Roots of Yggdrasil sees you repeatedly striving for Valhalla as you hastily build settlements and industry in the face of the pursuing Ginnungagap. Often you'll only be a turn or two before total disaster, forcing you to balance the deckbuilding elements with planning around the space and natural resources you have available.
This guide will go over some general and specific tips on how to consistently reach Gimle before Ragnarok's incursion, as well as how to fill out character relationships and trials of the gods. With the right approach, almost every situation the game offers can be won.
Plan around your Scion abilities
The different cubs lean towards specific play styles which will affect which items and cards you want to pick up during a run. You will start the game with only Thrasir, but will unlock faster as you go through loops.
|
Descendant |
Play style |
Powers |
Deck |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Thrasir |
Thrasir wants to clear levels quickly use their bonuses that are activated at the start of each island. |
In the first two turns, everything costs half the supplies. |
Short-term cards like clearcutting mill and iron extractor give massive amounts of resources instantlyallowing him to build entire settlements while his starting discount lasts. Having a lean deck ensures that you draw something useful in the first two turns. |
|
Lif |
Life's scaling income increases can snowball into almost infinite amounts of supply to overwhelming problems with sheer economic power. |
Lif provides a multiplier on income based on how many trees and ores are in use (not including destroyed). |
Forest buildings are especially valuable because they can be packed much more densely than mining cards. |
|
Kare |
Kare builds around military income instead of supplies, allowing you to quickly explore the islands and make full use of their resources. |
Kare doesn't have as much of the resource manipulation mechanics that the other loops have but instead focuses on traction and hand manipulation. |
You can build a more unwieldy deck and rely on his primal power if you need to search for a specific card. Kare draws a card when you destroy threats, which encourages you to have some left over to use when you want to draw more cards. |
|
Err |
Eir wants to stop each island for as long as possible. She is the only character whose income increases the stack between islands. You'll often want to have Ginnungagap encroach all the way to the ship so you can convert her power repeatedly. |
She gains passive income every time her kin power is used to create a threat. |
Eir can ignore most military buildings and focus on taking cards that improve supply production. Her passive power output can do most of the work exploring and fighting draugr. |
It's also worth remembering how scions interact with different house types. Thrasir's scion power can build a single house in a few turns.
By playing around with hall houses, this can save potentially triple digit amounts of inventory
but must follow their unique building placement rules.
Some buildings are better destroyed
Some buildings give their benefit as long as they stand, while others will give you a single boost once placed. The other type can actively benefit from being placed on unstable ground such as flood plains as this allows you to rebuild them later to stack the benefits.
In the starting deck, the barracks are the only card that works this way. You get a lump sum of strength but are prevented from placing a second barrack too close to the first. By destroying it, you can draw in soldiers from the same household multiple times.
Guild Halls are particularly good choices for thiswhich gives you huge lump sums of supplies but ties up the nearby buildings until they are destroyed. Enhancers similarly give you their income boost for the entire island, even if the original building is destroyed or swallowed by darkness.
The Trials of the Gods lets you choose difficulty modifiers for added challenge, and they are needed both to develop character stories and to get extra upgrade resources. Knowing which ones you can easily flip for a run is a great way to move faster through the upgrade tree.
- Lethargy increases the population cost of new cards. If you use heroic homes, which can produce an almost unlimited population, this modifier becomes irrelevant.
- Bad Draugr can be devastating if you explore too quickly on a character that doesn't have the strength to fend off the extended threats. If you play as Eir or Kare, you should be able to beat draugr as they appear, regardless of size.
- Thrasir aims to complete each island before night falls, making Time Pressure irrelevant outside of the final level.
Even if you stack too many attempts and can't make it to Valhalla, you'll find that the multiplier to Holt Matter will bounce back quickly.
Each kinship's final kinship requires you to reach the level five challenge with them. Starting this early will save time in the long run.
Explore as early and often as possible
Each island starts you off with a fairly small space and requires you to pay to expand into more territory. With exploration taking two turns at the baseline, you may run out of space and resources if you don't start exploring round one.
Often, it is worth spending on further exploration rather than defeating nearby draugr because of the time delay. Some draugr towers aren't worth clearing at all, such as ones that block building types you don't use.
You will be able to see the location of plants before exploring them. Spend the first turn examining each plant so you know which ones you will be able to complete.
Depending on the island, you need either two or three out of four plants. The easiest ones are normally those that require a fixed amount of resources, such as supplies, power, exploration or events. The hardest ones are usually the ones that require specific building types, as you need several turns to build a settlement around them.
Begin your exploration towards
plants closest to Ginnungagap
as these may become unattainable if you wait too long.
Artifacts that can speed up exploration are among the best in the game. If you are offered any of the following, you should normally accept it over alternative rewards:
- Wheel of Dawnflamewhich allows you to explore twice as fast in the first five turns of an island.
- Explorer's Bootswhich reduces exploration times by one turn.
- Malevolen's staffwhich lets you spend population to explore instead of power.
- Hate's husbandwhich triggers any earnings when you complete an exploration. On a character like Eir, this is enough to fund the upcoming explorations.
Prioritize unlocking new homes
The the standard house type is the most difficult to use in the game. It's the only building that changes shape drastically every time you build one, making it hard to pack them tightly.
It's also the most expensive to increase your population with, making certain plants very hard to come by. Also, it has no secondary mechanics there all three other houses give some form of secondary benefic.
- Nomad home gives power, which means you will always have a use for surplus material. They require spacing between each other, creating convenient gaps for amenities and other buildings.
- Heroic houses give population when using an action card. This gives an advantage to the otherwise useless curse cards and allows you to build your population without spending supplies.
- Hall Houses provide income over time over accessories, might and Eitr, depending on their upgrade level. Often you may want to deliberately keep the hall at a specific level to avoid losing income to Eitr.
Check your milestones for clues to progress
Much of the progression will be facilitated if you collect milestone upgrades. How these work is only explained after a few loops when Kare joins your scions, but you can actually use them beforehand by checking the compendium from Holt. Milestones offer a variety of benefits:
- Simple milestones give you extra resources to acquire upgrades.
- Affinity milestones allow you to build uniques Holt buildings that give you permanent upgrades.
- Each building specific milestone increases your chance to craft the building's upgraded form in future loops.
- Locked milestones can give you tips on new approaches you can try. They can also tell you how to develop character relationships as you struggle to progress.
Plan ahead when building at Holt
You will be able to add new buildings to Holt between each run and get permanent bonuses for all your future runs. There are a few different considerations that will affect which buildings you want to use on Holt, such as not all of them are strictly beneficial.
- There is no advantage to having more than two berserker camps on Holt, as there are only two starting cards they can upgrade.
- Scavenger poles add scarcity of supplies to your starting deck in exchange for upgrading any card. This will severely damage your texture on the first island until you can remove the curse. Usually you want to use other upgrade builds.
- Trader's guild adds retain as a keyword in your starting deck. This is normally an upgrade but can hurt you if you attempt the cursed trial or carry the cursed key, as keeping a burden card will severely hurt your moves.
- Callasbruk have no housing requirement, making them very cheap to build lots of. Their bonuses are small but add up.
Always take the cursed key
You begin each run with Norns offering a selection of artifacts. Rarely includes this cursed keywhich gives you multiple permanent unlocks if you can wear it for a full loop.
The key reduces the number of cards you draw, making Kare a good candidate to counter its debuff.
The rewards for completing this mission are quite substantial and allow you to advance much faster. In addition to getting your fourth scion, it gives you access to the Market at the Holt so you can convert resources and not worry about collecting too many of the wrong acorns.
After completing this quest, the Cursed Key should stop being offered by the Norn.
