TIPS: Don't spend skill points in paladog hp, walking speed aura, riding speed, and paladog armor, I've found these skills pretty useless, focus in exp gaining, troop improvements and food/mana regeneration rather than food/mana capacity. In regard to equipment, poison mace, food mace and meteor mace worked fine for me. Just transform you mana into food for summoning, use poison mace for killing high hp enemies and meteor for masses of enemies. Rings of exp are the best, but if you have trouble beating stages i would advise using mana/food or health regeneration rings.
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