The Borders of Sharom

Hidden Cities - 3
Treasures - 1

The difficulty gets stepped up here: enemies will regularly come at you, the map is bigger and this stage hides a very crucial item. Notice that besides your Lord's unit and Lans's unit, you also have Warren's unit plus several other ones. Play around with the formations and makeup of these units until you have a well-balanced fighting team. A good example of a well-rounded unit is two Fighters in front and two Wizards and one Amazon in the back.

Deploy a unit and send it north of your base to liberate Valna. In fact, liberate it with your Lord. Your main base won't get attacked if you follow my strategy, whereas Valna regularly receives small assaults from the west, across the sea. It is necessary to say here that Valna has a shop in it. Station a unit in it, select it and notice that there is a new option there along with Move, Recruit, etc.: Buy Items. Go on and buy some Heals.

Now send a strong unit (Lans is one) south of the base, west across the bridge and into Abdella. Liberate this city but don't stop yet! Head west along the road, across another bridge into a Roshfallian Temple. Liberate it, station the unit there and stay there for a while.

At this point, the enemy should be coming from the enemy base, but since there's only one land path to your base they'll be stopped at that Temple (this is why you needed a strong unit there). Whack away at them, since they're not too hard, but don't advance.

When you've gained some levels you'll be able to change classes. Select a unit, select Edit and then select Change Class. If you see a little arrow next to an icon of a soldier that means that that soldier can improve his or her class. See what classes are available and decide. You'll want Fighters to turn into Knights for the most part, but don't neglect the specialized forms of Fighters. I recommend having a Dollmage in the back row of a strong unit, since the Dollmage's back row attack is extremely good (for now at least) and you won't get to use it with other soldiers for a while. Turn Amazons into Clerics and turn leftover ones into Valkyries, but don't bother with Witches.

After upgrading some units and buying some items, send a third unit into the sea northeast of Valna. You'll find an inconspicuous island there. Don't be fooled - it holds an extremely important, completely hidden temple. Find it and liberate it, and you'll get the Star of Heroes. Do not sell this item or throw it away. You need it for the best ending.

Next follow the island chain west of that temple. One of the islands holds a hidden city (Ellery). Also explore the road that leads west and south of the Temple on the mainland, as there's a hidden city (Fallsala) at the end of it. Finally, there's treasure on the center island of the cluster.

With all of this done, you're fully ready to engage King Usar, the leader of this land. Attack him with Lans's unit to see a brief discussion between the two, then fight Usar.

Boss: Usar
HP: 120 | STR: 76 | AGI: 72 | INT:57 | CHA:57 | ALI: 43 | LUK: 59

This is almost as easy as the fight with Warren. Usar has two Wizards in the back row, but they won't do anything besides be annoying. The king himself is in the front rank, and thus the prime target for your melee fighters. With a good strong unit such as Lans's (in the picture shown as containing two Wizards, two Knights and a Dollmage), and your Tactics set to Leader, you'll waste the king with no problem. Don't waste your Tarots; just watch the fight.