Progression Quick Start

== Summary ==
In Sands of Salzaar, you will start the game with your chosen class and possibly a character or squad. Starting number of characters or squads is entirely dependent on the class you chose and the Legacy Squad selections you were able to make. Below is a set of roughly outlined goals for the beginning of your playthrough following character creation.
== Recruit Squads ==
=== Why? ===
Regardless of your class or Legacy selectsions, your first goal should be to fill out your regiment(i.e. squads). These are important for larger scale battles with regiments of factions or monsters.
Being able to defeat regiments in battle is important since XP granted is per enemy defeated. Each of which give a different amount based on their type and tier.
Note that XP from battles is divided between your party characters and/or regiment squads that are below level 20. And each character/squad increments your daily food consumed by +1.
So it’s up to you if you want to level up more squads/characters at a slower pace and a higher daily food cost. Or recruit a few at a time, getting them to Tier 3 at least or Level 20 before repeating the recruitment process. Note that you should aim to go down the Talent tree paths that have “+1 Squads” nodes.
Make it your goal to recruit around 12-15 squads to start. Plus to keep up with gathering resources for upgrading and feeding your squads, you should look for 1/2 floor dungeons throughout the regions. These dungeons tend to look like saw mills, lumber yards, mines, bazaars, etc.. that accordingly award you wood, ironstone, and food resources.
=== How? ===
* PRISONS - There are “prisons” which in general for acquiring human squads look like cream and yellow colored pavilions visually. For monsters, these prisons look like a huge metal grates in hillsides(NOTE: these do not have a symbol on the mini map like human prisons). On the minimap, a helmet symbol is shown. This helmet symbol is very similar to the helmet symbol for the heroic souls statues. Except that the ones for prisons are white instead of gold. This option is great if you can beat the guards with your party of characters, which can be hard early on at the start of the game. Another downside is you only get a squad of 2 units. Which means you need to do another “prison” run to hopefully get 2 more units of the same type so that you can combine the 2 squads of 2 into one of 4. In general this is fairly easy when doing prisons in the same region. But if you have exhausted all of them then you have to wait 15 days to run them again.
* TOWNS - Every town generally has a “recruitment” officer for humans. And sometimes a beastmaster. However these squads will cost you utar which will be scarce initially. So for this option, you’ll most likely have to take quests from town council members and others in town to earn some utar. Doing things like item delivery or item acquisition should reward 300-500 utar at a time. Offered human squads to recruit generally cost 200-700 utar. While monster squads generally cost 500-1500 utar.
== Recruit Characters ==
=== Why? ===
For Title Dungeons, you can only bring your party of characters. No squads allowed. So without additional characters in your party, you will most likely fail to beat the final boss of higher level Title Dungeons. Unless of course your player character is min/maxed extensively. At this point you should also start investing in the Talent tree paths that have “+1 Character” nodes.
=== How? ===
From the main map, you can hover over towns to see what “Characters” are there at the moment. You can find those characters either in the Tavern or the Hall tabs of the Town you interact with. They require some favor before you can recruit them. 
* QUESTS - You can do quests for them which have a cooldown period before you can embark on another quest for them. Each successful quest grants 5 favor with that character. I’m not 100% sure but you need at least somewhere between 10-20 favor to be able to recruit a character.
* GIFTS - Or give them a gift which usually results in +20 favor. These gifts can be awarded to you randomly from regiment battles, dungeons, etc… . Or can sometimes be bought from a Town’s shop. The character will tell you what types of gifts they like when you attempt to give them one. And if you don’t have any applicable gifts in your inventory then the game tells you via a conversation message.
Gifts are by far the easier way to gain favor leading up to recruiting a character.
== Clear Harder/Higher Level Content ==
* Heroic Soul Statues - These have a chance to award you with jewels, “Inset Jewel” item, Wisdom Crystals, and legendary equipment. Will help to make your squads and your characters much better. Plus Wisdom Crystals will allow you to surpass the soft cap of 20 skill points for your class. Note that you can only bring your player character to a Heroic Souls Statue boss fight.
* Title Dungeons - Same type of rewards as Heroic Soul Statues, except that possible rewards are listed and you can bring your whole party of characters. These will have multiple floors that you need to progress through. But the only real challenge is the boss on the last floor(i.e. very similar to Heroic Soul Statue bosses).
* Start your own Faction(i.e. Sieges) - Taking over a town by siege to create your own faction will increase the maximum squads you can recruit by 10. And you can take advantage of some passive resource gains from mines, mills, etc… built in your initial town. This is essential for being able to take over other towns more easily. Since the reserve squads you place in towns can be put under the leadership of another character who can join you in your Sieges. Note that for a Siege I recommend a regiment of at least 12-15 squads and at least 3 characters in your party.