If you haven't played a few good games of Enchanted Forest yet, but plan to, I highly recommend you play before reading this analysis.

Most of the strategy involved in Enchanted Forest is picking your fights. There's a hit/gold tradeoff in most of the situations you have control over, and the question arises -- what's a good trade and what isn't? There's no one answer. Toward the beginning of the game, it's good to preserve hits to ensure you have enough time to do the basic "big" tasks such as finding the Blackstone and all the level boosters. Toward the end of the game, if you have lots of hits, you want to grab all the gold you can find, because the last thing you want to do is visit every non-tree square and have gobs of hit points left over -- that means there were risks you could have safely taken before that you didn't.

Here's a brief analysis of the tradeoffs in the game:

--------- POTIONS/TRAPS ---------

Although you don't have any control over what strength potions and traps you hit, the potency of each of these items is greatly affected by the current level. So obtaining the level boosters -- four of which you *can* strategically track down -- do affect your average wins/losses.

Strength potions give you 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 hit points for levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively. Trap losses are random: 50-100, 50-150, 50-200, 50-250, 50-300, and 50-350 (for levels 0-5). If you take the strength potion gains and compare them to trap losses, the ratios of gain to loss for each level are: 0.67:1, 1:1, 1.2:1, 1.33:1, 1.43:1, 1.5:1. So it's in your best interest to ascend to Level 2 as fast as you can, when, on average, you'll gain, rather than lose, hit points on these two squares. (Potions and traps appear with equal likelihood, so that doesn't enter into the equation.)

--------- GAMBLING SALOONS --------

The idiosyncrasy about the gambling saloons is, if you bet 350 gold pieces and win, you aren't charged for the initial bet -- you just get the winnings. As a result, it is ALWAYS a good idea to bet the maximum no matter what the odds. If you bet 350 gold pieces every time you hit a saloon, you'll gain, on average: 175, 116, 87.5, 70, and 58.3 gold pieces per gamble, when the odds are 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, respectively. Betting any amount above zero, however, will always average out to a gain in the long run. Don't ask me how those ogres make a living.

------------ CHESTS -----------

Now we come to hits vs gold tradeoffs. Chests always provide gold (and starting at level 2, may also provide saws), but they can often be trapped and cause a loss of hit points. Sometimes it isn't worth it. Sometimes it is. Chest traps can cause losses in the range of: 10-200, 10-220, 10-240, 10-260, 10-280, and 10-300, depending on the current level. The chances a chest will be trapped are 60%. So the average hit point loss per chest is 63, 69, 75, 81, 87, and 93, depending on the level.

The ranges of gold found in chests are: 100-1300, 100-1400, 100-1500, 100-1600, 100-1700, and 100-1800. So the averages are 700, 750, 800, 850, 900, and 950.

All told, the ratio of average gold gains to average hit losses are: 11.11:1, 10.87:1, 10.67:1, 10.49:1, 10.34:1, and 10.22:1. In other words, it's better to open chests on lower levels rather than higher levels. However, the differences are slight, and opening chests even on the highest level is still a bargain. The risk is that the hit point losses can be quite large, and in general you don't want to open chests unless you have hit points to spare.

----------- MONSTERS -----------

The average monster takes 55 hit points to kill. The average treasure is worth 235 gold pieces, and you get a 50 point bonus per monster kill, bringing the total gains to 285 points. So the average ratio of points gained to hits lost is 5.18:1. However, with monsters you can pick your fights. You know what the rate of return is going to be up front. In general, it's worth fighting any monster guarding a pile of gold, because the ratio is 10.5:1 at worst and 105:1 at best. Whatever the case, learn the values of all the treasures, the strengths of all monsters, and consider the ratio when picking your fights.

If a monster is guarding a worthless coin, you don't get any gold for fighting, but you do get the 50 point bonus, so if it's an orc, that's still a 5:1 gain. If it's a kobold, it's a 2.5:1 gain, which is marginal. Running is one good choice in this case, because, it being a weak monster, you have a good chance of getting away, and if you don't, it won't be disastrous. If anything higher is guarding it, bribing is probably the best option -- the amount of money a monster will take for a bribe depends more on the treasure than the monster, and if he's guarding a worthless coin, he'll only take a very small amount.