Map nodes and progression
Armor and repeated attempts
The current Armor rule is a halving of incoming damage for each 300 Armor, replacing the old flat subtraction. Under that rule, 300 Armor leaves half the incoming damage and 600 leaves a quarter; it does not make a unit immune. Shield is different: Unit Info describes it as blocking one full attack.
Repeated level attempts grant units a small Armor bonus. Bosses also retain damage rather than returning at full health on the next attempt, and their repeated-attempt difficulty is eased. Check the next attempt before discarding the route and starting an entirely different grind.
The October 26 1.0.6_g patch lowers the first-loop difficulty ceiling to better fit a fully upgraded skill tree. It also lowers Armor on Scorched-area enemies to match the Armor rework. A launch-era wall and a current attempt therefore need different spending checks.
Before and after New Game+
1.0.6 increases NG+ difficulty and changes skill costs to linear growth instead of exponential growth. Currency previously spent on skills in older saves is refunded automatically. If a returning save shows a different skill budget, inspect the refunded currency and the current tree before assuming that progress disappeared.
Spend against the next displayed cost and benefit. The patch does not provide one universal NG+ reset checklist for every inventory item, so follow the current game's confirmation when choosing a reset.
1.0 stopped being a linear demo. The 12 September post is the official wording: you now venture out between nodes on a map, pushing into new territories, and earning new resources to upgrade with.
The achievement list supplies the node names in the dated reference below. Use the in-game map connections for travel; achievement percentages do not establish their prerequisite order.
Node list (20 September 2026 rates)
| Node / achievement | Unlock rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Enter the Forest | 97.8% | Tutorial biome. Official Forest screenshots show a stone keep in a pine clearing, goblins in, Knight + Archer on the bar |
| Clown Siege | 86.3% | Named as its own achievement |
| Swamp | 86.3% | Northern swamp difficulty lowered and the movement penalty removed in v1.0.2_e |
| Scorched | 51.3% | |
| Haunted Farm | 47.8% | Official screenshot 05 is a wheat-field arena with pigs and hat-wearing riders. A player who stalled before v1.0.1_a said they could not reach a wheat region after the toad boss. That lines up with a farm node; we are not renaming the achievement |
| The Mushrooms | 42.9% | |
| Gnome Garden | 41.4% | |
| Magical Lands | 40.6% | |
| Cursed Kingdom | 29.4% | The first three cursed levels now award a crown each (v1.0.2_e) |
| Crown Siege | 20.9% | Namesake clear. Still the rarest achievement two days in |
"Goblin Lair" is a node name from a player bug report, not from the achievement list. Until it appears in a tooltip screenshot we keep it as a reported location, not a row in the table.
v1.0.2_e also added a quest indicator to the Frog Queen's location on the map — the first patch change that points at a specific node.
How movement works (official)
- The campaign is a node map, not a playlist.
- New territories grant additional resources used on the skill tree.
- Adaptive difficulty exists because the developers could not pre-balance every route.
That last point matters for anyone comparing their map to a streamer's. Two saves can be on different nodes with different trees and the game is trying to smooth the gap. v1.0.1_a then lowered scaling globally and capped the late game, v1.0.2_e eased the northern swamp and dropped its movement penalty, and v1.0.3 fixed the upgrade that cost 9000 instead of 900. A route that felt impossible on launch night is supposed to be less brutal today.
Demo vs 1.0
The May demo post promised new environments, more boss battles and loads of units and enemies for 1.0. The September 12 post confirms the map rewrite and the skill-tree expansion actually shipped. Demo route advice (a Chinese post about first five stages, dump the army on the boss, stage 7 soldiers plus mages) is demo-era. Use it as colour, not as a 1.0 walkthrough.
Sandbox is not a node
Sandbox Mode is launched as a separate mode for unlocked toys. It is not a map node and it is not where the namesake Crown Siege clear lives.