Scouting
| Scouting | ||
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Basic Scouting: allows your hero to see 1 square further into the shroud. | |
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Advanced Scouting: allows your hero to see 2 square further into the shroud. (3 squares in Horn of the Abyss) 
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Expert Scouting: allows your hero to see 3 square further into the shroud. (5 squares in Horn of the Abyss)
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Scouting is a secondary skill that increases hero's scouting radius by one at basic level, by two at advanced level and by three at expert level. Related artifacts are Speculum and Spyglass, which both increased the scouting radius by +1.
Heroes with Scouting as a starting skill:
Aeris the Druid – Basic Scouting
Broghild the Beastmaster – Basic Scouting
Calh the Demoniac – Basic Scouting
Deemer the Warlock – Advanced (Basic in HotA ) Scouting-
Fiona the Demoniac – Advanced Scouting 
Lorelei the Overlord – Basic Scouting
Piquedram the Alchemist – Basic Scouting
Shiva the Barbarian – Basic Scouting
Beatrice the Knight – Basic Scouting 
Miriam the Captain – Basic Scouting
Horn of the Abyss
In Horn of the Abyss the skill effect was increased from +2 and +3 scouting radius for advanced and expert levels to +3 and +5 respectively.
Scouting specialty was introduced: it increases the scouting range by 1 every 6 levels.
Heroes with Scouting specialty:
Chance to get
Out of total 112 for Shadow of Death, and of (112 + Interference chance) for Horn of the Abyss .
Banned skills change the probability.
| Town | Class | Chance to learn |
|---|---|---|
 Castle |
Knight | 4 |
| Castle |
Cleric | 3 |
 Rampart |
Ranger | 7 |
| Rampart |
Druid | 2 (lowest) |
 Tower |
Alchemist | 4 |
| Tower |
Wizard | 2 (lowest) |
 Inferno |
Demoniac | 5 |
| Inferno |
Heretic | 3 |
 Necropolis |
Death Knight | 4 |
| Necropolis |
Necromancer | 2 (lowest) |
 Dungeon |
Overlord | 5 |
| Dungeon |
Warlock | 2 (lowest) |
 Stronghold |
Barbarian | 8 (highest) |
| Stronghold |
Battle Mage | 4 |
 Fortress |
Beastmaster | 7 |
| Fortress |
Witch | 2 (lowest) |
 Conflux |
Planeswalker | 6 |
| Conflux |
Elementalist | 2 (lowest) |
 Cove |
Captain | 4 |
| Cove |
Navigator | 2 (lowest) |
 Factory |
Mercenary | {{{21}}} |
| Factory |
Artificer | {{{22}}} |
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User commentary
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In a multiplayer mode, Scouting is decent so as to discover the map faster. However, if playing against AI, there is a way to examine the uncovered lands, saving a slot for a more mighty secondary skill: save the progress and use a cheat which unveils the whole map, then return to your normal game, having remembered the most important things (i.e. location of various map objects, artifacts, enemy heroes, their force and proximity to your towns, etc.) Anyway, as the game is played, the map is often getting fully unveiled, or at least everything important for the mission is disclosed, sooner or later. Scouting is a useful secondary skill early in the game. It enables hero to quickly reveal undiscovered lands, which may give the player an useful insight where to venture. However, during the end part of the map when the most important areas are already revealed, scouting becomes somewhat useless. For this reason, scouting is most useful for scout-type secondary heroes combined with traveling skills logistics, pathfinding and navigation. Scouting can, however, be useful to counter the effect's of Necropolis darkness shroud or the adventure map object Cover of Darkness. Things that ruin Scouting |