Getting to the end of a Survival run in Age Of Darkness: Final Stand requires a lot of preparation, exploration, and being willing to fight to the last. Each wave that assaults your Keep will be significantly stronger than the one before it, so you need to keep ramping up your defenses throughout the game to have any hope of making it to the end.
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Age Of Darkness: Final Stand – 8 Beginner Tips
Keep the Nightmares at bay with these tips for Age Of Darkness.
Knowing exactly what’s in store for you so that there are no surprises goes a long way toward earning your first win. This guide has everything you need to know, including tips for weathering the storm.
How Many Waves Are There?
Survival has a day/night cycle, occasionally interrupted by Death Nights. During the day, Nightmares are weaker, making it easier to explore and expand. At night, Elite Nightmares spawn and small groups of enemies may attack your buildings.
Nightmares won’t move close to a light source unless provoked, so if a building keeps getting attacked either build a tower to defend it or a light sconce to drive the Nightmares away.
On a Death Night, one of the Dark Crystals on the map will shatter, causing a Nightmare Swarm to spawn at its location and attack your keep. There are five Death Nights in total, one for each Crystal.
A Death Night only ends when every Nightmare in the oncoming Swarm has died. Wandering Nightmares don’t count toward this; even worse, they’ll respawn in any areas covered by the Death Fog once the Death Night is over.
Which Crystal Will Spawn The Swarm?
The order of the Dark Crystals shattering is randomized and hidden. You will be alerted to which Crystal is about to shatter the morning before a Death Night, giving you only five minutes of real time gameplay to prepare. During that time, you should:
- Build a Watchtower if you haven’t already to highlight the path the Swarm will take so that you can build defenses.
- Wall off any choke points that the Swarm will pass through on its way to your Keep, and build towers.
- Train extra troops to defend the walls.
- For the third Death Night and later, it’s a good idea to build defenses along the side of the Swarm’s path; not only will towers attack passing Nightmares, but some of the enemies will peel off from the main force to fight back. Divide and conquer!
The first Dark Crystal shatters at sundown on the fourth day; after that, a Crystal will shatter every sixth night. That means that in total, there are 28 days, including the Final Stand, unless you destroy any Crystals early.
The Crystal Scout Blessing tells you which Crystal is about to shatter and what path the Swarm will take one day early.
Should You Destroy A Crystal Early?
If you send an expedition to the edge of the map, usually led by your Hero, you may come across a Dark Crystal that hasn’t yet shattered. If you can get to it, you can destroy it, causing a Death Night to happen in five minutes’ time.
Doing so means that you have less time to build up your defenses, but it gives you control over where the Swarm is coming from. Since you destroyed the Crystal, you know from which direction to expect an attack and can prepare accordingly.
Destroying a Dark Crystal also yields a large reward of Dark Essence, which can be used to buy high-tier upgrades in the Skill Tree. You can collect a smaller amount of Dark Essence by visiting the site of a Dark Crystal that already shattered naturally, but the yield is much lower and rarely worth the danger.
Every Dark Crystal on the map will shatter eventually, so if you reach one and leave it intact, you’re just delaying the inevitable.
What Is The Final Stand?
After the fifth Death Night, a ten-minute timer will start counting down. When it reaches zero, it’s time for you to make your Final Stand. A massive Nightmare Swarm will emerge from every previous Dark Crystal site at once, and they will all converge on your Keep following the same paths that they did before. You’ll need to defend your Keep against tens of thousands of Nightmares, and your Hero will only be able to fight on a single front at a time. It’s the ultimate test.
Your biggest advantage is that you already know which paths the five incoming Swarms will take. After each Death Night, make a note of what worked and what didn’t, and increase your defenses along that Swarm’s route slowly over the remainder of the game. Thicker walls, more towers, and additional choke points along the route will all serve to slow and whittle down the numbers of the Swarms.
Definitely build some defenses around your Keep as well, and upgrade it all the way if you haven’t already. At least one Swarm is bound to break through in most cases.
If you’re able to eliminate the entire Final Swarm before they can destroy your Keep, you’ll claim victory!
Important Buildings
It’s essential to have a Siege Factory ready and producing Impalers by the third Death Night to deal with Crushers, and by the fourth Death Night you should have Grand Bellows Towers researched and constructed at key choke points.
The Grand Bellows Tower singlehandedly clears Crawlers that enter its radius as long as you can keep it protected, leaving your Hero, troops, and other defenders to focus on larger threats without getting bogged down.
