Nordhold: 100% Achievement Guide

I enjoyed playing Nordhold very much and was able to get all achievements within 30 hours of gameplay. You’ll get most achievements automatically by just playing but there are some which require a bit more tactic so i made this small guide which hopefully gives the extra help if you’re struggling!

This guide was written based on version 1.0.0.46 of the game.

Pathfinder
Complete the tutorial.

Easy, just complete the tutorial.

First Steps
Reach the “Gold” rank in normal mode.

Finish a run with at least 1000 points.

Platinized
Reach the “Platin” rank in normal mode.

Finish a run with at least 2000 points.

Obsidian Guardian
Reach the “Obsidian” rank in normal mode.

Finish a run with at least 2500 points.

Valhalla Vanguard
Reach the “Valhalla” rank in normal mode.

Finish a run with at least 3000 points.

Path of Discovery
Complete 50% of all possible discoveries.

Keep playing and trying new things and this achievement will pop-up eventually.

Slayer
Defeat the first boss.

Appears on wave 10.

Berserker
Defeat the second boss.

Appears on wave 20.

Champion
Defeat the third boss.

Appears on wave 25.

Overlord
Defeat the final boss.

Appears on wave 30, the final wave to officially win.

Enemy Bane
Kill 1000 enemies.

Keep on killing!!!

Thor’s Wrath
Reach 5000 DPS in a wave.

Keep on killing more and faster!!!

Mystic Fury
Deal over 250,000 damage with spells in a run.

Pew pew with magic. Pretty easy but if you’re struggling, the Arc Tower’s Lightning Surge Banner also gives a chance to pew Lightning Strike which is all spell damage.

Runic Power
Achieve 300% or more spell damage.

Just buy/pick anything which increases spell damage, Relics, Mage Tower upgrades and pick a hero which can cast Arcane explosion. Every time you cast Arcane Explosion, you get +1% spell damage and when fully upgraded to level 3, you get +4% per cast. Spell damage can also synergise well with a few Tower Banners.

Fusion Mastery
Gain 2 fusions in one run.

Fusing towers can make nice combo’s between two towers. In order to fuse, you need 3 Banners of each tower which are compatible to fuse with each other. You can see which towers are eligible to fuse with if you hover over your excising tower banners. The screenshot shows that the freezing tower can fuse with a Runestone, Arc or Raven tower:

One of a Kind
Obtain your first unique banner.

Similar to Fusing but for focusing on using a single tower type. If you have collected 9 banners for the same tower type, you will get the tower’s unique card which is very good and be even further upgraded with future banner rolls.

You Bow to No One
Complete a run without arrow towers.
Don’t build Arrow Towers 🙂

Single-Minded Sentinel
Complete all 30 waves with just one tower type.

Beginning might be a bit difficult but for me it was pretty easy using the Runestone tower

Tower Master
Level a tower to level 10.

Simple, have a favorite tower in which you invest all your gold in.

Architect
Unlock all 8 towers.

Keep on playing, winning or dying and earn honor points which you can use to unlock new meta upgrades or new towers.

Builder of Realms
Have 20+ building upgrades in one run.

Easy. I usually start my runs with level 2 Economy Budgets and get level 3 as fast as possible.

Merchant of the North
Earn 20+ gold per wave with “Trading Ships”.

Economy budgets reduces the costs of upgrades and apparently, trading ships are ‘upgrades’ for your dock so also a good move to start with trading ships as fast as possible.

Golden Hoard
Accumulate more than 500 gold in your guild hall before claiming in one run.

The Guild house saves up money and gets more every run but resets when you claim it’s gold. Best to fully upgrade it and wait a few runs until it has accumulated more than 500 gold.

Guildmaster
Hire 12 workers in one run.

Work, work! quite straightforward.

Developed Town
Specialize 2 Village Buildings in one run.

I did not realize this was possible after 15 hours of gameplay lol. See below:

You can upgrade the following buildings:

1. Lumberjack Camp
2. Mill
3. Quarry
4. Goldmine
5. Tavern
6. Brewery
7. Workshop
8. Statue
9. HeroTower

Architect’s Dream
Unlock all buildings.

Keep progressing and they all unlock eventually.

Pioneer Expansion
Build 15 outposts in one run.

I didn’t use outpost much. For this achievement i only used Runestone Towers so i could spend all surplus wood for building wood outposts.

Professor
Complete the last research of a university research strand in one run.

Build your university early on and focus on a single research tree. There’s some nice Relics or Oracle picks which can speed research time up.

Dark Offering
Sacrifice 3 workers in one run.

Sacrifice workers for awesome legendary relics.

These achievements take a bit more effort but are pretty doable.

Relic Hunter
Collect 20 relics in one run.

Hoard all the relics!!

Loyal Workforce
Finish wave 30 with no more than 5 workers.

If you read the text literally, it doesn’t say to never hire more than 5 workers but just have 5 or less workers after wave 30. You can sacrifice a worker every 5 waves after wave 5 so if you keep that into account, this one is pretty easy.

Last Stand
Win the game with only 1 life point left.

This one is pretty tricky, if you don’t build any towers in the first 3 waves, a total of 18 units spawn but you still have 2 health left (if you fully upgraded the gate). Other way is to get ‘lucky’ so that a unit is able to pass your defenses but this is still pretty unpredictable so how about we don’t let anyone pass and still get damage!

If you made a run until wave 10 or further, your next run can give you 2 extra boons to start with. If you’re ‘lucky’, you can get an item which gives an immediate +100 resource (wood, grain or stone) but you will lose 1 HP every wave. If you just as lucky as me, take spearhead as initial relic and build a Runetower which can keep you safe till wave 7/8. Now every wave you will lose 1 HP and you should NOT let any unit pass, otherwise you have to play multiple runs in order to get the +100resource/-1HP item again. When you have just 1 HP left, build a Druids Cove so you’ll get +1HP every wave which evens out the damage. Now you have can just focus on having a bullwark and when you survice wave 30, the achievement pops up!

Some (hopefully) useful tips:

• Spearhead
  Picking the spearhead as starting relic is my usual pick when starting a new run. It scales very good with Arc Towers or Runestone Towers and saves you to build multiple towers in the early waves.
• Resources
  I think Gold and Wood are the most important resources early game. Make sure you spend as much as you can every wave and investing in trade ships and Economy Budget early game is a good investment.
• Tower building
  Try to build your towers on the highest Hex Tiles which also cover as many road tiles as possible.
• Tower upgrades
  Almost every tower benefits most from Rate of Fire. Think about bleed/burn/weaken DOTS, the faster such towers can shoot, the faster the stacks pile up and thus do more damage over time. The same goes for %chance for a special attack, more faster means more chances to prock. My only exception would be the frost tower which should prioritize range in order to slow as many units as possible.
• Specialize building
  Don’t forget to specialize your town buildings. The Workshop has a very good upgrade in which you can place towers on resource nodes which can increase Damage, Range or Rate of Fire depending on the resource.
• Lighthouse Sponsoring
  The lighthouse has only one upgrade which is repeatable but very useful. You can spend some gold for the next mission to also collect resources on their voyage. I always take the gold in the guild house to spent on the sponsoring one wave prior the Mission wave pops up.