Solutions to the Third Bastion Puzzles

Make haste, recruit! Our scouts have sighted an enemy army marching on the Bastion. If they’re correct, it should reach our gates by the end of the week. We must prepare the defenses. Just remember, you’ve trained for this. You may be raw, but you’re ready.

The last I saw, you were learning to deal with the extra nasty beasts that ride at the head of the enemy army. I hope you’re ready to deal with them. In a few days, they won’t be training dummies anymore. Let’s take a look back on your tests to prepare you for the real thing. First, I recall you had to deal with a flier and two basic enemies.

You want to begin this puzzle by placing one green mana on the tower in your district to channel it. This lets you take the two red mana from the sources there. After that, you move to the middle district and, finally, you spend four red mana to attack the Fire Warrior, taking it as a fireball spell with a power of one. 

On your second turn, you start by channeling the blue source with one blue mana. The gets you three blue mana in return. From there, you move to the left district. Once there, you spend your five blue mana to attack the Mountain Flier and take it as a missile spell. Remember that fliers prevent you from channeling the sources and tower in the district where they’ve set up shop, so you’ll need to find a way to deal with them quickly. 

Think you can eliminate that Forest Warrior this turn? You’ve got all the tools you need. To do it, you start by moving to the citadel and channeling it. This gives you the two green mana from the towers. Finally, you’re going to use all the resources at your disposal to attack the Forest Warrior. Your missile spell lets you attack an enemy at any wall section and your one-power fireball spell reduces the mana cost to defeat that enemy by one, which means your three green mana will take you the rest of the way. 

Now, we should move on to the other tricky beast you had to deal with in your last round of tests: the shapeshifter. The strength of these buggers is equal to the total strength of the enemies adjacent to them. Even worse, if there are no enemies adjacent to it, its strength is nine.

In the puzzle, you had to deal with a Dark Shapeshifter. How were you able to take care of it?

If you’re going to take out a shapeshifter, first you’ve got to deal with his “buddy”. So, to begin your first turn, you want to channel the yellow source to gain three yellow mana. Next, you’ll want to attack the Plains Beast and take it as a speed spell. Finally, you’ll want to move to the left district.

Now that you’re in a district with a black source, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to attack that shapeshifter. To do so, you’ll start the second turn by using one of the yellow many you have left over to channel the black source, gaining three black mana. Next, you’ll move back to the middle district. Finally, you’ll spend five black mana to attack the Dark Shapeshifter and take it as a teleport spell. 

This is it. You’re almost there. You should begin your final turn by moving to the right district. Once there, you want to use another yellow mana to channel the green source and gain three green mana. Now that you have enough mana to defeat the Forest Mage, you need a way to attack it before your turn is over. Seeing as you’ve already moved, you can’t perform that action again. Luckily, you now have the teleport spell. You can cast this to move the Forest Mage to any wall section, so you want to bring it to the walls outside your district now. Once it’s there, you just have to spend five green mana to defeat it.

As you can see from this puzzle, shapeshifters have a weakness that can be exploited: defeating one of the enemies next to it can reduce its strength to a more manageable level. Often, the enemies next to a shapeshifter are the key to defeating them.

There are many more advanced enemies, of course, but there’s no time to describe them all now. Prepare yourself. You’re a defender of the bastion now.