Justice: How to build a complete fort and still earn the gold token

Overview

The Justice challenge requires the player to micromanage building a fort. To win the gold token, at least 500 surviving soldiers are required. That usually means to build as efficiently as possible. But what if one is a completionist? This guide shows how to acquire all fort upgrades while still having over 500 remaining soldiers.

Disclaimer

This guide is for building every single upgrade of the fort. If you just want to get the gold token, upgrading most of the optional buildings is completely pointless. Following the guide takes 4-6 hours. Here is someone beating the Justice challenge with gold token in 33 minutes WITHOUT upgrading everything.

AGAIN: DO NOT FOLLOW THIS GUIDE IF YOU ONLY WANT THE GOLD TOKEN.

Still here? Well, then let’s delve into the big project.

Introduction

You are an aspiring builder and were hired to oversee the latest Imperial project, codename Justice: A mighty Imperial Fort in the Northern Mountains.
However, time is of the essence as Northern Raiders try to take down the stationed legion of Imperial troops that desperately need the fort to defend themselves. So your client has allowed you to cut some corners with luxury buildings such as the bakehouse or joinery. All defensive buildings must still be built though. You, as a perfectionist, however, wouldn’t even dream of leaving something incomplete, so you need to figure out how to build everything while keeping at least 500 of the 1000 stationed soldiers alive (this will award you a gold star (token)).

Goal and Mechanics

To build the bare minimum for the fort you need 390 wood and 60 stone. To build the fort in its entirety you need 490 wood, 93 stone and 11 food. If you additionally want to build the ravine bridge and fortify the tunnel, your total required resources are 540 wood, 117 stone, 11 food and 30 soldiers.

Once all your defences are constructed, you can no longer start any other buildings. That means, all extra buildings must be finished before starting the last defence building.

Raiders will advance every time an encounter is completed. The camp does not count as encounter and the general store does not count as encounter if you don’t do any transactions. The first group of raiders will spawn at their village once you have visited 2 encounters. The raiders will start using the secret Greyfell Tunnel once you completed the first fort building.

Each group of raiders has a certain number of enemies. If you happen to meet the raiders and fail the gambit, you will trigger a fight. After the fight you receive 4 fame and 4 additional fame if you have soldiers with you. The number of enemies you defeat in that combat is removed from the number of enemies in the group. Once the group has no more enemies, it completely disappears from the map and you are awarded two gains cards. We will mainly use this to prevent raiders from ever reaching the fort by fighting them in the bottom left corner. There are 2 visited encounters which allow us to repeatedly move onto the raider marker without it ever moving.
The number of soldiers lost in a combat you partake in is the number of allied soldiers that die during the combat (duh). The number of soldiers that die in a combat you don’t partake in is

and then rounded down. That means if your fort defence is 500, the losses are half of the attackers, if your fort defence is 900, the losses are 10%. If you run into a group of raiders at the very end on your way to the village, your army loses as many soldiers as there are remaining attackers (as you are outside the fort and thus with defence 0).

Prerequisites

For the strategy to work, 8 extra coins are necessary. It does not matter if you get them from starting equipment or from encounters.

Other than that, there are no mandatory prerequisites, but if want an easier time, the following equipment cards can help you a lot:

• Scorched Blade: Destroys Northerners as long as you don’t get hit.
• Any shield with Buckler ability: Really good in combination with scorched blade; helps you charge your weapon faster.
• Imperial Armor, Mask of Holy Fortunes, Ring of Concentration: Helps with the chance cards gambit at quarry.
• Gladiator’s Visage, Bounty Hunter’s Helm: You will fight a lot. And I mean a lot, a lot. The first one will help you heal with food after every combat, the second can help you gain enough money to buy the rest of the equipment. Note: The Raiding Party encounter does not count properly for the Bounty Hunter’s Helm, so you need to visit your camp after a battle to claim your money gains card.
• Armour of Gluttony: In combination with Gladiator’s Visage you get up to 52 defence. That is a flat 50% damage reduction. Combine that with your helm and shield and the berserkers only hit for 3 damage.
• Elusive Charm: In case you get snared.
• The Lord’s Diadem, Bullseye: Helps with precision gambit in the forests. (Not that you should need the help as silver segment is enough.)
• Chef’s Charm: If you need more healing by eating.

You notice that there are no artefacts mentioned.
Since you fight many, many, many fights, only the recharging artefacts are useful at all. And among those I didn’t really find any too useful. If you want to take artefacts, I recommend these:

• Cry for Victory: Buffs not only you and your companion but all the imperial friendly units, too. Doesn’t start charged. 1 use per combat.
• Hali’s Ward: One use more or less clears one entire combat encounter if thrown at a big crowd. 3 uses total.
• Rethgar’s Quake, House Belobog’s Ruin: Knock down enemies to get some breathing room. Second artefact has at least the additional passive ability to rarely instantly kill an enemy who is knocked down. 5 uses total each.
• Traitor’s Urge: Gives breathing room during combat and speeds it up as enemies are fighting among themselves. 3 uses total.
• Lion Heart, Healing Spirits: Some extra healing in a pinch. 3 uses total each.
• Edesia’s Charm: Get some extra food. 3 uses total.

For companions, any works, with one being way better than the others:

• Hubie: Distracts all enemies and greatly reduces Imperial troop loss in combat. This allows for way faster combats as you will always have a lot of allies and they help you clear the enemies.
  Additionally, Hubie can recharge bomb artefacts, which suddenly makes them worth a lot. I recommend Hali’s Ward and/or Rethgar’s Quake. Remember, that after recharging an artefact Hubie is unavailable for 3 rounds. That means Northerners have to advance 3 times before you can use Hubie in combat again. So don’t use the ability if you are currently fighting a raiding party.

To prove, this can be done with any gear with the right strategy, I personally chose the most useless setup, i.e. bad starting gear, only useless rings as equipment cards, mostly map reveal as encounters. The 8 necessary extra coins I got by selling the merchant ring and the item that you receive on your first return with bulding materials to the fort. I chose Malaclypse as companion to give me at least some breathing room in battle thanks to the shield.

Step 1: Carve your path

As a first step we need to prepare our battlefield. That means to visit as many encounters as possible before the first raiding party draws close.

1. Go to the Quarry (if you have enough food, collect stones once).
2. (Optionally if you don’t have at least 2 food: Go back to the General Store and buy 2 food.)
3. Go to the Light Woods and collect wood once.
4. Go further down until you reach the bottom left corner. If you visited the General Store, you will move onto the raider marker; if you didn’t the raider marker moves onto you.
5. By repeatedly moving between the two visited encounters, widdle down the number of raiders until you completely defeat them.
   
6. Continue your journey until you reach the Dense Woods. Try to avoid the battle against the raiders by winning the gambit. If you still have food, collect wood once.
7. Make your way back to the fort; make a pitstop at the bottom left two encounters to defeat the raiding party.
8. If you STILL have food, gather wood in the Light Woods once while passing by.
9. Do not upgrade any defence.

Step 2: Quarry troubles

The next step is a make or break in the run.

1. Go to the Quarry.
2. Collect stone for 5 turns.
   IMPORTANT: If you do not collect at least 91 stone and have at least 10 soldiers remaining, forfeit the challenge. Otherwise you will spend a lot longer to safely collect the remaining stone than you have spent getting to this point.
3. Go to the Narrow Ravine and build the bridge.
4. You will get the message that the fort was attacked and around 90 soldiers were lost.
5. Return to the fort and build a Bakehouse.
   

Step 3: Squad upgrade

In the next part the goal is to upgrade the squad size from 20 to 26 soldiers which speeds up the gathering process a bit.

1. Leave the fort.
2. Gather the remaining wood in the Light Woods.
3. Fight the raiding party in the bottom left.
4. Go to the bridge encounter via the bottom route to make it a visited encounter.
5. Return to the bottom left and defeat the raiding party.
6. Return to the fort to restock your supplies.
7. Go to the General Store and buy 3 food.
8. Return to the fort and build the Churtle Stable.

Step 4: Blocking the backdoor

Now that a fort building is complete, raiders will use the Greyfell tunnel. Since we cannot completely eliminate those raiding parties, we need to block that path. But first, we need to stop a different raiding party.

1. Leave the fort ALONE.
2. Go to the bottom left and defeat the raiding party single-handedly.
3. Return to the fort. Build a Mason if you have at least 40 wood or are confident that you can beat a raiding party combat without losing more than 6 soldiers.
4. Leave the fort and go to Mountain River on the right, try to win the gambit against the raiding party.
5. • If you win the gambit or have at least 20 soldiers remaining after the combat. go to the Dense Forest and collect wood once.
     
   • Otherwise attack the raiding party two more times and move to the fort. You will be prompted with defending the fort after you leave it again.
     
6. Collect stone until you get Success or Huge Success. You need to have at least 20 soldiers left after that. This opens the Greyfell Tunnel.
7. Move to the tunnel and fortify it.
8. Return to the fort. Build the Joinery if you still have enough materials.

Step 5: The big haul

Now we will gather all the wood we still need.

1. DO NOT FORGET TO STOCK UP SUPPLIES AT THE MESS TENT.
2. Leave the fort and go to the Dense Woods via the bridge.
3. Collect wood several times. The silver segment on the precision gambit is enough as that awards 52 wood each time. A raid will happen during this.
   
4. Try to avoid combat against the raiding party. Three times. (It’s better to collect wood 4 more times with less soldiers than only 2 more times with more.)
5. As soon as the raiding party marker is on the bottom left Mountain River, hurry after it and defeat it.
   
6. Return to the fort.

Step 6: Clean up

By now you should have enough stone and at least close to enough wood. You should still have at least 575 soldiers in total. If you still need wood: You have enough troops to gather wood 3 more times by performing the following routine:

1. Leave the fort on your own.
2. Defeat a raiding party AT THE VERY BOTTOM LEFT single-handedly. If the party has already advanced one space, you need to defeat it and the next raiding party.
3. Go back to the fort and then to the Dense Woods via the bridge.
4. Gather wood until the raider marker is at the bottom left Mountain River (that usually means once).
5. Hurry after the raiders and defeat them.
6. Return to the fort.

During one of my testplays, every second raiding party went to the Greyfell Tunnel. If that’s the case you can gather materials and safely return to the Fort with all your soldiers before attacking the next raiding party alone. Additionally, that allows you to collect stone if you need it.

Once you have enough wood, you can do the following routine:

1. Leave the fort on your own.
2. Defeat a raiding party at the two visited encounters bottom left single-handedly.
3. Return to the fort to heal, restock your supplies and start a building.

The order you build the remaining fort buildings does not matter too much; I recommend the following:

1. Mason, Joinery
2. A palisade, Ballistas, Central Tower
3. Gatehouse
4. Barbican
5. Watch Tower
6. Wooden spikes

Doing it in this order has the advantage that you don’t need to kill the raiding parties after building the Barbican since you only receive 8% of the losses (usually around 20 soldiers, so make sure you still have more than enough soldiers when you stop killing the raiding parties). Additionally, if you don’t have enough stone for the Watch Tower you can safely collect at that point.

Step 7: Victory Lap

Once the final defence building is finished you cannot enter the fort anymore. However, you can still sit on the fort encounter to avoid entering combat against raiding parties. Use that as retreat if you don’t find an opening to the village.

At the village a final combat awaits but it is easier than all the other fights you have endured so far. Win it and congratulations, you have just built a complete Imperial Fort and still triumphed over the Army of Northerners.

General Tips

• Do not try this unless you are masochistic. It takes around 4-6 hours to complete the challenge.
• The guide has a little leeway for errors in later stages, but the movement at the start is important.
• DO NOT FORGET TO VISIT THE MESS TENT. If you forget, you lose basically 1 whole cycle and need to spend an additional 30 minutes on combat. If that happens, ditch the soldiers and kill the raiding party alone (as described in Step 6) to avoid any further losses.
• There is no need to risk going for the gold segment on Dense Woods; it is only slightly more than the silver segment and usually much harder to get.
• The easiest and fastest gambit to fail is the precision gambit followed by wheel gambit. Chance cards feel the slowest.
• If you have allied Imperial troops, do not kill knocked down enemies with low health. The time spent to finish them off is time you could use to prevent damage to an ally. And unlike Corrupted, Northerners do not heal when knocked down.
• While being annoying, the Trappers do not do a lot of damage on their own; focus on the other units first.
• It is incredibly important to kill the Shamans as fast as possible and never allow them to start healing again. The shaman healing a split-second can be the difference between 2 and 5 lost soldiers.
• Losses cause losses, if you only have a few remaining soldiers on your team, they will be killed much more quickly. You should try to prioritize enemies that are engaged with low-health allies.
• Going into camp and choosing the wait option somehow counts as 2 turns for your companion cooldown, even though the Northerners only advance once. Use this to get your companion back faster.
• If you play for as many soldiers as possible with Hubie, you need to fight a lot of raiding parties. At some late point (~ 2 buildings left), the game just crashes when you try to fight another time. I assume there is a limit on how often one can visit the same encounter during a run and exceeding it causes the game to crash. You can still defend the fort in the “Invaders at the Gate” event (letting a raider marker move onto the fort while being on the fort as well).

Conclusion

With the described strategy it is possible to build all fort upgrades and still win against the Northerner Army. However, it can be improved as 3 big raiding parties are not stopped. This could be reduced to 1 raiding party (the first and only using the Greyfell Tunnel) but then far more journeys to the Dense Woods and combats with allied soldiers are required. This is only possible when using Hubie, as otherwise the losses are too big. But it is possible to finish with around 900 soldiers.