After every Death Night inAge Of Darkness: Final Stand, you get to choose from one of three Blessings. These buffs last until the end of the run, whether in victory or, as is much more likely, defeat. Making the right choice each time a Blessing comes your way can help hone your strategy and give you just enough of an advantage to see the dawn.
Every Blessing can be useful in the right circumstances, but some are more universally beneficial than others. When in doubt, this list can help you choose between a good Blessing and a better one, or avoid Blessings that don’t fit your build.
16Resourceful
Doubles The Value Of Resource Pickups
Resource gain can be slow in Age Of Darkness, especially if yourbuild order isn’t up to speed yetor a Nightmare attack has left your economy hampered. Resource pickups can help close the gap, but they’re rare enough that your Blessing slots are better spent elsewhere.
A possible exception to this rule is if you’replaying as Aurelia.Her Whip Flail attack causes some enemies todrop Dark Essence, and getting double the amount makes it much easier to balance her rapid expenditure of the rare red crystals with other needs, like recruiting Harbingers and buying high-tier unit skills.
15Night Watch
Enemies Sometimes Drop Resources At Night
If you really need combat to supplement your resource income, possibly because you’re going for the aggressiveLash OutAchievement,Night Watchis very helpful, if a bit unpredictable. It combos well with Resourceful, but that means dedicating two Blessing slots to relatively weak powers that could be replaced by just building and defending Lubmer Mills and Quarries.
While every Hero can expect to do their share of night fighting,Vizargoallows some opportunities to exploit Night Watch because of his enhance abilities after the sun goes down. Regardless of your chosen Hero,be sure to keep an eye on your resource capacity; drops don’t do you any good if there’s nowhere to put them!
14Truly Blessed
Doubles Your Hero’s XP Gain
Despite being a game about defense, success in Age Of Darkness requires you tostrike out with your Hero as often as possible, hunting Nightmares day and night to level up as quickly as you can. If they aren’t Level 10 by the Final Stand, you’re in big trouble.
Truly Blessedis great if it’s available as your first or second Blessing pick, butits value drops off sharply after that. It’s best used toensure that your Hero has all four abilities unlockedby the third Death Night, the better to handle the first appearance of Crushers and overwhelming waves of Crawlers that will emerge from that point on.
13Budget Carpenter
Buildings Cost Less To Construct
There are few moments more nail-bitingly tense in Age Of Darkness thanwatching the Death Night timer tick down, waiting for enough resources to come in that you can finish the last wall or tower that you need. It can literally come down to seconds, but byreducing the build cost with Budget Carpenter, you can start construction earlier and be more confident that you’ll be ready when the Nightmares attack.
12Motivated Laymen
Speeds Up Building Construction
Of course, by the late game, building costs shouldn’t be an issue - you’ll be much more concerned with making sure that a new building is ready to serve its purpose by the time the Swarm hits.Motivated Laymenreduces build times by a respectable fifteen percent, giving you much better ability to react to emergencies lilke breakthroughs, flanks, and lost buildings.
11Two For One
Training Halls Have A Chance To Spawn Extra Units
You’ll never be able to match the Nightmares when it comes to raw numbers - they have troops numbering in the tens of thousands, while you’re stuck in the double digits - but every pair of boots on the ground can buy you a few seconds or even save the day.Two For Oneonly triggers fifteen percent of the time, as it would probably be overpowered otherwise, but if you get lucky it can get you anextra Order Knight, Arbalest, or Harbingerwhen you train one normally.
Just remember that extra troops spawned by this Blessing still need upkeep, includingVillagers and Food. If you choose Two For One, try to always have a little more on hand than you otherwise would to feed your additional troops.
10Unsightly
Increases The Vision Radius Of All Buildings
Letting your buildings see further doesn’t seem quite as powerful as other Blessings at first; after all, it doesn’t kill any Nightmares, and towers that can see further can’t shoot further to match. However, the unique mechanics of Age Of Darkness make this power a real sleeper hit.
Building visionkeeps the Death Fog at bayduring Death Nights, which in turnprevents Nightmares from respawningin cleared sections of the map. By giving your buildings a longer sight line, you can make it that much less likely that they’ll have unfriendly new neighbors after a Swarm attack. You can also use extended sight lines tobuild cheeky towers on the far side of forestsand lakes, further expanding your reach and potentially slowing enemy approaches without any real fear of retaliation.
9Rigged Defenses
Buildings Sometimes Explode When Destroyed, Damaging Nearby Enemies
In some games, a Blessing like this would be an act of desperation; if you need to rely on your buildings being destroyed, you’re doing something wrong. In Age Of Darkness, though, you’re always desperate, andyour buildings are going to be destroyed- there’s no getting around that fact.
Especially on the later Death Nights, the Nightmareswill absolutely breach your defenses in one or more places.Rigging said defenses, as well as any buildings that get overrun, to blow up is a great way to slow their advance and help you consolidate at the next line of defense.
Rigged Defenses can also help if a wandering patrol hits one of your outlying Farms; you may lose the Farm, but the explosion will make sure that the Crawlers don’t destroy anything else.
8Change Of Heart
Change Of Heartisn’t nearly as consistent as Rigged Defenses, but when it works it really works. For thirty seconds after a buildings is destroyed while you have this Blessing,enemies dying near the site of the building have a fifteen-percent chance of resurrecting on your side.In most cases, that will mean that a handful of Crawlers join your ranks and then immediately die again, but sometimes you’ll get lucky and reanimate a higher-tier Nightmare - maybe even a Crusher!
You don’t have any actual control over which enemies resurrect, and some are much better than others. A Wraith is decent in combat, for example, but itsHorror burst on death is useless, since Nightmares can’t become Horrified.
7Encouraged
Emboldened Units Occasionally Deal Double Damage
A major part of your strategy when playing as the Order or the Rebellion will beEmboldening your unitsthrough combat experience. This unlocks their faction perk, and also renders themimmune to Horrorfor the rest of the game.
If you manage to build up a large force of Emboldened troops and keep them alive, then theEncouragedBlessing is a great way to capitalize on your hard work. A ten-percent crit chance isn’t too bad when you consider how many attacks your entire army makes while they’re holding the line against a Swarm!
Edwin is a particularly good Hero for taking this Blessing, as heincreases the Emboldening rate of nearby units, and as an Order Hero he gets access tobetter Siege unitsthat can make the most out of a damage doubler. On the other hand, Encouraged isuseless for the Volatists, whose units can never become Emboldened
