Age of Darkness: Final Stand Defence Guide: Units, Towers & More

The name Age of Darkness: Final Stand says it all – it’s all about survival and defence. While defence doesn’t have to solely be about finding a dark corner and turtling up, setting up fortifications and establishing a concrete defence plan is a crucial component to success. To help players understand what’s at their disposal, we compiled a guide looking at all the major tools available for defence.

Here are the six main defensive tools in Age of Darkness: Final Stand:

– Terrain
– Walls
– Gates
– Towers
– Training Hall
– Units

A lot of structures players will be building, like housing, farms, and lumber yards aren’t explicitly meant for defence and will provide the economic backbone for the player’s strategy. This doesn’t mean these buildings can’t be utilized for defence.

On the contrary, any and all buildings can be positioned to create chokepoints, narrow lanes, and speed bumps all to break up enemy hordes and delay them as much as possible. A strong defensive strategy isn’t just about thick walls, but also planning and structuring of the entire settlement.

And here’s everything you need to know about defence in Age of Darkness: Final Stand.

 

Terrain

The most basic ally to any defensive strategy, terrain will be the main guiding factor to establishing an effective defence. Ideally, any kind of blocking, limiting, or delaying terrain can act as a force multiplier in blunting the impact of the oncoming hordes.

Cliffs, rocks, debris, thick forests, and narrow passageways flanked by water are all excellent terrain features. Their main benefit is to narrow the horde’s usable frontage to reduce the number of effective units putting pressure on the player’s forces and structures.

 

Walls

If you can’t find good terrain, make your own. Walls are the most basic defensive structure as they are a simple obstacle in the horde’s path and they can be utilized in a huge number of ways. Moreover, walls have three levels of upgrades found in the workshops that can give them even more utility, like setting wooden walls on fire to damage nearby enemies.

The best way to utilize walls is in tandem with good terrain as the blocking effect of destructible walls and indestructible terrain stacks together. A wise fortification builder will take note of this interaction.

 

Gates

Gates don’t necessarily offer anything unique themselves as they simply act as a larger section of wall that friendly troops can move through. They will be necessary as ranging out to explore, scavenge for resources, and to ultimately defeat the horde are all crucial for victory and staying fully and completely walled in will only limit the player’s defensive options.

 

Towers

Towers are another incredibly versatile defensive structure that can add a damage dealing edge to the player’s frontiers. There are three types of towers players can utilize: garrison, ballista, and fire.

The garrison tower simply lets players station units, usually ranged troops, to increase their effective vision and attack range. These will towers will also keep the troops safe inside when the hordes inevitably come.

The ballista tower is the player’s heavy artillery, designed to deal big damage against large targets and groups of units. These towers will be invaluable in later stages as the horde’s numbers ramp up.

Fire towers are the most unique in their effect in that they provide a positive effect to all units in its radius, removing any Horror negative effect. Another fire tower acts as an area-of-effect explosive device to help weaken large numbers of units.

 

Training Hall

The training hall is one of those structures that doesn’t have any direct impact on defence. However, it’s a vital building due to it being the only location from which to recruit new units. Additionally, the Training Hall has a large footprint and a healthy amount of hit points, which can make it a useful roadblock in case Nightmares do break through the initial defences.

 

Units

Players will need to recruit an army and utilize mobile forces to aid their fortifications and take the fight to the enemy. All units have a skill tree that can upgrade and optimize their performance and understanding these upgrades is just as important as using units in combat (check out our skill guide here). There are three unit types players can utilize: heroes, melee, and ranged.

Heroes are a unique and powerful unit that will respawn if defeated and can act as a small army in itself. They typically have area-of-effect attacks and a number of powerful abilities that can rapidly swing an engagement in the player’s favor.

Players will have two melee units to work with: the soldier and the guardian. Both of their functions are similar in that they act as tanky mobile roadblocks that keep the enemy at bay and buy time for the hero and damage dealing ranged units to do their work. The guardian needs to be researched at the Training Hall for a hefty sum of money before recruitment.

There are also two ranged units players can utilize: the archer and the arbalest, the latter of which needs to be researched prior to recruitment. The archer is a basic damage dealer with no real special abilities, while the arbalest has increased damage and a knockback effect similar to the ballista tower.

Defence is survival strategy games is never about choosing one thing and spamming, but is instead an involved affair requiring an integrated approach of all assets. Now that players know what’s available to them, the challenge falls to them to best utilize the available equipment and forces to hold off the hordes of Nightmares and buy humanity as much time as possible.

Age of Darkness: Final Stand is available on PC.

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