Swords and Sandals Crusader – Survival Mode [Hard] Guide

Overview

Survival Mode – one of game modes released in Swords and Sandals Crusader.Your task is survive through 8 rounds, battling with all other factions + a Supercolossus.It has 3 difficulty levels: easy, medium, hard, but we will concentrate on the last one. (You can’t play Hard mode in browser version of S&S:C)

Recommended Factions

There are 8 playable factions in the game, but if it comes to hard mode of Survival, I recommend to play with one of these three factions (Baron Wolfgang’s Free States and Lord Celen’s Iron Republic are quite useless here):

Arglaxx and the Beast Force

Starting skills: War Drums, Colossus Mastery

War Drums allows him to drain enemy’s command points, which sometimes it makes them impossible to cast a spell. Morale reduction is purely cosmetic for enemies, because their squads with low morale can still attack ferociously anyway.

The most important thing here is Colossus Mastery, which increases stats of your colossus. Keep in mind that this unit is the most valuable one during hard mode gameplay.

The advantage while playing with this faction is that you don’t have to worry about War Drums, because only Beast Force has this spell as starting one (in Survival mode you can’t fight with the same faction as you play with)

Sir Belgrave and the Templar Church

Starting skills: Defensive Tactics, Heal Army

Defensive Tactics applies only to non-colossus units and increases the likehood that they will evade the strike, but his second spell is really important. It actually heals EVERY unit in your army (including your Colossus), which it’s really handy while you have only one giant knight.
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Emperor Antares and the Death Imperium

Starting Skills: Fear, Raise Dead

Emperor Antares’s Death Imperium is actually one of the best factions in the game. Every squad in his army has Fanatical morale, so they are immune to Fear Spell and they won’t desert (the enemy troops will flee instead). Unfortunately, his army is actually vulnerable to morale loss from War Drums due to bug in game and additionally you can’t boost morale of your troops with Leadership.

You cannot retreat while playing as Antares.

His Raise Dead spell can be handy when you want to summon a large squad of light units to support colossus during battle and activate the “Colossus Bug”, which I’ll mention later.

The Leaders order

It’s really important to see whom you’ll fight with in the following rounds.

The most troublemaking leaders (Arglaxx, Sir Belgrave [and Baron Wolfgang if you are playing as Antares]) should be fought at very first rounds of Survival game (at 1-4 rounds) as they have small army.

Arglaxx will constatly drain your command points with War Drums while Sir Belgrave may spam with Heal army, making his units hard to destroy with colossus or light unit squad.

Wolfgang‘s bowmen will destroy your light units faster than other factions, because they have Archery as starting skill

From round 5 every leader will have full army + colossus (exactly 111 units).

Warning! The Super Colossus may appear before round 8 and due to bug it can appear more than once [although it’s very rare]. Whenever that happens, you should expect a normal leader at round 8. instead, as usually you won’t fight with that monster more than once.

In this screenshot Supercolossus appears on round 2.

Strategy for Sir Belgrave and Arglaxx

No matter which faction you’ll pick on Hard Mode, you’ll start with 12 units:

– 4 light
– 2 heavies
– 4 ranged
– 1 cavalry
– 1 Colossus

If you lose Colossus, the game is already over.

Sir Belgrave and Arglaxx are the easiest leaders to pass Survival Hard Mode with.

While playing as Templar Church or Beast Force, you should definetely focus on Colossus.

Colossus is immune to low level damaging spells, low level Archery arrows (Even Baron Wolfgang’s bowmen arrows can’t hurt it) and Fear, therefore it won’t flee. This is the only unit type that you can order Ferocious attack even if it has low morale.

While playing as Arglaxx, you need to focus on Heal Army first. At round 5, Heal Army should be at level 5. After that, keep raising Colossus Mastery until you’ll reach to last normal leader before Supercolossus (unless it appears on other place, but still you should master Raise dead before fighting it). When you beat that leader, add points to Raise Dead. Why? I’ll tell about it in later chapter.

Similarly with Sir Belgrave, but raise Colossus Mastery instead. Just like in Arglaxx, it’s recommended to have Heal Army up to level 5

At most cases give an order to your colossus to attack cautiously, this will prevent uneccessary HP loss while fighting with light and ranged units. Order Ferocious attack only when you want to finish off your enemy, as in that state it will be very vulnerable to damage while fighting with full squad.

At 5+ rounds, when your Colossus’s HP drops to approximetely 200 HP, use Heal army, but you should use wisely. At second side, you should use that spell as long as you’ll reach 100 Command points, because further killing enemy units without healing colossus is potentially dangerous.

Obviously the choice depends on situation.

Strategy for Emperor Antares

Antares’s units have maximum morale at beginning, it means they will never flee, but unlike colossus, you can’t order ferocious attack when they have low morale. Also you can’t retreat, it means you need to fight til last unit falls. Still, you are vulnerable to morale loss from using your units frequently and enemy’s War Drums [although “Death Imperium is immune to taunts”].

Start spamming with Raise dead from Round 1 and keep developing it [until you’ll reach level high enough to spawn a major part of light unit squad – approx 20 / 28 units per spell), then focus on Colossus Mastery

The game is slightly harder though as on Round 5 and beyond, you’ll deal with enemy’s 40 ranged troops which will injure and eventually kill few of your troops per round, until you kill them completely.

It’s harder, but still possible to pass Hard Survival mode as Antares

The Supercolossus

Shi-Tzu Rantula is a non-playable character which appears only in Survival mode. It is supposed to appear on last round of Survival, but due to bug, it can appear earlier, so at its place at round 8. there will be a normal leader. There can be two or more Shi-Tzu Rantulas in one Survival game session (it’s very rare though).

The monster has 625 HP, higher offense and defense (it’s more likely to hit and evade attacks dealt by your soldiers). Also it can attack more times than other colossi, up to 10 times per round [while normal ones can attack 8 times during one round], it’s more harming for your squads.

How to kill it easily?

There’s a colossus bug which makes enemy colossus attack only one time no matter if it fights with other colossus or not. Use Raise dead to spawn at least 16 light units and send them to fight with beast.

NEVER send colossus to attack Shi-Tzu Rantula before activating that bug!

Afterwards, send colossus and watch it killing the beast. That’s it

Ending

Hopefully this guide will be helpful for you.

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Good luck and have fun Crusaders 😀