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Roots of Yggdrasilsees you repeatedly striving for Valhalla as you hurriedly build settlements and industry ahead of the pursuing Ginnungagap. Oftentimes, you’ll only be a turn or two ahead of 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 a few general and specific tips for how to consistently reach Gimle ahead of Ragnarok’s encroachment, as well as how you can fill out the character kinships and the Trials of the Gods. With the right approach, just about every situation the game offers is winnable.
Plan Around Your Scion Abilities
The different scions lean into specific playstyles that will affect what items and cards you want to pick up in a run. You’ll start the game with only Thrasir, but will unlock more quickly as you progress through loops.
Deck
Thrasir
Thrasir wants to clear levels quicklyusing his bonuses that activate on each island’s start.
In the first two turns, everything costs half the supplies.
Short-term cards likeclearcut mill and iron extractor give massive amounts of resources immediately, letting him build full settlements while his starting discount lasts.
Keeping a lean deck ensures you draw something useful in those first two turns.
Lif
Lif’s scaling income boosts can snowball to near-infinite amounts of supply tooverwhelm problems with sheer economic might.
Lif grants a multiplier on incomebased on how many trees and ores and in use (not counting destroyed ones).
Forestry buildings are especially valuable as they can be packed much more tightly than mining cards.
Kare
Kare builds around military income instead of supplies,letting you quickly explore the islands and make full use of their resources.
Kare doesn’t have as many of the resource manipulating mechanics that the other scions have but insteadfocuses on draw power and hand manipulation.
You can build a more unwieldy deck andrely on his scion power if you need to search for a specific card.
Kare draws a card when destroying threats, incentivizing you to keep some around for use when you want to draw more cards.
Eir
Eir wants to stall each island as long as possible.She is the only character whose income boosts stack between islands.You’ll often want to let the Ginnungagap encroach right up to the ship so you may recast her power repeatedly.
She gains passive might income each time her scion power is used to spawn a threat.
Eir canignore most military buildings and focus on taking cards that improve supply production.Her passive might production can do most of the work in exploration and fighting draugr.
Its also worth remembering how the scions interact with different housing types. Thrasir’s scion power can construct a single house every few turns.Playing with hall houses, this can save potentially triple digit amounts of suppliesbut has to follow their unique rules for building placement.
Some Buildings Are Better Off Destroyed
Some buildings give their benefit for as long as they’re standing, while others will give you a single boost once when they’re placed. The second type can activelybenefit from being placed on unstable grounds like flood plainsas this lets you rebuild them later to stack the benefits.
In the starting deck, the barracks is the only card that functions in this way. You’ll get a lump sum of might but be prevented from placing a second barracks too close to the first. Destroying it lets you draft soldiers from the same household multiple times.
The Guild Halls are especially good choices for this, giving you massive lump sums of supplies but tying up the nearby buildings until they’re destroyed. Enhancers similarly give you their income boost for the entire island, even if the original building is destroyed or swallowed by darkness.
Take On Extra Challenges Often
The Trials of the Gods let you choose difficulty modifiers for extra challenge, and they’reneeded for both progressing character stories and gaining extra upgrade resources. Knowing which ones you can easily turn for a run is a good way of progressing through the upgrade tree more quickly.
Even if you stack too many trials and are unable to make it to Valhalla, you’ll find the multiplier to Holt Matter will bounce you back quickly.
Each scion’s final kinship requires you to reach level five challenge with them. Starting this early will save you time in the long run.
Explore As Early And Often As Possible
Each island starts you with a rather small space and requires you to pay might to expand into more territory. With exploration taking two turns at baseline,you can run out of space and resources if you don’t start exploring on turn one.
Often,it’s worthspending on further exploration rather than defeating nearby draugrbecause of the time delay. Some draugr towers aren’t worth clearing at all, such as ones that block building types you aren’t using.
You’ll be able to see the locations of saplings before you explore them. Spend the first turn examining each sapling so you know which ones you’ll be able to complete.
Depending on the island,you’ll need either two or three out of four saplings.The easiest are normally the ones that require a flat sum of resources, such as supplies, might, explorations, or events. The hardest are typically the ones that require specific building types, as you’ll need several turns to build up a settlement around them.
Start your exploration towards thesaplings closest to the Ginnungagap, as these can become unobtainable if you wait too long.
Artifacts that can speed up exploration are among the best in the game. If you’re offered any of the following, you should normally accept them over alternative rewards:
Prioritise Unlocking New Housing Types
Thedefault housing type is the hardest to usein the game. It’s the only building that changes shape drastically each time you build one, and that makes it difficult to pack them tightly.
It also is the most expensive to increase your population with, making some saplings very difficult to obtain. Additionally, it has no secondary mechanics whereall three of the other houses give some form of secondary benefit.
Check Your Milestones For Clues To Progress
Large parts of the progression will be made easier if you accumulate milestone upgrades. The way these work is only explained after a few loops once Kare joins your scions, but you’re actually able to use them beforehand by checking the compendium from the Holt. Milestones offer a bunch of different benefits:
You’ll be able to add new buildings to the Holt between each run, gaining permanent bonuses for all your future runs. There are a few different considerations that will affect what buildings you want to use on the Holt, asnot all of them are strictly beneficial.
Always Take The Cursed Key
You’ll start each run with the Norns offering a choice of artifact. Rarely this includes thecursed key, which gives youmultiple permanent unlocks if you are able to carry it for an entire loop.
The key reduces the number of cards you draw, making Kare a good candidate to counter its debuff.
The rewards for finishing this quest are rather significant and let you advance a good deal faster. Alongside gaining your fourth scion, it gives you access to the Market at the Holt so you’re able to convert resources and not worry about collecting too many of the wrong acorns.
Once you’ve completed this quest, the cursed key should stop being offered by the Norn.
