Surviving 100 Days

This is a guide on how to survive for 100 days. I'll tell you step by step how I managed not only to survive for 100 days, but to save the crown after day 100.

Determine Your Goal

Decide whether you want to keep defending until the day you die, or if you want to defend for a long time, then take off on the ship. If your only goal is to get the achievements, don't build the boat as it will expend a lot of your resources.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=972915118

Pros And Cons of Island 1

Pros

• Has only one side to defend
  
• Don't have to destroy portals
  
• Has a merchant
  
• Shorter distance between your base and a recruitment camp
  
• Fewer enemies
  
• (Optional) Lower ship building cost

Cons

• Less space means less useful spawns
  
• Winter starts on day 20
  
• Less bragging rights

To me, it's the obvious choice, but it's your choice to make.

The Preparation

First you should do a run on a different island. I suggest the second island. The goal of this run is to escape the island with everything you want to start the 100 day run with. This should include the following:

• 2 or 3 knights, each with archers in tow
  
• A full bag of coins, aside from the 10 you need to escape
  
• Your mount of choice
  
• (Optional) Your hermit of choice
  
• (Optional) A dog

Now I'll go over each of those in further detail.

Knights

The knights will serve as your line of defense while you go out and recruit people, gather coins, build your kingdom, etc. You will get two knights by building the castle and recruiting them from there. You can optionally play an island before this and have brought a knight or two from there, or find a knight hermit to get a third.

Coins

This is pretty straightforward: after building your ship and sending your knights toward it, you should have a full bag of coins. Gather them from rabbit hunters, farmers, deer, your banker, etc. before you pay the 10 coin fee to leave.

Mount

There are numerous mounts that you can choose from in the game, but I'll narrow it down for you:

1. Bear
   
2. Stag
   
3. Warhorse

Bear
The bear is in my opinion the best choice on account of its walk speed. In the winter, there is no grass to eat and your stamina is reduced. As such, walk speed is a key component, as well as the ability to attack if need be, and to hunt the remaining stray rabbits and deer in the winter. Being able to kill for money is a great way to get your camp going before winter.

Stag
The stag wouldn't be my top choice, but it's what I used due to it being the best choice that I've found in my run. The stag has very high stamina and run speed, and can attract stray deer back to your camp during the winter, before they all die out. The stag can also be consistantly useful to build up your bank prior to the winter.

Warhorse
The warhorse can be beneficial with the buff it provides to your units, but my biggest issues with it are the lack of speed and the lack of money making capabilities. The choice is still yours to make.

Why Not Unicorn?
The unicorn can generate a lot of gold, sure, but when the winter comes, it loses that ability as there is no grass for it to eat. It then becomes a standard horse with no particularly beneficial attributes.

Hermits

While the hermits can be useful, they are by no means mandatory. If you want to bring one with you, go for it.

Ballista
The ballista allows for easy work of the fliers, and is the best choice in my opinion.

Baker
The baker can round up recruits, but you have to pay for the bread whenever they get eaten, so to save money, I prefer to run around on a decent mount to gather them myself.

Knight
The knight hermit allows for an extra knight, but in my opinion the ballista is a better choice.

Dog

We'll have only one use for the dog: a one use meat shield. It's not needed.

When your ship is ready and you have everything you want to bring, set sail for island 1, or whichever other island you're trying this on.

Getting Started

Your goals before winter comes are as follows:

• Start your camp
  
• Find out where the portal is
  
• Find recruitment camps
  
• Start clearing forests and building up your army
  
• Find an archer statue, and upgrade the wooden shrine
  
• Max out your outermost defences facing the portal
  
• Build up your army as much as you can
  
• Find anything that you wanted from the previous island but couldn't find
  
• (Optional) Construct your ship and send it off to the dock with any knights you want to bring to the next land.

So long as you have your knights with you, you won't have to worry about defences too much. Your primary goal is to get as much gold as you can in the limited time you have. You should clear nearby forests, but omit trees adjacent to the merchant's camp and recruitment camps. Spend your money on defence upgrades, as well as recruiting archers. Make sure you have more archers hunting rabbits than you have under the knights' control. While you could make farmers to get gold, buying archers is a better use of funds as you'll need a lot of them in the winter.

Do not expand too far. You should have only the first two walls on the portal side.

Never destroy the trees around the merchant's camp! This will permanently despawn him, and you will have no source of income during the winter. Everyday you should be giving him a coin so that you can claim eight coins the next day.

The archer statue is a must have. It is cheap and allows for far greater damage. If you don't have it, get it. You won't have to make use of it until later.

The Archer Statue

The archer statue greatly improves the accuracy of your archers, allowing them to hit with nearly every shot. This makes much shorter work of the enemies, and reduces the time that they are banging on your wall.

Each level costs four coins and lasts for one day, however, after you've maxed it out, waited two days, and the second level is running out, if you pay the four coins again, it should refill it to max as opposed to the second tier. This should be exploited at all times from the point that you start using the statue.

The other statues won't help you in this run as they are either made obsolete by winter, or are too expensive.

In the Winter

You've built your defences, gathered your army, and now winter has come. Congratulations, now is the tough part where you have to be able to plan your limited remaining funds to hire archers, use the shrine, rebuild walls if they fall, all whilst remembering to pay the merchant in time everyday.

Note that if you plan to escape the island safely, you should have 10 gold either stored with the banker, or in your pouch. I chose to have it on me so that I could turn on a dime and dash for the boat if things start looking grim. This means you should not spend absolutely everything, and count out your coins if you're unsure about how much you have. If you're just playing until you die for the achievement, don't worry about it.

The game plan from here on is relatively simple: for the first while you should be spending everything on getting more and more archers. When they start to get overwhelming, but before they actually do any major damage, start using the archer shrine. If you're using the shrine properly as per the Archer Shrine section of this guide, you should only have to use it every second day. I started using it at around day 30, but it depends on how well you've built your defences. Don't wait too long to start using it or your wall will fall.

As you have limited gold, keep an eye on how many NEETs you have and balance that with the amount of bows you make and are dropped by fallen units.

Don't go to close to the wall, or you're at risk of the giants hurling catapult boulders back at you and causing your money to fall into the water.

Some nights won't have any enemies spawn. Take this opportunity to build up your defences, but still remember to keep the archer statue active and to pay the merchant.

In Closing

This guide was based purely on my own experiences. What has worked for some won't necessarily work for others. If you have any questions, or other tips and tricks, leave them in the comments. Good luck, fellow monarchs!

[IWNL TomiZarck]

got

[Tsunami]

A nice tip: You can use the Bear to protect your walls. First I stored safely every coin, then I stayed outside the wall and waited till the first mob would throw the crown inside the kingdom defences. Then the camera will slide towards the fallen crown, but you will be able to stay outside the wall attacking the enemies. It has proven very effective, even against the Giants.

[EricFiredragon]

No need for a shrine, just need triple the gold your pouch can fit every day ;)
No, really, that's what I did.

[Portal]

It's just not possible to survive 100 nights on island 1 without the Upgrade shrine. And this guide may be true about unicorn being useless in winter, Why can't you just use the unicorn to build up a giant amount of money before winter hits? You forgot to mention the Banker, as he can make a LOT of money very fast if just invest a little gold in him everyday. You still did good!

[R-A-B]

How can Island 1 be accomplished when the stone shrine never appears on it?

[Venboven]

Personally, I think that you should have focused some on the Banker. He is SO So important to surviving the winter.

[Gems]

Plus, the bank is loaded with coins in case of a winter. Probably got about 70 in there, thanks to the unicorn.

[Gems]

I'm gonna try it out on island 4, I've already got the boat ready and my knights if something goes wrong, but I have a very strong defense. I've made up to day 54 on the 5th island, it should be easier here with the less troops and the ballista hermit

[Skruntoo]

I like island 3 most for long runs personally. The guarunteed nearby camp and merchant aren't as useful as a nearby farm and a well managed bookeeper. You get a lot more out of a topped up gold store than you do out of the merchant each day. I'm well past day 100 living off interest; don't even need the buff statues anymore.

[Dried Monkey]

While you can technically pick up coins after paying the fee to launch the boat, paying the fee saves your stats in that moment, and loads those saved stats in the next game. As such, you can see extra coins after paying the fee, but in the next game you don't have them.