Most of your time will be spent completing missions. Once you have made a move there is no turning back time, so plan your strategy carefully before commanding each of your mercenaries. Here you will get to see your intrepid band in action, perfecting the skills of warfare. Checking your Mission Info often will be vital to your continued success as you delve deeper into the game.

Deployment

The first thing you do when starting a new mission is choose where your party members should start. You can place them anywhere in the displayed (non-black) area on the left side of the map except on enemies, houses or mountains. Choose carefully for once a mercenary has been placed that is where they will start the mission. Place mercenaries by clicking with the mouse or selecting the area with the arrow keys and pressing enter. When you have deployed your entire band the mission will begin and it will be your turn.

Charcter Selection and Moving

There are three phases to every individual party members turn. These are selection, moving and attack. A character must first be selected then will automatically go into their respective moving phase. Upon the completion of the moving phase the mercenary will then go into their attack phase. When the attack phase is complete the mercenary is marked as "tired" and you may move a different mercenary. The remaining party members may be skipped by pressing the F5 key which will end all the remaining mercenaries turns and begin the computer's turn.

Character Selection

The first thing you need to do to even begin to play any mission is learn how to select a character. Position the square green pointer over any of your characters on the screen (the ones without a red outline) by moving the mouse or using the arrow keys. Any character waiting for instructions will have black text on their status bar located in the bottom right corner. You can also move quickly between your characters by pressing the Tab key. If the character status text is greyed out then they have already moved this turn and cannot be selected. If the text is red they have perished and of course cannot be selected. To select them for movement once the cursor is over the character press enter or click the mouse button. The character will now give verbal confirmation of selection and go into movement mode.

Moving Phase

When the conrol is switched to the moving phase the cursor disapears. If you are using a mouse an arrow will appear in the direction the mercenary will move next. To move the mercenary either press the arrow key in the direction you wish to move, or move the mouse cursor till the arrow is pointing in the direction you wish to move and then click on the map. Different mercenaries can move a different amount of spaces ever turn based on their class and dexterity. You can see the amount of moves remaining to the currently selected mercenary on the character status bar on the lower right side of the screen. If you do not wish to use all your moves this round then you may end a mercenaries movement phase by pressing enter or by clicking on them with the mouse.

Terrain

There are 4 different kinds of terrain to keep in mind when moving your band across the map. The first is normal terrain and allows easy passage. The second is rough terrain usually displayed as rock piles (shown in the picture at left) though they can be represented in other ways. This kind of terrain will forfeit the remainder of the character's movement phase and go directly to the attack phase. The third kind of terrain is the difficult terrain usualy displayed as trees (pictured at left) but can also be represented in other ways. This terrain type will not only stop the character's movement but forfeit their attack phase as well. Only walk over difficult terrain if you have no intention of attacking this round. The fourth and final terrain type is the impassible terrain. This is represented by houses, (pictured at left) mountains and other large obstacles as well as water and other characters/monsters on the map. Note that while none of your mercenaries can cross this type of terrain there are some kinds of monsters that can!

Special Items

Often you will see items on the map, sometimes left by killed mosters or upon destruction of houses and caravans. The item can be retreived by simply moving any member of your party over it. Items have many uses which are elaborated on in other sections of this help. To veiw what items you are currently carrying press F4.