Hey everyone! I make guides for Wildermyth and Bad North. I might share some of my original fictional there too if they ever get long enough.

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Spoiler Warnings
Artifacts – particularly knockback weapons and shields
Themes, Pets, & minor details on some of their associated events.
DLC – both Armour & Skins and Omenroad have had a meaningful impact on knockback warriors, and I actually have them now!
Mods – some offhand mentions of popular mods

So use your noggin and think about how unspoiled YOU want the game. Probably not too unspoiled because you’re looking up guides?

I was part of the closed beta for Omenroad and received the DLC for free like every other beta tester as a thanks for our feedback.

Anything marked with a (Th) or (Theoretical) is something I haven’t specifically tried on a specific build, though I may have experience with it otherwise, and in many cases I am relying on the knowledge and experience of others who have tried it

If anyone has feedback, I'd love to hear it! There will always be a few mistakes, plus some of my theoretical stuff is really educated guessing (praise the wiki) so hearing from folk who've tried things is great!

This guide is long (8.7k words) like seriously, where did all these words come from??

This guide was written between 2025-07-03 10:37 and 2025-07-07, during patch 1.16+559 – I will list any updates it receives here
Update 2025-07-09 patch 1.16+559: correction, Sentinel UI does factor in Long Reach
Update 2025-07-13 patch 1.16+559: Added Lilmark Ogerfair as a Cavalier example, and adjusted the section from practical experience. Also added the forgotten Combining Archetypes section. Oops.
Update 2025-07-23 patch 1.16+559: Minor adjustments & fixes, added missing artifact weapons, published on steam

Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in jargon, so I got a list to help with that

Party Role – what this character’s job is in a party

• Control – prevent foes from doing something, or otherwise interfere with incoming foes and their effects
  
• Damage – kill foes and do it quickly. large damage numbers (especially across multiple foes)
  
• Enable – combo pieces and setup; make other characters go BRRR.
  
• Sponge – be targeted by a fair chunk or attacks and walk out the other side with barely a scratch

-line – how close to their foes this character should be: often a good indicator of sponginess

• Backline – in the safest position, with the team between you and your foes, often far away from foes
  
• Midline – between foes and the squishiest characters, and expected to be able tank a hit, but behind the actual sponges
  
• Frontline – closest to danger, expected to absorb all hits and come out relatively unscathed

Adjacent – Both orthogonal AND diagonal
Alphastrike – the damage you can deal on the first turn/first attack
AoE – Area of Effect (i.e. an area in which you can hit multiple targets)
Avoidance – the combined stat of block plus dodge. Since the only mechanical difference happens if you have the Ice Shield (which activates when you block) and they are otherwise both just added together for hit chance calculations, it’s generally more useful to talk about them as a unit
Bow hunter – a hunter that uses a bow or crossbow (5.9 to 9.6 max range) see this guide
Clutch – game changing from loss to win at a critical moment
ERC – Ember Rail Cannon: a team strategy that turns a Bow hunter into a gatling gun with Spiritblade mystics. I detail it in this guide
DoT – Damage Over Time. What it says on the tin e.g. Quellingmoss
Grofit– Growth + Profit = Grofit (I believe it’s a warframe reference – I just like it)
OTK – One Turn Kill. Basically what happens when their health is lower than your alphastrike
Power curve – the increase in power over time in a build – ideally this wants to be as front-loaded as possible without compromising the late-game strength
Proc – “triggers” or “effect happens”, e.g. “killing a foe procs rogue, putting you in Grayplane” or “Quellingmoss poison procs when the foe turn starts so it’s procced more when you can slow them down”
Saturation attack(s) – when lots of attacks are used to bypass limited defences, such as 5 foes running at/past a warrior with vigilance+, or 4+ physical shred directed at a warrior with stalwart+ active, shredding past the buffer of stalwart (which is 3 armour)
UI User Interface – the buttons and display you interact with

Knockback warrior is a front or midline control build with a high non-directable damage output that can tool into a strong sponge setup – perhaps even the strongest. Other setups can focus on team synergy or damage output, making it a build that covers all four Party roles to at least some degree.

To be considered a Knockback Warrior, you need:

• A knockback attack (mace Frying Pan, hammer, theme, or specific artifact weapon, preferably with a leaf stunt) that’s prioritised by Guardian
  
• A willingness to enter Guardian almost every turn

There’s more to doing it well, of course. For that you want:

• Vigilance+
  
• Long reach (Or Sentinel)

The sheer simplicity of the build is why I never really sat down to write it up, despite it being my oldest and probably strongest build, an undersung cornerstone of the ERC team build. What follows is detailed minutia on why this works, and how to tune it to beyond the powers of mortal foes (or at least he melee ones).

General Playstyle
Knockback warrior is a great way to put down area denial, creating a zone that even more annoying foes will struggle to bypass – for example, it’s not uncommon for a pilot to jump over the warrior and get knocked away from the team as they land, especially with long reach. But you do need to be aware of foe movement range; melee foes that cannot green-move to attack will not enter the guarded zone. With careful planning this can be used to select which foes come in close, or group them up for your AoEs!!

If there are a lot of enemies and you aren’t physically blocking them – ideally you want only 3-4 foes to be in range of your heroes – you can have your vigilance saturated and start getting shrackled, sometimes fatally.

Finally, be careful of cover. All attacks in wildermyth are affected by cover, so you should try to avoid setting up in a spot where foes will enter the guarded zone while benefiting from cover

Specific matchups:
Rager is the most difficult foe to lock down, since they can move and attack with a single action point left, meaning they can still attack the team even if you knock them back. This is especially troublesome since they have crush – the ability to walk over scenery – so you will have a harder time blocking their movement. To beat them, you should position just outside their green move, so they have to use that second action before you knock them back.

Haunts have a built-in way to defeat the pre-emptive nature of knockback warriors – using Spectrestep to prevent the knockback (at no cost to them since attacking also removes it). When you’re up against them, you should try to pop that free avoid with an AoE on your turn

Example:



Gorgaron Youngload in his first outing joined (via an event) and retired in the same chapter – making him a great example of a minimal setup!

1) Accuracy – you fail if you miss, and you will have to deal with cover sometimes. I really cannot stress the importance of not missing your one shot to stop the <insert scary melee foe here> enough

2) Retirement age – in 5 chapter campaigns, warriors struggle with retiring early, and this build is not going to pick up abilities that boost it. You can disregard this if you’re doing 3 chapters or omenroad, but it’s nice to have the flexibility to do 5 chapters if you need to.

3)Avoidance (Block & Dodge) – a castle must remain unbroken to defend those within

4) Stunt chance – specifically if you have a leaf stunt, this keeps you in the fight

5) Speed – it’s nice to have a small amount of speed on a warrior

6) Warding – warriors sometimes struggle to get enough warding as compared to armour. A little bump from augments or background is good

7) Bonus damage – knockback warriors make a lot of attacks, so you get a lot of value out of giving them bonus damage. It’s not super necessary tho

8) Armour – flat defence is good

9) Health – it will increase your effective health, but you won’t really be getting the value from it in this build unless you’re using the Drauven PCs mod or something

10) Potency – for this build type, only useful if you have Zealous Leap, Raider, or are using a theme with a knockback attack. In the lattermost case, consider it equivalent to Bonus Damage

Most warrior armours offer some value to the Knockback build, although there are 3 top contenders

-scale (DLC: Armours and Skins)
A knockback warrior – and, perhaps more importantly, the team behind them – lives and dies on accuracy. If you miss, then your foes will not be interrupted, and will continue on their merry way. This is bad. If you’re able to snag yourself an accuracy-heavy history, a critter, and/or a bunch of accuracy augments, -scale may not be needed, but who can really complain about 100% hit chances?

-guard
the dodge and stunt chance offer great power. A dead warrior is not able to defend their companions, and stunt chance is damage and defence both – if you have a leaf stunt handy. Should you prove able to scrounge enough accuracy from other sources that you don’t need to pick up -scale armour, -guard armour will be a major boon to your efforts

-clate (DLC: Armours and Skins)
Valiant bracing is likely the best ability passive for a warrior who wants to enter guardian. It can make shredding her armour an exercise in futility, especially when combined with stalwart. However, stalwart is likely enough on it’s own so you’re unlikely to still be using -clate at full build, given the choice.

Of the remaining options
-mail
The classic warrior armour, getting all that tasty armour will help you out – but you will need to source your warding elsewhere

-scoth (DLC: Armours and Skins)
Fashioned for the Fray is a solid passive, but not necessarily very useful when your team wants to huddle up around you, and you pay a hefty price for it, along with speed you don’t necessarily need. Particularly aggressive playstyles can benefit from this approach, especially since the speed enables it, but you must be careful of overextending, and be sure to build up excellent defences to go with it

-cowling (DLC: Armours and Skins)
you uh. Don’t really need potency for the most part? I could see this being a potent pick if you’re using a theme knockback attack such as elmsoul with a view to outright killing most foes on the first pass, and Zealous Leap will benefit, but you’d need to get your accuracy beyond question, and grab yourself armour instead of warding where possible.. then again, elmsoul and child of the hills do offer sturdy foundations for such a warding-to-armour pivot, since the legs give you armour, and they have leaf stunts/stonewalling respectively to back that up

There are two axes along which we can change our approach – the base and the stunt. I’m going to cover them separately to avoid repeating myself, starting with stunt because it is the most important.

Stunt:

1) Leaf – you can’t go wrong with leaf stunts. The advantage stays so they can’t happen at the wrong time, and they offer you infinite-ish health. You also attack so much with this build that you will stunt pretty regularly, only needing ~25% stunt chance to stunt 1/round on average
.
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Honestly, I could stop there. The gap is very wide, at least on higher difficulties. I won’t though, because there really is room for variety when you build into it – specifically when you build the knockback warrior as a midline part of the team instead of the glorious sponge of the immovable frontline.
.
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2) Basic – yeah I know. Elemental stunts are awesome. But uh. Okay, look, this is a very distant second. Leaf stunt is just that good, and basic stunts don’t come with downsides. You might need another character on sponge duty.

3) Fire – More damage is more damage, and if foes are clumped up you can set fires – which you can make them walk over again and again. Arson is often a winning play in Wildermyth; just be careful you don’t overestimate your own toughness, and/or have a different character on sponge duty

4) Shadow – you don’t really get the same control over keeping the free dodge as most builds, since you will be gleefully attacking multiple times out of the player turn, but having Shadestride some of the time is nice, and it does give you some resilience against things that slip through. Leaf will usually be better though.

5) Stone – Can drag out fights a little, as you pin foes in you vicinity. Can also drop you in sticky situations if you bunch up foes with a stunt then don’t stunt the next turn to keep them pinned, but if you build for it you can get substantial value. I would only recommend this if you build your team around making use of those pins, and your warrior around getting them reliably

6) Water – pure downside. Water stunts don’t work properly on your foes’ turn (it’s not your turn so you can’t use the action point), so you’ll be washing you stunt damage downstream for no particular benefit or reason. Extremely distant last place.



Base:

Mace – I favour defence over pretty much everything else, and a maces mean shields, the single strongest defence tool in Wildermyth

Hammer & Theme – They offer an increase in damage and in some cases knockback, which can mean safety, but the lack of a shield increases vulnerability to ranged attacks, so you will have to account for that

Knockback Artifact weapon – Eaglewing and Oakenbrand are interesting in that they offer avoidance, as well as a notable tweak to how they play, but suffer from the lack of elemental stunts. You’d need to really commit to avoidance to stay safe from ranged attacks and general attrition or otherwise have ways to handle those. Use with care. Titan’s Fist is a better hammer with the same downside. Likewise Quakebaker (Th) is a better stone hammer, the Omenfry Skillet (Th) is just a better fire stunt mace Frying Pan, & Halehammer (Th) is a better basic mace.

There are 4 options when it comes to shields, and they’re usually preferable in the same order, although it does depend a little on exactly what you’re going for

Winterlock’s Ice Shield gives you a limited but important way to take on ranged foes, and is not to be underestimated!

Crystalline theme’s Shield Arm (Gem Shield) is a decent second pick for the stunt chance – which is less absolute single-target damage than Dragonpaw (depending on breakpoints) but crucially offers flexibility and reliability (i.e. it’s not dependant on breakpoints). If you’re not using omenroad, the downsides are largely about theme compatibility.

Dragonpaw Shield is strictly better than a basic shield and can help you on action economy if the bonus damage hits a breakpoint. Plus it looks gorgeous

Basic Shield is still great – remember, the best feature of any shield is that sweet 1 damage reduction (to my knowledge, if damage is reduced to 0 this way physical attacks will NOT shred armour)

Broadly speaking, as long as you leave one arm open for holding a mace, or use arms that grant an attack with knockback, you can use any transformation. However, there are some stand-out options

• Celestial – getting an extra layer of control out of your hair is delightful, and transforming a leg can do some funny things from time to time, especially against deepists
  
• Crystalline (Th) – stunt chance on the head and shield is a pretty good deal for most builds, and the leg stats are giving you avoidance for an absolute bargain of speed
  
• Elmsoul (Th) – a knockback attack with a leaf stunt is already pretty solid, but the damage is also kind of awesome with both arms, and the legs give knockback immunity. Deep Roots is a good source of retirement age too, up to +8 if you have all the limbs
  
• Flamesoul (Th) – this is a slightly unhinged addition, but an efficient warding for speed trade on the legs and the fire immunity more generally make this an appealing option, even for a character who has to trade their shield-arm for the privilege. Certainly worth a leg at an omenroad shrine, especially since the ground pet slot is quite competitive
  
• Child of the Hills (CotH) (Th) you don’t get a leaf stunt, and I think there might just be better uses for CotH on a warrior. That said, Stonewalling is decent and purposefully building around it could create something fairly unique
  
• Spelltouched only good if you’re using a theme attack. Even then, I wouldn’t call it mandatory but it is worth mentioning since it is a strict upgrade in that case

Wings

• Crowtouched (Th) Avoidance is awesome, and fly can be used in lieu of Zealous leap as desired – it’s actually better
  
• Drauven Wings (Th) Airlift is a strong ability for a character who wants to stay next to another character. It’s not my first choice but if I was considering Zealous Leap I’d be happy to swap, and extra speed is always decent, even if the dodge-speed of crowtouched is better value
  
• Hawksoul (Th) I could see a world where diving into danger is a great move – perhaps on a cavalier, although I’m not certain it would pan out in practice

Tail

• Foxish The fox tail’s a great stat boost, and your action economy can be somewhat strained. The upgrade is decent too. Specific archetypes might have niche use for other tails.

A note on the number of (Th) marks: I have used all of these themes (shoutout to the wing shrine where I finally got a taste of Hawksoul), but it’s a little bit of a stretch to call some of them knockback warriors, even though I often would adopt the knockback attack & always guardian approach, even without the core skills. In the case of Elmsoul I just don’t have that many of them, and my only warrior with it has a complex “Untouchable Shards” build that will probably warrant it’s own guide at some point (it also has the unusual distinction of wanting to avoid using guardian). However, I could not be more confident in my interpretation of use. I’ve got a neat little spreadsheet and a wealth of experience using this build (going all the way back to my earliest builds), as well as interpreting the numbers and how they shake out.

The ground pet slot is often pretty competitive, and that’s definitely the case here. While you won’t make or break your build on this alone, some pets will definitely serve you better than others. Drauven bird, as always, is a functionally free accuracy buff up in the shoulder pet slot

• Critter I’ve always loved critter, and it’s especially solid in reaction builds where you can’t set up flanks. 12 accuracy is no joke, and can be a real lifesaver, especially if you’re struggling to get enough. 10/10 goober, and Trinket Hunter is a good filler ability.
  
  
• Golden Rabbit Bonus damage is a good stat, and Protector can be a great ability for the midline variants. The ability to break up certain foes’ attacks (by knocking them back between attacks) is actually pretty useful since it’s often more dangerous foes that multi-attack in separate instances. Plus more attacks is more attacks.
  
  
• Fire Chicken fire immunity is huge, and lighting fires is a good perk, although Raider is better in that regard, since it doesn’t have a cooldown. Due to the way Covering Fire (Th) can return you to stealth after a guardian attack, the greyplane damage bypass can be attractive for damage oriented variants, allowing for both more aggressive positioning and a higher damage output, fires permitting
  
  
• Hago Cub While temporary by nature, this lil’ bean is getting a mention here due to how phenomenal the stats are for this build: a decent quantity in a lot of desirable stats. That, and Omenroad lacking chapter intervals allows the Hago cub to stick around for a full run there
  
  
• Duck (Th) good stats that don’t go away. I think Duck isn’t quite as good as Critter, but Alarming Quack covers a pretty obvious weakness in Knockback Warrior’s anti-melee nature
  
  
• Ogogen (Th) it feels.. odd to put the pet rock here, but since I know one leg worth of Celestial Path can be good, it’s hard to argue Ogogen – which gives you exactly that – is bad. Plus there’s a decent upgrade for it. Although you may struggle to fit it within your 7 slots in campaign play
  
  
• Pinecone having the ability to wall with trees is nice, and giving them back to Lord Evergreen is good for any build.
  
  
• Shadowcat (Th) will allow you to do teamplay things. If you’ve got what you need elsewhere and you aren’t using Stalwart, there are solid reasons to pick this shadowy bean, depending on the rest of your team
  
  
• Black Cat (Th) is a bit awkward, since you should be knocking foes away before they get next to you. Might have value on a non Long Reach Cavalier tho.

Core: Upon which all rests
Wall: Against which foes break
Tower: From whence we strike
Chef: Supplies win Sieges
Cavalier: Rescue in Reach

Unlike Bow Hunters, who get to pick from a selection of skills to get their core builds online, knockback warriors of all stripes require two things: pre-emptive reaction attacks (Vigilance+), and the range to cover the whole team (a good chokepoint, Long Reach or, if you’re particularly gutsy/spread out, Sentinel). Beyond that is all fine-tuning.

Vigilance+:
The premier action economy tool, perhaps in the whole game, thankfully complementing it’s rival, Archery. Vigilance+ is a 2-part investment that increases your attacks from 1 to 2 to 4. While that might sound less impressive than infinite attacks, it comes with 2 major advantages: certitude and pre-emptivity. Which are fancy ways of saying “you always get the number you’re supposed to get” (i.e. unlike with riposte you don’t have to dodge) and “you strike first” i.e. you can prevent attacks from ever reaching you.

When comparing Vigilance to other value reaction attack abilities, Archery (with Throughshot) and Protector (Bunny pet’s skill) have a higher ceiling (infinity is pretty hard to beat) and retain certitude, but lose pre-emptivity. Riposte also has a higher ceiling, but has neither certitude nor pre-emptivity, and seldom generates the same reliability as Vigilance+, due to both the dodge requirement and the need for the foe to target you (rather than any hero).

Long Reach(+):
While it isn’t strictly necessary, if you don’t have long reach you will need unshakeably divine positioning to use knockback warrior, and the Wall or Cavalier archetypes will probably be your only option for success, since the major advantage of Long Reach is the ability to attack foes on the other side of your allies, as well as block off avenues of attack that would otherwise circumvent the guardian zone



Image: Lilmark Ogerfair perfectly covering for his allies. Please note that Vyasorr is from the Drauven PCs mod and cannot be made in vanilla

In the example above, Lilmark is able to cover for both his allies using the fat plus shape of long reach+. Ordinarily Woreleen would be vulnerable being diagonal to him, but I accounted for this with the cunning placement of an unlit lamp. Please not that lamps & other scenery will not stop enemies with the Crush ability

In certain builds you may be able to replace Long reach with Sentinel (or even combine them) but you must be careful when doing so, building and positioning with that replacement in mind (i.e. have other characters that can take on ranged foes with only unreliable access to archery, and have abilities that mitigate the weakness to ranged attackers.

The key concept of this archetype is that no foes have what it takes to break your defence. Leaf mace and shield, with a selection of themes to pick from, this archetype is durable beyond any other build I’m aware of – save, perhaps, certain Leaf Archery Throughshot builds, and full-build AvoiDancers in a safe corner. This build, however, almost does not give a damm where it stands and can happily turn back the tide wherever necessary while reliably keeping other allies safe

Wall is a frontline sponge/control archetype.

Core:
Stalwart(+)
Vigilance+
Long Reach

Optionals
Paladin(+) OR Zealous Leap(+)
Untouchable – cutting down on incoming attacks once in a while can make a difference
Backslam(+) – largely because you’ll have a lot of armour
Endurance(+) - sometimes your defences need an extra boost
Engage – being able to take aggro on a specific foe can fix some difficult situations with the odd melee foe that slips behind the team, but also ranged foes, who you otherwise don’t interact with

Theme Dependant Optionals
Bash+/Heavy Bash+ (Elmsoul 1 or 2 arms)
Erratic Movement (Th) (Pet Rat) (If using Paladin)
Fly/Airlift/Talon Dive – viable alternatives to Zealous Leap(+)


Prioritisation

History: Accuracy is probably still above all else, but Avoidance is a very narrow second. Ideally you want some Warding, especially if your armour doesn’t have any. If you have the MutM recruit you could get some stunt chance in there for more leaf. Speed and Retirement Age as needed.

Armour:

• -guard, for the dodge and leaf stunts
  
• -scale, to really push accuracy
  
• -clate, to emphasise taking hits (good vs many ranged foes)
  
• -scoth, if you’re standing up aggressively away from the team
  
• -mail, you’ll be slow, but the armour is good. Grab more warding, but remember Stalwart can cover that to some extent
  
• -cowling (Th), avoid this, you will not have enough armour

Shield:

• Ice Shield
  
• Gem Shield Arm (Th)
  
• Dragonpaw Shield
  
• Basic Shield

Attack: Leaf Mace. That Leaf stunt is your lifeblood, and you want a shield. If you went Gem Shield Arm you could also use an Elmsoul arm, though I suppose both arms is an option if you want to lean towards damage – you could even go all in for Splinterskin and take Deep Roots

Themes:

• Celestial – hair is awesome and, while the loss of armour is tragic, a single leg can be useful as an accuracy booster in some situations
  
• Crystalline (Th) – eye and shield are both great, and the legs are an excellent stat trade
  
• Elmsoul (Th) – everything is awesome, in pretty much any quantity and combination. Armour is good, leaf stunt knockback is perfect, knockback immunity is solid, and Deep Roots is, as ever, a great source of Retirement Age, especially if you have several limbs. Avoid combining the legs with a Celestial leg or Ogogen (getting knocked back in place is that use-case)
  
• Spelltouched – only if you’re using at least one elmsoul arm
  
  
• Crowtouched (Th) – wings, and leg warding. wouldn’t go for the head (or arms)
  
• Drauven Wings (Th)/Hawksoul (Th) – for using Airlift/Talon Dive instead of Zealous Leap
  
  
• Foxish – great stats you need

Pets:

• Hago Cub – pure grofit on stats
  
• Critter – always a top pick
  
• Rat (Th) – if you want to do the erratic movement variant
  
• Duck (Th) – Solid Stat boost, especially appreciated for a defence oriented build
  
• Ogogen (Th) – same as celestial legs, Celestial Path has niche uses. I generally rate other pets higher though.

Using Stalwart and when to + it:

Stalwart can keep any warrior in a fight long after they otherwise would have run out of armour and health. Stalwart cannot restore lost armour, but armour from stalwart is lost first, and can be replenished by toggling the ability off and then on for the price of a swift and a single action, leaving one action open – this toggling means that even if they do manage to strip you down to 0 armour, you can always end your turn with 3.

With your final action, don’t be afraid to just stand in place and enter guardian or, if it’s down to the ranged foes, move (you can do this between the two toggles to get a full speed move). Of course, you won’t always need to toggle, and there will be circumstances where you can leave it off for a round, or leave yourself missing some of your stalwart armour for a round, especially towards the end of a fight or when there aren’t enough foes to shred you down

When to + Stalwart
Against Thrixl, Drauven and, to a lesser extent Deepists, the + is a major boon, allowing you to outright ignore a lot of what makes them scary – while there are Gorgons and Morthagi that use dangerous status effects, they’re generally not all that worrying for a Wall



Optionals - Mobility:

Being able to quickly reposition is always valuable, especially against foes like Drauven Redcloaks and in Omenroad. A Wall can sometimes struggle under the ½ speed and draining action economy of Stalwart, so their optionals are about fixing that.

Starting with Paladin; I used to be very against it, and especially Paladin+, as an ability. I certainly still think it’s far from necessary. However, it is largely true that this opinion came from starting with paladin on the two level 1 warriors in AtBoS. Paladin is a terrible ability to start with, since it doesn’t really improve a level 1 character’s capabilities. I also thought the + was only for ending on attacks, but it’s actually ending on any action

Paladin is good or bad in the context of the abilities around it, and in the case of a knockback warrior, it can allow them to toggle stalwart on and off, move, and still enter guardian a the end of the turn. It also received a boost with the release of the Armours and Skins DLC, since with that there are more armours that don’t reduce speed, or don’t reduce it by as much

Further, when using Paladin, you could potentially grab Erratic Movement instead of the + if you have the pet rat, trading flexibility for avoidance, although this is slightly anti-synergistic if you’re using the Ice Shield, since it would weight your Avoidance towards dodge.

Zealous Leap was my previous mobility-of-choice in this slot, since it offers significant advantages in the actually moving part, especially for warriors without speed history or augments wearing -mail armour. I think that in the context of Stalwart, when you need to also enter guardian, Paladin offers a slight edge in survivability, and a more useful +, but Zealous leap can get you out of dicey situations regular movement can’t path to – or into them if you need to rescue an ally. You usually won’t need to move every turn, so the base version will cover a lot of your needs, especially if you have decent potency – just be careful not to use it when you don’t need it.


Playstyle
Fairly static with short bursts of movement, especially when chokepoints are involved. Always between the rest of the team and the most dangerous group of foes (ideally all foes). If possible, you want to be right on the edge of just enough foes to use all, or 1 less than all of your reaction strikes (since further away foes won’t double move past you if the guarded zone is still active). A great partner for a Reactive Bow Hunter.

Mae North is basically the pinnacle of indestructibility. Like, the untouchable is overkill, and I’d likely swap Long Reach+ for Paladin, but damm, she will not be letting such petty concerns as “melee foes” and “ranged attacks” bother her


Bellof Frostsly has a great setup for a morthagi or gorgon campaign, and she’d be ok into the other three, especially deepists. Her defences are a tough nut to crack, and the leaf stunts will build up to fill any such cracks. I don’t generally recommend engage, but it can be useful to leash a foe in an inconvenient spot, especially ranged enemies. I’d definitely want to trade something out for Vigilance+, but what exactly would really depend on what themes I saw.

This archetype is a midline control/damage hybrid that can either one shot most foes coming into range, or bring them down enough of a notch to make them easy pickings on the next turn. The execution of this archetype is actually pretty variable, based on what pet you pick and your choice of attack, but the basic concept is fundamentally the same so I don’t feel the need to split it further


Core:
Vigilance+
Long Reach(+) - the + is more valuable since you kinda want to be behind allies, but it’s not mandatory

Optionals:
Viciousness+ (Th) – damage, pure and simple
Untouchable – getting the proc on the foe turn can help a lot, especially if you then miss an attack or get targeted by a ranged foe
Wolfcall (Th) – since you will kill at least some of the foes who come knocking for knockback, the speed boost is actually a nice boost option for the team
Battledance+ (Th) and/or Paladin+ – the justification is a little weaker, but it is +1 attack each with optional mobility. I’ve found Paladin+ can be a nice way to set up flanks for the rest of your team

Theme Dependant Optionals

• Heavy Bash+ (Th) – you’re supposed to be doing damage. So do damage xD
  
• Covering Fire (Th) – I reckon the armour bypass of grayplane will be huge, and I’ve always felt towers are a bit too squishy without leaf stunts, so getting more & safer aggressive positioning options will widen your selection of attacks and foes will not avoid the guardian zone. Juicy.
  
• Protector – an old reliable; you get more attacks, specifically against saturation attacks and other ways foes bypass your guardian zone, such as foes with 2 range and some charge attacks
  
• Airlift – being able to carry your sponge forwards with you is a really useful feature for a more damage oriented build, especially if you’re using Protector

Prioritisation

History: Accuracy, Accuracy, Accuracy. You do not have the defence to miss. Bonus damage, Stunt (with the MutM recruit), and potency (if using a theme attack) are up next. Retirement age and Speed as needed, otherwise Avoidance before flat defence. Warding can be nice to let you walk through fire (if you aren’t immune)

Armour:

• -scale, to really push accuracy
  
• -cowling (Th), great IF you’re using a theme attack (since the potency will provide a dramatic damage boost)
  
• -guard, for the dodge and stunts
  
• -clate, a nice way to prevent or at least slow down armour shred
  
• -scoth, if you’re needing the speed or not managing to wall consistently
  
• -mail, you really ought to use something else, since turtling defence isn’t your priority

Shield: you don’t necessarily need a shield, but you can opt for one

• Gem Shield Arm (Th)
  
• Dragonpaw Shield
  
• Ice Shield – probably could be rated higher, but you ideally want to avoid taking attacks
  
• Basic Shield

Attack: Heavy Bash (Both Elmsoul Arms), Fire/Basic/Leaf Hammer/Mace. Avoid anything with a stone stunt, since you actually need things to run at you.

Themes:

• Crystalline (Th)
  
• Elmsoul (Th)
  
• Celestial
  
• Spelltouched – IF you’re using a theme attack
  
  
• Drauven Wings (Th) – for Airlift
  
• Crowtouched (Th) especially the wings, but Peck is decent and the legs offer a nice bit of warding
  
  
• Scorpoid (Th)/Skunkish (Th) – having a way to get an extra attack could be good
  
• Foxish

Pets:

• Critter – when you miss you do 0 damage
  
• Golden Rabbit – more attacks = more damage
  
• Fire Chicken – Covering fire (Th) is the main sauce here

Playstyle
Careful positioning behind tougher teammates, or making clever use of corners/cover, making sure to be adjacent to your allies if you have protector. A non-trivial amount of “oh, it died” when you hit things expecting them to be knocked back.

Example: Fae


Fae is usually more Chef-ward, but here she’s lacking support skills. Her damage numbers are often very impressive, and she can be seen here how she was after unlocking the Shadow mace for me. I’d’ve like to show a covering fire build and/or something more purposefully damagy than a mace, but I don’t have one. The siren song of shields really calls out to me xD

Because the core build is only 3 abilities, you can actually look to fill out the rest of the build with support oriented pieces. Most of my knockback warriors started out as Chefs, using Raider to enable ERC setups. Indeed, because raider can do that in one ability, and you can start with all the basic pieces of a knockback warrior (guardian and a frying pan/club), and you only need a couple of abilities to really get online, taking a 1 point diversion into support can be much more impactful than beelining for the core skills. Once I had those skills, it was fairly common for me to drop the support skill on recruitment and just pick it up if I saw/needed it (I often didn’t).

Chef is a midline control/enable archetype, although if you mix in stalwart you can go frontline control/enable/sponge

Core:
Vigilance+
Long Reach

Optionals
Raider(+)
Inspiration(+)
Bard(+)
Aid(+) (Th)
Tinker(+) (Th)
Wisdom(+) - faster job clearing → fewer calamities → easier fights
Backslam – for when a foe needs help lining up for their swift demise



Theme Dependant Optionals

• Bash+/Heavy Bash+/Crush+ - theme attack upgrades are good to have
  
• Protector – breaking up attacks and having an answer to saturation attacks is good
  
• Treasure Hunter (Th) – the stat advantage of filling out augments quickly shouldn’t be underestimated
  
• Starguide (Th) – defence for you allies if you can use it right – and should stack with Inspiration+

Prioritisation

History: I keep saying this, but accuracy. From there it’ll depend on what exactly you’re aiming to do – a more frontline build will want stat prioritisation more like a wall, where a more midline build might focus on potency, or even retirement age to buff up support abilities.

Armour:

• -guard, for the dodge and stunts
  
• -scale, to really push accuracy
  
• -clate, a nice way to prevent or at least slow down armour shred
  
• -mail, you’ll be slow, but the armour is good. Grab more warding where you can
  
• -cowling (Th), you might not have enough armour, but it’ll really depend on your focus
  
• -scoth, if you’re standing up aggressively away from the team, you’d better’ve built for it

Shield:

• Gem Shield Arm (Th)
  
• Ice Shield
  
• Dragonpaw Shield
  
• Basic Shield

Attack:
The only real option, of course, is to commit to the bit and use the Omenfry Skillet xD

On a more serious note, I think you get a lot of flexibility here, with every base form and stunt offering something – the choice should complement your team’s build: you don’t have the pressure to output damage, so stone stunts are more attractive (especially if you’re using poison strategies), fire is a great tool for making more fire, shadow is gonna give you some positioning and safety options, and Leaf, of course, is still evergreen. This is probably the worst spot for basic stunts tho, and water is still bad.

Themes:

• Celestial
  
• Crystalline (Th)
  
• Elmsoul (Th)
  
• Spelltouched – IF you’re using a theme attack
  
  
• Drauven Wings (Th) – for Airlift
  
• Crowtouched (Th) – especially the wings
  
  
• Skunkish (Th) – having a way to apply poison on a single action could be great if you’re going towards a pin or poison oriented build/team
  
• Foxish

Pets:

• Critter – accuracy is safety
  
• Golden Rabbit – mostly for protector to break up multiattacks, but the damage is nice to have
  
• Ogogen – especially if you’re moving around and/or have celestial legs, the upgrade is solid
  
• Duck – good stats to have, and Alarming Quack is a solid ability when you aren’t turbo-toggling Stalwart

Playstyle
Close to your allies, enabling their shenanigans, buffing them and batting away foes, absorbing the odd hit, and generally making sure things go smoothly. There will be turns where you use a support skill instead of guardian, just be discerning about it.

Example:


Mae North, before her ascension to the ultimate sponge, is a pretty perfect example of grabbing raider for the ERC team, leaning on the frontline sponge side of chef.


Fae in a more chef-like setup. She does so much damage that she’s what I think of as a Tower, even like this (broadswipes can be ok, but it’s not really the sauce or the source of damage here, more of a filler piece on a tryout)

Making use of the slightly increased effective range of Sentinel compared to long reach, this archetype aims to be a solution to diffuse team playstyles, allowing for loose, skirmish-style positioning more than would otherwise be possible.

This is a ???line control/sponge build because you never know where you’ll end up, but you better build survivability if you want to walk away from the trouble your jumping legs will put you in


Core:
Vigilance+
Sentinel

Optionals
Stalwart(+) - might die without this, especially the warding
Untouchable(+) - you might need it where you’re going. Hopefully jumping into fire/acid/traps/corruption etc. doesn’t break it
Paladin(+) - mobility, aggression, I could see the + being awesome in a Flamesoul variant
Long reach – sometimes you want to really assert your dominance on the range front

Theme Dependant Optionals
Sharpshooter (Th) – if you go Paladin+ and Flamesoul with the cone of fire arm...
Fly/Talon Dive - safety/aggression
Erratic movement – Stayin’ alive (with Paladin)


Prioritisation

History: Avoidance (Block & Dodge). I’d say accuracy again, but here I fear more for your safety than anyone else’s. Accuracy is a very close second and then flat defence. As always, Retirement Age and Speed as needed

Armour:

• -scoth, you’ve never heard of walling
  
• -cowling (Th), you probably won’t have enough armour, but the theme attack damage might be tasty, and you may need the extra warding for all those dangerous tiles you keep jumping onto
  
• -guard, for the dodge and stunts
  
• -clate, a nice way to prevent or at least slow down armour shred
  
• -scale, to really push accuracy
  
• -mail, you’ll be slow, but the armour is good. Grab more warding, but remember Stalwart can cover that to some extent
  
  
  
  Shield:
  
  • Ice Shield – goes nicely with Untouchable
    
  • Gem Shield Arm (Th)
    
  • Dragonpaw Shield
    
  • Basic Shield
  
  Attack: go wild. Ok, actually I think this might be the one time shadow comes close to leaf, especially if you lack Untouchable. stone can let you pretend you have sentinel+, and fire is more likely to spread due to the longer range of going at ‘em
  
  Themes:
  
  • Flamesoul (Th) – fire immunity will save your bacon from being cooked, and I think there’s room for cone of fire to cook your foes’ bacon
    
  • Celestial – weirdly, I think you might get great value out of the legs with all that jumping. Plus If you can get the hair with flamesoul arm and/or a scorpion tail attack...
    
  • Elmsoul (Th)
    
  • Crystalline (Th)
    
  • Spelltouched – IF you’re using a theme attack
    
    
  • Hawksoul (Th) – you’re probably mad enough to fly into a group of foes. You might even jump out again
    
  • Crowtouched (Th) especially the wings, but Peck is decent and the legs offer a nice bit of warding
    
    
  • Scorpoid (Th)/Skunkish (Th) – having a way to get an extra attack could be good
    
  • Foxish
  
  Pets:
  
  • Duck (Th) – Stats and Alarming Quack, as with Chef
    
  • Rat (Th) – Erratic Movement moment
    
  • Ogogen – Celestial path jump win
    
  • Fire Chicken – fire immunity is great for you
    
  • Critter – you might die from missing
  
  
  On the use of Sentinel
  
  The main advantage of Sentinel is that it gives you a bit more effective range than Long Reach. The jump itself has spear range, but you can then strike with your range from there – this does stack with Long Reach, and the UI will show both in its range indicator. The side benefit is that, being a warrior ability, you’re more likely to see it than Long Reach.
  
  
  Look at that massive range!
  
  
  Of course, the downside is that your legs will get you into trouble; fire, corruption, acid, you’ll jump into all that and more. Plus you lose control of your walling and adjacency to allies, and can end up jumping slowly towards all the foes on the map (this can actually be an important advantage for particularly slow heroes). Building survivability is vital to countering that.
  
  Playstyle
  make sure you’re close enough to make that first jump, but otherwise you can be further from your allies than normal. If you’re also using long reach you can set up a massive zone of control and clump up enemies for flashy AoE destruction. Be prepared for risky moves and work diligently with the rest of the team to mitigate them. Unusually for Wildermyth, in this particular case it is advisable to avoid setting the map on fire – unless you are fire immune xD
  
  Example:
  
  
  Lilmark Ogerfair may be destined for a build that isn’t strictly knockback warrior (using sentinel+ to interrupt movement while mass-blasting with his sylvan arm), but damm, that’s a cavalier through and through.

One of the great things about the amount of commonality between the builds and the fairly rigid core build, is that the Archetypes can play very nicely together. A tower splashing Wall with Stalwart? Must be tuesday. And any build that isn’t using heavily positional skills like Protector can flex Cavalier just by grabbing sentinel. Honestly, it’s harder to really define them as wholly separate than to accept most builds are a combination of the archetypes – especially if you’re getting bonus abilities from omenroad shrines!

So what really defines the archetypes you’re relying on is how they play and what they do:
Tough as a bastion? Wall
Damage like artillery? Tower
Feeds your other builds? Chef
Jumps about like sallying cavalry? Cavalier

All of the above? Wall/Tower/Chef/Cavalier and woe betide your foes!!

Some heroes are better examples than others, but I want to showcase a few contenders who were just missing a little something


Gorgaron Youngload (after a proper outing) is pretty funny because he can absorb so much magical damage and then stomp it back out across the whole map. Sadly, missing Vigilance+ means I don’t really use him as a Knockback warrior at this point, and he could easily flex into a more raidery playstyle. He’s currently banking on his extreme flat defence to see him though, but he really ought to get Elmsoul – or something like shadow if he wants to move away from knockback. Honestly, I wonder if he’d make a great Cavalier, since all that excess warding he has for feedback loop would come in handy, and stomp-stunning a random assortment of enemies could be a good tool. Might work out more Chef in practice though.


Scout showing off her Hago cub – the very first one I ever saw, and since that was in the final chapter I could never bring myself to take her out on a new run.. although maybe I should. Perhaps, like the cub, this build has teething issues. But a Vigilance/Long reach start should clear them right up!


Juna Cherrytear’s build has a bit of an identity crisis – long reach but no vigilance, fire chicken with ice shield. Broadswipes getting +’d. but perhaps there’s a solid foundation here for a spongy cavalier that fears no fire, or perhaps a more durable tower with covering fire. But really, only time will tell


I won’t pretend to know what’s going on with Fey Koth’s build but hey, that’s a nice big hammer!


Fliniel Easttoe should probably have stayed away from that magic fountain, since the bonking staff is much rarer than spelltouched (in the sense that I don’t exactly want to run the story campaigns many times to get the staff and you can’t grab it on a veteran) but she looks badass, so who am I to complain?


Lilmark Ogerfair is probably destined for some other build, being my only warrior with Sylvan, but here he is with a good, solid, wall configuration. I’d certainly trade engage+ for vigilance+, but I believe at the time I was trying to see what all the fuss is about engage(+) (I still don’t get it)

UPDATE; it seems he’s destined for life as a non-knockback Cavalier/Tower! Morthagi fear him! Gorgons want him! Wait…

Thanks for reading this far! I hope you've enjoyed it (or, if you skipped ahead, that you will xD) and again, if you'd like to see me make more guides, please consider donating to my Patreon[www.patreon.com]

Thanks to psionusoid, LiterallyNobody, and BoldestDungeon for discussing some of the finer details and niche use-cases I haven’t seen first hand

Thanks to Myelachti for reminding me that folks don’t really find the positional play of knockback warrior intuitive, and I should, y’know, actually explain how it works xD

Thanks to Nunda, PandaMay and Jakebite for their puns and encouragement!

And, just for Jakebite:

Within our Long Reach
Our Vigilance must hold firm
To protect our friends