The Ember Rail Cannon – A Wildermyth Walking Lunch Guide To Overkill

“With Spiritblade, there is no overkill, there is only fire and reload” ~ AngusOfTheDandelion (me)

This guide walks you through the basics of building a team around spiritblade, and the variations therein.

About me

Hey everyone! I make guides for Wildermyth and write...things? At the moment only my Wildermyth guides are published, but I do intend to branch out into other games (eg. I have an unfinished guide to Bad North lying around somewhere) and share some of my (original) fictional works when I get the time and inclination!

I play Wildermyth on Walking Lunch difficulty, recommended Calamities, standard save system (though I did once win a Carved in Stone 3-chapter story campaign). Even at this difficulty, there’s a lot of build diversity, so much that I can only be sure I haven’t thought of them all. If you do things differently to me and it works for you, that’s awesome! Please let me know how you do it!

This means you can be sure that my guides will work on all difficulty settings, and that when you start with higher level heroes (level 4 or 5) you should be able to complete higher calamity starts without too much trouble. It doesn’t mean I believe in a handful of hyper-specific builds as the only way to play – I said it in the last paragraph and I’ll say it again; I love to hear what works for others!

I am committed to free, unlimited access to my works and writings for everyone, forever.

Anyone may freely excerpt, reference, and build on my works, provided they are clearly cited and referenced, and that my works are never used to promote hatred or bigotry of any kind - including but not limited to:

fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, polyphobia, bi/panphobia, acephobia

Further, while I may throw my voice behind things from time to time, I will never accept money or control over my works to do so. There will be no adverts here or anywhere else I create

That said I do need to eat, so if you enjoy my work and want to support my ability to keep making it, here’s a link to my Patreon [patreon.com]

Disclaimers/Warnings

THIS GUIDE MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR SOME MINOR EVENTS BECAUSE IT HAS THEMES IN IT! That said, I don’t have any main-campaign spoilers, and I mostly don’t touch on how you get themes, so use your noggin and think about how unspoiled YOU want the game. Probably not too unspoiled because you’re looking up guides?

If anyone has feedback, I'd love to hear it! I kinda rushed towards the end so there were a few mistakes, plus some of my theoretical stuff is really educated guessing (praise the wiki) so hearing from folk who've tried things is great!

Anything marked with a (Th) or (Theoretical) is something I haven’t specifically tried in a team of this type, though I may have experience with it otherwise,

This guide is long (6.7k words) you can pick little bits of it and skim some sections. In fact, you can entirely skip the last (trivia) section that details how I did this and lets me gush about my characters without losing all that much.

This guide was written during patch 1.11 Firlow – I will list any updates it receives here

A Basic Overview

As the name suggests, this team concept works around turning 1 character into a cannon – specifically a hunter with Ember Arrows. This technically works with other builds (including hunters without Ember Arrows), but fundamentally you will need blazes, and lots of them: whatever happens fire will be involved. A more generic name might be “Blazing Rail Cannon” or even “Spirit Rail Cannon” – I chose Ember because to me paints a more compelling feel of impending doomTM, which is how the team works

The great thing about this team is that it requires very little from the characters in terms of themes and specific abilities (many of the characters are functional with a single ability, and close to optimal with only 3), while also being fairly simple to pilot and therefore hard to mess* up, and it works with 3 characters 1 from each class, while still being somewhat flexible in terms of actual composition

*not my actual choice of word, avoiding any profanity filtering

Further, I do not optimise by background. There might be some minor selection bias in me re-using my most successful heroes, but I only re-roll over aesthetics/vibes, so this team will work for folk who aren’t hardcore optimisers.. in fact, I’ve never even successfully forced an event (I did try to get a fire chicken on a specific character once – and failed because I haven’t seen the event since xD). There’s a link to a guide by psionusoid in the theoretical themes section of the vigourflow shotgun part of this guide that goes into impressive detail on that sort of thing, as well as some other character builds

That said, this team works on WL with regular calamities, and I’m told also on higher calamity starts, and certainly out-scales maximum calamities. I’m still trying to level up enough mythwalkers for high calamity starts, so the higher starts part is from someone else who tried out my team build and was suitably impressed – shoutout to them for giving me the confidence to actually put this guide together!

Roles within the team

Since this is a team concept more than a single character build, it’s got a lot of flexibility to it and has various options on how you approach it. For ease of use, I’ve split it into team roles, most of which can be covered by at least 2 classes to varying degrees of success, and every character in the team can theoretically fill 2 roles, regardless of what their class and main role is. I’ll have a “preferred team” overview at the end:

Defender (any)

Someone who can take or mitigate any enemies that slip through, whether it’s a Vigilance knockback warrior, an AvoiDancer Hunter, or some form of Earthscribe Mystic. A lot of the time the cannon will full clear whatever you’re up against and this role will be unnecessary, but when you need them, they’re indispensable. As such, the character filling role is usually also filling another role, one way or another

For this I favour a Warrior, with the build being shield & mace with Long Reach & Vigilance+ as the Defender-specific parts of their build, allowing the warrior to interrupt most incoming enemies by pushing them out of range, causing them to waste an action, while also granting the warrior extra toughness for when one slips through (either by a miss or more enemies than reaction strikes approaching). The rest of their build is quite flexible both in themes and abilities, and while there are certainly more and less optimal versions, all of them should work well, and I greatly favour Raider since that’s close to a one-stop-shop for all your firestarter needs.

Firestarter (Warrior, Mystic)*

You’re going to need Blazes. You’re going to need at least 2-6 of them. Make sure you can create 1 per Spiritblader on the first turn without using actions you need for something else. If you don’t have a native way to start fires, you will be dangerously weak on the first turn, possibly throughout a whole map if the scenery doesn’t help you out. While both Ember Arrows and Spiritblade do start fires when used, they need a fire to do that, so you can’t rely on them

*yes, generic options mean hunters can participate. No, that doesn’t mean they’re good at it. ok, I'm being a little unfair, but I have been absolutely spoiled by raider

Generic options:

Torch: anyone with an offhand can have these, and they’re craftable. Usable 1/turn as a swift action, their major downside is that they can only target debris within 1.6 + Long Reach of the user. They also eat your swift action which is a problem for any mystic who needs both their actions and an interfuse in the same turn. This is actually solid on a hunter, and warrior if you're struggling to find raider though, but the debris limitation is fairly crippling relative to raider on the first turn

Fire Chicken: anyone who doesn’t want or need a different pet can use this cutie, which also offers immunity to fire (that is, you don’t take damage from walking through blazes, a useful feature on a team so reliant on them) and can start fires on empty tiles. The ability that goes with it is nice too. Unfortunately, this is limited to 1.6 range, being unaffected by Long Reach, and is only usable once per 3 turns, making it a little problematic if you can’t keep the fire burning or need several blazes quickly. The covering fire ability is pretty interesting though

Warrior Option:
Raider: I consider this the premier firestarting option – a swift action with no cooldown and no need for debris, that also allows the warrior to remove scenery (destroying cover from enemies so your cannons can shoot them more easily, or even just to create debris so the fire keeps burning instead of burning your swift actions), and the upgrade allows you to light fire under enemies to damage them! Most effective when paired with Long Reach, as with the torch

Mystic Option:
Ignite: this costs an action and requires debris unless upgraded, but the mystic is automatically interfused with the resulting blaze, and it can be used as an attack (provided there’s an enemy on debris) even before being upgraded. The upgrade allows you to spawn fire without debris, allowing the action it costs to be reliably weaponised. This is especially worthwhile if your mystic has a reason to want multiple blaze interfusions (ie they’re a Vigorflow build), but since it does cost an action, it reduces the effectiveness of Spiritblade a little and should be used with that in mind. Overall I'd say this is about even with a torch on a hunter - the action requirement sucks, but the range is good and it can be an attack

Cannon (Hunter, Mystic)*

This is the main damage dealer role, and comes with a some variations, including the * that there’s no specific reason why a damage focused warrior couldn’t be a useful target for Spiritblade attacks, just that their extremely limited range even with Long Reach (most archery abilities are hunter exclusive) generally makes them struggle to be the main focus, even if they have the raw damage to be worth it – further, melee teams need to move forwards more often than ranged teams, reducing the number of actions and in-range interfusions available for Spiritblade.

Ember Cannon - Hunter

The hunter class has a whole set of abilities that focus on being good with cross/bows, and you need several of them (as well as the stats from a few levels) to make them a true Ember Cannon

Core Abilities
These are the abilities that you should really have at least 3 of (including upgrades) to make the hunter go brr – you don’t necessarily need all of them, but they’ll never be bad pickups

Ember Arrows: the titular ability, this allows a Hunter to add their potency and 1 armour shred to the damage done by ranged attacks while adjacent (inc. diagonally) to any source of fire. This is extremely strong, though you need a few levels/augments and/or the Bone Bow) to get stupendous value from it, so I’d be careful picking it as the first skill on a fresh hunter if others from this list are available. The upgraded version grants a swift action mobility tool, which can be extremely valuable when you need to reposition, especially around tight spaces, to let your Spiritblade attacks line up more easily, which is more important if you have Through Shot


Through Shot: Under the right circumstances this can almost double your damage and allow you to hit targets that would otherwise be covered by their allies. Really solid ability, and the upgraded form is somehow even better

Piercing Shots: this can be a flat 1 + potency damage buff (strictly better than Ember Arrows which is just adding potency), but only if the enemy has that much armour to pierce. The upgrade adds 1 shred, which is quite underwhelming, and generally isn’t worthwhile outside of maybe massive armour bossfights (and often not even then), especially if you have the shred from Ember Arrows.

Sharpshooter: no minimum range for bows is a significant quality of life improvement (making an auxiliary crossbow much less necessary), and the +1 range, +1 damage to ranged attacks is extremely solid (it also works with many themes, those considered ranged, including the crossbow from Mortificial Enhancements), though the upgrade is a little underwhelming, only adding +1 range for ranged attacks, which is strictly worse than the base form of Long Reach


Auxiliary abilities
These are nice to have, or can make a hunter who can’t find the last core ability or two remain relevant:

Archery: with a sufficiently durable team (and enough core skills) this can make it less important to kill all the pesky ranged enemies your (warrior) defender can’t guardian away, and let you either focus on killing the most dangerous enemies, or just the melee ones on-turn if you’re using a defender that doesn’t hard-counter those, leaving the ranged ones to pick themselves off on your turn. This can often be much more effective with through shot, since enemies can’t hide behind other enemies to prevent the counterattack – in fact, that counter will hit both or more!

Quellingmoss: this can functionally be worth +1 damage (provided you don’t need to kill an enemy on your turn), in addition to being a way to weaponise your second action – which is pretty effective alongside Ember Arrows+ granting a swift action move, and has niche applications in popping enemy abilities such as specterstep

Theoretical abilities
These are abilities I haven’t specifically tested in any of my Ember Rail Cannon runs, but that I acknowledge may have auxiliary or even core applications, either from my own use of them previously, or from reading them, and other’s thoughts on them:

Ambush: I have had the odd moment, especially in maps with tight corners, where I have thought to myself “Ambush would be pretty useful in this exact moment”. I suspect it would be on my auxiliary list, since it doesn’t come up too often, but nonetheless, a stored attack is a stored attack, especially when it gets bonus damage. I probably wouldn’t upgrade it, but the upgrade is decent

Crippling Strikes: given the sheer volume of fire (pun intended) this team produces from the hunter, I would not be surprised if crippling strikes was core, especially if the hunter in question had Through Shot already. The playstyle would likely be more control oriented, but since the goal is often to deal damage without taking any, not specifically to deal the most possible right nowTM, that’s the opposite of a problem. Especially with the upgrade granting +2 damage on every shot after the first on any given target, you’re not even strictly locked out of high damage values. Just be careful around unstoppable enemies.



Equipment
So you’ve got your abilities, but what are you holding? A bow and a crossbow (for adjacent targets (unless you have sharpshooter and access to offhand items). You could use 2 bows if you have sharpshooter, especially if you don’t need any offhand items. I don’t think there are any bad offhand items – a torch to set your own fires might be nice if you have Ember Arrows, and afaik the thrown weapons apply Quellingmoss, though you might be better off using your swift action to move. I’ve also found poison can help knock down an enemy you’re just short on damage for and don’t want to shoot more than necessary

For the basic elemental weapons, all have potential in the right build – with enough stunt chance you’re basically guaranteed to get the effect at least once per turn (on a character with a 20% chance (1 augment, gem eye, etc) you need 5 attacks to stunt an average of once – and you get 7 to 9 attacks at base on a fully assembled rail cannon), making water plus something else attractive. Fire can be a nice way to increase the available blazes, stone could be a way to make enemies more vulnerable and/or completely useless for a turn, and leaf should have a nice home in a build with Archery.

I haven’t tried every artefact, but I can say:
Bone Bow is very powerful with potency scaling skills such as Ember Arrows, Piercing Shots, and Quellingmoss, and gets even better if you can empower it (someday I’ll get that...)
Vigilkeeper is a pretty phenomenal tool for letting you shoot at enemies from a distance where they won’t be able to hurt you team next turn regardless of what happens (including from further than sight range if you use interfusions for scouting!)

For what I haven’t tried:
Strongbow is probably solid? At least for single-target smackdown
Vost is interesting, though the knockback may cause issues for follow-up shots – probably better with Ambush as a layer of defence similar to a mace/hammer guardian warrior.

Themes
These are pretty flexible – or at least, as long as you don’t transform any arms, won’t do any harm. I’ve found the +6 stunt chance from Crystalline’s head piece to be pretty solid

Pets
Critter and Drauven Bird: the extra accuracy will make a huge difference, especially with the sheer volume of attacks they’ll be making at sometimes unfavourable angles. Plus the bird doesn’t compete with anything
Fire Chicken: nice if you have Ember Arrows and/or want to walk through/stand on the blazes
Duck and Rat: probably ok with Archery, though unlikely to be optimal
Golden Rabbit: extremely unlikely to get on a hunter (only if event warrior dies and the hunter has the most correct personality stats in the party), but bonus damage is bonus damage

Anything else won’t harm the build, but probably won’t contribute to it either (Ignoring Hago Cub since it’s not permanent, even though it’s extremely good)

Vigourflow Cannon – Mystic (Theoretical)

This is a lot simpler than the hunter, since mystics only really have 1 way to keep up (or even surpass) in single target damage using the abilities Vigorflow+, Openmind, Sharpshooter along with equipment containing a Bow, Swan Scepter, Thnarrs Accordica, and any theme and pet an equivalent hunter would use, for most of the same reasons

From Vigorflow+ damage boosts alone this nets a theoretical +9 damage on turn 1, up to a maximum of +18 on later turns with a max level mystic and enough blazes

Their last mythwalker starting ability would be well spent on Ignite, or even Spiritblade if there’s another Cannon in the group

I haven’t personally tested this, since I like having a shotgun mystic (see below) and scouting makes having a hunter option in the party more attractive in general (plus I’ve literally never seen a swan wand, which is likely more important for this particular mystic than the others) but… well, you’re only just getting +9 from the hunter when combining Piercing Shots with Ember Arrows on a max level hunter (though that does go to +15 with a max level Bone Bow) assuming the enemy has enough armour for Piercing Shots to be fully relevant (that being 5 without, and 8 with the Bone Bow) which might not happen in practice. Having said that, if you throw in other hunter abilities, especially Through Shot for the ability to hit multiple targets, the hunters are likely to be overall more powerful, and they have meaningful build variety.

Vigourflow Shotgun - Mystic

This is probably the most difficult piece of the team to assemble, because it requires specific themes. It’s also among the most important because Spiritblade can target theme attacks. This teammate is there to ensure that when detritus* hits the fan and there are a metric detritustonne* of nearby enemies, they can be deleted from existence in a timely fashion. I haven’t tried every working combination, but fundamentally this build is “the Vigorflow Cannon plus a theme that works with Vigorflow and can hit multiple targets” Options are as follows:

*not my actual choice of words, avoiding any profanity filtering

Verified themes
Flamesoul: The AoE is great on this, and it really deserves its title as the best-known Vigorflow theme – fire go brrr. The main downside is that it can be annoying – or on rare occasions impossible – to position optimally around your team, as the friendly fire, really isn’t


Sylvan: This is my current preferred theme. Witherbolt is reliable and has no special positioning requirements. The insane damage doubling is a big sell, even though it doesn’t apply to the Vigorflow bonus. It’s also worth noting that (as psionusoid pointed out to me) the base range for Witherbolt is 6, compared to 4.6 for most other ranged theme attacks

Theoretical themes
What can I say, I haven’t tried everything:

Stormtouched: the chain lightning upgrade should be the inverse of the Sylvan witherbolt, which arguably makes it more useful (Vigorflow shouldn’t be halved just like it wasn’t doubled – I’ve since been informed that this is correct!). While I do advocate getting theme upgrades anyway, I think needing it for the 3rd hit is a not ideal. actually this comes from having both arms, which is also not ideal, but it should be great anyway. And thunderstomp is a great boon when things are going wrong.

Wolftouched: When both arms are transformed, the frenzy attack can hit several enemies. I don’t super love this as you lose access to Swan Scepter, though since I don’t actually have a Vigorflow with one – or have ever seen one – I don’t see this as too tragic. However, this build would need Long Reach instead of Sharpshooter, and might actually be too short-range in some circumstances. I’m also not sure if frenzy can be targeted by Spiritblade, or if you’d just get wolf claw. They’d definitely want Spiritblade over Ignite, simply because they need to contribute to the team when they aren’t being swarmed, and might suffer from having to drop Vigorflow+ to get the theme upgrade and still fit Spiritblade in, something the others don’t have a problem with, especially with how crucial the speed boost from Vigorflow+ is for melee characters… they might even be forced to prey (pun intended) that Openmind shows up as a random pick, though I’ll concede they might still be ok without it. psionusoid has confirmed that frenzy does not proc on spiritblade, making this option inefficient at best

Beyond that, I recommend this guide by psionusoid for looks into other builds, specifically the section on Vigorflow builds/themes. They also look at upbringing and other optimising minutia that I don’t touch on here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2891244314

Spiritblader (Mystic)

This is the simplest part of the build. It’s also the most flexible and the most specific. And the most obvious. You need Spiritblade+, though a level 1 character with the base version is still a valuable member of the team (they can get the upgrade guaranteed at lvl2).

That’s it, that’s the character.

Ok, ok, fine, there’s more I can say

Maintaining needed interfusions

Thnarrs Accordica is nice to have, because people can move out of range of a blaze, and if you want to also buff with the +1 damage from orthogonal objects, that presents an issue solved by swapping to the book, interfusing with an in-range blaze, swapping back to a staff, and going nuts. At the end of the turn, you’ll lose an interfusion (I think the furthest away one? Never figured that out) and if you lost the wrong one/need a new one, you can do the same next turn. The bonus attacks really are the draw of Spiritblade though, so don’t sweat the orthogonal-to-interfusion bonus if you have to choose between them.

Openmind: can more or less do the same thing as Thnarrs Accordica, especially if you upgrade it, but since it’s not required, per se, I generally don’t advise this ability unless you have another reason to want it (eg. wanting infusions for passive effects like Earthscribe or to use an ability that creates an interfused object often) since skill slots are valuable and you only have 3 spare to play with

Long Reach (Th): Probably not the most efficient, but it could help keep allies in range of blazes, since I’m told the distance of Spiritblade is affected by this.
Doubling Down on Passives
Since spiritbladers have pretty well-spoken for actions (and sometimes even swift actions), passives can be quite strong, whether they directly help the team, or just the character they’re on. Some also grant access to active abilities that come in clutch. I haven’t tried all of these on a spiritblader, but I’m pretty confident in what follows nonetheless (reminder; I mark theoretical ones with a (Th) here specifically if I haven’t used them anywhere on an Ember Rail Cannon team, since the generic of these are also often good on the defender):

Bard (Ability): Extra stunt chance is good and afaik this part stacks across characters. I haven’t tried the upgrade, but it should lead to some pretty silly near-always-stunt rounds. The legacy cost reduction doesn’t stack, but is pretty solid, and the extra speed to preparing recruits can get you ahead of the game

Earthscribe: If there are rocks, you get temporary health an armour. With the upgrade and enough rocks (especially if you pick up Openmind and/or Thnarrs Accordica) you can be a defender in addition to a spiritblader. Rock shield is also a powerful active, as is bone wall – and if there are no rocks, there should at least be bones. The main issue you’ll run into is positioning (spiritbladers often fall behind using both actions as attacks), so if you want to be an actual defender, you’ll need a swift action move, or a taxi character (see “Mobility on the Fly” section below).

Elementalist (Th): fires that can burn without debris are useful, especially if paired with Ignite, and you get some niche actives as part of the deal. If you have a Firling Wand and the Arches active skill, though at that point you may be better off with Naturalist. Still, I suppose you could have the base version of all three, though at that point you might not be using Spiritblade often enough. Balance in all things, I suppose

Inspiration: I haven’t directly used this on a Spiritblader, and they may struggle to position correctly for it (it might be better on the team’s defender (which I have tried it on), since they’re more likely to have more positional flexibility.. assuming they aren’t also a spiritblader). No idea if it stacks, but it is decently strong, and stacks with the adjacent to object buff from spiritblade iirc

Wisdom: I love this – where possible I like to have it on at least one team member, and since the Spiritblader archetype has 3 whole slots to play with… Basically, overland stuff happening faster is always a boon.

Auxiliary active abilities
Mostly these are for when you need something that isn’t pure damage. Some of the “passive” skills also have actives, so I won’t be repeating them here, just look up, and again, some generic options are good on the defender too:


Aid: I prefer rock shield (Earthscribe) since it gets more uses, is more flexible, and, while rock shield doesn't cleanse any, Aid doesn’t cleanse all negative status effects – specifically it’s funny about some of the thrixl ones like dominate. Its major benefits over Earthscribe are that the temp health persists, and that a warrior defender can pick it up

Arches: great control skill. Does use an action, but can be useful for getting both cover and the Spiritblade passive down. It's even a non-turn ending action when upgraded

Compulsion: ever feel like you want to line up the enemy just a little better? Maybe walk them through all those tasty fires you’ve made? Just get an enemy to sod off out of range for a turn? Compulsion is the skill for you! And since it only costs a swift action when upgraded, you don’t even have to sacrifice an attack if you’re already interfused/have a Swan Scepter. Thoroughly enjoyed this one

Heroism: more actions you can give to anyone one the team? Solid. Absolutely the best? Not necessarily. But solid.

Ignite: I’ve mentioned this a lot through the guide, and it is good. You need fire. Ignite provides. The action cost does make it less than perfect, but it is more than suitable if you can’t find a Raider and/or are struggling for blaze interfusions. Plus, as a non-turn-ending action it can be solid, and (especially when upgraded to be unbounded by debris) it might not be a sacrifice to use, especially if you’ve got enough aggressive stats like stunt chance up your sleeve (eg my character Nory Tripmusk, with the gem eye and shield for 27% base stunt chance)


Naturalist (Th): moving allies about with treecall? Sounds useful on a tortoise team like this. A swift action attack with the upgrade? Yo, compulsion called, it’s good too (especially Naturalist if you have aggressive stats as mentioned above)! Making debris-able objects with the upgrade? They can even catch fire before becoming debris! Also great! Kinda can’t believe I’ve not picked this up yet really, excited to try!


Tinker: Limited use, not my favourite. I feel the same way about this as I do about Aid, but even if you don’t want it on a spiritblader, I’m not gonna sit here and say a warrior defender couldn’t make use of it, especially with the ability to self-target



Mobility on the Fly (pun intended)

Swift action movement is extremely solid (Just ask the warriors with Zealous Leap), and even more so when you have a non-movement use for both your main actions. Sadly (or fairly if you think balance-wise), mystics don’t have a skill for that… unless they get wings. Different wings* have what is effectively a special Zealous Leap skill associated with them. Crowtouched is both the easiest to get and usually the most powerful. Drauven Wings makes the character a taxi but is harder to use/get, and Hawksoul is comfortably between if you squint – easy to use, hardest to get (I literally don’t have any) and not strictly the most optimal for most characters who can get them (though there are some theme conflicts)

*if you look closely, this is neither a spoiler nor technically wrong

Having a set of wings is usually optimal anyway, but that’s between you and your characters.

Notable Oddities and Idiosyncrasies

At various points, I’ve mentioned what I run, and how I run it – and how else it could be run. Here’s a few weirdnesses that don’t specifically fit anywhere else, things that tie together earlier ideas or are just… bizarre:

Enabler Warrior

A Defender/Firestarter cross, taking advantage of the few and sometimes overlapping slots both need. The build is Raider, Long Reach, Vigilance+, Flex pick. My current mythwalker Fae has a Golden Rabbit, and uses the flex spot for protector… it doesn’t come up very often, but it can be a game-changer against enemies that attack more than once. I recommend the shield and mace combo, and in Fae’s case managed to snag an artifact shield. She also has celestial hair, a solid feature but more aesthetic than strictly a vital build piece

Other notable picks include Stalwart and Engage (Th), the former being excellent for tankiness and the latter as a theoretical replacement for Vigilance. Both of which work extremely well on a Child of the Hills build with shardskin (which can arguably skip Vigilance anyway). Stalwart is a stand-out performer in thrixl campaigns, as they use more magical attacks, and the upgrade provides complete immunity to all negative status effects (but does not cleanse) including the ones not cleansed by Aid – and the thrixl will continue to target this character with them anyway (yes, even on Walking Lunch, which is where I discovered this)! Zealous Leap is a nice addition to Stalwart variants, as it helps them move about without relying on speed. I might take base Vigilance to make room, with hopes to upgrade it later

No, I do not like paladin or sentinel. The former has anti-synergy with its upgrade (Zealous Leap is better in most cases) and the latter yeets you out of position, which I feel makes it strictly worse than Long Reach in a majority of cases (at least in an ERC team), though psionusoid informs me the two do stack, despite my earlier assertion that they don’t

Artillery Warrior

A warrior that is.. maybe a defender? Using the Celestial theme, and specifically the Meteor Strike ability to zone out enemies and absolutely annihilate any that end within it. Apparently I deal in celestial bunny warriors, but Branylle Moonric is a different style: Meteor Strike, Stalwart, & Zealous Leap are the three core abilities, with two build paths; Raider, Long Reach for a Firestarter, or; shooting star+, Stalwart+ for a spirtblader replacement. You might ask “why?” and the simple answer is that, since she reliably and effectively weaponises both actions, spiritblade doesn’t increase the team’s efficiency relative to her. When she’s using Meteor Strike every turn, having Stalwart+ protects her from enemies knocking her into it, and having shooting star+ is a significant boost over the default. You could hybrid flex this build and go Raider with shooting star+ OR Stalwart+, but that can make starting fires in the right spots a little more annoying

If you can throw in reliable pins/stuns (eg. Arches), Meteor Strike becomes truly terrifying, and is the main reason her build can replace a spiritblader

Tactical, Strategical, and Logistical Overview

This team build… is a bit weird. It requires positioning some will find extremely unintuitive, and I think it’ll help to explain my general approach to the game when I’m using it, including tips for in-fight use.

Logistics-wise, one of the greatest things about this build is that you only have 1 character (the main Cannon) who needs weapon upgrades. Is it nice to have them on others? Sure. Is it mission critical? Nah. You get that bow to its max range, maybe the secondary too, and you have your damage packaged & ready to go. That means you can reliably get everyone’s armour maxed without making compromises.

This build has flashy stars and their stalwart (yay pun) companions. I know some feel like this creates a feeling of “main characters”, and especially a standard “enabler warrior” can feel like they’re just kinda.. stood there, left out. But the thing is, nobody else can do what they do. Raider is by far the most efficient way to start fires, and it can take a whole team of ignite/fire chicken/torches to match them… and they won’t even do it better!

Plus, I think it’s important to remember that a support is every bit the main character a flashy DPS is – I’m the kind of person who mains support/tank whatever game I hop into, and I’m happy to do it. I can’t imagine thinking that made me less of a character

In terms of strategy, I like to clear every site, and save as many legacy points for promotions as possible – I generally don’t build stations, and I’ll only re-roll abilities in the most dire of circumstances – maybe once per 5 chapter campaign (I only play story 3 chapters). I also like to have characters running around building defences, since a single warrior and/or older character with wisdom can turn back a large incursion with 0 risk – though be warned that you only gain the 2 legacy points if the incursion breaks against your defences, and not if it breaks destroying a site.

I like to be quick clearing all the sites, mostly by efficient pathing, but I’m a naturally greedy player. Unless I have a specific reason not to, I will always chase opportunities and spirits of the wild (I usually get them too!)

There can come a time where your team completely outscales the calamities – they pass without adding cards, and I smile. I once ground out legacy points from incursions that way - I was also trying to figure out if characters can die of old age during a chapter, and my conclusion is that if they can, the age is so high you will never see it in practice. Be warned that you can only do this on the last chapter, as otherwise all your heroes will retire, and in either case your characters will become quite slow.

On a tactics level, try to use actions evenly across the team as you go – you may run out of targets, and more folk will be able to move if you use spiritblade more evenly – and don’t forget that the most important thing to do with the hunter is positioning – if there are still spiritbladers, they can still shoot, even if they don’t have any of their own actions left.

It’s also important to move the team forward together at their own pace – I’ve never seen a spawn mission where the damage output of the team isn’t faster than the health output of any spawns. There are times to position aggressively and string out a little, but at the wrong moment that can leave you very vulnerable. Plus, don’t forget that sometimes a well places arches/bonewall/etc is worth more than a single attack, and don’t get mixed up between which actions are single, and which are turn ending.

History & Trivia of the Ember Rail Cannon

I’ve heard that when 1.9+433 Eve Vallenlong (unstable beta) was announced there was some talk of ember arrows & spiritblade teams, although they focused more on transformations, since at the time ember arrows scaled fully with theme attacks, but afaik, I’m the first to deep dive into it. Certainly, my bug reports contributed to a number of edge cases where spiritblade would incorrectly interact with Sharpshooter, Throughshot, Sharpshooter and through shot (together).

If my team names sound weird to you, know that I limit myself to names that directly draw on the randomly generated ones, mixing and matching but never introducing new content words.

The Mare Battalion is the first team you can see inklings of the Ember Rail Cannon - Flamesoul is the first piece got, and the reason I experimented with Ember Arrows to begin with, as my earliest impressions of the ability were that it was unreliable on account of the need for fire (which you’re never short of when you have 2 Flamesouls running around). I had read Flamesoul Vigorflow mystics were extremely strong, so when I got Flamesoul on a mystic, Lutie Easttoe the campaign before (The Daughters of Plenty), for the first time ever, I jumped at the chance to build one. Initially, I ran her in The Mare Battalion alongside one Jaymy Oceabridge, my first Flamesoul (a hunter), which helps deplete enemy warding (I found Rogue & Heroism an excellent way to bypass warding back before it was depletable, though it was somewhat ineffective on some large targets that keep taking hits long after all nearby squishes are all wiped).

During The Mare Battalion campaign, Luti Eastoe also picked up spiritblade, which, since she was perma-infused to blazes and I had solid targets for it was decently useful, pointing me towards the skill being worthwhile for the attacks.

With Spiritblade on the team, I started appreciating the ability more – when I first started playing I loved it for the +1 damage, but it had fallen out of favour because… well that misses the point. Once I started using it, and discovered that the upgrade let you weaponise both actions, I got pretty excited and actually used it.

Next came the Weevils of the Orchid, where I levelled Genlow Prickleharp (a hunter with an interesting hybrid archer/thornfang build, Frostfang & Queenaxe who’d had a pretty rough first campaign, losing an eye), towards the bow on the next step of my journey – The Battalion of the Riddle. In this campaign I had Fae, my first foray into raider, and between Genlow and Cary Bodsmit (my fist dedicated spiritblader) I began to really see the potential (though Genlow wasn’t promote that time – I think through poor options :/)

Falling in love with Raider + Spiritblade, the team focus started to shift a little towards the hunter, and with my first mythwalker being a thornfang build with foxflight (nyoom!), I quickly realised that keeping up with a ranged character would be significantly easier – I like to keep at least 1 of every class in my main party (especially hunter!) for overland tasks, and the increased reliability on Ember Arrows began to show. Since I’m also more of a defence knockback warrior main at heart, it wasn’t hard to fit it into builds

From there I played 4 solidifying campaigns – The Girdle of the Glutted Blade, The Light of the Invincible Pine, Love’s Ember Chevron, and finally Justice Arrow’s Bringers. These campaigns saw my team go from a theoretical concept to a monstrous practicality

In my most recent Ember Rail Cannon campaign (as of 01/2023), Justice Arrow’s Bringers, I accidentally dismantled my Ember Cannon as Gales Clerksy retired, and I had to scrape together a new one from her fresh-faced hero-worshipping protégé hunter, Roymere Reds. Either I was extremely lucky, or it’s extremely easy to do, as I was able to make him every bit as good as her, with her passed-down experience and some last chapter levelling. He even found a bone bow to her vigilkeeper! I found myself using spiritblade on Julienne Pricklespur, my Sylvan Vigourflow Shotgun, more than normal while I got him up to scratch, but if anything that just emphasises the importance of having a shotgun (She started that campaign with nothing but openminded – not even the theme!!). It’s funny actually – Melway also started that campaign themeless at rank 1 (spiritblade), and ended with crow wings, flamesoul, and no vigourflow xD I really thought she was going to be the shotgun, but RNGeezus laughs at me. However, I do want to note that a rank 1 with spiritblade is every bit as powerful as a mythwalker Ember Cannon… provided they’re on the same team. That is what makes this team so terrifying.

[AngusOfTheDandelion]

FFS dude, you are fully aware I don't spend LP on re-rolls - I save up for team-wide promotions. very occasionally I have re-rolled, but I couldn't even say for certain I re-rolled for an Ember Cannon. I'm pretty sure I've done it twice and once was a warrior.

so no, you build differently out of your choices, not re-roll differences. now, again, stop clogging the comments here and save it for discord.

[Robur Velvetclaw]

"In the nicest possible way, you don't build Ember Barrels basically at all the way I do...."

Because I am working on a tight budget, and I don't intend on burning LPs on the levelling lottery.

[AngusOfTheDandelion]

In the nicest possible way, you don't build Ember Barrels basically at all the way I do. I've seen the flashcone, rogue, feeback loop hunter you're currently running and... for the love of Wildermyth please just build sharpshooter. build at all the way I recommend.

to avoid clogging up these comments keep this in the wildermyth discord

[Robur Velvetclaw]

So I started playing with an ERC team, again, after the devs .... fixed??? the Drauven Sneer ability, and there are issues.

One of the problems about fighting Drauven Deeven and Redcloaks now is that if they get damaged, even if by a little bit, these folks will jump BACKWARD, away from your folk. As you know I tend to run a Water Bow + Rogue ember cannon barrel, so this Sneer mechanic poses problems. Even with the insane range of some modded weapons (ie the Fire Bow from the Boojum Miniplot mod, or one of the Water Bows from the Ranger Pack) this posed problems at high calamity difficulty.

I suppose I could go for your original recommendations: Stone Bow/Artefact weapon + Pierce (in addition to the mandatory Ember Arrows + Throughshot+ ) but it would seem that in order to make this work, you need to *somehow* increase the Stunt chances of the Ember Cannon Barrel guy.

[AngusOfTheDandelion]

I seem incapable of rolling that event and it doesn't seem that good to me on paper :P

[Robur Velvetclaw]

*koff*Koff* Improvsed Fireball *koff*koff*

[AngusOfTheDandelion]

I'll be sure to get that in when I update the guide :)

[Raverik]

and one more thing, storm touched vigourflow shotgun mystic can stun on stunt