In-Depth Guide to Master: Snow Wars II.

     INTRODUCTION

     Hi there, my Neopian friend on the other side of the screen. I’ve received a few petitions asking me to write a guide for a game that might be of interest to people into avatar collecting. This game as you have already read in the title of this article is Snow Wars II; an improved, more exciting and harder version of an old non-flash game.

     I’m pretty sure most of us own the trophy awarded for beating Snow Wars, but maybe it’s not enough for you and that’s perfectly fine! Always aim for the stars and to be better. So this time around I’m going to listen to some of you, i’ll give you all tips and advices for this game. You should able to get the avatar by the time you finish reading this guide and even a shiny trophy, because why not?

     THE BASICS

     Most of this information is kind of obvious and if you have history trying to get the avatar for this game, you already know the basics; I’ll mention all of this as a reminder anyway.

     -The main objective is to protect your snowmen as long as you can.

     -The game is divided in 3 stages which are: Surrounding your snowmen with ice blocks, placing your catapults and attacking the pesky snow beasts and sneaky Lupes.

     -Your game starts with the surround your snowmen stage; you’ll have 30 seconds to do it in the beginning of the game and 15 seconds during the rest of the game. You need to surround your snowmen completely, it’s easy to tell you were successful, once you surround a snowman, the area within the wall will turn into a darker blue shade.

     -Ice blocks come in different shapes and the sequence in which you receive them is totally random. The different shapes are as follow: 1x1 ice block, 2x1 rectangular-shaped, 3x1 rectangular-shaped, 4 T-shaped ice blocks, 5 cross-shaped ice blocks, 3x1 L-shaped and 5 Z-shaped. You can rotate the ice blocks by pressing the space bar.

     -Following the surround your snowmen stage comes the Place your catapult stage; just follow the instruction and place your catapults, you can only place them inside of your walls.

     -In the third stage, you only need to attack the snow beasts and Lupes that appear on the battlefield by aiming at them with your cursor and clicking to shoot. They go from 2-5 snow beasts and 3-6 Lupes per attacking stage; your enemies increase in number as you advance in the game.

     -You get points by successfully rebuilding your walls over and over again and a few more extra points in the attacking stage. Also the more snowmen you keep throughout the game, the more points you’ll receive in the surround stage, so take good care of your 5 snowmen.

     THE STRATEGY

     The game is pretty simple in fact, anyway there are a couple things you can implement to your gameplay so you can survive longer in order to obtain 10,000 points.

     Snowmen placement: This might not seem important but it is, this is the first thing you need to check when your game starts. Every time you start a game your snowmen will be set randomly in the battlefield; the ideal configuration of your snowmen is when they’re all placed far from the edges of the game window and from the river in the middle. Here are 2 screenshots of a bad and a good snowmen placement:

     Getting the perfect placement might take you a few tries, just keep restarting your game until you feel your snowmen are fine.

     Building your walls: So building your walls around the snowmen sounds as something easy to do, and well, it is. But again, a handy tip i can give you is: In the first round of surround you have to be quick to build your walls, since you only have 30 seconds to do it; don’t fall into despair though, you must always try to surround all of your 5 snowmen since the beginning BUT keep your walls as thin as possible. By thin I mean that your wall should be 1-2 blocks of width. Why? Because later in the game, you won’t be getting 1x1 or 2x1 ice blocks to patch your wall and if your wall is to thick, you might end up with a single 1x1 hole that you won’t be able to cover it when you start getting Z and cross ice blocks, most of the time this is why your game will be over, so be careful.

     Also, as you build your walls, try to leave 2-3 squares free from the edges of the game window and from the river, for the same reason i explained previously, this way you’ll be able to repair your walls more easily.

     Section the area within your walls: It’s clear by now that in the first stage of surround you must built your walls to protect your snowmen, however in the following surround stages you should focus on 2 things: The first one is to repair your walls, of course, and the second one is to separate your snowmen into individual rooms. At times you won’t be able to completely repair all of your walls, but if you do have the area within divided into sections, even though you lose one or two rooms, you’ll still have 2-3 sections active and your game will continue. If you ever get to be in that specific scenario, right after defeating the snow beasts and Lupes, aim at your wall section that you couldn’t repair previously so it will be easier to patch those walls and recover the lost sections (Assuming that was the reason you couldn’t repair them due to not getting the right ice blocks).

     Keep a small amount of catapults: The right amount of catapults you should have in order for your game to run smoothly is 20-25. If you fill all of the area within your walls with catapults, 2 things will happen and none of them are good. Placing more than 35 catapults will lag your game big time, taking away your time to attack and therefore you will have more Lupes left by the time the attack stage is over. Also, placing more catapults than necessary will occupy space that is vital to separate your snowmen and to repair your walls.

     Enemy priority: Your priority is to attack the snow beasts before the Lupes, because the longer they stay in the battlefield, the more damage they will inflict to your walls and you’ll go from 2 holes to repair up to 8-10 holes to patch, which is a complete nightmare to do.

     Sometimes you will run out of time and some Lupes might be left, but don’t panic, that’s not a good thing to happen but it certainly won’t affect you that much. If those Lupes ever happen to cross the river, they won’t come back and the only thing you need to watch is that they should not enter your walls, otherwise they’ll be just fooling around doing nothing; if a Lupe does enter your walls, just patch the hole from where it entered and it will vanish.

     Technical suggestions: These tips aren’t directly related to the gameplay but they are important as well. You should be playing in the lowest quality and the smallest window setting, this will prevent your game to lag. This is optional though, it really depends on how fast your PC is, my PC is a turtle, so playing with this setting does improve my game.

     And the last thing is to TAKE SCREENSHOTS. Before you start every attack stage, place your non-dominant hand over the “PrntScr” key, after defeating your enemies, press it and then paste the screenshot on any drawing program. Now you’re able to take a look at your damaged walls and to spot where the holes are, after counting how many holes you need to patch, come back to the game and start the surround stage; So you’ll know exactly what to do. If you don’t do this, you’ll be risking your game as it is easy not to spot a 1x1 hole sometimes, so yeah, this is really important to do.

     Finally, here’s a screenshot to show you everything that i’ve explained to you so far:

     As a summary: Good snowmen placement, thinnest possible walls, individual rooms and sneaky Lupes. I know what you’re thinking, i have more than 20-25 catapults in that screenshot and the explanation is quite simple. During that game, there were two times i was only able to repair 2 sections of my walls, so i had to place extra catapults to make up for the ones i lost, that way I ended up with 34 catapults, anyway try to keep your catapult count below 35.

     CONCLUSION

     This game is about strategy and patience, lots of patience. Eventually you will reach the avatar score and if you try for it on the beginning of the month, you will also gain a cool trophy. Just stay calm and as always, practice makes perfect, don’t give up! That’s all for this time, see you around everybody.