War! What is it good for? Apparently, it’s a great way to cook mushrooms. Mushroom Wars 2 is an easy to learn, difficult to master real time strategy game from Zillion Whales, that’s available on both PC and mobile, where you command an army of tiny, adorable mushrooms to rack up a not-so-tiny body count over the most grueling battles of mushroomkind.
The name of the game is capturing structures and management of troop deployments: As there are no such things as special units or anything like that apart from your hero’s command powers (Which tends to be unavailable half the time because of the energy system).
The positioning of your army and timing of troop movements around the map becomes massively important in Mushroom Wars 2, since it’s all about looking for weak spots in the enemy defense while aggressively taking territory, and making the enemy pay in blood (Or shrooms, we’re not quite sure if little mushroom soldiers even bleed) for every structure they try to take from you.
With pretty art in spite of the tiny, tiny troops on screen, seemingly simple yet rather brain tickling and tense gameplay, and some really weird mushroom factions (You have the typical mushroom knights and evil dark cultist shrooms common in fantasy, but for some reason there are also space invader shooms who try to melee you with wooden staves in spite of owning perfectly good laser guns and UFOs, and cute flowery shroom girls with a penchant for nature and backstabbing), this game will likely take up a lot of your time.
Which is just as well, as the climb up the multiplayer ladder is a long, arduous one. Even those who pay cash will suffer dearly if they, oh say, waste their army’s lives on pointless, widow-manufacturing assaults against heavily defended neutral towers early in the match!
While Mushroom Wars 2 has a single player campaign, this guide will mostly focus on the multiplayer, since you need to finish multiplayer battles to unlock single player campaign missions. Unless of course, you fork over some cold hard cash for the campaign missions instead. Hey, the devs need to keep the lights on somehow to keep this game’s multiplayer free.
So without further ado, let’s delve into our Mushroom Wars 2 beginner’s guide to find out how you can dominate your enemies and lead your mushroom armies to victory!
LIFE IS YOUR CURRENCY: THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND IN THE FIELD
As a strategy game, having a keen eye for troop movements, remembering where the enemy moved their troops last, and generally having a clear head on your shoulders is very important. You might have a plan in mind, but being inflexible is a great way to die, since your opponent probably has a plan too!
You don’t want to tell the families of these shrooms that their sons and daughters’ lives were wasted attacking a tower that they weren’t even able to capture by the end! Here are some things to keep in mind as you command your troops in the field.
Deployment Numbers
When setting your deployment count on the left side of the screen, keep in mind where you’re deploying from and for what purpose. A safe bet is to set it to 50-75% only when those troops are being deployed from the rear to shore up the front line: Everyone has Rudo as their starter hero, and if they use his Sabotage special power at the worst possible moment, your entire rear might get nabbed if you keep using 100%!
And even without him, the enemy might have the bright idea to simply bypass your main fortified front line and rush troops into your rear, however dangerous that might be.
On the other hand, 100% is useful for pressing the attack against the enemy, especially against an important or opportunistic target, like an enemy structure that just deployed its troops elsewhere. Tapping the cog icon next to the Mushroom pass button under the Multiplayer tab lets you set your initial deployment count at the start of battle.
Time Your Troop Deployments
Sometimes, it may be a good idea to have your troops from the rear charge into the front immediately, rather than having them stop at your structures in the front. When doing this, you might want to reinforce them with your troops from the front right? When doing so, make sure your troops pop out of their structure right as the troops from the rear are passing through them, so their attack has more immediate bulk.
This is important especially when assaulting villages since they generate enemy troops even as they’re being attacked. You’ll want your attack force to be very dense so the enemy village doesn’t have time to regenerate troops and defend themselves, and make it harder for reinforcements to save it.
Slithery Like A Snake
One technique specific to structures with low garrison counts (About 30-50 men or so) is the community-named Snake Maneuver, so called because such a maneuver properly pulled off resembles a dense line formation in the shape of a cobra, with the front of the formation flared out like a funnel, followed by a line of soldiers.
To do it, take such a low garrison structure, set your troop deployment to 25%, and rapidly order the structure to send units to its target repeatedly. This ensures a very dense attack formation, making the most out of so few troops.
This is a technique that might normally be done on the defensive as a powerful reinforcement tool since you usually want huge garrison counts defending on the front line (The technique is reliant on small garrisons, since 25% of a hundred man army is still huge enough to delay repeat orders, as a single order’s formation needs to all come out before repeat orders can be issued), though this can also be useful on the offense because of the dense attack formation not giving enemy Villages any time to generate soldiers mid-attack before being bludgeoned to death by the front end of the snake.
You’ll need clever troop positioning to safely pull off an offensive Snake maneuver, carefully moving some troops back from the front line to thin out the front garrisons enough to pull off the maneuver. As a very tiny sidenote, you might scare rookie players into surrendering if you pull this off at the start of a battle, but don’t rely on it!
Towers Up Front, Villages Out Back, Forges Out Way Back
You may be tempted to convert a lot of structures into Towers, so as to keep the entire map under a barrage of fire wherever the enemy goes. Remember that Towers cannot train soldiers though. This little fact means converting too many Villages into Towers is dangerous, as now you won’t be able to make the troops needed to reinforce the Tower garrisons, thus making them easy to capture and have pointed at you.
To make the most of your towers, an idea could be to convert only the villages and structures in or near the front into Towers, and keep Villages behind them pumping out soldiers to strengthen their garrisons. This way, your villages behind the towers are harder to take, and the towers themselves become harder to take down thanks to the constant influx of soldiers reinforcing them.
Reinforce Before Upgrades
You’ll usually want to upgrade structures in the rear before upgrading villages placed near the front, unless you’ve already established defensive garrisons out there. Upgrading structures costs troops (The writer hopes those troops just get reassigned to rear logistics and desk jobs instead of being planted into the ground to grow mushroom houses.)
Remember that while a Village can only generate up to a maximum number of troops, you can fill them past their max capacity by sending in troops from other garrisons to reinforce them. Once you’re sure that you have enough defenders up front in case of enemy attack,then you can upgrade them.
Are You Happy!? Sir Yes Sir!
The stars just below your total army count denote your army’s Morale. All armies start at 0 morale, wherein everyone is at normal fighting strength. More morale stars, up to a total of 5, improves your army’s combat ability, especially when on the defensive. After all, what is a better motivator than defending your beloved homeland from invaders? Every Morale star improves an army’s defensive ability by 25%, their offensive power by 5%, and their movement speed by 10%.
At 4 stars, each soldier in your army is worth two of a 0 morale enemy’s when they’re defending, and that’s before taking the added defense given by whatever building they’re garrisoned in! Morale can be improved by successfully defending against an attack, so don’t feed your troops into the meatgrinder too eagerly: Not only do failed attacks make your troops lose morale, it also improves the morale of the defending enemy!
Upgrading structures also improves Morale, and so do successful assaults. They are also slowly improved everytime a Tower kills passing enemies, so try to bypass enemy Towers when you can. Keep the enemy miserable and broken, and your troops itching for a fight!
Watch The Replays, Especially The Painful Ones
War is a dark art crafted with the corpses of good shrooms lost in the battlefield. As such, if your men are butchered either due to the enemy’s cunning or to your own mistakes, all the more you must study your battles. Every battle has a replay option after the fact, which allows you to see certain things you couldn’t in a fight: Specifically, the enemy’s garrison numbers, which are hidden to you.
This allows you to better study how the enemy moves and what they were thinking when making said moves. You can also catch where you went wrong if you haven’t already during the battle proper. Then apply that knowledge to your future battles where applicable.
Pillage The Weak First
At the start of the match, there will be many neutral structures placed all over the map. Normally, it’s a good idea to go for the cheapest structures fairly close to your base on the map first, especially if they happen to be Villages: The absolute worst thing you can do early on is to massacre your own troops trying to rush a 60-garrison Forge while there are 5-15 garrison villages nearby.
And if it’s a heavily defended tower, don’t even bother until later on, unless the tower is blocking the way so hard you have no choice. Far too many players have been destroyed charging into a heavily defended tower first thing into the match, or worse, throwing away a sizeable numbers advantage (and what could have been a very easy victory) by doing so later in the match.
Observe Troop Movements
Speaking of weakspots, keep an eye on two things at all times: The enemy’s total army count, located on top of the screen, and their troop movements between their own structures. While you cannot see how the enemy garrisons their structures, you can make an educated guess by watching both their troop movements and their total count: If you notice them moving lots of troops to a single structure, you can be pretty sure that structure will be a massive pain in the butt to assault, though where those troops came from might have a problem with their numbers.
On the other hand, if you keep your troops on the move constantly while waiting for the enemy to do something, you can perhaps confuse them into doing something stupid, or at least prevent them from figuring out your own plan or troop concentrations on the map. Just don’t open yourself up to the enemy Hero’s 4th skill doing it!
TAKING LAND: STRUCTURE TYPES
In Mushroom Wars 2, the map is always littered with neutral structures, and captured structures can either be upgraded or changed into one of three types. How do you capture them you ask? Simple: You send in your troops to kick the occupants out! Victory is purchased with blood, and the structures are an investment. Here are the structure types in the game.
Villages: No Troops, No War
Villages are the most important structure in the game, full stop. They’re simple enough to understand: They make troops, and the bigger a village is, the more troops it can store, and the faster it can make them. They are also the second strongest of the buildings, since their ability to make troops doesn’t stop when under attack, so even with 1-1 morale you need more troops than a village currently has to take it down.
They also have a passive defensive bonus when upgraded, making the army defending it worth more than the actual number of troops inside, with every several shrooms doing work worth themselves and a few extra. If you run out of villages and have no more troops to convert whatever Towers or Forges you have left, then the war is lost.
Towers: Defending The Homeland
Towers are for defending the frontline. While they do not generate troops, they can store them like any other structure can, and any enemy troops marching within their AOE will get shot full of holes. They also provide a powerful defensive bonus to the troops inside, making them the hardest structure to capture.
Though it can only shoot at one target at a time, it starts firing very rapidly when upgraded, racking up loads of kills, while making its already hefty defensive bonus stronger. Keep this in mind when attempting to capture neutral Towers: If they’re too busy shooting at the enemy, you can waltz your troops past them, or into them relatively unharmed. We say relatively because if you want to take it, you still have to deal with the garrison inside. You only want these up in the front line, as any tower away from the current contested area is a tower not contributing to the fight.
You convert such towers into Villages or Forges so you can better roll over your enemy. If you see a heavily defended neutral tower (Especially this one tower in a specific map that has a whopping 500 grey troops in it!), you’re usually better off bypassing it entirely, or waiting for the enemy to attack it then either swing in behind them, or take the tower soon after the surviving enemy or neutral troops get thinned out after the enemy’s assault, whether it fails or if it just barely succeeds.
That being said, you’ll likely have to take that tower eventually either way, especially if it’s in a very inconvenient position for you. Early on, walking your troops through it to get to another, easier structure might be fine, but those casualties will rack up over the course of the match!
Forges: From Ploughshares To Swords
Forges are generally second on the list for capture priority when all structures have equal garrisons, and are nice to have. Forges improve your soldiers’ combat ability similarly to Morale, by supplying them with better weapons and equipment, thus increasing their abilities by a percentage.
They don’t generate troops and they lack any fortification bonuses like Towers or upgraded Villages, so they only take as many troops are in them to capture, but only if it’s neutral. If it’s in enemy hands, then whoever is inside also benefits from the Forge’s global stat buffs, giving it something akin to an indirect defensive bonus. You’ll want them in the rear away from the enemy.
At most, you’ll want two Forges, since your priority is getting a bigger army to roll over the enemy with, and your primary way of getting buffs for your troops is usually the Morale system.
OUT OF BATTLE LOGISTICS: GETTING STRONGER
The game offers a few ways to make your armies stronger after battle. Always check on these things provided you’ve managed to grind the coinage necessary for upgrades. The fighters get all the glory and win battles, but It’s usually the boring logistics nerds that eventually wins wars, by helping the brave shrooms up front do their jobs in the first place!
Passive Skills
Eventually, with enough games in Multiplayer, you’ll unlock the Passive Skill tree. Each passive skill either makes it easier for your troops to fight, or makes it easier for you to do mundane boring stuff like waiting for chests to open faster.
They can be anything from increasing the defensive abilities of structures, to simply making unit formations denser so your troops crash into the enemy like a powerful tidal wave rather than simply trying to grind them away like a river. You need Runes to get them along with gold, so you’ll need to win battles to power up. You get a rune for every victory.
Hero Skills
The Hero determines what kind of special support powers you get during a match, less like a frontline super unit and more a commander in the rear. Each Hero has four of them, and each can be upgraded by collecting cards depicting said skill, and gold.
You can only use skills if your Hero has energy though, so these aren’t as high a priority as Passives if you’re not willing to wait for their Charges bar to fill up (This is not like the in-battle energy mechanic which powers up as your troops get massacred, it’s closer to energy systems you would find in other mobile games that prevent you from using characters outright for a few hours when they run out) before jumping into a multiplayer match.
Make sure you use them wisely, since they’re just powerful enough to turn a battle around when used at the precise moment, and make sure to press the advantage if the skill use goes according to plan.
Artifacts
Or in other words, armor and equipment for your Hero. Artifacts provide passive buffs for your army. It can be anything from lessened morale loss from callously sending your men to die on a horribly planned assault, increased percentages for troops defending structures, increased movement speed, faster construction of structures, or increased power on the attack.
Any piece of gear green tier or better also comes with boosts for certain Heroes’ skills, so make sure you keep that in mind when picking which piece of gear goes to what hero. You can get them from Chests and occasionally as a free offer from the Shop, though Artifact Chests give them guaranteed.
Ads To Blow Chests Open
The only reason to get passive upgrades to lessen chest opening time (Unless you reach a one hour threshold of reduced time) is to get to whatever upgrade happens to be behind them on the passive upgrade tree. That’s because you can tap a chest you’ve already started to open, and watch ads to cut down an hour’s worth of time from the timer.
And you can do this repeatedly, until all the chests are open! Best of all, this adds to the Mushroom Cinema chest you get for watching 10 ads, so you get yet another chest for all the trouble. This is usually best done once your chest queue is full, since that way, you get to play for an extended period of time before you have to watch a bunch of ads, especially if you get a good chest that takes longer to unlock.
Events
As with any online game, Events are something to keep an eye open for. Events often give you rewards, anything from one of the various currencies needed to upgrade your armies and heroes, to cosmetic items that make your troops look more distinctive in the field. They also often have a limited timeframe, so you’d do well to participate in any event that pops out, when it pops out.
This is the end of our Mushroom Wars 2 beginner’s guide. We hope it helps you and your troops achieve victory in the battlefield. If you have your own tips and tricks to share, then don’t hesitate to drop us a line!
Jean Jean
Sunday 30th of April 2023
How to find the fourth artifact ?