The Dwarven Forge
In order to reach Midgard, Chiron suggests the heroes pass through some dwarven mines, after liberating them from the giants.
Starting objective: Find a settlement and build a Town Center.
Difficulty levels:
- Easy:
- The Giants do not start with Thurisaz Rune upgrade
- Hard:
- The Giants start with Monstrous Rage upgrade
- The Giants only need destroy two of the Dwarven Forges to defeat the player
- Titan:
- The Giants only need destroy one of the Dwarven Forge to defeat the player
This mission opens in the south of the map, (1) where our heroes have been joined by the enigmatic Brokk and Eitri. While these guys are campaign heroes and have the same perks as Arkantos and his companions, they aren’t very durable – so they’re best left to just gathering alongside your other villagers and dwarves. Also under your command are 8 Ulfsarks and a handful of villagers.
There are two settlements to choose from, both in the immediate vicinity. The one to the east (2b) is less likely to be taken down by Giants, but it’s not going to do much to defend your villagers. The one to the north (2a) is probably preferable for this reason – you can hit the Town Bell and villagers don’t have to go far to get to it’s safety.
Clear out the Giants and Trolls in the area and begin building a Town Center. Once it’s up, you’ll get your next objective.
New objective: Kill the Giants and Trolls near the Dwarven Forge (6) to recapture it.
Establish an economy – there’s plenty of free food around, hunting and berries.
This map has very little gold. There is a small pile near your starting Town Center, (2a) once it runs out another can be found to northeast. (3) You will want to keep your army on hand when mining here, since this is right in the path most favoured by the Giants when attacking. As you are Thor, take advantage of your Dwarven Mine power before searching within the caverns for more gold – because you’ll find it harder to defend villagers here. If you really want more gold, then just inside the easternmost entrance to the mines, you can also find some dwarves excavating a cave. (4) Send some heroes along to deal with the Mummies they unearth, and you can claim the gold mine here as well, along with the three relics inside the cave.
There’s another gold mine to be found in the mines north of your Town Center, (4) but this also happens to coincide with the route enemy units are going to take. For reasons explained below, you don’t want to do much fighting inside the mines.
You face four main units on the mission: Trolls, Mountain Giants, Fire Giants and Ballistae. The Giants generate attacks composed of these units at regular intervals. The last two will create the most problems, since they can take advantage of the narrow paths on the map where your units will easily get congested – avoid fighting in choke points, try and draw enemies out into the open near your camp.
You should be able to repel the first attacks with your starting heroes. Things will soon get tougher though, so you should turn your attention to creating an army.
While Jarls are far superior units to Hersir and also have a large bonus vs MU’s, they are not heroes – the MU’s you are facing on this mission all have damage penalties when fighting heroes. (Many MU’s do reduced damage to Heroes.) Basically, Hersir will stay alive longer, so get up a Temple as soon as possible and start cranking them out. Once you have a few, put up an armory an take advantage of hack damage and attack upgrades – Age advances also increase the attack and HP of all hero units, so advancing to Heroic and Mythic will give your Hersir a natural boost.
As you start under Freyja, it would also be wise to train a Valkyrie or two to heal your units in between attacks.
On the easier difficulties, a sufficiently upgraded army of Hersir will suffice, but on the harder levels you may want to take it one step further before you actually attack: advance to the Mythic Age under Baldr and invoke the Ragnarok god power. If you train extra villagers beforehand and make sure you grab all the armory upgrades, you will have a very imposing army that should prove more than adequate to fulfil the objective of capturing and defending the forge.
Once you’re ready, head out and attack towards the forge. (6) Be careful not to let your units pile up on one another – you are trying to move a large number of units through a narrow area, which is going to make matters even worse when you start running into bad guys.
Once you’ve taken out all the enemies in the forge area, it will convert to your control and you’ll be given a new objective.
New objective: Defend the Dwarven Forge until the Giants retreat.
You now have to hold off 12 minutes. If the Forges are destroyed, you lose. Hopefully, this won’t be too hard.
The Dwarven Forges research three unique technologies. Giant Slaying blades makes your human units do x4 damage vs MU’s, and increases the bonus on your Heroes and Jarls. Osmium Mail provides a -20% modifier to hack damage vulnerability. (The equivalent of two hack armor techs at the armory.) Finally, Asbestos Shields reduces damage done by Fire Giants (including their special attack) by 20%. While most of this mission is over, these are worthwhile techs to invest in.
About a minute and a half before the timer runs down, the Giants will launch an all out attack, ordering all their units to the forge. (They also get two upgrades at this stage to give their units a bit more edge.) If you have trouble surviving this last push, try advancing to Heroic under Skadi when you are building up and using her Frost god power at this part of the mission to buy you time.
Once the timer hits 0, you’ll be rewarded with victory.