Northgard – Conquest Guide (Tips and Tricks)

This guide is a collection of tips and tricks I have learned to assist with the conquest map series.

Tips and Tricks to Conquest

All credit goes to joemama1512!

Intro

Conquest is a game mode for Northgard where you select a clan and difficulty and play a series of maps, obtaining bonuses which you keep cumulatively over the course of the conquest.

Every clan’s 1st tier, 4th and 7th tier maps are fixed types, with a fixed non-choosable bonus. Typically the first bonus is quite strong. The second is pretty good, and the last is very powerful but very specific and narrow…plus it doesnt matter all that much since you dont use it much.

In between you can pick from two randomly chosen map types with random bonuses. Beating one will let you advance to the next set of maps. You can always play all the maps on the way to get more bonuses or move forward towards better bonuses and advancement. This also depends on the difficulty of the maps as they are definitely not all equal…. you may come back for one later after having more bonuses to assist you.

You have “won” by beating the 7th tier map, but you can finish the entire conquest if there were any leftovers.

I really like this mode of gameplay but it turned me off when I first encountered it because I didn’t really understand how it worked very well and got creamed. So I hope this helps some people through some rough spots.

General Hints and Bonuses Discussion

Be aware that the game difficulty increases as you move further towards the end. While the wolf placement and all stays constant depending on the difficulty level (i.e. environmental difficulty), the AI will receive extra bonuses and become a lot stronger over the course of the games, so keep this in mind.

It is generally suggested to do as many of the lower level maps as you can when you can to pick up their bonuses unless the bonuses are just really bad.

As far as bonuses they fall into several categories:

• +5/10/15% production bonus for X type of worker.

This can be pretty good for very common workers such as lumberjacks or miners or brewers. Stuff that is always in use. However most of the time you get Farmer,fisher,smith,sailor, etc. These bonuses are weak just because on average you will get much less out of these since you arent smithing all that much relatively speaking and have no idea what kind of food products you will be getting.

• Free forge upgrade and doublespeed forge for X type of worker.

This can be useful as an early tier bonus like above for a woodworker or miner. While it needs a forge and a bit of time, it gives a 15% bonus which is a lot more than the 5% bonus an early tier bonus would provide. However, never take this mid to late map because it is very undervalued for a stronger pick. Remember the basic production bonus works right away and stacks with forge upgrades.

• Attack/Defense upgrade for X fighter type.

Again, really hit or miss. +Offense for shieldbearers for example is pretty dubious. But if you love axeman then a 5/10/15% attack bonus is pretty strong.

• Building X does not need an item slot.

Can be extremely strong or really weak depending on your clan and building type. Any military building is generally a good deal since ANY of them will give more warband they are equally good… except if you are going legion and upgrading a specific type for bonuses. Bears in particular love putting a military building on every zone for the Morale boost from Protector of the Land.

Granery is pretty good too since you can drop 2 or 3 of them per game. Other single use buildings like brewer,smith,etc arent very useful though. Trading post/market are situational since many clans prefer ships. But kraken do love trading posts with neutrals for lore, and so forth.

• Cheaper warchief

Very strong except for certain clans that get theirs cheap/free such as squirrel. Means you can in many cases bust out a warchief instead of 2 warriors right away for clearing without needing a Ruins.

• Relic/chief cooldown

Strong for certain clans. Dragons love faster spamming of draconic jotnir with their relic. Anyone with bad relic can benefit from mjlonir spam. Wolf warchief loves faster zone-takeover ability! Snake loves faster zone-blow-up ability.

Most clans relics dont have clickeys nor do their warchiefs so don’t get much out of this.

• +1/2/3 of some resource. Or free Iron/Stone every X months.

Very good bonus. Almost always taken. Remember that +1 food for example means 1 food every 10 seconds or 6 food per month = 72 food per year extra. That is pretty significant. This falls off in utility over time but early game makes a big difference.

Free stone is particularly good to upgrade lots of stuff and free iron can help get a warchief out a bit faster, especially with cheaper-warchief bonus.

• Faster relic forge and cheaper.

Great combo with relic cooldown in some cases. Once again, very clan dependent. A fast raven relic can be extremely strong for example, as is dragon. Whereas many other clans dont care about a turbo-relic.

• Free sheep breeding.

This one sucks in general. Takes way too long to really be effective and you generally use sheep as early game turbo button.

• Free warrior or 2x warrior to start.

Can be really good. Worst case you can literally assign them back to peons and have a good economic start if you build a house in your starter zone. Depends on your clan.

• Colonization cost bonus.

You almost always take this as it really helps get the 12 zones for fame victory and saves a lot of food and helps your start.

• Population Growth

King for Dragon clan. Decent for many other clans but you can sometimes grow too fast and starve. It can throw off your game so be careful wtih it.

• Upgrade X building for Free.

Widely variable. If a common building like lumbermill then its awesome. Brewery upgrade is good. Farm/Fish/Hunt not so good since you never know. Ditto with trading post/market which are the most common options.

• House population.

Useful. Better for some clans than others but this can save you several slots.

• Easier winter.

Can be really useful and I tend to take this for most clans.

Map Specific Advice

Winter is Here – Awful awful map. Teaches you about storing up for winter though. Not much to say about this one. Try to focus on Ships and remember to switch them to fame around midgame. Its a big map and hard to progress and fight anyone. Its mostly resource management.. pile up food in granery’s and in winter time, avoid food production and focus on mining/money/scouting. This is because food production is lessened in winter and then eats yet another 50% cut so you really want your farmers/villagers to be doing something else more useful instead.

Greed’s Price – No gold allowed. Only from ruins. Must kill a big boar.

• This is another awful map that sucks. It is however pretty easy since the enemy AI is basically completely crippled and does practically nothing.
• The goal is to have as low of an upkeep as possible.
• Build house or two, one woodshop, one military building, two scouts, and thats about it. I avoid food buildings as they cost upkeep and catch on fire, useless.
• Mine only enough iron to get a warchief out potentially. Pick up 5 stone so you can drop a offering well.
• Basically you just scout and work your way towards ruins which you plunder every year for gold.

When a building gets damaged from lack of gold you can repair it and then STOP the repair right before its done and get your lumber back! You can keep all buildings safe this way until you have more gold.

Try to find a jotnir camp. Once befriended he can solo the boar for you. Takes a while but guaranteed easy win. If not, wait until you have 3 ruins taken over and then you can use that to get your warchief out to tank. Boar regenerates so pick off the dragur with it, full heal then attack it alone with about 4 other warriors/axes/whatever.

To reserve gold, create several houses and towers and mines but do not build them. This way you can sell them and get your gold reserve back. Otherwise if you are out of gold and explore 3 zones you will be slightly under 150 gold as they get done at different times. This technique lets you avoid this issue.

If you have a +gold conquest bonus this map is way easier!

Viking’s Glory – Can be tricky because there are two allied teams against you. You usually wind up being attacked up top and on bottom by each team while you are tring to get the final bit of fame.

You can help this situation somewhat by focusing on expanding towards one team if you have a fast-start clan like wolf or eagle. This lets you go on the offensive and push them instead of waiting to wind up in a siege situation.

Swamps of Death – Fewer than usual building slots. Not much to say except try to focus a bit more on gold so you can expand zones easier.

Myklifar uprising – volcano. Use I key after an eruption to locate the stone piles that are created so you dont get a surprise monster in your base. Easy stone makes upgrading a lot of stuff much easier.

Befriend Jotnir – easiset map ever. Reroll it a few times until Jotnir are very close and dont have mountains on your side! Then you just rush to get to them, drop wells and win.

Invasion from Hellheim – recently fixed I believe. This map is all about expansion speed. Scout all squares around you and take the food zones first. Get them up and running.

Then make sure you only colonize towards the gates…. no random colonizing elsewhere because it jacks up your food costs for new zones which you can’t afford. Take guardian for the militia. Rush towards one gate, take it. Tower it. Sit on it with troops. Move to next gates.

Sometimes you have to restart if you get neutral-hoze. For example, a dwarf grotto that blocks one of the gates can happen and theres no way to win without fighting the 6 dwarves which can be time consuming.

The Cursed – Its 4 vs a neutral enemy with lots of dragur waves. Its actually easier on harder mode cuz your allies are better! Should be easy win if you are fairly quick. You can request zones from allies if they block you and they will scout for you and even feast for you.

Dystopia – 10 happiness always but your dudes turn into spectral warriors occasionally. This one is worse on harder modes as more dudes get poofed. It seems to be a percentage of your population.

• It does affect your military such as militia and troops.
• It does not affect scouts and sailors!

Soo… make sure to go SHIPS as your money source. Built towers in your home zone as well as any other zones that have active workers.

Finally, build mulitple scout houses. It takes some micro but you can turn a lot of people into scouts right before it hits and then put them back which will greatly decrease your poof-factor. Not needed on medium mode so much but on hard? Yeah they poof half your people!

Also don’t be an idiot and reflexively take Shining Happy People, Feeling Safe, and other happiness lores like I do…

Kobold Infestation – Try to put down offering well ASAP when close to them and a tower. They will likely invade you and a tower will allow you to beat them down until you have the 30 rep neeed for them to leave you alone. Trading helps too.

Note: Once you hit 30 rep, you can enter their zone and clear Wolves and other stuff from their zones so they wont attack you and annoy you.

Once you hit 100 rep you can use gold to buy out their zones. You keep the kobolds as a super-militia too! If you buy out the last zone however you will “kill” the kobolds and get a fame bonus for it. But no more supertrade.

Lazy Villagers – no gathering of food by villagers.

Can be a tough map depending on clan. Dont over expand early and use up your extra food reserves!

Dirty trick: Spam healing huts. When idle they will produce food at normal villager rates. Can be improved by forge buff although not by upgrading. However, if army is wounded they will start healing and your food will drop significantly if you overly rely on this trick! This can lead to starvation and an endless healing-starving cycle!! Note that only one healing hut will focus on 1 dude so a beat up warchief should only affect a single hut. But rats can be deadly when everyone gets sick.

Odin’s Glory – Annoying long map. Focus on gold and get Negotiation to buy iron/stone since its halved on the map. Get a market soon so it will build up reserves you can buy later.

I recommend getting the Shield relic so when you take the sword of the gods smith you can plop it down to help defend. 50% defense to everyone is pretty solid!

Gem Cutter – Make a gem mine right away as it acts like a super brewery for some time and you can trade the gems later. It does throw off your build order somewhat. Otherwise, pretty normal map.

Muspars Wrath – Kill 15 jotnir dudes.

This can be tough, especially if your clan is slower and on hard mode where they get a big bonus. In some cases you have to go for it and take out an enemy clan entirely as the fast start clans just can’t be outraced, such as Rat and Eagle. Only way to win is to scout them, catch them offguard and slaughter them.

Valkyrie Galore – hold gate for a year.

Another very long map. Highly recommend taking the Shield relic. Killing other enemies is encouraged as fighting valkyries plus others constant attacks can wear you down.

Frozen Gates – enemies spawn and attack constantly. Win by domination.

The gates will often do your dirty work for you. Time your attacks with theirs and watch the glowing of the gates to know which ones will be spawning baddies.

Yggdrasal – get 2000/2500 food to colonize yggdrasal.

Just get lots of food and then win. Fairly easy and enemy is highly unlikely to save up that much food.

Wyverns – kill 3 wyverns.

The main way to win this is to cheeze the enemy. Let them do most of the dirty work then jump in and finish off the dragon when its really low health.

You can also abuse the AI by attacking them once they have killed off their army. Biggest threat here is a clan on the other side of the map that you can’t get to who can win.

Hostile Lands – 1v3 which is tricky. You get scirmishers that are much cheaper and more effective than normal. Focus on going 1 direction into a single foe instead of spreading out evenly and getting tag teamed by 3 enemies on 3 fronts. Take out one as fast as possible then move on. This map is more of a knife fight, not a lategame deal.

Defend the Oppressed – 2v2 with a weaker AI.

Try to expand towards your AI ally and if you can get to it and clear some zones for them, it will help them a ton! They are super lazy and will lose villagers to wolves, etc. If you do this, they will be way more useful later.

Wise One – Easy lore victory, just need to colonize Sword to win.

Not much to say about this one.

Bifrost gate – This one sucks. Take over gate, defend it until you can feed it 3000+ lore to win. Biggest issue with this map is there is a time limit that you will probably forget about. So you need to colonize by 104 AD or you wont have time to make the lore.

Ensure you get Erudation lore and either the shield relic or the lore relic and a Eavesdropping diplomatic station.

Keep it Simple – no Upgraded buildings.

Note you can still forge weapon improvements and relics so dont overlook that.

Not much to say about this one except dont overdo your pop since you wont have improved efficiency food buildings and your dudes eat more per dude the more you have.

Master Supplier – cheaper markets.

Pretty basic map.

Beyond the Sea – commercial upgrade. Lots of beaches.

Use boats? Pretty basic map.

Call of Blood – 1v3. Tough map potentially.

You get free military units every year so do more economy right off the bat and use the free units to clear your area around you.

As before focus on expanding in one direction and focus on 1 enemy at a time instead of expanding everywhere.

Imported Knowledge – have to buy tech with gold.

Quite tough. Need to focus on Iron forge upgrades and stone upgrades ASAP as you will need their efficiency since you will be lacking tech.

Tech is costly so its hard to get going with gold.

Surrounded – 1v3 where you start in the middle.

This is a pretty small map so you need to focus on 1 bad guy and not expand all around. Can be pretty difficult.

New Settlers – settlers keep arriving whether you want them or not.

They are also extra greedy!

This map sucks on Hard mode as villagers eat SO MUCH. And are whiny about happiness. Do your best to slow down your growth. Be house-locked until you have to upgrade/build a new one.

Having a wolf or dragur zone you never colonize to eat your villagers periodically is not a bad idea. Let your scouts die too.

Clan Specific Advice

Bear – You unfortunately have to play Winter is Here as your first map with no other bonuses except insta-bear. Whoever is ahead in fame wins. Its a big map and very hard to make any progress. You can easily lose to a clan you never see. I recommend restarting the conquest repeatedly until you can avoid the following clans:

• Boar: Free bonus fame from lore makes life really hard. Worst clan to fight by far.
• Raven: AI cheats like crazy and sends tons of mercs and naglifar that are very hard to deal with due to your very limited resources.
• Ox: Warcraft lore gives them a lot of free fame despite being in theory slower to start off.

Make sure to go for free-slot military building as a bonus if you find it as it will help a ton with Protector of the Land morale.

Bears middle map bonus is shieldbearers start with their forge upgrade…which is the worst bonus in the game I believe.

Raven: Not a whole lot to say. At every 200 fame, getting 3 dudes PLUS one free morale permanently does help your expansion although watch your food supplies. Their 3 fixed maps are well suited for them.

Getting cheaper relic/faster cooldown can be really strong for you.

Horse – Tough first map. Warchief’s healing is super helpful. Cheaper warchief is a key bonus if you can find it.

Snake – Very strong bonus that encourages scirmisher usage. 50% attack/defense bonus!

Middle bonus buffs Signy which is awesome.

Eagle – Weird initial bonus that is easy to forget. You can use villagers to clear zones like dragon so don’t forget to do this vs 1 wolf, etc.

First map is annoying but eagle is well suited for it as they can loot ruins without having to colonize them, just clear them. Plus free cache gold.

Dragon – huge health bonus for dragonkin.

I recommend watching Freeze Drips How to Dragon guide. Dropping boat ASAP to get more thralls right at 7 population, then a second set before you get the 200 fame bonus gives you 11 out of 6 thralls which gives a huge food bonus midgame. This really powers their economy and changed how I play them.

Getting the faster relic cooldown is very strong to generate draconic jotnir more quickly.

Kraken – 50% norn production bonus is huge. This lets you generate weird quickly and boom your population.

I actually get norn very fast and hit 600 weird and bust out a valkyrie for early clear since she regenerates and is very strong. Faster than a warchief start and quick enough for most clearing needs.

Squirrel – Their bonus lets them eat two meals at once which is interesting. This does reward multiple cook stations so you can keep +lore and +food/wood/gold running at the same time.

Ox – crappy early bonus for sure although it does save some resources with reselling mines. Tough first map since they are slower to develop and a wyvern race is not exactly ideal.

I recommend restarting the conquest to avoid eagle and wolf and rat clans which will get too much of a head start on wyvern hunting for you to deal with easily.

Their middle map bonus is quite solid though with +25 health to all units!

Can benefit from warchief cooldown bonus with Ram.

Stag – Very strong clan with 50% skald production. This is huge! It means a great bonus for villager growth but also a ton of free fame which the clan is based off of. Furthermore, with the Skald gold producing lore each one gets the improved +50% gold towards that too! Thus they also generate lots of gold.

Note their second bonus which makes silos totally free and take up no zone. Do not pick up the granery no slot as a regular bonus therefore!! If it comes up.

Rat – Never really liked rat. Weak early bonus. Sorry not much to say here.

Lynx – Solid bonus ensures guaranteed hunters on your starting zone. With 10% permanent bonus too!

One of the few clans that benefits from the Warchief cooldown bonus.

Boar – 50% mender production. Seems kind of lame but does buff the lore they generate when idle which is pretty good.

Goat – Start with 3 sheep not 1. Surprisingly strong as this lets you make a PEN right away which can start breeding as soon as you get the tech, and produces a lot of free food.

Not the most exciting clan but the extra sheep start really makes the most of their playstyle.

The sheep breeding conquest bonus IS actually good with these guys.

Note their middle bonus is weird. Free Defensive Strategy tech. This means you can actually pick up a 3rd tier lore on your very first pick potentially! That means you can get Feeling Safe very early for +3 happiness as soon as you bust out your chief.