Overview
- Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
- Offline: 12/12 (200)
- Online: 0/0 (0)
- Approximate amount of time to 200: 15-25 hours
- Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 2 (One on War Mage, one on Nightmare)
- Number of missable achievements: None
- Do cheat codes disable achievements?: No Cheats
- Does difficulty affect achievements?: Yes
- Glitchy achievements: None
- Unobtainable achievements: None
- Extra equipment needed?: None
Introduction:
Orcs Must Die! is the first release from Robot Entertainment, founded by some people leftover from Ensemble Studios, who made Halo Wars. It is a tower defense game, but instead of having the traditional top-down view it is a third-person action game. You have to stop waves of orcs and various other monsters advancing from all over the area from reaching a magical rift in the back of your castle. You can use traps and towers to stop them, but unlike normal tower defense games you yourself are also a key force to stopping the waves.
Step #1: War Mage run:
When you first start, you will only have two difficulties available: Apprentice, and War Mage. Playing on Apprentice is pretty pointless unless you want to get the hang of the game, but the game eases you into things pretty well anyway and War Mage is easy enough to get the swing of things.
Your first decision is whether or not you want to try and get all 5 skulls on your first run-through or not. The main disadvantage to doing it on your first run-through is that you won't have every weapon or trap, and while many video guides online will assume you do, it is far from necessary. If you run into trouble on any given level and look up a video guide but they're using weapons you don't have, the strategy can almost always be tweaked to accommodate what you do have. For example, if they are using the Brimstone trap and you don't have it yet, the spike trap should work just as fine.
A very important link to keep in mind is the guide at xblafans.com which will break down every weapon, enemy, weaver, and provide video and text guides for every level. They will also give a wave breakdown for every level, so you know what will be coming at you at any given time and how to prepare.
See "Ultimate War Mage" in the guide for more information
Step #2: Nightmare run:
This is a step a lot of people seem to be afraid of, but it's not nearly as bad as you'd think. The main difference is that you are given little to no time to prepare, but this can be easily overcome with a few simple things to remember (see "Legendary War Mage" in the guide for more information).
Step #3: Clean-Up:
Nothing too crazy here. All of the achievements can be gained easily with a little strategy (or a little grinding in the case of "Member: 30k Club"). If you're having any trouble with a particular achievement, look it up in the guide for help.
[x360a would like to thank relauby for this Roadmap]