I've made this guide because when I searched steam I didn't see any hardmode-specific guides. Hopefully the knowledge I've gained from beating hardmode multiple times will be useful to you, fellow player. If I've missed anything or been too unclear at some point, please leave a comment so I can correct it.

Keep in mind, this guide is meant to teach you the general strategy behind beating hardmode, not provide a complete walkthrough. While the guide will cover content all the way to the endgame, it won't hold your hand through every step of the way. This is to avoid confusion for people whose computers can handle different numbers of hearthlings, so there may be some lee-way or slight changes depending on how big your colony can get.

The first part of any journey is choosing the first five hearthlings you'll take on it; You may bring disembarked characters, or a fresh set. While the traits of each hearthling will not necessarily make-or-break the hardmode experience, some traits are less helpful than others:

-- Food-specific traits: Food can quickly become scarce in hardmode in the event of an emergency or a lack of farmers/trappers. This is especially true in the arctic map, where plant growth is stunted most of the year. Hearthlings with food-specific traits may upset themselves or others with their food choices at these times, or increase food drain in the case of the glutton trait.

-- Passionate/Heart of a Crafter traits: In hardmode your hearthlings will need to be multi-talented, and generally wont be able to settle permanently into a position. This is because late game will require you to train most if not all of your town to be a militia. If you do end up with a hearthling that has one of these traits, its best to conscript them to the militia last. Heart of a Crafter hearthlings should be assigned to cooking, in order to keep their morale up.

-- Pessimistic: Obvious bad trait is obvious; assign pesky pessimists to close tasks to avoid making them travel long distances, reducing their efficiency even further.

-- Animal Companion: Cute as it may be, Animal Companion hearthlings bring an extra mouth to feed early game. This becomes even more troubling if the pet has a food restriction, in which case it may die early on, leaving your hearthling mopey and inefficient for some of the most vital days in the playthrough. Pets can be obtained later via the trapper, so don't feel obligated to bring one with you.

-- Featherweight: While featherweight sounds like an amazing trait on the surface, it has two primary problems. Problem one is the reduced speed of the hearthling when they're carrying items; in hardmode for the sake of keeping things clean all hearthlings may need to be temporarily told to haul items for a day. Featherweight hearthlings are far slower at this. The second issue comes when the hearthling is in combat; their increased speed leads to them pulling ahead of the pack, often resulting in them getting ganked or chasing around enemies before the rest of the group can reach them. This ends up increasing the time your patrols spend away from town, opening you up to a counter-attack.

There are also some traits that can be helpful to have, if they are used correctly:

-- Green Thumb: This trait makes the hearthling an ideal farmer. Since food supply can be difficult to keep up in hardmode, the few hearthlings you have assigned to maintaining it should be well suited to the task. Improving the farming process with Green Thumb hearthlings is a good way to do this.

-- Loner: This trait makes for great trappers, as they'll spend more time running and setting traps, and less time chatting with their peers. Trappers naturally have to run long distances due to the size of their work areas, so it's ideal to have ones that don't dawdle. Bonus points if this is combined with the Pack Mule trait.

-- Jokester: Jokester hearthlings give morale bonuses to some of the hearthlings they talk to, resulting in them increasing the overall efficiency of the community. The Gregarious trait may increase this effect by increasing the number of hearthlings they talk to, but I haven't tested this.

-- Optimistic: Overall higher morale means overall higher speed; This makes for a more efficient hearthling.


This set of starter hearthlings is the one I'll be using to create the town you'll see throughout the rest of this guide.

For hardmode, you'll want a few things right off the bat. While it is possible to win without them, it makes early game far harder than it needs to be. These things are:

-- Food Source
-- Active Defense
-- Passive Defense


To obtain the first two you should choose the "Merchant Caravan" starting items allotment. This provides you with a trapper's knife for an almost immediate food source, as well as an herbalist's staff and footman's sword, which are required for active defense. The starting food amount may be small, but the tools will give you far greater payout by the end of the first week. If you take the northern alliance, you might pick the hunting party start instead to guarantee access to at least two militia early on.

The last thing you need, Passive Defense, refers to a defensible position. Enemies will come often in late hardmode, so you want to limit their access to your town, otherwise your militia may not always be close enough to deal with them. The best way to do this is to choose a spot that is approachable from no more than two directions. This can be a penninsula, a valley, or a hill. When choosing your map, keep in mind the available chokepoints and choose your building site accordingly. The better the position you find, the less walls and trenches you'll need to make yourself.


While choosing a location, also make sure you are situated next to at least one lowlands area. Mountaintops are defensible, but are terrible for maintaining your food supply.

Early hardmode is a race to build a self-sustaining militia and a reliable food supply. As such, this section will be more in-depth than the rest of the guide.

The first thing you want to do is assign an herbalist, a footman/archer, and your faction's primary crafter. Your herbalist should have decently high spirit, your footman/archer high body, and your crafter should be someone who will double as non-cleric militia later on. Have your workers move a few herbs, berry bushes/pear cacti, and silkweed plants close to your base, and then harvest them. If you're in the arctic, you may not have access to all of these so you'll have to trade for their respective resource and have your herbalist break them down for seeds.

Your herbalist should be immediately put to work turning herbs into seeds to get to level two. Queue up three or so clerics tomes ahead of time at the top of the list so they'll immediately begin making them once they reach level two.

Your crafter should be immediately put to work making the most expensive item per used resource available to them that is at their current level. This will level their skill and rapidly increase your net worth. While this might sound like a bad strategy due to the increased enemy response to high-worth colonies, in hard-mode the baddies wont wait for you to get rich before they try to knock you down. You need more hearthlings, and fast. Also queue one of each crafting tool and five of basic tools like farmer, footman/archer, and trapper talismans. Make sure you've marked a sizeable resource zone for harvest so the crafter has materials.


Assign one of your remaining workers to be a trapper, and lay out three long 50x10 trapper zones 2-3 blocks apart for them to use. This setup is most efficient, and also prevents trap overlap. As soon as is possible, assign one zone to animals, and the rest to insects. Insects provide enormous amounts of food, enough for one skilled trapper with five 10x50 insect zones to feed 20 hearthlings.

From here, have the other worker continue to harvest the plants you've relocated, and plant their seeds in patches so you increase the amount of resources you have available to you. After that focus on getting crafting talismans made and working your way to footman/archer and weaver talismans so you can grow your militia. You'll likely need a weaver to make bolts of leather, unless you get lucky and a trader brings you some. VERY IMPORTANT: all crafters should be hearthlings whose second function will be as non-cleric militia later on. Do not assign them to be militia early, or you'll make it harder for them to level up their crafting profession.


By day seven you should hopefully have at least one cleric and 2-3 footmen/archers. If not, focus entirely on meeting that quota. You should have a stable food source, and also should have grown your population a bit. If you're feeling confident, try building some small buildings to hold storage and beds for your hearthlings. If you survive this long and meet these requirements, then congratulations! You've survived the first hurdle.

By this point, you've likely gotten the attention of Ogo's underlings; if not, keep expanding and you will.

Moving forward you want at least 2/3's of all your hearthlings to be militia at any given point in time. Assign hearthlings with profession-compatible traits for those professions until later. The exception to this is if you don't enough militia, in which case you can make an exception. If a crafter has already attained max level and isn't currently in use, reassign them to the militia. You should hopefully have a carpenter and a blacksmith at this point, and have them well on their way to max level. They'll be important later.


As for Ogo's toadies, you have two options. The cheesy option is to leave the message in your quest log unanswered until you feel ready. The more honest option is to respond when you get it, and make choices accordingly. Either way, those snot nosed little punks will return no matter how many times you pay them off.

Once you've knuckled down and squashed one of Ogo's underlings, you'll start to have goblin wolves show up on the map. You'll get a warning each time they spawn, so you can preemptively attack them if you want to. If you do this, make sure to manually target the cage first, or your hearthlings might not destroy it. You can also wait for them to come to you if you're confident in your forces and don't want to leave your outpost undefended.


Either way, these outposts shouldn't be hard to destroy.

Once you've done this, Ogo's standard-bearer will show up and inform you that Ogo is coming for you. This starts the countdown until his arrival, so you'll want to take the time to verify that you are ready for him. If you have a high level carpenter and want to make the windchime, feel free to do so. Otherwise you'll want archers, a couple clerics, and at least one knight before you take on Ogo himself. Also be sure to build walls or dig trenches to make chokepoints that will funnel his forces into a manageable column so you don't get surrounded.


While your base won't look exactly like this, it should have the features marked above.

If you don't die or softlock your save, then congratulations! You've survived the second hurdle. Ogo is significant in that he marks the first third of what I like to call "The War Questline." Since combat past this point is controlled by placing the kobold gongs, I'll wait until the War Questline section to go in depth about them.

Now that Ogo and his shmuck army have beaten a hasty retreat, you've reached a stage of relative peace. While this doesn't mean that you're off the hook from invading armies, it does mean they'll be more or less based on your military power, so you wont get steamrolled by an unexpected force. Does this mean its time to move onto the next military challenge? No, welcome to the third hurdle: base management.


Base management is one of those things that's easy on the surface, but difficult to refine once your population gets too big. That's why this needs to be planned out now, because late game won't give you much breathing room until you beat it. On the bright side, it should be pretty manageable if you just follow a simple set of guidelines:

-- Keep your buildings close together
It can be tempting to make a sprawling complex of a town complete with marked pastures and rolling meadows, but this works against you in hardmode, where enemies might attack from multiple directions at once. It's best to keep your building entrances close together, and utilize multiple floors to even further compact your town.

-- Define and limit access to your chokepoints
The seemingly paradoxical task of limiting the rest of the map's access to your base while providing ease of access to the map from yours can be difficult, but there are ways to achieve it. By keeping your base small, adding ladders to cliffs around the outside of your base, and having chokepoints on opposite ends your hearthlings will be able to walk quickly around the outer radius of your base. Aim to make travel around the outer edge of your base smooth, and if one side of the map is difficult to access then tunnel or bridge your way there. As long as your hearthlings can run across your base in a manner of seconds, it should be defensible.

-- Refine your militia's composition
A good militia in Stonehearth has two main purposes: area denial and elimination. Area denial is performed by knights; by engaging the enemy and getting their attention they stop them from moving and wreaking havoc on your base or offensive line. The number you need is dependent on how many enemies you face. Ideally you should have one knight for every three enemies on average. Elimination is performed primarily by archers; they deal damage quickly at long range to dispose of enemies. The number you need depends on how much time you have between attacks, but it's easier to just get as many as you can. Clerics are the odd duck of the group, they support both groups to keep them from dwindling as the fight goes on. You want at least as many of these as there are knights, possibly more if you have a lot of archers. The footman profession should be used only as a training stage.

-- Centralize your storage
Many enemies will move towards your storage area in an attempt to steal or destroy items. keeping storage centralized makes defending it easier. Crafters should be close to this area in order to maximize their efficiency.

-- Maximize level for each crafting profession on at least one hearthling
This will allow you to make use of any recipes you need to in order to complete quests. Doing this before you reach your population cap keeps you from having to train a hearthling that knows a different profession; if you don't do this it will be far harder and require more resources to reach maximum level for that profession.

-- Stabilize your food supply
Taking the time to figure out how many hearthlings you need maintaining your food supply and setting up the storage needed to contain it all is helpful later on when you need to conscript most of your population into the militia. It will allow you to know exactly how many hearthlings you need to scrape by, maximizing the size of your militia in order to increase your chances of success.

-- Decide on and facilitate a level of luxury
Luxury goods and furniture influence the morale of hearthlings, so it's good to provide them to an extent. This is a good time to decide what level of luxury you are going to provide for your hearthlings, and design your base around it. More luxury generally requires more space and more materials, so try not to bite off more than you can chew. Later in-game, you'll likely be too busy to worry about this, so take care of it while you can.

-- Upgrade your militia's gear
Make sure you have enough talismans, weapons, and armor for your militia. Try to make as many sets of max level armor and weaponry as you have talismans, and try to have more talismans than you'll need. This will ensure you don't run out of gear in the event some of it gets misplaced.

-- Place your turrets and traps
If you're going to use turrets and traps, figure out ideal placement now. You don't want to be guessing at effective setups when you have a large scripted army on your doorstep. It also wouldn't hurt to make sure your engineers are trained, or to stockpile turrets and traps in the event that they break.


If you've successfully done everything on this list, you've beaten the third hurdle... probably. There's no way to tell if you were successful until you take on the fourth hurdle, but you can be far more confident if you take the time to prepare.

So, you've dealt with Ogo and (hopefully) handled the logistics of your town. Now it's time to continue the War Questline.


Your next step is to listen to what the mysterious figure has to say. This should activate by itself once Ogo is gone. Once you've done this, you must wait until an orc chieftain appears and insults the strength of your outpost, instructing you to place kobold gongs to attract increasingly difficult armies to fight. You'll get the first recipe for use by your blacksmith. Use the ensuing carnage to train all of your hearthlings for the militia.

-- The Scout Army
These guys are basically pushovers. Send your military to their camp after their initial attack and wipe them off the face of the map. The elite scout hat will drop at their camp, but you'll have to manually mark it to be looted.

-- The Elite Army
You have two options for this one. When you notice the goblins setting up camp, you can agree to pay their exorbitant price to pack up and leave, or you can fight them. Personally i prefer to fight them, but if you are allergic to being wealthy you can pay them instead. These guys are basically pushovers as well; move your forces in and wipe them out. Remember to mark the master hat as loot.


-- The Master Army
These guys are the third and possibly toughest of the groups to fight. Their forces consist primarily of ogres, which have lots of health and a wide swing radius that will do damage to all the hearthlings in its path. Conscript every available hearthling into the militia, and allow the first group to attack you while taking note of the path they take to your base. Remember to target enemies one at a time using the attack command. When you've defeated that group, move your hearthlings between 40 and 80 blocks away from their main base; when the next wave spawns, slaughter them as they leave the camp and then rush in, destroying the tents first so no more can spawn. Take care of the remaining enemies and mark the general's hat to be looted.

-- The General's Army
This army is made primarily of orcs, and can also be somewhat difficult. However, it isn't insurmountable if you micromanage what your group attacks and when. Make sure to conscript as many hearthlings for this fight as possible ahead of time. As for battle strategy, you'll first want to take out the orcish clerics. If you have trouble finding them, look for particle effects. Only once all their clerics are down can you focus on their other troops; I recommend targeting the melee orcs first, then the ogres, then the kobold archers. Use the same ambush tactic you used to take on the master army, and you should be able to defeat this army as well. Just make sure not to let the kobold archers fleeing from your troops lead you into the enemy encampment early.


Shortly after you have defeated all four gong armies the orc chieftain will return, challenging you to battle. These guys are pushovers, so just walk in with your full militia and tear their camp to the ground. Once you have defeated them, the chieftain will recognize your right to the land, and remark that they must return home to deal with a shaman dabbling in dark magic.

The last quest you get is related to the fourth hurdle, and will be discussed in that section. Aside from the last quest, you have completed the War Questline. Well done!

The Hearth Questline revolves around the different stages of improving your town's tier. Not counting the starting one, there are three main tiers:

-- Outpost
-- Settlement
-- Township

To become an outpost all you have to do is name your outpost and pick a banner. Hardmode can be completed with any banner, so don't feel like you're locked into a specific path. Personally, I find the banner of strength to be the most helpful, as it doubles ore production and prevents hearthlings from feeling cramped.

To become a settlement you just have to grow to a certain point (about 10 hearthlings) and your factions representative will ask you to pick a hearth to work towards. The hearths offer the option of either a free daily buff, interest on gold chests in your possession, or the ability to summon enemies. None of these are inherently overpowered on their own, but you can use the third option to level up your militia and obtain copious amounts of metal. Generally I just pick whichever seems easiest at the time.


For this playthrough I'll be taking the hearth of makers for the sake of expedience.

After some time you'll be contacted again and asked to choose a township focus and build a shrine to match. The exact effects vary for each faction, so which shrine type you choose may differ depending on which faction you're playing as. While hardmode can be completed with any shrine type, ones that give weapon/armor recipes and/or attributes tend to be exceptionally helpful. Some shrines are more difficult to make than others, so be sure to balance utility with cost.

This is also the earliest stage at which the three travelers from Hestia have a chance to show up to your town. Their arrival is not related to the Warren Questline, nor does it have any objectives required to complete it. You can choose to let them stay, or shoo them off.


Once you have completed the shrine and placed it, your faction representative will congratulate you on a job well done.

A while after you have become a township, the representative will return once again and offer to let you reembark. You can end the playthrough here if you would like, or you can wait and finish the rest of the questlines and content that you haven't completed. If you choose to wait, make sure not to click any options on the reembark quest, as it't bugged and may not trigger again. This is the last quest that is part of the Hearth Questline.

The Warren Questline itself isn't very difficult even in hardmode, but following the questline far enough will give you the means to fight the last boss, so I'll cover it anyway.


The questline starts with a request to leave out vegetables for a giant pair of ears sticking out of a bush. Provide the necessary vegetables and wait, easy. Keep your vegetable garden up and running though even if rabbits are the only reason you have it, as the rabbitfolk will request more vegetables later on in exchange for sugarbell plants, berry bushes, petals and seeds, and energy tonics.

Completing quests for the warren also has the added bonus of increasing your rapport with the rabbitfolk, which in turn unlocks more quests and options. In order to complete the questline quickly, its best to anticipate repeat requests and fill them as quickly as possible.


Once you have gained a certain amount of trust, the rabbitfolk will reveal themselves to you and gift you a set of lanterns; This will unlock a larger set of quests you can use to gain trust with them. These quests include protecting or healing their members, providing them with potions or doors, and eventually even loaning your hearthlings to them for a few days at a time. As you continue to meet their requests, you'll get closer to unlocking some of the more specialized missions.

One of the first specialized quests you'll run into is the heirbloom quest. Heirbloom is a plant that provides both vegetables and fiber. The rabbitfolk will want the stalks in particular, leaving you to make use of the food source. Heirbloom can be planted even by a level one farmer, and grows fairly quickly.


Make sure to keep a patch of this growing, as heirbloom stalks will replace the vegetables they normally ask for.


Once you have gained even more of their trust, they will send you a statue and a cricket golem. This is the point at which all of the special quests, barring the last one, become available. They won't trigger all at once, so continue building the trust of the rabbitfolk to access them all.

One of the available special quests allows you to obtain two rabbitfolk as hearthlings; these hearthlings are special in that even if you complete the quest at full population they will join your town. Rabbitfolk can become weavers, workers, masons, or archers. While their possible jobs are limited, their ability to become archers makes them useful.


In order to attract them to your town you will have to place an amberstone pedestal nearby two unassigned beds inside a building. If you don't have spare room for decorations to meet the requirements, building a house template quickly and filling it with random decorations will do the trick. Once you have done that they will be willing to move in.

Another special quest allows you to train one of your hearthlings as a geomancer. Once the rabbitfolk trust you enough, they'll send a messenger to tell you the story of geomancy. Following that, they'll offer you a one-time opportunity to select a hearthling to visit their warren to learn geomancy for a week. Once they return, they will be a level one geomancer, with a geomancy staff talisman.


This skill can be useful in hardmode for quickly blocking off tunnels or base entrances in the event that you are overwhelmed and cannot withstand another attack. Preparing block placement spells ahead of time can be the difference between a long siege and having your colony wiped out.


A less useful but still interesting special quest allows you to send a weaver and a mason to the rabbitfolk to learn their faction recipes. While the recipes learned can be helpful for increasing the aesthetic or comfort of furniture, chances are you'll have already finished setting up the interiors of your buildings. Still though, if you get this quest before you have had a chance to do so, it offers several fairly cheap recipes that provide a reasonable level of luxury for your hearthlings.

The last special quest is related to the fourth hurdle, and will be covered in that section. Aside from that one and repeating quests, you've completed the Warren Questline. Congratulations!

At some point during your playthrough you may receive a cry for help from a person in a ruined keep. They are being attacked by undead, and ask you to save them. Whether or not you can help them will be entirely dependent on the composition of your militia and whether you can spare them for an immediate attack. If you do intend to give it a try, make sure to save your game the moment you get the message, as time is short and things can spiral out of control very quickly.

Personally, I would not advise helping them due to the sheer difficulty of the mission. The enemies are sponge tanks that hit like a freight train, the gate you're meant to defend is impossibly frail, and even if you manage not to let the gate go down the quest will still fail if you take too long to kill every enemy. Even if you complete it within the time limit, the reward is unlikely to help you at any point in time during your hardmode playthrough. Of course, to those of you still interested in taking this challenge on, there is a strategy that increases your likelihood of success. I have personally used this strategy twice, with no hearthling deaths.

You'll want to bring mainly archers and plenty of clerics, about 1/2 the number of archers you have if possible. They'll need spiky quivers and the best bows you have available. You are also going want a few knights, although these won't last more than a minute.


-- Step 1: Target the Bone Wolves
These suckers hit the hardest and run the fastest. Target them one at a time and take them down as quickly as possible. The knights are here to buy time to kill as many as possible before they target your archers. Once the bone wolves have disposed of all of your canned hearthlings, they'll start targeting your archers, taking them down very quickly. Continue focusing down the bone wolves while kiting archers individually away from the skeletons.

-- Step 2: Thin the Skeletons
Now that the bone wolves are finished move your remaining archers and clerics away from the primary group of skeletons and start targeting them one at a time. Keep an eye on the gate health and engage step 3 once it reaches about 1500/6000

-- Step 3: Multitask
This is the part where you hope you've done enough damage to the additional enemies and pry away five hearthlings into a seperate group. Kite them away from the skeletal mass and tell them to focus fire on the giant siege skeleton. If the siege skeleton or small skeletons get close enough to start hitting them, manually kite them away and have them resume fire. The idea here is to keep them close enough that the siege skeleton aggros on them instead of the gate, but far enough that it can't do significant damage. Once the siege skeleton is down, reassign these hearthlings to the main group; this may occur at any step following this one.

-- Step 4: Begin Rescues
Pay attention to your downed hearthlings health, and once they get down to 2-3 slices of time remaining, pull some archers from the group targeting the smaller skeletons and uncheck their job box. Due to their priorities order, if you direct them away using the move command they should begin rescuing your incapacitated hearthlings. Continue doing this with your archers one or two at a time until all of your incapacitated hearthlings are on their way back to base to recuperate. If you've thinned enough to the skeleton horde, your clerics should be able to outheal any damage caused by those remaining, so long as they aren't cornered.

-- Step 5: Perform Damage Control
Chances are your base has been invaded by some hostile force by now, so cross your fingers and hope your hearthlings survive long enough to get the ones in real danger into beds to recover. Once they have done this, recheck their job box so they are ready to fight back when directed to run to the ruined keep. If some of them are incapacitated while trying to get your other hearthlings into bed, don't worry too much. Their death clock will start at full, hopefully giving you enough time to finish off the skeletons before you save them.

-- Step 6: Finish Them Off
With what's left of your army take out the remaining skeletons. Direct your hearthlings back to your base to rescue those who were incapacitated there after they've cleaned up the invaders. Once they're all in bed, make sure to check and see who made it, and who didn't. If you lost any vital hearthlings you may want to reload.


Search your message box to see if you finished the quest in time. If the voice sounds weaker, you didn't succeed and will need to reload if you want to try again. Otherwise, the voice will commend you on your victory and provide information to a number of questions. They will ask you to take care of a baby copper dragon to preserve their lineage. To my knowledge these never grow any larger, and merely function as a typical pet. It should be assigned randomly to a hearthling.

If you have successfully completed the mission, then congratulations on being the same kind of crazy I am. This is in my opinion the hardest mission in the game by far, and its random timing means its impossible to prepare ahead of time. Completing this mission is quite the achievement.

There are two ways to trigger the last hurdle; each of them are at the end of their respective questlines. Both of them can be triggered during the same playthrough.

-- The War Questline
To trigger the fourth hurdle via the War Questline you have to defeat the orc chieftain and wait a bit. They will soon return with news that one of their shamans attempted to bind n a great evil, and that one of the coalesced shards that it is made of lies underneath the land your colony is situated on. She hands you a fifth gong, and instructs you to place it and activate it when you are ready for battle.

-- The Warren Questline
To trigger the fourth hurdle via the Warren Questline you must successfully gain the full trust of the rabbitfolk and at the very least be offered each of the special quests provided as part of the questline. Once you have achieved this and gained even more rapport with the rabbitfolk, their representative will arrived and tell you about the great evil and how one of its shards is coalesced under your territory. They will ask you to fight it, but unlike triggering it via the War Questline you have another mission to complete first. You must lend them a level 4+ mason, level 4+ blacksmith, and two other hearthlings of any level or profession for a few days. Upon their return, they will provide you with a giant arbalest you can place and then activate to summon the fourth hurdle.


Once you have acquired one or both of these summon items, all that remains is to summon the titan. Before you do so however, there are some things you should double-check.

-- Are all of your hearthlings trained as militia?
During the siege, hearthlings who get seperated from the group and those who get left at base alone are in real danger. Since enemies and catastrophies will spawn constantly, its a good idea to make sure all of your hearthlings are trained in being either an archer or a cleric (knights are hard-countered by corrupted wolves) and can be conscripted at any time so they travel with your primary group and can fend for themselves.

-- Do you have a food reserve or plans to obtain food during the siege?
The fourth hurdle is the primary stage where food is likely to become scarce, so it is important to have a reserve for or quick access to food. Since hearthlings cannot be left alone by themselves, and your militia will need to be moving almost non-stop, having a typical food source like full time trapping, herding, or farming likely won't cut it. Having an orchard of berry bushes or prickly pear cacti that can be harvested by a few workers in a short period of time is a good way of obtaining food during the siege. You can also prepare a reserve ahead of time of flour, cornmeal, sausages, bug meat, or jerky. All of these foods spoil slowly, so they should be able to sustain your hearthlings if you have a cook working in short shifts before heading back out with the militia. Bug meat and jerky can also be eaten raw, which can be a lifesaver if your cook becomes incapacitated or it becomes too dangerous to remove him from the militia. Short-term spoilage foods like fruits, vegetables, and eggs are a poor choice as they will likely not last the length of the siege.

-- Do you have a plan to instantaneously close access to your base if needed?
There may come a point where too many of your hearthlings are incapacitated or too many enemies spawn close to your base at once. In times like these, it is important to have a plan to instantly isolate your base. You can use geomancy to block off tunnel entrances or thin passages, and building easy-to-construct simple bridges over trenches or moats allows you to manually destroy them if the pressure gets too high. If you live on a mountain peak or in a low valley you can use ladders to control access to your base and mark them for disposal (by hearthlings that can build) in the event of an emergency. Do *not* depend on gates or doorways to keep you safe, as the siege will be relentless and when you most need them you won't have the manpower to defend or repair them. A quick reminder: remember that if you are going to close off your base, you should check to make sure as many hearthlings as possible if not all of them are inside of your base. If they aren't, they will almost certainly perish.

-- Do you have adequate access to most of the map?
During the siege enemies and tendrils can spawn a ways away from your base. In order to combat this and make sure that all of them do not spawn out of reach, you should make sure you have direct routes to nearly everywhere on the map. While this will also mean that spawned enemies can reach you just as quickly, if you are proactive and keep your militia on the move this should be manageable.


Once you have finished your preparations, activate the summoning item. Lightning will strike the surface of the map and the evil being will spawn at the edge of the map. In order to defeat them, you must use a combination of withstanding attacks and going on the offensive.


-- Dig up tentacles
You can use the slice terrain tool to see where underground they are and dig accordingly. If you want to move quickly you can direct your hearthlings to target the exact spot they are located and dig there. If you don't mind taking a while you can also dig tunnels underneath the surface to reach them without significantly endangering your workers.


-- Clear Dark Brambles
These brambles will spread over time, potentially blocking off above-ground access to the tentacles. Use the harvest command to clear these and weaken the evil further.


-- Destroy Portals
Destroying portals and the dark minions defending them will weaken the evil as well as preventing raids on your settlement by powerful enemies. Be wary of sending your troops too far from your base, as enemies may spawn suddenly near it.


-- Use the Arbalest
If you obtained the arbalest from the Warren Questline, then you will be invited to use it at different intervals to remove a massive chunk of the evil's health. While the arbalest isn't necessary to win, it can be incredibly helpful.


In time, you will whittle down the titan's health bar until they are destroyed, cleansing your lands and your summon items. Depending on which of them you have acquired, a rabbitfolk geomancer and/or an orc warrior will wish to join your town. The gong and the arbalest will allow their respective races to have a chance of joining your town in the future, if they are deployed.


Completing this means you have beaten the last hurdle, and consequently hardmode. Congratulations! You've shown you have the grit to beat the biggest threats the game can throw at you, and come out victorious!

Aside from the above-written strategies for victory, here are a number of tips and tricks I've used in my playthroughs to increase efficiency and get out of tough spots. Hopefully these help you the same as they've helped me.

-- Craft excess resources into resource piles to save space and prepare them for easy transport to build sites. You can disassemble them once they've been installed there.

-- Trappers provide more food if set to capture insects. Farmers provide less food if overwhelmed by too much farmland.

-- Patrols tend to stick close to buildings and roads. You can use this to control their general location.

-- Military units will stop mid-attack to follow a go-to command. They will continue attacking the nearest enemy until there are no more nearby enemies if you place an attack command out of immediate range. If its in their immediate range and set to a unit instead of an area they will immediately switch targets. If you place a defend command they will leave to eat and sleep, but less frequently than if they were permitted to patrol freely.

-- Berry bushes are one of the fastest renewing food sources in the game. It can be helpful to bring one with you when you disembark, so you can use its seeds to plant an orchard in your next playthrough.

-- The first profession is easy to teach, the second profession is manageable, the third profession takes annoyingly long, the fourth profession is like pulling teeth and can take an entire playthrough.

-- Giving crafters a job as archers can make them useful when there's nothing to craft.

-- If you don't feel like building, tunnels and chambers dug into the side of a mountain can serve as a good base.

-- Attribute gains from township shrines carry over on disembarked hearthlings. You can use this to make up to three super-hearthlings over time.

-- Removing beds can be a good tactic if you're transporting items from far away, as hearthlings will lay down to sleep where they're at, saving commute time.

-- Rugs can be a good option for increasing the aesthetic value of an area if you don't have much spare room.

-- You can't save the template for a building you have already commanded your hearthlings to build. Don't be like me; learn this the easy way.

-- Zillas and bone wolves do massive damage, turning knights and footmen into busywork for your clerics. Rely on archers for these fights.

-- Using supply shelves and related items to store food can give you a visual cue as to how much you have left, without ruining the aesthetic like stockpiles do.

-- If you fail a playthrough, take a moment to consider what went wrong. Sometimes a small change can make all the difference.

-- Eight small crates or one chest can store as much as two large crates using only half as much space.

-- In safe areas, it can be more expedient to place storage units at a resource gathering area and then move them back to base when they're full.

-- Ladders are bae. Don't underestimate them.

-- Creating new saves instead of overwriting old ones reduces the chance that your save will be corrupted.

-- Assign hearthlings with low stats to constant jobs such as farming, trapping, cooking, or weaving so they'll be the last hearthlings you pull when you need to bolster your militia. This maximizes their relative usefulness by reducing the time they spend in an incompatible profession.