Few questions - roads, events, staves, quests

#1 Trading and economics autobuilds for you, to cities and outposts respectively. (if you play Capitar, their pioneers can make roads manually)

#2 It won't. Don't go into the fire and you'll be fine

#3 Yes, mages are using mana to kill , the staffs are really pitiful except really early in the game. The other weapons give you special abilities (crushing blow from clubs etc.) and has more attack. So only use weapons for their stats. (initiative, +crit spelldamage etc.)

#4 Depends on the quests. If you failed and died, the mob should generally be were the quest was, but you could have bugged it. There are more quests don't worry

- not afaik. I got level 90+ champions in FE with paragon.

- yes. Escape scrolls and the Cautious ability for a custom sovereign screen. (one of the originals could have it as well, but don't know which)

Thanks for the rapid reply. So it's as I feared, those quests seem to be bugged. I saved, went in, found out that my troops are too weak and reloaded. Some quests disappeared without ever triggering them (the quest hut was not there). Could have my neighbour done the quest? In other instance I started the quest, went to the quest location but didn't go in (well, you know what I mean).

As for the mages, is it viable to equip them with a massive two hander and let them swing it as an alternative to being idle (if I don't want to spend any mana).

How can I obtain the escape scrolls? Is it something I can research and then buy in the shop?

Yes AI's can do "your" quests, and they can disappear like that. 

And of course your mages can have massive 2-handers, as long as you are careful. (they usually have low HP/armor) But if you aren't sure if you want to spend mana, go for Water3, you get an enchantment reducing mana costs with 40% there. 

Escape scrolls are drop only. So you are better off making a cautious sovereign in the custom screen if you haven't figured out when to fight yet

One thing to add with Roads. If your Sovereign or one of your champions takes the Commander path then there's a first tier ability that lets them build roads in the square they are in. It seems to cost no resources and is instant, so you can have them running around laying roads in every square they move into, which can be handy. Though you have to remember to do this manually and only move 1 square at a time, which can be a pain.

Hope that helps.

not sure if it is just capitars pioneers that can build roads. i play mancers and i build roads with my pioneers prior to the tech unlock for roads to cities. i do that just so i can move my pioneers away from a moster lair quickly and i never have to stop them next to one. nothing worse than losing thirty population to a pack of bandits or whatever while im going to grab my next city. 

grr just realized mancers are capitar sorry always make a custom sov/faction

dont forget initiative.  The higher your initiative the more times your sov or champ will take a turn in battle.  Giving a spell caster a +4 initiative assassin blade also gives the the ability to cast more often in fights and still hang back some.

Once you start a quest, there is sometimes a secondary location where you need to go. If you click on the quest icon that runs along the left side of your screen, the game will show you where this location is.

Good idea about the weapons sjaminei, mfrast, I will probably do that and rely on other troops to do the damage.

When I click those bugged quests, it doesn't move the camera. It does for new quests or for those that are not yet bugged. Also, no quest locations are visible to me at the moment.

3) There is actually a better staff (Hailstone Staff, 12 Cold Attack -6 Initiative) in game, but it's part of the equipment of a recruitable champion, a female Mancer Mage called Ritressa who I could pick at the 200 Fame mark I think.

The main point of magic staffs being bad for champions is the insane initiative blow, and that the damage does not scale at all. You can have 9000 attack and the staff will still hit for 12 (or 6) damage. The only stuff that scales with it are more magic damage. So the +2 fire/cold damage amulets, and the rings are the only way to increase the damage. This is also a good tip when designing mages, get those rings and amulets on them and you can increase damage by at least 50%. (if you use all 4 accessories, 100% increased damage for the +6 damage staffs)

i did not know that about the accessories. thats really cool. thanks.

I think if you manage to get a real bit of physical attack into that 9000, that full 9000 attack will start contributing to the staff damage. The reason it doesn't currently is that the only things that improve actual physical attack are weapons, and staves don't include a physical component to the attack. All of the bonuses instead provide a physical attack boost, which only gets added in if there is a nonzero physical attack to start with. Thus, if you were to mod staves to grant 1 physical attack in addition to their current elemental attack, you would see those bonuses from traits add in.

This type of staff, and also the Incineration Staff (12 fire attack, -6 initiative), is available in the shop and for unit design after researching Arcane Weapons. I believe I have also seen these as loot on occasion, though I'm not sure. Even including that these ignore target defense ratings due to being magic attacks, they aren't very good weapons for champions, though.

For mages, particularly mages with Fire or Water Magic or Greater Necromancy and a decent investment in the Evoker traits, I'd sooner use a dagger for the initiative bonuses or one of the various staves with a spell damage bonus or spell mastery bonus, because spells like Fireball, Flame Dart, Blizzard, and Horrific Wail can do terrible things to anything they hit, and support spells like Curse, Graveseal, Heal, and Haste can greatly benefit your own army or hamper the opposing army, and using a dagger you can fire more of these spells off, while a staff granting spell mastery makes curses and damage spells more likely to stick and have their full effect, and a staff with a spell damage bonus just makes those damage spells a bit better (my opinion is that in general I'd go with daggers on most high-level spell casters and staves with spell mastery or spell damage bonuses on lower-level spell casters, because a high level mage doesn't usually need more spell mastery and, if specialized for damage, probably doesn't need help in the damage department, either).

A further note about daggers and staves - daggers provide a small critical chance bonus, and a few provide a bonus to critical damage, while most staves with spell mastery or spell damage bonuses provide a penalty to critical chance. Damage spells can hit critically. (As an aside, this makes some people consider Assassins to be decent damage spell casters. I personally disagree, as I think that a guaranteed 180% (or 200% for Fire spells) of normal spell damage every time you cast a spell, with lower spell costs, higher spell mastery, and lower casting time for those spells where that is a concern is superior to having a chance to roughly double

A further note on this - any faction with Mancer Blood gains the Road Building ability in the unit design screen, so if you wanted to you could create a cheap road-builder (i.e., not a pioneer who costs 30 population at start of training).

Afaik, staves with physical damage and magic damage in this game are currently called bows  

(you can mod all sorts of fun stuff into the game yourself obviously, but that wasn't the point here)

As you uplevel your mage sovereign or champion, select Spell Mastery and Spell Evoke (spelling?).  These will make your mage more powerful and will also provide powerful spells.  For example, Sunder is very useful on elementals.  It does not take much leveling to easily kill an air elemental.  As you get stronger, the nasty elementals will become easier.  My current sov can do over 100 damage with Sunder.  Another useful spell is Protection from Fire which helps when fighting dragons.  Equip your mage with good weapons that do not lower initiative since you will want to cast spells early in battle.

My mage has a sword that allows casting Blizzard, which damages 25 tiles.   I can kill off more than half an army with it.  You get it from the elemental in the Arctic wildland; but you really need Sunder to make the kill.   All of the wildland bosses drop powerful swords.  You can also get Heartseeker in the arena but it's a tough fight against dragons and demons.

Magical staves are a low priority; archery is better.  They are useful against undead, like the Banshee.  I've not tried a staff with my sov.  It might be more powerful due to her high spell damage.