Nordhold – Optimized Mortar & Runestone Build Guide

Reliable Mortar & Runestone Strategy Guide

Ву Jake.

General

This guide is written without using +50% elite and moving arrows around, even though I do use that with this strategy. But here is a less RNG reliant mortar supported by runestone build which is pretty reliable to get into round 26.

You should expect to lose 5-10 HP in the first 7 waves. Wave 8 things get safe. When you have 2 mortars, the one closest to enemy should target max HP, the one closer to your base targets the closest to base.

You have to play with this function and keep swapping the front mortar’s priority between front/max HP and group (one of each when you have 3).

You also want to build your mortars with as many turns as possible. This is important especially for the early game. More turns is better than move hexes in total.

At late game (20+) you will want like 70% of mortars focusing front, 20% max HP and 10% group. And when you’re getting overrun, change them all to front.

As far as banners go… you always want to get every legendary runestone fire rate banner you see.

Overall banner stats I like are:

• +8-10 range (normally depends on where my corners are, you can stop at +5 if you already covered your “ideal spot”)
• +50% radius
• + as much burn as possible
• + as much 4th shot mortar 2nd to burn
• + and from there priority is fire rate > radius > range if they are your “best option” that isn’t one of the above

You don’t need to get legendary banner on first banner to follow this build to the letter, but if you are going for elite oracle at lvl 4 then I would restart until you do get a legendary banner. The two best for elites are burn and range, but burn is by far the best for this strat and should get you 0 HP loss in first 7 waves without building any arrows.

Waves

Wave 0

• Pact of prosperity
• Buy trade
• Castle discount
• Sell 30 stone
• Buy 30 wheat
• Build mortar after exploring (can also wait)
• Buy house + 2 workers
• Buy tavern
• Upgrade lumberjack 2x

Wave 1

• Trade upgrade x2

Wave 2

• Brewery

Wave 3

• Build mill
• Upgrade mill x2
• Brewery upgrade (wood)
• 4 mill, 1 wood

Wave 4

• Buy worker
• Build quarry
• 1 wood, 1 quarry, 4 mill
• Castle discount 2nd
• Trade upgrade 3rd
• Hope you don’t get elite on this round

Wave 5

• Pick a useful hero (mortar fire > chest > gold per worker > rerolls)
• 2 wood, 2 stone, 2 mill
• Explore and build runestone on best spot for a mortar hub (if there is one). If not, just the best spot for a runestone

Wave 6

• Build house – worker
• 2 wood, 5 mill
• Build 2nd mortar

Wave 7

• Castle discount complete
• Tax burden 1
• Hire worker
• Upgrade quarry 1x
• 1 wood, 2 stone, 5 mill
• Market: accuracy is priority, otherwise skip is normally the option

Wave 8

• Tax burden 2
• Reposition first mortar if you have good rune spot
• Houses upgrade/recruit worker
• 2 stone, 7 mill

Wave 9

• x2 tavern upgrades
• x1 quarry upgrade
• 3 stone, 1 mill
• Build 3rd mortar (total of 4 mortar, 1 rune)
• Move archer around if you don’t have either legendary range or burn
• Always pick runestone fire rate legendary. Goals after this are +10 range, burn, flat radius 50+, then always 4th shot

Wave 10

• Worker
• 4 wood, 3 stone, rest 4 mill

Wave 11

• Complete tavern
• Complete quarry
• 2x mortars
• 11 workers in mill
• You should have 146-152 wood to move an arrow tower but shouldn’t be needed (need to keep 140 ready for house next turn)

Wave 12

• Complete house
• 2x worker
• 3 wood, 1 stone, 9 mill
• Don’t spend gold!

Wave 13

• Trading post complete
• Last worker
• Spend leftover gold as you want (brewery gold upgrade? statue? complete mill upgrade for 1 worker brewery?) (save enough for rune?)
• 2 wood for workshop, or 3 if you want to build gold mine too
• From here you need to adapt to the map, maybe reposition your entire cluster
• If your banners are good, you can easily go a turn or two without building if you manage your towers to avoid overkill and look for a better position
• Upgrades to look to get before next market are workshop complete/mill complete/market upgrade reduction
• 10+ in stone and 2 in gold should get you through all your needs until you have to worry about when to swap to full gold for upgrades, which is more around wave 18+

Q&A

Is burn good now? I gave up on it and focused on crescendo and width when I was trying to make mortars work.

I just figured newer players would like an easy-ish guide that they can then experiment from with elites.

I like getting the crescendo… or 4th shot as I called it, but it has diminishing returns because you have to focus fire on the front mob, so you’re not really gaining that much out of them. I’d say the 2 most important banners are runestone and the +10 range, everything else is kinda in the wind. If you have +70 radius and just basic grey 200% crescendo, it’s good enough. Or 20 radius and 300 crescendo, same thing. Stars aligned is probably something like: enough burn to hit 3 seconds, 1-2 crescendo, 1 radius banner any rarity, and some crazy 45%+ runestones. The main thing is about the explosions being big enough to wrap around corners.

Burn for first banner though, it’s really good vs the lower level elites and lets you not build any arrows at all. Saves you some wood, gets you ahead some compared to other banners. And legendary burn almost one-shots the zoomers in the early waves, enough for a runestone to treat them like the other smalls.

And it’s the zoomers which are what most of the swapping priority on 2nd mortar is about. They’re a pain.