The Well of Urd

To reach the Norse Underworld and stop Gargarensis, the heroes must capture the Well of Urd.

Starting objective: Build an army and destroy the gate to the Well of Urd. (6)

Difficulty levels:

  • Easy:
    • Gargarensis has less starting units
    • Gargarensis has less Towers
  • Hard:
    • Gargarensis has more starting units
    • Gargarensis has more Towers
  • Titan:
    • Gargarensis has even more starting units

This mission opens in the south of the map. (1) In addition to your heroes, under your command are several Huskarls, Raiders and Jarls. Establish a strong economy – this is a generic build and destroy mission, so your first order of business is getting a solid resource income to support you.

Your village is well furnished with resources – gold is just east of your Town Center, and two more piles can be found west of your farms. (2) Hunting can be found just near your Town Center, to the northeast are berries, (3a) more hunting lies across the river. (3b) Use your Great Hunt power to increase hunting yields. Finally, Gargarensis has a lone Town Center west of your village (4) that can be claimed for additional population and another gold mine if you wish.

There are three relics on the map – two that can be easily captured. One is across the river near the hunting patch (3b) and the other is near the enemy Town Center to the west. (4) The final relic is in Gargarensis’ stronghold and not worth retrieving.

Apart from a single Longhouse, all of Gargarensis’ production buildings are inside his fortress in the north of the map, so you can probably forget about trying to limit his offensive capabilities. For now, you just have to deal with his attacks while you build up. Try walling off certain approaches to your town to limit the paths of attack you have to deal with. It’s also an idea to try and keep attackers away from the Tents you start with, because these give you a significantly higher pop limit.

Gargarensis favors Ulfsarks and Jarls on this mission – on the harder difficulties, you’ll be facing quite a lot of them. Hence your own Ulfsarks and Throwing Axemen supporting them would be a wise choice. Get some longhouses up and begin training them straight away. Also, since you are Odin, your Jarls have more HP – so if you wish, you can invest in these. (If you do, research Freyja’s Thundering Hooves and Njord’s Ring Giver to make them extremely powerful.)

Finally, you will of course need some building killers. Gargarensis has quite a few defenses separating you from your objective. Mountain Giants, Frost Giants, Fire Giants (try saying that three times quickly) and Portable Rams are all suitable options.

For your Heroic Age god choice, Njord grants you the Mountain Giant – which is a very effective building killer – and the Ring Giver upgrade for your Jarls. Alternately, if you are not interested in Jarls, take Skadi, who provides the powerful Huntress’ Axe upgrade to your Throwing Axemen. You can also use her Frost god power to buy you time in either attacking and defending.

In Mythic, you can choose from Baldr and Tyr. Baldr grants you the Fire Giant MU – the most practical siege weapon in the Norse arsenal due to its range – and if massive armies of heroes are your thing, he also has the Ragnarok god power. Tyr on the other hand grants you the powerful Berserkergang upgrade to your Ulfsarks and several of his Fenris Wolves make for a very tough prospect to deal with.

Once you are satisfied with your forces, it’s time to attack. There are no great advantages to any particular route – though the easternmost path to the fortress (6) will provide you the quickest access to your objective. As usual, you don’t need to wipe out the entire fortress. So once you breach the walls, head straight for the gate (6) and take it down. Several Fire Giants will be spawned.

New objective: Defeat all of the myth units defending the Well of Urd. (6)

On Titan you’ve got seven of these behemoths to deal with, on lower difficulties though it shouldn’t give you any pause. Just make sure your heroes are at the fore of the fray, and target any ranged units you have around on the giants. Once they all go down, you’ll be rewarded with victory.

On to mission 28

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