Olden Era Exodus Guide — Two Towns, Three Duels and the Desert Break

Exodus is to Single Hero what Jebus Cross is to Classic: the template the ladder is played on. Since the season reset it has accounted for more than half of all recorded Single Hero games — the Single Hero map meta has today's share — and it is the one template with a thorough, current competitive guide published by a rival site, which this page draws on and credits. Since 0.82.06 matchmaking lets a player keep only the templates they want, from a Single Hero rotation of Exodus, Mix, Sprint, Outcast Tournament, Harmony, Blitz and Vendetta, so the share is now partly a vote.

"Develop your cities and strengthen your army to defeat the opponent in a series of weekly battles."

This guide covers the template as the game ships it in build 26428102 (4 November 2026; Exodus's own template file has not changed since the 0.82.06 update of 29 October, which strengthened Exodus's guards, reworked its Pandora's Boxes and fixed what the second desert must contain) and the way it is played on the ladder. The template's facts and text are from the game files; the strategy is a synthesis of what experienced players publish, with the sources listed at the end. Live numbers: Single Hero meta · Single Hero factions · Single Hero duration.

The template in the game's words

Mode	Single Hero — "You cannot hire additional heroes during the game. If your hero dies, you lose."
Map	Large (128 × 128), two players
Difficulty	Moderate
Expected length	60–120 minutes
Win condition	Tournament: "Face the opponent's hero in a series of battles. The winner of the set claims victory in the game." 2 points required
Battle dates	Month 1, Week 2, Day 3 · Month 1, Week 3, Day 4 · Month 1, Week 3, Day 5
Tags	Fast Game, Medium Economy, City Development, Land Conquest, Special Victory Condition

The detailed description: "A template focused on city development, featuring a map split into balanced halves for each player. Playstyle depends heavily on your starting area and its creature dwellings, which dictate your castle's build path. The primary objective is to reach the desert areas — and their immense riches — as early as possible."

The game also ships Exodus Classic, the open-beta version, whose main difference is that "it is played in a Best-of-5 tournament format" with a longer expected length.

How the duels work

The scoring is worth knowing before the first game:

• The duels fire automatically once both players have ended the scheduled day. The first comes on Week 2 Day 3, so the opening is nine days long.
• Only original stacks count. Summoned units do not. A surviving original stack earns the point; if both sides are wiped out, both score and the next duel decides.
• Losses do not carry back to the adventure map. The army you fight the first duel with is the army you keep, win or lose.
• Two points win. Lose the first duel and the series is still open; lose two and it is over.

That last pair of facts is the whole strategic shape of Exodus. The first duel is a free look at the opponent's army that costs nothing to lose, and the second and third are the ones to win. The mistake this leads to is the most common one at lower ratings: over-preparing for the first duel. Skipping scouting, delaying the zone break, converting resources to gold or recruiting off-stack creatures to win a fight that does not end the game is how players lose the two that do.

What you start with

You start with two towns of your faction, a standard starting army, Town Portal at a mana cost of 0, and one accessible foreign-faction town in the biome zone. The free Town Portal is the template's defining tool — a hero can clear on the map all day, portal home, recruit and be back the next morning — and it is why Exodus is a "city development" template in the game's own tag: both towns build dwellings, and the hero collects from both.

The map is symmetric, the guards and rewards are not: guards, rewards and objects are randomized, and the opponent's half is closed to you. The 0.82.06 update made the guards heavier where it counts: the external guards of creature dwellings and the Mercenary Guild are 1.5 times what they were, the Mountain Monastery's guard is tripled, and the guards at the entrances to the desert areas are slightly stronger. Exodus is a race against the map on your own side, scored in three fights.

A week-by-week plan

The standard opening, in outline:

Week 1, days 1–3. Make one upgraded tier‑1 power stack by pooling the basic units of both towns through Town Portal. Prioritise experience over gold until the hero reaches level 6; since 0.82.06 the template's level-ups no longer offer Siegecraft, so the choice is one dud shorter. Stay near roads; scout off-road only for high-value targets — easy gold, Pandora's Boxes, dwellings within about half a day's movement, remembering that a dwelling's guard is half again as strong as it was. Build in both towns according to your faction's first-week route.

Week 1, days 3–4. Capture the third town — the foreign-faction one in the biome zone — ideally on Day 3 or 4. Build its economy first and do not build creature dwellings in a foreign city; recruit a few tier‑1 trade stacks from it to absorb the map losses the main stack must not take.

Week 1, day 7, into week 2. Enter the biome. Elite timing is Day 7; a normal break is early week 2. Before entering, unlock Second Wind — 35 Movement for 15 mana now, once a day — and have a Mage Guild in the third town for efficient scouting. Then prioritise scouting and zone progression over preparing for the first duel.

Week 2. Develop towns and grow the main stacks; keep the off-stack creatures in town. Most factions want a few main power stacks plus one high-initiative stack — the faction guides name them: Marksmen and Griffins for Temple, Skeleton Archers and Wraiths for Necropolis, Dancers and Grand Shoths for Dungeon and Schism, Stingers for Hive. Plan the Desert break in advance and take the first duel as it comes.

Week 3. The Desert. Off-road scouting now pays: artifacts and resources become the priority, and the Artifact Merchants are where missing set pieces are found before the third duel — though not Boots of Travel, the Backpack or Seven-League Boots, which no longer appear on Exodus since 0.82.06. The second desert is guaranteed its big three since the same patch (below). Convert surplus resources to gold only when you are ready to recruit the full army, upgrade the key artifacts with Alchemical Dust (destroy unused ones for more), and swap utility artifacts for combat gear before each duel. A full army needs 100,000 to 200,000 gold by the end of week 3.

The objects that matter

• Mearea's Altar — "Grants Gold after defeating its guard." Since 0.82.06 its Couatls are always split into three stacks — one, one and one on the smallest roll for 2,000 gold, two, two and two on the largest for 5,000 — which makes the old trick of feeding a single guard a few one-unit stacks a worse trade: do not rush it on days 1–3. The battle site page has every roll.
• Pandora's Boxes — every one is a choice now. A troop box lets you pick the creature's upgrade; the box that used to pay experience offers experience, Law Points or Astrology Points and pays 25% more; the gold box offers gold, resources or Alchemical Dust and pays 20% more; attribute boxes come as a combat box (+4/6 Attack, +4/6 Defense or +2/3 to both) or a magic box (the same for Spell Power and Knowledge), worth less than the old stat boxes; and the five spell boxes, one per tier, let you choose the school or restore 20% to 100% of the hero's mana. On Exodus the stat and spell boxes' limits were retuned and a few of them can now turn up in the first desert. After the early levels, the Astrology or Law Points in an experience box are usually worth more than its experience.
• Creature dwellings — higher-tier dwellings boost weekly growth, so capture them early in the week; growth accumulates once flagged; recruit before each duel. Their external guards are 1.5 times stronger since 0.82.06, so count them before the main stack commits. A known bug: the recruit window sometimes does not open after a guard fight — interact with the dwelling again.
• The second desert's big three — since 0.82.06 it always holds at least one Dragon Utopia (25,000 to 40,000 gold and four artifacts behind 14 to 26 Cave Dragons in six stacks), one Research Laboratory (20,000 to 50,000 gold and epic or legendary artifacts behind 3 to 6 Lich Dragons) and one Overgrown Vori Ruins, with at most two, two and one. The Ruins pay 15,000 to 30,000 gold, resources and 60 to 150 Alchemical Dust — half the Dust they paid before the patch — and their guard grew to 2 to 5 Sentinels of Glory, always in three stacks.
• The Arborcopia — a one-use weekly-growth tree in the final Desert zone behind a guarded teleporter, where the Legendary set artifacts also are. Build the creature dwellings and the Fort to maximum first, then use it; the meta timing is the end of week 3.

The Astrology path

Astrology Points buy the high Neutral spells, and Exodus is where the path is most standardised. Two things changed in 0.82.06: Single Hero mode lost its 20% discount on the Astrology and Law Points a level needs, so each step comes a little later, and the spells themselves were re-costed and re-tiered. The order, which every faction guide on this site repeats because the game's data supports it:

1. Second Wind — "Immediately restores 35 Movement points to the hero. Usable 1 time(s) per day." 15 mana, 11 from level 2; level 3 restores 50 and level 4 restores 80. It is once a day at every level now — the second cast that level 4 used to give is gone, traded for a bigger single one.
2. Shadowflight — "Grants the hero the ability to fly until the end of the day, allowing them to move freely through any obstacles on the global map. Flying above obstacles costs +40% Movement points." Now a tier‑2 spell, learnable at hero level 4 according to the notes, for 20 mana (14 from level 2); level 3 removes the penalty. A common late-game win condition on a map of guarded passes, and a cheaper one than it was.
3. Dimension Door — "Teleports the hero to target location within 8 squares. Usable 1 times per day." Tier 4, 22 mana (14 from level 2); 12 squares at level 3 and two casts at level 4.
4. Town Portal upgrades — free to cast here, two casts a day at level 3 and three at level 4 — which are rare and need heavy Astrology investment.

Two more Global Map spells moved in the same patch without joining the path: Gate of Light dropped to tier 3 and 18 mana (10 upgraded), a portal any hero can walk through, and Pocket Dimension rose to tier 4 and 22 mana (18 upgraded). End turns in a town with a Mage Guild to restore mana; Second Wind at level 4, 80 Movement for 11 mana, is the goal. The laws that generate Astrology — Temple's Faith in Magic, Grove's Clear Sky, Dungeon's Celestial Maps, Schism's Planar Explorers — are worth more on Exodus than their text suggests.

Factions on Exodus

Exodus is where the Single Hero faction stats are made: with more than half the games, the Single Hero faction table filtered to Exodus is close to the faction table itself. Two faction notes. A popular Hive opener is Mila's army-wide Masterful Haste with Hornets early and a beeline for Waurms. Schism is at its best in Exodus-style play — Stinging Ra'Shoth as the main, Grand Shoths as the initiative stack, the Cultists spent — and its law and Astrology orders are the same as above.

Common mistakes

1. Over-preparing for the first duel. It does not end the game; the scouting and zone break you skipped for it do.
2. Trading the main stack on the map. Single Hero has no recovery; the trade stacks from the third town exist to be traded.
3. Building creature dwellings in the foreign town. Economy there, units at home.
4. Converting resources to gold early. Do it once, when the full army is ready to buy.
5. Spending Alchemical Dust past the first upgrade in week 1. One cheap tier‑1 or tier‑2 upgrade for the main stack pays for itself; the rest is for the key artifacts before the last two duels.
6. Forgetting the recruit before a duel. Growth accumulates in flagged dwellings; collect it the day before the scheduled battle.

Where this comes from

The template's facts and text are from the game files for build 26428102 (4 November 2026, the 0.82.08 hotfix, which left Exodus's file as 0.82.06 made it), as published on the Exodus template page and the battle sites pages; the guard, object, spell-tier and Pandora's Box changes are from Unfrozen's 0.82.06 patch notes. The strategy draws on Hydrotonic's Steam guide to the 0.81 changes, the Steam community's Exodus threads, and the ranked games this site tracks. Live share, faction records and game length: Single Hero meta · Single Hero factions · Single Hero duration.

Related: Every ranked template explained · Jebus Cross guide · Vendetta guide · Sprint guide · Blitz guide