Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Desecrated Grove Campaign

If you thought Bonesburg campaign was a challenge, things get cranked up yet another notch here.  Even once I figured out the general outline of the build I wanted to use, this one required quite a bit of practice before I was ready to start actually recording.

I think I like these Shadowmoon maps so much because they require a lot of micro, which is usually not a huge factor in Kingdom Rush games.  But this map will put your hero through their paces, test your reaction time when things get out of hand, and force you to plan your Rains of Fire with the greatest precision.

One of the biggest challenges comes early in wave 2 with the Ghouls.  Now technically we could have gone with a different build plan that would handle them without any problem, but it really behooves us to rush our DWAARP in the middle of the map, as it - comboed with the chokepoints created by the barracks - will do the majority of heavy lifting for this map.  But the result is that it's very easy for things to go sideways with the Ghouls, almost regardless of which hero you're using, and I will freely admit there were a few restarts.  Normally I don't like showcasing builds that have a high element of RNG, but since it's only in wave 2 I'm okay with it here, as the cost of a failed run is low, and ultimately I do think this is the best build.

Once you survive wave 2, things are largely okay until about the midway point.  The Abominations in wave 7 take some careful management, and then wave 8 is pretty intense between the Abominations on the lower path and the mix of Werewolves and Lycans on the upper path.  It's an exercise in deciding where best to use reinforcements and Rain of Fire.

Wave 10 is another big test.  The couple of Abominations that take the top path end up overlapping with the Werewolves from the east.  The danger here is that killing an Abomination will wipe out your blockers just as the Werewolves are coming through, giving them an open road to the exit.  This is one of those points where there's not really a foolproof strategy for all heroes - you just have to react as best you can with what you have.

Wave 12 is the biggest make-or-break point in this strategy.  You need to get your hero and some reinforcements on the lane coming from the north.  Three Lycans appear, and a full moon triggers at the same time, shapeshifting them.  You have to drop a Rain of Fire with the right precision to do maximum damage to them, then make sure you keep them on the damaging part of the ground to burn them down fast enough.  If one or more manage to break through it's very likely they'll make it to the exit due to their speed and regeneration.

After that things calm down a bit, but not completely.  By this point we're able to upgrade the Archmages with Whirlwind, which does wonders to catch leaks.  Still, the Ghouls that suddenly popup from the ground or are released by Jack can ruin your day in a moment if you're not ready for them.  Again, it's a balancing act of managing your resources wisely between your hero, your reinforcements, and Rain of Fire to deal with both them and the large number of Abominations on the bottom lane.

From there it's all downhill.  The large numbers of Lycans in wave 15 look intimidating, but one good Rain of Fire coupled with multiple Whirlwinds for any stragglers is enough to take care of them.  All in all this map definitely feels like running a marathon - incredibly hard, but incredibly gratifying once you complete it.

Impressions

The hero grades definitely reflect the challenge here, and there are some that break the norm.

On the 'C' team we have Mirage, Cronan, and Kahz.  Mirage and Cronan shouldn't be surprises, and Kahz takes a 'C' because this is one of those maps where his antics are extremely counterproductive.  A lot of the strategy here relies on your hero being in specific places at specific times to deal with specific threats (see the description of wave 12 above), so having him charge around the map and rearrange enemy order with teleports is a horrible pain to deal with.  This is definitely the map that will make you hate him if you don't already.

Most of the 'B's shouldn't be surprising, belonging to some of the more DPS-challenged heroes, but Grawl does join them.  Just like Bonesburg, mobility is very important here, and Grawl's slow speed coupled with the DPS loss from Bastion means he's just not an ideal choice.  But the real shocker here is Ashbite getting his very first 'B'.  While normally his DPS makes up for it, his inability to block is a crippling hindrance here, especially in circumstances like waves 2 and 12 described above.  This is where Bonehart proves himself the superior dragon, as his ability to generate blockers - frail though they may be - helps him maintain his straight-'A' streak.

As for the rest of the 'A's, we have a shocking addition to the normal crew.  Dierdre gets a rare 'A' on a hard map.  While her DPS is trash, her superior tanking ability, her ability to keep other blockers alive, and her extreme mobility with teleporting actually means she performs very solidly here.  Between the DWAARP and the Archmages there's more than enough DPS in this build, what's needed is stalling ability to let the towers do their job, and she does a great job of that.

Final Grades

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

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Desecrated Grove Campaign

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Iron

Iron mode turns out to be a bit of a reprieve after the challenges of campaign and heroic modes.  There was a little work here to figure out the optimal build for taking down the Abominations, which are the only real threat.  When you need high single-target damage though, you usually know to call on Crossbow Forts with Barrage.

As for our heroes, all that's asked of them here is to stall the Abominations within range of the towers so they can DPS them down.  There are no bad choices for this, so everyone gets an 'A'.  A trivial map like this is a nice palate-cleanser before the next map, Desecrated Grove, which I know is going to be a doozy.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Iron 

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Heroic

Heroic mode is still challenging here, but it's a bit of a step back from the difficulty of campaign mode.  Unlike campaign mode, here the better strategy is to rush DWAARPs as soon as possible, as the lack of Bats on this stage makes an AoE focus possible.  Beyond that, a lot of the map feels like an exercise in herding cattle, as it's about grouping up Abominations so that the spend maximum time in the DWAARPs' radius and to make Rains of Fire as efficient as possible.

There's no need for a separate Impressions section here.  Mirage and Dierdre get docked down to 'B's for their well-known DPS problems, which makes things slightly harder, but other than that everyone does just fine on this one.

Final Grades

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

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Heroic

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Campaign

To be honest I kind of find the Rising Tides elite campaign to be a bit tedious, but the Shadowmoon campaign we start today is my favorite in the game.  I'm a little disappointed in some of the asset reuse from the original Kingdom Rush (I could have happily never dealt with Abominations ever again), but overall it is incredibly challenging, perfectly walking that line of being fun without frustrating.

Bonesburg starts off as a bit of a poverty map - you don't start with much gold, and while Zombies appear in large numbers, at 7 gold per kill it still takes a ridiculous number of them to accumulate anything.  But that's part of the interesting challenge here - if you can survive the first two or three waves, you're probably okay until around wave 12 when the waves of Abominations start getting ridiculous.

Necessity dictates a lot of our tower choice here.  While I spent the main campaign singing the praises of the Mecha, for Zombies and Abominations it's just not enough, and we return to the trusty DWAARP.  Placing them on corners where they cover a huge amount of path, we guarantee both of these slow enemies will spend a huge amount of time getting pounded by them, as well as taking at least a couple of Furnace Blasts.

The map mixes things up though by throwing in Bats, so we can't go all-in on AoE.  We fill all remaining spots with Archers, except one which will be a Necromancer to generate some extra blocking for us down the line.  I found the most effective strategy for this map to be upgrading all towers a single level at a time, as opposed to rushing a level 4 tower early.

Wave 13 is when things become make-or-break.  The Abominations that appear from the top don't have a lot of path through your defenses to go through and thus need a lot of attention, but at the same time you have an absurd number of Abominations and Werewolves coming in from the left.  Careful use of Rain of Fire is critical here to keep things manageable.  If you can survive through wave 14 you should be home free, as wave 15 is more of the same but you should have a more than adequate build to deal with it now.

I will say this is one of the maps where I could have greatly reduced the difficulty by not insta-calling the next waves, but I decided to persevere and find a solution while still doing that.  I'm proud of the fact that for this entire challenge - with the exception of just a single map I believe - I've insta-called every next wave.

Impressions

This map asks a lot of the heroes, unlike most other maps in the game.  For a great deal of the map they will be in "putting out fires" mode, racing from hotspot to hotspot on the battlefield.  Whether it's killing stray Zombies that appear from the sidelines or helping group up enemies for a Rain of Fire, they don't get a moment's rest.  So it was surprising to me that the grades weren't nearly as bad as I might have guessed.

We only have two 'C's for the map, and they are unsurprisingly Mirage and Dierdre.  We need a lot of DPS on this map to take down the ridiculous number of enemies, and of course these two just don't have it.

Most of the 'B' crew shouldn't be surprising, although Grawl sadly does join them.  Mobility is another key metric for our heroes here, and he just does not have it.  Also, due to his Bastion ability he constantly is losing DPS as you move him around the map.  But it's still a testament to his general greatness that he only earns a 'B' and nothing worse.

Final Grades

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

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Bonesburg Campaign

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Iron

We have an interesting challenge for the final map of this elite campaign.  The first trick of this map is establishing a minimal "normal" build that can handle the mobs that will then allow us to save up the money we need to upgrade the Shrines of Regnos.  On both the bottom and right islands we rely on Necromancer Towers to create extra blockers for us, and then a Mecha and an Archmage respectively to provide the extra DPS we need.

The second "trick" to figuring out this map is to not upgrade the shrines just because we have the money to.  The map is designed so that a shrine will usually recharge before the next big thing you need to use it on appears.  Even three level 1 shrines can do some serious work, so we only upgrade them when we need to instantly refresh their cooldown.  In most cases we don't finally get them all to level 3 until the very end of the map when three Bloodshells appear at once.

As for the heroes, they don't have to do much on this stage, so everybody gets an 'A'.  All your hero has to do is provide a little extra blocking and/or DPS on the bottom island for the normal mobs while the shrines and Rain of Fire deal with all the major threats, and everyone does that adequately well.

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Iron

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Heroic

We have a worthy follow-up challenge to the campaign mode in this map, with it being just about the same level of difficulty.  The difference here is that our Assassins tactic from campaign mode isn't practical here, so we have to go a more conventional route to take down Bloodshells.  Archmage Towers are the primary means of DPS against them, but we still need to pull a few more tricks to stall them long enough for the kill.  On the right-side path that means Whirlwind to buy enough time, and on the left a Necromancer Tower for lots of blocking fodder.  On both paths we use the trick of upgrading barracks to instantly refresh the units to stall the Bloodshells long enough.  In addition we also have to deal with some Bluegales, so a Crossbow Fort with upgraded range placed on the right-side island is our means of getting all the necessary firepower in place.  All in all a good workout of a map.

Impressions

As with so much of Frontiers, it's all about the build.  All we ask of the heroes is half-decent stalling and/or DPS to assist with the endless numbers of Greenfins and Deviltides.  The usual suspects earn 'B's here for their deficiencies in those areas.  Kahz joins them as well, as this is yet another map where his antics are dangerously counterproductive.  Dierdre earns a surprising 'A', however, as her terrific tanking ability plus her ability to heal and resurrect barracks units really makes for solid stalling ability on a map where it's desperately needed.

Final Grades

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

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Heroic

Kingdom Rush Frontiers (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Campaign

I'm returning from my holiday hiatus recharged and ready to finish up this Frontiers challenge.  We pick back up on the last map of the first elite campaign - The Sunken Citadel - where we have to take on the Leviathan.  While the level is quite challenging, the Leviathan is one of the easiest bosses in the whole franchise.  He can't attack your units at all, merely temporarily disable some of your towers.  But there are Blacksurges on this stage, so we already have to have a defense ready to handle that kind of thing.  In addition he moves very slowly towards the exit, taking long pauses along the way so your towers can hit him.  So the real challenge is not the boss, but just surviving the level itself.

This one did take me a while to find a build I felt comfortable with, although in the end I will still freely admit that this build is somewhat RNG-dependent.  We go all-in with Assassins for this one, relying on them to get insta-kills to take down the Bluegales and Bloodshells.  We cover every lane the enemy comes down with two fully upgraded Assassins (minus the pickpocket upgrade of course), so that's six units with a 5% chance for an insta-kill on every attack.  That may not sound like much on paper, but ultimately we are stacking things in our favor.  With a 1 second attack speed, it works out to a 26.5% chance of an insta-kill every second, which is pretty good.  However, on the flip side we're relying on them for pretty much all our DPS for most of the map, so there's plenty of opportunity to get a bad run of RNG where things go south.  I will admit it did happen a few of times as I was making these recordings, and there were some restarts, but ultimately I feel comfortable in recommending this as a build for what's one of the most challenging maps in this game.

Impressions

It's always hard to grade a map where the build has an element of RNG.  Since it does, we have to lean a lot harder on our heroes here than we have in other maps, relying on them to pick up the slack when that run of bad RNG does happen and the Assassins just can't get an insta-kill.

I ended up giving out several 'C's for this map - and 'C's have been very rare in this challenge so far.  My normal definition of a 'C' is "you can win with this hero, but it's going to be a real struggle".  I have a little trouble applying that definition here, but I really felt the need to differentiate the heroes into at least three tiers for their performances - especially since we've had so few grades in this challenge so far.  Since the build is RNG-dependent, it's really about how much your hero can shoulder when you get those bad RNG runs and the insta-kills just aren't proccing.

Most of the 'C' team shouldn't be too surprising - Mirage, Nivus, and Dierdre have all established themselves as bottom-tier heroes already.  Captain Blackthorne surprisingly joins them.  While his gold generation ability usually makes him a top-tier hero, for this map getting ahead in the build plan doesn't do nearly as much for you as in other maps, as it doesn't increase the chances of insta-kills, which is what we're relying on.  What we need from heroes on this map is either good DPS to help take down mobs or good stalling ability, and Blackthorne just doesn't have either.

As for Kahz, well, Kahz is Kahz.  While his charges aren't too much of a problem here being confined to the small island at the bottom (and actually can be pretty helpful), his teleporting antics are most unwelcome.  When you're already playing the odds, banking on Assassins to get insta-kills on Bloodshells and Bluegales within so many seconds before more mobs appear, having him move enemies around to unexpected positions really can throw things off.

The 'A' and 'B' teams shouldn't be too surprising.  While I decided early on not to do a Best Choice award for this series, since it would almost always be Bonehart, this is one of those rare maps where Sha'tra would actually take the top spot.  Abduction's 25 second cooldown and ability to take out one large enemy or multiple lesser enemies makes it the perfect tool for this level.  Of course there are too many Bloodshells and Bluegales for him to use it on all of them, but the ones he does get lowers the odds of bad RNG ruining things by so much.  In addition, it can take out two or three Greenfins or Deviltides at once, which is huge on those waves where they try to overwhelm you with numbers.

Final Grades

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

Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - The Sunken Citadel Campaign