Olden Era Vendetta Guide — Global Map Spells, Pandora's Boxes and the Hunt

Vendetta is the Single Hero template for players who want the game decided on the map rather than on a calendar. In the season's first weeks it was the second most-played Single Hero template after Exodus, with about one game in eight; the Single Hero map meta has today's share. The game describes it as a hunt:

"You have obtained scrolls of the essential Global Map spells. Use them to conquer the lands, collect all treasures in the central area, and crush your opponent!"

This guide covers the template as the game ships it in build 26428102 (4 November 2026: the 0.82.06 update of 29 October, which re-costed the Global Map spells the template hands out, moved the Movement perks between Logistics and Scouting, and rebuilt every Pandora's Box around a choice, and the 0.82.08 hotfix, which restored the desert's Pandora's Boxes). The facts and text are the game's; the sources are listed at the end. Vendetta has had less written about it than Exodus, so the plan below leans on the game's own description of the template, the data on what its boxes and spells do, and the Single Hero principles that strong players use on Exodus and apply here.

The template in the game's words

The detailed description: "A template where your hero begins with a full suite of Global Map spells. Your goal is to boost your magic attributes as quickly as possible to leverage these spells effectively, using them to rapidly gather Pandora's Boxes, clear the guards in the central desert, and build momentum. Victory requires more than a massive army: you must hunt down your opponent across the map for the final duel."

Three things set it apart from Exodus. There are no scheduled duels: the fight happens when one player forces it. The map is open between the players: the central area joins both halves, and the hunt crosses it. And you start with the spells other templates spend three weeks of Astrology on.

The spells you start with

The Global Map spells, as the game defines them at their first level (the spell browser has every level). The 0.82.06 update touched three of the four:

• Second Wind — "Immediately restores 35 Movement points to the hero. Usable 1 time(s) per day." 15 mana, 11 from level 2; 50 Movement at level 3 and 80 at level 4, and once a day at every level — the patch took away the second cast level 4 used to give and made the single one bigger.
• Town Portal — "Teleports the casting hero to a selected city you control. Usable 1 times per day." 24 mana, 18 from level 2; two casts a day at level 3, three at level 4.
• 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." 20 mana, 14 from level 2; the penalty was 30% before the patch, and it disappears at level 3.
• Dimension Door — "Teleports the hero to target location within 8 squares. Usable 1 times per day." 22 mana, 14 from level 2; 12 squares at level 3 and two casts at level 4.

Each costs mana, and that is what "boost your magic attributes" means: the three movement spells cost 57 mana together at their first levels and 39 once each is upgraded. Knowledge sets the mana pool, and a hero who can cast Second Wind, Dimension Door and Shadowflight in the same day is a hero that reaches boxes and guards two days before one who cannot. The Pandora's Boxes that grant +Knowledge, +Spell Power and mana restores are worth more here than on any other template; so are the laws that restore mana (Schism's Depths of Mind, "Your Schism heroes restore +5% mana each morning" at its first level) or raise the pool (Dungeon's Arcane Knowledge, "Your heroes gain +15 maximum mana"; Grove's Knowledge is Power), the one that cuts the cost (Hive's Mana Devour, "Your Hive heroes’ spells cost –1 mana" per level, to –3), the Herbomancer's Mushroom Magic ("Reduces the mana cost of the hero’s spells by 1", 3 or 2 on its upgrades) and, above all, Logistics' Pathfinding Magic perk: "Neutral Global Map spells cost –4 mana. This bonus is doubled if the hero knows “Scouting.”" — eight mana off every cast above for a hero with both skills.

What the boxes hold

Vendetta's early game is Pandora's Boxes, and the 0.82.06 update made every one of them a choice:

• A troop box lets you pick the upgrade version of the creature it holds, as before.
• The box that used to pay experience offers Experience, Law Points or Astrology Points, and 25% more of them than before.
• The box that used to pay gold offers Gold, Resources or Alchemical Dust, and 20% more.
• Attribute boxes come in two kinds. A combat box offers +4/6 Attack, +4/6 Defense or +2/3 to both; a magic box offers +4/6 Spell Power, +4/6 Knowledge or +2/3 to both. Both are worth less than the old stat boxes.
• Spell boxes are five, one per 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, which on Vendetta is often the better half of the choice.

The guard tells you something about the contents — reading the guard to guess the box is a skill of its own on this family of templates — and the Companion's battle-site cards tell you the guard exactly. The old trap of opening a spell box with a hero who could not learn its school is gone: the mana is always there to take. What remains is choosing well, and on Single Hero there is only one hero to choose for.

A plan for the hunt

Days 1–3. Spend the spells on reach, not on safety. Second Wind every day; Dimension Door to skip a guard between you and a box. Take the boxes the starting army can take and the attribute and XP boxes first — the Single Hero rule from the Exodus guides, experience before gold until level 6, holds here with the extra reason that Knowledge is movement.

Days 4–7. Clear the starting zone's guards and dwellings, recruit on day 8, and break toward the centre. Town Portal is the safety net that lets a hero clear to the far side of the zone and still recruit at home. Keep the main stack whole: there is no second hero and no scheduled duel to reset losses, so a stack lost on day 5 is lost for the game.

Week 2. The central desert. "Clear the guards in the central desert, and build momentum": the desert's boxes hold the high-tier troops and the spell tiers — and since the 0.82.08 hotfix there are as many of them as intended, after a bug had significantly cut their number — and clearing it first is both the army and the information — a hero in the centre sees the other half. Shadowflight across the passes the guards still hold, at +40% Movement over the obstacles until the spell is level 3; Dimension Door past the ones you cannot.

The duel. Vendetta ends when one hero defeats the other, and either player can force it. The hunter needs movement — Shadowflight to fly over the map's obstacles, Dimension Door for the last eight squares, twelve once it is level 3 — and an army that wins the fight it forces; the hunted needs Town Portal and a reason to fight at home. The scouting that Exodus players skip for the first duel is the whole game here: know where the opponent is and what they have before you cross the centre, because the fight you force is the one you cannot undo.

Factions on Vendetta

A template about mana and movement favours heroes who start with more of both. Logistics is +10/15/20% Movement, and the 0.82.06 update reshuffled its perks: Leaps and Bounds left for Scouting, Strong Mounts is now a flat "+5% more Movement points on the global map", Careful Planning saves "up to 30 unused Movement points for the next day" instead of 50, and Pathfinding Magic is the perk a Vendetta hero takes first. The heroes who start with the skill — Nihil, Marl, Fleu, Ister — bring a rank of it already, and Nihil, Fleu and Ister are Wayfarers besides: "+5% Movement points for every 8 hero level(s). Moves significantly more efficiently on roads." The Pathfinders — Eith, Leon Sticky‑Fingers, Ulkuth — have a specialisation whose "movement takes no terrain penalties" and start with Scouting, which since 0.82.06 holds Leaps and Bounds at Expert: "The hero restores 5 Movement point(s) after each victory in battle." Schism's Aga’Shoth Riders carry Plow Through, "Reduces terrain penalties by 50% for the hero", for the whole army. Casters with high starting Knowledge — Necromancers at 4, Clerics and Warlocks at 3 — cast more of the Global Map spells a day. Factions that clear with a single strong stack from day one (Kel'Ghul's Dread Knights, Typhona's Hydras, Zoran's Waurms) take the early boxes other heroes have to walk past. Which factions actually win on it this week is on the Single Hero faction stats, filtered to Vendetta.

Common mistakes

1. Casting Town Portal to save a hero that should have fought. The hunted player who always portals home never wins; the game ends only when a hero dies.
2. Taking the spells from a box the hero will not cast. Since 0.82.06 the same box restores 20% to 100% of the hero's mana instead, and on Vendetta mana is movement.
3. Treating Vendetta like Exodus. No calendar means no free first duel; the first fight is the only one.
4. Spending mana on nothing. Every Second Wind and Dimension Door cast on a day without a target is a day's reach wasted.
5. Crossing the centre blind. Scout the other half before you force the fight; the opponent's army is the only thing that matters once you do.
6. Ignoring Knowledge. It is the mana pool, and the mana pool is the template.

Where this comes from

The template's facts and text, the spell, skill, law and specialisation texts are from the game files for build 26428102 (4 November 2026, the 0.82.08 hotfix), as published on the Vendetta template page, in the spell browser and on the Logistics and Scouting pages; the Pandora's Box choices and the spell-tier changes are from Unfrozen's 0.82.06 patch notes, and the desert-box fix from the 0.82.08 notes. The 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 · Sprint guide · Blitz guide