Breakdown of a game: Kingdom Two Crowns Norse Lands

[Spillmyblood]

Nearly a month has passed since the release of the new deals Norse Lands. I spend a month of intensive playing the game and I came to this conclusion.
As I said before and even wrote a review about it, that I like this new DLC. The music, pixel art style and gameplay are solid. The price is cheap. I even discussed it on here, that I thought it would be somewhere between 10 and 20 euro's.

Gameplay:

The basic gameplay still is the same. Build up your kingdom, expand it, recruit and destroy the Greed. However the defense and partly the attack mechanics differ from previous versions.

Defense:

In this deal you have to forget about walls that are nearly indestructible. Compare the highest walls in Norse Lands with the stone walls in the other versions. As in Deadlands, your ruler has a bigger and more active role in defending then ever before. It is now a combination of troops with shields defending outside the walls, your towers and you, the ruler, as the backbone of the defense.

Attack:

As for attacking your mount and your ruler are more viable too. Your ruler has some awesome weapons to wield. The horn, the hammer, the skull and the staff. In my opinion the skull is the most useful weapon in the game. You can early in the game solo portals without having the need for knights. Combine this with the mount Sleipnir and you can be a one man army if you play it smart.

Mounts:

As stated above in my opinion Sleipnir is the best mount out there for its speed and its special attacks fire trail and knock back.Sleipnir can be the difference between being overrun in a blood moon and turning the tide.
The Buck is good for getting more coins faster earlier on. Later on it lacks the overall stamina and a special attack or defense ability to be useful.

The least effective mount out there in this DLC is Gullinbursti. He is the Norse Land's version of the unicorn. The big difference is that the unicorn is much faster. Gullinbursti is extremely slow. Besides digging for coins, he can buff your farms. But by the time you can attain this mount, you will probably have plenty of farms or coins, rendering him obsolete.

Strategy:

On this board, we discussed of it was possible, to play the game in more ways than the most viable one: rushing.
I played the game extensively for the last few weeks and started multiple games. The rush version as of this moment I still did not finish. I focussed my attention on the turtle strategy.

Two of these turtle games failed. One was on day 345 and the other day 320. The day 345 run, I was stupidly defending my outer walls and running in a Greed wave containing a crownstealer. The 320 days run I was overrun by a Blood moon followed up by another Blood moon. I guess it was a bug, because I never encountered it before in my previous runs.

On my third try I successfully ended my one reign run at day 272. Multiple errors were my by me playing this third run. In this run I payed for a hermit on the third island instead of getting Sleipnir. I defeated the greed on three islands before returning to island 3 and getting Sleipnir. I forgot to get the hammer early on in the game and only got the skull at first. I made it for myself more difficult by accident than it needed to be.

To answer the question: Is it possible to turtle in Norse Lands? I can confirm this with a resounding Yes!

RNG:

I have to mention the part about luck in this game. Of the 6 islands, the location of the mounts, hermits, vagrant camps, your ship and starting locations each time differ if you start a new game.
If you are unlucky you end up with a bad starting location. Early on in the game this is not a real problem, but on later islands it can be fatal. If you cannot make enough money, due to a farm being too far out to build one, or being stuck between two portals very near your starting location, you will have a difficult time on the island.
Blood moons later on, let's say above day 100, can be in combination with a bad starting location the end of your reign.

Bugs:
As of yesterday, a new patch has been released. Several bugs have been addressed in this patch. I wrote this already before the patch was released.

• Moonwalking of troops/vagrants: I call it Moonwalking, cause it reminded me of it. I have even recorded it. A peasant walking backwards, your knight walking backwards. It is funny to see. They still do what they are suppose to do, only just backwards.

• The wannabe Blood moon: We all know the sound of a Blood moon or the music that comes with a Blood moon. But there is no Blood moon, just a regular night.

• The night with a Blood moon attack: This is possible to most annoying bug I encountered. A regular night with a wave attack similar the a Blood moon attack. I encountered a few of these in my multiple runs.

• The day after the Blood moon attack wave: Normally after a Bloodmoon your next night there will be no attack wave of the greed. However, in my 272 days one reign run, I encountered these 3 times. Maybe it is a bug or maybe it is a feature.

• I do not want your gold collector: This is one of the most funniest bug I encountered. You are on an island, bulking with gold and you want to share all of this gold with your greedy gold collector. But at one point when you share it, he decides to run away. And I mean literally walk away far outside and then coming back to the castle and shutting the door in your face. Very funny bug indeed.


Conclusion:

I had a great time playing this DLC. No regrets about buying it.
The developers are listening to the community and as of today they already released a patch. For a small development team they do a great job.
If I had to give this doc a grade, I would say a solid 8.

Links:

Video of the last island and victory of my one reign run : https://youtu.be/9wcbjU5JX6g

Video of making the last stand on the last island: https://youtu.be/BvPYizAfRYs

Video of a Blood moon above day 250: https://youtu.be/-xBSeqZ07GQ