Warriors of the North Unit Analysis Part 9: Neutral Sapients


Same basic division as back in The Legend and Armored Princess, same basic logic. Barbarians and Berserkers are of course missing from this list because they've gone over and become Viking units.


Pirate
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: 50
Leadership: 25
Attack/Defense: 8 / 4
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 25
Damage: 3-5 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: None
Abilities: Excavator (+10% Gold from overworld loot), Marine (+2 Morale in naval combat), Nimble (20% chance to dodge attacks)

No changes.

Though it's worth noting that some Skills and other effects that support Vikings include Pirates and Sea Dogs in the list of units that benefit. As such, there's a bit of a bias toward picking Pirates over any other, similar options. And in the early game money can be enough of a problem that it can be genuinely tempting to grab a Pirate or Sea Dog; just stuff one into Reserves.

Sea Dog
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 100
Leadership: 40
Attack/Defense: 18 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 2
Health: 40
Damage: 5-7 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Fury Attack (Reload: 1. Simultaneously attacks not only the target but also enemies to the side for 5-7 Physical damage. No friendly fire risk), Running (Charge: 1. +2 Action Points)
Abilities: Excavator (+10% Gold from overworld loot), Marine (+2 Morale in naval combat), Nimble (20% chance to evade attacks)

No changes.

Nothing to really add I didn't already note under Pirates.

Griffin
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 260
Leadership: 80
Attack/Defense: 20 / 20
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 5
Health: 90
Damage: 5-10 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 20% Magic, -10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Split (Charge: 1. Stack splits in half, shunting half its numbers into a new stack directly adjacent. This new stack cannot use Split, and is considered a new unit in most every respect, having its full supply of Action Points and being unaffected by any effects lingering on the spawning stack. Does not end the originating stack's turn)
Abilities: Beast (-10% Fire resistance, +10% Ice resistance), Flight, Furious (Retaliations never 'run out'), Magic Resistance (+20% Magic resistance)

They've become slightly weak to Fire but are resistant to the new Ice damage type, having picked up the Beast quality.

So basically you ideally Burn them instead of Freezing them. Especially since they're so fast -1 Speed generally won't matter to them.

Beholder
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 460
Leadership: 140
Attack/Defense: 20 / 24
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 80
Damage: 7-12 Magical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: None
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 6), No Melee Penalty, Paralyzing Ray (Ranged attack has a chance to put target to Sleep for one turn. The lower the target's level, the higher the chance of Sleep), Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground battles), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No change.

Though since Paralyzing Ray doesn't work on the Undead, much of the time they'll be primarily a decent source of Magic damage. So they're actually pretty unappealing in Warriors of the North...

Evil Beholder
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 620
Leadership: 180
Attack/Defense: 22 / 28
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 100
Damage: 9-15 Magical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Mind Control (Charge: 1. Mind controls a single unit -enemy or ally- that hasn't used up its Action Points yet and directs it to attack an enemy. If the victim can't reach the chosen target, they will still move as close as they can. This consumes the victim's turn. Invalid against Level 5 units, units with immunity to Mind effects, and can only control up to 180 Leadership per Evil Beholder)
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 7), No Melee Penalty, Paralyzing Ray (Ranged attack has a chance to put target to Sleep for one turn. The lower the target's level, the higher the chance of Sleep), Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground battles), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No changes.

Same basic deal as Beholders, but compounded by how Mind Control also doesn't work on the Undead.

Cyclops
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 5000
Leadership: 1400
Attack/Defense: 50 / 67
Initiative/Speed: 1 / 3
Health: 650
Damage (Ranged): 60-70 Physical
Damage (Melee): 80 Physical
Resistances: 30% Physical, 60% Poison, 30% Fire, 25% Ice
Talents: Stunning Slap (Charge: 1. Does 70 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy and Stuns them), Push (Reload: 2. Pushes an adjacent enemy one tile away and does 80-100 Physical damage in the process. The target can't retaliate)
Abilities: Archer, Sniper, Stone (30%/60%/30% Physical/Poison/Fire resistance. Persistence of Mind is thrown in. The Cyclops is an inorganic unit, rendering it impossible to heal but immune to Plague etc), No Melee Penalty

Cyclops continue their 'only Magic and Astral damage are good against them' dynamic by picking up Ice resistance, even if it's a little weaker than their Physical and Fire resistances. Strangely, it's not listed under the Stone Ability. Otherwise, they haven't directly changed any.

The Ice resistance itself is actually not in the base version of Warriors of the North, added in specifically by Ice And Fire, making base-Warriors of the North Cyclops possibly the easiest to kill version in the series.

As I noted with the bears, an odd change Warriors of the North made is that inflicting Stun with an attack no longer prevents the target from retaliating. This makes Stunning Slap no longer appealing as a 'free' attack (Because the victim will always retaliate if they normally would), further encouraging using Push or a ranged attack.

A more indirect change is that, as with plants, Cyclops have always been immune to Bleeding but now Bleeding immunity is more significant. Cyclops are probably your best choice if you want a unit that can tank hits from Werewolf Elves or White Werewolves without suffering from Bleeding, in fact. It's either them or Ice Dragons, and Cyclops are better at soaking Physical punishment and keeping problematic enemies away from the rest of your forces.

Ice and Fire in specific also actually gives Cyclops the 'real' Persistence of Mind Ability, making this the only entry in the series where they're properly fully immune to mental effects, instead of just mostly-immune.

Emerald Green Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 11,000
Leadership: 1900
Attack/Defense: 53 / 60
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 6
Health: 800
Damage (Default): 80-110 Physical
Damage (Hates Giants): 160-220 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 30% Magic, 50% Fire
Talents: Target Capture (Reload; 2. Targets an enemy 1 empty tile away, dragging them adjacent and doing 130 Physical damage per Emerald Green Dragon in the attacking stack. The target doesn't get to retaliate, and will eg set off traps it's been pulled into), Mana Source (Reload: 3. Inflicts 50-70 Magic damage on all adjacent units, granting the owning Hero Mana based on the damage done)
Abilities: Flight, Hates Giants (Calls the Hates Giants attack against Giants, and -1 Morale if Giants are in the army), Fire Protection (50% Fire resistance), Magic Resistance (30% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

No changes.

The introduction of Ice makes it a bit easier to beat down Emerald Green Dragons, especially since Ice damage sources don't tend to be poor at direct damage the way Poison damage sources so often are. This makes Emerald Green Dragons a little bit less generally useful in player hands, and also makes it a lot easier to nuke them down as enemies than in prior games.

Red Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 12000
Leadership: 2000
Attack/Defense: 63 / 63
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 7
Health: 870
Damage: 100-120 Fire
Resistances: 15% Physical, 30% Magic, 80% Fire
Talents: Fire Flood (Reload: 2. Infinite range straight-line attack that does 100-140 Fire damage to all units in the line with a 50% chance to Burn them)
Abilities: Flight, Dragon Breath (Melee attacks hit the tile beyond the target, with a 50% chance to Burn hit units. This includes retaliations), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance and cannot be Burned), Magic Resistance (+30% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects)

They've picked up +10 to Attack and Defense, surprisingly enough. No other changes.

Like Emerald Green Dragons, the introduction of Ice damage makes Red Dragons less consistently durable, though their Defense boost partially offsets this when it comes to units attacking them. And unlike Emerald Green Dragons, Red Dragons are strongly effective against some Ice damage enemies, such as Ice Spiders and Ice Dragons. So where Emerald Green Dragons are pretty clearly knocked down a peg, Red Dragons are a little more complicated -in player hands, they're pretty close to purely improved, since enemies don't use Rage and I'm not sure any of the Ice damage Spells are actually used by any enemy Heroes. In AI hands, they're probably a little easier to deal with than before... unless, of course, you're not particularly interested in leveling Lord of the North, and don't have a strong Blizzard.

Black Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 15000
Leadership: 2500
Attack/Defense: 70 / 70
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 8
Health: 1000
Damage: 110-130 Fire
Resistances: 20% Physical, 80% Magic, 80% Fire, 20% Ice
Talents: Rain of Fire (Reload: 2. Moves up to the Black Dragon's full Action Point total, automatically attacking units the Black Dragon flies over for 110-140 Fire damage with an 80% chance for each affected unit to be Burned)
Abilities: Flight, Dragon Breath (Melee attacks hit the tile beyond the target, with a 50% chance to Burn hit units. This includes retaliations), Immune to Fire (80% Fire resistance and cannot be Burned), Magic Immunity (Immune to most Spells, and 80% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Dragon Power (Enemies below Level 5 have -1 Initiative)

They've picked up Ice resistance, retaining the rule that only Astral and Poison damage are fully effective against them. No actual changes.

Technically, this means Black Dragons are still a stronger choice than Red Dragons pretty consistently, but with Red Dragons having bolstered their Attack the Leadership difference makes Red Dragons pretty consistently a bit more lethal than Black Dragons. Not hugely so, but enough to make it more a matter of whether you prefer Rain of Fire or Fire Flood's utility. Rain of Fire has better damage potential, but is harder to use while staying safe and dishing out damage ASAP.

So it really is a matter of preference in Warriors of the North.

Huzzah!

Thorn Warrior
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 8
Attack/Defense: 4 / 3
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 9
Damage: 1-3 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, -100% Fire
Talents: Sowing (Charge: 1. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter from an adjacent corpse, destroying the corpse, whose Leadership is 2-4 per Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to mental effects, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures)

No change.

It's a little more plausible you might want to incorporate Thorn Warriors into your army proper thanks to Royal Thorns directly supporting them now, particularly if you're a Skald and so Warriors of Valhalla will let you take the sting out of casualties, but overall they're the same as they ever were, and unlike The Legend you will have better options right out the gate. (In the form of Viking units) So they're still something you usually don't want to field.

Thorn Hunter
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 8
Attack/Defense: 4 / 1
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 3
Health: 6
Damage: 1-2 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, -100% Fire
Talents: Sowing (Charge: 1. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter from an adjacent corpse, destroying the corpse, whose Leadership is 2-4 per Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 4), Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to mental effects, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), No Melee Penalty

No change.

Thanks to Royal Thorns directly supporting them, and the surprising amount of Plant support Warriors of the North offers, this is possibly the best game in the series for Thorn Hunters. Either that or The Legend just for having an early game where they're liable to be one of your only ranged options for a bit. Regardless, it can be genuinely tempting to implement Thorn Hunters alongside Royal Thorns, instead of them being displaced by Royal Thorns. 4 Speed is enough to play keep away with quite a few enemies while still peppering them with ranged fire.

Royal Thorn
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 600
Leadership: 380
Attack/Defense: 30 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 2 / 1
Health: 360
Damage (Ranged): 20-30 Physical
Damage (Melee): 20-40 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison, -100% Fire
Talents: Germination (Reload: 2. Spawns a Thorn Warrior or Hunter in an adjacent tile, type randomly chosen, whose Leadership is 150-300 per Royal Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 6), Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to mental effects, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), No Melee Penalty, Thorn Leader (+1 Initiative and Speed for allied Thorn Warriors and Thorn Hunters)

They've picked up Thorn Leader, making them even better at just hanging back and burying the enemy in spawned Thorns. Otherwise they're not changed.

Of course, as they level up they'll pick up superior ability to bury enemies in Thorns through summoning boosts, and they'll also get some damage in, making their role as a turret a bit more effective. They'll also pick up Health as they level, which is very useful, though alas no Speed anywhere in the process of leveling, ensuring they remain turrets if not given some form of support.

This is the best game of the series for Royal Thorns, bar maybe Champion of the Arena, and it's quite nice. And remember; Undead don't include any Fire damage sources, but they do include some Poison. Plants are consistently good against Undead. Thus, the Undead-heavy nature of Warriors of the North is also a point in the Royal Thorn's favor.


Witch Hunter
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: 300
Leadership: 120
Attack/Defense: 20 / 14
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 3
Health: 110
Damage: 5-9 Physical
Resistances: 50% Magic
Talents: Magic Block (Charge: 1. Targets a single enemy stack of units. For three turns, the affected stack will take 8-12 Magic damage any time they attack and will take 12-20 Magic damage anytime they use a Talent. If the unit is considered to be a Mage, these values are increased by 50%. These numbers scale to the Witch Hunter stack's size), Magical Aid (Reload: 2. Applies a random magical buff to to the user's stack. Does not end the turn), Magic Lock (Charge: 1. A single target enemy is unable to use any of its Talents for 3 turns)
Abilities: Mage Slayer (50% damage against mages and summoned unit), Magic Protection (+50% Magic resistance), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Restoration (Purges all negative effects at the beginning of the unit's turn)

+1 to max damage, Magic Lock does end their turn now (And only has 1 charge instead of being reloading!), Magic Block has been made far more general, and Mage Hunter has been broken up into multiple different Abilities. (With the one labeled Mage Slayer now also boosting damage against summons!) The overall result is that Witch Hunters are simultaneously overall more general in their utility and yet not nearly so maddeningly ridiculous with their Talent spam. I approve.

Magical Aid has also been subtly overhauled. First of all, the Spell list is now...

Bless, Stone Skin, Haste, Hell Breath, Divine Armor, Power of Light, Power of Night, and Dragon Slayer

... which is even more prone to being either an offense boost or a defense boost -only Haste isn't one of the two. The chance of a given Spell being cast is modified by the relevancy of the enemy formation -the higher the enemy army's overall Fire resistance is, the less likely you are to get Hell Breath, for example. In the case of Power of Light, Power of Night, and Dragonslayer, they flat-out can't be selected if the enemy army contains no relevant units; no dragons? No chance of Dragonslayer. For the other Spells, their chance to be selected will never be 0%; you can still get Hell Breath even if the enemy army is entirely Red Dragons and Black Dragons, it's just a lot less likely than against an army of units with standard resistances.

More subtle is that these Spells behave as if they were cast by the owning Hero; in Crossworlds, a Witch Hunter casting Bless on itself wouldn't get duration boosts from your Intellect or from the Healer Skill, where a Witch Hunter in Warriors of the North absolutely will get whatever boosts you'd apply if you cast the Spell yourself. By extension, duration is no longer standardized; instead of being 2 turns (Aside the oopsie...), the duration will be the Spell's own duration, including modifiers. (They're still always cast as Level 2, note; you can't raise their Level by raising the Level of those Spells in your book, for one) This aspect is an increasingly large buff to Witch Hunter effectiveness in player hands as a run progresses, while AI Witch Hunters are only affected by it if they happen to get assigned to a Hero; if you were underwhelmed by Witch Hunters in Armored Princess but liked the idea of them, consider giving them a second chance in Warriors of the North.


Assassin
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 800
Leadership: 150
Attack/Defense: 36 / 20
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 3
Health: 100
Damage: 11-13 Physical
Resistances: 25% Poison
Talents: Backstab (Charge: 1. A target enemy whose current facing and environmental location would allow a unit to strike it from behind is attacked for 17 Physical damage and Poisoned. If a Trap is in the position that would be attacked from, Backstab is interrupted, and the Assassin is now standing in the tile the Trap is in, having activated it), Murder (Charge: 1. Does 13 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy. If the targeted stack is slain by Murder, the Assassin only uses up 1 Action Point on the Murder, and in fact is given 1 Action Point if they would be at 0, giving them an immediate second turn. Additionally, Backstab gains a charge, even if that takes it over its normal max)
Abilities: No Retaliation, Poisonous (30% chance to Poison the enemy for 3 turns), Poison Protection (25% Poison resistance), Servant of Death (Buffs of any kind are instantly purged, and the Assassin is immune to Mind effects except for Hypnosis. When Hypnotized, Servant of Death stops working until the Hypnosis ends), Known Enemy (The more the player has fought stacks of a certain overall faction, the more Attack and Defense the Assassin has for the purposes of attacking/taking damage from units of those categories. Assassins don't need to participate in combat against units to get this boost)

Known Enemy is a much less wonky metagame-y thing than Find Weakness, which is honestly a bit of a relief. I'm not entirely sure of its mechanics in terms of how the game decides what a given battlegroup qualifies as, and I'm pretty sure there's some element of 'rot' where you can lose progress against a specific faction by fighting other factions or something of the sort, but, again, not sure the details. It's not too important overall, beyond that I'm pretty sure it's not possible -or at least not reasonable- to achieve +100% against all factions at once. As with Find Weakness, AI Assassins will have randomized numbers per battle.

Murder has also been changed, even though its in-game description is unaltered. (And I'm not just talking about the part where using it is no longer relevant for long-term improving your Assassins) In Armored Princess, the Assassin successfully finishing off a stack with Murder would keep any unused Action Points (Including the one they should've used on attacking), and add two to that. In Warriors of the North... well, I'm not really sure what is happening, but a successful Murder in Warriors of the North usually results in only 1-2 Action Points being available even if the Assassin had more beforehand, making the Assassin much less able to perform Murder hit-and-runs. It's a weird little nerf, and I'm not even sure it was deliberately coded in, rather than being a side effect of code refactoring.

Murder has also been made less appealing indirectly by Warriors of the North's rework of Medals. In Armored Princess, the only Medal that 'competed' with using Murder to finish off a target was Trapper. In Warriors of the North, there's multiple Medals that are centered on 'finish off a target in a specific way' (And no, using Murder doesn't advance any of them), making a successful Murder defacto taking away Medal progress for a long, long time, especially if you're playing Ice and Fire where Medals have 5 ranks.

Assassins are still a good unit, but where in Armored Princess they were basically a better Royal Snake, in Warriors of the North the Royal Snake will often be more useful past the first turn, and sometimes even on the first turn.

Admittedly, with Gift making a return, Assassins are potentially bumped up by that, as you can Backstab, Murder, Backstab, and then Gift for another such chain. That's pretty rapid damage output.

On the other hand, with Zlogn dropping regularly in many fights and being able to catch a Backstabbing Assassin just like a Trap, Backstab is a lot less reliable.

So... in spite of the only direct change being a short/midterm buff, Assassins really are a lot less amazing in Warriors of the North. Not helping is that for a long time Skeleton Archers are a thing you regularly are trying to nuke down before they act, and the vast majority of the time Assassins are no help at all there; you're better off with a generic ranged unit for such situations. Armored Princess was much more prone to enemy battlegroups with no ranged attackers at all, which was part of why Assassins were so reliably useful.


Royal Griffin
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1200
Leadership: 300
Attack/Defense: 35 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 6
Health: 215
Damage (Default): 20-30 Physical
Damage (Dragon Despiser): 40-60 Physical
Resistances: 10% Physical, 50% Magic, -10% Fire, 10% Ice
Talents: Cheer (Charge: 1. For 2 turns, all allied Elves and Humans get 50% more Attack and Initiative), Heavenly Guard (Charge: 1. Summons an Angelic Guard stack into a random nearby tile, whose Leadership is 150 per Royal Griffin in the summoning stack)
Abilities: Beast (-10% Fire resistance, +10% Ice resistance), Flight, Furious (Retaliations never 'run out'), Magic Protection (50% Magic resistance), Dragon Despiser (Calls the Dragon Despiser attack against dragons, and -2 to Morale if there's an allied dragon in the army), Regal (+1 Morale to allied Humans below Level 4 and Griffins-the-unit)

They've picked up slight Physical resistance, Beast has come into being (But unlike Griffins they were already weak to Fire, so this is overall just an improvement!), though they've actually lost 5 whole Health. (I guess to slightly offset their new resistances?) Regal has also been made less effective, probably since it's no longer necessary to have a stand-in for Humans lacking a mono-species Morale bonus since they in fact have one.

A bit of an indirect strike against Royal Griffins is how limited/erratic your access to Humans is. The one cluster of shops that consistently provides good access to Humans is only available for a limited portion of the game; unless you deliberately buy ahead and dump units into castles -not the Arlania or Greenwort castles, anything in them will be lost when Darion updates- so you can keep accessing them even as casualties mount and your Leadership rises, you'll probably struggle to keep up adequate Human forces for Royal Griffins to support.

This is pretty minor overall, but worth mentioning.

The bigger strike against them is the introduction of Ice Dragons, which are also a fast flying summoner of good bulk, only they pretty much outperform Royal Griffins in every way so long as no Fire damage is around to melt them.


Angelic Guard
Level: 3
Hiring Cost: N/A (Technically 300, but this doesn't matter)
Leadership: 60
Attack/Defense: 20 / 15
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 5
Health: 33
Damage: 4-7 Ice
Resistances: 50% Physical, 25% Magic
Talents: None
Abilities: Flight, Furious, Phantom (50% Physical resistance and can travel through solid objects), Negates Magic (25% Magic resistance, and automatically purges all buffs and debuffs)

They've switched to Ice damage, in line with the other ghost-y units, and lost their Fire weakness, oddly enough. No other changes.

Since so few things seriously resist Ice, this is overall a modest buff to their performance.

Troll
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3600
Leadership: 1100
Attack/Defense: 50 / 55
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 2
Health: 780
Damage: 60-80 Physical
Resistances: 15% Physical, 15% Fire, 15% Ice
Talents: Pacify (Reload: 3. Does 70-90 Physical damage to an adjacent enemy. Additionally, the target's Initiative is reduced to 1 and it will always do its minimum damage, temporarily)
Abilities: Troll Skin (If aboveground and in daylight hours, base Physical, Fire, and Ice resistance are doubled. If underground and/or at night, +1 to Speed and Initiative, and the Troll has Regeneration), Petrify (When the stack is destroyed, a statue is left behind, acting as a destructible environmental object), Malevolent (Anytime any unit dies, so long as it wasn't slain by a Spell, +5 Attack. This stacks)

They've picked up Ice resistance, with it being tied into their Troll Skin mechanic. That's... uh... it. It's also only true in Ice and Fire: the base version of the game skipped right over them, like so many other units, making Ice particularly dominating of a damage type in the base game.

Unless I count the fact that for some reason their death animation is a lot buggier now. They'll laugh and then abruptly switch to the stone statue graphic unless you kill them with a Spell, apparently reacting to their own death with a Malevolent boost. For that matter, when they finish off a stack, they won't actually complete the swing and return to their default pose before laughing; they'll just abruptly jump from their club nearly hitting the ground to laughing. Have a Troll kill a Troll for maximum weird!

If you know what you're doing and are a little lucky, you can get Trolls surprisingly early, which can be cool for leveraging their darkness regeneration. Not particularly earlier than in Armored Princess, but it's still worth mentioning.

On that note, their statue's mechanics haven't changed, though it might seem otherwise depending on your play experience, since the Health of the statue is still defined by the island the battle is occurring in. So 3 Defense, 50% Poison resistance, and still that weird -50% Fire resistance.


Demonologist
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1200
Leadership: 210
Attack/Defense: 30 / 25
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 2
Health: 160
Damage (Ranged): 12-14 Fire
Damage (Anti-Demon ranged): 18-21 Magical
Damage (Melee): 9-10 Physical
Resistances: 25% Magic, 25% Fire
Talents: Thread of Life (Charge: 1. Does 14-18 Magic damage to a single enemy anywhere on the field, 40% of that damage then being used to heal/resurrect an allied stack. Machines and Magic-immune units can't be targeted), Demonic Beasts (Reload: 3. A given battlefield randomly generates an arbitrary list of tiles that are valid places to target Demonic Beasts. When using Demonic Beasts, you select an unoccupied instance of these tiles, and then 52.5-105 Leadership per Demonologist of Cerberi, Executioners, or Demons-the-unit is summoned into that tile)
Abilities: Flaming Skull (Range: 4. Against most units, ranged attack does Fire damage. Against Demons, ranged attack calls the anti-Demon attack), Demonology (+1 Morale if friendly Demons-the-faction are around, and +5 Attack in fiery environments), Gatekeeper (+2 to Attack and Defense every time Demons are summoned to the battlefield, or Teleport, Infernal Exchange, Bone Gate, Scragg Power, or Secret Paths are utilized. This stacks), Magic Protection (25% Magic resist), Fire Protection (25% Fire resist), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to Mind effects)

The only change is that Gatekeeper no longer applies to Dragon of Chaos (Because you can't summon them in battle) but it does apply to two new Ice and Fire unit Talents.

They're still a really good unit, and since there's a mandatory mid-game sequence heavy on Demons where you'll usually be able to immediately acquire Demonologists, any run can get good use out of them. Gatekeeper is also a little more leveragable; one Undead Lizardman unit can cast Teleport as a Talent, for example, instead of you needing to burn a precious Hero cast on it.


Jotun
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 3600
Leadership: 1350
Attack/Defense: 46 / 48
Initiative/Speed: 5 / 2
Health: 720
Damage: 60-70 Physical
Resistances: 35% Ice
Talents: Icy Breath (Reload: 2. An adjacent enemy and the target behind it suffer 35-50 Ice damage and are Frozen), Enchanting (Reload: 1. Switches Enchanted Mace's behavior)
Abilities: Hardened (+35% Ice resistance, and +50% Defense in snowy battlefields), Enchanted Mace (The Jotun's melee attacks either have 20% leeching, or have a 30% chance to Freeze enemies. Freeze chance is the default behavior), Greedy (Finishing off a stack provides +10 Morale for the rest of the battle), Runic Knowledge (Begins battle with 2 Attack and 2 Defense Runes), Boldness (+1 Action Point, immediately granting an extra turn, if any ally gets a critical hit, assuming the Jotun currently has no Action Points)

Surprisingly, random Rune distribution from eg leveling Rune Magic behaves the same on Jotun as on units with baseline even Rune distribution. That is, if you have Rune Magic at rank 2, Jotun will not be reliably gifted 2 Luck Runes because of having 2 Attack and 2 Defense Runes to 0 Luck Runes, but rather will get 1 of two different random Rune types. That's not how I'd have expected those mechanics to interact.

I'd make a joke about how Jotun is just Norse for Giant and so we have the Dwarven Giant and the Neutral Giant, but it's actually more complicated than that. Though interestingly one of the etymologies for Jotun is consistent with giving them the Greedy Ability!

Mechanically, the most interesting thing about the Jotun is that Boldness provides an incentive to try to run a selection of units whose base Initiative is middling to poor. Every unit of yours that goes after the Jotun is a chance to give the Jotun an extra turn, after all. Ideally you'd combine it with units who have access to splash attacks because if any part of an attack crits, it counts. Units who will move after Jotun by default while having ranged splash damage include; Giants, Slingers, Sorcerers, sort-of Advisors, Catapults, Soothsayers, Alchemists, and Pyromages. Stone Skin can get Evil Eyes, Rune Mages, and Imps in that list as well. Beyond that, you'll need shenanigans with Items or the like to get Jotun moving before the remaining ranged splash options.

Of course, melee splash is decent for this purpose too. The list of units that have some form of melee splash and go after Jotun by default is; Knights, Advisors, Jarls, Orc Chieftains, Paladins when fighting Undead, Brontors, Ram-Thors, and technically a good chunk of the Undead via Necro Energy Blast but that's not a great plan since it only has one charge and takes ages to get enough Necro Energy to use it and so on.

Properly backed by such units, Jotun can potentially lean pretty heavily on the 20% leech version of Enchanted Mace to keep going even while you have them in the thick of things. It's too bad you generally won't have access to Jotun until you're roundabout halfway through the game, and probably have 20,000+ Leadership.

Boldness is kind of important to Jotun standing out, because truth be told Ice Dragons otherwise tend to beat them out for utility. They're both Level 5 units that are particularly effective against Ice-damage enemies, they're both good at spreading around Freeze, but Ice Dragons are way better at both of those and generate disposable meatshields and laugh off Magic damage and are unimpressed with Poison damage and are decently resistant to Physical and fly and move much faster. All Jotun have over Ice Dragons -aside that Lizardmen and Undead Lizardmen hate dragons but get along fine with Jotun- is a lack of a Fire weakness (Not relevant very often, particularly once you're done with Demonis), access to Runes (Minor), and Boldness. So if you've got access to Ice Dragons, it's difficult to justify using Jotun unless you're going to try to lean hard on Boldness.

I actually really like Boldness, to be clear. It's fantastic that the series is trying to make low Initiative armies more interesting instead of just bad, and I actually think it's a much more interesting 'I get more turns at random' effect than Demonic Fury's mechanics. It's just Jotun have the misfortune of showing up at the same time as Ice Dragons, in terms of the series.

... in Ice and Fire.

In the base game, Jotun hold up better. Jotun access is locked behind flight access via Jotun Houses in the first four islands: in Ice and Fire, you don't get flight access until you're quite late in the game, where it's quite probable you've already gotten Ice Dragon access and in general have access to a lot of Level 5 units and whatnot. In the base game, flight access is extremely early, and so Jotun access will actually be occurring when your Leadership is so low you can only lead 1 copy! Similarly, you won't have access to other Level 5 units to compete with them for utility. The result is that in the base game Jotun are actually liable to see use for a good chunk of the game, because they'll be your best meatshield for helping you work on Grand Strategian/avoid spending Gold on casualties. They'll still eventually lose their luster as you gain access to other Level 5 units and have your Leadership rise high enough that being a high-Leadership unit is no longer all that intrinsically beneficial a quality, but this is a far better situation than in Ice and Fire, where Jotun will almost never make sense on their own merits to use.

The ironic thing is that in an overt sense Ice and Fire actually buffed Jotun, doubling the percentage on their Enchanted Mace's health-leeching mode and giving them Boldness. They're just... not enough to make up for the context shift caused by flight being shoved so much later.

The other issue with Jotun is that they're surprisingly frail. Their Leadership-to-Health ratio is just about 2-to-1, and then unlike other Level 5 units with such poor Health they have poor resistances, resisting exactly one rare element to only a modest extent. A Black Dragon has an even worse Leadership-to-Health ratio than a Jotun, for example, but takes trivial damage from Magic and Fire damage (Where Magic is the second-most-common damage type on units), and resists Physical enough to overcome the Jotun's Health advantage. The Jotun is only advantaged in those regards against Ice, Poison, and Astral damage (All rare damage types), and then it has more than 20 less Defense! So units will almost always kill Jotun faster than Black Dragons. While the Black Dragon flies, gets to strike multiple targets potentially every turn, is immune to most Spells, passively lowers enemy Initiative, has much more Speed and Initiative, can't be Burned...

... point is, the Jotun isn't poor on durability but strong elsewhere. Black Dragons are, admittedly, one of the series' better units, but most Level 5 unit comparisons have this issue to some extent or another: Jotun are slow and frail, with Boldness being the only potential game-changer Ability to justify them.

They really needed a better stat block, and better resistances.


Ice Thorn
Level: 1
Hiring Cost: 10
Leadership: 15
Attack/Defense: 4 / 2
Initiative/Speed: 3 / 3
Health: 6
Damage (Ranged): 1-3 Ice
Damage (Melee): 1-2 Physical
Resistances: 50% Poison-100% Fire, 15% Ice
Talents: Ice Flowers (Charge: 1. Spawns an Ice Thorn stack from an adjacent corpse, destroying the corpse, whose Leadership is 2-4 per Ice Thorn in the spawning stack)
Abilities: Archer (Range: 6), Plant (+100% vulnerability to Fire, +50% resistance to Poison, immunity to mental effects, assorted secondary implications), Eyeless (Immunity to Blind, Precision, and Greasy Mist. Also can detect invisible creatures), Frostproof (15% Ice resistance, immunity to Freeze), Icing (Upon death, an Ice Spike is left behind instead of a corpse)

Am I the only one who spent ages just assuming this was a Snow Elf unit? It's got the Snow Elf background, it's Ice and Fire content with an ice theme...

Anyway.

It's a Thorn Hunter, but Ice themed. And with nearly double the Leadership while only increasing its maximum damage by 50%. And having the exact same per-head rate of generation on Ice Flowers as Germination has, even though that means it's slightly over half the per-Leadership generation. And actually has its damage lowered by fighting in melee.

What I'm saying is Ice Thorns are mostly bad Thorn Hunters. You should generally only be fielding them by virtue of Ice Nymphs spawning them, or if you're just having fun with an all-Thorn army. (Which still needs something for the fifth slot, mind...) The advantages they gain are fairly minor -a point of Defense, a point of Initiative, Ice damage, minor Ice resistance, and immunity to Freeze- where that jump in Leadership almost halves their effectiveness. They even have the same Health per head as Thorn Hunters! Though on the plus side they also have the same Gold cost, so... they'll cost you less for a squad wipe? I guess?

Their only substantial advantage is that they've got a normal firing range, instead of the painfully short range of Thorn Hunters. And that they inflict Ice damage, but outside cases where a unit has serious Physical resistance and no Ice resistance Thorn Hunters will usually do more damage than Ice Thorns anyway. They don't even have a chance to inflict Freeze!

Unsurprisingly, they don't make for very threatening enemies either. You fight them the same as Thorn Hunters, except it's easier. No caveat about their minor Ice resistance; 15% Ice resistance is not enough to make up for double the Leadership. Especially since you'd probably rather dump eg Gudrida's Rage or Loki's Aid on either Thorn instead of Lord of the North.

I like the idea of Ice Thorns, but the numbers are really badly handled.


Ice Dragon
Level: 5
Hiring Cost: 23000
Leadership: 2200
Attack/Defense: 62 / 68
Initiative/Speed: 6 / 7
Health: 1100
Damage: 100-120 Ice
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic, -100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: Cold Heaven (Reload: 3. The target and both enemies to its side take 60-80 Ice damage. Enemies below Level 5 are also knocked back one tile), Call Henchmen (Charge: 1. Generates a stack of Ice Minions or undoes casualties of an existing such stack, either way by 850 Leadership per Ice Dragon)
Abilities: Flight, Magic Immunity (Immune to Spells and +80% Magic resistance), Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Freezing Touch (Melee attacks always Freeze), Creator (Each time the Ice Dragon finishes off an enemy stack, it gains a charge on Call Henchmen. Additionally, when an Ice Dragon stack is completely finished off, it leaves behind a Mana charger, which provides 2-5 Mana per Ice Dragon plus 1 Action Point regardless of original stack size when a unit enters its tile), Claustrophobic (Attack is halved underground)

Strangely, where Ice Spiders don't leave a corpse, Ice Dragons do. This is particularly curious since it makes it almost impossible to see the Mana charger that's left behind when they die, due to their corpse's sheer size and similar coloration. The Mana charger's value scaling to the stack's original size is more of a curiosity than anything else, but it's interesting that the developers chose to do so at all.

Note that Call Henchmen can only place one Ice Minion on the field. If you've already got one on the field, you can't call a second one. If your current Ice Minion is undamaged, you can't use the Talent at all.

A bizarre glitch with Ice Dragons: enemy Ice Dragons effectively have No Retaliation, but yours do not. I've no idea why, but it's very irritating.

As is usual with dragons, Ice Dragons can theoretically wear down arbitrarily large armies via abusing their Talents and incredible mobility. Unlike other dragons, they get minion generation so they can help protect your vulnerable ranged attackers while doing all this. They actually kind of shunt aside Black Dragons as far as far as 'I want a Spell-immune dragon in my forces', outside of when fighting Fire damage sources -and since they're Spell-immune and enemies don't get Rage, that only applies when facing the handful of units that have native access to Fire damage!

Notably, Warriors of the North's distribution of enemies makes it surprisingly rare for Fire damage units to crop up. There are almost no Human battlegroups, so Bowmen lobbing Flaming Arrows is a rarity, and I've already covered how insanely rare Pyromages are as enemies. Undead are common much of the time, and include no Fire damage sources. Demons are almost exclusive to one portion of the game, and it's entirely possible you'll have cleared it out before getting access to Ice Dragons. Goblin Catapults are the only Fire damage source on Orcs, and they're almost exclusive to the Isles of Freedom, which you'll probably have largely cleared out before you get access to Ice Dragons.

Basically, you'll occasionally encounter Fire Dragonflies, Fire Spiders, Red Dragons, and Black Dragons as issues, Alchemists lobbing Fire Water and Engineers lobbing their grenades are something to keep in mind in the Dwarven portions of the game -and they're late enough to actually matter- and you might end up fighting Snow Falcons with Ice Dragons, but since they do mixed Fire/Ice damage in actuality that works out to (50% Fire*2=100%+50% Ice*0.2=12.5%, totaling to 112.5%) a very small damage increase rather than a serious weakness. And that's only on their basic attack; the Snow Falcon's two attacking Talents don't do Fire damage at all.

So yeah, Ice Dragons are shockingly amazing in part due to their one weakness only rarely being picked on.

Claustrophobic is pretty much entirely ignorable, too. Underground sequences are fairly rare in Warriors of the North in the first place, and the Ice Dragon's utility isn't defined primarily around its direct damage; its capacity to stall enemies with Ice Minions, Cold Heaven's pushback, and its own bulk is much more its big utility, and anytime it performs a regular attack the target is Frozen and so will take percentile damage unaffected by its Attack value.

Though you'll need to be a bit more careful than usual if you're trying to have the Ice Dragon use its own body as a shield. It being Spell-immune means almost all forms of healing and resurrection don't work on it, even most unit Talents. You don't need to worry particularly about Magic or Ice damage attackers, but even Poison damage attackers may do more than you expect and inflict a casualty or put it in reach of a casualty after just one more hit.

The loss of Defense in volcanic battlegrounds is arguably a bit more significant, except Demonis is where more or less all of those are at and bringing Ice Dragons into Demonis is generally a pretty dumb idea just on the high risk of being Burned and the widespread presence of Imps, Scoffer Imps, and Archdemons to toss out Fire damage, so really it's just kind of redundant.

Ice Dragons are actually my favorite of the series' dragons.


Ice Minion
Level: 2
Hiring Cost: N/A (Technically 10, but this doesn't matter)
Leadership: 50
Attack/Defense: 12 / 10
Initiative/Speed: 7 / 3
Health: 35
Damage: 3-5 Ice
Resistances: 25% Physical, 50% Poison, 80% Magic-100% Fire, 80% Ice
Talents: The Crystal Garden (Charge: 1. The Ice Minion stack is destroyed, spawning Ice Spikes in three adjacent tiles of the player's choice)
Abilities: Easy Step (Takes half damage from Traps), Ice Creation (Immunity to mental effects, 25% Physical resistance, 50% Poison resistance, -100% Fire weakness, 80% Ice resistance, cannot be Frozen, +50% Defense in snowy battlefields, -50% Defense in volcanic battlefields, immunity to some Spells), Nimble (Flat 30% chance for incoming attacks to Miss)

I like their evasion animation. It involves them hovering for a couple of seconds. It's cute. Really, all their animations are great. I'm not so fond of the sound effect they play pretty much constantly as part of their idle animation, though.

Though it is a bit odd that they do Ice damage when their melee attacks are just forward-flipping into people or doing an awkward hover-kick.

Anyway, the Ice Minion is pretty straightforward; it's a disposable minion that tends to last surprisingly long. The only wrinkle is The Crystal Garden is an odd Talent whose usage is complicated by how many Snow Elf units can leverage Ice Spikes to useful effect. If you're not using any of those units, The Crystal Garden is mostly just a last-ditch way of letting a nearly-destroyed stack of Ice Minions stall the enemy for even longer. If you are using those Snow Elves... suddenly you've got options for setting up to inflict mass damage, increase the production of a different kind of disposable minion, mass healing/resurrection... which can make it sensible to activate The Crystal Garden prematurely so you can leverage one or more of those effects.

If your Ice Dragons have already gotten a new charge on Call Minions, it can also be worthwhile to trigger The Crystal Garden early -say, at 50% original numbers- just so you can summon a fresh batch of Ice Minions.

Overall, though, Ice Minions are a fairly straightforward disposable summoned minion and that's about it.


Contemplator
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 1440
Leadership: 270
Attack/Defense: 26 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 140
Damage (Ranged): 12-17 Magical
Damage (Melee): 12-17 Physical
Resistances: Generic.
Talents: Impulse (Reload: 3. Does 10-13 Physical damage to all enemies within 3 tiles. If Energy is 65 or higher, 65 Energy is drained and Impulse does 50% more damage, shoves enemies one tile if they're below Level 5 and adjacent, and each affected enemy has a 60% chance to be Stunned if it's below Level 5 and is susceptible to mental effects), Fighting Trance (Reload: 3. For 2 turns, the Contemplator's Attack and Health are increased by 50%, but its Talents are unavailable until the Trance ends. Does not end the Contemplator's turn. If there is 85 or more Energy available, drains 85 Energy and for the duration of the Trance the Contemplator has unlimited retaliations and its ranged attacks have a 60% chance of hypnotizing enemies that are below Level 5, susceptible to mental effects, and have equal or lesser Leadership than its stack), Vector (Reload: 3. Deals 11-13 Fire damage to all units in a straight line, 'centered' on a hostile target. If there is 50 or more Energy available, drains 50 Energy and the attack does 50% more damage and has a 60% chance to Burn each unit in the line)
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 7), Underdweller (+50% Attack in underground battles), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), No Melee Penalty, Energy (Contemplators have 0-100 Energy in battle. They begin a battle with 50 Energy, and gain 20-30 Energy at the start of their turn, assuming it's their first turn of the round. If their Energy accumulates to 100 Energy, they gain +2 Initiative and +10% to all resistances except Magic and Physical so long as they remain at 100 Energy)

Yes, the in-game description claims that 100 Energy adds to all resistances. It's wrong. Because of bugs, to be fair, but it's still wrong.

Another Ice and Fire addition that's lifted from Red Sands... kinda. The Red Sands version was actually a Rune Mage type of dealy, instead of this Energy dynamic, and the exact effects are a little bit different -the Red Sands version got Drain Life from its trance state instead of Furious- but it's the same graphic, the same name (Internally: the, er, fan translation for Red Sands calls them 'Mystiks', and so does the Ice and Fire files), and the basic setup is essentially the same once you account for the switch to Energy instead of Runes.

Contemplators are a lot of fun to use. They're a surprisingly durable (Per-head, given how early you can get them) ranged attacker who presents you with some mildly complicated decisions; since Fighting Trance locks off access to their other Talents for a couple of turns, and since hitting 100 Energy gives some useful benefits, your choices with them have trade-offs. Vector and Impulse also don't have incompatible preferred parameters, but they're sufficiently at right angles to each other that moving to use one usually involves not moving to more readily use the other. And of course the enhanced effects for having Energy thresholds when activating a Talent make it less clear-cut whether to use a Talent at all or wait a turn. The whole thing makes the process of best using them considerably more nuanced and interesting than any other unit in the entire series! It's too bad they're the exception and not the rule.

In practice the boosts they get for sitting at maximum Energy are sufficiently minor that you don't need to worry about that element overly-much, but every once in a while you'll find yourself in a situation where +2 Initiative on your Contemplators would be a pretty big deal.

I personally don't take advantage of it much, but Contemplators are a relatively obvious unit to leverage with Teleport, whether getting them to an ideal position they can't reach on their own to employ Vector or Impulse or moving them amid your enemies to use Impulse and then Teleporting them out of danger. Fighting Trance makes them a good ranged unit to use in the early game to soak punishment for your other ranged attackers; not only do they end up with the Health for it, but they'll punish being mobbed by melee attackers if you saved up Energy first. Just support them with some healing, possibly some resurrection, and they can be quite useful that way.

The one thing that's kind of frustrating is that Contemplators are... kind of in the wrong game. Warriors of the North's combat is fast, enough so that Contemplators generally only get to use one enhanced Talent at all. Red Sands has much slower combat, such that this Energy gimmick being applied to them back in Red Sands would be a much more natural fit. Contemplators are still a lot of fun and one of my favorite Ice and Fire units, full stop, but there's a bit of design dissonance there, where this exact unit would've been much more interesting in Armored Princess.

As enemies... well, you don't see Contemplators very often. They mostly show up in Lizardmen territory, and not very often even then. And when they do show up, they're not particularly smart about how they play. They'll Vector a random lone unit that's your only unit resistant to Fire, or fire off a basic shot without ever getting around to Fighting Trance, and wander around pretty aimlessly in general. Usually whatever is with them is a much bigger concern, and it's easy to have incidentally wiped out the Contemplators without even trying thanks to Rage splash damage and whatnot.

Still, they're a lot of fun to use.

Also, to be explicit, they will in fact be Blinded by Guard Droids shining light at them. You probably intuited that, but it's worth being clear.


Gorgon
Level: 4
Hiring Cost: 920
Leadership: 240
Attack/Defense: 24 / 30
Initiative/Speed: 4 / 3
Health: 130
Damage (Ranged): 11-16 Magical
Damage (Melee): 11-16 Poison
Resistances: 25% Poison
Talents: Summon Snakes (Reload: 3. In an adjacent clear tile of the summoner's choice, a stack of Snakes, Swamp Snakes, or Royal Snakes appears who Leadership totals to 80-120 per Gorgon at summoning), Hex (Reload: 4. A select target that is susceptible to mental effects is inflicted with a random selection of 1-3 negative effects for 2 turns)
Abilities: Soaring, Archer (Range: 6), No Melee Penalty, Underdweller (+50% Attack underground), Persistence of Mind (Immunity to mental effects), Poison Breath (25% Poison resist, and melee attacks have a 30% chance to inflict Poisoning for 3 turns), Petrifying Eyes (Ranged attacks have a chance of petrifying the target for 2 turns, which renders it immobile, unable to act, and unable to retaliate against melee attacks, but raises all resistances by 40% for the duration. The lower the level of the unit, the more likely it is to be petrified, with Level 5 units, Undead, Plants, and inorganic units impossible to petrify), Master of Snakes (+1 Morale to allied Snakes, Swamp Snakes, and Royal Snakes. Additionally, the Gorgon gains +5 to Attack and Defense for each allied stack of snakes, while enemy snakes suffer -1 to Initiative)

Yes, that is the classic Beholder graphic from The Legend. Yes, that's what Ice and Fire uses for their portrait. No, it's not actually representative of their in-battle graphic, which is a sickly green version of the current Beholder skin, more or less. I'm not sure if that's a sign of Ice and Fire being rushed/sloppy or if they deliberately chose to do that because the Red Sands version uses that graphic.

They're basically identical to their Red Sands version, incidentally, aside that the Red Sands version had two charges on summoning snakes instead of it being a reloading Talent.

It's sad Ice and Fire's content doesn't return in Dark Side... among other points, Gorgons doing Magic damage at range and Poison damage in melee is unique to them, and a neat little niche whose loss is felt in Dark Side.

Petrifying Eyes is basically a supercharged version of Paralyzing Ray, but with slightly worse odds of success; 90% against Level 1 units, 40% for Level 2, 20% for Level 3, and 10 for Level 4. (As opposed to 100%/50%/25%/10% on Paralyzing Ray; note that Level 4 units have the same odds for both) It's also more general than Paralyzing Ray; Undead, Plants, and inorganic units all have immunity to mental effects, but not everything with such immunity falls into one of those categories. Though of course Warriors of the North is pretty heavily dominated by Undead, so you'll be running into immunity a lot anyway...

Yes, Master of Snakes doesn't mention the Morale bonus in-game. Yes, it's still actually a real thing. Sadly, it might as well not be, because it's difficult to justify spending a unit slot on a snake when you can just summon them with your Gorgons, and summons still don't interact with Morale at all. But it does apply if you do choose to field actual Royal Snakes or something. And hey, if you want to do a gimmick master of snakes build, why not. Not... sure what you'd put in the fifth slot, but whatever.

Hex specifically can cast Helplessness, Weakness, or Slow. As such, if it hits with three effects, it's reliably all three of those. It specifically casts them as if they were Level 1, which is a little unusual -the standard in the series is for Spells-from-Talents to be cast as Level 2 in specific. It's specifically a 25% chance to inflict only one effect, a 50% chance to inflict two, and a 25% chance to inflict all three, which is a pleasant surprise; you can't count on getting more than one, but 75% of the time you will, so it's the expected result. Usually this kind of mechanic is set up as increasingly worse odds of each step of better result, which is often design-problematic. (Not to mention obnoxious) So this is nice to see.

Being a ranged attacker that generates its own meatshield -and unlike Druids, Gorgons are mobile and actually decent with their ranged attack if only because of Petrify- is not actually a unique quality (Royal Thorns have been here from the beginning, after all), but Gorgons are probably the best unit in the series at the role, and they make it much easier to go all-in on a ranged force even against somewhat oversized enemy forces that might otherwise get in your face and cripple your ranged potential. 3 Speed Soaring gives Gorgons a lot of ability to get the resulting snakes positioned to block off chokepoints and draw enemy attention in general, and Petrify can be leveraged to delay key units like Devilfish that might otherwise be difficult to keep under control. Hex... is honestly mostly a filler move due to its unpredictable behavior, but can be worth dropping on stuff like Demons-the-unit you're unlikely to Petrify. (Or don't want to attack directly, Demons-the-unit again being a good example due to Demonic Rage bonus turns occurring in response to damage in particular)

Contemplators are a lot more fun than Gorgons, but I still quite like Gorgons. The mechanics are solid, and the implicit lore stuff -a creature named a Gorgon whose gaze petrifies with a connection to snakes- connects really well to the mechanics to boot. It's fantastic.

As enemies, Gorgons are insanely rare, and they don't really try to leverage their advantages when you do encounter them. They'll mostly just perform a ranged attack on one of your units, often the highest-Level one instead of the lowest, waste turns slapping Hex on usually one of your ranged units that isn't terribly concerned by most of Hex's possible outcomes, and every once in a while remember that oh yeah they can summon snakes can't they?

It's a little disappointing, though admittedly Petrify would be sufficiently infuriating to deal with on a regular basis I can't get too broken up over it.

Like Contemplators, Guard Droids can Blind them with Beam of Light. Also like Contemplators, you probably intuited this, but I'd rather be explicit regardless.

-----------------------

Next time, we see what Ice and Fire has done with Lizardmen.

Comments

  1. Cyclops' melee damage is 80.

    Emerald Dragon's Anti-Giant attack deals 160-220 damage.

    I always found Red Dragon not having ice weakness to be illogical. Turns out he doesn't even have ice resistance string, just like Royal Snake. Unlike the snake, Dragon didn't have it in base WotN too. So it's not "devs decided that he shouldn't be weak to ice" but "devs forgot about ice completely in his case".

    Royal Thorn deals 20-40 damage in melee.
    Ranged damage is still 20-30. No increase.
    With all this code stuff I pretty much abandoned my translation notes, so let's have one here. 'Thorn Leader' is more like 'Elder Thorn' in Russian. Implies more of it being respected/listened to/obeyed due to it being older and/or more experienced/wiser than it being "official" leader, so to speak. Okay, it propably sounds weird in English, especially in regards to plants. Biggest smartest plant, basically.

    Witch Hunter's antimage/summoned bonus is still a damage modifier. Rather unusualy, considering that other units (like Paladin or Orc Hunter) got it replaced with special attacks. Goblins still have modifiers due to their numerous attacks (talents/melee/ranged). Witch Hunter doesn't have such; special damage modifier that applies to just 1 attack looks weird in WotN.
    Magical Aid has new spell list: Bless, Stone Skin, Haste, Hell Breath, Divine Armor, Power of Day, Power of Night, Dragon Slayer. Spells are cast at level 2 and are as strong as if cast by hero. This includes duration - talent's own duration of 2 turns is unused. This look like a purposeful change with description not being updated.
    Power of Day, Power of Night and Dragonslayer will only get a chance if required enemies are present. Their chance is proportionally increased when combined leadership of such enemies is higher than leadership of Witch Hunters and decreased in the opposite case.
    Chances of other spells too can be changed depending on various factors, like Hell Breath chance getting proportionally decreased when enemies' average fire resistance is high/increased when they are weak to fire. Chances will never drop to zero through.
    Magic Lock has 1 charge, not 2 turns reload. It was nerfed it this aspect, while your description make it look as if it was buffed with faster reload than in AP.

    Assassin's Murder is indeed coded differently*. AP version was gave a new turn and +2 AP. WotN version just doesn't end current turn.

    *Well, technically almost everything is coded differently in WotN/Darkside compared to the Legend/AP. Even internal names of most talents are (usually slightly) different. In practice the result is mostly the same, just adapted to the new base, so to speak.

    Royal Griffin's hiring cost is 1200.
    Dragonslayer attack deals 40-60 damage.
    Side note: Cheer is one of those talents whose code is pretty much copied from AP. This includes special targeting type that checks for allied Humans or Elves and than another similar check in the talent's script itself. I guess Royal Griffin really wants to be sure - who knows, maybe it's Orcs in disguise :)

    It's once again has no practical use, but Heavenly Guard has hiring cost of 300. Once again, they are fully functional unit that should work normally if modded to be available to hire, unlike something like Phoenix.
    Oh, and he is immune to ALL magical effects, not just negative. Description (original atleast) is correct about it. It was the same in AP. Did I missed that?

    Troll statue hp is still dependant on Location Difficulty. It still has 3 defense, 50% poison resistance and 50% fire weakness.

    Demonologist's melee damage is 9-10. Anti-demon ranged damage is 18-21.
    Demonic Beasts's power was not reduced and the same as it was in AP. It can only summon Cerberi, Demons-the-unit or Executioners. And it's leadership count is actually still 52,5-105, not 52-105. The difference in minimal, but those halves are counted; stack of 2 Demonogists can summon 105-210 leadership of demons, not 104-210.

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    Replies
    1. Jotun get +50% to defense in cold arenas, as Hardened description tells. One can get them at Nordlig (if go to the Jotun home that is supposed to be unreachable without flight, but actually can be reached by disembarking from a ship) so this ability helps to make them uber-tanky for the beginning. It would be even better with life-draining club if most of enemies weren't Undead.
      'Boldness' is not what I think of when I see this ability. It's original name is the word for the pleasant feeling when everything looks easy and achievable, you feel like "I know I can do anything and I enjoy it!" but your brain goes to relax (if not on vacation) for this time. It's often associated with drunkiness ("for a drunken person even a sea is only knee deep" (c)) but can also be a result of other things. A person with lucky streak in life can go into [the word]. A beginner writer whose first book unexpectedly overselled can feel [the word] as well. A member of a group can feel [the word] when his/her group does something awesome even if he/she personally didn't. Basically it's something like "inspired confidence that makes one dumber". Now, Jotun doesn't get any negative effects, but atleast in Russia Jotuns already are stereotyped as being rather dumb - he just can't go any dumber.

      Ice thorn deals 1-2 damage in melee.
      And yes, it was indeed a Snow Elf unit at some point.

      Ice Dragon's hiring cost is 23000, not 2300. You must be must really popular among them if they give you such discount.
      Call Henchman leadership limit is 850, not 935.
      Mana Charger gives 2-5 mana per Dragon.
      I can't test it, but I don't remember AI Ice Dragons having effective No Retaliation in WotN. And atleast in Darkside they always get retaliated normally for me.
      Ice Dragon has a cut ability - after receiving an attack that killed atleast 1 dragon, Ice Dragon stack deals 40-60 physical* damage to everyone in 2 tile radius and has 25% chance to cause Bleed. The idea was that killed Dragon explode in ice shards.
      * It's unused in-game description claims it's Ice, but it's physical in the code.

      Ice Minion's hiring cost is merely 10. Useless info, I know.
      Also, little guy doesn't have Freezing Touch. No Freeze for him.

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    2. Let's talk about Contemplator's name. 'Contemplate', as I understand, does not necessary imply gazing (but often do). Russian word is about trying to understand something by calmly looking upon/watching it for a long time while being mentally focused on it. Alternatively it can mean using process of looking at something for a long time to relax and ease one's mind (like watching forest or stars and allowing your thoughts to drift freely).
      This unit's original name is another word associated with fantasy eye monsters, so it goes with the theme. While Level 3 one is feral and animalistic and it's Level 4 bro is malevolent and angry, this eye creature is implied to be calm and thoughtful. Pinnacle of eye monster evolution :)
      I hope my ramblings about words doesn't bore you too much :)
      Just like it's lesser brothers, it will be blinded by Droid's Searchlight; it too is classified as 'Night-Sight-creature', even through it doesn't actually have Night Vision.
      It's chance to hypnotize (from Battle Trance) works only on stacks of lower or equal leadership.
      Maxed energy doesn't increase some resistances due to mistakes in the code; namely, it tries to increase Contemplator's 'physycal' resistance instead of physical, and tries to apply a second astral resistance bonus to Contemplator magic resistance.
      Oh, and it deals physical in melee and magical at range, just like Dread Eye.

      Gorgon's original name is basically 'he-gorgon'. Like mythological creature but specifically male (mythological ones were all-female). No idea what is significance of it, if any.
      'Add a joke about mystery of Beholders' reproduction'
      His hiring cost is 920.
      Gorgon too will be blinded by Droid's searchlight despite not having actual Night Sight for the same reason as other eye bros.
      He can't petrify undead, plants and inorganics. In the game where most of enemies are undead. 'sigh' He will petrify living non-plants with mind immunity just fine through. Chance is 90% for level 1 creatures, 40% for level 2, 20% for level 3 and 10% for level 4. So yes, it's indeed less reliable agains level 1 that Paralyzing Ray (which always works on level 1 units).
      'Master of Snakes' is 'Lord of Snakes' in the original. Meaning is essentially the same, but sounds cooler :)
      Hex can apply Hopelessness, Weakness and Slow. They are casted at as level 1 versions and are chosen randomly. There is 50% chance for two spells and 25% chance for all three.

      There was another planned neutral sapient unit that was cut. His Russian name was 'Повелитель теней', so it's should be 'Shadowlord' or 'Lord of Shadows' in English. His internal name was 'assassin2', so the model would be a modified assassin. He had No Retaliation and Night Sight, plus some unique abilities:
      - when he attacks from under Invisibility effect, his target lose all AP (and thus it's turn) and can't use any talents for 2 turns.
      - at night and undeground he gets 20% evade chance and +15% to all resistances, except astral.
      - every third hit deals increased damage. It had different earlier version that did something with crit chance and damage.
      As with High Druid, there is no information about his stats or talents. Through Invisibility as a talent sounds reasonable, considering his ability.

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    3. Whoops, must've failed to recognize my Royal Thorns were damage-boosted by leveling.

      As I note in the post, Murder in WotN will sometimes lower the Assassin's action points, so it's not as simple as just 'turn continues'. Or if it that simple, it's by virtue of some other mechanic interacting weirdly with this 'turn continues' logic.

      Yeah, you missed Angelic Guard purging all effects. Frankly, I'm in disbelief I ever had it written up in the first place; I've been repeatedly frustrated by them purging positive effects when trying to leverage them. I'll probably tweak the AP post to point it out-slash-gripe about it.

      The English description for Hardened in WotN doesn't mention the snowy battlefield Defense boost, actually. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure why I ignored it, as I've seen very visibly that eg Jarls are incredible tanks in early snowy battlefields and noticeably worse if fought away from snow.

      It sounds like Boldness probably should've been more like 'drunk on success'. (Which is an English phrase that doesn't *necessarily* carry the connotation of being about to do a stupid thing, but can be used that way) 'Blissful Ignorance' might also work as a short phrase, as phrases about 'ignorance is bliss' are generally used in an ironic sort of 'your current relaxed state is because you're an idiot, not because things are going as well as you think' way. If I felt the need to stick to a single word for some reason, I'd have gone with 'overconfidence'. (Or maybe 'overconfident', but whatever) I can sort of see how the translators arrived at Boldness, as 'emboldened by success' is a phrase that can in fact carry the connotation that the emboldened state is foolish, but yeah, 'Boldness' did not remotely call to mind 'Jotun are buoyed by successes, probably to an unreasonable extent' -which is too bad, because the mechanics fit to such really well!

      I'm guessing Ice Thorns do Ice damage at range and Physical in melee?

      Is there a Skill that boosts unit summons and doesn't mention it in English? I just checked Call Henchmen with my endgame Soothsayer file, and they were getting 1215 Leadership of units generated predicted, which is way higher than both our numbers, and it being leveled enough to get +10% wouldn't remotely explain the discrepancy unless the level mechanics are much jankier than I'd thought.

      And yeah whoops not sure why I thought Ice Minions Freeze; it's not listed in their Abilities, and a quick retest shows it doesn't happen.

      It sounds like Contemplators might've been more accurately named Meditators, but I actually quite like Contemplator as a name -it fits together well with Beholder and still has the same connotation of thinking really hard about something. So kudos on the translators in this case.

      I'm amused to hear that Gorgons are specifically, explicitly male Gorgons. Are the Hex chances you're listing as in "25% of the time, you do 1 debuff, 25% of the time you do two debuffs, and 50% of the time you do three debuffs" or as in "50% of the time you do 1 debuff, then 25% of the time you did more you do three debuff instead of two"? Or do you mean something else entirely?

      I think I've run across assassin2 referred to in the files! I have mixed feelings about it not being a thing -an Assassin variant could've been cool, but this sounds very abusable, annoyingly random, and also the game already has bugginess and all.

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  2. You mean your Assissins had 4+ AP and got it reduced to 1-2 after using Murder? This is really weird. It's really should be as simple as I described. Murder finishes off a stack > Assassin's turn continues.
    Um, just in case - you do know that making an attack costs 1 Action Point, right? If your Assassin had 2 AP before using Murder and has 1AP after, it works properly - he used this 1AP on Murder.

    You are correct about Ice Thorns. Should I specifically mention damage types of different attacks in the future? If there are different damage types, of course.

    I have no idea what is mentioned in English descripton and what isn't but the only skill that buffs summons is Creation from magic skilltree, and it's Russian description tells about it. Your Olaf clearly has it. 850*1.3*1.1 = 1215,5. So here is your result.

    Isn't meditation is more of of inward thing?

    Hex - 25% chance of 1 spell, 50% of two, 25% of three.
    Btw I actually wanted to point out how unusual that it's spells are cast at level 1 instead of common level 2, but didn't. And than you did it youself :)

    Text part on Witch Hunter mention 'Power of Knight' instead of 'Power of Night'.
    And you forgot to mention that Magical Aid spells are cast at level 2.

    Oh, forgot to mention one thing about Ice Dragon's cut ability - in case you (or anyone who reads it) wonder what was the logic behind it - the original idea was that a killed Ice Dragon exploded, hitting everyone around by sharp pieces of it's body.
    ...Yeah.

    It's minor thing but like I said Contemplator's Hypnotize chance works or stacks of lesser or equal leadership, not just lesser.
    By Dread Eye I meant Evil Eye. Internal name again. >_<

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    1. I've done stuff like Teleported an Assassin next to a target, Murdered a target intending to walk two tiles away and Backstab another enemy, and been dismayed to discover they only had 1 action point after the Murder. I've also had cases of walking forward one tile, Murdering a target, and still having 2 action points. The only consistency I've noticed is that they'll have at least one action point after Murder finishes a stack, even if they had only one action point to start.

      Damage types on different attacks is one of things I've always prioritized incorporating into these posts, so I'd appreciate it, yes.

      Double-checking Creation's English description, it technically refers to the summoning boost, but just in the form of the overall description saying it boosts 'the hero's' ability to summon; the individual Skill Rank summaries don't directly mention it, and the wording makes it sound like it only affects Spell summoning. Double-checking my Magic Skills post, I do reference the summoning boost, so I caught that much, but I'll be adjusting it to talk about the units-summoning-units aspect; this explains a lot of oddities I couldn't parse over the years.

      You can 'meditate on (thing)'. It's most often used to allude to getting into a zen state in specific, but it's a more versatile word than that, and some of the exact examples you give are things people will do when trying to get to the zen state to boot. (eg focusing on a night sky)

      Whoops, fixed the Witch Hunter stuff. I'd meant to explicitly note the Spell Level and just overlooked it amid all the other info needing to be communicated.

      And I figured 'Ice Dragon explodes' was the logic -that's the Ice Snake animation, after all.

      And corrected the Hypnotize wording.

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    2. Hmm, I tested Assassins right now. They have 3 AP.
      Murder target is right next to them - Assassins have correct 2 AP (3 base -1 for action).
      Murder target is 1 tile away - Assassins they have correct 1AP (3base -1 for movement -1 for attack).
      Murder target is 2 tiles away - Assassins have correct 1AP (3base -2 for movement; attack doesn't remove final action point as it would end the turn).

      Tried using teleport before attack - results are the same.

      Btw, it looks like function 'Attack.act_charge' now works differently. So Murder (that uses it) should now restore used Backstab charge instead of just adding one, just as description tells.

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