Beginner Tips And Tricks For Nordhold

In Nordhold, you’ll need to learn many mechanics to master this unique tower defense game. The game combines base and resource management with turn-based strategy. You might miss a few mechanics here and there, so it’s best to learn all of them!

One can easily lose if you don’t play your cards right. The game has some roguelike elements, so losing is part of the fun, right until you get stuck. Then, it can be frustrating trying to find out where you went wrong. This is why you’ll need to know some tips and tricks on how to more efficiently play the game.

Gain Honor To Progress

The game is a roguelike, so if you want to make progress, be prepared to lose a lot. You get Honor when finishing a wave, and you’ll get more after a boss wave. You can use Honor to unlock different Perks.

Some of these perks can help you in future runs, like making towers cheaper or getting more resources. The Eternal Glory perk will increase your Honor gain while picking up the perk ‘Heritage’ will give you a free worker in every run.

Honor can also be used to unlock new towers, so you can try out different play-styles and builds. Having a bad run can still be good since you’re gaining these points.

Prioritize Your Economy

Having a good economy can help you survive more waves since you’ll need resources to make more towers. You will always start with a Woodcutter’s Hut, but you’ll need to build more to get the other resources.

To get some food, you will need to build a mill; food is needed to get more workers. Some towers need stone and gold, so build the Quarry and the Goldmine to get the necessary resources.

Some buildings will help you generate more resources on top of your workers. The Tavern will increase worker output. If you build a brewery, it will increase worker output further; just remember that it will need food to work.

Don’t Be Afraid To Take Damage In Early Waves

When an enemy unit reaches your gates, you’ll take damage, so your first instinct is to not let that happen. Sometimes it’s good for you to take damage just as long as you plan for it. Not building towers in the first couple of waves is a valid tactic.

If you want to maximize your economy, sometimes you’ll want to skip building a tower to save resources on economy buildings. This can be easier with the perk Shield Wall, which can give you more HP.

Try To Use Only One Or Two Tower Types

Once you’ve unlocked more towers, you’ll want to try them all out and combine them. While this is great, another way to play the game is to use only one or two towers. That’s because the game incentivizes you to use a few tower types to make them stronger.

As you progress through the waves, you’ll get banners that can make your towers stronger. The banners are random, but the game will only spawn banners of towers you’ve built. So, if you use only one tower, then you will always get banners for that tower.

This can lead to powerful builds since all the buffs you get from banners will always be for that one tower. Try playing only Runestone Towers or pair it up with the occasional Raven Tower for something simple and easy.

Maximize Your Banners By Using Banish

Now that you know you can use single towers to get the banners you want, you’ll also want to use Banish. If you banish a banner, it won’t be available in the future. Doing so increases the chances of the ones you want to spawn.

The Perk ‘Strategic Mind‘ in the Castle gives you more banishes. Use them to permanently remove banners you don’t need if you’re planning for a specific build.

For example, if you want to go for a Shock Tower Crit Build, then banish Lightning Surge since it won’t help with that. When going for single-tower builds, it can be easy to get the banner you need every time with the right number of banishments.

Set Priority Targets

When you select a tower, to the right of the upgrade window is the Focus Priority. This is where you can set what the tower prioritizes, and there are a lot of choices! You can set the priority of each tower to make sure they hit the right targets.

For example, the Raven Tower can prioritize bosses and then enemies with High HP. Another tower that benefits from this is the Magma Tower, which you can set to prioritize groups of enemies for maximum effect!

Use The Terrain To Your Advantage

Make sure that you keep an eye on the terrain height since you can cover more ground the higher the tower is. This is especially important to towers that have short range, like the Runestone Tower.

As you go through the waves, you might notice some of the terrain hexes have different symbols. If you hover a tower on it you’ll see the bonus of that terrain. Some of the bonuses include increased range or damage, so keep an eye out for them.

Try to cover as much path as possible with your tower placement. The more path the tower covers, the more damage it can deal!

Get Passive Resource Income

When you reach the later waves, you’ll be able to unlock passive income upgrades for your resource buildings. This can drastically change your early-game economy, which can shift to just generating gold and wood to get them early.

You can even unlock Perks that can increase the maximum Passive Income you can get per building!