Blight's Newbie FAQ

Updated on May 17 2016 (added a note equal POW combat)

  • General

Is there a changelog?

Yes! Its here: Trello

Does clearing a blighted city/graveyard of bodies incur any threat to the unit doing the cleaning?

No. As long as the unit/character makes it to the blight/graveyard before new zombies spawn, the area is cleansed.

Do I have to attack the Neutral (grey) units when I take a city?

No. If you pay the valour cost those units will join your kingdom and come under your command as normal.

Can you fight another player?

Under most normal circumstances, no. There are units in the game, however, that can damage or destroy mortal (ie; players’ units). There are also cards that can make another player’s situation more difficult. (making another players game more difficult is called “griefing”)

Help! The text on XX unit appears broken? What gives?

Blight is in Beta – which means it is still a work in progress. There will be times that units are being updated, modified or changed that will involve abilities not working correctly or text appearing odd. Be patient. Feel free to report the bug on the forums (but do a quick scan to see if its a known issue before posting)

If I have two of the same heroes type on a stack, do both of their abilities work?

No. Thus, having two Orcish Desert Maidens in an army gives only one bonus.

Do the different terrains/environments on a tile give defensive bonuses?

No. The only environmental defensive bonuses are from fortifications.

What is a ‘buff’?

A ‘buff’ is a power increase to a unit outside of their normal (default) power. On a card you can see the buffs as a number after a plus (+) sign – indicating their our outside factors improving the power of the card. In some cases, these buffs can be removed.

Some settlements have little circles next to them, what is that?

The circle indicates the settlement is training a unit.

What is that gear-like circle encompassing a settlement?

That represents the fortifications of the town. The bigger and darker the circle is, the stronger the fortifications. Fortifications range from +0 (no gear-like circle) to +10 (a highly fortified +6 town with an added +4 fortification ability having been used on it) (the big, dark gear-like circle). Fortifications are strength bonuses applied to every Hero and every unit in an Army. This can give a significant boost to strength if there are a lot of units in the town, enough to hold off strong armies or drastically reduce casualties.

Whats the Priority for Move Compulsions/Freezes?

The most recently cast compulsion (ie. to force an immortal stack to move in a direction such as from a Dragonhelm Knight or a Bridge Witch) takes precedence over an older one.

Pins override move compulsions. If you cast Shall Not Pass or Tangle Vines, even on cards being pulled or pushed somewhere, the target will stop moving.

  • The Enemy

How often do the zombies appear at an active blight?

Every 3-6 hours, there is a % chance for each zombie in a grave to rise up. The % chance increases with each resurrection event, so that the longer the grave has existed, the more chance there is a body will get up and start walking around. The rate is also increased when other zombies are on top of a graveyard.

Whats the difference between an Immortal and a Zombie?

An “Immortal” is a more comprehensive term that encompasses all types of undead in Blight. “Zombie” is a type of immortal.

Yikes! Where did this guy just come from? I have a powerful zombie with a special ability walking around on my map now.

These are boss Immortals. They spawn when another Immortal makes it to a mana pool. They are stronger than your average Immortal and have a special power that triggers on cooldown (and in many cases, when they spawn too). A small sample of the powers are: removing all gold in the game, fearing nearby mortal units away, attracting all nearby Immortals in order to form a supergroup, and instantly spawning all blighted bodies at a graveyard it touches. There are two possible boss Immortals that can spawn from each race; the race used to determine which boss spawns is dependent on which race of Immortal touches the mana pool first. This only occurs one time; when the mana pool is first blighted.

How do the Difficulty Ratings impact the game’s start?

(Pending update, information may be no longer correct)

The difficulty ratings give the Zombies/Immortals a bit of a head start.

Currently, the difficulty settings are as follows:

  • Easy: 0 days head start for the Zombies, 2.5% spawn chance every 12 hours

  • Normal: 1 day, 5% spawn chance

  • Hard: 2 days, 7.5% spawn chance

  • Nightmare: 3 days, 10% spawn chance

  • Cards


Whats the deal with the cards?

Cards represent units you are allowed to access anyone on the board. Cards are played from your “hand” and you will always have a minimum of five cards. Cards represent not only common units, but also offer opportunities to recruit types of units that cannot be accessed simply by recruiting from a settlement. You do not have to use cards in the game, but they are helpful.

Cards are bought with Blight-specific currency called “Hero Coins” (which is not the same as “gold” in the game). Hero Coins are either won or purchased using real world money. You can purchase Cards both before a game (and thus make a deck composed of units/cards you want to utilize in the scenario), and you can also purchase cards during a game (often helpful when you capture another race’s settlement and need something more than just the default settlement recruit type).

You can only deploy a particular race’s card at a settlement you control. So, if you have an elf card but dont have an elf settlement, you cannot play the card.

Is there a maximum limit to the number of cards in my hand at one time?

No.

If I play a card from my hand, is it free in terms of population use? What is the advantage to playing cards?

It is not free. Population is still used in the settlement where you play a card.

The advantages are significant. First, playing cards allows you to access more powerful and different types of units. Playing a card also avoids the training delay that occurs when you raise a unit from a population (usually 6 hours).

I cant play my two cards at the same settlement! What gives?

As of May 2016, a major patch was instituted that made it so only a single card can be played at any settlement in a six hour period. Those settlements that are experiencing deployment cooldown have a small blue dot to the left of the town’s name. There are a few cards that can bypass this restriction, such as the Troll’s Marsh Prince or the Goblin’s Spider Rider, but in general, its one card per settlement per six hours. Plan accordingly.

Are there any strategy guides?

Yes! Though we we could always use more.

They are here: Strategy Guide

- Movement

The Map is made up of Routes and Waypoints.

  • A Route is any of those dotted lines on the Map that shows where units can move. The illustration below shows three different Routes:

  • A Waypoint is an intersection between two or more Routes. The illustration below shows three different Waypoints.

  • Armies may be stopped anywhere along a Route, but they may only be commanded to move to Waypoints. That is, you cannot right-click in the middle of a Route to tell an Army to go there: you must choose one end or the other.

All units move between Waypoints in twenty discrete Steps, each Step being 5% of the travel distance between Waypoints (0.05 Leagues). You may have noticed that when inspecting a moving unit in the game, the progress indicator shows both “Progress” (always a multiple of 5%) and a “Step” countdown. These represent which Step along the current Route the unit is currently on, and the time until the unit moves on to the next Step.


Two (or more) Armies must occupy the exact same location in order to initiate Combat. That means:

  • Occupying the same Waypoint.
  • Occupying the same Step Point on a Route.

These are the only ways for units to be in combat with each other. Two armies can be one Step away from each other all day long and they will never fight.

- Combat

I had enough strength to win a battle, but I had no units left after the battle. Did they disappear? Did I lose the battle?

If you had the higher strength to win the battle, then you did in fact win it. What probably happened is that the units you sent in were all mortally wounded while winning the battle, so that while they won and burned the bodies, they did not survive longer for another fight. If you check your combat log, it will show you what happened to the units. Take hope though; even though you had no survivors, they did live long enough to clean up so they will not leave a graveyard left behind to spawn new zombies.

What happens when two armies meet and are of equal power?

Both sides will usually die and the “victor” is effectively random. If the immortals and zombies win, it will leave a gravesite.

Can you go into detail about ranged and melee combat?

Sure!

– Melee combat

Melee combat works as follows, with Strength a > Strength b:

  • The weaker side (Strength b) is entirely destroyed.
  • Each unit on the victorious side has a chance to die, equal to b² / a² (note that POW is squared for this step)

Melee Example 1: Close Battle

Mortals with Strength 1000 vs Zombies with Strength 1100
a = 1100
b = 1000

a² = 1210000
b² = 1000000
b² / a² = 0.826

Zombies Win. Each Zombie has an 83% chance of destruction.

Melee Example 2: Overwhelming Advantage

Mortals with Strength 1000 vs Zombies with Strength 100
a = 1000
b = 100

a² = 1000000
b² = 10000
b² / a² = 0.01

Mortals Win. Each Mortal has a 1% chance of being killed.

– Ranged Combat
Ranged Attacks work a bit differently. There’s never any danger to the attacker (Strength a). If the attack is stronger than the defender, the defender is killed outright. If the attack is weaker than the defense (a < b), each defender has a chance to die, equal to a / b. The math works out so that on average, you can assume the attack will kill about a Strength worth of defenders.

Ranged POW is NOT squared like it is in melee.

Ranged Example 1: Wipe Them Out

Ranged attack with Strength 200 vs Zombies with Strength 100
a = 200
b = 100

a > b

Zombies are completely destroyed.

Ranged Example 2: Whittling Down the Enemy

Ranged attack with Strength 100 vs 125 Zombie Goblins (total Strength 1000)
a = 100
b = 1000

a < b
a / b = 0.1

Each Zombie has a 10% chance of being destroyed. On average, 125 x 0.1 = 12-13 Zombie Goblins die (stack reduced in Strength by 96-104 on average).

Ranged Example 3: Hail Mary

Ranged attack with Strength 200 vs 1 Zombie Dragon (total Strength 1000)
a = 200
b = 1000

a < b
a / b = 0.2

Each Zombie has a 20% chance of being destroyed. On average, 1 x 0.2 = zero Dragons die. But maybe you’ll get lucky and beat the odds!

Can you explain the “Preparing for Combat” event?

"Preparing for combat happens when a living army and an undead army occupy the same space on the map and begin to fight in melee combat. “Preparing for Combat” starts when the two armies touch, and lasts for one hour. During that time, both sides can add more units/heroes/immortals to the combat. After the hour is up, whichever units are in the fight lend their Power and special abilities (if organized into an Army) to the fight and it is immediately resolved.

Note, that you can add recent arrivals to a combat to an army to grant them buffs. Likewise, you can use a ranged attack on undead units while they are Preparing for Combat (and yes, if you eliminated the undead before combat starts there is no resulting combat).

What are the design goals for combat?

Decisive victories should confer an advantage. In the old system, it didn’t matter if you just barely scraped out a victory or won with fifty-to-one odds; you’d still lose the same number of units on average. The new system reflects the fact that lopsided battles should result in fewer casualties for the victory than very close ones.

To create a compelling reason to actually include high-value units like Dragons in a winning army, because increasing your margin of victory increases each unit’s overall chance of survival. In the old system, there was a meaningful advantage to be had if you were able to log in and stop your important units just shy of a battle so they wouldn’t die to a bad saving throw. Consider a 5,000-Strength army with a Dragon in it, going up against a 1,000-Strength zombie group. In the old system, the Dragon would have a 20% chance of dying to this minimal threat, so it was wise to avoid sending it into this combat at all. Now, leaving the Dragon in the army decreases each of your units’ chances of death from ~6% to 4%, so it’s more likely to be worth the risk overall.

3 Likes

I don’t think so… I’ve personally had over 15 in my hand, but at some point they all start to overlap and it gets difficult to tell what’s what…

It’s pretty random, but the game seems to work on 6Hr increments, i.e. most cool downs or abilities will be some multiple of 6Hr.

Yes, Immortals are zombies, but they can also be “bosses”. If a zombie group reaches a mana well it creates a “boss”. Effects usually affect ‘immortals’ and hence include zombies and bosses.

Is it accurate to say “Immortal” includes all undead types, while “zombie” refers to the undead versions of the six core races?

Hey @Praetorian,

Thanks for getting started in this. Can I help out by editing your FAQ directly, or would you rather I just post some answers as comments below and you can edit it when you get a chance.

I just use the word Immortal to refer to any creature that is already dead and won’t die again of natural causes.

Every 12 hours a grave has a “resurrection” event where a random number of zombies rise up. The longer the grave has existed, the more chance there is a body will get up and start walking around. If there are not many bodies, there is a good chance nobody will get up in the first 12 or 24 hours.

I try to refer to these as "Hero Coins wherever possible - Becuase you buy heroes with them. Let me know If I missed somewhere.

Awesome, thanks.

Feel free to copy/paste/edit directly into the reply. You know this stuff, your voice should be heard. :slight_smile:

Updated with Jay’s and Eshal’s responses. Edited for clarity and grammar as well:

Does clearing a blighted city/graveyard of bodies incur any threat to the unit doing the cleaning?

No. As long as the unit/character makes it to the blight/graveyard before new zombies spawn, the area is cleansed.

Do I have to attack the Neutral (grey) units when I take a city?

No. If you pay the valour cost those units will join your kingdom and come under your command as normal.

Whats the deal with the cards?

Cards represent units you are allowed to access anyone on the board. Cards are played from your “hand” and you will always have a minimum of five cards. Cards represent not only common units, but also offer opportunities to recruit types of units that cannot be accessed simply by recruiting from a settlement. You do not have to use cards in the game, but they are helpful.

Cards are bought with Blight-specific currency called “Hero Coins” (which is not the same as “gold” in the game). Hero Coins are either won or purchased using real world money. You can purchase Cards both before a game (and thus make a deck composed of units/cards you want to utilize in the scenario), and you can also purchase cards during a game (often helpful when you capture another race’s settlement and need something more than just the default settlement recruit type).

You can only deploy a particular race’s card at a settlement you control. So, if you have an elf card but dont have an elf settlement, you cannot play the card.

Is there a maximum limit to the number of cards in my hand at one time?

No.

If I play a card from my hand, is it free in terms of population use? What is the advantage to playing cards?

It is not free. Population is still used in the settlement where you play a card.

The advantages are significant. First, playing cards allows you to access more powerful and different types of units. Playing a card also avoids the training delay that occurs when you raise a unit from a population (usually 6 hours).

Can you fight another player?

Under most normal circumstances, no. There are units in the game, however, that can damage mortal (ie; player) units).

Help! The text on XX unit appears broken? What gives?

Blight is in Beta – which means it is still a work in progress. There will be times that units are being updated, modified or changed that will involve abilities not working correctly or text appearing odd. Be patient. Feel free to report the bug on the forums (but do a quick scan to see if its a known issue before posting)

How often do the zombies appear at an active blight?

Every 12 hours a grave has a “resurrection” event where a random number of zombies rise up. The longer the grave has existed, the more chance there is a body will get up and start walking around. If there are not many bodies, there is a good chance nobody will get up in the first 12 or 24 hours.

Whats the difference between an Immortal and a Zombie?

An “Immortal” is a more comprehensive term that encompasses all types of undead in Blight. “Zombie” is a type of immortal.

I would add something to the neutral unit text about being able to move onto the city without provoking a fight. Even after learning those units could be recruited, one player I played with was a little nervous about moving onto the city in the first place.

You should probably add something about the boss immortals too. There was a post on the forums here a couple of months ago where a player got upset when a boss spawned; since he didn’t know how they spawned, he believed there was no in-game warning that it was going to happen, that it just happened. Then again, the somewhat new tutorial might already cover this. If not, maybe:

Where did this guy just come from? I have a powerful zombie with a special ability walking around on my map now.
These are boss immortals. They spawn when some kind of immortal makes it to a mana pool. They are stronger than your average immortal and have a special power that triggers on cooldown (and in many cases, when they spawn too). A small sample of the powers are: removing all gold in the game, fearing nearby mortal units away, attracting all nearby immortals in order to form a supergroup, and instantly spawning all blighted bodies at a graveyard it touches. There are two possible boss immortals that can spawn from each race; the race used to determine which boss spawns is dependent on which race of immortal touches the mana pool first. This only occurs one time; when the mana pool is first blighted.

@JayKyburz –

Can you confirm if multiple copies of the same card type grant bonuses that stack? ie the Elvish Healer or the Orcish Desert Maiden?

@Dex --awesome, thanks. Very good point. I’ll add this to the next iteration.

They do not. Having 2 Maidens in the orc army gives only one bonus. You need to have other characters to get more bonuses (Like the Butcher and the Warchief.)

Got it. Thanks for the quick confirmation.

Updated with more responses.

Does clearing a blighted city/graveyard of bodies incur any threat to the unit doing the cleaning?

No. As long as the unit/character makes it to the blight/graveyard before new zombies spawn, the area is cleansed.

Do I have to attack the Neutral (grey) units when I take a city?

No. If you pay the valour cost those units will join your kingdom and come under your command as normal.

Whats the deal with the cards?

Cards represent units you are allowed to access anyone on the board. Cards are played from your “hand” and you will always have a minimum of five cards. Cards represent not only common units, but also offer opportunities to recruit types of units that cannot be accessed simply by recruiting from a settlement. You do not have to use cards in the game, but they are helpful.

Cards are bought with Blight-specific currency called “Hero Coins” (which is not the same as “gold” in the game). Hero Coins are either won or purchased using real world money. You can purchase Cards both before a game (and thus make a deck composed of units/cards you want to utilize in the scenario), and you can also purchase cards during a game (often helpful when you capture another race’s settlement and need something more than just the default settlement recruit type).

You can only deploy a particular race’s card at a settlement you control. So, if you have an elf card but dont have an elf settlement, you cannot play the card.

Is there a maximum limit to the number of cards in my hand at one time?

No.

If I play a card from my hand, is it free in terms of population use? What is the advantage to playing cards?

It is not free. Population is still used in the settlement where you play a card.

The advantages are significant. First, playing cards allows you to access more powerful and different types of units. Playing a card also avoids the training delay that occurs when you raise a unit from a population (usually 6 hours).

Can you fight another player?

Under most normal circumstances, no. There are units in the game, however, that can damage mortal (ie; player) units).

Help! The text on XX unit appears broken? What gives?

Blight is in Beta – which means it is still a work in progress. There will be times that units are being updated, modified or changed that will involve abilities not working correctly or text appearing odd. Be patient. Feel free to report the bug on the forums (but do a quick scan to see if its a known issue before posting)

How often do the zombies appear at an active blight?

Every 12 hours a grave has a “resurrection” event where a random number of zombies rise up. The longer the grave has existed, the more chance there is a body will get up and start walking around. If there are not many bodies, there is a good chance nobody will get up in the first 12 or 24 hours.

Whats the difference between an Immortal and a Zombie?

An “Immortal” is a more comprehensive term that encompasses all types of undead in Blight. “Zombie” is a type of immortal.

If I have two of the same card type on a stack, do both of their abilities work?

No. Thus, having two Orcish Desert Maidens in an army gives only one bonus.

Yikes! Where did this guy just come from? I have a powerful zombie with a special ability walking around on my map now.

These are boss Immortals. They spawn when another Immortal makes it to a mana pool. They are stronger than your average Immortal and have a special power that triggers on cooldown (and in many cases, when they spawn too). A small sample of the powers are: removing all gold in the game, fearing nearby mortal units away, attracting all nearby Immortals in order to form a supergroup, and instantly spawning all blighted bodies at a graveyard it touches. There are two possible boss Immortals that can spawn from each race; the race used to determine which boss spawns is dependent on which race of Immortal touches the mana pool first. This only occurs one time; when the mana pool is first blighted.

Hey @Praetorian. I updated your first post at the top of the thread with the most uptodate version. We don’t want people to have to scroll down to read the whole discussion!

Thanks. I’m used to another board where you can’t edit after a certain amount of time. Updating the top post makes a lot of sense.

@JayKyburz – Can you confirm there are no defensive bonuses outside of fortifications? In other words and just to make sure, do forests or Mountains offer some defensive bonus I am not seeing?

Cities have normal fortifications and then you have some cards that add another fortification to villages but you can only have one. Apart from that you can get bonus defense while on Forests or Mountains, but only if you use the correct cards. An example being this card which is one of my favorites.

If this guy is in the army with any other unit and it’s on a Swamp part of the map, doesn’t even need to be a village, everyone gets the bonus and it helps a lot. The same card doesn’t stack as well but different cards with different abilities do I believe. So 2 x Ironshell Sergeants does not give double the swamp boos, but an Ironshell Sergeant with a card that gives all Orcs + 4 will give all Orcs in the army + 4 and + 6 if they are in swamps.

Yep it’s just as Kuma_says, fortification on location are the only special bonuses you get without heroes.

@JayKyburz – willing to embed this into the game on the FAQ page or at least link here?

@JayKyburz – 'nother question. How do you figure the movement penalties? Is the league / road of a given card the base speed and then everything penalized from there depending on terrain? Can you share the terrain movement penalties?

Terrain movements are in the game help menu.

Don’t forget there are cards the lower movement penalties or even speed up units.