LF help on Bifrost challenging difficulty

[Mr_F0NG]

Hi, wondering if there was someone that would be willing to help me co op bifrost on challenging difficulty to get the achievement for it. I'm a little rusty, but I have beat the campaigns and at least one conquest on challenging/extreme. I own all the clans. If there is a particular one that works good in this mode, I can practice it before hand.

I'm open to using discord or just in game chat.

I'm also wondering how much time should be set aside, maybe schedule it for a weekend.

My timezone is -6 utc

Thanks!

[Regular Boar]

the thing is in my experience bifröst is way easier alone than with 2 players. i finished 3 runs alone. played one with my friend who is equally good/bad in this game and we were not able to finish the last mission. the reason imo is that waves get stronger with each player than one player's extra military power would give.

that being said i would still give it a try if you want, though i dont promise anything. so it might be a waste of time for you ; )

[Mr_F0NG]

Ah ok in that case I can give it some solo attempts. I was trying to do some research on solo vs co op but was really coming up short on the solo stuff. Any clan recommendations?

[Regular Boar]

i strongly recommend wolf clan. since there are tons of animals around (especially in the last level - vanaheim - which is the hardest) you have plenty of food. they also have a very strong military (berserker) which is key in bifröst.
very important picks are: 20% stronger and cheaper warchief (wolf unique) blood blades through side quest (life leech) and vanaheim blades through side quest. generally always pick blade rewards instead of tower or barricade. i also recommend keeping the tech 'military strategy' because after some waves there are no good choices so you just pick any military camp (warrior, shield bearer, shaman camp, dragon altar etc.) to get your attack power up. in the end i had 11 different units = 55% more dmg. interesting choice is brawler camp cause that is 5 units in one building. although its a lot of micromanagement to level and keep them alive - your choice
buildings i picked: fishing hut, healers hut, mine, forge, marketplace, axe thrower camp
good realms: midgard (start) idavoll (very easy game mechanics and lots of animals), vanaheim (last mission, mandatory), nidavellir (easy game mechanics and chance to get dwarf camp). muspellheim is also okay but not my first choice and niflheim is bad for every clan except bear clan
tip for first mission. scout all tiles around town hall. if there is no fish restart the run until there is

[Mr_F0NG]

These are great tips. I'll give it a shot!

[Regular Boar]

good luck. tell me how it went

[The Debauchery]

Originally posted by Regular Boar:

blood blades through side quest (life leech) and vanaheim blades through side quest. generally always pick blade rewards instead of tower or barricade.

Personally I take Vanaheim Towers, but for all other elements I'll go for blades.
Vanaheim Towers are particularly useful in defending zones since the shots make the monsters afraid, which means for a limited time they won't fight back at all and even villagers can wail on them. Better yet, if you get Wyvern Kill subquests and the like, you can sometimes unlock a 2nd guard tower per zone, while some of the other colonisation subquests can allow guard towers to fire 2 arrows at a time. Comboing all three of those together makes zones far more defensible.

It definitely isn't worth bothering with barricade upgrades since they're disposable anyway, and any more than one tower would be a waste since they don't stack.

As far as element stuff goes... Blood heals, Lightning does spike damage (and I think it stacks with Mjollnir), Venom & Fire do DoT, Ice / Frost slows enemies down. Storm makes attacks AoE, which would be useful against large crowds but you're usually not against big groups like that. Generally Storm is not worth considering if you're playing Lion or Stoat, and maybe with others. Similarly Blood is most useful if you don't have combat healers like Shamans... and I've noticed Bifrost likes to offer Shamans as a bonus quite often.

[Regular Boar]

oh maybe i got the name wrong. i meant those blades that can 'root' (but effectively disable) enemies for 3 seconds. wasnt that vanaheim blades? anyway i stack those with storm (splash dmg) and blood blades. great crowd control and ridiculous life leech. you are right, fear is good on towers however it declines in usefulness when waves getting too big in my experience. for the same reason i wouldnt bother with DoT's. except maybe when coupled with splash dmg (storm blades) lightning stacks with mjollnir however i found the extra dmg not good enough to occupy the relic slot and quest reward. i got lots of dmg through military strategy. my problem was always tankiness thats why i go for CC and life leech.
that being said i dont pride myself as an expert. i guess everyone has its own playstyle and different strategies. but that worked for me at least

[The Debauchery]

Originally posted by Regular Boar:

oh maybe i got the name wrong. i meant those blades that can 'root' (but effectively disable) enemies for 3 seconds. wasnt that vanaheim blades? anyway i stack those with storm (splash dmg) and blood blades. great crowd control and ridiculous life leech. you are right, fear is good on towers however it declines in usefulness when waves getting too big in my experience. for the same reason i wouldnt bother with DoT's. except maybe when coupled with splash dmg (storm blades) lightning stacks with mjollnir however i found the extra dmg not good enough to occupy the relic slot and quest reward. i got lots of dmg through military strategy. my problem was always tankiness thats why i go for CC and life leech.

I tend to use Mjollnir as my backup Relic if the clan-specific ones aren't better. Never hurts to have more damage, and I prioritise upgrading my troops anyway. I mean what are the alternatives, relic-wise? Lore? Happiness? Production? I guess maybe the last if you're struggling with that.

The tower thing with defence largely depends on positioning. I'm not sure how you do it, but I make sure to position the defence towers on the nearest side to base for every zone, typically opposite the direction the waves come from. And if I have two of them I space them far apart. The Bifrost enemies are largely melee attackers, so the more distance they have to cover while under fire (typically delayed by any workers in the zone too), the greater the chance they'll be beaten before even reaching the towers.
That said I haven't done exhaustive testing to find out whether the rate of fire from the towers varies depending on the distance of the enemies. But I think maintaining long range is still the better option.
In any case, I don't have difficulties with the waves if I claim the zones along the direct paths, barricade the entry direction, then place towers opposite that point at maximum range. Especially since they're almost always Vanaheim Towers and can stop the enemy in their tracks.

I believe the Vanaheim Blades are the ones that root enemies... but they're mutually exclusive with Vanaheim Towers.... so... I tend not to use them. Frost Blades have a similar effect, slowing enemies down. But honestly I don't have difficulty with most of the fights on most of the stages. It is the final boss of Bifrost that I'm usually preparing for, hence the focus on damage and health rather than AoE or movement control for troop weapons.

And I can understand tankiness being a concern... but it probably depends how many troops you're fielding. I tend to go heavy on the offence, light on the defence, and focus on taking down enemies before they can deal any significant damage. I usually go with about 1:3 melee to ranged attackers. For the final battle, having a warband of about 50 tends to work well enough, though a fair portion of them tend to be wiped out by the boss's third form. Still, it doesn't matter as long as they take her down.

[Regular Boar]

yeah no i absolutely agree with you on the relic thing. if the clan specific is not useful i get also mjollnir. i dont have problems with waves until the last mission. it gets really strong after year 4 or so and i am too slow to be ready for the boss before that. if i dont have CC i always take heavy casualities that need almost a year to be replaced XD so there is still some learning curve for me i guess. so what you are saying is really helpful. although i wouldnt know how to get a warband of 50 people. how do you grow them so fast? breweries? because those i never pick. btw do you know if the boss is affected by the tech monster slayer?

[The Debauchery]

Originally posted by Regular Boar:

yeah no i absolutely agree with you on the relic thing. if the clan specific is not useful i get also mjollnir. i dont have problems with waves until the last mission. it gets really strong after year 4 or so and i am too slow to be ready for the boss before that. if i dont have CC i always take heavy casualities that need almost a year to be replaced XD so there is still some learning curve for me i guess. so what you are saying is really helpful. although i wouldnt know how to get a warband of 50 people. how do you grow them so fast? breweries? because those i never pick. btw do you know if the boss is affected by the tech monster slayer?

Re: Year 4 .... I rarely have things going on that long, I admit. I should also note I've only done it once in Extreme, with Boar, and Vanaheim gives them a natural advantage since they can claim the strong Vanaheim animals just as easily as Northgard ones. The only major downside is that even Boar can't conquer the dens any more than anyone else can, even with the lore explicitly for doing that. But if the animals claim any zones back from Boar then Boar can simply re-colonise and take the animals too IF they have the resources to colonise.
Re: Warband of 50, I usually have one or two specialised zones near my base so I can make one of every military building I got as bonuses along the way. I usually also have at least one military building that doesn't take up a building slot, and I build one of those in every single zone I can fit one in to push up the maximum warband size. Then once I've upgraded, maximised my resources, etc... I just convert pretty much every free citizen into a military unit and rush the boss. Repeat twice for the different stages and its a win.

I should also note that yearly bonuses that give you free Stone / Iron / etc are pretty useful.

[Regular Boar]

thanks again for sharing this useful insight : )
free stone/iron is kinda my favourite bonus. its rather rare though. i also like to pick +3 food/wood/krowns/lore. it gives a massive start on each map. altar of kings is also a big game changer for me. i think they should give it to everyone by default or at least offer this bonus to every clan at least once

[The Debauchery]

Seems Owl Clan is an absolute nightmare for Bifrost. I don't know what they're like in regular matches, but playing Owl Clan without any of their associated lore branches is borderline impossible. They need Lore to build everything, but Bifrost Mode doesn't give them any easy means of gathering lore early.... and unless I can unlock the necessary lores for gaining MORE lore from combat, or unlock the Boar Mender building, I suspect this run is going to end in failure.

[Edit]: I got access to Shamans. It wasn't ideal, but building Shaman buildings everywhere and constantly killing animals let me get a purification fire bonus to Lore gain, which is probably the sole reason I managed to get through Bifrost with this nightmare clan.
They're honestly not so bad when you've got like... 100 Lore Gain, but at anything less than 30 you're just wasting time waiting for lore to build up in order to do anything at all.

[Regular Boar]

owl clan is not my favourite though i think they got a lot of potential when played right. however they usually get enough lore from their unique scouts which you cant pick in bifröst since the scout building is given by default. therein lies the problem. the devs thought of giving the hörgr to kraken clan so this is clearly an oversight. i guess they didnt test bifröst with every clan before releasing it.
I think you cant unlock mender : ( at least it was never offered to me in any run. so yeah it sounds like its about getting warcraft lore or fail XD sailors wouldnt probably generate enough and altar of kings is too lategame to give significant lore gain...
I think I wont even try before they patched it. I mean they have to

[Mr_F0NG]

I found this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t00SxNY61Gs

Finally beat at least the first level on easy and still getting the hang of the wolf. I'll crank up the difficulty once I know what each level has in store and I'm not so slow with this clan lol

[The Debauchery]

Originally posted by Regular Boar:

owl clan is not my favourite though i think they got a lot of potential when played right. however they usually get enough lore from their unique scouts which you cant pick in bifröst since the scout building is given by default. therein lies the problem. the devs thought of giving the hörgr to kraken clan so this is clearly an oversight. i guess they didnt test bifröst with every clan before releasing it.
I think you cant unlock mender : ( at least it was never offered to me in any run. so yeah it sounds like its about getting warcraft lore or fail XD sailors wouldnt probably generate enough and altar of kings is too lategame to give significant lore gain...
I think I wont even try before they patched it. I mean they have to

Like I said, I managed it in the end with Shamans and the Flame of Purification.
I believe they gave the stone that summons the Norns instead of regular scouts, but as far as I could tell their only contribution to Lore is to use runestones in neutral zones... and since conventionally you can only summon 3 Norns (I got a bonus to let me have 5, but it still wasn't enough) it barely even contributes to the Lore income.
Funnily enough I didn't understand the true purpose of the Owl Clan relic when I played Bifrost, so I made life more difficult for myself than I had to by using the default Lore-boosting relic instead. It turns out that once you've actually built and placed that special Relic, it is insanely OP and pushes Owl Clan from struggling to progress to utterly rampaging. I just wish I'd understood how it works sooner.