Olden Era: compare creatures and upgrade costs

Start with the job your stack must do

Compare creatures for a particular fight: which enemy must they reach, what retaliation must they survive, and what changes after the upgrade? Higher Attack does not make a creature the best shooter, defender and ability carrier at the same time.

Open the creature catalog and select the base creature and both upgrade branches. Then use the unit comparison tool to examine the candidates together. Keep a comparison of individual creatures separate from a comparison of the armies you can actually afford.

Read the stats together

The official Hooded Horse wiki's Units page distinguishes attack types and active/passive creature abilities. For a useful comparison, establish how you will use the creature before evaluating its numbers.

• Damage and quantity: record one creature's damage range and the stack size. Multiplying them is a starting point before combat modifiers, not a prediction of damage against a particular enemy.
• Attack and Defense: compare candidates with the same hero and conditions. Do not treat one extra point of Attack as one extra point of damage.
• Health, Speed and Initiative: check whether the stack can reach its intended target and survive the exchange. A single stat ranking cannot answer every question.
• Abilities: read range, retaliation, target restrictions and activation conditions separately. A change of role can matter more than a numerical increase.

Worked example: the Skeleton upgrade branches

In our wiki data checked on September 8, 2026, the Skeleton costs 35 gold to recruit, while Skeleton Warrior and Skeleton Archer each cost 50. The Warrior has 3 Defense against the base Skeleton's 1; the Archer gains a ranged attack. These are the values in the inspected records, not a guarantee for every save or game patch.

An illustrative 1,050-gold recruitment budget buys 30 base Skeletons or 21 upgraded creatures, assuming sufficient stock and the necessary buildings are already available. This is purchasing arithmetic, not a combat result. The two upgrades cost the same to recruit but serve different purposes, so a single stat-per-gold ratio is not enough to choose between them.

Recruitment price is not an upgrade quote

The 50 − 35 = 15 gold difference above compares recruitment prices. Do not automatically use it as the cost of converting an existing Skeleton. For an army you already own, use the actual quote shown in your game's upgrade interface.

Write down the cost for the whole selected stack, required resources and buildings, travel to the upgrade location, and the purchases you would postpone. If your immediate goal is a guarded mine, prefer an option that makes that fight more reliable without breaking the rest of your plan.

Check the army and available buildings through the faction pages. Comparing an upgrade you can use today with a creature you still need to unlock hides a substantial part of the decision.

A checklist before you spend

• Name the next fight and the specific benefit of the upgrade: a new target, fewer expected losses or a useful ability.
• Keep the comparison conditions consistent: hero, stack size, terrain, effects and available resources.
• Check the price of your actual transaction in the game. Keep resources for essential recruitment and the next turn.
• After a game update, recheck sensitive values against the creature record and Unfrozen's official notes. This article's date records the example check; it is not a patch number.