- F1-- Getting in
- F2 -- The Fort Mechanics
- F3 -- Upgrading the Fort
- F4 -- Night Time
- F4.5 -- Hunting at Night
- F5 -- DAWN
- F6 -- New Mice
- F7 -- Loot Distribution
- F8 -- New Traps
- F9 -- Treasure Chests and HotM
- TL:DR - The guide for the hopelessly lost
Start by going to the Claw Shot City Cartographer and buy the map piece for 25 fools gold. It’s an immediate turnaround, so you can travel on the map straight to Fort Rox. Yay! That was easy!
You must defend your fort from the vicious attacks of the Night Mice. The way to do this is to upgrade your fort, and of course arm different weapons. This area gives us a new HUD with seperate sub-HUD’s for the upgrades. Those who know the GWH will be familiar with the general mechanics.
In this area, you can use multiple different cheese to attract different mice. The HUD will recommend Gouda, Sb+, a new Crescent Cheese, and Moon cheese. The importance of these two new cheeses will be discussed in the Night Phase. Don’t bother with them during the day.
To cover each section of the HUD, the top left shows a “Defend Fort”, this is when you’re ready to switch to the Night HUD. You do get the option to cancel or retreat from Night as you wish.
That blue crystal is mana, and the Activate is for when you build the MageTower. This will have some uses to help speed through the area, but isn’t required by any means.
The black rock there is meteorite pieces, and the next two are Howlite and Bloodstone -- two new loot drops that are only found during the Night phase, and are used for Upgrading your various defences (see the pics below for requirements and benefits of upgrading.)
POWER PLAY TIP
Meteorite Piece (MP) use will be contentious for a while. If you can use moon cheese by either buying from the marketplace, crafting, or buying a Mouseleum Champion Kit, then that’s great. Meteorite pieces can be gotten from loot drops, or if you’re desperate, in the Kings Cart for one KC per piece. MP use won’t really be known until the sugar auras go away, but for now I suggest to split your supply in half, and use half for cheese crafting and half for rebuilding the wall after each run.
The fort has five separate areas you can upgrade. The wall, ballista, cannon, moat, and a mage tower. Each one has different attributes that will affect your gameplay. The attributes stay permanent, so don’t be afraid to upgrade whenever possible. To enter the night phase, you MUST build at least a wall, which is 50 meteorite pieces, gained by loot drops from the law mice of Daytime.
The HUD will light up the “Upgrade” button during Daytime whenever you have enough supplies, so you don’t need to be too meticulous about checking the requirements. If you want to, though, you can click Upgrade anytime, day or night, and look to see where you stand on supplies. Note that you can only upgrade during the Day!
IMPORTANT TIP!
A note on upgrading the wall. When you start with the basic wall, you’ll notice it takes 50 meteorite pieces to build a 50 health wall. When you upgrade, though, no meteorite pieces are used! Your wall still has 50 health but you’ve raised the max to 100. This means you’ll need 50 more meteorite pieces to fully heal the wall before you can go into the Night once more. You can enter the wall anytime, though, even at 1 health if you really want to.
All ballista effects are immediately active. There’s no need to do anything other than sit back and reap the benefits of making the Twilight-Midnight areas just a little bit easier. Ballista 1 will increase your catch rate by approx x1.5 for Reaper's Perch trap or similar. Ballista 2 gives around a 40-50% chance of automatically catching any Werewolf encountered. Ballista 3 will automatically catch the Nightmancer mouse, which is encountered approx 5% at Twilight, and 10% at Midnight.
Like the Ballista, nothing special to do here other than enjoy the benefits of making the Utter Darkness and First Light areas just a bit easier to get through. Nightfire is encountered approx 10% at Utter Darkness, and 20-24% at First Light.
Who doesn’t like taking less damage?
Upon building the mage tower, you will gain 5 Mana. The choice is yours to activate or not. This is a similar mechanic to the lantern oil, in that you will get double loot drops and is also required to upgrade the tower.
Mana can be gotten many ways. You can donate, find as loot drops, or buy it from the general store with Howlite and bloodstones. Notice many of the effects are only available when active. Please note the “Sunsphere enchantment” is a little misleading in the wording. You do not get to skip two hunts, but rather one extra hunt (advancing you two total...your regular hunt plus one extra.)
POWER PLAY TIP
Unless you’ve donated, you’ll want to be cautious on when to use activate the tower as mana drops are scarce. After upgrading, activation abilities do stack, so you may decide to activate only when your wall needs healing (it heals in the dark!), or when you need extra loot such as Howlite at Twilight, or Bloodstones in First Light. The choice will be yours to make as to what you need during your run.
DONATORS
First off, thanks for keeping the game free for the rest of us. That said, donating for Mana and getting double loot drops will rapidly speed your way through the upgrades, making the whole area easier. Activate that as soon as you are able.
DECISION TIME:
A common question is what order to upgrade in? Everyone’s play style is a little different, but you should definitely start with Wall 1, Mage Tower 1, and then most people start with Ballista 1 (and exit night) before Moat 1. From here, it seems the best way to upgrade is to start with your weapons. You’ll need to catch mice to upgrade the rest of it! So, work on your ballista, then cannon before focusing on the higher walls, moat and tower.
And now some discussion on Wall Health. The wall starts out at a mere 50 health, but by the time you’re fully upgraded and have mana to burn, you’ll have a wall with 350 health and enchantments that both prevent damage as well as heal the wall. One of the questions that gets asked is “order of operations”.
At the beginning of each hunt, your workers are busy trying to repair the damage before the attack comes. If you’ve got the tower activated and your wall isn’t at full health you’ll gain one point. Yay! Next, as the mice come to attack you, they can get weakened by crossing the moat, and they’ll do less damage. Yay! So that’s how it works in a nutshell.
A fully upgraded Fort that’s taken 100 points of damage would look like this:
- Before clicking the horn, it’s at 250. Click the horn…
- Tower fixes some damage. Now you’re at 251.
- Mice get weakened crossing the moat, and instead of 5 damage only do 3. Now you’re at 248.
Night is a dangerous time! You need to hide behind the walls you’ve built, and wait for 130 attacks (hunts) which progress at the top of the HUD. As long as you capture the mice, the wall will not be damaged. But if you miss….
It seems like every mouse that you FTC will do a minimum of 3 damage, giving you a grey box. If the mouse steals from you, a Red Box means you’ll get 5 damage to your wall. The exception is the battering ram, which does 15 damage EVERY ENCOUNTER. That’s right, even if you catch him you still take the damage. The only way to avoid the battering ram is to use special cheese like the crescent or moon cheeses. (Similar to the Shadow Stalker in the Labyrinth avoids GG.)
Of interesting note that simply doesn’t make sense to me...and FTA means no mice show up, and by the Power of GreySkull your wall manages to take 5 damage. Amazing!
Assuming you don’t reach dawn, once your wall has been destroyed, you’ll pass out unconscious from the assault and wake up with a new day and a damaged wall.
“The hordes of mice overran my fort walls, crumbling them to rubble. My fellow hunters found me unconscious near the battlements in the morning.”
You’ll need to repair the wall by either spending meteorite pieces (or have an upgraded tower), plus upgrade any defenses, and prepare for the next onslaught.
POWER PLAY TIP
Don’t feel like you have to spend the whole night and wait for your wall to be battered down. Go to night time, spend 5 or so hunts and collect some Howlite, then leave. You won’t have to spend too many (if any!) meteorite pieces to fix your wall, and you’ll be able to immediately upgrade your ballista, which reduces the power of the night mice….less FTC’s mean less damage!
To survive the night, you need to spend 130 hunts during the night to get the Monster of the Meteor to show up. Night is broken up into five stages, each with different mice of different power and damage to your wall, this mechanic we’ve seen before in the Iceberg.
The daytime mice are busy little worker mice who go around picking up meteorite pieces for you to loot. Nothing much else to say about them. Be sure to arm a law trap!
Werewolves: This area is mostly werewolves, which drop Howlite, Mana, and meteorite pieces as loot. If you FTC one of them, then your wall will be hit for 3-5 damage.
NightMancer Mouse FTC will extend the night by 3 hunts. This makes dawn harder to reach! You cannot go past 130 hunts for the whole night, but you can be pushed back from one stage to an earlier one.
Battering Ram Mouse FTC damages your wall by 15. Ouch! This guy doesn’t like the light, so be sure to use Moon/Crescent if you want to avoid this mouse
Please note that leaving the area does NOT reset the timeline. Much like the iceberg, you’ll come back right where you left off.
POWER PLAY TIP
While the Moon Cheese offers a “near perfect” attraction rate, the Crescent cheese is much cheaper, but with a reduction in attraction. HornTracker also shows a consistently better loot drop when using Moon Cheese (no surprise since it takes SB to make.)
As you enter Midnight, the mice become a mixture of eight mice weak to shadow (but normal to arcane) and four mice weak to arcane (and normal with shadow), plus the Battering Ram. My suggestion is to stick with the best shadow trap you have. The pushback given by the NightMancer is not worth the extra loot drops given by the Gunslinger and NightWatcher.
Upon entering Pitch Black, you’ll find a notice that tells you now is the time to arm Arcane. All the same mice are present, plus three new ones. This brings the mix to eight Shadow and seven Arcane, plus the battering ram. However, now we have the NightFire mouse arriving, which does tons of damage compared to the battering ram so the choice is yours...damage or push back? General feedback from the community is to switch to Arcane the moment you step into Pitch.
POWER PLAY TIP
When you miss the Nightmancer (and you will), he can push you out of Pitch and back into Midnight. Watch your trap setup! You’ll need to go back to Shadow for a hunt or three.
DECISION TIME
For those advanced players with all your defenses built up, you’ll notice one in particular. The Mage Tower moves you two hunts along the path with each hunt and gives bonus loot. Yet PitchBlack is the shortest section with loot of all kinds available. To activate, or not?? That’s up to you. My recommendation is to turn off the Tower for those ten hunts….but that’s just me. :)
Still learning about this area. It seems the mice here are the same as in Pitch Black, but there is a population shift towards the Nightfire and other more difficult mice will be found in abundance.
With first light, the Werewolves finally flee for home, and now there are only arcane mice around. They’re tough, though, so be prepared for a hard fought battle to reach the final dawn.
(Props to Benjamin Moomaw and Janette King for being the first ones I heard of to get to First Light...paving the way for the rest of us!! Note that Ben did it with a Level 2 Wall/Tower and Level 1 for Moat, Cannon, and Ballista, while armed with Candy charms and the Grand Arcanum trap. So don’t feel like you have to have the Zokor traps.)
Please make note of that rotten evil Nightmancer, who pushes you back in time by 3 hunts with each FTC. These numbers above are accurate when you first enter Night, they will change based on how many Nightmancers you miss. This guy can even push you back into a different timeframe, so be careful of the trap setup, should you be pushed between Pitch and Twilight!
One of the difficult decisions is to decide when to stay in the Night side, and when to cut your losses and run, similar to the Furoma Rift decisions. For this guide-maker, I retreated after getting one howlite so I could build my ballista, as that is a quick and easy way to help your progress.
My second “bail out” was after I had 15 mana and 36 howlite, so I upgraded the tower, the moat and my ballista before going back in and trying to reach the Ruby drop levels of Midnight. The adventure guide says to upgrade the wall before the ballista, but you can do as you see fit. The key is to get lots of howlite and start upgrading as you are able.
Congrats to Bryan Lye for being the first to pave the way through Dawn!
And now you’ve finally made it here too, great job! You’ll find three mice: The battering ram, the Night Guardian, and the Monster of the Meteor. The damage mechanics stay the same at first, but with miss of the Monster, the damage of every mouse in the area goes up an extra 100%. (You’ll get a box explaining this in game.)
E.g. The first time you miss the Monster, the damage of both him and Night Guardian will go from 3 points to 6 points. The next time, 9 points. Then 12. And don’t get me started on the Battering Ram!!
These two mice drop Dawn Dust, which is the only way you can build the new traps. The guardian drops one or two Dust, and the Monster will drop three to five. You’ll need 500 for each trap so be prepared to be here a while to collect all 1,000. However, you might get lucky and get a bird drop (roughly 5%) or a bolt drop (roughly 10%) which will speed up the process.
Dawn Dust is also used for making Sunshine Cheese. It takes 25 Dawn Dust at the cheese shop to buy one Sunshine, but it’s the only way to get the Heart of the Meteor Mouse, so be prepared!
POWER PLAY TIP* Shielding charms are your friend. They block a red box from happening, which means less damage. E.g. If a red box does 5 damage, then you’ll only take 3. While this doesn’t seem like much during Midnight, at Dawn when you’re at 800% damage, it’s the difference between taking 40 damage without the charm, or using it and only taking 24 damage.
Each catch of the Monster of the Meteor increases how much damage the next FTC will do, regardless if it’s the guardian or the Monster, the damage will be the same. You can find a table detailing the damage per rage level in the wiki
There are 24 new mice in this area, divided into two primary zones. Daytime & Nighttime, but then as night progresses different waves of mice will attack.
Some special notes on the new mice, some is a repeat some is new:
- Meteorite Mover: Super rare, only found in daytime. Can be caught with Gouda and Patience.
- Battering Ram: Use Crescent/Moon cheese to avoid this beast.
- Nightmancer: Can’t avoid him, and if you FTC he moves you back three hunts! This guy is particularly evil in the Midnight section, as a shadow mouse when you’re likely using an arcane trap. Upgrade Ballista to level 3 for an auto-catch. Sweet!!!
- Wealthy Werewarrior: The only other Shadow mouse in the Arcane section. Evil devs….
- Dawn Mice: With each catch of the Monster, all Dawn mice do double the damage. From 3 points to 6, then 9, then 12, then 15, then…..yeah. Good luck with that!
Meteorite Pieces: Available anywhere anytime, day or night.
Howlite: Plentiful before Pitchblack, but still available afterwards.
Bloodstone: Plentiful after Pitchblack, but still available afterwards.
Mana: Pretty rare. In my findings you’ll see an average of one every four hunts during the Pitch Black phase, so only 2 or 3 per run through. If you’ve got the resources, you’ll get 1 every 3 hunts if you use SB+ during the Daytime hours, as the Materials Mining Manager drops them. Lastly, of course, you can donate -- $12 USD equals roughly 1,000 hunts worth of mana.
Animatronic Bird: Available as Monster loot drop or bought in store for 500 dawn dust.
Silver Bolt: Available as Monster loot drop or bought in store for 50 dawn dust.
I know it’s a 4S (Super Small Sample Size), but here’s my experiences in each area. This data in the chart below represents two full run throughs from day to dawn.
Too small? Check my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/1044840372252800/photos/a.1219740341429468.1073741829.1044840372252800/1223813834355452/?type=3&theater Cheese does seem to make a difference! Check out these two horntracker screens side by side. Bird drops and Dawn Dust both tripled when using Moon cheese!
POWER PLAY TIP* Still stuck on the Battering Ram? Want to just get him once to finish off your collection? One tip provided by the forums is to finish your run through to daylight again, then use all but two of your meteorite pieces to craft crescent cheese. Next, heal your wall for two points. Enter Twilight, and hope you catch him. If you miss, you’ll be bumped back to Daytime again. Do a hunt for a few pieces of meteorite to heal your wall, and try again. Yes, this is a lot of work, but this method means you’re only losing 2-3 meteorite pieces each hunt instead of dozens.
There are no new bases or skins, but there are three new traps which can be built through the trap smith in Fort Rox. Both the Droid ArchMagus and the InterDimensional Crossbow will require special items (Animatronic bird and silver bolts, respectively) which are bought for 500 Dawn Dust each, or if you’ve got some DHU, the Monster of the Meteor is also known to drop the bird/bolt as loot! Also, you’ll need some howlite, so don’t spend it all converting to Mana.
Please remember the new Arcane/Shadow traps are NOT the most powerful in the game. The Zokor traps are more powerful (and more expensive), and if you were here for Ronza in 2016, then the Chrome Arcane is buried in your inventory. It’s better too!
However, there is also is the Meteor Prison Core Trap, the best Law trap in the game. This will require a part from the Heart of the Meteor mouse, see section 9 below.
Game Boost Tip Once you get the traps, Dawn Dust has three uses, listed in my recommended order:
- Save for future portal crafting, 100 dawn dust each
- Craft Sunshine Cheese, for 25 dawn dust each
- Buy Bolt/Birds in the store and sell on the open market.
MOUSEHUNT FUN FACT: This game can change quickly, and the people that watch it are the ones that get RICH. You wonder how people get 100 million gold? Well, when this guide was first written, the Animatronic Bird was selling on the marketplace for 7 million a few days after opening, and by 11/11/16 was down to 2 million. Today, 3/22/17, they sell for less than 200,000. True Early Birds made some nice money!
Treasure Chests for the Fort Rox area were released on March 15, 2017. You’ll need to collect two components from these chests, a Portal Core and a Portal Console. Take these plus 100 dawn dust to the Fort Rox General Store, and buy yourself the Portal Projector….your key to entering the Heart of the Meteor.
With massive DHU, you might do three chests and wind up with three Cores. However, you can scour the marketplace for a Console. As of this writing (3/21), there is a 25% of a console/portal from a rare chest, and a 12% chance from the regular chest.
Common Chest: http://horntracker.com/loot.php?loot_id=2371 Rare Chest: http://horntracker.com/loot.php?loot_id=2372 Each Map is 20 mice, and is a few mice from all areas, from Daylight to Dawn. When you reach Dawn, you can activate the Portal via the HUD. Note the portal will be destroyed when it opens, so it’s a one time use! Much like the Tower, once you go in there’s no coming back without crafting another, so be sure to have your SunShine Cheese (25 dawn dust each, Cheese Shop) in your inventory and ready to go.
GAMEPLAY TIP This area is like the Zugzwangs Tower. Once you leave, you’ll need to craft a new projector to come back in. The good news, is that the portal brings you right back where you left. That is, if you open the portal with 42 wall strength, you’ll exit and land right back at Dawn with 42 wall strength!
The Heart of the Meteor Mouse is Arcane weak, but pretty strong. Have no fear, though. After nine misses, she will collapse in exhaustion, and your tenth hunt is a near certain catch. Once you do catch her, you’ll be sent back to Daylight, and your hard earned Sunshine Cheese will automatically disarm. (Yay!) She’ll also drop a Meteoric Core Fragment, which you can take to the Trapsmith for a new Law Trap that’s near double the power of the best one out there.
GAMEPLAY TIP Stock up on special Sunrise cheese before you go in. There’s no leaving for more, but anything over 10 is a waste.
- Get the map piece from CSC cartographer.
- Enter Fort Rox.
- Build Wall and Mage Tower soon as you can.
- Enter Nighttime. Use the Moon cheese to avoid battering ram.
- Collect as much howlite as you can.
- Eventually get defeated and go back to daytime.
- Fix the wall using either upgraded tower or spare pieces
- Buy any defense upgrades you can with Howlite.
- Repeat steps 4 through 8 until you can survive until Dawn and face the Monster.
- Obtain 1000 Dawn Dust and buy the two new traps (500 each) or get lucky drops
- Buy or Earn Portal pieces, and buy a portal from the General Store. Open it in Dawn
- Have 10 Sunrise Cheese to attract new Heart of Meteor Mouse
- Buy the new Law Trap using Heart Mouse loot.
- 11/3/16 Initial Version
- 11/4/16 Updates
- 11/5/16 Bryan Lye is first to finish! Lots of updates
- 11/11/16 Added in lots of updates since 11/5, sorry I didn’t track them all. I think I’m done with this guide unless anything major pops up!
- 11/29/16 Some comments from the forums (thanks Paul Hidding!) to make some tweaks to the play styles
- 3/10/17 -- Prep for Heart of the Meteor and the new Treasure Chests
- 3/15/17 - Added in some comments about treasure chests and Sunshine cheese.
- 3/22/17 -- Finally got around to merging the Heart Guide with this one. There can be only one!
- 3/24/17 -- Added a bit to the HotM section
I can be reached at either MHCC or MHTA under my real name: Steven Cherecwich
This guide is imperfect and incomplete, so you are free to copy and modify as you see fit, but please give me some kind of mention that it was taken from here.
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