Warriors of the North Boss Analysis

Undead Giant Spider

Attack/Defense: 12 / 13

Initiative: 100

Health: 16,000

Resistances: 10% Physical, 10% Magical, 50% Poison

The Undead Giant Spider is superficially very similar to Armored Princess' version, with only one genuinely new move available to it. (A ranged poison spit attack that has a high chance of Cursing the target, which surprisingly actually does Magic damage) However, it's placed as an unavoidable early-game Boss fight, and critically it now retaliates even against No Retaliation effects. If a unit does damage to it? They're retaliated against. Period. In fact, you're arguably better off using generic melee units, as melee attacks that shouldn't provoke a retaliation will provoke a ranged retaliation, potentially meaning being webbed instead of merely taking some damage.

The combination of its placement and the fact that only Spells can do damage to it without provoking a retaliation means the Undead Giant Spider is probably the hardest Boss in the entire series.

The most important aspect of fighting the Undead Giant Spider is not actually picking the right tools for the fight itself, but rather is making sure to unlock access to the Isles of Freedom and taking advantage of them to gain more power. You can easily find yourself going from 4000~ Leadership -having cleared out all the Viking islands in their entirety- to 10,000~ Leadership just from grabbing all the low-hanging fruit in the Isles of Freedom. 4000 or so Leadership is a nightmare to fight the Undead Giant Spider with. 10,000 or so Leadership can potentially kill it in 3 turns. Also make sure to talk to the pirate captain on Istering about the Ice Gardens -he'll give you a Sea Chart for Merlassar, and while it will be seriously out of your depth you'll still be able to scoop up boosts. If you're willing to sneak past battlegroups to Drinren, you'll also be able to unlock the Ice Gardens, which will also be out of your depth but will also have more lootables to help.

... the painful thing is that in the base game, neither of these options is available. You'll have to improve yourself solely off of what you can find in the first four islands. If you're not obsessively grinding Grand Strategian and just generally playing at a very high level very consistently, it's quite possible to end up in a situation where it may not be possible for you to beat the Giant Undead Spider, if you're playing on the higher difficulties. I'd be especially leery of throwing yourself into a base-game Impossible run: it can be done -I've gotten a Skald past the Giant Undead Spider, and it didn't even involve cheesy tactics- but it's not a happy experience, especially if you like to play these games to relax.

Note that its magical poison spit attack inflicts a Poisoning effect even on units immune to normal Poisoning, such as Royal Snakes. They take reduced damage, thankfully, but they're not actually immune to the effect. Also note that all its moves can Curse victims -even webbing a unit has a 10% chance to additionally Curse the target.

On more of a design note, it's worth pointing out the Health vs Attack and Defense on the Undead Giant Spider; its Attack and Defense are comparable to, say, the White Kraken in Orcs on the March, which is also an early-game Boss, but its Health is hugely inflated by comparison: the White Kraken has, across its three tentacles, a total of 2,400 Health. The Undead Giant Spider has almost seven times that. It's really bizarre, especially alongside how overtuned its ability set is; I genuinely don't understand how the devs didn't anticipate the Undead Giant Spider being such an obnoxious bottleneck.


Archdemon Astaroth

Attack/Defense: 40 / 40

Initiative: 150

Health: 40,666

Resistances: 20% Magical, 80% Fire, -10% Ice

The main thing that's really changed about Baal Astaroth is that, like in Champion of the Arena, you fight him without a green team ally.

Well, that and his arena is a straight corridor, which means the exact locations of his 'remove battlefield chunk' have been altered, but overall it's not very important.

He's also a little weak to the newly-properly-a-damage-type of Ice, I guess?

Oh, and like Baal, Astaroth has more Number of the Beast reference-ness in his Health value, though not in his Attack and Defense stats. Like Baal, I kind of suspect very few players both played on a low enough difficulty to actually see this and actually got far enough to see it.

Overall, Astaroth is tuned to be so incredibly weak that by the time you have access to him you're likely to stomp him in 3 or so turns. Where Baal was a serious challenge to surmount at the end of the game, Astaroth is basically free experience, not to mention his Medal-based reward.

So I'm not giving much of a strategy overview here. You shouldn't need one. Just don't get caught up in expecting him to be a Demon in mechanical terms; just like Baal, he isn't, so stuff like Exorcism won't apply to him.

Do note that Astaroth is exclusive to Ice and Fire, as the entire 'heaven' portion of Demonis was added by it and that's where he lurks. By extension, the ability to max a Medal after beating him is exclusive to Ice and Fire. If you're planning on playing the base game, you'll need to max the Medals 'honestly'. This isn't too much of a burden, but it's something to keep in mind with eg Crystal Collector; don't just ignore it on the idea you'll use Astaroth to max it if you're doing a run in the base game.


Loki

Attack/Defense: 60 / 60

Initiative: 100

Health: 78,000

Resistances: 20% Physical, 20% Magical, 10% Fire

The game claims Loki is 'immune' to Fire, but this is just plain wrong. More surprising is that he has no Ice resistance whatsoever, in spite of being a Viking. In conjunction with his Physical and Magical resistance, Ice damage Spells and units are one of your better options -as are Poison options, actually.

Loki's movelist includes...

1: Leaping to the other side of the battlefield, inflicting Physical damage on all your units and changing which side of the battlefield you need to target to attack him.

2: Generating a 5-tile-wide wave that does Fire damage to all units inside, including his own summons, and scattering invisible Fire Traps within the zone he strikes that last for two turns. These Fire Traps work exactly as the ones Loki's Aid produces when used by you: a unit that enters them loses all its Action Points and becomes Burned, and units that start their turn in one also become Burned. (Actually, the Burn refreshes basically anytime any unit takes a turn. Don't bother trying to Dispel the Burn) A Fire Trap is revealed when activated in either way, including if an enemy unit triggers it.

3: Summoning Vikings-the-species. This is a somewhat randomized number of stacks that tends to be about 4, with the exact unit list being restricted to Berserkers, Axe Throwers, and Vikings-the-unit. The units always enter from the edge of the field (Random positions, but never in front of Loki), and get to take a turn the round they're summoned in.

4: Melee Physical attacks in the form of stomping on a unit. He only uses this if attacked from the sides, and it only hits one unit at a time.

5: Melee Physical attacks by slamming his flail into the tile directly in front of him. This hits not only any of your units in that tile, but also all tiles adjacent to that tile (Though for around a fifth the damage compared to the main target), inflicting Stun 50% of the time on the main target and 10% of the time on secondary targets. Has no friendly fire, and is used both as Loki's retaliation when attacked from directly in front but also as an attack he'll occasionally choose to initiate if you have units in the strike zone.

6: Ranged Physical attack where he throws a flail at a single arbitrary stack. This Stuns the target 80% of the time, so you might as well assume it Stuns, and is Loki's retaliation when attacked by an effect that should normally not provoke retaliation. (Ranged attacks, Fire Breath, etc)

I've personally only ever seen Loki use the ranged Physical attack, the forward flail-smash, and the Viking summoning as proper turns. I'm not entirely sure the other moves are things he can choose to use.

When Loki drops below something like 66% Health, he performs the leaping attack, and then turns around and immediately uses the Fire Trap wave, and then summons a wave of Vikings, all for free immediately after the damage was dealt. He does this again when dropping below around 33% Health.

Surprisingly, Loki isn't actually that threatening. His summons are tiny and his damage is very low, though his Health is high enough he's not an actual joke like some of these Bosses. Just be forewarned that his Fire Traps are a bit buggy: I've had the game crash from attempting to have an Orc Onslaught through them, for example. So make sure you save before fighting him.

Overall, though, by the time you can get to him Loki is generally only a mild-to-moderate threat. Ranged units are preferable to minimize the problems caused by his Fire Traps, and area-of-effect that can hit widely disparate units like Geyser or Evil Eye's Geyser-Talent is good for quickly clearing out his summons, but you don't really need a strategy to win, just one to win with fewer casualties. The only caveat to this is that if you try to beeline to him on a higher difficulty so you can get Loki's Aid early enough to potentially max it, then he can be moderately challenging. Just moderately, though.


The Driller

Attack/Defense: 50 / 40

Initiative: 100

Health: 7000/14,000/28,000 (First/second/third phases)

Resistances: 20% Physical, 80% Poison, 10% Fire

The Driller's in-game graphics have been overhauled a bit (There's no visible Gremlin crew, for one), but I've not been able to find a matching UI icon for its new graphic.

In gameplay terms, the Driller is nearly unchanged, except for two key differences: firstly, pushing it back does not skip its turn, period. Its actual capabilities are essentially identical, but now it will actually get a chance to spawn Droids and do some damage to you before going down.

This actually makes it probably the third-nastiest Boss in the game, or second-nastiest if I assume you clear out the Isles of Freedom to make the Undead Spider much easier. Its damage output is extreme and not meaningfully avoidable, slow units can't be used without support because the cave-in will instant-kill them (Since it doesn't lose turns anymore, you have less time to get ahead of the cave-ins!), and now it's spitting out durable summons to clog up the battlefield. Also not helping is the second change: that it immediately and for free spawns a Droid stack each time you knock it back.

On the plus side, it's also an entirely optional late-game fight. Just skip it if you can't figure out how to beat it at all or are unhappy with the casualties you're taking when beating it. It's not like you need the rewards for beating it that late in the game. Indeed, it's so optional the Quest it's attached to can be resolved without facing the Driller! (Though some kind of fight is unavoidable; if you don't fight the Driller, you'll fight a Hero)


Giant Undead Lizardman

Attack/Defense: 50 / 50

Initiative: 120

Health: 55,000

Resistances: 20% Poison, -10% Fire, 30% Ice

It's K'tahu, but it summons Undead Lizardmen instead of Lizardmen, and has picked up Ice resistance now that Ice damage is a thing and a little bit of a Fire weakness.

... it's actually more complicated than that. Zombie K'tahu here actually has a special retaliation that hits everything in his immediate reach, knocking them all the way to the other end of the battlefield if at all possible, in addition to doing damage. He also has the Undead Lizardman trait of Ancient Rage, as indicated by the log and animations showing it triggering each time you do damage to him, and his in-game description claims he can actually eat his own Undead Lizardmen to regain Health.

I've never actually seen that last one because the Giant Undead Lizardman is hilariously easy for the point of the game you can actually reach him. It's utterly trivial to kill him in 3 turns if you do your best to prepare for the Undead Giant Spider and then rush through the plot beats that are mandatory to be able to fight him at all. You're far more likely to have been in serious danger from some of the Undead Lizardmen battlegroups in the Marshan Swamp than from him. It's a bizarre and striking contrast with the Undead Giant Spider being an utter nightmare. The hilarious thing is that you'll gain so much experience you may well gain three levels from defeating him!

There's little reason to care, but for posterity's sake: he can't summon Worms but otherwise summons random Undead Lizardmen, and all his attacks do Physical damage. (Including the poison spit)


Prince-Consort Guilford

Attack/Defense: 60 / 60

Initiative: 100

Health: 15,000/60,000 (First/second phases)

Resistances: 30% Physical, 50% Magical (30% in second phase)

The final Boss of the game. Much like Armored Princess' fight against Baal, in this fight you have an ally, this time commanding a team of Undead, which is pretty nifty. Whether due to different circumstances or genuinely improved AI, this ally isn't nearly as problematic as the one in Armored Princess, though they can be a little bit of a nuisance in the second stage of the fight.

Speaking of, Guilford has two stages. Arguably 2-and-a-half. He starts the battle with an Undead army on the field, while he himself is completely immune to harm. Once the Undead army is wiped out, he becomes possible to hurt. Once he runs out of Health, he turns himself into a Black Dragon somehow and changes up his movelist, as well as having a much higher Health value now.

The game claims Guilford is immune to magic, but he's not. He just starts the fight untouchable, period, and then switches to being susceptible to everything.

To be fair, he does have 50% Magic resistance, so Magic damage is poor against him...

Counterintuitively, switching to dragon form actually lowers his Magic resistance by 20%, bringing it equal to his Physical resistance. And no, turning into a Black Dragon doesn't give him Fire resistance. It's weird. And the Magic resistance lowering appears to be a bug; he was likely supposed to gain Magic resistance.

When Guilford is human, his moves include...

1: Bone Bomb. A bone cage looking thing appears over a unit, and once that unit's turn is completed they take Physical damage as do any other units within 2 tiles of them. It's basically Kamikaze, but with a one-turn fuse and a wider blast radius. (Its damage drops off with distance, too, unlike Kamikaze: the adjacent units take 50% what the target takes, and units further away only take 20% what the main target takes) It's also surprisingly weak, though it's guaranteed to inflict Bleeding on the main target (The secondary targets can still end up Bleeding, but the chance goes down with distance), which can be a problem. He can use this as a ranged retaliation, though it's not his only option for doing so.

2: Black Arrows. A single unit takes Astral damage and additionally has a 15% chance to have a Blood Mark placed on them. This is his other ranged retaliation move, and it's probably the nastiest thing he can do.

3: Soul Burn. All of Guilford's enemies take low Fire damage. Surprisingly low damage given it recycles Armageddon's animation.

4: He can summon a surprisingly small number of Undead in random locations. It can summon Skeletons, Skeleton Archers, Zombies, and Decaying Zombies. It's oddly prone to only summoning one type at a time, but this isn't an actual hard restriction.

In dragon form, Guilford's movelist switches to...

1: Death Star, sorta. A weak Magic damage attack centered on a unit, which additionally hits all units in each straight line direction from that unit. (It actually heals Guilford's units, annoyingly, though not Guilford himself) So Death Star if you could place it directly on a unit and if it was Magic damage instead of Astral. Notably, this is his ranged retaliation move in dragon form.

2: In melee, Dragon-Guilford can bite a single target for Physical damage directly in front of him or to the sides of that tile. In addition to the raw damage this does, it randomly inflicts Plague (66%), Fear (11%), Bleed (11%), Curse (11%), or Stun. (1%) This is dragon form's retaliation against melee attackers standing directly in front of him.

3: Alternatively, Dragon-Guilford can swipe at two targets at a time at either side of him, doing Physical damage and potentially knocking the hit units back. (20% chance) This is dragon form's retaliation against melee attackers to his side.

4: He can still summon Undead, but now the list is Bone Dragons. Yep. Just Bone Dragons.

Guilford is really the one properly-balanced Boss of the game; he's not hilariously easy, but he's also not nightmarishly difficult. (Well, unless you try to beeline to him, I suppose, but if you're horrendously under-leveled that's pretty clearly your fault) Ideally you'll lean on ranged units and try to separate them so his Death Star retaliation isn't catching multiple units and his bone cage attack isn't catching multiple units either, and obviously Magic and Physical and to a lesser extent Fire resistance are useful qualities for units to have... but overall you can win even with a non-optimized force. This is appreciated after Baal, who is enough of a brick wall it can be quite disheartening.

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Next time we wrap up Warriors of the North with a unit bonus post, and then move on to Dark Side at last.