How to beat Lakeburg?

[PET]

Hey there,

it's a bit sad that I'm on the 2nd map, I'm starting my 5th try and I still can't beat this. I did some Meta progression, it surely becomes a bit easier to reach late at night. In my past 3 games, I always lose at night 9.

So any tips?
What Omens to choose? I currently have Tainted Essence 30% & Extra Hero, so I start with 4.

Should I build walls? What about defenses?

Any kind of help is welcomed as I'm starting to get bored of the game. A try takes ~5 hours for me and it sucks failing and failing at the same map with almost no feeling of progression.

Thanks

[Bumc]

Probably not pushing fog away enough (build seer -> use it) or you completely misunderstand something and your builds lack any synergy as a result.
Generally if you get to wave 9 without dying it should be easy from there.

Walls are luxury, your materials are better spent on ballistas and maybe 1-2 catapults.
Extra hero isn't too good because you end up splitting exp, but it shouldn't be a big deal.
Best omens are probably just boring ones that make you hit harder -- %accuracy, %damage, %resist reduction, %opportunism and %isolation, dunno if you have them unlocked by now.

[PET]

Hmm... so yu say to do ballistas and catapults.
I used Seer last game to push the fog. I will try again.

[Registered Flex Offender]

I failed on the 2nd map the first time I tried it too. Here are 2 tiny tips, besides the above being said that the Seer pushing fog away is very important/most important. You have to judge your money and supplies when you think it becomes important. To me, if I am given 2 little lines of unrevealed fog... I am def pushing the fog. Before a boss it should be maxed (I think 4 or 5 times of using the fog upgrade).

- look at the # of enemies during the boss battle (often seems like infinite)
- increasing mana stat actually sucks, at least from my experience. I just got to stage 4 so maybe it is more useful later?

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Registered Flex Offender:

I failed on the 2nd map the first time I tried it too. Here are 2 tiny tips, besides the above being said that the Seer pushing fog away is very important/most important. You have to judge your money and supplies when you think it becomes important. To me, if I am given 2 little lines of unrevealed fog... I am def pushing the fog. Before a boss it should be maxed (I think 4 or 5 times of using the fog upgrade).

- look at the # of enemies during the boss battle (often seems like infinite)
- increasing mana stat actually sucks, at least from my experience. I just got to stage 4 so maybe it is more useful later?

I would argue against mana stat not actually being important. Allthough i would first ask you to clarify what you mean under it. If you mean raising the mana pool of a hero, then that is definetly worth it. Just think on a guy who can use a wand's multiple attack for 2 AP like 7 or 8 times, each dealing 400 damage. Not to mention casting that spell twice results you getting an AP back? Can be really worth it. Of course to each to his own play, some folks like to play ranged, some folks like to play melee. I prefer to play poisoneous:)
(With casters and preferably 1 handed xbowers:D)
Usually by Lakeburgs last night every one of my char has at least 70 mana, some even 120.
If one cannot use poison i make them into casters, or hard core rangers. Also i would also suggest to grind a bit before on Gilden haven first, increase the difficulty slowly to get as much stuff unlocked as possible.

[Registered Flex Offender]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by Registered Flex Offender:

I failed on the 2nd map the first time I tried it too. Here are 2 tiny tips, besides the above being said that the Seer pushing fog away is very important/most important. You have to judge your money and supplies when you think it becomes important. To me, if I am given 2 little lines of unrevealed fog... I am def pushing the fog. Before a boss it should be maxed (I think 4 or 5 times of using the fog upgrade).

- look at the # of enemies during the boss battle (often seems like infinite)
- increasing mana stat actually sucks, at least from my experience. I just got to stage 4 so maybe it is more useful later?

I would argue against mana stat not actually being important. Allthough i would first ask you to clarify what you mean under it. If you mean raising the mana pool of a hero, then that is definetly worth it. Just think on a guy who can use a wand's multiple attack for 2 AP like 7 or 8 times, each dealing 400 damage. Not to mention casting that spell twice results you getting an AP back? Can be really worth it. Of course to each to his own play, some folks like to play ranged, some folks like to play melee. I prefer to play poisoneous:)
(With casters and preferably 1 handed xbowers:D)
Usually by Lakeburgs last night every one of my char has at least 70 mana, some even 120.
If one cannot use poison i make them into casters, or hard core rangers. Also i would also suggest to grind a bit before on Gilden haven first, increase the difficulty slowly to get as much stuff unlocked as possible.

Gonna spoiler this text cuz I don't want to potentially take guesswork/trial-and-error out of anybodies fun. My first and 2nd run I used mana. Even created the mana structures first and constantly upgraded max mana. Ofc it was fun never hitting 0 mana. But after I died on the boss phase of stage 2, due to not being strong enough to kill stuff quickly, I had the idea to go right into damage and crit or jut damage depending on the perks. Basically glass cannon everyone. It seems to be working well, I beat stage 2 easy and then stage 3 easy on first try. The difficult part ofc is balancing mana use on the first few rounds. As for mana, the perks handle that very well. Some refill mana, some give crit when mana is low, etc. But being able to clear waves without mana is very fun. Or the crit perk that refills mana on crits will keep you loaded on mana even while using it.
I actually prefer poison in almost all videogames, but in this game it takes a lot of extra time that other abilities can do better + faster, since you should be keeping track of contagion and stuns + not going too crazy with poison damage, planning the spread, etc. Maybe later stages will require the poison

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Registered Flex Offender:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

I would argue against mana stat not actually being important. Allthough i would first ask you to clarify what you mean under it. If you mean raising the mana pool of a hero, then that is definetly worth it. Just think on a guy who can use a wand's multiple attack for 2 AP like 7 or 8 times, each dealing 400 damage. Not to mention casting that spell twice results you getting an AP back? Can be really worth it. Of course to each to his own play, some folks like to play ranged, some folks like to play melee. I prefer to play poisoneous:)
(With casters and preferably 1 handed xbowers:D)
Usually by Lakeburgs last night every one of my char has at least 70 mana, some even 120.
If one cannot use poison i make them into casters, or hard core rangers. Also i would also suggest to grind a bit before on Gilden haven first, increase the difficulty slowly to get as much stuff unlocked as possible.

Gonna spoiler this text cuz I don't want to potentially take guesswork/trial-and-error out of anybodies fun. My first and 2nd run I used mana. Even created the mana structures first and constantly upgraded max mana. Ofc it was fun never hitting 0 mana. But after I died on the boss phase of stage 2, due to not being strong enough to kill stuff quickly, I had the idea to go right into damage and crit or jut damage depending on the perks. Basically glass cannon everyone. It seems to be working well, I beat stage 2 easy and then stage 3 easy on first try. The difficult part ofc is balancing mana use on the first few rounds. As for mana, the perks handle that very well. Some refill mana, some give crit when mana is low, etc. But being able to clear waves without mana is very fun. Or the crit perk that refills mana on crits will keep you loaded on mana even while using it.
I actually prefer poison in almost all videogames, but in this game it takes a lot of extra time that other abilities can do better + faster, since you should be keeping track of contagion and stuns + not going too crazy with poison damage, planning the spread, etc. Maybe later stages will require the poison

No need about the spoiler:) I knew about that particular tactic, is what i meant on melee.(The build you mentioned was explained in detail in a differen thread about different builds, the one you described and other ones. I think i read it last july or august during the ea.)

Well, poison also has stunlock option. Also poison starts with 35 points now(it used to be 30 i think), and increasing it is not that hard, especially if you opt for a few items with poison increase. Depending on your heroes you can also go different paths too, multi-target and bounce both can really increase the spread. But yes sometimes you need to plan out how to spread it, but the same goes for glass tactic too, you need to figure out which way to go, to avoid being hit thereafter.(Allthough you can always get spiked defenses and a high enough block to assist, along with vamps. Whereas with a poisoner I can poison everyone in a 3 tile radius, get hp back from poisoning and also vampirism and spike works. You can combine poisoner with melee as well, but i prefer ranged in most games)

[A5G_Reaper]

That's a rather weird spot to constantly fail at. Either you didn't snowball your economy hard enough, your heroes have badly optimized build, or combat execution is badly done.

Omen: If you're struggling then picking +essence is a rather bad choice, isn't it? Better get something that help you survive. I used +1 housing, mysticism (+mana and mana regen on all heroes), and +8% crit. Housing snowballs the economy very hard especially with how many nights are available to do it. Mana and mana regen allows liberal use of spells early, and lakeburg doesnt have 4-pronged attack for quite some time so the starting three heroes are sufficient in defending it until then. And crit, well, it's just good stats.

Defense: Forget about walls until nearing the end. Max out catapults first, 2 at each corners and 1 at the midpoint. It helps a lot to clear the early waves, just remember to use them sparingly unless you have more than 1 hero with defensive training perk because if the hero lands a killing blow they get bonus exp. Ballista next, 10 at each side, dont ever bother making them mounted but do upgrade the operator as soon as possible. A couple barricades will do if you need to protect these in the meantime. Only after finishing building it that you can start getting walls. Reinforced wooden wall only, do NOT get stone walls. In fact, i at this point the starting stone walls still stand (dont ever waste material repairing them) you should tear them down. Being able to shoot through walls is important, and you'll never have enough material for full layer of stone walls or mounted ballista.

Economy: Gold mine, housing. You should have them fully or near fully upgraded by the third day. You can sell some of the starting equipment for extra fund to kickstart this, armor/pants/hat are generally safe to pawn off and so is some consumables and trinkets. Buying back things from the shop cost the same, so you can also temporarily sell something to get a "loan" of sort. Say, going from 27 to 30 gold to build a house then using the worker to scavenge a corpse, then using the gold to buy back the pawned equipment. Snowballing is important. After that you should build whatever you need. Crafting buildings are never bad. Seer if the fog gets too close. Mana wells and/or temple if you need them, or simply want to start boosting your heroes' HP and mana.

Use gold mines to get money, use money to upgrade crafting buildings, use the upgraded equipment to arm your heroes so they can comfortably hold back the horde by their own. Ideally you want only as many heroes as you strictly need (4 is a good number), so that at the last day you can instabuy maxed or near-max level heroes off the tavern and skip all the earlygame perks in favor of immediately making them a powerhouse.

Hero build: Primary damage stat boosts all damage output. Secondary damage stat, however, only boost the relevant skill. It's color coded, physical damage is red and is used by melee weapons. Ranged damage is yellow and is used by ranged weapons. Magic damage is purple and is used by magic weapons. These do NOT overlap, so careful not to pick dead stats. Similarly stats like momentum, multihit, or propagation only affect weapons that have those skills so there's no point picking momentum if you're using a bow.

Perk synergy is not something that can be explained shortly, but if you could post some screenshot of your heroes we can help point out if anything can be done about it.

Combat: Now this may looks simple at a glance, but if you just focus on killing the closest enemies then you'll inevitably get overran. In most cases you'll want to wound as many as possible, only killing those that will be able to walk up into the haven and/or whack a building that isn't barricade./wall. Wounds makes enemies slower, which depending on the distance could well double the turns needed for them to threaten anything. They also allows healthy enemies to catch up to them, making the clump a prime target for AoE. And finally, ballistas deals better with a large number of wounded enemies than a smaller number of healthy ones. Every bit counts when you're defending with minimal manpower.

The other aspect is target selection. Runners are fast, dodgy, and hard to hit, so if you have a wand user you should prioritize smacking them with the undodgeable attack. Or you let them pass for the undodgeable ballista to kill them. Dodger are even dodgier, largely same response. Splitter have decent block, either wallop them with big single-target hit or poison them. The flying ones have resistance, attack them with magic or poison. Armored are tanky if you hit it head on, but generally instadies to any armor-piercing attack. A bulky needs way too much focus fire to deal with, you hit it with the handbow's poison that debuff its movement point and just ignore it for three turns. Etc, etc, each enemies have the best way to deal with. You should build a toolbox capable of taking care a majority of the encounters. In particular the handbow is a very versatile weapon to have. It can wound a large number of enemies, it have poison, it have movement debuff, and it have propagate attack. The downside is that it's not very good against bosses, so keep that in mind.

[Registered Flex Offender]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by Registered Flex Offender:

Gonna spoiler this text cuz I don't want to potentially take guesswork/trial-and-error out of anybodies fun. My first and 2nd run I used mana. Even created the mana structures first and constantly upgraded max mana. Ofc it was fun never hitting 0 mana. But after I died on the boss phase of stage 2, due to not being strong enough to kill stuff quickly, I had the idea to go right into damage and crit or jut damage depending on the perks. Basically glass cannon everyone. It seems to be working well, I beat stage 2 easy and then stage 3 easy on first try. The difficult part ofc is balancing mana use on the first few rounds. As for mana, the perks handle that very well. Some refill mana, some give crit when mana is low, etc. But being able to clear waves without mana is very fun. Or the crit perk that refills mana on crits will keep you loaded on mana even while using it.
I actually prefer poison in almost all videogames, but in this game it takes a lot of extra time that other abilities can do better + faster, since you should be keeping track of contagion and stuns + not going too crazy with poison damage, planning the spread, etc. Maybe later stages will require the poison

No need about the spoiler:) I knew about that particular tactic, is what i meant on melee.(The build you mentioned was explained in detail in a differen thread about different builds, the one you described and other ones. I think i read it last july or august during the ea.)

Well, poison also has stunlock option. Also poison starts with 35 points now(it used to be 30 i think), and increasing it is not that hard, especially if you opt for a few items with poison increase. Depending on your heroes you can also go different paths too, multi-target and bounce both can really increase the spread. But yes sometimes you need to plan out how to spread it, but the same goes for glass tactic too, you need to figure out which way to go, to avoid being hit thereafter.(Allthough you can always get spiked defenses and a high enough block to assist, along with vamps. Whereas with a poisoner I can poison everyone in a 3 tile radius, get hp back from poisoning and also vampirism and spike works. You can combine poisoner with melee as well, but i prefer ranged in most games)

Yeah I just dislike the slow poison animations and also when it starts spreading, the game lags/stutters so its just more enjoyable for me to skip poison since the setup phase is already long as is, no need to add extra time. And I honestly didn't even look at any threads for tips cuz that would be boring, and I just bought the game a handful of days ago so I surely wouldn't buy a difficult roguelite to just cheat and figure out strong comps. Melee also works really good for me, but melee recruits seem to be much more picky with gear + perks imo, I do usually have 1 or 2

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Registered Flex Offender:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

No need about the spoiler:) I knew about that particular tactic, is what i meant on melee.(The build you mentioned was explained in detail in a differen thread about different builds, the one you described and other ones. I think i read it last july or august during the ea.)

Well, poison also has stunlock option. Also poison starts with 35 points now(it used to be 30 i think), and increasing it is not that hard, especially if you opt for a few items with poison increase. Depending on your heroes you can also go different paths too, multi-target and bounce both can really increase the spread. But yes sometimes you need to plan out how to spread it, but the same goes for glass tactic too, you need to figure out which way to go, to avoid being hit thereafter.(Allthough you can always get spiked defenses and a high enough block to assist, along with vamps. Whereas with a poisoner I can poison everyone in a 3 tile radius, get hp back from poisoning and also vampirism and spike works. You can combine poisoner with melee as well, but i prefer ranged in most games)

Yeah I just dislike the slow poison animations and also when it starts spreading, the game lags/stutters so its just more enjoyable for me to skip poison since the setup phase is already long as is, no need to add extra time. And I honestly didn't even look at any threads for tips cuz that would be boring, and I just bought the game a handful of days ago so I surely wouldn't buy a difficult roguelite to just cheat and figure out strong comps. Melee also works really good for me, but melee recruits seem to be much more picky with gear + perks imo, I do usually have 1 or 2

Hm not sure what you mean about the slow poison animation and the spread, i did not notice it. (Prolly because i play it on my better computer, or i just set up some stuff ages ago, and thus it does not show?)
Also there is another way to speed up things a bit during fight by pressing the space, but be careful as that time, due to lack for a better word i would say, the crawlers and folks "resonate" super fast:)

edit: oh no worries, i am an ea guy:)(Early access of course not Electronic Arts:P) When i see a deserving and interesting one i just love to try it.:) (Like two games i own came out of ea recently that were in EA for a while:D But there are like half a dozen more, perhaps i have that beta tester mind:))

[Samseng Yik]

My tips
1) 4 heroes at night 5, 5 heroes at night 8, 6 heroes at night 10. You can adjust anyhow you like. But when more directions of enemy come, you need more heroes and more AP to kill enemy
2) Spam Ballista, just make sure at least has some wall
3) Only need basic omens, such as accuracy boost, reduce resist, block boost, MP boost, extra resource boost.
4) A balance of hero role. So you are able to utilize every loot type instead of "Must get that weapon type"
5) Unlock all weapons with essence when they appear. And learn their strength.
Has a heroes equip 4 weapons (main hand and off hand) let you deal much damage in a turn. Always make sure each heroes equip 2 full set weapon/offhand/shield .
6) Big Game Hunter perk is useful against final boss

The rest is probably based on your tactic. Of course not every players has the same talent to play a genre of game well. Not everyone can eat Durian, or play Dark Soul well

[Handbanana]

Most importantly is never lose anything. No walls, ballistas, buildings or heroes. You absolutely should be S ranking every single night with no exceptions except maybe night 2 if you get a bad hero roll to start with useless weapons. Its all about snowballing. You should be gaining and getting stronger every night.

I beat it on my first attempt but i guess I played the early access a little so I have a general understanding of how the game works. Though a lot of balance has changed since then. Go all ranged and magic heroes. Melee is mostly useless and you literally can't use it against the boss anyway.

Get your gold mines up and houses up ASAP. Get your seer by day 3 or 4 at the latest. Make sure you buy the scavenger huts also and upgrade them for passive production. You likely won't actively be using them. One of the things that changed is ballistas take only materials and no gold now. The inn can be useful but you don't need extra heroes until day 5 or 6 and you don't technically "need" them at all if you build them right and get lucky with perks.

You need heroes with AE attacks. You need to be killing multiple enemies per turn per hero. 1 kill per AP is in general not very acceptable. Only exception maybe being longbow sniping high health enemies and high priority targets.

By the time I hit the boss I had most of my walls as stone and over 30 ballistas surrounding the town with 6 catapults and a few towers inbetween.

By the time the boss came up my main archer had 120% dmg, 45%crit + first blood so 60% on full health targets and almost 300 crit dmg. She would open up with a snipe for 2.8k on the boss when it crit. She killed the boss and the first arm by herself on the first turn.

[trash nurse]

The way I beat it is I focused on rifles due to their huge single target dmg.
On that last map I positioned my dudes around the hole and just shot up the thing when it popped out.

My build order was focused on gold.
workers first, then mines, then salvage.
Buy any gun upgrades you can from the shop

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Handbanana:

By the time I hit the boss I had most of my walls as stone and over 30 ballistas surrounding the town with 6 catapults and a few towers inbetween.

By the time the boss came up my main archer had 120% dmg, 45%crit + first blood so 60% on full health targets and almost 300 crit dmg. She would open up with a snipe for 2.8k on the boss when it crit. She killed the boss and the first arm by herself on the first turn.

I actually never build stone walls, because they restrict your heroes visuals.(Unless they changed that i am using that knowledge from early access). Instead of stone walls i built only the stronger wooden ones, and placed 40 ballistas. Catapults i did not use, however i placed down 5 warp-s because this way you could focus on killing the bosses, and then just switch back to the mobs. Because if you kill the monsters too fast they will take a turn or two to appear again. (The advancement of the night, aka the red line on top left, gives you a huge hint when the boss appears. Just like on the prior map.)

My wand user was doing 462 damage per hit. And i could use the third attack of it which is multiple attacks affected by multi-hit perk, 7 times for 2 AP. If he critted it was 692 damage. For the final dragon head it still took 2 turns:)
(Give or take +-20 damage)

Originally posted by Samseng Yik:

My tips

3) Only need basic omens, such as accuracy boost, reduce resist, block boost, MP boost, extra resource boost.

Actually what i advise is to take economic boosting omens. Like the one where you can scavange for free for the first time. +30 gold and +40 gold and 100 material (i think it is 100 might be 80)
Why? Because this way you can have after your first day starting with 188 gold. Or if you are able to accumulate the bodies at one specific point even higher. (removing a body for free every night can net you at least 18 gold, or more gold, or 3(!) items, which seem to be affected by the overall level of your item producing facilities.)
You should get the full amount of heroes, boost their xp gain, but not necessarily via points or perks spent. If you set up the item producing facilities, you can get really good weapons, armour and trinkets. The excess you can sell at the shop and use that extra money to roll for better items at the shop too. It is not uncommon for me at Lakeburg to have a guy have at least 2 level 5 red items. Which give 35%(!) to poison damage, xp, etc. Since they can have like at least 6 bonuses that can really matter, if say they boost overall damage, critical and for instance reliability. Having a guy or gal perform MAX damage all the time is something you really want to look forward to, with 60% chance of criticals it means that half the time or more he or she will do 1.5-1.75 or higher damage too.(I had a guy do 2.5 times damage too!)

[PET]

Thank you all for the tips! Finally managed to beat it!

I didn't know you can have more than 3 heroes. I also managed to create a pretty good economy early on. I prioritized 3 Gold Mines & Houses. I also got a lot of catapults & ballistas.

[Pitchslayer]

lol i beat it on Apocalypse 1 finally ! Thought the run was dead in turn 10 alrdy, but my two big game hunters killed it in the last round possible, bloody hell, lost 3 heroes, village completly gone, altar at 60 health. BAM BAM