The first turn freeze is a strategy employed by Battledomers early on in their careers, and takes them well into the high end game. At the lowest levels, this is attempted with unreliable freezing, but inexpensive, abilities and weapons such as: fiery gaze, snowglobe staff, and the frost cannons, to name a few options. The purpose of the first turn freeze is to render an opponent helpless for the second round of combat, allowing the attacking player to get their damage through completely unblocked. Typically this attack will consist of the highest damage weapons in that person's arsenal with fierce or berserk attack. Honey potions are probably the favorite item to use unblocked, but are expensive. Other weapons in this family include Jhudora's Potion, Battle Potate, Cake Bomb, Ummagine Battle Muffin, and Ummagine Bomb; there is a long list of once-per-battle high damage weapons. Also in this situation, attackers will typically use very high damage multiple use weapons that are easily blocked, such as the Attack Pea. Once a pet reaches that point where it cannot be killed by a general opponent by a first turn freeze, this strategy becomes something less of a threat. That can take well over 300 to 400 hit points on a middle range pet. Pets in the strength 150 to 200 range can do anywhere from 100 to 350 damage with the right weapons in an unblocked situation. This is why defending against the first turn freeze is almost mandatory, and the only way to do this is to first turn freeze in response. Once players reach equilibrium with the bilateral first turn freeze the battle frequently becomes an issue of which can get in a second freeze using fiery gaze; this is what makes reliable freezing weapons so valuable (Hypno Helmet and Freezing Potion). A player relying on a Snowglobe Staff or a Frost Cannon for a first turn freeze MUST use fiery gaze as well to improve the odds of actually getting the freeze. If both effects freeze on the same turn, then when effect has been wasted. A player with a Hypno Helmet or Freezing Potion has a 100 percent chance of a first turn freeze, and does not have to use Fiery Gaze until later turns. If a pet reaches a point where it can survive an unblocked attack from most opponents, the first turn freeze stops dictating style of play; i.e. it no longer becomes mandatory to use freeze effects on the first turn. In fact, higher level battledomers will save their freeze abilities for the end battle, in the hopes of finishing off badly wounded high hit point opponents.

Assuming both battledomers have reached the stage of battledoming I like to call MAFTF (mutually assured first turn freeze; i.e. both players are going to freeze reliably on the first turn) the next step in the progression is the after the first turn freeze, which involves trading shots between opponents until one achieves a second freeze through the use of the faerie granted ability Fiery Gaze. This strategy is used as frequently in the high end game as it is in the low end game, if energy permits as battles draw to closes.
The same principles and reasoning apply to this second freeze. It's purpose is to get through an unblocked high damage attack.

Unless the results of the First Turn Freeze and the After The First Turn Freeze is the death of one of the opponents, battledomers are going to have to trade punches. There are varied schools of thought on the best way to go about this, but these variants generally reduce down to one of two basic approaches to the Battledome. The first of these is a high damage fast attack capability (which I call the West Coast Offense after an American football strategy). This approach utilizes high damage reusable fast attack weapons, the purpose being to inflict as high an amount of damage as possible, but sacrificing the ability to defend. Weapons commonly used in this approach include the Lost Desert Dagger, Plastic Halloween Fork, Battle Ducks, Zaptwig, Mono Claw, Mystical Fish Lobber, and Faerie Slingshot. There are many other weapons that fit into this style of fighting. Combatants in this fighting style will generally rely heavily on Fierce and Berserk Attack, Heal, and Drain Life. The opposite of this, and the second approach, is what I call the Old School Defense approach (again, borrowed from American football). This style emphasize the blocking of incoming damage, frequently to the detriment of outgoing damage. The goal is to inflict more damage than is blocked. Commonly used weapons in this style include Dirty Snow, Fire Snow, Radioactive Snow, Attack Fork, Metallic Sun Staff, Hand Painted and Winged Scarab, Tornado Ring, Rod of Dark Nova, and others. These are all weapons which block damage, but also do damage back. Variants of this school use "Shields" (weapons which only block) combined with West Coast weaponry (a Lost Desert Dagger, for instance; all attack, no defense) to achieve a similar effect. Combatants in this fighting style will generally rely heavily on Improved Defend, Burrow, Sink and Drain Life.

There is no evidence yet to support any difference between the level at which an ability is used. Drain Life will not drain more life on the "strong" setting than it will on the "weak" setting, it will just drain your energy faster to use it on "strong". The "strength" of an ability does not seem to matter except in the cases of Burrow and Sink, and this has not been confirmed. That said, my advice on the strength to use for your abilities is to use Medium for Burrow and Sink, or Strong if you want to burn 60 percent of your energy on those two moves. Always Drain Life, Heal and Fiery Gaze on weak. Diamond Dust will do the same thing as Fiery Gaze and there is no reason to use it at a strength other than weak. Understand this: USING ABILITIES ON WEAK WILL CONSERVE YOUR ENERGY. You will be able to use more abilities for more turns by conserving your energy. This is important.

There is no evidence that the level of a faerie ability has any discernable effect on the ability. That may change in the future, and with that in mind, it is NEEDLESS to get faerie abilities that you don't need, since most of the methods to raise the level of faerie abilities raise random abilities. Following are my recommendations for faerie openings:

Level 1: 1 water faerie: this will grant the ability Heal

Level 6: 3 fire faeries: this will grant the useless Level 1 and Level 3 abilities Smoke Screen and Fiery Roar as well as the extremely useful Level 6 ability Fiery Gaze.

Level 10: 4 earth faeries: this will grant the Level 1 ability Magic Pebbles (useless), the Level 3 ability Tough Skin (blocks one water, not totally useless but seldom used), the Level 6 ability Magic Berries (which some think is good enough to warrant opening these faeries at Level 6), and Level 10 ability Burrow, a critical blocking ability.

Level 21: 7 dark faeries: forget about the slew of lower level abilities this gives you, it gives you most importantly the ability Drain Life. It also grants the Level 17 ability Shadow Health, which may be a useful spell.

Level 30: 1 more dark faerie, for the ability Sink.

For best character development I believe in opening the faeries in this order at these levels. I believe this because, as noted before, the fewer abilities you have the greater the chance a good one gets increased when you get an ability level increase (Wheel of Excitement, for example, grants these increases, to name but one source; neggs are another). If the only ability that can get increased from Level 1 to Level 6 is Heal, guess what, it's going to be the one that gets increased.

Drain Life is currently the most used and abused faerie ability in the game. It would not surprise me if any moment now the Neostaff decided to make this a once per battle ability in the manner of Sink and Burrow. Drain Life essentially takes 11 percent of an opponent's hit points and transfers them to the caster. It cannot be blocked. It cannot be stopped. Used on weak, it could be done 10 times before the caster ran out of energy. Against higher hit point opponents this can be devastating. Consider a pet using Drain Life and an Everlasting Crystal Apple (an item that heals for 30 points and can be used round after round and won't break) against a pet with 300 or so hit points. This means that for the first few rounds that pet is adding an average of 60 points to their health. Their opponent must not only inflict greater damage than that in order to have any impact, but if they fail to produce as much damage as the attacker is generating with their second weapon, they are being out damaged and they will lose.

Grenades is a term that I use for any once per battle weapon. These weaons are just what they say, items that may only used once per battle. Some of these items when used will vanish forever. Weapons in this family include Snowballs, Snowflakes, Exploding Pizza Pasty, and Clockwork Grundos to name but a few. Another class of these items are persistent, that is they may only be used once per battle, but you get them back when the battle is over. Weapons in this family include Mud Mixture, Illusens Earth Potion, Honey Potion, and Battle Potato to name only a few.

Grenades commonly carry higher damage output than their equivalently priced multi-use counterparts, hence their popularity. The drawback to this high damage, other than the once per battle restriction, also tends to be the restriction of these types of weapons to only one per pet and the attacks are generally composed of only one or two types of easy to block icons.

What all of this essentially means is that grenades, in the absence of higher damage output multi-use weapons, are extremely popular, and reasonably so, for use in attacks that will be unblocked; in fact they are usually not effective at all if used in any other situation. This does not mean they can't be, and that there aren't exceptions to the rule.

Weapon Generators are another commonly used family of weapons. These devices essentially generate one use grenades, to be used as described in the Lesson on grenades. Weapons in this family include the Hawk Wand, the Snowglobe Staff, the Tiki Bomb Bag, and the Box of Clockwork Grundos, to name a few. An examination of these four items reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of weapon generators. Hawk Wand is a weapon which does one of two things: it either generates a Hawk Feather, which is a dismally weak four icon damage output one use grenade, or it blows up and does a LOT of damage to the pet using it. Obviously, this is a horrible weapon generator. Not only does it fail to produce a grenade capable of inflicting any real damage, but it stands a good chance of hurting the pet that uses it. Snowglobe Staff is one of the strangest weapon generators created yet. This weapon will do several different things, but never more than one thing at a time. It will attempt to defend against an icy snowball, whether an icy snowball was thrown against you or not (and possibly break for the battle). It will generate a very weak hand grenade known as a yellow snowball (and possibly break for the battle). It will attack for six icons of damage spread across two icon types that are not easy to block (and possibly break for the battle). It will freeze the opponent (at which point it will no longer be available for the battle, like any other freezing item). Lastly, it will do nothing at all, and simply break for the battle. One can see that the likelihood of a favorable outcome with this weapon is not good, hence its position as very likely the least popular freezing item in the game. Tiki Bomb Bag is a weapon generator which will produce one Tiki Bomb every time it is used. It is reusable throughout the battle, but it may break for the duration at any point. The Tiki Bomb is a great grenade, capable of doing as many as fifteen icons of damage spread across a three damage types. The advantage of a weapons like this is that it lets you produce a high damage grenade, possibly repeatedly, that is hard to block and even better to use in unblocked situations for the high damage output. The drawback is that it takes two turns to deploy the fruits of the Bag's labors (one turn to make the weapon, one turn to fire it). What this effectively means is that with the weapon your pet has managed to do 7.5 icons in attack for two turns in a row (the 15 maximum damage of the Tiki Bomb divided by two). This realization is the reason most high level battledomers shun these types of weapons. Box of Clockwork Grundo is one of the best of the weapon generators and suffers little of the drawbacks talked about so far. The Box is capable of producing between one and four Clockwork Grundos every time it is used. The Box will not break during the battle and can be used repeatedly. Two of the best things about this weapon are that it produces random Grundos (there are four Grundos, each doing a different type of damage), creating a situation where the pet's opponent has no idea what to block, and the Grundos themselves each hit for a maximum of 15 icons of damage, a very respectable amount of damage. The ability of the Box to produce multiple grenades essentially means that the pet using it can give up two inventory slots that most pets devote to two grenades and replace those with only the Box; this frees up an inventory slot. As a weapon generator, there are no drawbacks to this weapon. It is easy to see why it is so expensive and so popular.