LOD or merged meshes?

Hi I am trying to get my batches count down along with Tris number and wondering the best way to go about it.

I have bought SimpleLOD and Super Level Optimiser.

SLO will bake atlases but if i use ' Combine Meshes' it will merge all static meshes to one. which as i believe and please correct me if i am wrong will render to lod system on each of the object useless as they are all one mesh.

So not really sure what to do to be honest.

To Give you an idea of my level so far which i far from finished is 10 trees. 12 fences 10 logs level and character with sword shield and helmet = 68.9k tris, 79.3 k verts , batches 74 set Pass calls 54.

This is all set with Mobile shader one directional light. if i change the shader to standard it jumps to 112k verts.

I have fog applied with no GI.

Any suggestions as to current tris number and optimisation would be good..

seems really hard to get number of tris down as a 120tris tress converts to 1k once imported with normal diffuse shader. only 1D light shader seems to bring it down..

So i guess what is the best optimisation, combine meshes or LOD on individual meshes but higher draw calls.. even though same texture..(ish)

Thanks

Daniel