Castle Woodwarf – King Guide

Knowledge of upgrades, mechanics, and strategies that will make achieving score above 1000 easier.

Introduction

In my opinion, finding the strategies and tactics by yourself is more entertaining and this game itself is so shallow that players shouldn’t resort to a guide unless they simply can’t think for themselves yet still want to get the achievement. If you still feel like reading this guide, feel free to continue.

In the case that you have no idea what you should be doing, to get the King achievement you need to clear the game with a score of 1000 or higher which means spending less than 800 seconds to buy the final Level 10 Environment upgrade (the victory condition).

By following this guide, depending on your luck (the position of tree spawns), you should be able to score higher than 1100 on all game modes (vanilla, Might Challenge, Time Challenge).

Initial Setup

To start off the game, you should buy the following things:

• +1 Magic Tree (number of trees)
• +1 Lumberdwarf (a.k.a Cutter)
• +1 Upgrade Lumberdwarf
• +1 Upgrade Home (wood block value)
• +1 Gatherdwarf (a.k.a Collector)
• +1 Upgrade Gatherdwarf (number of blocks carried, walk speed)

This setup creates a single Cutter that hacks down a single tree down with two strikes into two 10 gold small blocks that the single Collector will bring back home (20 gold total) in one efficient and quick run.

Because the spawn position of trees is random, you might want to restart the game until you get a tree close to your house (ie. treescumming) so that the Cutter can hack it quickly and the collector can bring your first loot immediately for the next upgrade. In this case you should delay the purchase of your first Collector a little so that they don’t run past the Cutter and first wood blocks.

It doesn’t stop there either; if the tree spawns far right, the Cutter can only cut one tree before being forced to take a full trip to lake and back, wasting their energy (amount of trees they can cut in one visit) and your precious time which heavily affects your overall score in the long run. Early game is the place where you can waste the most time by being inefficient, so be careful.

First Paycheck, Next Trees, Second Setup

Just like with the first tree, the position of the second tree is equally important; the more trees your Cutter can hack down near your home, the quicker your Collector can bring home additional batches of gold. The crucial thing about early game is the order you start upgrading which should be determined by the position of the trees:

• A. If the second tree spawns close right to your cutter, buy another Collector
• B. If the second tree spawns far right to your cutter, buy another Tree
• C. If the second tree spawns left to your cutter, buy another Cutter

This is the main method for adapting to early tree spawn positions with upgrades to stabilize your pacing.

• In case of A, you will get another 20 gold batch much faster which gives you another quick upgrade choice (another Tree, another Cutter, or Cutter Upgrade).
• In case of B, buying another tree will reduce the time it takes for the Cutter to reach the next tree and allows him to cut multiple trees (instead of wasting energy and time on only two trees).
• In case of C, your first Cutter will waste their run but your second Cutter resets the situation and leaves wood near the home where the Collector can efficiently loot them.

Overall, the most stable choice regardless of the situation is buying another tree, but if you can think quickly and act accordingly then the aforementioned routes will greatly improve your pacing in the most crucial point of the game.

For the third tree spawn, you want to adapt to overall situation similarly to the second tree spawn with your purchases/upgrades and gradually reach the following setup:

• 3 Trees on Level 1
• 2 Cutters on Level 3
• 3 Collectors on Level 4
• Level 3 Home

Each of these upgrades cost only up to 50 gold (excluding Level 3 Home which is 200 gold). This makes the setup very flexible to upgrade into and keeps your pacing in good shape. This setup results in two Cutters that hack trees with one swing, ideally set apart from each other with your purchase timing so that they don’t overlap (most important tactic throughout the whole game), and three Collectors who can keep up with all the small blocks. By the time you reach this point, you should still have at least 50 Fish left and be ready for the next step.

Fish Production, Third Setup

Once you start running low on Fish, you should get:

• Level 2 Environment (Fish value)
• 3x Fisherdwarf on Level 4
• Upgrade Tree Level 2

This will make a shift from 2x small wood blocks to only 1x big ones which allows your Collectors to loot everything more efficiently. Buying low level Fishers early in the game will only hamper your progress by increasing the number of mouths to be fed while delaying your gold production (spending money on Fish upgrades instead of Tree / Cutter / Collector upgrades), so upgrading fishing stuff all at once when you have the money (470 gold for the setup above) works out better.

Once your Fish production is sustainable, the next setup you want to aim for is:

• 5x Trees on Level 5
• 4x Cutters on Level 5
• 5x Collectors on Level 6
• Upgrade Home Level 4 or 5

This is the next ideal setup for Cutters because it takes two L5 strikes to cut one L5 Tree (which puts out two big blocks) which means you can have two Cutters running in two waves that cut down everything quickly and efficiently. This is so efficient that it works even as your final setup as long as your four Cutters won’t overlap into a single four Cutter wave (ie. 4×1 wave instead of 2×2 waves) which can be avoided through the timing of your Cutter purchase. If your Cutters form into waves of 3 and 1, you can still buy a fifth Cutter with a careful timing to balance it back into two waves (3 and 2) that keep cutting trees quickly without catching up with each other unless you get lots of unlucky same spot tree spawns.

Increasing the number of trees means the chance of Cutters running out of energy to return home quicker increases (more efficient cutting), but so increases the chance of tree spawning in the same spot more than twice which is the thing you want to avoid the most (because it eventually leads to Cutters catching up to each other and overlapping), so the choice between 5 and 6 Trees can be difficult. Another reason to not buy the 6th Tree is saving the upgrade money (1000 gold) for upgrading Environment instead (which you will be doing anyway since it’s the main goal of the game).

Upgrading Environment & Dragon

Once you get your Environment upgraded to level 3 (400 gold), your basement starts producing gold out of thin air over time. At first it doesn’t affect the overall income by that much, but on higher levels it overcomes the amount of gold you get from a 5×5 Cutter-Tree setup and the ultimate goal (clearing the game) is Level 10 Environment upgrade which is why upgrading Environment should be the top priority in the late game. This also means that spending 1000 or 2000 gold upgrades on anything but Environment Upgrade (and Dragon when necessary) is also questionable.

That being said, in the case your Cutters happen to overlap into a single big wave, you can upgrade and/or buy more Trees to make Cutters spend all of their energy and make them return home quicker and gain more money from each wave. Level 8 Trees will produce three big blocks so it’s more efficient than Levels 6 and 7, but still not really worth all the gold, especially because bigger trees take longer to grow and prematurely cut trees don’t give the full amount of blocks (despite using as much energy from Cutters to cut down as fully grown trees). The penalty of same spot spawns is also much harsher with bigger trees for that reason.

Upgrading your Dragon should be done only just before the waves happen because a higher level Dragon consumes more Fish. If your pacing is good then you barely need to spend any thought on upgrading the Dragon, just upgrade it when the enemies that come are significantly bigger than the Dragon itself. You should NEVER SKIP WAVES, the amount of gold you get for it is tiny when compared to the cost of additional Dragon upgrades that you have to spend on in the long run.

While Might Challenge doesn’t change things that much, Time Challenge makes things harder because the very first wave comes quicker and forces you use money on your Dragon that you’d want to spend on other upgrades to improve your pacing. Ironically Might Challenge might be the easiest since it doesn’t have the vanilla prologue that actually eats your score before you get to actually play.

Summary

In summary:

• Early game is the most crucial phase; focus on what’s happening on the screen and adapt accordingly.
• Time your upgrades carefully; don’t let Cutters ever overlap into a single big wave.
• Use efficient setups to increase your income up to a sustainable level before upgrading Fishers or Dragon.
• Buying non-Environment 1000+ gold upgrades in late game is generally a waste of money.

In the end, luck (tree spawn positions) can hugely affect your score any point in the game (successive same spot tree spawns), so don’t give up if you fail once or twice!