After every Death Night in Age Of Darkness: Final Stand, you get to choose from one of three Blessings. These buffs last until the end of the run, whether in victory or, as is much more likely, defeat. Making the right choice each time a Blessing comes your way can help hone your strategy and give you just enough of an advantage to see the dawn.
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Every Blessing can be useful in the right circumstances, but some are more universally beneficial than others. When in doubt, this list can help you choose between a good Blessing and a better one, or avoid Blessings that don’t fit your build.
16
Resourceful
Doubles The Value Of Resource Pickups
Resource gain can be slow in Age Of Darkness, especially if your build order isn’t up to speed yet or a Nightmare attack has left your economy hampered. Resource pickups can help close the gap, but they’re rare enough that your Blessing slots are better spent elsewhere.
A possible exception to this rule is if you’re playing as Aurelia. Her Whip Flail attack causes some enemies to drop Dark Essence, and getting double the amount makes it much easier to balance her rapid expenditure of the rare red crystals with other needs, like recruiting Harbingers and buying high-tier unit skills.
15
Night Watch
Enemies Sometimes Drop Resources At Night
If you really need combat to supplement your resource income, possibly because you’re going for the aggressive Lash Out Achievement, Night Watch is very helpful, if a bit unpredictable. It combos well with Resourceful, but that means dedicating two Blessing slots to relatively weak powers that could be replaced by just building and defending Lubmer Mills and Quarries.
While every Hero can expect to do their share of night fighting, Vizargo allows some opportunities to exploit Night Watch because of his enhance abilities after the sun goes down. Regardless of your chosen Hero, be sure to keep an eye on your resource capacity; drops don’t do you any good if there’s nowhere to put them!
14
Truly Blessed
Doubles Your Hero’s XP Gain
Despite being a game about defense, success in Age Of Darkness requires you to strike out with your Hero as often as possible, hunting Nightmares day and night to level up as quickly as you can. If they aren’t Level 10 by the Final Stand, you’re in big trouble.
Truly Blessed is great if it’s available as your first or second Blessing pick, but its value drops off sharply after that. It’s best used to ensure that your Hero has all four abilities unlocked by the third Death Night, the better to handle the first appearance of Crushers and overwhelming waves of Crawlers that will emerge from that point on.
13
Budget Carpenter
Buildings Cost Less To Construct
There are few moments more nail-bitingly tense in Age Of Darkness than watching the Death Night timer tick down, waiting for enough resources to come in that you can finish the last wall or tower that you need. It can literally come down to seconds, but by reducing the build cost with Budget Carpenter, you can start construction earlier and be more confident that you’ll be ready when the Nightmares attack.
12
Motivated Laymen
Speeds Up Building Construction
Of course, by the late game, building costs shouldn’t be an issue – you’ll be much more concerned with making sure that a new building is ready to serve its purpose by the time the Swarm hits. Motivated Laymen reduces build times by a respectable fifteen percent, giving you much better ability to react to emergencies lilke breakthroughs, flanks, and lost buildings.
11
Two For One
You’ll never be able to match the Nightmares when it comes to raw numbers – they have troops numbering in the tens of thousands, while you’re stuck in the double digits – but every pair of boots on the ground can buy you a few seconds or even save the day. Two For One only triggers fifteen percent of the time, as it would probably be overpowered otherwise, but if you get lucky it can get you an extra Order Knight, Arbalest, or Harbinger when you train one normally.
Just remember that extra troops spawned by this Blessing still need upkeep, including Villagers and Food. If you choose Two For One, try to always have a little more on hand than you otherwise would to feed your additional troops.
10
Unsightly
Increases The Vision Radius Of All Buildings
Letting your buildings see further doesn’t seem quite as powerful as other Blessings at first; after all, it doesn’t kill any Nightmares, and towers that can see further can’t shoot further to match. However, the unique mechanics of Age Of Darkness make this power a real sleeper hit.
Building vision keeps the Death Fog at bay during Death Nights, which in turn prevents Nightmares from respawning in cleared sections of the map. By giving your buildings a longer sight line, you can make it that much less likely that they’ll have unfriendly new neighbors after a Swarm attack. You can also use extended sight lines to build cheeky towers on the far side of forests and lakes, further expanding your reach and potentially slowing enemy approaches without any real fear of retaliation.
9
Rigged Defenses
Buildings Sometimes Explode When Destroyed, Damaging Nearby Enemies
In some games, a Blessing like this would be an act of desperation; if you need to rely on your buildings being destroyed, you’re doing something wrong. In Age Of Darkness, though, you’re always desperate, and your buildings are going to be destroyed – there’s no getting around that fact.
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Especially on the later Death Nights, the Nightmares will absolutely breach your defenses in one or more places. Rigging said defenses, as well as any buildings that get overrun, to blow up is a great way to slow their advance and help you consolidate at the next line of defense.
Rigged Defenses can also help if a wandering patrol hits one of your outlying Farms; you may lose the Farm, but the explosion will make sure that the Crawlers don’t destroy anything else.
8
Change Of Heart
Destroyed Buildings Have A Chance To Resurrect Dead Nightmares As Allies
Change Of Heart isn’t nearly as consistent as Rigged Defenses, but when it works it really works. For thirty seconds after a buildings is destroyed while you have this Blessing, enemies dying near the site of the building have a fifteen-percent chance of resurrecting on your side. In most cases, that will mean that a handful of Crawlers join your ranks and then immediately die again, but sometimes you’ll get lucky and reanimate a higher-tier Nightmare – maybe even a Crusher!
You don’t have any actual control over which enemies resurrect, and some are much better than others. A Wraith is decent in combat, for example, but its Horror burst on death is useless, since Nightmares can’t become Horrified.
7
Encouraged
Emboldened Units Occasionally Deal Double Damage
A major part of your strategy when playing as the Order or the Rebellion will be Emboldening your units through combat experience. This unlocks their faction perk, and also renders them immune to Horror for the rest of the game.
If you manage to build up a large force of Emboldened troops and keep them alive, then the Encouraged Blessing is a great way to capitalize on your hard work. A ten-percent crit chance isn’t too bad when you consider how many attacks your entire army makes while they’re holding the line against a Swarm!
Edwin is a particularly good Hero for taking this Blessing, as he increases the Emboldening rate of nearby units, and as an Order Hero he gets access to better Siege units that can make the most out of a damage doubler. On the other hand, Encouraged is useless for the Volatists, whose units can never become Emboldened
6
Last Stand
Units At Critical Health Deal More Damage
Like Rigged Defenses, Last Stand helps turn some of the Nightmares’ offense against them. A fifty-percent boost to damage can be huge, especially if you have ways of keeping wounded units teetering on the brink of death without actually dying.
Low-tier units like Soldiers and Cultists probably won’t get more than a hit or two out of their Last Stand, but with support from a Lightbearer, Order Knights and Pikemen can hover just below one-quarter of their max health, especially if they’re near a Workshop to repair their Armor. Ranged units like Arbalests can also make good use of Last Stand; let them take some damage, then pull them back behind the walls to fire off a few shots before they heal up.
Merek, with his ability to grant nearby units Armor and yo-yo their health bars, is the best Hero to pick Last Stand for.
5
Way Of The Blade
Melee Units Cost More To Train But Increase Their Combat Stats
A two-thirds price increase on your Melee units – your first line of defense against the darkness – is tough to commit to, but it’s absolutely worth it. Way Of The Blade pays dividends on your investment by boosting the HP, Armor, Damage, and Shred of all your Melee units by one-third. That includes existing units that you’ve already paid for, so if you have a large, elite force it’s even more worth the pick.
It’s especially worth noting that the buffs from Way Of The Blade stack with Skill Tree perks like Fury, letting you turn Cultists into bladed whirlwinds of death, or Order Knights and Sentinels into implacable juggernauts.
4
Day Break
Units Fill One-Fourth Of Their Emboldening Meter At Dawn
The later the game gets, the less time you have to Embolden your new recruits. Sure, they’ll have plenty of opportunities to rack up kills during Death Nights, but that’s also when they’re most likely to fall valiantly in defense of Erodar. If you’re playing as the Order or the Rebellion, Day Break is a great way to ensure that your army is fully prepared in the leadup to the Final Stand.
Siege units in particular can benefit from this Blessing, as they have high Emboldening thresholds and their movement slows to a crawl if they become Horrified. Try to train new units the day after a Death Night; as long as they survive, they should be fully Emboldened by the next one.
3
Blood Of My Enemy
Slain Enemies Have A Chance To Heal Nearby Allies
Win or lose, you’re going to be slaying a lot of Nightmares on any given run. Your reward for all that fighting should be more than mere survival. With Blood Of My Enemy, each slain Nightmare (including the tens of thousands of Crawlers you’ll carve through) has a fifteen-percent chance of healing your troops as they die.
Healing options in Age Of Darkness are very limited, even for characters like Merek who make it their focus. Getting what amounts to an auto-heal that will trigger consistently during Death Nights by virtue of the sheer volume of enemies you’re facing will keep your troops alive much longer. It’s also good for helping units fresh from the Triage Tent back to fighting shape, as they resurrect with only a fraction of their health bar filled.
2
Crystal Scout
Reveals The Next Crystal Location One Day Earlier
The dawn before each Death Night is usually a hurried dash to find the incoming Swarm’s route and build up a suitable defense. Watchtowers are erected, new units are trained, and last-minute preparations are made. Crystal Scout takes a lot of the pressure off of you by giving you an extra day of notice.
In most cases, that extra day can be used to make absolutely sure that nothing will get through where you choose to make your stand. If you’re feeling brave, though, you can instead use that time to lead an expedition to the Crystal, destroying it for a large reward of Dark Essence. It’s a risky move, but the upgrades that you can buy thanks to your daring are well worth it.
1
Nightmare Fuel
Units Fully Heal When They Become Horrified
Your longest-serving troops will be Emboldened, and not have to deal with Horror, and if your micro game is strong you can manually avoid most Horror-causing attacks. If you get the Nightmare Fuel Blessing, though, you may not even need to worry about it. Just make sure that your choke points have a Light Tower nearby so that units can consistently recover from Horror; if they get Horrified again, they’ll just heal back up to keep fighting!
Horrified units do penalize your final score, so if that’s something you care about, take it into consideration.
Nightmare Fuel is a great Blessing for any faction, but it’s practically required for the Volatists, who get an attack buff from being Horrified and potentially want to get that scary purple icon on their units. For the Volatists, this Blessing essentially turns Harbingers into healers, as their ability Horrifies nearby units when it activates.
Real-Time Strategy
Survival
- Released
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January 15, 2025
- ESRB
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m
- Developer(s)
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PlaySide Studios
- Publisher(s)
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PlaySide Studios