The Road to Edain 4.6: Settlements and outposts

[Elendils Cousin 3. Grades]

Greetings, companions of the Edain!

Recently, we have received an increasing number of questions inquiring about the structures that the Misty Mountains can construct on settlement and outpost plots in 4.6. To answer these questions together, today we present the different options to you before also taking a small look at the exclusive units that are unlocked with Pact of Hatred.

The settlements

Settlements allow the Misty Mountains to build three different lairs from which wild warriors can be recruited: Orcs, Wargs and Trolls. These hoards are a key to the Misty Mountains' aggressive style: no other race can muster such enormous hordes of soldiers so quickly to swamp the enemy, as the warriors come crawling from every corner of the battlefield. The lairs are also constantly defended by their inhabitants, providing the Misty Mountains with an extremely helpful little boost on the defensive: The higher the level of the hoard, the more defenders are ready for action. As already hinted at when introducing the Loot Hoard, a special Goblin-Town building, these wild lairs only level up after researching the Empowerment of the Wilderness upgrade - or when enemies are killed near them! The martial nature of the wild orcs, trolls and wargs ensures that battles and confrontations only attract more of their kind, thus allowing the lairs to grow.

Additional archers and even spearmen protect the Orc Lair at level 3

In terms of recruitable soldiers, the settlements offer basic infantry, cavalry and monster options at the start. In the Orc Lair, cheap warriors and archers are available, which put enemies under pressure due to their superior numbers. The Warghort can recruit Warg Packs, which can effectively hunt enemy horsemen and attack unprotected farm buildings due to their Howl ability, but should be wary of  stronger infantry. These wargs use a skin that is slighty different to Isengard's Wargriders.

The Troll Lair is the most expensive of the three buildings, but also offers the most dangerous warriors in the form of Stone Trolls. The Stone Trolls may fear the sunlight, but they themselves sow fear and terror among enemy soldiers. In keeping with the primitive society of orcs and trolls, they do not have any upgrades, but can use trees as weapons and thus cause additional area damage.

Twice the trolls, double the fun

In addition, the heroes Tom, Bill and Bert can be recruited here, who have a special stance system for switching between the three trolls and are just waiting to crush careless opponents into jelly. Depending on which stance is selected, the player controls a different one of the three trolls - Bill is the aggressive one, Tom the defensive one and Bert the balanced middle one. They can use the following abilities:

Rock Throwing: Throw stones at your opponents.
Squash ‘em into jelly (Level 2): Tom, Bert and Bill throw themselves at their enemies to crush them into jelly.
Cook some jelly (Level 4): Tom, Bert and Bill set up their own pot of jelly. Allies near this are permanently healed.
Troll Hoard (Level 7): The three robbers create a troll hoard which they defend with their lives. Near this troll hoard they have +300% armour. You can only maintain a maximum of one troll hoard of the three robbers at a time in the game.
The Three Trolls (Level 10): The selected troll briefly summons each of the other two trolls to the battlefield.

Why is he the cook?

As you can see, the three trolls can hardly be defeated in the vicinity of their hoard, which is why its placement needs to be carefully considered. And if they reach level 10, all three robbers can cause mischief at the same time for a short duration.

Outposts

Moria outpost in the front, Moria base in the back

On the outpost, the Misty Mountains have two different options: They can build a Moria outpost, which can be used to increase income or to supply more warriors, or they can create a Fissure. Initially, we had planned to make the Moria outpost available as an option of the builder, just like Gundabad and Goblin-Town. But since every skirmish already starts with a Moria base and freely placing a classic outpost structure always leads to problems with disappearing buildplots in case of bumpy terrain, we decided to make Moria exclusive to outpost buildplots. There, it has many uses: the building discount from the Loot Mines is an enormously useful bonus for the ever-expanding goblins, especially since their mines also automatically reach the level of the highest loot mine already available. More Moria warriors with their poison weapons or cave trolls can also be a dangerous choice. However, if you are confronted with a powerful fortified positions, you may want to build a Fissure instead.

Big, not so friendly giant

The Fissure can recruit Giants who hurl stones at their opponents from enormous distances. Apart from dragons, they are the strongest monsters in the Misty Mountains, with high melee damage and resistance to most kinds of damage. Unlike Ents, they also don't move at a snail's pace and fire much faster - if you don't take care of giants quickly, you'll quickly be in trouble! So should you need to crack walls defended by archers or simply aim for methodical destruction of the enemy from a safe distance, giants are the first choice.

Pact of Hatred

Last but not least, let's take a quick look at two special units that become available via the Spellbook: Mountain Wargs and Brood Mothers. Both are available when you cast the Pact of Hatred on a Warg Lair or a Spider Lair.

Mountain Wargs are particularly large and powerful wargs that, unlike their smaller counterparts, strike out on their own. Their high individual damage makes them particularly useful against stronger single entities. Brood mothers, on the other hand, are very special giant spiders that are accompanied and protected by a group of small, just-hatched offspring. In close combat, their constant supply of tiny spiders allows them to hold out for a surprisingly long time against supposedly superior opponents, as long as they are not targeted by enemy archers. However, they also have a long-range attack: they can become stationary for a while to let their brood attack enemies directly at medium range. This way, archers can be prevented from shooting or enemy heroes can be targeted who are hiding behind melee fighters.


We hope you enjoyed this update and are, as always, looking forward to your feedback!

Your Edain Team