in both size and orientation for both races this chapter. As each initial upgrade gives quite a large boost to population, it is likely that one will end up selling off one residence for every 5-6 that they upgrade.
ELVES
Upgrading from level 23 --> 24 adds 450 population.
Upgrading from level 24 --> 25 adds 170 population.
HUMANS
Upgrading from level 23 --> 24 adds 450 population.
Upgrading from level 24 --> 25 adds 170 population.
WORKSHOPS
Luckily for both elves and humans, workshop upgrades are far less eventful than residence upgrades. They do not change in size or shape.
ELVES
Level 23 --> 24 costs 2700 orcs and 159 population
Level 24 --> 25 costs 3000 orcs and 179 population
HUMANS
Level 23 --> 24 costs 2700 orcs and 159 population
Level 24 --> 25 costs 3000 orcs and 179 population
ARMORIES
Both elves and humans will find upgrading armories in the Sorcerers & Dragons chapter to be relatively challenging upgrades.
Armories change in both size and shape for both races during this chapter. The new size is one square longer and one square less wide for each. They do not change in orientation for either race.
ELVES & HUMANS
Armories grow from 5x5 to 6x4.
Each upgrade to levels 24 --> 27
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Training size grows by 40.
TIER 2 MANUFACTORIES
In the Sorcerers & Dragons chapter, we get 4 more upgrade levels for each tier 2 manufactory.
Both elves and humans with a Crystal boost will have trickier times upgrading this chapter compared to Silk or Human Scrolls producers.
Each gets a size growth, making the first initial upgrade quite expensive in population.
The least dramatic of upgrades for this chapter is the Scrolls upgrade, unless you're a human, then you get a size change and a hefty population price for each initial upgrade.
Both elven and human planks producers will have a reasonably difficult challenge with silk upgrades.
While neither experiences a size change, making population requirements slightly easier, both get an orientation change, making shuffling a little more on the challenging side.
CONCLUSION
We hope this guide helps make your passage through this chapter easier and more fun, and as always never hesitate to ask any questions you may have.
~Good Luck, and Happy Building~
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