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Fort Rox

Table of contents

Requirements:

Summary:

Fort Rox is the area in Varmint valley following Claw Shot City and Gnawnian Express Station, and keeps with the Wild West theme. You’re building and upgrading a fort by day in order to properly defend it against hordes of mice by night.

The area is really all about the fort upgrades. Even with better than average traps, you’ll have some lousy catchrates at the start, but you’ll be able to boost them by upgrading your wall, cannon, moat,…

When you’re done with the area, you’ll have 3 new traps and a ticket to a new area: Queso Canyon.

TL;DRs:

Trap setups below assume you don’t have any Limited Edition traps in your position. If you do, check CRE to see if they perform better or worse than the ones mentioned below.

3 Power types are used in this area: Law, Arcane and Shadow. Once you make it till Dawn, the area provides a new trap for each of these power types.

The choice of trap (type) depends on the phase you’re hunting in. As for the base, make sure you have at least the Aqua base in your possession. Anything better (Spellbook, Papyrus, Rift, …) is a nice bonus.

Day

Mice here are weak to Law-type traps.

If you’ve bothered finishing Claw Shot City, you’ll have the S.L.A.C. II in your posession. It’s generally not considered worth the effort you put in, so if you (like many other hunters) haven’t, you have 2 main options:

Some numbers extracted from CRE (assuming Gouda, LGS, Aqua base and no charms):

Night

First part of the night is Shadow, second part is Arcane.

Dawn

Use your best Arcane setup

Cheeses and mouse pool

2 Cheeses you may have used before in your Lycan catching days are re-introduced here: Moon and Crescent cheese.

Both are crafted/bought using Meteorite Pieces, but Moon requires additional 2 Magic Essence for 1 piece of cheese. Check the wiki links for the exact formula. Apart from these, store-bought and Super|brie+ work as well, but are not advised during the Night phase

Day phase: Collecting meteorite pieces

Day phase is where you start out. All mice here are law type and drop Meteorite Pieces, which you’ll need for 2 reasons:

You’ll come back here often. The idea is that you gather Meteorite Pieces here, “spend” them during nighttime (hunt with the in the form of cheese or watch mice destroy your wall) and then start the process all over.

As you start out, the first thing you’ll have to do is get the first wall upgrade. It’ll cost you 50 meteorite pieces, which will go directly in your 50HP wall (meaning you won’t have to repair it first). Then, gather some more meteorite pieces to craft a batch of Crescent/Moon to start off your first Night run. You don’t need much (go with 20, why not) for the first run, as you’ll retreat as soon as you’ve gathered 1 Howlite to get the first Ballista upgrade (this will significantly boost the awful catchrate you get on the first run).

Sounds grindy. How do I speed this up?

There are a couple of alternative sources for Meteorite Pieces that may be useful, depending on your financial situation:

Night phase: Collecting howlite and bloodstone

Night is a dangerous time! You need to hide behind the walls you’ve built, and hold out for 130 attacks (hunts) which progress at the top of the HUD. Succesful catches won’t damage your wall. However:

You’re able to retreat back to the day phase at any time during the night without incurring additional damage to your wall. If you don’t retreat, assuming you don’t reach dawn, once your wall reaches 0 HP, you’ll pass out unconscious from the assault and wake up back in the Day phase with a damaged wall. You’ll need to gather Meteorite pieces to repair your wall and enter the Night phase again.

What’s the point, you ask? Well, the ultimate goal here is to make it through the night and reach Dawn. However, you won’t even get close during your first few runs. Instead you’ll gather supplies (Howlite and Bloodstone) during Night, which you’ll spend on various upgrades to increase catch rate, increase wall HP limit, limit damage by mice,… More on the different upgrades and their effect in the upgrades section. Each upgrade should allow you to make it a bit further into the night, until you finally make it till dawn.

In order to give you an idea on the drop rates of Howlite and Bloodstones, I constructed the following table containing the drop rates per catch (assuming Crescent) per phase of Night. In order to get accurate numbers, you need to multiply this number by your overall catchrate in that phase (check CRE)

  Howlite Bloodstone
Twilight 0.47 0
Midnight 0.54 0.15
Pitch 0.52 0.28
Utter darkness 0.42 0.43
First Light 0.41 0.50

So, I’ve mentioned retreating. In the first few runs you’ll be collecting Howlite, and won’t make it past Pitch (probably). In this case there is no “cost” to retreating: you don’t lose additional HP, and Twilight, Midnight and Pitch all roughly drop the same amount of Howlite so there is penalty of having to start back in Twilight. So during your Howlite runs, retreat whenever you have enough resources to perform an upgrade.

As you advance further into the night, you might want to be more careful. At some point Bloodstones become an important resource for your upgrades. As you can see in the table above the initial Night phases won’t provide much Bloodstones, so when you’ve made it past pitch you need to compare the ramp-up cost (the number of hunts and Crescent cheese needed to make it through Twilight, Midnight and Pitch) against the benefits of coming back later with an additional upgrade. Cannon-1 and Moat-2 are probably candidates for early retreat, as they don’t require a lot of Bloodstones and you’re still losing a lot of HP in the later phases of night. The upgrades are explain in the upgrades section.

The mice

Except for a couple of exceptions, we can categorize each mouse encountered during Night into 2 groups:

Each of these follow the normal 3/5 damage rule for FTCs. As I said, there are exceptions:

Stages of the night

Night is broken up into five stages, each with different mice of different power and damage to your wall, this mechanic we’ve seen before in the Iceberg.

  # hunts Mice Recommended trap
Twilight 35 Mainly weremice and Nightmancer Shadow
Midnight 25 Mainly weremice and Nightmancer. Some Cosmic Critters Shadow
Pitch 10 ALL OF THEM! Arcane
Utter Darkness 25 Mainly Cosmic Critters and Nightfire. Some Weremice Arcane
First Light 35 Mainly Cosmic Critters and Nightfire Arcane

Note on Pitch:

This is a short phase, but Pitch can be a real… pitch (haha). Switching to Arcane means you’re also more likely to miss the Nightmancer (yes, he’s still around), which can knock you back into the Midnight phase. Keep an eye on your trap setup if this happens.

We haven’t discussed Mana yet, but a small sneak peak: when activated, it boosts your hunt progression by 2 hunts per hunt. If you want to boost past this area to avoid having being knocked back, you could choose to activate it here.

Sounds grindy. How do I speed this up?

Upgrades

When you’ve collected upgrade materials during night, you’ll be able to use those to upgrade your fort equipment during the day phase. In this section, I’ll briefly explain what the different upgrades are. For a more detailed list, see the wiki.

  Howlite Bloodstone Description
Ballista 1 1 0 Decreases the power of Fort Rox Weremice by 50%.
Ballista 2 25 0 Provides a chance to instantly capture Fort Rox Weremice.
Ballista 3 100 20 Instantly defeats the Nightmancer Mouse.
Cannon 1 20 5 Decreases the power of Fort Rox Cosmic Critters by 50%.
Cannon 2 30 15 Provides a chance to instantly capture Fort Rox Cosmic Critters.
Cannon 3 50 60 Instantly defeats the Nightfire Mouse.
Moat 1 10 0 Reduces damage your wall receives by 1.
Moat 2 35 2 Reduces damage your wall receives by 2.
Moat 3 100 50 Reduces damage your wall receives by 3.
Wall 1 0 0 Maximum Health: 50
Wall 2 15 0 Maximum Health: 100
Wall 3 40 20 Maximum Health: 200
Wall 4 150 75 Maximum Health: 350

Generally, the first upgrades in a category require only (or mostly) Howlite, and as the upgrades become more powerful they also require Bloodstones. This matches with the fact that Bloodstones are scarce during the first part of night and become more abundant later on, so you’ll have to push further into the night to get those good upgrades.

Which upgrades to prioritize?

First, let’s get the Mage Tower out of the way. What you do with this one is entirely up to you. The upgrades aren’t very expensive in terms of Bloodstone/Howlite, but will cost Tower Mana. If you plan to boost your way through Fort Rox, (and spend a lot of money on Tower Mana in the process) make sure to get these as soon as you can, as they are quite powerful. If you’re short on cash, and have a limited supply of Mana, you might want to push it back on the priority list.

Now, for the other ones.

In the first runs you’ll only have access to Howlite, so that’s easy: get Ballista-1, Moat-1 and Wall-2 as the Adventure book dictates. Note that at this point you can still retreat without delaying your progress. Hunt in Twilight/Midnight and retreat as soon as you have the necessary Howlite. Upgrade and go again.

Next up would be Cannon-1, Cannon-2, Moat-2 and Ballista-2. I think the order in which you should do these depends on how easy you can get to Utter Darkness at this point.

The rest if very subjective, depending on your setup and luck so far, and has been fuel for many debates. I assume that by now you’ve made a few runs and have a clear idea on what you want to focus on. I’ll just add a small note on Cannon-3 vs Ballista-3: if you’ve had some bad luck with Nightmancer, you’ve probably been eyeing the Ballista-3 upgrade for a while (the push back can be frustrating). I would caution constraint though, and prioritize Cannon-3 to get rid of Nightfire instead. Being pushed back is annoying, yes, but has less impact on the amount of resources you’ll gather in your run.

Dawn phase: Collecting Dawn dust

You’ll find three mice here : Monster of the Meteor, Dawn Guardian and Battering Ram (if not hunting with Moon/Crescent). The damage mechanics stay the same at first, but each catch of the Monster will increase the damage of every mouse by an extra 100%. You can find a table detailing the damage per rage level in the wiki .

E.g. The first time you miss the Monster, the damage of both him and Night Guardian will go from 3 points to 6 points. The next time, 9 points. Then 12. You get it. If for some reason you’re not hunting with Crescent or Moon: Battering Ram damage is not affected by this multiplier.

Shielding charms, if you have any, may be useful here as they prevent red boxes (FTC with mice stealing supplies) which cause more damages. For reference: at rage level 10, a normal FTC causes 33 damage, a red box FTC does 50.

The Monster of the Meteor and Night Guardian mice drop Dawn Dust, which is used for a couple of things:

Sounds grindy. How do I speed this up?

Heart of the meteor: Getting the Meteor Prison Core trap

Hidden in the Dawn phase, is the “Heart of the meteor” bonus area. If you’ve finished Fiery Warpath yet, it will likely remind you of the Artillery Commander bonus area.

It takes a bit of work to gain access to this area, and gather the cheese for it, but as a reward you get a shiny new law trap: The Meteor Prison Core trap, which is upgradeable in a later area to the more powerful Ember Prison Core trap.

To gain access, you’ll need to buy the Fort Rox Portal Projector from the Fort Rox Cartographer for

We covered Dawn Dust in the previous section. The 2 portal parts are acquired by finishing (rare) Fort Rox Treasure Maps. A normal chest will give you roughly a 12% chance of one of the portal parts dropping, rare chests go up to 35%. If mapping confuses you, or you don’t have friends to do them with, look below the section on maps

When you reach Dawn, you can activate the Portal via the HUD. Note, the portal will be destroyed when it opens, so it’s a one time use! Once you go in there’s no coming back without crafting another, so be sure to have your Sunrise Cheese (25 dawn dust each, Cheese Shop) in your inventory and ready to go.

The Heart of the Meteor Mouse is weak to arcane traps, but pretty strong. Have no fear, though: after nine misses she will collapse in exhaustion, and your tenth hunt is a certain catch. Once you do catch her, you’ll be sent back to where you were at Dawn, and your hard earned Sunrise Cheese will automatically disarm. She’ll also drop a Meteoric Core Fragment, which you can take to the Trapsmith to get the Meteor Prison Core trap.

If you have any Sunrise Cheese left, you can sell them on the Marketplace (they usually go for a pretty good price).

It’s worth noting that in this phase, your wall will take no damage and your fort defenses (this includes the Mage Tower) have no effect.

Sounds grindy. How do I speed this up?

Mana

As you may have figured out by now, Tower Mana is a (finite) resource that gives you a number of boosts/benefits when activated depending on how far the Mage Tower has been upgraded (see upgrades). 1 Mana will be consumed per hunt, regardless of how that hunt turned out.

Where to get it?

When to use it?

I’ll assume you don’t have enough Tower Mana to leave it on all the time. If you do then, well…, leave it on all the time. There are a couple of useful scenario’s I can think of:

More on maps

I strongly recommend doing maps in this area for a number of reasons:

I would recommend starting maps as soon as possible to increase your odds of getting Portal parts. That may be a bit tricky at first, as maps contain mice in all phases (Day, Night and Dawn). If you don’t have friends to help you out, you could check the map groups to either leech a fort rox map, or find other hunters in that area interested in doing maps together.

An interesting strategy for getting the Portal parts (you could sell them on the Marketplace) is to finish a Fort Rox map by yourself (leave one easy mouse uncaught) and give away the 4 remaining hunter slots on your map but asking them to send you back any Portal parts they may have received in exchange. This can be an interesting way of making some of the money back you spent on Crescent cheese from the Marketplace, or optimize your chances of getting a Portal part in case you don’t have it yet.

Why you would come back

Not much to come back for. The usual stuff: Maps, Bronze/Silver/Gold Crowns, getting traps you skipped for collection purposes. No theme to collect here.