Ice Army Caves guide (with videos)

It should be run for experience when your military rank is Warlord. I prefer to run it around 90-120, weaving long tunnels between every levels. This can be helpful to get yourself out of the awkward phase where hell pents are too hard for you.

You can control your workers by issuing chat commands to them.

follow : All workers in range of your command start following you

fight : All workers in range of your command start fighting anyone in sight.

guard : All workers in range of your command start guarding a spot.

transfer : All workers in range of your command start transferring platinum between two storages. Requires standing between two storages and facing the destination one.

mine : All workers in range of your command start mining platinum and drops it into the nearest storage. Requires facing a mine and being close enough to it.

take : All workers in range attempt to take control of a storage you're facing. This is necessary for using the /jp and the /eguard command.

Any of these commands will be ignored if your worker is already fighting an enemy worker.

Feel free to /alias the commands to make them easier to type. I use "/alias fo follow" and so forth.

You can issue commands to specific workers by adding their worker number to it. For example "555 fight"

A new worker costs 300 plat to spawn.

Warcry and endurance are the most important stats. Raise them in equal parts until warcry is maxed. You don't need to max endurance. 115 warcry and 95 endurance is enough to warcry 3 times, dealing HP damage to enemy workers which is really the only efficient way to kill them.

Speed is the second most important stats, it will allow you workers to fight faster and mine faster as well. This can give you the edge against a CPU that mines slower. I max it second.

Max worker is raised whenever you want, but it would be preferable to have 5 max workers by mission 4, around 8 max workers by mission 7, and around 11 max workers by the end of all missions.

Raise base income last, it's your insurance policy when things go badly.

Eguards are higher level units that are tethered to a storage. You don't need to kill the enemy eguards to complete a mission. You can spawn them yourself by using the /eguard command. A very important note is that you don't have unlimited e-guards and only replenish 1 per mission completed. You don't get refunded eguards even if you fail a mission. Use /info to check your eguards remaining.

You can use your own character to wedge yourself into a location to prevent workers from accessing them. This can be useful when your warcry starts dealing damage, because your workers will keep regenerating and warcrying more when they are unable to hit an enemy.

You can skip the intermediate storages by using a combination of mine and transfer commands.

Stagger your workers into a fight. You want each of them to get their 3 warcries out to deal HP damage. At first, this can be done by running around and issuing numbered fight commands, but when the enemy warcry starts to damage your worker, this will force the engagement. When you reach that point, keep them out of the fight by using the guard command and sending them in one at a time.

You can convert SU/GU to platinum by using it on your chest.

The ratios of conversion are 1k su/20 plat and 1k gu/200 plat. Given the costs of SU/GU at Jeremy in Return of Yendor, we can conclude that GU is more cost efficient.

Every mission can be run 3 times.

Mission 1. Spawn your workers and run east to the enemy. Go around the back of the eguard and take advantage of the fenced area. By standing in the path of the enemy workers, you can prevent one of them from attacking. This mission is linked with mission 2, so completing it will also complete mission 2.

Mission 3. Spawn your workers and run south west. Once in sight of the eguard, just head up and then back down to avoid the aggro range. Engage the enemy while making sure you do so out of range of the e-guard. This should be fairly easy if you levelled up warcry.

Mission 4. This is an annoying mission if you don't have warcry/end maxed out, so I skip ahead to mission 5 and then come back. With warcry maxed out, you can kill any group in here with 9 warcries, so 3 workers. Farm 5 workers and face off against the two factions. Since enemy warcry doesn't affect you yet, make sure to run in deep before starting an engagement, so that you affect every enemy worker with warcry.

Mission 5. As soon as you enter the mission, you need to spawn your workers right away, and head north west. You need to reach the enemy before they drop an eguard. /surrender if you don't make it. Remember to issue numbered fight commands to get your 3 warcries out on each worker. After you defeated the first enemy, you need to raise 5 workers to fight the remaining one.

Mission 6. Same strat as mission 3, except you start with 1 more worker.

Mission 7. Same strat as mission 4, except you start with 1 more worker.

Mission 8. Same strat as mission 5, except you start with 1 more worker. The first enemy will drop an eguard faster, so if your speed isn't up to... speed... then you will probably not make it in time.

Mission 9. Get 8 workers and place them in the center of the map on guard. Send in one worker at a time against either enemies.

Mission 10. Start mining, and as soon as you can afford a second worker, send it south west to fight the enemy, while your first worker is still mining. Just keep progressively adding more workers into the fight until the enemy is defeated.

Mission 11. This is a pvp map that offers no reward, skip it.

Mission 12. Start mining and force an early confrontation with the enemy south west and wipe him out ASAP. This isn't necessary, but I do it to cull the enemies I have to hunt after. Not much else say, once you have enough units, start hunting the other factions since they're relatively close.

Mission 13. Start mining and bring a single worker to take and then guard a depot a little to the south of the first enemy. This will force a confrontation that you will win because your workers are still mining. Keep spawning new workers and then sending them in to reinforce your first unit. Once the first enemy is defeated gather all your troops and hunt for the remaining one.

Mission 14. (Eguard method) Spawn your workers and rush north west to intercept the enemy dropping an eguard with a single worker. As soon as you get the chance, take a depot and then spawn an eguard to finish the enemy off. Repeat the same strategy for the remaining enemy.

Mission 14. (No eguard, zombie method) Get 6 workers and daisy chain them to gather platinum. Soon enough you'll get attacked in your base. Ignore it all. If no one is fighting in your base, they'll try to steal from your chest,so spawn a worker as soon as you see them preparing to do that. You cannot die as long as you have enough platinum to spawn a worker, so take advantage of that. Wait until they kill each other then spawn some workers to finish them off.

The video guides are in this playlist. I minimize the use of e-guards and don't convert SU/GU for the sake of the guide.