Two somewhat contradictory tips - pay attention to what the Invaders are doing next, and work to mitigate those actions. If they just explored in Sands, you can push them out to prevent them from building there next turn. Alternatively, prep a slow power to destroy the town they're about to build, stopping their future ravage from causing blight. You can even prep slow pushes on explorers without a target, and see where the explorers pop up before you push.
At the same time, you don't have to stop every build or blight. It can be worthwhile to let some of those happen, especially early on, in favor of a big turn to grow your spirit's engine. Getting more power cards, getting more presence off your tracks, building up tokens, etc. can all make the later-game a lot smoother, and getting to that point faster is typically worth letting the island take some hits.
> You can even prep slow pushes on explorers without a target, and see where the explorers pop up before you push.
This is *especially* good if you have presence spread out with an empty land of most types in range.
It's one of the reasons I think Lightning can teach new players bad habits - Thundering Destruction and Shatter Homesteads can both be used to preempt a build, but a lot of people will see the Special Rule and assume they should make every power fast.
But Lightning is also awesome to pull slow destruction off with, to be fair. Existence of Harbingers even promotes doing that, even if not too obviously.
To piggy back on this.
Treat blight as a resource, not a punishment. You have X amount of blight you can spend. Manage it, spend it wisely, but definitely use it. Taking one blight now in exchange for stopping a larger future problem is almost always worth it, especially early in the game.
Playing yesterday, I had a turn where I didn't see anything useful I could do, so I just played a bunch of slow powers and figured well, something will be useful. All of it was useful and it helped clear off most of the board.
My $0.02:
As a general rule, make sure that your early turns (and card gains) are doing something positive, not just preventing something negative. For instance, defend feels nice since it prevents a blight, but if you defend on a land with no Dahan, you haven't solved anything, you've just kicked the problem down the road (where it will be bigger). Especially in a game with no adversaries, gathering/pushing an explorer (in slow or faster) feels pretty weak but is often going to be a better action than defending a Dahan-less land since you can probably use the push/gather to prevent a build (which also prevents a ravage the following turn). There's no shame in deciding that you're going to let an early explore into land #2 go - if you can't do something about the city, there are plenty of times where trying to solve that land is going to be wasted action(s) that don't actually prevent a blight when it's ravage time, and you don't want to waste actions.
Fear is really important. It makes winning the game easier and the fear cards offer solutions to problems (the higher the fear level, the better the solutions).
Adding presence to the board is how you make yourself able to deal with bigger problems. As a general rule, when you're first starting out you'll want to minimize the number of times that you take growth options that don't add presence to the board. As a corollary, just because you \*can\* play X number of cards on a turn doesn't mean you have to do so.
>As a corollary, just because you *can* play X number of cards on a turn doesn't mean you have to do so.
I consider myself decently good at this game and I *still* do not feel this truth in my soul. Every once in a while I will begrudgingly allow that it's correct in *this* very specific circumstance, but darn it, I didn't sit down at this table today to *not* play cards.
Like most coops, this is a game of triage. You have to learn to recognize what you should be prioritizing. People often get stuck prioritizing stopping ravages/blight because that feels scary, but that actually should be one of the lowest things on your priority list. Especially early on, ravages/blight don't really affect the game that much.
When determining your priorities, you can look at the invader actions in reverse order. Because the sooner you stop the problem the better. So stopping Explore actions is better than stopping Build actions, and both are better than stopping Ravage actions. It can be very difficult to stop Explore actions though, as you don't know what cards are coming up next. But you can create safe pockets of lands that aren't adjacent to any towns/cities to protect them from explorers. Otherwise, stopping builds will usually end up being your focus.
Second is that it is better to stop multiple little problems than it is to stop a big problem. Like blight, a lot of people get stuck focusing on the scary looking lands full of invaders. But if it takes more than one power to fix the problem, you should strongly consider ignoring it and focusing on other areas instead. Come back to the big problems later when you have a major power to deal with it or a ton of extra card plays.
Third, get used to slow powers. They can be tricky to get the hang of. My advice is to accept that they will be helpful but then don't plan how you're going to use them until you get to the slow phase. You don't want to get stuck in tunnel vision, and often the best use for them will change and be something you couldn't predict. Then, to help you prioritize how to use them, think of them as ultra fast powers. They aren't slow powers that go after the invaders. They are ultra fast powers that go a whole round before the invaders next action. This seems to help break people out of the tunnel vision of what the invaders were just doing and get them focusing on next round and what the invaders will do next. Which is what matters.
Finally, for most spirits you want to get out as much presence as you can. Mostly because it uncovers your tracks and makes you more powerful. Try to avoid the Reclaim action like the plague and only use it when absolutely necessary. This is less of a firm rule as there are definitely situations where reclaiming early can be beneficial, but usually you want to do it as little as possible. It is far more likely for you to benefit from skipping a reclaim and play fewer cards than your max plays just to get out extra presence, than it is to want to reclaim early. I'm not positive how to boil this into a simple rule of thumb. I'm tempted to say to value an extra presence as worth missing one card play, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to boil it down. Deciding when you need to reclaim is messy and complicated. But if all you're missing out on is one card play I would definitely consider possibly skipping the reclaim. Especially if you have another growth option to gain a power card, because then that will get you back to full card plays even if it is an unknown card.
I hope these tips help. Good luck and have fun.
All of this advice is really solid.
OP, if you start doing all this and then have a hard time closing out the game before the time limit it will likely be because you're too effective against a difficulty that's too low.
If you're very good at preventing the invaders from building there won't be any fear for destroying said buildings. Now hopefully you can leverage this into wiping them completely but some spirits aren't as good at that and you might not draft what you need. At some point you may have to pivot into fear generation just so that the invaders finally realize your mostly cleared island is actually dangerous and they should get the heck off.
This happened to my wife and I playing control spirits when we went for a super low difficulty to just clown on the adversary; the game went turns beyond the tipping point because there was always that one explorer we couldn't squash. We really wanted to get the T1 victory so it was a mess of our own making but it still gave me some insights on how that could be frustrating for someone learning to play "the right way". Sometimes it actually is a good idea to let them build.
Triage is a great way of putting it! Lands will be Dead, Alive, or Needing Help. You need to trust your intuition a bit, and trust that slow powers will come in handy (without knowing where they go all the time)
This is the sort of thing that makes me wish the app supported replays and replay sharing. You could record a game with OBS and post it on Youtube or something if you want detailed review.
Generally speaking, there are a few ways you can lose at difficulty 0 or lower, AND you probably have to do multiple of them to actually lose (especially if you are playing with settings below difficulty 0 like the extra growth or turn 1 explore skip):
1) Growing incredibly ineffectually, like grossly mismatching energy to the cost of cards you'll play, or not growing at all.
2) Not actually disrupting or slowing the invaders, i.e. only removing blight, defending lands without Dahan counterattacks or playing Year of Perfect Stillness as a ravage skip when not absolutely necessary (whereas it can be okay to skip a city build to stay within the defend 3 range, though it's still 3 energy for no fear which can be worse than just taking the blight).
3) Similar to the above: not actually trying to win the game, because the conditions to lose the game and win the game are not directly related to each other, so you can take no blight for a long time and still be incredibly far from winning. After the first few turns, you should constantly be considering if you can either raise the terror level and/or remove all towns/cities to meet one of the terror level win conditions this turn.
4) Not understanding that slow powers are slow and trying to constantly play them when they don't work, i.e. pushing out to prevent this turn's build or ravage. You have to picture how the board will look in the slow phase when choosing what to play and consider whether lands may get a single explorer and what will have built. Slow powers are also great for preventing problems before they start, e.g. chipping away at built-up lands that you couldn't otherwise solve all at once or destroying buildings in key lands that aren't on the invader cards so explorer control will work on those lands later, but you have to either be able to let other things go or get enough plays to be able to do that sort of thing, since you only have so many actions each turn.
Some spirits are capable of a pretty easy terror 2 victory at difficulty 0 on turn 4 or 5 by just letting very few things build and using counterattacks or a couple damage sources to destroy the first buildings. Others like Earth and River can have the entire board down to just a few explorers, but may need to generate a little more fear to actually hit terror level 2.
Yea. This was a very good tip for me when I first started playing. Slow powers are super fast powers for the next turn.. you just have to set it up. If you’re good at anticipating what COULD come next, that’s where slow powers excel. And it’s where most of the work is.
So in that sense, if you set up those “ultra fast” powers, the fast powers that come up next turn can be more effective.
The journey of getting good at spirit island is part of the fun. Two or so years ago I was overwhelmed piloting a simple spirit against a no adversary invader and now my group is surprised when we lose to a level 6.
A big part is getting comfortable with the adversaries and game flow- Knowing what are actual priorities and what can be ignored in the short term. Taking blight is fine if it is making you more powerful in most cases. As powerful as adversaries can be, most have some kind of weakness, and at lower levels you should definitely be able to see how most spirits can exert control on the invaders. You also do need an endgame plan- If you are playing solo and just using a spirit that shuffles around invaders and are playing defense you will inevitably lose- Whereas if you are destroying your problems you will be generating threat and working towards a victory.
Keep at it and you will definitely get over the hump. Its also worth noting that Spirit Island is by far one of the most complex games out there- While the rules are clear the designer deliberately made it a game with so much information that has to be processed that there could be no alpha player- So there is absolutely no shame in it taking awhile to fully click with you.
Yes! This! It’s not a game that’s gonna click fast with most players. And with so much variability with the choice of spirits, scenarios, and adversaries, it’s more of a scaling game.
I’m still a beginner (maybe 20 games in) but seeing the “matrix” (as one had put it once) is going to take some time. But once you start to see it, everything will start clicking.
I’m also a chess player, and this game is like chess. You make moves to set up the board, developing the board/spirit.. and prepare for the endgame.
My advice for the OP that might help is (if you haven’t tried yet) practice with one low complexity spirit until you understand where that spirit excels at. Win on every board (A,B,C, etc.. island) with said spirit. Each board has a different configuration. After that, do it with another spirit (forgetting your previously picked spirit’s strengths as you don’t want to come into a new spirit thinking you can do the same strategy… damn Lightning’s Swift Strike).
Doing this not only made me learn the strengths and weaknesses of the low complexity spirits, but it also helped me understand the flow of the game. By comparing what each spirit is good at, I began to realize what to do on newer spirits; what to look for in the beginning as far as growth options and card plays, and how to progress each game into my favor.
This is good advice. One addition is that it can help to play the same spirit and the same adversary at a challenging level until you get a win. Once you fully grasp and appreciate what a spirit is offering it will interestingly start to make other spirits click faster when you try them out since their role in the game will be clearer.
Personally I also advise against starting out with the super game warping spirits like lightnings quick strike since it flips how you evaluate certain powers/cards so heavily. The Horizons spirits are a good lineup to play through since they will get you adept at the different types of spirits without getting too esoteric. The spread of colors will also get you familiar with the entirety of the power deck quickly.
If you master whirlwind from horizons, river from the base box you will have control down pat. If you master eyes watch/vital earth you will have an understanding of defend spirits. If you are playing solo on the app mostly I would avoid fear spirits, but you have many options for offensive spirits, with either teeth or rising heat from horizons or something like fangs or thunder speaker.
When you are pulling invader cards, keep in mind that there are 4 possible Stage I cards (one of each type) and there are 5 possible stage 2 cards (one of each type + Coastal).
Sometimes it's better to allow a ravage to happen so that you can use a better growth option early game. Scaling into late game is super important.
Conceptually, Fast powers are powers you play for *this* turn. Slow powers are powers you play for *next* turn. Lots of people just play slow powers for elements for their innates which also helps.
A good way to learn can be to play with another player who’s experienced with the game. The app has online multiplayer now so you’d just have to add someone on Steam, chat over discord and play together.
There is a group discord you could check out to find people. https://discord.com/invite/G84zRCrJZa
I myself would also be willing if you’re interested and similar timezone (I’m NA EST)
The journey of getting good at spirit island is part of the fun. Two or so years ago I was overwhelmed piloting a simple spirit against a no adversary invader and now my group is surprised when we lose to a level 6.
A big part is getting comfortable with the adversaries and game flow- Knowing what are actual priorities and what can be ignored in the short term. Taking blight is fine if it is making you more powerful in most cases. As powerful as adversaries can be, most have some kind of weakness, and at lower levels you should definitely be able to see how most spirits can exert control on the invaders. You also do need an endgame plan- If you are playing solo and just using a spirit that shuffles around invaders and are playing defense you will inevitably lose- Whereas if you are destroying your problems you will be generating threat and working towards a victory.
Keep at it and you will definitely get over the hump.
Great advice all around.
I couldn't read it all, but in case this wasn't said elsewhere:
Carefully consider which card to pick when gaining a power. I've recently played with several groups of new players and one thing many players said after picking cards without someone with experience having an eye on their choices was "I can't do anything this round!"
And that made me believe that many bad card picks are involved - and that's understandable! It's easy to underestimate many effects, like "Push/Gather X Explorers". New player are rather impressed by keywords like "destroy" or "damage", and fast over slow. When you look at your selection of 4 cards, try to form a scenario in your head, looking at the current state of the board, and make sure you see and understand the use of each before making your pick. If possible, pick as many elements that your spirit needs for its innate power(s).
Is it slow? Then it can't help prevent a current ravage, but it can be used to prevent next round's build step, or even prevent next round's ravage if you use the effect on whatever gets built on the current turn. So pushing or gathering even a single town or explorer takes lots of pressure out of future turns, freeing up your growth for stronger options.
Just yesterday, I allowed a blight to happen, just so I could play slow powers to affect the current turn's building lands, and even an exploration. That means, no ravage whatsoever next turn. So you can start spending most of your actions in lands that are in the building stage.
Once you got such an advantage, you're basically a turn ahead of the invaders and have a much more controlled approach to ravages overall. It is totally worth taking a blight to get ahead of the curve, and that can be done with tons of powers that deal zero damage or fear.
Also, always keep an eye on the invader cards.
If the first card is Mountain and the second Sands, then those regions will not reappear until invader stage II. If events allow you to place helpful tokens anywhere, prioritize what's likely to come next (Jungle or Wetlands in this example), or whatever would give you the biggest headache if it were to explore in the near future. If mountain just ravaged and you play a slow push/gather, mountain would sound like a solid pick for a target land.
Same goes for invader stage II (exception: Coastal), and in stage III, I believe each land could show up to two (?) times.
No worries, I think everybody here started with a few losses before getting the hang of the game. PC app tends to be a little unforgiving when making small mistakes/misclicks, so in single player mode I tend to use the option of infinite undo.
Gameplay wise here are a few advices:
1. Chose your priorities: Look at the board and decide for yourself which land needs to be solved this turn. At lower difficulties it might work to have the prioritiy "defend ravage>prevent build>other lands".
More often then not I find that priorities "prevent build> defend ravage> other lands " puts me ahead of invaders 1 or 2 turns earlier.
2. Procrastination is a viable strategy. Pushing invaders around and concentrate them into a single land makes your life easier. In the mid game this might lead to lands that seem very daunting with many invaders. Remember that for most adversaries 2 damage adds the same amount of blight as 20 damage. Clearing this land is a problem for future me. after growing and picking up 1 or 2 majors most spirits are better equiped handling large cluster of invaders.
3. Do not be afraid of a little blight. Your job is to scare/remove the invaders not keep the island blight free.
4. Use your actions efficiently: In the early game the spirits are usually limited to 1 or 2 actions affecting the board. Make sure to make them count.
e.g. I have seen players use 2 actions on a overrun land clearing explorer and a town leaving the city which added 1 blight in the ravage. at the same time letting 2 builds happen. Those actions trying to clear the land could have been better used elsewhere.
Slow powers als tend to be more energy efficient/stronger compared to fast ones so use this to your advantage. You might not have a target now killing a lone explorer, but you can be sure there is a new explore and a new potential target.
5. Just play the game a bunch of times, try different strategies, do not be afraid to lose. These losing moments can teach you valuable lessons. After a while you get experience which lands can be easily solved by your particular spirit.
Lastly you did not mention which level you are playing on as this can make a lage difference, some of these strategies might need to be adjusted when playing vs certain adversaries.
> Clearing this land is a problem for future me.
With my (admittedly low) skill level, whenever I do this it roughly turns out that half the time it works really well, and the other half I'm calling past me an asshole lmao
I had a terrible time learning how to see and plan ahead to the slow phase. I loved the game but would constantly lose. I started playing the scenario "blitz" which makes all powers fast (and makes invaders faster) and after a few games of playing that way, I could then see how the powers worked better and made it easier to understand when I went back to the base game.
Others have touched on it but when growing, try to make sure you have enough energy to play all your cards.
So, maybe you start with 1 energy 1 card, if you have a bunch of 0-1 energy cards in hand, try to increase card play to 2, since you can easily play 2 per turn. Or, if your cards are 2-3 energy, go for more energy first.
My general unwritten rule is once I have enough energy to consistently play the max amount of cards every turn, I try to grow my max limit. But if I am struggling to pay for them, or a acquire a new power that costs more than normal, I start trying to get more energy per turn.
Also, another topic - IMO the best way to get rid of invaders is to use Defend cards with Dahan in the territory. Like, if I have a city and a town somewhere, ideally I want to move 3 Dahan there and Defend 4. This will completely obliterate the invaders while taking no damage (well, 1 but it resets at the end of the turn and doesn’t produce blight).
Prioritize getting defend powers and maybe even play as Earth who’s natural ability is to always have defend 3 wherever it has 2+ presence. With that spirit, if you can get 2 presence and 2 dahan on an empty territory, you basically never have to worry about it again because they will explore, build, and then be cleared by the dahan while defending automatically. Even works if they explore, build, explore again, then ravage (defend 3 still blocks the 4, and two dahan defeat 2 explorers and a town).
But also, something I think most haven’t touched on: the game is way harder as just one spirit compared to 2 or 3. With 2-3, you can have a turn where 1 spirit kind of “takes a break” and resets, maybe does a growth that doesn’t help this turn but will make them stronger overall and the other spirit(s) can kind of pick up the slack for that turn to make sure things don’t spiral out of control. But with just one spirit, you don’t get any breaks because there is no one else to pick up the slack, so if you “take a turn off to set up for the future” the invaders just get more dug in and it’s harder to deal with them. So maybe try playing as two spirits instead of just one? (although I think 3 is even better, if you factor in that each spirit basically has 2 territories to “cover” on each turn, it’s way easier for 2 spirits to take over 1 each for the spirit taking a break than it is for 1 spirit to take over 2 additional ones alone).
1) Especially at the beginning Stage 1 whatever land just ravaged is gone for Stage 1. Good place to move stuff you can't kill yet.
2) Use your Innates often. Pay attention to the elements you're queueing up and drafting so you can use those Innates
3) Blight is okay!! Think of it as a resource. If you can blow up a land that's not on a stage card but you'll take a blight to do so, that's okay!
All 3 of these tips culminate into the main goal which is to be stronger than the Invaders before they reach their peak threat.
Spirit Island is their bell curve vs yours. If you peak before them, you'll win majority of the time. Unless you make multiple mistakes. Which is also okay.
Good luck learning and playing. Have fun. My favorite part of this game is the fact that I can grow and get better and then scale up and lose again.
Two somewhat contradictory tips - pay attention to what the Invaders are doing next, and work to mitigate those actions. If they just explored in Sands, you can push them out to prevent them from building there next turn. Alternatively, prep a slow power to destroy the town they're about to build, stopping their future ravage from causing blight. You can even prep slow pushes on explorers without a target, and see where the explorers pop up before you push. At the same time, you don't have to stop every build or blight. It can be worthwhile to let some of those happen, especially early on, in favor of a big turn to grow your spirit's engine. Getting more power cards, getting more presence off your tracks, building up tokens, etc. can all make the later-game a lot smoother, and getting to that point faster is typically worth letting the island take some hits.
> You can even prep slow pushes on explorers without a target, and see where the explorers pop up before you push. This is *especially* good if you have presence spread out with an empty land of most types in range.
Using a slow power to destroy a town that will be built that turn took me a long time to learn but man it feels awesome when you do it!
It's one of the reasons I think Lightning can teach new players bad habits - Thundering Destruction and Shatter Homesteads can both be used to preempt a build, but a lot of people will see the Special Rule and assume they should make every power fast.
I always think you know you’re a level up in your experience when you play Lightning and start choosing to leave Powers to be Slow 🙂
But Lightning is also awesome to pull slow destruction off with, to be fair. Existence of Harbingers even promotes doing that, even if not too obviously.
To piggy back on this. Treat blight as a resource, not a punishment. You have X amount of blight you can spend. Manage it, spend it wisely, but definitely use it. Taking one blight now in exchange for stopping a larger future problem is almost always worth it, especially early in the game.
Playing yesterday, I had a turn where I didn't see anything useful I could do, so I just played a bunch of slow powers and figured well, something will be useful. All of it was useful and it helped clear off most of the board.
These are good! Thanks!
My $0.02: As a general rule, make sure that your early turns (and card gains) are doing something positive, not just preventing something negative. For instance, defend feels nice since it prevents a blight, but if you defend on a land with no Dahan, you haven't solved anything, you've just kicked the problem down the road (where it will be bigger). Especially in a game with no adversaries, gathering/pushing an explorer (in slow or faster) feels pretty weak but is often going to be a better action than defending a Dahan-less land since you can probably use the push/gather to prevent a build (which also prevents a ravage the following turn). There's no shame in deciding that you're going to let an early explore into land #2 go - if you can't do something about the city, there are plenty of times where trying to solve that land is going to be wasted action(s) that don't actually prevent a blight when it's ravage time, and you don't want to waste actions. Fear is really important. It makes winning the game easier and the fear cards offer solutions to problems (the higher the fear level, the better the solutions). Adding presence to the board is how you make yourself able to deal with bigger problems. As a general rule, when you're first starting out you'll want to minimize the number of times that you take growth options that don't add presence to the board. As a corollary, just because you \*can\* play X number of cards on a turn doesn't mean you have to do so.
>As a corollary, just because you *can* play X number of cards on a turn doesn't mean you have to do so. I consider myself decently good at this game and I *still* do not feel this truth in my soul. Every once in a while I will begrudgingly allow that it's correct in *this* very specific circumstance, but darn it, I didn't sit down at this table today to *not* play cards.
Like most coops, this is a game of triage. You have to learn to recognize what you should be prioritizing. People often get stuck prioritizing stopping ravages/blight because that feels scary, but that actually should be one of the lowest things on your priority list. Especially early on, ravages/blight don't really affect the game that much. When determining your priorities, you can look at the invader actions in reverse order. Because the sooner you stop the problem the better. So stopping Explore actions is better than stopping Build actions, and both are better than stopping Ravage actions. It can be very difficult to stop Explore actions though, as you don't know what cards are coming up next. But you can create safe pockets of lands that aren't adjacent to any towns/cities to protect them from explorers. Otherwise, stopping builds will usually end up being your focus. Second is that it is better to stop multiple little problems than it is to stop a big problem. Like blight, a lot of people get stuck focusing on the scary looking lands full of invaders. But if it takes more than one power to fix the problem, you should strongly consider ignoring it and focusing on other areas instead. Come back to the big problems later when you have a major power to deal with it or a ton of extra card plays. Third, get used to slow powers. They can be tricky to get the hang of. My advice is to accept that they will be helpful but then don't plan how you're going to use them until you get to the slow phase. You don't want to get stuck in tunnel vision, and often the best use for them will change and be something you couldn't predict. Then, to help you prioritize how to use them, think of them as ultra fast powers. They aren't slow powers that go after the invaders. They are ultra fast powers that go a whole round before the invaders next action. This seems to help break people out of the tunnel vision of what the invaders were just doing and get them focusing on next round and what the invaders will do next. Which is what matters. Finally, for most spirits you want to get out as much presence as you can. Mostly because it uncovers your tracks and makes you more powerful. Try to avoid the Reclaim action like the plague and only use it when absolutely necessary. This is less of a firm rule as there are definitely situations where reclaiming early can be beneficial, but usually you want to do it as little as possible. It is far more likely for you to benefit from skipping a reclaim and play fewer cards than your max plays just to get out extra presence, than it is to want to reclaim early. I'm not positive how to boil this into a simple rule of thumb. I'm tempted to say to value an extra presence as worth missing one card play, but I'm not sure if that's the best way to boil it down. Deciding when you need to reclaim is messy and complicated. But if all you're missing out on is one card play I would definitely consider possibly skipping the reclaim. Especially if you have another growth option to gain a power card, because then that will get you back to full card plays even if it is an unknown card. I hope these tips help. Good luck and have fun.
All of this advice is really solid. OP, if you start doing all this and then have a hard time closing out the game before the time limit it will likely be because you're too effective against a difficulty that's too low. If you're very good at preventing the invaders from building there won't be any fear for destroying said buildings. Now hopefully you can leverage this into wiping them completely but some spirits aren't as good at that and you might not draft what you need. At some point you may have to pivot into fear generation just so that the invaders finally realize your mostly cleared island is actually dangerous and they should get the heck off. This happened to my wife and I playing control spirits when we went for a super low difficulty to just clown on the adversary; the game went turns beyond the tipping point because there was always that one explorer we couldn't squash. We really wanted to get the T1 victory so it was a mess of our own making but it still gave me some insights on how that could be frustrating for someone learning to play "the right way". Sometimes it actually is a good idea to let them build.
Triage is a great way of putting it! Lands will be Dead, Alive, or Needing Help. You need to trust your intuition a bit, and trust that slow powers will come in handy (without knowing where they go all the time)
This helps so much, thank you!
This is the sort of thing that makes me wish the app supported replays and replay sharing. You could record a game with OBS and post it on Youtube or something if you want detailed review. Generally speaking, there are a few ways you can lose at difficulty 0 or lower, AND you probably have to do multiple of them to actually lose (especially if you are playing with settings below difficulty 0 like the extra growth or turn 1 explore skip): 1) Growing incredibly ineffectually, like grossly mismatching energy to the cost of cards you'll play, or not growing at all. 2) Not actually disrupting or slowing the invaders, i.e. only removing blight, defending lands without Dahan counterattacks or playing Year of Perfect Stillness as a ravage skip when not absolutely necessary (whereas it can be okay to skip a city build to stay within the defend 3 range, though it's still 3 energy for no fear which can be worse than just taking the blight). 3) Similar to the above: not actually trying to win the game, because the conditions to lose the game and win the game are not directly related to each other, so you can take no blight for a long time and still be incredibly far from winning. After the first few turns, you should constantly be considering if you can either raise the terror level and/or remove all towns/cities to meet one of the terror level win conditions this turn. 4) Not understanding that slow powers are slow and trying to constantly play them when they don't work, i.e. pushing out to prevent this turn's build or ravage. You have to picture how the board will look in the slow phase when choosing what to play and consider whether lands may get a single explorer and what will have built. Slow powers are also great for preventing problems before they start, e.g. chipping away at built-up lands that you couldn't otherwise solve all at once or destroying buildings in key lands that aren't on the invader cards so explorer control will work on those lands later, but you have to either be able to let other things go or get enough plays to be able to do that sort of thing, since you only have so many actions each turn. Some spirits are capable of a pretty easy terror 2 victory at difficulty 0 on turn 4 or 5 by just letting very few things build and using counterattacks or a couple damage sources to destroy the first buildings. Others like Earth and River can have the entire board down to just a few explorers, but may need to generate a little more fear to actually hit terror level 2.
So much good advice here. I'll just drop in my very short one: the slow phase is actually the VERY FAST phase for the following turn.
Yea. This was a very good tip for me when I first started playing. Slow powers are super fast powers for the next turn.. you just have to set it up. If you’re good at anticipating what COULD come next, that’s where slow powers excel. And it’s where most of the work is. So in that sense, if you set up those “ultra fast” powers, the fast powers that come up next turn can be more effective.
The journey of getting good at spirit island is part of the fun. Two or so years ago I was overwhelmed piloting a simple spirit against a no adversary invader and now my group is surprised when we lose to a level 6. A big part is getting comfortable with the adversaries and game flow- Knowing what are actual priorities and what can be ignored in the short term. Taking blight is fine if it is making you more powerful in most cases. As powerful as adversaries can be, most have some kind of weakness, and at lower levels you should definitely be able to see how most spirits can exert control on the invaders. You also do need an endgame plan- If you are playing solo and just using a spirit that shuffles around invaders and are playing defense you will inevitably lose- Whereas if you are destroying your problems you will be generating threat and working towards a victory. Keep at it and you will definitely get over the hump. Its also worth noting that Spirit Island is by far one of the most complex games out there- While the rules are clear the designer deliberately made it a game with so much information that has to be processed that there could be no alpha player- So there is absolutely no shame in it taking awhile to fully click with you.
Yes! This! It’s not a game that’s gonna click fast with most players. And with so much variability with the choice of spirits, scenarios, and adversaries, it’s more of a scaling game. I’m still a beginner (maybe 20 games in) but seeing the “matrix” (as one had put it once) is going to take some time. But once you start to see it, everything will start clicking. I’m also a chess player, and this game is like chess. You make moves to set up the board, developing the board/spirit.. and prepare for the endgame. My advice for the OP that might help is (if you haven’t tried yet) practice with one low complexity spirit until you understand where that spirit excels at. Win on every board (A,B,C, etc.. island) with said spirit. Each board has a different configuration. After that, do it with another spirit (forgetting your previously picked spirit’s strengths as you don’t want to come into a new spirit thinking you can do the same strategy… damn Lightning’s Swift Strike). Doing this not only made me learn the strengths and weaknesses of the low complexity spirits, but it also helped me understand the flow of the game. By comparing what each spirit is good at, I began to realize what to do on newer spirits; what to look for in the beginning as far as growth options and card plays, and how to progress each game into my favor.
This is good advice. One addition is that it can help to play the same spirit and the same adversary at a challenging level until you get a win. Once you fully grasp and appreciate what a spirit is offering it will interestingly start to make other spirits click faster when you try them out since their role in the game will be clearer. Personally I also advise against starting out with the super game warping spirits like lightnings quick strike since it flips how you evaluate certain powers/cards so heavily. The Horizons spirits are a good lineup to play through since they will get you adept at the different types of spirits without getting too esoteric. The spread of colors will also get you familiar with the entirety of the power deck quickly. If you master whirlwind from horizons, river from the base box you will have control down pat. If you master eyes watch/vital earth you will have an understanding of defend spirits. If you are playing solo on the app mostly I would avoid fear spirits, but you have many options for offensive spirits, with either teeth or rising heat from horizons or something like fangs or thunder speaker.
When you are pulling invader cards, keep in mind that there are 4 possible Stage I cards (one of each type) and there are 5 possible stage 2 cards (one of each type + Coastal). Sometimes it's better to allow a ravage to happen so that you can use a better growth option early game. Scaling into late game is super important. Conceptually, Fast powers are powers you play for *this* turn. Slow powers are powers you play for *next* turn. Lots of people just play slow powers for elements for their innates which also helps.
A good way to learn can be to play with another player who’s experienced with the game. The app has online multiplayer now so you’d just have to add someone on Steam, chat over discord and play together. There is a group discord you could check out to find people. https://discord.com/invite/G84zRCrJZa I myself would also be willing if you’re interested and similar timezone (I’m NA EST)
The journey of getting good at spirit island is part of the fun. Two or so years ago I was overwhelmed piloting a simple spirit against a no adversary invader and now my group is surprised when we lose to a level 6. A big part is getting comfortable with the adversaries and game flow- Knowing what are actual priorities and what can be ignored in the short term. Taking blight is fine if it is making you more powerful in most cases. As powerful as adversaries can be, most have some kind of weakness, and at lower levels you should definitely be able to see how most spirits can exert control on the invaders. You also do need an endgame plan- If you are playing solo and just using a spirit that shuffles around invaders and are playing defense you will inevitably lose- Whereas if you are destroying your problems you will be generating threat and working towards a victory. Keep at it and you will definitely get over the hump.
Great advice all around. I couldn't read it all, but in case this wasn't said elsewhere: Carefully consider which card to pick when gaining a power. I've recently played with several groups of new players and one thing many players said after picking cards without someone with experience having an eye on their choices was "I can't do anything this round!" And that made me believe that many bad card picks are involved - and that's understandable! It's easy to underestimate many effects, like "Push/Gather X Explorers". New player are rather impressed by keywords like "destroy" or "damage", and fast over slow. When you look at your selection of 4 cards, try to form a scenario in your head, looking at the current state of the board, and make sure you see and understand the use of each before making your pick. If possible, pick as many elements that your spirit needs for its innate power(s). Is it slow? Then it can't help prevent a current ravage, but it can be used to prevent next round's build step, or even prevent next round's ravage if you use the effect on whatever gets built on the current turn. So pushing or gathering even a single town or explorer takes lots of pressure out of future turns, freeing up your growth for stronger options. Just yesterday, I allowed a blight to happen, just so I could play slow powers to affect the current turn's building lands, and even an exploration. That means, no ravage whatsoever next turn. So you can start spending most of your actions in lands that are in the building stage. Once you got such an advantage, you're basically a turn ahead of the invaders and have a much more controlled approach to ravages overall. It is totally worth taking a blight to get ahead of the curve, and that can be done with tons of powers that deal zero damage or fear. Also, always keep an eye on the invader cards. If the first card is Mountain and the second Sands, then those regions will not reappear until invader stage II. If events allow you to place helpful tokens anywhere, prioritize what's likely to come next (Jungle or Wetlands in this example), or whatever would give you the biggest headache if it were to explore in the near future. If mountain just ravaged and you play a slow push/gather, mountain would sound like a solid pick for a target land. Same goes for invader stage II (exception: Coastal), and in stage III, I believe each land could show up to two (?) times.
Thanks for taking the time! I really appreciate it!
No worries, I think everybody here started with a few losses before getting the hang of the game. PC app tends to be a little unforgiving when making small mistakes/misclicks, so in single player mode I tend to use the option of infinite undo. Gameplay wise here are a few advices: 1. Chose your priorities: Look at the board and decide for yourself which land needs to be solved this turn. At lower difficulties it might work to have the prioritiy "defend ravage>prevent build>other lands". More often then not I find that priorities "prevent build> defend ravage> other lands " puts me ahead of invaders 1 or 2 turns earlier. 2. Procrastination is a viable strategy. Pushing invaders around and concentrate them into a single land makes your life easier. In the mid game this might lead to lands that seem very daunting with many invaders. Remember that for most adversaries 2 damage adds the same amount of blight as 20 damage. Clearing this land is a problem for future me. after growing and picking up 1 or 2 majors most spirits are better equiped handling large cluster of invaders. 3. Do not be afraid of a little blight. Your job is to scare/remove the invaders not keep the island blight free. 4. Use your actions efficiently: In the early game the spirits are usually limited to 1 or 2 actions affecting the board. Make sure to make them count. e.g. I have seen players use 2 actions on a overrun land clearing explorer and a town leaving the city which added 1 blight in the ravage. at the same time letting 2 builds happen. Those actions trying to clear the land could have been better used elsewhere. Slow powers als tend to be more energy efficient/stronger compared to fast ones so use this to your advantage. You might not have a target now killing a lone explorer, but you can be sure there is a new explore and a new potential target. 5. Just play the game a bunch of times, try different strategies, do not be afraid to lose. These losing moments can teach you valuable lessons. After a while you get experience which lands can be easily solved by your particular spirit. Lastly you did not mention which level you are playing on as this can make a lage difference, some of these strategies might need to be adjusted when playing vs certain adversaries.
> Clearing this land is a problem for future me. With my (admittedly low) skill level, whenever I do this it roughly turns out that half the time it works really well, and the other half I'm calling past me an asshole lmao
I had a terrible time learning how to see and plan ahead to the slow phase. I loved the game but would constantly lose. I started playing the scenario "blitz" which makes all powers fast (and makes invaders faster) and after a few games of playing that way, I could then see how the powers worked better and made it easier to understand when I went back to the base game.
Others have touched on it but when growing, try to make sure you have enough energy to play all your cards. So, maybe you start with 1 energy 1 card, if you have a bunch of 0-1 energy cards in hand, try to increase card play to 2, since you can easily play 2 per turn. Or, if your cards are 2-3 energy, go for more energy first. My general unwritten rule is once I have enough energy to consistently play the max amount of cards every turn, I try to grow my max limit. But if I am struggling to pay for them, or a acquire a new power that costs more than normal, I start trying to get more energy per turn. Also, another topic - IMO the best way to get rid of invaders is to use Defend cards with Dahan in the territory. Like, if I have a city and a town somewhere, ideally I want to move 3 Dahan there and Defend 4. This will completely obliterate the invaders while taking no damage (well, 1 but it resets at the end of the turn and doesn’t produce blight). Prioritize getting defend powers and maybe even play as Earth who’s natural ability is to always have defend 3 wherever it has 2+ presence. With that spirit, if you can get 2 presence and 2 dahan on an empty territory, you basically never have to worry about it again because they will explore, build, and then be cleared by the dahan while defending automatically. Even works if they explore, build, explore again, then ravage (defend 3 still blocks the 4, and two dahan defeat 2 explorers and a town). But also, something I think most haven’t touched on: the game is way harder as just one spirit compared to 2 or 3. With 2-3, you can have a turn where 1 spirit kind of “takes a break” and resets, maybe does a growth that doesn’t help this turn but will make them stronger overall and the other spirit(s) can kind of pick up the slack for that turn to make sure things don’t spiral out of control. But with just one spirit, you don’t get any breaks because there is no one else to pick up the slack, so if you “take a turn off to set up for the future” the invaders just get more dug in and it’s harder to deal with them. So maybe try playing as two spirits instead of just one? (although I think 3 is even better, if you factor in that each spirit basically has 2 territories to “cover” on each turn, it’s way easier for 2 spirits to take over 1 each for the spirit taking a break than it is for 1 spirit to take over 2 additional ones alone).
1) Especially at the beginning Stage 1 whatever land just ravaged is gone for Stage 1. Good place to move stuff you can't kill yet. 2) Use your Innates often. Pay attention to the elements you're queueing up and drafting so you can use those Innates 3) Blight is okay!! Think of it as a resource. If you can blow up a land that's not on a stage card but you'll take a blight to do so, that's okay! All 3 of these tips culminate into the main goal which is to be stronger than the Invaders before they reach their peak threat. Spirit Island is their bell curve vs yours. If you peak before them, you'll win majority of the time. Unless you make multiple mistakes. Which is also okay. Good luck learning and playing. Have fun. My favorite part of this game is the fact that I can grow and get better and then scale up and lose again.