Tips and Tricks!

[Orange Guise]

Are you struggling to loop?

Here's some off-the-cuff basic advice, pieced together by an evil genius!



TIP 1: PAUSE BEFORE FINISHING A LOOP.

When you finish a loop, it all gets harder. Monsters will level up and that makes them substantially more dangerous. You always want to go to planning mode and take stock of how you're doing - if you are in trouble and need to bail out, or do some other sneaky things to take control of the map.

if you stop before reaching your camp and think carefully, you can preserve precious resources and effort. If you are planning to return to camp, dump all the landscape cards you have that are worth resources.


TIP 2: DON'T BE IN SUCH A HURRY TO PLAY LANDSCAPES. HURRY UP AND PLAY ROADS/ADJACENTS.

Treasuries can make holding a handful of landscape cards fruitful. It's best to conserve Mountains. And Meadows can be played carefully for bonuses. You don't need to play Landscape (far from road) all that quickly, and there might not be as much benefit as you think.

TIP 3: DO NOT PLAY GRAVEYARDS CARELESSLY.

Skeletons deal Unga-Tons of damage. They are dangerous foes, and the more enemies you are taking on, the more likely they will become a problem. As your road crowds with enemies and your travels slow, days will pass. A 4-skeleton Graveyard can be a major issue, especially past day 5.

TIP 4: EVERY 10 ROCK TILES, GOBLINS APPEAR. SAVE YOUR ROCK CARDS UNTIL YOU HAVE DECENT REGENERATION, OR A PLAN.

Playing Mountain cards will bulk up your maximum HP. But it won't recover any HP at all. You'll need to heal back the difference. It doesn't hurt you, but... until you can recover it, it could be a liability. Goblins are vicious. Make sure you can handle them, or can regenerate your HP, before you play loads of mountain tiles.

TIP 5: PLAY YOUR MEADOWS NEXT TO OTHER NON-MEADOW SPACES.

This will make them bloom. It gives you the Change resource, and it also bumps up their daily regeneration effect.

TIP 6: PLAYING A 3x3 OF ROCK WILL CREATE A BIG MOUNTAIN - AND HARPIES.

Try to make your 3x3 with small rocks, then surround it with big mountains to maximize gained HP. Harpies can be a good source of treasure, if you can manage your HP effectively.



TIP 7: SET THE BATTLEGROUND ADJACENTS NEAR EACH OTHER TO CHANGE THE OVERLAPPING ROAD TILES.

Blood clots will appear and can provide extra foes.

TIP 8: SET VAMPIRE MANSION ADJACENTS INSIDE CORNERS AND SWITCHBACKS (U-TURN) TO MAXIMIZE FOES.

you'll spawn Vampires on up to 7 tiles.

TIP 9: LATEGAME, SPACE OUT COCOONS ON INSIDE TURNS (5 to 7) TO MAXIMIZE SPIDER SPAWNS.

Spiders spawn really aggressively, and spawning them over a large area can pad out your combat.

TIP 10: FULLY SURROUND TREASURIES TO RECEIVE SOME RARE ITEMS FOR YOUR CURRENT LEVEL.

Avoid finishing Treasuries until you think your equipment needs an upgrade.

(StarRunner says - ) TIP 11: PLAY A VAMPIRE MANSION NEXT TO A VILLAGE TO GET A DESTROYED VILLAGE.

This is an interesting little thing you can do. It will change again after three loops.

TIP 12: GOBLINS THAT SET UP NEXT TO SWAMPS WILL SPAWN GOBLIN ARCHERS.

Look out for advanced goblins.

(shard says - ) TIP 13: TRY USING OBLIVION ON A VILLAGE THAT ALREADY SPAWNED ITS FARMS, YOU'LL GET TO KEEP THE FARMS.


====
BASIC BESTIARY
Stats are Per-Lap. That can get deadly if you don't keep an eye on it.
Correctly assessing which stats are best for your monster can help you pick out just the right gear.

Slime: 13 HP, 3 DMG per lap. 0.6 attackspeed. Power rating 23.4
STRENGTHS: Slimes only drop junk items - low level, no bonuses and very few rare/magic items. Dealing with slimes means largely wasting your time.
FIGHTER COUNTER: Slime damage is very low. HP regeneration in all its forms will relieve the small amount of danger from slimes, and even turn encounters into chances to heal.
Slimes are not dangerous and you should not base a strategy around fighting them.
PLACEMENT TIPS: PLACE SOMETHING. The bad old slime will go away.

Ratwolf: 16 HP, 3.5 DMG per lap. 0.75 Attackspeed. Power Rating 41.86
STRENGTHS: Ratwolves are a fair mix of durable and evasive. They are not too harmful, but they will roam into areas with other monsters and absorb attacks, letting more dangerous monsters stay alive longer.
FIGHTER COUNTER: Yes. I mean, use COUNTERATTACK. Ratwolves have a different attackspeed than most fighters, so you might be able to attack very rapidly due to how counterattack works - when enemies attack simultaneously, you only can counter one foe.
PLACEMENT TIPS: If you space your groves 2 tiles apart, you'll reduce the overall concentration of Ratwolves - as well as maximize potential spawns over time later on. In a pinch, drop a Grove infront of your guy to cheese one resource at the cost of sub optimal placement.

Skeleton: 12 HP, *26.6 DMG* per lap, 0.3 Attackspeed. Power Rating *95.76*
STRENGTHS: Skeletons are strong enough to act as cleanup - while on the brittle side, their damage is overwhelmingly high. They attack slowly, spawn slowly, and will probably end your run in failure if you get crazy.
FIGHTER COUNTER: Attackspeed, Defense, and Damage are critical to Skeletons. Beat them down before they get a chance to retaliate. Strike a good balance and strive to allow zero attacks. Skeletons are the true Power Check. Skeletons drop really good loot. so you'll probably have an easy time if you can kill the Skeleton.
PLACEMENT TIPS: Graveyards are best isolated, early on. Mixing an early skeleton with some Ratwolves and a Vampire is a recipe for a loop-3 game over. Later, though, you will want to pair them with something fragile, like Spiders, or put torches nearby - a 4-pack of Skeletons is Really Bad News. Perhaps the best place for a Graveyard is just after your town - you will have just healed up, and it will provide you with leveled gear to handle the upcoming loop. Just don't overdo it. . .

Harpy: 14 HP, 5.4 DMG per lap. 0.8 attackspeed. Power Rating 60.
STRENGTHS: A solid mix of ferocity and toughness, perhaps the biggest issue with Harpies is their behavior - they move to a random link of road, and they might team up with anything. If they pair with a couple Skeletons, a Flesh Golem, or a Vampire, things might suddenly get bad.
FIGHTER COUNTER: You never get too many harpies, since they are only spawned by one special multi-tile structure. Fighting them early, and respecting their force later, are the keys to milking this one.
PLACEMENT TIPS: If you want extra harpies, start your structure close to the road. Chrono Crystals will double the amount of Harpies you get, and they have fairly good drops.

Gargoyle: 5.25 HP, 8.58 DMG per lap, 0.3 attackspeed. Power Rating 13.
STRENGTHS: They hit a little hard but they aren't too tough to handle most of the time. The Power Rating says it all.
FIGHTER COUNTER: You got some good items from that tile - oh wait, here comes some more freebies! Your countermove is an open palm.
PLACEMENT TIPS: Aside from those already mentioned, keep in mind that building that structure near the road, will require a different tile to complete.

[Orange Guise]

On a side note (Balance) ... why even bother with Lighthouses?

Going faster through the loop just means facing tougher enemies sooner.

=/ Seems to me like a "Never Build" type of thing.

[Qjuad]

Lighthouses can be useful in certain circumstances if you are going for a high attack speed build - works well with the trait that gives a 20% chance to stun on hit.

[Daystar]

If you place a vampire mansion on a road piece above a village, you will get a destroyed village that will turn into something better after 3 loops

[Betim]

Ohhh! Those are some nice tips!

[o4zloiroman]

What's the point of Vampires and Spiders? Just loot and cards?

[glass]

Originally posted by Orange Guise:

On a side note (Balance) ... why even bother with Lighthouses?

Going faster through the loop just means facing tougher enemies sooner.

=/ Seems to me like a "Never Build" type of thing.

You take less days to clear a loop. This means that monster's won't stack up as much.

[SVBB]

Originally posted by o4zloiroman:

What's the point of Vampires and Spiders? Just loot and cards?

Isn't that point of like... everything? (Also i feel like Vampires drop more Vamp% equipment)

[Orange Guise]

Originally posted by glass:

Originally posted by Orange Guise:

On a side note (Balance) ... why even bother with Lighthouses?

Going faster through the loop just means facing tougher enemies sooner.

=/ Seems to me like a "Never Build" type of thing.

You take less days to clear a loop. This means that monster's won't stack up as much.

But you want to clear loops with as many monsters as absolutely possible . . . to maximize the ratio of items, raise your overall fighting power, and be a general force of loop nature... right?

What good comes of short loops?

[InsideOut]

Originally posted by glass:

Originally posted by Orange Guise:

On a side note (Balance) ... why even bother with Lighthouses?

Going faster through the loop just means facing tougher enemies sooner.

=/ Seems to me like a "Never Build" type of thing.

You take less days to clear a loop. This means that monster's won't stack up as much.

So do I understand correctly enemies' strength grows with each day, not with each loop?

Interesting, as treasure chests also spawn with each new loop.

[Orange Guise]

Originally posted by InsideOut:

Originally posted by glass:

You take less days to clear a loop. This means that monster's won't stack up as much.

So do I understand correctly enemies' strength grows with each day, not with each loop?

You misunderstand.

Enemies' strength grows with each loop, not with each day.

[Turnil]

use the lamp and the bloodgrove to make harder battles (goblins and skeletons) easier.

[shard]

farming more food: build a village with one or two fields, then use an Oblivion to destroy the village leaving the fields behind

[pheasant]

Nice tips! Thanks for this

[Clarkus]

If you put a vampire mansion next to a swamp, a vampire will spawn and give everything vampirism. The reason this can be VERY good in a swamp is that healing damages, so every hit you take will damage the monster. Just have to be careful not to have too much vampirism yourself in that run, otherwise it can wreck your health. But having a blood grove nearby can make farming flesh golems a snap.

[VayuNya]

SET BLOOD GROVE ADJACENTS TO GROVE, THEN REMOVE THE GROVE, THE BLOOD GROVE CHANGED TO HUNGRY GROOVE
The hungry grove occasionally attacks the hero but he devours enemies that have less than 20% hp left.

SET WHEAT FIELD ADJACENTS TO VILLAGE, THEN REMOVE THE VILLAGE, THE WHEAT FIELD CHANGED TO OVERGROWN FIELD
The overgrown field still spawns a scarecrow every 4 days but now he'll creates a field of blades (enemies) on EVERY empty tiles during the battle too