Hey everyone! I make guides for Wildermyth and Bad North. I might share some of my original fictional there too if they ever get long enough.

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Spoiler Warnings
Themes, Pets, & minor details on some of their associated events.

So use your noggin and think about how unspoiled YOU want the game. Probably not too unspoiled because you’re looking up guides?

I was part of the closed beta for Omenroad and received the DLC for free like every other beta tester as a thanks for our feedback.

Anything marked with a (Th) or (Theoretical) is something I haven’t specifically tried on a specific build, though I may have experience with it otherwise, and in many cases I am relying on the knowledge and experience of others who have tried it

If anyone has feedback, I'd love to hear it! There will always be a few mistakes, plus some of my theoretical stuff is really educated guessing (praise the wiki) so hearing from folk who've tried things is great!

This guide is short (3.6k words) and beginner friendly, but should hold value to veteran players

This guide was mostly written during 1.11 Firlow and finished 2023-05-10 1216 during 1.13+477 Niyati Hotfix– I will list any patch updates it receives here
Update 2024-05-29 1740: minor typo and formatting fixes
Update 2025-08-13 1917 patch 1.16+559: intro section updated to the new style. Added Glossary, split Basic Guide Information into its own section, added Guide Recommendations. Minor typo & accuracy fixes. Updated some sections to reflect changes in my playstyle/habits

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in jargon, so I got a list to help with that. Contains some terms not used in the guide for my own copy paste sanity

Party Role – what this character’s job is in a party

• Control – prevent foes from doing something, or otherwise interfere with incoming foes and their effects
  
• Damage – kill foes and do it quickly. large damage numbers (especially across multiple foes)
  
• Enable – combo pieces and setup; make other characters go BRRR.
  
• Sponge – be targeted by a fair chunk or attacks and walk out the other side with barely a scratch

-line – how close to their foes this character should be: often a good indicator of sponginess

• Backline – in the safest position, with the team between you and your foes, often far away from foes
  
• Midline – between foes and the squishiest characters, and expected to be able tank a hit, but behind the actual sponges
  
• Frontline – closest to danger, expected to absorb all hits and come out relatively unscathed

Adjacent – Both orthogonal AND diagonal
Alphastrike – the damage you can deal on the first turn/first attack
AoE – Area of Effect (i.e. an area in which you can hit multiple targets)
Avoidance – the combined stat of block plus dodge. Since the only mechanical difference happens if you have the Ice Shield (which activates when you block) and they are otherwise both just added together for hit chance calculations, it’s generally more useful to talk about them as a unit
Bow hunter – a hunter that uses a bow or crossbow (5.9 to 9.6 max range) see this guide
CC – Crowd Control [effect], hard CC is that which completely stops a character doing something e.g. a pin is a hard CC because it completely stops movement, where soft CC inhibits something – hobble is the soft CC version of pin
Clutch – game changing from loss to win at a critical moment
ERC – Ember Rail Cannon: a team strategy that turns a Bow hunter into a gatling gun with Spiritblade mystics. I detail it in this guide
DoT – Damage Over Time. What it says on the tin e.g. Quellingmoss
Grofit – Growth + Profit = Grofit (I believe it’s a warframe reference – I just like it)
OTK – One Turn Kill. Basically what happens when their health is lower than your alphastrike
Power curve – the increase in power over time in a build – ideally this wants to be as front-loaded as possible without compromising the late-game strength
Proc – “triggers” or “effect happens”, e.g. “killing a foe procs rogue, putting you in Grayplane” or “Quellingmoss poison procs when the foe turn starts so it’s procced more when you can slow them down”
Saturation attack(s) – when lots of attacks are used to bypass limited defences, such as 5 foes running at/past a warrior with vigilance+, or 4+ physical shred directed at a warrior with stalwart+ active, shredding past the buffer of stalwart (which is 3 armour)
UI User Interface – the buttons and display you interact with

These terms are going to come up a lot in this guide. When I say team, what I mean is a group of heroes working together directly in what Wildermyth calls a party

Ok, but what’s a party? In Wildermyth, a party is all the heroes together in a single location, doing the same task, often limited to 5 – for example when clearing out hostile sites

A company in contrast is every hero active in a single campaign, and no matter what they’re doing they’re part of a/the company

These distinctions are important mostly in terms of how you split the company into specialised parties to efficiently hand the overland through a chapter/campaign

In the early campaigns, the game likes to start you with 1 of each class – and in the later ones likes to ensure you have at least 1 of each, or at least the chance for that. This is because every class has an overland campaign they have a multiplier for – warriors get 2x for defence building, Mystics get 2x for securing/rebuilding sites, hunters get 3.2x for scouting.

Scouting is the most vital – if you don’t have a hunter your progress across the map will be at a snail’s pace, although an ageing Wisdom character can make up for it. That said, you only need 1 hunter, because with the massive bonus they clear pretty quickly.

Securing sites is the next most important – mostly because you will have to do this if you want the resources to upgrade weapons and armour.

Building defences is important, but unless you’re building T3s or repeatedly exhausting incursions against them, it’s a short enough task that a party of non-warriors will usually suffice.

Combining this with how warriors love to retire after 2-3 chapters, I actually prefer to start with 1 hunter, 2 mystics when I get the choice to, so that when I do recruit a warrior for their party capabilities, they’ll make it to the end of a 5-chapter (they also level up faster). That said, getting Wisdom on a warrior you start with can be a phenomenal way to turn back incursions without fighting while still getting the sweet, sweet Legacy Points. It’s very funny to watch a huge incursion fizzle out after 2-3 sites and rebuild them to T3 before the next incursion with a solitary hero.

It’s chapter 1. You have 3 heroes. You’ve got the option to recruit (but no legacy points!), a lot of tiles to scout, and the clock is ticking on those calamities! You’d think with your heroes at their weakest and fewest you’d have to keep them as grouped as a flight of geese in the air – and you’d be right! Well, almost…

In the very first moments of chapter 1, I like to pull a trick out my sleeve to get ahead. See, there’s no spread of lurking monsters yet so it’s safe to scout the first, sometimes even the second tile solo. As the fastest member of the group (and the only one really contributing to scouting tasks) the hunter can get this done as fast as sending the whole company, and the other two can sneak out a tier 1 defence on the home tile. This will save you a little time and make it a little easier to deal with any incursions you have to face down the line. This is especially true if you’re following the recommended “1 of each” composition. From there I gather everyone up and get to clearing

Aside from my nifty chapter 1 trick, there are a lot of strategies. I’m not going to cover them all because I can’t vouch for them, and some seem outright idiotic to me: I know of players who like to run the smallest parties possible (2-3 heroes) and clear as many sites as possible in parallel. I’m honestly not sure if this is just a lower difficulty thing, or if their builds and tactics are just that different from mine.

Instead, I’m going to tell you what I’m running for the PermaDeath Carved in Stone Walking Lunch Challenge (you run through the story campaigns in sequence, if a hero dies you mark them as unplayable, and if you lose a campaign you start from scratch) where I have yet to lose a hero (admittedly I’m only on the second campaign):

Never Split the Party

More seriously, you should also split for opportunities (hook quests) since that ups retirement age, grants a free level up, and can only take 3 heroes. Also, they tend to be very easy, so you only really need to take 2 most of the time. Just don’t do anything dangerous with the other 2-3.

I used to recruit until I have 5 heroes at the earliest moment. From there I would only recruit more through events/children or to replace someone who’ll retire soon (absent a suitable replacement). Any extra heroes I task to building defences and rebuilding sites destroyed by incursions – the ideal candidate is an old (ie, soon to retire) warrior with the Wisdom ability – their replacement can run with the main group and their experience passes to whoever needs it. The main group clears and secures sites as quickly as possible. If no extras are available for building and/or an incursion would exhaust without giving legacy points, I fight incursions with the main party. Where possible I have all sites secured before facing the final fight of a chapter – on timed chapters I settle for “as many as possible” which is often most of them.

These days I mostly just wait for children and event heroes (sometimes declining the latter) unless I have less than 5 on the last chapter from, e.g. a double-retirement (I think you only get 1 child/chapter) this is partly because I am very good at the game, so your mileage may vary, but it does let the core heroes rank up faster (since the experience is being split fewer ways) which can make them scale strongly.

To meaningfully talk about the composition of a fighting force, we need to talk about what each character can bring to the table – we’ll briefly touch on what builds can fit what roles, but the focus is on the larger concepts here. It’s crucial to remember that every character is likely to cover more than one role – for example a hunter with Crippling Strikes and Throughshot(+) has both a solid damage output and a decent control setup

The simplest role, this character’s job is to kill foes and do it quickly. Large damage numbers (especially across multiple foes) are their thing. Expect builds such as:

Broadswipes Warrior
AvoiDancer Hunter
Ember Cannon Hunter
Thornfang Hunter
Ignite Mystic
Splintersalvo Mystic
Vigourflow Mystic

These characters are the ones that can be targeted by a fair chunk of attacks and walk out the other side with barely a scratch. The basic version of this is any warrior with Stalwart, but you can expect:

Brick-Wall Warrior (what if I stacked Stalwart with Endurance+ and maybe Hardiness?)
Engage Warrior
AvoiDancer Hunter
Archery Hunter (when you add a Leaf bow to endurance and the flat defence armour taking hits is surprisingly easy – arguably this is the flat defence variant of AvoiDance, but there is more to that)
Earthscribe Mystic

These are the characters that prevent foes from doing something, or otherwise interfere with incoming foes and their effects. Expect builds like:

Engage Warrior
Knockback Warrior (or Sentinel+ as desired)
Reaction Hunter (Ambush+ or Ambush with Vost)
Arches Mystic

This is the category of characters that make other characters go BRRR. The combo pieces and setup characters. Notably this includes the ability to shred for physical characters: I find it’s not always necessary since some of the best damage builds either come with built in bypass (eg. melee hunters with rogue or ranged hunters with piercing shots), and when it is necessary the basic mystic wood interfusion (Splinterblast) is the cheapest way to do it (especially if you already have an arches build). Even outside shred, the vast majority of cases use a single ability or ability+, or even base class stuff, so this is almost universally combined with another, less abilty-intensive build. Examples:

Firestarter Warrior (Raider – this is for Ember Arrows and/or Spiritblade allies)
Shieldshear Warrior (I don’t really rate this (pending review), but it’s a nice pickup if you’ve no better options)
Compulsion Mystic (although it’s hard to definitively call this enable since sometimes it’s damage and sometimes control depending on context)
Naturalist+ Mystic (creates burnable tiles/debris, useful for various abilities, though the same effect can be achieved more slowly with Arches)
Spiritblade Mystic (technically it’s damage, but it does exactly nothing without a strong ally)

I’ve seen players stop at damage and go “any character that isn’t damage-focused is a waste of time” and it can be hard to blame them – “damage solves”, and “death is the hardest CC[1]” are both valid statements. A dead foe cannot damage your party or hinder you in any way (at least in Wildermyth) (Mostly) (Looking at you Bartoth-interfused idiots).

[1] CC = Crowd Control [effect], hard CC is that which completely stops a character doing something e.g. a pin is a hard CC because it completely stops movement, where soft CC inhibits something – hobble is the soft CC version of pin

So I do recommend every team to have a majority in damage focused characters and, in most cases, even non-damage focused characters will contribute to damage one way or another. This is especially true on higher difficulties where your foes’ groups become large enough to reduce the efficiency of CC.

However, you will generally find yourself needing at least 1 Control – you might not be able to control every foe, but you can’t kill all of them either in every case. Further, the more foes you kill the more efficient it becomes to control what remains, especially since you can focus-fire foes that are immune to your control (e.g. coachmen are immune to hobble/pin).

You will also probably want at least 1 Sponge for the same reason. In hours of gameplay foes, especially ranged ones, are bound to slip through your damage and control on a regular basis – and in those cases you can often absorb that on a sponge (who might not even take any damage) through careful positioning, rather than take it on a character that might die in 2 hits.

Both of those can often be accomplished with a single warrior – you may have noticed Engage Warrior popping up on both Sponge and Control. It’s often true of other warrior builds too, since Stalwart as a 1 point pickup is some 80% of the way to invulnerability (once you get the hang of toggling it at the right time). I say this as someone who is absolutely incapable of rolling engage, so that second part is thoroughly tested. Someday my Shardskin warrior will pick up engage and have the ultimate trifecta of damage, sponge, and control (at least vs melee foes).

What does this all mean in terms of actual characters? For me, it used to mean running 1 warrior, 1 hunter, 3 mystics, and trying to assemble an Ember Rail Cannon (for more details check my Ember Rail Cannon guide .

Specifically, I liked to run 3 mystics because mystics are more or less guaranteed to make it to chapter 5 with their native +20 to retirement age – it’s a lot easier to replace 1 warrior (and sometimes a hunter) than have 60% to 80% of the team dissipate at the end of chapter 3 or 4. That isn’t a party composition rule per se, but it did inform my other choices. So why does that even work?

(these days I wait for children and work with what I got. Makes for more variety in gameplay)

Simply put, mystics have the highest role diversity of any class right from level 1. Interfusion is profoundly strong and flexible, and one or two abilities are often build-defining. Even with their agonisingly slow level-up rate they can be serious threats before even considering abilities. From the bizarrely high damage output of Ignite(+), the frankly ridiculous control of Arches(+) locking down foes in a decent radius, the Sponge/Control (depending on terrain) of Earthscribe and even the niche but the terrifying damage of Vigourflow (especially with multi-hit themes) gives you so much to work with.

But

Even though the squishy caster fallacy[2] applies to Wildermyth, their class specific Sponge-ability is limited. Earthscribe being terrain-dependant (albeit extremely strong and with an excellent flex into control on basically every map without stone) hurts them in that department, as does the destructive nature of Soulsplitting (though that can be somewhat bypassed by creating your own terrain (i.e. Arches) but Endurance+ and a shield go a long way to making any character a brick wall, especially since Mystics can get both armour and warding from their armour (without the DLC) in contrast to warriors, who often need augments for their warding. Even without the job bonuses, I’d still want a warrior and a hunter to round out my capabilities, especially when I’m building on the fly instead of grabbing choice picks of specific legacy characters for the mix.

Specifically and especially the hunter. It’s extremely difficult to replicate what they can do with a mystic – their ability to safely kill foes far from the party (even the relative safety of thornfang rogue) is without equal, to the point where they often make the ideal enable target for a Spiritblade mystic.


[2] the (false) idea that casters are always squishy or should be – it is often true that casters are as tough or tougher than martial classes. AFAIK the idea originates in early D&D where it might have been true, but since losing characters at the drop of a hat is extremely unfun it’s not even true in the current edition of D&D (5e), see The “Squishy Caster” Fallacy - Tabletop Builds [tabletopbuilds.com]

I hope this was helpful to everyone! again, here's a link to my Patreon[www.patreon.com] for anyone who wants to support me and my guides!

Saint Scylla’s Beginner’s Guide is great if you’re starting out, and has some nice screencaps with a succinct style

I highly recommend checking out Derpykat’s Beginner’s Compendium too, for reading up on the game’s basic mechanics in a little more detail: even for veterans it’s good to go back to basics – even I learned something new reading through it (the exact movement cost of diagonal moves (1.4) – I was just eyeballing it before now!)