Bosses

As mentioned in the previous post, Bosses are large units that can only be fought, but not recruited. They usually have some special mechanics that need to be countered in order to win (also having a strong army is a must). Generally it is far easier to fight bosses if you can debuff them well, or buff your own creatures.

Lets take this boss for example (the rightmost adventurer is there for the scale):

The Jungle Boss uses totems to unleash his fury. His totems gain 1 AP per turn, and at 5 AP, they explode, dealing huge damage to your whole army. Obviously this must be avoided. The Boss also poisons your units, and the totems themselves buff and heal the Boss.

Now you can combat this several ways. Killing the totems quickly is a possibility (Some units, like the Mining Robot or the Tiger excel at a single decisive strike near the start of combat). Draining them from their AP is also a way (Red Cultists, Bears, and some other units also can do that). But then you still have to fight the boss himself.

Countering the poison is also a possibility: any unit with an AOE heal will do (High Priest, Monk, even the Faerie). For the boss himself you will need either strong debuffer units (Vampires would be ideal, but most of the undead have debuffs), or units that buff your army (Flagbearers, Enchanters, and many other).

Don't panic if you don't have the ideal army, since after all a very strong army will defeat this boss even if you don't care about any of the above (well, maybe killing the totems first is a good idea anyways). But if you don't want to grind and level up, spending precious time, employing tactics like these is a great  idea.

Main gameplay

Combat is great and all, but what about the non-combat gameplay? Roughly, it looks like this:

- you start with a small army (depending on class)
- you conquer dwellings so you can recruit new monsters
- you level up and find items, so you can customize your army depending on the items found, talents chosen and dwellings conquered
- when you become strong enough, you try to kill the island's boss
- that means you are strong enough to go further, and you are allowed to go to the next island (where you find stronger monsters to purchase, so this repeats).

We plan to do a separate post about both items to equip and bosses to fight, but just a few words about them:

Bosses are special monsters that are much stronger than anything you will meet in the wilderness. They are not recruitable. They usually have some trick that needs to be discovered.

Items are artifacts that you can give to your units. They can give stat boosts, passive abilities and even active abilities. Items usually have some requirements, for example a sword can only be used by Humanoids. One unit can equip one item.