Olden Era Sprint Guide — The Pandora's Box Race and Its Three Duels

Sprint is the fastest-moving of the ranked Single Hero templates and the third most played, close behind Vendetta in the season's first weeks; the Single Hero map meta has today's share. The game's pitch is a race:

"Obstacle course: make your way to the richest areas, battling your opponent along the way. Whoever earns more victories becomes the sprint champion!"

This guide covers the template as the game ships it in build 26428102 (4 November 2026 — the 0.82.08 hotfix). The 0.82.06 update of 29 October grew the map, retuned its areas and guards and rebuilt every Pandora's Box around a choice; the two hotfixes since, 0.82.07 and 0.82.08, eased the guards, pre-built dwellings in the outposts, brought Scouting back and took the Pathfinder heroes out. The facts and text are the game's; the plan leans on the template's own description, the data on what Pandora's Boxes hold and what each faction's tiers are, and the Single Hero principles strong players use on Exodus; the sources are listed at the end.

The template in the game's words

The detailed description: "A linear template focused on rapidly gathering Pandora's Boxes filled with troops. Each subsequent area yields higher‑tier units, granting whoever reaches the furthest lands first a decisive advantage in the final battle."

Two words from that paragraph do the work. Linear: each player's half is a chain of seven areas, and you go through them in order. Higher-tier: the first area's boxes hold low tiers, the last area's hold the tier‑6 and tier‑7 stacks that win the third duel. You start with one town, its tier‑1 and tier‑2 dwellings already built, but a Sprint army is mostly found rather than recruited: the boxes are the army, and the town tops it up. The 0.82.06 update stretched the map from 112 × 112 to 128 × 128 and, in Unfrozen's words, tuned the contents of the areas "extensively" to make the run more varied; the dates, the win rule and the description did not move. Since 0.82.08 the panel's size line calls 128 × 128 "Medium" (Blitz's still calls the same size "Large"); the table prints the game's word.

How the duels work

The scoring is the Tournament rule the Exodus guides describe: the duel fires when both players end the scheduled day; only original stacks count, summons do not; losses do not carry back to the map; a surviving stack scores the point; two points win. The three dates are each a week apart, on Day 2 — so the first duel comes after nine days of racing, the second after sixteen, and the third, if the first two split, after twenty-three.

Because the duels are weekly and the areas get richer every week, Sprint's calendar has a shape of its own: the player who is one area ahead fights each duel with the next tier up. The first duel is usually a fight of tier‑3 and tier‑4 boxes against each other; the third is tier‑6 and tier‑7. Being ahead at Week 4 Day 2 matters more than being ahead at Week 2 Day 2, which is the Exodus lesson again in a different costume: do not spend the race to win the first fight.

What the boxes hold

Sprint's boxes are the "filled with troops" kind — the game's description says so — and since 0.82.06 every Pandora's Box in the game offers a choice. The troop boxes are unchanged: you pick which upgrade of the creature you take. The box that used to pay experience now offers experience, Law Points or Astrology Points, and pays 25% more; the box that used to pay gold offers gold, resources or Alchemical Dust, and pays 20% more. Attribute boxes come in two kinds — a combat box that offers +4/6 Attack, +4/6 Defense or +2/3 to both, and a magic box with the same choice for Spell Power and Knowledge — and are worth less than the old stat boxes were. Spell boxes are five now, one per spell tier: each lets you choose which school's spells the hero learns, or restores 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100% of the hero's mana by tier instead. The troop boxes are the race; the attribute and experience boxes are the hero that commands them. One more change from the same patch: the mandatory boxes in each area are now placed at a distance from each other, so an area is walked, not swept from one spot.

The guard is the price, and on Sprint the price rises with the area — more steeply since 0.82.06, which strengthened the guards along the way "to slightly slow players down and encourage them to explore the areas", and the guards of the final areas on top. The hotfixes took part of that back: 0.82.07 slowed how fast the object guards in both players' areas grow, and 0.82.08 weakened the guards on the passages between areas. 0.82.08 also stopped a box with creatures from sharing its guard with other objects, so a troop box is its own fight, and took the rivers and the Mercenary Guild off the map; 0.82.07 had already removed the Arborcopia. The Companion shows the guard of any battle site you point at; for a plain box, the guard's tier is the best hint of the tier inside.

Pacing the race

Week 1. The first area. Open every box the starting army can open, in the order that grows the army fastest: troop boxes first, then the Attack and Defense boxes that make the next guard beatable, then gold. Second Wind, bought with the first Astrology, is a box a day — 35 Movement for 15 mana now, 11 once upgraded, once a day at every level. The template's level-ups never offer Logistics or Siegecraft, but Scouting, which 0.82.06 took off the table too, is back since 0.82.07, and on Sprint it is the Movement skill: Advanced Scouting's Pathfinding perk cuts terrain penalties by 50%, and Expert's Leaps and Bounds "restores 5 Movement point(s) after each victory in battle", on a template that is one guard after another. Single Hero mode also lost its 20% discount on the Astrology and Law Points a level needs in the same patch, so the first purchase comes a little later than it used to. The Exodus rule of experience over gold until level 6 holds. Do not fight the guard to the next area until this area's boxes are in the army — the next area is richer, but its guard is set for an army that has finished this one.

Week 2. The next areas and the first duel. Break the guard at the end of week 1 or the start of week 2; the duel on Day 2 comes either way. Fight it with what you have, learn what the opponent has, and keep racing. A lost first duel with the army intact and a lead of half an area is a winning position.

Week 3. The middle of the chain. This is where the tier‑5 and tier‑6 boxes are and where the second duel is decided. The player who reached it first has the higher tiers in the second duel; the player who did not has to win the third.

Week 4. The furthest lands and the final duel, with "a decisive advantage" to whoever got there first — the game's words. If the series is 1–1 going into Week 4 Day 2, the third duel is the game, and the week before it is spent opening the last boxes and upgrading what they gave.

The outposts. Areas 3, 5 and 7 of each chain hold an Abandoned Outpost: "Defeat its guard to transform this outpost into a city of your starting faction." Each one's guard is heavier than the last and grows 5% a week. Since 0.82.08 the third area's outpost comes with its tier‑3 dwelling built (tiers 1 and 2 upgraded) and the fifth area's with its tier‑5 dwelling (tiers 1 to 4 upgraded, walls and a level‑3 Mage Guild); the seventh is a full city, every dwelling upgraded. They are where the box army gets your own faction's creatures added to it, which is one more reason the race pays: whoever takes an outpost first recruits from it first. The gold box is also the Dust box now — gold, resources or Alchemical Dust, your choice — so take the gold while the army is being bought and the Dust once the artifact that decides the third duel is in the bag.

Factions on Sprint

A Sprint army is mostly what the boxes give, so the faction matters less for its roster than for its hero and its laws. Heroes whose specialisation buffs all creatures rather than one line travel best — Lord Edgar's True Lord, Niev's and Gorel Spearhead's Shooter, Grellekh's Fighter, Icequeen Hel'Ghat's Heart of Ice, Goldentongue's and Aeos the Exalted's Rousing Presence — because the stack you fight the third duel with may not be your faction's. Laws that buff everything travel the same way: Temple's Training lines, whose effect "is doubled for non‑Temple friendly creatures", and Necropolis's Death Equalizes All, "Friendly creatures from different factions don’t decrease each other’s Morale", which removes the penalty an army of boxes otherwise pays. Hive's Hive Integration and Hive Reception no longer travel: since 0.82.06 they read "Friendly Hive creatures gain 1 Attack" and "Friendly Hive creatures gain 1 Defense", and a Hive hero's box army fights without them. Grove's Veiled by the Trees still names every friendly creature, but only in an area you control, and was halved to 1/2/3 Attack and Defense. Movement is the other thing to draft for, and Sprint narrows it: eight heroes cannot be picked here at all. They are every hero who starts with Logistics — Ister, Nihil and Fleu, the Wayfarers, plus Marl and Tölketh — and, since 0.82.07, the three Pathfinders, Leon Sticky‑Fingers, Eith and Ulkuth, whose "movement takes no terrain penalties". What is left is Scouting: Mouaren and Natalida start with it, a head start on its Pathfinding and Leaps and Bounds perks, and every other hero can now take it on level-up. Which factions actually win on Sprint this week is on the Single Hero faction stats, filtered to Sprint.

Common mistakes

1. Winning the first duel and losing the race. The first duel is tier 3 against tier 3; the third is the game.
2. Breaking to the next area before the current one is empty. Its boxes were the army the next guard was set for.
3. Opening a spell box for spells the one hero cannot use. Since 0.82.06 the same box restores 20% to 100% of the hero's mana instead, so nothing is wasted — but on Single Hero there is one hero; know which it needs before you open.
4. A mixed army with no answer to Morale. Boxes pay in every faction; take the hero or law that lets them fight together.
5. Spending Dust before Week 4. The artifacts that decide the third duel want it.
6. Fighting a guard that costs a stack. The boxes are the army, not the town: a lost high-tier stack comes back from the next area's boxes or an outpost's dwelling, and the starting town cannot replace it.

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), as published on the Sprint template page; the areas, the outposts and their buildings, and the hero and skill bans are read from the template file itself. The Pandora's Box choices are from Unfrozen's 0.82.06 patch notes, and the guard, outpost, Scouting, Pathfinder, river and Mercenary Guild changes from the 0.82.07 and 0.82.08 notes — what the two hotfixes changed. The duel scoring and Single Hero principles are the ones in the Exodus guide. Live share, faction records and game length: Single Hero meta · Single Hero factions · Single Hero duration.

Related: Every ranked template explained · Exodus guide · Vendetta guide · Blitz guide