Holiday Update

My long term readers (ha, I kill myself!) will have probably noticed that I've been off my usual release cadence.  While my Skyrim videos are still going out as usual, my Kingdom Rush Frontiers series has missed a few days.  That's because I got way ahead in my Skyrim series and have videos queued up through mid-December right now.  That's easy to do with Skyrim, since I try to keep each video in the 30-60 minute range, so I can crank out a week's worth of content in a pretty short time.  However with Kingdom Rush videos it's anywhere from 2-4 hours of video for a release (16 heroes times the average time to complete the map, which can range anywhere from 7 to 17 minutes depending on the mode).

I'm not burned out on my Frontiers series, but when all I'm playing is Frontiers and Skyrim back to back, I do get a little tired every now and then and need to take a little break.  So that's what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks and anticipate I will be doing through the holidays.

I've gotten back into Vampire Survivors a lot lately.  I got into the game pretty early on and loved it.  A few months ago though - about the time the Cappella Magna stage came out, I think - I just got burned out.  I'd been playing for months, but I got tired of new releases coming out every two or three weeks and having to chase all the new achievements and unlocks.  So I decided to put it on the shelf until version 1.0 released, which it did recently.  I've gotten back into it and 100% it all over again.  I'm debating whether I'm going to release any videos for it, but I think I might.

I also bought and have been playing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  This is a new game to me, but one I've always wanted to try.  I do plan on doing a walkthrough video for it, but I have quite a ways to go.  I'm just about to finish the campaign on normal.  After that I need to go back and find the last few secrets I've missed, then master the game so I can complete it on the hard difficulty, which is of course what I will do videos for.  I'm not expecting to get to that point for a few months though.

And finally I've been playing Borderlands 2 more lately.  As I said in my Road Ahead post ages ago, I have no plans to ever do content for it, but I'm still working on 100% it still after all these years.  Of course I beat the game when it first came out, but there's just so much to do for 100% - getting 6 characters to OP10, completing all challenges, grinding for all the needed weapons, etc.  It's something I jump in and out of when I need a break from something else and needs some FPS action.

So bottom line I'm still working on my Frontiers series, but I'm just taking the pressure off myself for the moment of doing two releases a week every week.  Come the new year I expect I'll be back to the normal rhythm, as I am excited to finish the series and move on to some other things.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Iron

Things get a little trickier for iron mode, as they should.  The subtlety that had to be figured out here is that it's best to start with a Necromancer tower at the main exit to provide both good DPS as well as blocking.  However, once the Assassins have been fully upgraded, it's best to tear down the Necromancer tower and build an Archmage tower for better overall DPS.  It really helps with the Bloodshells at the end.

Speaking of the end, things get a little dicey for sure.  How hard it is depends on how many Bloodshells are still up (if RNG isn't giving your Assassins the insta-kills you need) when the final Bluegale arrives.  If the Bluegale gets there quick and gets a storm going over your Assassins while you still have three Bloodshells things can go south fast.

Impressions

This wasn't a horribly hard map, but it did stretch the weaker heroes a bit.  As such, Mirage, Dierdre, and Kutsao earn 'B's, as there were moments where I had to work to keep things contained with them.  Kahz earns another 'B' for the same reasons as last time - this is just not a good map for him to be charging around randomly.  All other heroes do fine and earn 'A's.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Iron

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Heroic

This is a rare heroic mode that feels like it's a step back from campaign mode in terms of difficulty.  Although we didn't assign any grades in campaign mode, it didn't mean it was easy.  It was challenging in terms of both the build and cooldown management.  However, in heroic mode there are no enemies that head to the second exit and there are no Bluegales, which makes everything significantly easier.  I hesitate to call it a trivial map, but after the lessons learned in campaign mode it's not really challenging.

Ironically, despite that fact I am actually assigning one grade for this map: I'm giving Kahz a 'B'.  Usually with Kahz his antics with Bull Rush and Daedalus' Maze aren't too much of a problem, but this is one map where they are seriously not appreciated.  All that we ask of our heroes here is just to block while our towers do all the real work.  But Kahz refusing to stay home and help block is a real hinderance.  In addition, because he is constantly blocking, stunning, and teleporting random enemies, it really throws off the rhythm of the map.  Cooldown management is still important here - knowing when and where to use Rain of Fire and the Shrine of Regnos.  But when enemies aren't in the place they're supposed to be at the time they're supposed to be, everything gets thrown off.

One final frustration with Kahz is the fact that Daedalus' Maze can apparently confuse enemies and cause them to forget what path they're supposed to be taking.  You can see an example of this starting at the 4:20 mark.  Kahz teleports a Devilfin to him, which happens to be the place where the bottom path intersects the path to the second exit.  When the Devilfin comes out of the stun, it then starts heading to the second exit - even though no enemies in this map path to that exit.  I had to use a Rain of Fire to catch it at the last second.

Ultimately the map is still plenty doable with Kahz, but with all the complications he brings to the table I feel justified in shaming him with a lone 'B'.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Heroic

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Campaign

The game tries to ratchet up the difficulty here by playing with the geography.  We now have islands with build points that can't be reached by non-flying heroes.  There are also two exit lanes, and both of them are pretty cramped for space to defend them.

Fortunately (or unfortunately for a challenge whose purpose is to rank heroes) a good build strategy takes care of everything.  A Necromancer plus Mecha is all that's needed to defend the primary exit for most of the level, and a barracks and Mecha adequately defend the other with some properly timed Rain of Fire support.  Later in the maps we start building out Assassin's Guilds to deal with the Bloodshells.  When Sneak Attack is maxed out, it basically works out that every attack has a 1% insta-kill chance.  That might not sound like a reliable strategy, but with Counterattack maxxed out as well a single Assassin's Guild can stall a Bloodshell just about indefinitely (perhaps with a little reinforcement support to hold it in place while waiting for respawns).  It doesn't take all that long between three of them to get 100 attacks in, which does not guarantee an insta-kill will happen, but the odds are definitely in favor of it.

And when the insta-kill just doesn't want to proc, we have the Shrine of Regnos to fall back on.  We start upgrading it fairly early on, as we can use it to minimize some of the early threats from Bloodshells and Blacksurges.  We take advantage of the fact that when you upgrade the shrine the ability immediately becomes available.  Exploiting this we can use the shrine twice in quick succession two separate times - we upgrade the shrine to level 1, then when a threat appears we use it, upgrade to level 2, and immediately use it again.  We can do this again when going from level 2 to 3, and between this and Rain of Fire we can take out a lot of big mobs.

So there's not much for our heroes to do here except provide support at the main chokepoint, and everyone does that adequately well.  So no grades here, but perhaps we'll get some in heroic or iron mode.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Storm Atoll Campaign

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Iron

There's only one word I can think of to describe this map, and that is messy.  I'm not a fan of maps like this because there's just too much RNG involved, so you can never feel like you have a foolproof strategy in place.  With Rain of Fire and upgrading the towers near the water you can take down some of the gunships before they fire much, but you can't do it with all of them, so you're going to endure a lot of their barrages one way or another, and that's where the RNG comes in.  In this strategy I use lots of level 1 barracks scattered across the map to try to draw their fire out to harmless places.  Still, if they decide to focus-fire the Boatswains and your hero at the chokepoint, or if they take out all your blockers on the southern exit just as some Greenfins are heading there it can be a loss despite your best efforts and even despite using an otherwise great hero.

Impressions

I'm going to take a rare step like I did some time ago (I can't remember which map off the top of my head) and give each hero a 'B' by default, even if their video makes it look like they had no troubles doing the map, because that just means they got good RNG with the gunships.  I'm only handing out 'A's to heroes who have some special quality that I feel allows them to overcome the RNG and provide reliable wins.

To that end, the only 'A's for this map are Sha'tra, Ashbite, and Bonehart.  Sha'tra's Abduction ability allows him to take out the Blacksurges quickly, and doing so allows your towers to continue to focus on the other mobs unimpeded, so that even if the gunships take out critical blockers your towers can generally DPS the mobs down anyway.  As for Ashbite and Bonehart, their ability to destroy the hordes of mobs en masse means it almost doesn't matter if your blockers are there or not.  In addition, Ashbite has an insta-kill chance on his Feast ability.  At 40% it might take a couple of tries, but chances are you can take out the first Blacksurge before they become too much of an issue.

Final Grades

• Alric - B
• Mirage - B
• Captain Blackthorne - B
• Cronan - B
• Bruxa - B
• Nivus - B
• Dierdre - B
• Grawl - B
• Sha'tra - A
• Ashbite - A
• Karkinos - B
• Kutsao - B
• Dante - B
• Bonehart - A
• Kahz - B
• Saitam - B

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Iron

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Heroic

This one largely works out as a redux of campaign mode, and the strategy is very similar - start at the bridge as a chokepoint, then fall back to the Boatswains, and rely on Wasp Missiles for damage as Blacksurges disable all your towers.  All in all not a lot to say.  Again I'm going to give Mirage a lone 'B' here, as she has to work slightly harder than other heroes because of her low DPS.  A bit disappointing for an elite heroic mode, but iron mode looks like it might shape up to be rather challenging.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Port Tortuga Heroic