Hello everyone, thanks for reading me again! As explained in the previous article, today I’m telling you more about the new DLC faction we’re adding to Drop Duchy. This new faction is Viking-themed, and it’s called The North. Let’s see what they do!
The North is the fifth faction in the game, and once again, we strived to give them a strong gameplay identity that sets them apart from every other faction. So, where did we go after the peaceful nature-oriented Tribe? We chose to go all-in on war with the most combat-focused faction to date!
The North is a fierce clan of sea raiders with its own combat style that’ll make you rethink your approach. Instead of doing a whole sequence that goes through all the groups, you’ll be able to select a different target for each of your attacking groups. It gives you more flexibility to leverage your group’s strengths and weaknesses, but it also means that a given group can’t clear the whole map.
Due to their direct combat, the North can’t merge their groups to manipulate the types in their favour; however, they can do something much better: pillaging production buildings for extra resources! If you’ve got some spare groups, you can target a resource building to collect more out of them, although it comes at the cost of removing the card permanently from your deck. As you’ll see in the next paragraphs, though, the faction has access to exclusive cards to facilitate that.
The last key mechanic of The North is the Fury, which symbolizes the Vikings’ retaliation and bloodthirst: for every damage you suffer during a round, you get additional troops for the next round. If you can survive the enemy’s forces (or if you willingly self-inflict damage), you’ll reap greater rewards with bonus groups joining your camp next round. It’s another valuable tool to take advantage of enemies, as long as you’re careful not to burn your wings while playing with fire.
So, which exclusive cards do the North have to fit their special combat style? Once again, there are four buildings and four technologies to unlock by completing the faction quests.
The starting building of the faction is called the Hall of Heroes, and it’s one you’ll want to place near the center of the grid since it buffs both military and production buildings that are adjacent. The more you can fit, the better! Speaking of which, the starting technology card Scouting adds up to three Depot buildings to each round’s deck.
The Depots have dead-simple harvesting rules requiring you to connect terrains, and soon enough you’ll realize that you can double their gains if you place next ot the Hall of Heroes, then double them again using the pillage during the combat phase. The best part? Since Depots are added to the deck every round, pillaging them doesn’t remove any cards from your deck.
As you complete quests, you’ll unlock cards that add new mechanics to Drop Duchy, such as the Raiding Camp, which makes you lose Defence (feeding your Fury combo) and can duplicate itself when placed adjacent to an enemy. Swarming the grid has never been easier as long as you have the means to refill those. Defence, of course!
On the tech side, you’ll be able to grab options such as Awareness to eliminate the weakness malus in combat or Insatiable Greed to increase the yield of your plundering. I should also mention that some of the newly added common cards that release with this update pair very well with the North qirks, such as the Military Hospital, which recruits for every missing Defence point, or the tech Conscription, which makes you lose Defence in exchange for additional troops. All in all, there are plenty of new combos to explore with this faction, which again can be played in all existing game modes!
That’s it for this breakdown of the new faction of Drop Duchy! As explained in the previous devlog, we are now shifting our focus to bringing the game to new platforms, and we don’t plan to add more to the game. Thanks a lot for your continued support, and I hope you’ll have a lot of fun with the new update. Cheers!
JB Oger - Game Director
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