Map nodes and progression
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.
Steam does not publish a map image with labels. The achievement list does publish the node names players are clearing, in the order the unlock rates imply.
Node list (19 September 2026 rates)
| Node / achievement | Unlock rate | What we can say |
|---|---|---|
| Enter the Forest | 100% | Tutorial biome. Official Forest screenshots show a stone keep in a pine clearing, goblins in, Knight + Archer on the bar |
| Clown Siege | 92.0% | Named as its own achievement. We have not seen an official lore blurb |
| Swamp | 88.7% | |
| Scorched | 32.1% | |
| The Mushrooms | 25.1% | |
| Haunted Farm | 25.0% | 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 |
| Gnome Garden | 19.7% | |
| Magical Lands | 17.1% | |
| Cursed Kingdom | 9.2% | Same rarity as Astral Beam |
| Crown Siege | 0.5% | Namesake clear. Rarest achievement on day two |
"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.
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, so 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 0.5% Crown Siege achievement lives.