Grim Nights – Comprehensive Guide

A little bit of everything.

Villagers & Gatherers a quick overview

Villagers can be insta-killed. At the moment there’s no hotkey for this, but if the Mattias Myde (who created the game) is looking, that would be a welcome improvement! My clicker hurts…

No Buff (Just a normal guy/gal) These are placeholders if you need someone in your mines or fields. Keep if absolutely necessary and replace as soon as possible. There’s enough villagers with good buffs that keeping these is next to pointless.

+1/+2 when Farming
Can be useful. If you need more food, look for more of these and replace the worst farmers with better ones. If you’re good on food, get rid of them.

+1/+2 when Chopping Wood
A decent choice. Again it depends on what you need, but early game these will be important. With the Trader’s Magic Pinecone (Which grows a tree) It’s pretty easy to get more than enough wood.

+1/+2 when Mining Stone
Stone miners are interesting in that they are not only good at mining stone, but also digging new sections of the mine. A +2 Stone Miner will mine new sections super quick, so keep that in mind.

+1 when mining any ore or stone
These are the jack of all trades in your mine. They’re just as good as a +1 stone/iron/gold miner, but can do all 3, and are the only villager with +1 when digging sulfur. Keep these whenever you need more miners and +2s aren’t available. I haven’t tested if they dig new sections as fast as a +1 stone miner.

+1/+2 when mining Iron
I would kill a +1 in favor of a Jack of all Trades, but a +2 is worth keeping.

+1/+2 when mining Gold
Again, kill off +1s if a Jack of all Trades is available instead. +2s are worth it.

Builds two/three times as fast
I know a builder isn’t a gatherer but I wasn’t gonna create a whole section just for him. I never needed more than 1 of these. Get a x2 or x3 and keep track of him (He can be easy to lose on ground level) Kill the rest.

Villagers – Combat ready

These are the villagers you should use in your army.

Any villager with +100% Damage
Some will have a health debuf (-50% health), but that doesn’t matter. Make these your archers, arbalasts and later turn them into Musketeers. They’re somewhat rare so always keep them whenever you find one.

Any villager with +50% Damage
Again, if they have a health debuf it doesn’t matter. Make these your archers and abalasts, but in late game make these longbowmen. You’ll get around 3x as many of these as you will the +100%ers, by the end of the game I was killing them off in favor of trying to get more +100%ers, but not before you have around 25 of these as longbowmen. If you make them into healers they heal more, but I prefer to have more damage and not get injured. The best defense is a good defense……Or something like that.

+50% / +100% Health
Health is more important than armor because it scales better a +100% health knight with 3 +25% health potions will have 296 HP and 10 armor. A +2 Armor knight with 3 +25% health potions will only have 148 HP and 12 armor. Also, if you go all armor it’s 75 HP and 18 armor. Personally, I’d rather have the 296 health. With that said, keep these healthy lads and ladies and turn them into Pikes, Spears, and later Knights. You can also make these healers.

+1/+2 Armor
Again I prefer health to armor. Kill them off or use them as healers. If they also have the food debuf or the speed debuf, just kill them and get a better one.

+20% / +40% Faster
These can be used as healers, but really they’re just faster. Any other buff is preferable especially if you’re thinking about turning these into a gatherer because gatherers rarely have to move.

Soldiers

“The best defense is a good defense” – Yours truly.

The goal here is to keep the enemy from getting close enough to do any damage, and that’s actually not that hard to do. Here’s how.

(I’ll go into which buildings you need in the buildings section)

Archers 
These are your basic ranged unit. Always make these from +100% or +50% damage villagers. Early game it doesn’t matter which. Make sure you have enough of these to kill the enemy before they can hit you back.

Arbalasts
It’s a fancy word for a Crossbow. This is the next upgrade for archers when you upgrade the tavern to level 2. Again, +100 or +50 damage villagers, doesn’t matter which.

Longbowmen 
These are Tier 3 archers. When you can choose between these and Musketeers, make your +50%ers Longbowmen and your +100%ers Musketeers. As the tool tip says in the game, they have a long range and are not accurate, and they do have a minimum range which is what the Musketeers are for. Basically if you put them in a fully upgraded guard tower (the one with the fire on top) they shoot flaming arrows in a huge arc (all other units shoot in a straight line) that damage and also burn over time. In Mass they are very very deadly and all but the fastest and toughest will get through. I had 25-30 by around day 10 and it was always a joy to see them killing everything even bats (yes there’s bats). It’s basically like carpet bombing the enemy.

Musketeers
Again make your +100% ers into Musketeers, and only them. These are expensive so only use your best villagers. Anything your Longbowmen don’t kill should be killed by your Musketeers if you have enough of them. Max damage (With potions) is 33-41 per shot.

Spearsmen/Knights
Train these from +50% and +100% HP Villagers. While they are useful in a pinch and in the mine, if you’re doing it right these guys are gonna be really really bored. As I said at the top, it’s your ranged units’ job to keep the enemy from getting close enough to do any damage and if they’re doing that you’ll hardly ever use your mele units. They also eat a lot more food than anyone else, so that’s another reason to only make a few of them. Each upgrade gets a little more armor and health with base Knights having 75 HP and 10 armor, and a max of 296 HP OR 18 armor. Keep a couple in the mine for when you dig new sections, that’s all you need down there.

Healer
The base level of healer can heal 1 unit at a time, though I’ve noticed this can be a bit buggy for some reason. Sometimes he’ll chase your wounded units, other times they’ll be right next to each other and he won’t do jack♥♥♥♥♥♥ Anywho, the level 2 healer can group heal. These are particularly useful in the mine when it’s just your mele units, but above ground your ranged units should be killing the enemy before they do any damage. These can be made from pretty much any villager.

Buildings

I won’t be covering how much each building costs because it says so in-game and I’m too lazy to do so. Without further adieu here we goo!

Tavern
This is your bread and butter. The more taverns you have the quicker you get new villagers. The first thing you should do when starting a new game is build a house. The second is build a second tavern. By day 13 I had 6 or 7 of these because I only wanted +100 damage villagers and I was killing everybody else. /tear *Sniff* Good times. There are 2 upgrades, 100 gold and 300 gold, and upgrading your tavern upgrades your whole town (Except houses)

House
Houses expand your population and allow you to have 3 more villagers per house, or 9 after upgrading twice. The most houses you can have is 8, so the most villagers you can have is 81 #icandomath. Also, while when I played it was buggy, you should be able to put animals on your house for 5 gold (It’s a button on the house like an upgrade). I’m not sure how many (because bugs) but it’s a good way to free up your population from food production to more useful things like standing around because you didn’t notice they were idle.

Windmill
Not much to say here, it’s a farm. It can utilise 4 farmers and even has an elevated platform on the windmill itself, I’m assuming for archers or whatever. Never used that feature.

Barracks
Trains Spearmen and archers at tavern level 1 and Spearmen II (boo for unimaginative name) and Arbalasts at level 2

Guard Tower
It’s a guard tower. You put archers on it. Can be upgraded twice, last upgrade has a fire on top that can add a DOT (Damage over Time) to your archers. Especially useful (even critical) for Longbowmen. Can be built on the ground or on the Stone Terrace for even more height.

Mine Entrance
It’s the entrance to your mine. Not sure what more you want from me 😛

Temple
Trains healers.

Stone Terrace
You can build this behind any building (even trees and Windmills) and put more buildings on top of it, including guard towers. Requires stairs before you can get to the second floor, which can be tricky to find and place. Just keep clicking on the wall till you find it. Good luck!

Bell Tower
Send a villager to the top to ring the bell. It instantly summons a trader (one per day) which you can use to buy and sell everything. Also sells Magic Pinecones which are a fantastic source of wood. Don’t buy wood, buy magic pinecones and chop it yourself.

Wooden Spikes
Purely defensive, you can place these anywhere there’s open ground even on slopes, though that’s a little bit tricky. They damage and slow down enemies. They can be repaired, but once they’re gone they’re gone so expect to lose some in a wave. They can be upgraded which makes them a bit more powerful and have some knock back.

Gunpowder Mill
Use this to train Musketeers and Grenadiers….and that’s it.

Elite Barracks
Use this to train Longbowmen and Knights….and that’s it.

Market
YOUR ONE STOP SHOP FOR ALL YOUR TRADING NEEDS! It’s like walmart except the prices aren’t better than the trader. You can also get decorations here, like flags and street lamps.

Trees
Why buy wood when you can chop it? No seriously, don’t buy wood it’s pointless. Chop the trees you start with, and when you’re done chopping those buy some more trees from the trader and chop those too.

Bosses

I’m not going to cover the basic enemies, they’re pretty simple. Zombies, zom, Boomers Boom, shields block arrows, hell hounds are fast etc.

Mogha
Not strictly a boss per-se, Moghu has about 1,000 HP and slowly walks toward your base. You can (and should) sacrafice any and all poor bastards you can spare to her. Simply put them in a clump for her to walk into or make them walk into her. She will begin a countdown to disappear after her first victim, with +1 second per villager. When she disappears she will leave potions directly proportional to how many villagers she devowered. Obviously you want as many as you can get your filthy grubby mitts on. She won’t “Eat” mele units, and I don’t think she can be killed. My longbowmen shot at her (and missed) but no other ranged units seemed to care that there was an angry ancient god crawling toward them. I’m not sure if she can be killed. She comes only during the day, but not every day. It seems to be random.

Spawn of Mogha
If Mogha reaches your buildings and has not been given a sacrafice she will explode into these “Spawn of Mogha” creatures that do a lot of damage (it increases depending on what day you’re on) and are hard to kill. So just give her a villager or 20 and don’t let that happen.

Mergle
This boss crawls out of the bog half way between you and the castle and has 1800 HP. It throws exploding…well, it’s something that explodes….at you rather quickly and will quickly kill your archers if it hits them. Can and will hit archers on top of towers on top of the stone terrace. It will attack whatever it gets to first and you can use that to your advantage. Place wooden spikes for it to focus it’s wrath on, or alternatively attack it with a mele unit or two just to keep it occupied while your ranged units kill it. He comes around day 6 or 7.

Ughant
This ugly mug is basically a giant knight with a bigass hammer. He smashes the ground in front of him. He has 4,000 HP. He’ll quickly kill wooden spikes, and even knights in 2 hits. I was able to get a knight behind him and he just stood there poinding the ground while my ranged units poinded him to submission. Comes around day 10.