How to Level Your Dynasty Weapons FAST - version 1.21
So I was interested in leveling my dynasty weapons quickly and had read that this could easily be done by letting the neutral stacks on the map grow very large first and then fighting them. I had no success with this method, I believe it has been nerfed in the most recent patch, as well as other methods of quickly leveling them (like user-made weapon-leveling maps). The amount I gained would be almost none or none at all. However, after a decent bit of testing, I found a method that allows one to level many weapons to five in a short while (30 mins or less), and have decided to share this information.
Here are a few things I've learned:
Dynasty weapon XP is not gained in battles when one's hero is max level for non-campaign maps.
Quick combat gives no dynasty XP.
Reloading a map and fighting a battle you previously fought will award no XP to your dynasty, unless the battle is fought with a different hero.
Fighting a very large number of creatures does not fill the dynasty weapon as much as it should, caps at some amount.
Most importantly, when neutral stacks try to run from your hero's army, you get XP added to the dynasty weapon, without fighting, and it's a lot! (this is what I abused to level my weapons quickly)
Some neutral stacks do not grow each week (generally "friendly" disposition stacks)
Also, creature stack size caps at 999,999 (this will be significant later)
So for the reasons I just described, the quickest way to level a dynasty weapon would be to spam ending turns until neutral stacks are large and then be strong enough that they will flee from your army and instantly fill your weapon to five. Now there are normally a few problems with this, for starters, it may be difficult or time consuming for you to recruit enough creatures to combat such large neutral stacks, no worries, I found a solution to that too.
Here is what I did, start a new necropolis campaign and be sure to set creature growth and neutral stack sizes on the highest allowed, AI can be whatever you like. At the very start there are 3 friendly sets of mobs, 1 ghouls, and 2 skeletal spearmen. The ghouls are the type of stack that does not grow each week, so feel free to recruit them immediately. However, do not grab the skeletons yet. At this point, repeatedly end your turn. Do this until the set of skeletal spearmen reaches 999,999(this is the maximum, it is important to get the maximum for this to work optimally). The size of the stack can easily be checked by attempting to attack them and then retreating. The stack will finally reach the max at the start of month 28. This is easily the most time consuming step, but easy level 5s are at your fingertips after this. Once you have them recruited, dismiss the ghouls in your army and split the skeletons into 7 roughly evenly divided stacks. The reason for this is, when you attempt to recruit the next stack of skeletal spearmen the game will automatically merge them with your biggest stack of spearmen. If you do not split the stacks you will not gain any from recruiting them. At this point you have 2 stacks of almost 1 million spearmen. Continue forward slightly and there are praetorian's guarding the exit. I think this stack is bugged as it always attempted to run from me, even though their disposition was hatred. Before engaging them, put on whatever dynasty weapon you want to be level 5. Allow them to run and BAM! you have your first quick level 5 weapon. Exit the underground and continue forward to the next subterranean gate. In this underground area there will be a stack of friendly ghouls that is also maxed. Recruit them into your army now too and make a save file. At this point you have 3 million troops. Now all you have to do is equip whatever weapon you want to level and start approaching every mob on the map. All of the ones that attempt to run from you will give you an instant level 5 weapon, just retreat and not fight those that do not run. Then you can reload your save, buy a different hero, and max more weapons by approaching the mobs with the new hero too. Reload and use a new hero until you are satisfied or it stops giving you experience. And that's it! One should be able to get many weapons maxed per run.
The reason for maxing our stacks is that the random enemy stacks will also cap at 999,999. Therefore, we'll have 3x the army size of any core creatures on the map and they will be guaranteed trivial and more likely to run. Because friendly stacks are almost always initially smaller than other stacks, if we did not max the stack size nearly all neutrals on the map would still be double or triple our army's size. By exploiting the cap we have the army size advantage, at least against single stacks of core creatures.
For anyone having trouble defeating any neutral stacks that one is required to fight, simply purchase a might hero from the first castle and give them the dynasty weapon Arachne, at at least rank 4, loan them the big army you just recruited, and defeating those neutrals will be trivial.
Hope this post helps others with weapon questions, post if you have any questions or perhaps a better way to level weapons(that hasn't been nerfed). As this was practically the first map that this worked on I bet there may be some better ones for this.
Credit to Zebos1 for discovering that using a new hero will allow gaining dynasty XP for previously fought battles on reloads(sometimes stops working).