Jcat's Guide to Simplicity

At time of writing, the Simplicity achievement is only held by ~1% of players. It took me quite a while to get it, so I'll share how I did it with you!

What is the challenge?

The goal is to beat all four seasons of the game, while never placing a Workshop or a Menhir.

This limits you quite a bit, since it restricts you to only the basic resources: Wood, Life, Fight, Plant, Stone and Hammer. And money.

What towers do we have available?

At the start of the game, we have access to two buildings: House and Farm. We also have the Cut action.

Placing the House allows access to Outpost, Menhir and Workshop. We can't use Menhir or Workshop.

Placing the Farm unlocks the Market and the Windmill.

Placing the Outpost unlocks Tool Shed and Keep.

Placing the Tool Shed unlocks the actions Quick Repair, Reconstruct, and Deconstruct. It also unlocks the Fence and the Barracks.

Placing the Keep unlocks the Sniper Tower and the Beacon, which we can't use. It also unlocks Arrow Rain, which we can use, but we shouldn't (it's pretty bad).

Placing the Market allows you to place Bounties, Hire mercenaries, and Buy Wood and Stone,

Placing the Fence unlocks the Wall.

Placing the Barracks unlocks the Castle, which we can't use. It also unlocks Mega Cut.

So in summary, this is what we have access to:

Buildings: fence, house, wall.
Economic: farm, windmill, market
Towers: outpost, keep, tool shed, barracks
Actions: cut, mega cut, quick repair, arrow rain, reconstruct, deconstruct
Trade: bounty, hire, buy wood, buy stone

And that's it. You will unlock all of these before the first boss. Then that's it.

Our options and their stats

Now that we know what we can build, we can see what we should build and why.

The Buildings:

The Fence costs 1 wood, and has 10hp. You get two fences in a row which can be rotated with the r key. They aren't that good but they're cheap. If you are ending your turn and have leftover wood, you might as well plop some of these down. Trying to 'maze' enemies is an effective strategy, as they tend to only attack if they don't have an easy path to your palace, and will walk quite far distances to get around barricades - at least early in the game. I also like to use fences to cause enemies that deal splash damage to hit their own allies, and if I wasn't going for this achievement they're a very cheap way to blow up a powder keg too.

The House costs one life and one wood, and allows you to power your Barracks, Outposts, Keeps, Farms and Markets. It has 10hp.

The Wall costs 2 stone, which is quite an investment, but you get two walls with 100hp each! This is massive, because even most late game enemies don't do more than 20 or so damage, so they stick around. Walls are also quite effective at blocking those annoying Golem boulders - more on those later.

The Farm costs three plants, and produces 1 dice every 5 turns, but won't start producing a new dice until you spend the old one. The dice produced is a normal dice. These are KEY for this challenge because, except for the Market, this is your only way to get more than 4 dice a turn. And since some buildings cost 4 dice, that's really important. Farms have 6hp, and notably do not block movement. You should be building farms as early as you can. Once you have a house and an outpost, save every plant roll you get until you get a farm.

The Windmill doubles the growing speed of adjacent farms, meaning they take 3 turns instead of 5. This is pretty cool, but its not super necessary. It costs two plants and two wood, meaning it's more expensive than a Farm, and you need two Farms AND two Houses to power those Farms AND the Windmill before it's better than just building a Farm. I am not sure at this time if the effects of multiple windmills stack or not. Do note that the description of the Windmill says it requires a house to operate, but it doesn't. The Windmill has 30hp.

The Market costs two life and two plants, and produces one gold dice when you spend at least 10 resources. Like the farm, no new dice are created until the gold dice is spent. The gold dice has an equal chance of providing two gold, one, or zero. Generally when the dice lands on two, I hold it for later.

The Outpost costs one Fight and one Wood, and it fires one arrow that deals 2 damage, for each house next to it (max of 2). It has 10hp, and has a range of about 5 tiles.

The Keep costs two Stone and two Fight, and it fires two arrows for each house (max of 4). The arrows deal 2 damage. It has 40hp, which is a very nice upgrade over the Outpost, but it has one less tile of range.

The Tool Shed costs one Hammer and one Wood. It has 10hp and produces a farmer one turn after being placed. The farmers have 10hp, deal 3 damage, and move 2 tiles at a time. The farmer respawns after 4 turns if killed. Since the toolshed unlocks useful things, I usually place at least one, but the farmer isn't really that good. Their description states "they protect their city with courage but do they even stand a chance?" The answer is no, they don't :( however the fact that the toolshed is a 1x1 building can allow it to fit in spaces you wouldn't fit anything else in normally.

The Barracks costs two Fight and Two Wood. It has 40hp and produces up to two militia members, one for each house next to it. Militia members are the strongest melee unit we're going to have access to. They have 25hp, 5 attack, and move 2 tiles at a time. They also take 4 turns to respawn. Make sure to leave a place for them to get to the front lines, otherwise they can spawn into an enclosed space and get stuck.

Casts:
Cut deals 5 damage to one tile. If there is an obstacle on that tile, it removes that too. (Obstacles prevent building, but do not block units.) This is a great spell, and should be used liberally. It costs just one fight. Using these as much as we can will be our lategame strategy.

Mega Cut deals 5 damage to a 3x3 area, and removes obstacles in that area too. It's main use is clearing out a large amount of obstacles. Generally I prefer two cuts on one target to this, but it's not bad if you can hit at least three things. It costs two fights.

Quick Repair heals 10 hp to a building. Honestly quite expensive in normal circumstances. However, you aren't going to be using your hammers for very much else, so no complaints here. It costs two hammers.

Arrow Rain is trash. For each keep and outpost you have, fires an arrow in one of 9 tiles, chosen randomly. The arrows each deal 2 damage. You need 27 outposts/keeps for it to be equally useful to Mega Cut. Actually, worse, because it doesn't remove obstacles. Yeah. Devs, if you are reading this, change Arrow Rain so that the arrows don't target empty tiles, and then it would still be a bad spell but not unusable <3. This awful spell costs THREE FIGHTS. Don't.

Reconstruct repairs 30 hp in a 3x3 area. It costs 4 hammers. Generally I only use it if I happen to get 4 hammers on my regular 4 dice, but that does sometimes happen.

Deconstruct costs one gold and one hammer. It deletes a building and gives you back two glass dice, which are one-use normal dice. You can deconstruct one fence tile or a low health building to get some benefit out of it. Pretty good!

Bounty costs 1 gold, and puts a bounty on an enemy. Bounties cause your towers to prioritize that enemy. It's not exciting but it works.

Hire costs 1 gold and 1 fight, and summons a militia member wherever you want. Very good for throwing a 25hp roadblock in front of an enemy, and dealing some damage back too. Enemies will usually prioritize units over structures, so you can use these to draw attention away from fragile stuff. Also, they can soak a hit from a golem boulder.

Buy Wood and Buy Stone both cost 2 gold, and they give you one wood or one stone, respectively. The dice goes away after two turns if you haven't used it, for a reason I cannot explain. A very good use of your money, highly recommend.


And that's everything we can place or buy! Now, we will discuss resources.

Not All Resources are Created Equally

So we have access to the six basic resources, plus gold. But are they all equally valuable? Lets see! This info is here to help you decide what to hold and what to toss, and when.


What does this mean? I've bolded the things I think are most important for the run. So...
Wood and Stone are important, wood more commonly so. Both can be provided by the Market.
Stones are only useful in pairs. One stone by itself doesn't do a whole lot for us.
Life is mainly important for Houses.
Plant is important for Farms, especially early game. Once you have a lot of Farms/Windmills they are less important.
Fight is the most valuable resource, and cannot be provided with Markets. This is the main reason to build lots of Farms.
Hammers are not that valuable.

With this info down, we're almost done formulating a strategy. We just need to know what we're up against...

Season 1: Spring

So, it begins.

The first things that will attack you are small slimes. These are extremely weak, even in large groups. You will want to have one outpost - that's all you need to defend against them. They have 3 hp.

Wave two will follow, and here we will have one of the core strategies of this run. See, since we don't have access to any dice production outside of farms and markets, and both require 3-4 specific dice, it's important to have as many dice as we can early so we can increase our chance to roll the correct outcome.

The probability that we roll three life symbols (or more) in 3 dice is 1/216 (0.4%). With four dice, it's 1.6%. With five dice it's 3.5%. Six is... well the math gets hard and I'm lazy. But you can see that your chances improve MASSIVELY with more dice. So what do we do?

Take every wave early. At least now, when the enemies are small and weak. Taking waves early gives you two extra dice, which last until you use em. This is HUGE! You should take the first waves early, until the boss at least. Don't use these glass dice willy-nilly! If you have a choice between using a glass dice and a normal dice, choose the normal one. (Remember: You'll spend your dice from left to right. You can move your dice left by Holding them, which will make you spend those ones first.)

The first enemies that will give you issues will be the orcs, goblins with hats, and the cyclops. The goblins with hats only take 1 damage from your towers, but they will take full damage from the cut attack, and melee. The orcs are just stronger goblins. The cyclops moves slow but deals !!20!! damage and some splash damage! You reeally don't want him up close. Thankfully, if you Hire a dude behind him, you can get him to turn around and hit that guy instead of your houses - the splash damage from this can be very useful. Otherwise, your best bet is walls.

Boss 1 is the Goblin Airship. This guy has basically infinite movement and can fly, and has two attacks: he can summon a few goblins, or he can shoot a bomb that deals a small amount of damage. While the goblin airship is annoying, the real danger is the cyclops that spawns around this time. Focus on that asap, esp with your melee units since they can't hit the airship anyway. Priority #2 is the airship, and priority #3 are the goblins. Putting a bounty on the airship can help with focusing it down before it spawns too many guys. A lot of Keeps and Outposts will take the airship down no problem! You might lose some farms, since they don't have a lot of health, but as long as you have a few farms you can replenish those lost ones pretty easily.

Onto season 2! It only gets harder!

Season 2: Summer

Ahh, summer.

At the start of summer, all that will be sent towards you are boomflies. These bugs will fly right up to your infrastructure and explode, taking out your lower health buildings like outposts, farms and houses. Thankfully, they don't have much hp, and you can take them out with a single cut. DO THIS!! Your early fight dice should be spent on either setting up forward outposts or cutting all the boomflies. Their explosions can chain, so remember that!

The boss of summer is Horus, the big dumb plant. This guy is really hard, arguably harder than all the other bosses, so it's important to start preparing earlier than we had to prep for the airship.

Horus will spawn on the edge of the map and sort of just sit there, periodically either spawning tentacles everywhere, or throwing bombs at your stuff. It's pretty much impossible to not take any damage to your stuff here, unless you place units next to Horus by hiring mercenaries. Then, Horus will instead do an aoe attack.

Horus should be killed asap - their tentacles have a lot of health and while they don't do that much damage, they keep coming, which will eventually erode your stuff. I usually build outposts and keeps near the boss, with houses, to chip at their health. The real way to kill him, however, and all the other bosses and hard enemies after this point, is the simple tactic of

Cut Spam

.
Yeah. Just keep using all your fight dice to deal 5 damage at a time to the boss. You'll eventually kill it. This strategy works because there are only a limited amount of enemies that spawn, but you can produce as many fight dice as you need.

With cutspam and the above strategies, you should be fine against Horus. Nothing else in summer is really that scary, except the cyclopes, who can also die to cut spam.

Next, fall.

Season 3: Fall

The things that will give you trouble in this season are the living armors, the big spiders and the tree people.

Oh, and something hidden: When the season changes, some of the foliage/obstacles lying about will turn into mushrooms. These are actually sleeping enemies! Spend one cut each to deal with them, lest you have to spend more when they wake. The obstacles that are not mushrooms are safe.

Back to the big boys. The spiders spawn smaller spiders - some of these will be explosive, like the boomflies, they will be orange. Annoying, but easily dealt with using units.

The living armors and tree people are where the challenge starts to ramp up. The armors take reduced damage from everything we have access to, including the cut spell, which makes them stay around for a long time. They are easily stalled with walls, but these guys sometimes stay all the way until winter! You're supposed to kill them with spells, fire, or bombs, but we don't have access to these.

The tree people just have a lot of health. They take extra damage from fire, but we have none of that. So, just cut spam these guys.

The boss of this season is the bone snake. It's a flying unit made of many smaller pieces, that will fly around and be annoying. It's not nearly as scary as Horus, and while it has more health, destroying body pieces damages the head and destroys the pieces behind it. Your best bet is to put a bounty on the body piece directly behind the head, and then whittle it down with arrows and cuts.

Almost there! The final boss of the run is coming!

Season 4: Winter

The final boss of the run is here.

The yeti. It's the yeti.

Why? The yeti throws snowballs like big, furry artillery. These things deal ~20 damage and, more importantly, coat a 3x3 area with snow. This snow is an obstacle, which means you can't build on it. Let these guys run amok and you will die by attrition as you run out of space to place things.

There are only so many yetis, I think 4 to 6? You're meant to kill them with fire, but we don't have fire. So, just cut spam them down. While you are doing this, place walls near the other enemies. The yetis prioritize throwing snowballs over moving, and will chuck snowballs at the walls, damaging zombies and apprentices with the aoe. (Other yetis and ice elementals are immune).

The other enemies here are resilient, having a lot of health but not really being that dangerous. The ice elementals and apprentices can freeze your stuff, but frozen walls still work as walls. Just keep at it with your previous strategies and many keeps, and you'll be fine.

Now, the ""boss"" isn't really the main focus. Yes, target the yetis over the actual boss. The big bad wiznerd teleports each time it's hit, and spends most of its time summoning zombies. Since it's always teleporting, it'll inevitably get near your defenses and get hit. The zombies don't do much damage, so you can safely focus on killing yetis first, damaging the boss second, and leave the zombies to your towers.

But wait...

Spoiler: The boss has a secret phase.

When the sorcerer is down, he transforms into a big demon. He no longer summons things or teleports, and is just a big dumb thing that hits stuff. He can be easily stalled with walls and whittled down.

The only thing to worry about is *where* he transforms. If he becomes a big demon next to your palace, that's bad news. Make sure to time the phase change when he is not in the thick of your defenses.

And yeah! Kill the boy and you can claim that shiny achievement.