Heroes of Might & Magic: Olden Era – How to Beat the Mirage (Grail Guide)
Getting the Grail in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era isn’t like the old days where you just simply visited obelisks to find a buried treasure. Now, you have to face the “Mirage”—a challenging mirror-match boss fight that currently has the player community incredibly divided.
If you’ve been bashing your head against your keyboard trying to beat your clone, you aren’t alone. Here is a breakdown of how the Mirage actually works, the strategies players are using to beat it, and the trap builds you absolutely need to avoid.
The Problem: The 150% Mirror Match
The biggest issue with the Mirage fight is that it is not a fair fight. The game creates a mirror image of your hero, copying your artifacts and skills, but it gives the enemy army a massive multiplier (roughly 150% of your raw power).
To make matters worse, the losses you take during this fight are permanent. Winning a fair fight is essentially impossible because you will either wipe completely or lose your entire army in the process, which ruins your campaign. Because of this, players have realized you aren’t supposed to overpower the AI; you are supposed to treat it like a puzzle and outsmart it.
The Strategy: How to “Cheese” the Mirage
If you walk in with a massive, balanced endgame army, the AI will mirror that and crush you with sheer numbers. Instead, you need to manipulate the scaling.
- The Single-Stack Method: The most reliable strategy right now is to enter the fight with a very small army, such as a single stack of units or just two stacks of Tier 1 and Tier 2 creatures.
- Manipulating the AI: Because the AI copies your army structure, it will also only spawn with a single stack of units. The enemy’s stack will have more units than yours, but having only one target makes the fight manageable.
- First-Turn Advantage: You will get the first turn in combat. You must use this advantage immediately to cast a spell or ability that either disables the enemy stack or completely protects your own.
Warning: Two Massive Run-Ending Traps
Depending on your hero and faction choices, you might accidentally make the Mirage fight completely impossible for yourself. Watch out for these two specific scenarios:
1. The Oona / Lodos Nightshade Magic Block
If you are playing as the heroes Oona or Lodos, you might notice that you are completely blocked from casting any Nightshade Magic during the Mirage fight. You might think your game is bugged, but it’s actually working as intended. Both Oona and Lodos have a hero passive that prevents enemy heroes from casting Nightshade spells. Because you are fighting an exact clone of yourself, your clone’s passive is blocking you from casting!
2. The Temple “Sacred Lands” Softlock
If you are playing as the Temple faction, be incredibly careful with your law choices. If you choose the “Sacred Lands” law, your units become immune to effects. Consequently, the enemy Mirage units will also be immune to effects. This completely ruins the single-stack cheese strategy because you can no longer use crowd control or debuff spells on the enemy, forcing you into a raw-power fight against a 150% army that you are guaranteed to lose.
Will this be patched? If you hate this mechanic, there is good news. A developer for the game recently confirmed on the Steam forums that they are actively noting all the feedback and evaluating the Mirage mechanic for future updates.