Hello everyone!

Introduction

So I am not new to Travian, I have played for quite a while. I won't claim to be a professional or to know all of the ins and outs, but I have some ideas about the uses of the hero within this game.

In my opinion, it was a nice addition to allow us to start with a unique, customized unit that we could gather experience for to level up and use a powerful addition to our troops and villages. Some of you may remember the days of old when we used to build a mansion and train a basic troop as a hero... Well, the improvements have been huge and have added a whole new perspective to the game.

For beginners, I am not going to suggest any specific tribe for you except to say that you should be careful choosing Romans. Although they are very powerful to be used for hammers (big offensive armies of about 30 000 troops) and anvils (big defensive armies of about 20 000 troops), they are not exactly powerful in basic defence in the earlier stages of the game.

The Gauls and the Teutons offer a lot of early game advantages to a defensive player, for different reasons: The Gauls for the sheer defensive power of their base unit (the phalanx) against both infantry and cavalry, as well as the trapper; and the Teutons because of their ability to mass produce pretty decent defensive troops quite early if need be. I would suggest either of these races for a beginner. Don’t be roped in by the lovely idea of Rome! They were defeated by barbarians like the Teutons, so don’t be afraid to go for something less glorious than the Romans. The double building queue ability is nice throughout the game, but if you are active, it is highly unnecessary!

Now to move onto the actual reason for this guide: The Hero!

The hero starts off pretty weak and not much of an offensive or defensive feature, being able to be killed by only a small handful of troops. It is therefore an important addition to allow the hero to be able to hide during attacks on a village. Now, this feature starts off enabled, thus your hero will not be slaughtered in the very first minutes that you are out of beginner's protection.

It is my advice that you keep your hero hidden until you are in dire need of his/her aid in defensive combat, which should only be necessary if you keep getting raided by small parties of those irritating clubs from some Teut who won't stop riding you. Now, although the hero can be very powerful and have huge fighting strength, he is not to be mistaken for some super hero...

Do not attempt to simply upgrade his fighting strength to a couple thousand and 'destroy' all your enemies. Heroes are more balanced than this. No man can destroy big groups alone and heroes are simply men when it comes to it. I have tried this before, when I was new to the new version of the game... Trust me guys, he has better uses!

So let me first break the hero down into his skill set. The hero has 4 different abilities/aspects to spend his points on:

• Fighting strength
• Offensive bonus
• Defensive bonus
• Resources

The hero’s strength determines his personal ability to rip through his enemies. It is very tempting to throw all your points in this so that you can defend your village from large hordes without needing troop support. Now, this isn’t entirely untrue… If attacked with a small group of troops, he can wipe the floor with them and do a decent job defending and earn himself some experience, but against a large number of troops he simply gets overpowered and loses huge healthpoints (abbreviation: HP) and doesn’t do much damage to the attacking force.

An offensive bonus grants a percentage bonus to all troops that the hero is attacking with. This can be strong when attacking with huge numbers of troops, but does not make much of a difference if you only have a couple hundred soldiers. So I suggest that you skip this skill for a while… At least until you reach the stage of the game when you need masses of soldiers and you need an edge over your opponent.

A defensive bonus grants a percentage bonus to all troops that the hero has with him in the defending village. The bonus ONLY applies to troops if your hero is defending with them i.e. he is not hiding from the attackers. Since I suggested keeping him hidden a while first, I would suggest skipping this skill early on as well.

Now, the resources bonus is one that is extremely interesting. A hero with 12 points in resources, which requires a minimum of level 2, can produce an extra 216 of all resources for his home village. It is important to note that a single resource can also be given the entirety of this bonus; however your hero will produce slightly less resources this way, than if he produces all 4 resources. To illustrate this, let’s look at level 1 with 4 points spent in resources. The hero will either produce 12 of all resources or 40 of a single resource. This is important to note, because if we add up the bonus received from producing all the resources (12 * 4) we get 48 as opposed to the 40 if only 1 is produced. As the levels get higher, this difference increases too. For gold players (players who spend gold), leaving the production set to all resources is fine, since they can use the NPC trader to allocate their resources as they please. For players not spending gold, this attribute can be used and constantly changed to suit the player’s requirements at the time.

In my opinion, it is very important for a player to gain as much of a resource advantage in the early stages of the game as possible; therefore, it would be my opinion that the resource feature of the hero is the most powerful of his tools. The bonus received from his production can increase the output of a village dramatically and allow for the faster generation of troops and the easier upkeep of larger armies. Troops are imperative in the game, whether offensive or defensive. A Teuton wants to mass produce early game clubs so that he may get out attacks on multiple targets as soon as he gets out of his beginner’s protection. He wants to be able to send lots of small parties of troops, sometimes as little as 2 troops, to scout out nearby villages to see the practicality of that village becoming a resource farm. Thus, the resource bonus on level 2 of 216 for all resources would allow the Teuton to train an additional amount of lumber enough for 2 new clubs, clay for nearly 3, iron for 5 and crop for 5.Over a few hours and with the NPC trader, a good deal of extra troops can be trained and deployed to earn the player additional resources to go into the infrastructure of his village/s. A Gaul can add extra defensive troops and buildings to his village/s in order to more easily hold back enemy troops. The bonuses in the early game of this resource production cannot be overstated. This can help you significantly to try and keep up with overly offensive players, if you want to play defensively, or it can be used to train extra troops so that you, yourself, can be overly offensive.

Once you have no need for this extra bonus, your hero’s strength should be upgraded so that he may be used to clear out medium defended villages. This will grant experience to him so that he may be further upgraded later on.

Adventures are a good way to earn experience but be careful on the dangerous adventures. Before attempting these, either bid for an item that grants fighting strength or spend some points on fighting strength so that your hero doesn’t get killed trying to complete them. Finding items on adventures can be very helpful. You will definitely find a horse, which allows your hero to become mounted and move much faster when going on adventures or raids etc.

Books of wisdom allow the user to redistribute the skills later on in the game - you will find one in your first 10 adventures. If you do not need the resource bonuses, use silver to get your hands on one of these, or you may be lucky enough to find one, and add them to fighting strength or, if you have large amounts of troops, to offense and defence bonuses.

Suggested items

Items for the right hand should be ones that grant bonuses for the troops you are going to produce the most of, usually your base unit.

Items for the left hand that are good are: the small shield, although these are hard to get a hold of since they are hard to find and expensive at auctions; the map, it grants faster move speed to the hero and troops returning to the village. This allows for faster raids if your hero goes together with your troops etc.

Items for the head: A helmet of regeneration for more daily regeneration or a helmet of awareness that allows the user to gain more experience from adventures and fighting.

Armour items: The light breast plate for the fighting strength or the armour of regeneration which regenerates 40 hit points per day. Light segmented armour grants a bonus to fighting strength, small than the breast plate, and also provides a damage reduction.

A horse is always important due to the move speed bonus.

Boots can be anything. Small spurs allow quicker movement and boots of regeneration give better health regeneration, which is helpful for a busy hero.

I hope you find this guide useful, it is a good way to play with your hero and allows you huge opportunity for fast growth.