SpellForce 3 Versus Edition: Basic Guide

This your starting sector.
When the match begin, every player starts with one, each starting sector includes the following:

• Town Center.
• Godstone.
• Merchant.
• Basic Resources.
• T2 or T3 resources, depending on the map.

When starting your game, your first action should be to select the Godstone and start building the hero. Once you select your hero to spawn, start constructing your first buildings. If you’re not sure on what to build first, consider the costs of your buildings. If you see that all your buildings cost wood, you should probably start with 2 to 3 woodcutters and 1 hunting cabin. Apart from that, I will give you a general idea what to build and what to avoid in your main at the start fo the game:

THINGS TO BUILD AT THE START OF THE GAME:

• Woodcutters.
• Stonecutters.
• Hunting Cabins.

NEVER BUILD AT THE START OF THE GAME:

• Any sort of military buildings like Barracks, Warpits, Groves, Fighting huts etc.
• Farms.
• Billets or Tribe Shelters.
• Towers

Here’s a deeper explanation why you should avoid the buildings above at the start: They will simply slow you down too much. You should always start with building up your economy first, and building a tower will take away your precious workers and starting resources that could have been spent on another gathering building or an expansion. In later stages of the game, it’s fine to switch one or two of your economy buildings to a Barrack, switch Hunting Cabins to Farms once food ran out, or build some population buildings like Billets or Tribe shelters.

Apart from being your starting sector, your Town Center is the most important building in the game. Upgrading it increases your Tech Level, unlocking new units, buildings and resources.
NEVER UPGRADE YOUR TOWN CENTER TOO EARLY. The best time to upgrade it is usually once you’ve secured 2-3 sectors and fully built them. That’s around 4-8 min into the game depending on the faction.
If the win condition is capitol destruction, you will lose the game once your Town Center is destroyed.

You can recruit and revive your heroes at the GODSTONES, they not only serve as hero spawners but also as portals. If you own more than one Godstone you can link them together by pressing the blue button. Once connected, both of them will open and you can send your units inside to teleport. This can also be done between you and your allies in team matches.

They are usually captured when you take control of a sector, but if the sector is not captured yet, or if the Godstone is outside one, you can take ownership of it by selecting your hero and right-clicking the stone to interact with it. Once your hero is close enough, you will take control of the stone.

Expansion is the key to victory, every sector will provide you with extra workers, space, and new resources to use.
Each possible expansion will be marked on the minimap with the following icon:To expand, you first have to build a flag with your hero. Simply select your hero and right-click on the building spot:

Once your hero has finished building the flag, you can select it and click the option to upgrade it to a proper outpost:
Once the outpost is built, you’ll get some workers in that sector to use. You can also queue buildings in the sector even before the flag is upgraded. Every outpost has 4 levels, each providing extra workers, outpost HP&dmg.

Be careful though, as some expansion paths are guarded by neutral creeps, they will be explained in the next section under hero leveling.

Heroes are one of the most important parts of Spellforce. They support your armies, secure your expansion, and are often the difference between a win and a loss. Your heroes have their own abilities you can level and inventories, where you can change their equipment or give them different consumable items.

At the start of the game, your hero party starts with level 1 and 3 ability points. To level up your hero, click on the + sign on their portrait in the top left as shown on the screenshot below. You can also use K to open your spellbook. Leveled active abilities will always automatically go on to your ability bar but you can always drag them to different slots.

On every level up, you will get a voiced notification from your faction announcer about your heroes growing stronger. With each level, your heroes get +2 ability points to spend. The best way of leveling up is to kill heroes of enemy factions (especially if they’re higher level than yours) or killing the creeps marked on maps. There are 4 creep strength levels in the game, each with its own icon on the minimap:

The weakest groups, usually a group of 4 zombies or 3 bandits. Each group of them gives you +500 gold, bandits also drop 1 health potion.

Weak-medium level, usually a medusa or stronger zombie group but sometimes also a single bear. They usually drop 1-2 health potions and 1 mana potion.

Strong creeps, most of the time it’s a single wyvern but on some maps, it’s a stronger medusa group. They will always drop one accessory: shielding amulet/ring, a ring that increases max health, or a ring that increases max focus. The medusa group also drops their standard potions.

The strongest monsters, one of the 3 golems. They give you the highest amount of XP, gold, and the best accessories available.

Apart from different strengths, they also have different aggression settings. The groups with a white skull will only attack once it has been attacked (either by you or the enemy) while the groups with the red skull will always attack.

Each hero comes with their own equipment. It’s usually just a weapon and armour but some heroes come with a shield and sometimes headgear but the starting hats are only there for looks and are worth 0 gold. The default button to open your inventory is I but you can rebind it.
When spawning your first hero, you will also receive the following consumables:

• 3 Health Potions.
• 3 Mana Potions.
• Stone of Homecoming.

All consumables are shared by your heroes, the Stone of Homecoming has to be equipped and allows you to teleport to any friendly building. Including allied buildings or friendly buildings in enemy sectors. You can always get some extra consumables and accessories from the neutral monsters on the map but your main source of items will be merchants

Merchants have their own minimap icon and there’s always one in every main base. Sometimes there are extra merchants in the middle or, the sides of the map. You can trade various items with them. To trade simply right click the items you want to buy/sell then click apply.

Merchants usually sell stronger versions of your heroes’ equipment, weaker versions of accessories available from creeps, 10 health&focus potions, and other various consumables like debuffing orbs or friendly summons.
They also sell some PURPLE POTIONS of fresh start, which allow you to reset your abilities and a GREEN POTIONS that give you a +1 ability point. To use them, right-click them in your inventory with your hero selected.

Once you have bought your desired items, you can open your inventory to equip them or put the consumables onto your ability bar:

Here are some simple tips to get a little bit better at the game:

• Familiarize yourself with controls and factions in a game vs passive AI before jumping straight into PvP games or AI of higher difficulties.
• Always be active with your hero: use them to capture new sectors, buy items, kill workers in enemy sectors or even just scout the area.
• Avoid fighting in enemy territory unless you’re 300% sure you can win.
• Check the worker icon above the minimap from time to time. It’s your free worker count, always make sure all your workers are doing something. You can click it or use a key bound key (default backspace) to go to sectors with free workers.
• Watch replays of your games to see what mistakes you or the enemy has made and try to avoid them in the future.
• If playing a team game, try to communicate with your teammates, you can use enter to chat and click TAB with chat open to switch between ALL and allies only.
• If playing games with more than 1 hero or playing team games, you can pick up friendly heroes with your alive heroes by selecting them and right-clicking the dead one.
• Try not to give up too easily. Even if you’re losing, there’s always a possibility of outplaying your opponent and taking advantage of it.

That’s all, hope this helped, have fun with the game, and good luck in your future matches!