Day C the Easy Way (Spoilers)

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Getting the day C achievement this way was pretty easy. Read on if you're having trouble with it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168517

If you're going to do this, be prepared to spend *a lot* of time on it. I don't know if the day length in the game is consistent, but I clocked one of the days at 4 minutes even. That works out to 6 hours and 40 mins to go 100 game days. If the day length varies by season or something, this number is inaccurate, but should still give you a good idea of what to expect.

Starting Assets:
Standard boat load of builders (3 I think)
2 knights.
8 archers.
Standard Horse.
Dog.
No Hermit.

I did something dumb on an island 5 run and paid the price so I decided to do a little achievement hunting. On island 1, I went for "On the Eighth Day I Fumbled" and island 2 was meant to be an "On the Ninth Day I First Ran" but I screwed that up and ended up going for "Day C" instead. It would have been nice to have a better horse and a hermit from the outset, but they just didn't appear on island 1. The knight hermit is essential to this approach, and the baker would be very nice to have.


The Island:
Island 2. At least I think so. I am positive that it's the one due east of island 1. In retrospect, I wish I did this on island 3 or 4 instead. You will spend a lot of time in winter doing this achievement and more portals to destroy is going to mean more teleporter shortcuts. On the other hand, depending on how the RNG lays the map out, a bigger island may just mean more walking.


The Layout:
Cliff Village Portal Boat Camp Merchant Knight Hermit Bear Village Archer Shrine Worker Shrine Portal Unicorn Village Dock


The Strategy:
The core difficulty of a Day C run is that the blood moon waves get pretty nuts as the days go by. The key to dealing with this problem? Don't allow the greed to spawn on blood moon night!

There are two key pieces of information you need to know to accomplish this. First, the cliff portal takes 3 full days to rebuild. Second, the blood moon happens every 5th or 6th night. I'm not sure what the pattern to the blood moon is. It might be random or predefined or based on some user action. My personal guess is that there's some sort of mathematical formula and it just depends on how it rounds. What I do know for sure is that after tracking it for about 60 days it was always either a 5 or 6 day interval. This may be different on a different island.


In Detail:
The first goal is to proceed normally and get the boat to the dock and fully ready to depart so you have an escape route if you screw up.

The second goal is to smash all the portals aside from the cliff portal.

The third goal is to get defenses close enough to the cliff portal to make attacking it feasible.

When you have accomplished the goals above and you're ready to proceed, wait for the next blood moon. Make a note of what day it is. For the sake of example, we will say day 30. This means that the *next* blood moon will be on either day 35 or 36.

On day 33, refresh your buffs and move your king to be in position to launch an attack the second the enemy wave is over.

On day 34, smash the cliff portal.

This is your window to do any recruiting and other stuff that you want to do. You also want to build up defenses as close to the cliff as practical. In my case, my wall was about 2-3 screens from the cliff face and was not backed up by a tower. If possible, leave a couple trees between your wall the portal to stop your hunters from getting too close. It wasn't possible in my case, but would have made things easier.

Be sure to refresh your buffs on day 36.

The blood moon will happen on either day 35 or 36 but there is no portal. It is important to note which day this happens on. Since there is no portal, the moon will not actually turn red. There will still be a storm and the blood moon music will play that night. For the sake of example, we will say that the blood moon happened on day 35. This means the next will be on day 40 or 41.

The portal will be rebuilt on day 37. The instant the portal is rebuilt, it will send a small wave of greed at you. If you don't have trees close to your wall, this can be a problem as your hunters will be spread out between the wall and the nearest trees or the portal. If this is the case, I recommend sitting where you can just see the cliff face at the edge of the screen on this day. Watch for the portal to pick up its last rock, and when this happens, don't wait around. Head back to the hunter that's nearest to the portal. A horse-length or two from the hunter, drop coins until you start to pick them back up. This should buy your hunters enough time to get back to the wall. As they retreat, follow them and drop more coins. After the wave is dealt with, pick up any excess.

From here, it's just going to be a routine. Since the last blood moon was on day 35, the next blood moon will be either on day 40 or 41.

Refresh your buffs and get in position to attack on day 38.

Destroy the portal on day 39.

Refresh your buffs and get in position to protect your hunters on day 41.

Blood moon on either day 40 or 41, let's say it was 41. Next blood moon on 46 or 47

Portal rebuilds on day 42.

Refresh your buffs and get in position to attack on day 44.

Destroy portal on day 45.

Refresh your buffs and get in position to protect your hunters on day 47

Blood moon on either day 46 or 47.

Portal rebuilds on day 48.

Etc until dawn of day 101.


General thoughts:
You're going to be dealing with winter for a long time, so when you set up your linked portals, be sure to do so with an eye towards minimizing walking time.

Using the Knight hermit makes smashing that portal much easier. I used him to build 3 knight towers, giving me a total of 6 knights and 24 archers every time I attacked. Be sure to keep your knights topped up with coins.

Build a few layers of defenses just in case you screw up and lose the outer wall.

I don't know how many archers I built, but it was *a lot*. My general rule of thumb was: "If my archers aren't lagging the game when they fire, I need more."

In mid-winter (about day 62 in my run), you're going to loose half of your farms, so be sure to build more than you would normally need. If I recall correctly, I had 4 farms. Normally, I build 2 or 3.

After a certain point (day 75ish?), there will be two waves of greed every time they attack. The first wave will attack and be turned back and a second wave will spawn and keep attacking. This will use up about half the day when the portal is intact. Be careful about when you send your knights to attack. Since you're going to lose half of the day when you want to smash the portal, it is imperative that you're in place and ready to attack on time.

If you're like me and have trouble keeping track of what day things happened on, it would be wise to keep notes on a piece of paper.

I would say that the archer shrine and knight hermit are essential to pulling this method off reliably. If they are not available, don't bother on that map. The other hermits, a nice mount, other shrines, etc are all nice to have, but not mandatory.


Some screenshots of my defense layout and stuff:

The first line of defense (never breached) -
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168501

Under Attack -
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168453

The second line of defense -
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168474

The third line of defense -
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168488


Attack! -
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771168464



For anyone that's interested, here where my blood moon nights:
38
43
48
53
59*
64
70*
75
80
86*
92*
97

An asterisk denotes a 6 night interval. I'm not sure of what exactly determines the interval, so it may be different on your end. I got several days into "On the Ninth Day I First Ran" so I had a slow start and wasn't keeping track before day 38.

[jabberwok]

Beyond about day 70, I found it better to avoid attacking the portal at all, as I lost more units doing that than I did during blood moons.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

I didn't lose even a single knight in that whole level. That's the virtue of attacking with 6 knights and 24 buffed archers. I even attacked a couple of times during their late game second wave before I realized they where doing that and still didn't lose any knights. The story probably would have been different if I was allowing giants to spawn and chuck boulders at my guys.

To be totally fair, I did have the occasional archer get hit during attacks. Mostly when half of the knights had yet to arrive at the portal and the spawning greed knocked the few that where there back past the archers. A couple of times, the army turned around without clearing out all of the greed stragglers...

Still, we're not talking perma death here. Mostly those guys just got knocked down and lost their bow, and most of the time they reclaimed their bow when the battle was over. Very occasionally, they would become vagrants or lose their bow permanently and become peasants. Since I had more money than I could possibly spend at this point, it was a non-issue for me.

A giant chucking a boulder over the wall and knocking out like 40 dudes would have been a huge issue though.

[jabberwok]

Ah, I didn't have six knights. Think it would've been three, maybe 4 max. How did you get six knights on one side by the second land? Seems like there are two extra per land at most.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Knight hermit. I mentioned that at least 4 times in the OP man ;).

1 knight came from the boat, 2 knights raised at the castle, and 3 knight towers.

All 6 are pictured in the attack screenshot above, though one of them is kinda hard to spot and one is very hard to spot. One is just in front of my mount's back leg, partially hidden by an archer. The other is behind the first red archer to the left of the tower, all you can really see is his red plume.

Without the knight hermit, you would be at 3 max on the cliff side. You can take 3 on the boat and on the next land, two always go to the dock side with the remainder going to the cliff side.

[jabberwok]

Originally posted by Colonel Sanders Lite:

Knight hermit. I mentioned that at least 4 times in the OP man ;).

1 knight came from the boat, 2 knights raised at the castle, and 3 knight towers.

All 6 are pictured in the attack screenshot above, though one of them is kinda hard to spot and one is very hard to spot. One is just in front of my mount's back leg, partially hidden by an archer. The other is behind the first red archer to the left of the tower, all you can really see is his red plume.

Without the knight hermit, you would be at 3 max on the cliff side. You can take 3 on the boat and on the next land, two always go to the dock side with the remainder going to the cliff side.

Ah, excuse me, I don't have all those unlocks yet, and I skimmed portions of the post.

[Timetowin404]

I did this achievment on island 5.

I destroyed all the portals during the day after red moon (harder part, especially for the two last portals). Never did a new wall in the dark rocks side.

After that (day 40-45), the distance between the main camp and the black rocks was so big that common attacks didn't reach the main walls.

The only thing "special" I did was building 3 Ballista towers for aerian attacks, and I was lucky to have a spot for the 3d one like 10 meters after the walls. Sometimes a builder was caught, but released. Sometimes he was killed, and replaced 10 seconds after that.

I didn't do any farm (only chasing). I had like 500 coins in the bank before winter.

Winter came after day 50. Then I waited, refreshing bow and wall shrines only the day after red moons (when we hear the rocks moving, wait 1 day because the foes have a very long march to do). And I recruted when the old woman building attracted some people.

And, btw, I had freezes when the old group of classic foes escaped and the new poped, after day 80.

[CATDesign]

I did a similar strategy that Timetowin404 did, as having the Ballistas made me have highly reduced loses, regardless of the foes.

[CTZ]

Dang, nice job!

[Friend Besto]

Man I got to 61 today... y'all crazy. I didn't have knight towers though I did escape island 2 with 3 knights, a ballista hermit, and my dog!