A simple text guide to the methodology I found that worked best to achieve victory for this challenge.
Quick Intro
Team Composition
- Troubador with Bandages
- Troubador with Bandages
- Folk with Amulet
- Folk with Amulet
- Folk with Amulet
Your whole team needs to have the max armor/weaponry you can fit them with. If by the end of the game you’re forced into the castle on the last turn, you might be able to get away with missing one upgrade per Folk because of your Alloy budget.
Your King/Queen basically just exists as your healer until you can upgrade your Tavern to Level 3 and get two Troubadors. After that, I kept 4 Troubadors and 6 Folks, split into two teams; one team to upgrade & advance, and one team to explore for gold/materials/items. Try to craft or buy 4 bandages for all your troubadors. Always keep your Strings in case you find Diamonds to craft Amulets!
If the area has a lot of poison/bleed/burn, I’d sometimes swap out my TT-FFF composition for a T-F-T-FF comp, or a F-TT-FF comp if there are heavy hitters as well.
Items
Your goal is to get at least 2 Relic items from them before turn 45, and you’re going to feel just awful if you’re a few hundred gold short because you upgraded a building instead first. That mistake might cost you the run if no more show up for purchase by the end!
Three relics would be nice to have, but I went into mine with 2 Relics and a Unicorn Horn, and was able to complete the game with probably 2 or 3 more survivable turns left in my team.
As far as upgrading goes, I personally felt that upgrading a weapon almost always brought more benefit than choosing to upgrade armor instead.
Exploration Route
I preferred going through the Pelican Town route – once I figured out the trick, that is. I lost so many runs because the boss would constantly wipe the floor with me while I tried to out-heal his damage. You can’t heal through this. You should be viewing this fight as a DPS race.
My suggestion is to max all of your armor & weapons before this fight and go into it with 2 Tomahawks and a Big Potion. Throw the Tomahawks at the very start, and use the troubadors’ big damage skills. Besides that, just throw tomatoes and scratch chalkboards.
Use common sense and heal when appropriate – the potion is there just in case of bad luck, but you could bring 3 Tomahawks if you’re comfortable with that.
The Castle
On the last wave before the boss, make sure to take out all enemies except for the weakest one, damage-wise. Take a few rounds to Snack up, Heal up and buff your attack as far as it’ll go with Troubadors alone. Then your last turn should be buffing up once per Folk, and finishing off the last enemy with one of your Troubadors.
Hopefully you’ve got somewhere around 30-40+ attack buffed on your Folks. Wail on the boss with Tomatoes. If you’re lucky and your Troubadors don’t really get hit, you can fit in maybe 2 rounds of maximum pain. If you’re squeamish, just do one round of damage, then pop both of your relics. There’s no real time to snack or buff with your folks, so just keep your focus on doing as much damage as possible, and heal up with your Troubadors. If you still have your unicorn horn and things have gone totally wrong, the time has come for your Rocky moment. I have had multiple frustrating runs end because I needed just one or two more turns to be the victor, but I just plain ran out of resources. This will give you that extra cushion when all hope is lost, and maybe it will be the thing you needed to squeeze out a win.