Wildermyth

Wildermyth

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Beginner's Guide to Wildermyth
By Saint Scylla
An introduction to the gameplay of Wildermyth: character creation, equipment, combat, campaign mechanics... Welcome to the Yondering Lands!
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Starting a new game
Your first campaign
It's recommended to start with the Age of Ulstryx campaign in the Adventurer difficulty level. It's a 3-chapter story which includes cleverly introduced tutorials.

If you need any help or reminder with the basics, visit the How to Play page in the main menu. For further information, hit the links to the official wiki and the Wildermyth Combat Basics video in the top right corner of the How to Play page.


Character creation
When creating a new character, visit the History part of their character sheet. The procedural generation story grants them a set of 2 to 3 hooks (which affect story choices) and a set of passive bonus.


Example of an origin story (left) and its hooks and passive stat bonus (right)

Since you can reroll (randomly generate) the whole character sheet as many times as your patience allows, you may try your luck to get some nice passive bonus. This optimization is certainly not mandatory though it can prove useful if you play with a high difficult setting. For instance Hunters will benefit from an Accuracy bonus and Mystics from a Potency bonus. A Retirement Age bonus will allow your heroes to be active during extra chapters, which can make a real difference in long campaigns.
Know your enemies
Foes are divided into five different factions.


Deepists
Human cultists living in deep caves, with acquired tastes for horned headwear and terrible breakfast. If you see them aboveground, it means trouble. The main antagonists in the campaign Monarchs under the Mountain.




Drauven
Quarrelsome dragon-like creatures living in a caste system. Bad neighbors due to their cultural affinity for all things brutal such as weaponsmithing, raiding and slavery. The main antagonists in the campaign All the Bones of Summer.




Gorgons
Ancient, towering tentacled monsters leading warped beasts out of the woods. Able to corrupt the ground, giving benefits to their members and disadvantages to their human opponents. The main antagonists in the campaign Age of Ulstryx.




Morthagi
The Clockwork Dead. Steampunk skeletons, golems built of bones and cogs. Benefit from synergies when walling. The main antagonists in the campaign The Enduring War.




Thrixl
Weird, elegant insectoid beings, some small, some very large. The smartest of them are able to compete with your Mystics by interfusing with props. The main antagonists in the campaign Eluna and the Moth.

Campaign mechanics
Legacy Points economy
Legacy Points (LP) play a core role in the balancing of your campaign. Liberating a region by driving out the local monsters will grant your 2 LP, though you won't get extra LP if the region falls back under monster control and you liberate it again.
You can spend your LP by :
- recruiting a new hero (3 LP) or a legacy hero (4+ LP). Tip: the Bard passive skill is a great pick if selected early in your campaign since it reduces the cost of recruiting by 1 LP, in addition to giving a stunt chance bonus to allies in combat.
- crafting combat gear in-between campaign chapters or at the forge of a local village. If you're short in a resource required to craft a piece of equipment, you can spend LP instead.
- cancelling a timed calamity (1-3 LP). See below.


Calamities
Calamities are cards added to the deck of an enemy faction. They either introduce a new monster or upgrade an existing one.
There are two sources of calamities:
- A calamity card is drawn at the end of each fight, whether you won or lost.
- In addition, extra calamities are triggered at timed intervals depending on your overland campaign difficulty level. These extra calamities can be dispelled by spending Legacy Points, unlike the automatic post-fight calamities. Consider dispelling the calamities from the main antagonist of your campaign. For instance if you're playing the Age of Ulstryx campaign, where the main threat is the Gorgon faction, you will only rarely (if ever) fight Deepists. Therefore you can safely collect Deepist calamity cards and use your Legacy Points to dispel only Gorgon cards.


Overland strategy
In addition to completing the objectives of the chapter, your heroes can clean up each region from monsters and build local infrastructures. These mop-up operations are mostly, but not entirely, beneficial to your campaign:
- con: every fight generates a calamity, making future fights slightly more challenging.
- pro: every fight gives experience to participating heroes. Levelling up grants a skill choice and improves attributes such as health and warding.
- pro: every fight gives one or several items which can be distributed to any hero, participating or not.
- pro: every structure generates crafting resources. Unlike randomly-generated loot, crafting allows you to decide which hero gets which type and which level of weapon or armor. This is a great way to build synergies, such as giving a +potency weapon to a Mystic or a +stunt armor to a Warrior equipped with an elemental weapon.


Charisma and Tenacity
These character stats factor passively into story choice rolls, like a skill check in a classic RPG. The higher the stat, the higher the chance of a positive outcome. Positive outcomes go from temporary stats bonus in your next fight to opportunities to get a permanent change to your character in a theme event.


Theme events
Random events can be triggered when scouting a new region, arriving to or departing from a battle site, or simply travelling the world with a specific personality (e.g. leader) or history hook (e.g. dreamer). FeralKitty has written a comprehensive guide on this matter:
https://steamproxy-script.pipiskins.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1923378154

Rivers and mountains
Are your heroes unable to reach a region of the map or required to do a long detour because a river or a mountain range is blocking their way? You can click on a section of the river to build a bridge above it, or click on the mountain range to dig a pass through.
Equipment stats
Make an informed decision when you find or craft a new piece of gear.

Potency vs Warding
- Potency adds extra damage to Interfuse spells and themed spells. Mostly useful to Mystics.
- Warding cancels some damage from fire and enemy magical attacks. Mostly useful to exposed heroes such as Warriors.

Shred vs Pierce
- Shred destroys a fixed amount of the target's armor on every attack, down to zero. Typical of axes. Survivors get their full armor back at the end of the mission.
- Pierce ignores a fixed amount of the target's armor. Note that Hunters attacking from grayplane always ignore all armor and warding.

Stunt
Critical hit chance. A useful mechanic in higher difficulty levels. A successful stunt applies extra damage and an additional bonus if the weapon has an elemental property:
- Fire damages up to three nearby enemies
- Water refunds one action point (limited to once per turn)
- Leaf grants two temporary hit points (can stack)
- Stone pins and shreds 1 armor from all enemies in a two tile radius

There are several ways to improve your Heroes stunt chance:
- Warriors can equip a Brawlgard or a Wilderguard armor to improve their chance to stunt.
- A rival gets a one-time +25% to +100% stunt chance bonus when their rival lands a stunt hit. It doesn't chain though.

Speed
This stat dictates how many tiles a character can move per action point. It is lowered by the Linkmail and Knightmail armors of Warriors, and the Graybark and Thornbark armors of Hunters.

Combat tips
No enemy in sight
Be wary of unseen dangers. Don't exhaust all of your action points to dash into unknown territory, as you might not be able to fall back to safety. It can be smart to scout ahead with Hunters invisible in grayplane. Opening a door is something which should be done early in your turn, when most of your heroes can react to whatever lurks behind the door.

Around an enemy
Always minimize the number of enemies that will be able to attack you on their turn. Set up strangeholds with doorsteps, Warriors using Guardian to auto-attack enemies entering their range, or Mystic tricks such as fire and poisoned props to weaken the enemy.

Hover your mouse over an enemy and hold the shift key to see their move range. Make sure your characters stay out of reach, unless it's part of your battle plan. Note that monsters will avoid Warriors in Guardian/Sentinel stance if they have easier targets in range.
Parting words
The official wikia
If you'd like to dig deeper into the mechanics or the lore, you'll want to visit the official game's wikia: https://wildermyth.com/wiki/index.php


Turn-Based Tactics
If you enjoy turn-based games, visit the Steam community Turn-Based Tactics. We review the best games of the genre (from AAA to indie gems like Wildermyth), we share weekly news regarding games in development, and we maintain a huge release schedule of upcoming titles.

18 Comments
AngusOfTheDandelion 10 Jan, 2023 @ 6:23am 
no worries :D I think resources like this are great for the game's long term health - I can pontificate all I like about advanced builds, but if folk aren't getting past the basics, it won't matter, the discussions will die out, and it'll be a bad time all round

I'll favourite the guide and If any major changes shake it up while I'm active I'll try and let you know

and again, thanks for your contribution to the community!
Saint Scylla  [author] 10 Jan, 2023 @ 6:16am 
OK all your points have been added above. Thanks a lot for your help!

This short guide started as a simple lexicon before turning into a list of game mechanics and advices. I'm no longer an active player but I try to keep an eye on the patch notes. I should have known that the devs had addressed the interlude penalty.
AngusOfTheDandelion 9 Jan, 2023 @ 1:03pm 
oh shoot, I knew I missed one! they merged ranged & melee accuracy, so now it's just accuracy

casting a keener eye since you're still active and responsive:

Bard is a general skill, not limited to warriors
Stone Stunts also pin enemies in the radius
Rival stunting doesn't chain - a stunt granted by the rival bonus doesn't generate the rival bonus
The heavy hunter armours (grey/thornbark?) also reduce speed (though it's less noticable on the faster hunters

yeah, I think that's it!

Again, I'm really impressed with this guide, even several patches out of date it was still excellent, and I'm glad to see you appreciate and respond to feedback! :D
Saint Scylla  [author] 9 Jan, 2023 @ 8:23am 
Hi Angus512, thanks for your feedback, much appreciated!
I've edited my guide accordingly.
AngusOfTheDandelion 9 Jan, 2023 @ 6:55am 
decided to cast an eye over this as a veteran player (who just wrote an optimisation guide) and well done! great guide, though it may need a few minor updates:

friendship grants block, not stunt
interludes are no longer dependant on cleared tiles
greyplane also pierces warding

might be something else, but seriously, great beginner guide!
Lampros 16 Mar, 2022 @ 6:49am 
"Acquired tastes for... terrible breakfast" - LOL!
Saint Scylla  [author] 2 Aug, 2021 @ 8:23am 
@Silvercourage Good point, thanks for bringing it up! I've added some notes on overland strategy in the Campaign mechanics.
Silvercourage 26 Jul, 2021 @ 2:29pm 
Thank you! I’m still confused by whether I should be locking down every province I go to, or just pressing on straight for quest goals. I just finished chapter 1, so it may be clearer to me later, but thought I would mention as a helpful potential add in future. Maybe something like a general idea of when to patrol, when to assault, when to lock down, always lockdown towns, etc., tips. Regardless though, appreciate the effort you put into the guide, it was helpful! 🙂🦖🥦
Saint Scylla  [author] 2 Jul, 2021 @ 3:28am 
Guide updated for 1.0
PK_Ultra 17 Jun, 2021 @ 6:01pm 
a side pro-tip, dont name your heroes after loved ones. Permadeath is on.