Northgard Kraken A Seafearers Guide to the Rework

Feasting and relic rush: Rushing relic in order to summon kraken for free feasts is actually pretty strong and will provide free kraken events once every 6 months (i think or year). Also the resources gained from ships destroyed by the kraken can be useful in the early game. The free kraken feasts DO NOT increase the feast cost. For this playstyle I recommend stockpiling food if possible and feasting to help speed up the mining and smithing process. You will need to be at 200 fame in order to feast when the Kraken approaches and you need to remember to actually summon the Kraken with your relic. This playstle can be combined with any of the below styles.

Military rush: Kraken is more of a mid to late game clan and you may have issues trying to rush a large military, however you can reasonably quickly create a force consisting of 2 valkaries, Kara, 1 bodyguard, 4 spectral warriors and as many extra axe throwers as you can afford. In order to do this properly you will want 15 iron (Kara, Valk upgrade, axe thrower upgrade), and at least 500 gold. The strategy is as follows – Rush knowledge from beyond lore, this will help you earn extra gold and lore through marketplace, then get Near the Sea Spirit(it will also help you earn gold) then go straight to Valhalla’s reinforcement. You also need to do the forge upgrades when possible. In order to have 4 spectral warrior you need 1 on standby then once you reach 6/6 lore, obtain Ran’s blessing to recieve 4 more spectral warriors. Any extra gold you have can be used to purchase axe throwers (3 per military building). Do try and stay in positive wyrd when you deploy your military as the valkaries aoe healing will only work if wyrd is positive. Final notes on this strat is that the main bottlenecks will be lore and gold so this needs to be your focus, if iron spawned inland you should clear the tile and surounding with valkarie and spectral warrior and use high tide on the iron tile, if there is just one wolf on the tile you can take it with just one spectral warrior.

Expansive Development: “Near the Sea Spirit” is a powerful income generating tool that synergises well with expanding a large territory as well as contributing wyrd. With a large territory it might be benefitial to have multiple loremasters and take the erudition lore for increased lore production. For this playstyle i recommend considering the guardian miltary tree to help manage your territory. Otherwise the leadership tree has very high synergy and should also be considered, it is important to get the valkarie forge upgrade to make the most of this. If you are rushing it might still be benefitial to have a large territory if it is convenient as I believe the returns from “Near the Sea Spirit” will outweigh the cost:gain of “Knowledge from Beyond”.

Smaller Territory: Take “Knowledge from Beyond”, if you can’t access a lore stone early on you need to prioritise getting this. You still need to take “Near the Sea Spirit” as well because it is powerful. With this you should propably take the leadership military tree as it will help you get maximum value from your leader and valkaries. Free feasts from summoning kraken with relic can help a lot with sustaining smaller economies and you can also build more on each high tide tile with “Near the Sea Spirit” so this works well with food silos and “eredication” lore. If you manage to reach 500 fame you can bulk up your military with spectral warriors. “Endless tide” lore also helps by increasing your warband size.

• 2 valkaries are effective all around tanky warriors.
• Kara the leader is the fastest unit and does more damage but also is less tanky than valkaries.
• Spectral warriors are useful meat shields that are essentially free, they also have 50% projectile resistance and therefore are ideal for tanking turrets.
• Axe throwers are the ideal choice to convert your extra villagers into as valkaries and spectral warriors already provide a lot of tankiness. Additionally the safety of being ranged is useful when you want to go into negative wyrd (which spawns more spectral warriors but disables valkaries aoe healing)

You should maintain positive wyrd at all times unless you specifically need one or more spectral warriors. If you have succesfully planned ahead and have enough norns to maintain positive wyrd then you can intentionally go into negative wyrd by temporarily assigning norns to do something else.
When to go into negative wyrd:
You are in a population bottlneck due to not enough houses, use the time waiting for wood/ extra room etc to spawn a spectral warrior who can assist your tribe by clearing mobs, increasing production(200 fame), defending and converting tiles into high tide zones.
You need to activate “near the sea spirit”s effect in order to increase wyrd and gold production (do this by converting tiles you own into high tide, or converting unclaimd tiles to reduce colonization cost and then claiming them)
You reached your max desired population or are preparing for battle. In these situations it is wise to fill up on spectral warriors in anticipation of need. If you are already at your max desired population spectral warriors will have many uses and even idle they can increase production in the area (200 fame).

• Near the sea spirit
• endless tide
• fur coats
• valhalla reinforcement
• sharp axes
• eradiction (good because you have more building slots), medicine

Note: shiny happy people does in fact reduce wyrd requirements

Small territory – 18 – 23 (2-3 houses, town hall upgrade)
Large territory – 23
SimCity – 23+ and 1 spectral warrior per territory

(not necessarily in order)
town hall
1 Hogr
1 woodcutter lodge+ for bad starts or small territories:
1 fishing hut (with silo in area)
1 marketplace

• hogr
• axe thrower camp
• marketplace (depending on your strategy and start you might need to buy resources you don’t have access to or it might just be more efficient at lategame due to Kraken’s strong economy)
• trading post (situational)
• forge
• fishing cabin

Assigning more norns than needed to be in positive wyrd can still be useful as villagers will arive much faster, just make sure you have enough houses.
Building more than one hogr isn’t really necessary as one upgraded hogr should be more than sufficient. More hogr does mean more spectral warrior space however spectral warriors arrive slower the more you have. One upgraded hogr gives 2 warrior capacity and the fame bonus gives 4 capacity which is more than enough. You should try and accumulate 500 fame instead of building hogr everywhere.

Fame on Kraken can be a challenge as you don’t have docks or any inbuilt way to generate fame. That being said you have access to your leader and valkaries fairly quickly as well as support from spectral warriors, therefore you can participate in activities on the map to earn fame like clearing, raiding areas etc. Clearing annoying neutral factions gives good fame. Also due to krakens strong food economy you can focus on colonizing more zones and feasting to earn some extra fame.
Both fame bonuses are fairly useful so I recommend trying to reach them, but you may not be able to reach 500 fame in fast multiplayer games, you can still have 4 spectral warriors at once early on by using Ran’s Blessing as described in Military Rush playstyle.