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How to Throw Snowballs: A Snow Wars II Guide


by sacred_lioness

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The catapulting snowballs launched from Snow Beasts, the snarling Lupes charging onto your territory, the snow-block fortress that needs to be constantly mended, this is the definition of the intense game known as Snow Wars II. Snow Wars II is a fast pace game where gamers like you must play strategically, keeping in mind various offensive and defensive tactics. The first time I played Snow Wars II, I felt overwhelmed by all that was being asked by the game. However, as I learned the basics and various strategies that are involved in this game, I've come to realize that Snow Wars II is actually a pretty fun game! This guide is meant (hopefully) to help those out there struggling with this game to achieve the rare Grundo – Snowthrow! avatar or the Snow Wars II trophy! So time to start this guide, let's start with the goal and basics!

Goal –

The objective of the game is to successfully prolong the attack from Lupes and Snow Beasts while being able to continuously create a snow-block fortress around your snowmen.

Basics –

Gameplay varies from attacking the enemy to defending your fortress. During the first stage of the game, you are given different types of snow-blocks which are used to surround your snowmen. After finishing snow-block placement, you are given Grundos with catapults which act as your attackers. These Grundos can only be used if they are surrounded in a fortress. If they are not inside, they will not be able to be used in the following attack. After this stage, you will be attacked by Lupes and Snow Beasts from the right side of the screen. The Snow Beasts will launch snowballs at your fortress, taking out some of the snow-blocks, while the Lupes will slowly make their way across the frozen river to invade your fortress and attack your snowmen. Once the battle finishes, you will repeat the steps (snow-block placement, Grundo placement, and attack), until you lose the game (being unable to make a snow-block fortress with at least one snowman inside or if the Lupes demolishes all your snowmen).

Starting the Game –

When you first begin the game, I recommend playing with the 650 x 488 game size and low quality. Playing on low quality will help relieve the lag that you may experience later in the game (which is caused by the sheer amount of Snow Beasts and Lupes that spawn to attack your fortress or by the presence of too many snowballs moving across the screen). Starting the actual game where you try for the avatar or trophy may take a while, though. Your main goal for starting is to keep restarting the game until you have a good formation of snowmen. The grouping of the snowmen is VERY important, so you'll want to start a game with a good form now (rather than start with a bad one, get close to the avatar/trophy, and then lose). A bad formation of snowmen consists of one where at least one snowman is close to one of the edges of the screen (or the frozen river). If you continue a game with this bad formation, you may have trouble completing a defense for your snowmen (since the later levels give you harder snow-blocks to work with).

The First Fortress Build + Grundo Placement –

Once you have restarted the game and found a good formation (all the snowmen are relatively in the middle of the territory), begin placing your snow-blocks. Now this may take some practice, but with the first snow-block placement, you have 30 seconds to make (at least) one fortress around one snowman. I've found that you can easily make a square fortress around ALL of the snowmen. It may take some practice, but you'll need to get used to the fast placement and rotation of the snow-blocks. Note that the fortress doesn't have to look like a square, just get all your snowmen into one fortress and you'll be fine. Upon completion of the first snow-block placement round, you will transition into the Grundo placement. You will have 15 seconds to place your attackers. You'll want to start by placing your Grundos in between your snowmen (in an orderly fashion, such as a square shape or so). Make sure that your Grundos are not touching/near the edges of your fortress (if they are, they will very likely create complications in the future). For Grundo placement, I usually position the Grundos from the top down.

The First Battle –

Alright, so now that everything's set, you're ready to take on the Snow Beasts and Lupes! The strategy for your attack should be to attack the Snow Beasts (enemies with the catapults) first and then aim for the Lupes. The Snow Beasts pose much more of a threat to your victory since they aim for your wall and launch snowballs in order to break your wall down. So, based off your positioning of your Grundos, you'll know where you should aim first. For example, I set my first Grundo at the top, followed by the next one, and so on going downward. Therefore, I should make my first attack hit an enemy near the top of the screen on the other side of the river at any of the catapults there. You want to aim for the enemies that are close to whichever Grundo you're using to attack as well in order to decrease the time it takes the snowball to reach its target. The farther away the Grundo, the longer it takes for you to destroy the enemy, and the more time the enemy has to move (dodge your attack). Furthermore, you must always you're your mouse moving. After you've clicked 2-3 snowballs on one enemy, continue on to the next and do the same. The longer it takes for you to kill an enemy, the more time that particular enemy will delay you from destroying the others. Also try not to stay focused on one particular enemy either, you may lose track of time and find yourself facing a mob of Snow Beasts and Lupes the next round of battle. Once you've taken out the Snow Beasts, take aim at the Lupes and wait till the total 15 seconds you have to attack concludes.

That concludes the first three rounds in the game (which roughly lasts 1 minute)! Surprised that the game sounds easy so far? Hopefully you said yes, because that's what this guide is meant to do! Now as the game progresses with this repetitive process (fortress placement, Grundo placement, and attack, all lasting 15 seconds each), the game begins to become difficult so here are some of my personal tips!

Following the First Snow-block Placement –

A couple game features have changed, so now your game tactics will have to change as well. Firstly, you now only have 15 seconds to place snow-blocks. The main problem that occurs in this section of the game is the difficulty of putting down irregular shaped snow-blocks. As you progress through the game, you'll find very quickly that plus sign-shaped and Z-shaped snow-blocks are beginning to appear. These become a really big hassle since it's very difficult to place them (usually) into your fortress wall. What I usually do is have a gap on the outside of the fortress so I can quickly place one of these hard to fit blocks. As an experienced player of Snow Wars II, I must tell you that I lost the game on the fortress building round frequently. The following is a strategy that might save you from losing if you're unable to completely create the wall to your fortress

Split the Fortress! –

A good idea to prevent losing in the game is to split your whole fortress into two. To achieve this, you must be on the snow-block placement portion of the game and basically make a wall right through your fortress (vertically or horizontally), it doesn't really matter which direction (I personally like splitting the fortress vertically). Now, to understand how this can save you. If you're running out of time, just aim to save one side of the fortress and you'll be able to proceed with the game. This will save you in some situations (definitely did for me), giving you pretty much a second chance at getting the avatar/trophy. However, there is a downside to this strategy. Although you're given a second chance, it's somewhat hard to recover from this setup. You'll have to destroy the enemy as quickly as possible and you'll have more to rebuild in the snow-block placement stages of the game. In my honest opinion, this strategy is completely worth it since you'll still be in the game and that's all you'll need to get the avatar/trophy!

Following the First Grundo Placement –

Not much to comment on here. You'll basically need to continue putting Grundos to counter the large amount of enemies that spawn up each round. Just a small warning, don't put too many Grundos out of the field, your computer might not be able to handle all the Grundos. I've played once and had too many Grundos out (40-50); my computer was lagging so badly that the game froze and I had to restart my computer. Here are some tips to compliment the Split the Fortress! strategy.

Divide and Conquer! –

Following the Split the Fortress! strategy, you'll want to split your attackers into the two parts of your fortress. I recommend about 8-15 Grundos on each side (amount of Grundos doesn't really matter, just depends on how confident you feel). Any more than that risks creating a massive amount of lag which my interrupt your gameplay. As long as you have one side of your overall fortress walled in, you'll always have a strong force of Grundos ready to attack. The only downside to this part of the strategy has to do with the positioning of the Grundos. If you split your fortress down the middle vertically and the right side of your base was not walled off, you'll be faced with a slower attack since the Grundos' snowballs will take longer to reach and hit the enemies. If you split your fortress down the middle horizontally, you'll have a delayed attack on the north/south (depending on whether you couldn't wall off the top or bottom part of your fortress) side of the river.

Following the First Battle –

As much as possible, you'll want to try to clear out as many enemies as possible. The following attacks are pretty much like the first one, just with more enemies. Continue aiming for the Snow Beasts, followed by the Lupes. Now that you're in the later stages, sometimes enemies may escape getting attacked and stay until the next attack. Try not to let this happen, but if you let any enemies stay alive, try to make them Lupes. Lupes are not too dangerous, and if they wander into your fortress, simply walling the fortress can defeat all of the Lupes inside.

Recoil Damage! –

So this particular strategy is something I recently found out about the game. You can actually use your own Grundos to attack your own wall. You may be wondering how this would help you at all. Well, if you add too many snow-blocks to your wall and begin having trouble walling your fortress, you may want to destroy some blocks around the openings to make room for the bigger pieces of snow-blocks. I recommend using this strategy if you are able to destroy all the enemies or if you have only a couple Lupes left on the map. Only downside of this strategy is that this may take some of your time during your attack phase; furthermore, the attack on your own snow-blocks takes careful aim (you might destroy other blocks unintentionally).

So there you have it, a guide to Snow Wars II! I really do hope that this guide wasn't too confusing. Just go try Snow Wars II, who knows you might end up getting the avatar/trophy! Good luck to everyone out there! ~Suzie

 
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