Shadow of War: 7 Essential Tips for Defending Fortresses in Shadow Wars

When you finish the mission “The Bright Lord”, you unlock new skills, new random challenges, and obtain new gear for your character. You can continue capturing areas and dominating orcs to join your ranks within all regions.

You also have the opportunity to capture/defend new regions through new Siege Missions. This is called the Shadow Wars, which have multiple stages of Siege Missions, and represents the long Endgame of Shadow of War.

There are a total of 10 stages in the Shadow Wars, which when completed shows an epilogue cutscene that connects directly to the Lord of the Rings saga. Each stage consists of defending one (or several) of your fortresses from enemy Orcs that grow in level with each assault. Luckily, new Orcs that appear in these regions will also start to grow in level, giving you a pool of Captains to start defending your fortresses with.

Unlike an Assault, A Fortress Defense will plant you at the top of the gates of your fort as you watch your attackers mount their assault, bringing whatever assault weaponry they have chosen. To win a Fortress Defense, you must make sure at least one Control Point remains in your control, and all attacking enemy Captains are defeated or dominated to your side.

As the battle progresses, enemy Captains will assault the fort from all sides, climb over walls, and press the attack from several angles as the Warchiefs and their bodyguards that you place try to defend the points. If a point is lost, often times a nearby wall will be broken down as more reinforcements pour in to press the attack. To win, you must be vigilant about moving from point to point and stopping attackers, defeating Captains quickly, then moving on to the next point.

NOTE: If you lose a siege mission, you’ll lose the region and will have to reclaim the area back in order to continue progressing in Shadow Wars. When you reclaim the area, you’ll move on to the next stage.

EditShadow Wars Stages

Stage	Fortresses to Defend
Stage 1	Cirith Ungol
Stage 2	Nurnen
Stage 3	Seregost
Stage 4	Gorgoroth
Stage 5	Cirith Ungol and Nurnen
Stage 6	Seregost and Gorgoroth
Stage 7	Nurnen and Seregost
Stage 8	Nurnen and Cirith Ungol and Gorgoroth
Stage 9	Cirith Ungol and Seregost and Gorgoroth
Stage 10	Nurnen and Cirith Ungol and Seregost and Gorgoroth

EditTips for Surviving the Shadow Wars

Shadow Wars represents a very long haul, and can take a very big toll on your Orc Army. With every siege, your Warchiefs and Captains will be continually battered, fortresses will falter, and you'll need to replenish your army to cotinually combat the endless stream of attackers. Here are several expert tips on the best ways to defend whats yours.

After getting to Act 4 of the game, the level range of Orcs that were tied to each of the regions will no longer be in place, as bigger and tougher orcs will siege your Fortresses, and you'll have stronger orcs to dominate to help man the defenses.

However, in order to welcome these new Captains to your ranks, you'll need to "flush out" the weaker Orcs that are clogging up the Army screens in each region. Places like Gorgoroth will usually be well off for a bit, but lower level areas like Nurnen will be filled with level 10 orcs until you can make way for much higher Orcs to get the job done.

 

Consider taking the time to kill or expel Orcs in a region you need to defend, then let the passage of time bring in new recruits that you can then dominate.

Unlike Fortress Assaults, you won't be able to know your attackers until you start the defense mission. That means you won't know the which Captains will be attacking - what Strengths and Weaknesses they have, and what Siege Weaponry they will bring with them.

Before the Defense begins, make sure you have chosen to upgrade your fort with available defenses, and then see what your attackers are bringing - and plan accordingly. Are they bringing a War Graug and a pack of Caragors? Make sure you have a Host of Slayers and Warchiefs who are good at killing beasts. Are they bringing Ologs? Upgrade to Flame Spouts to stop them from tearing down walls.

You might not have the perfect counter for every single offensive tool they bring, but you can at least be sure your main Warchiefs won't be killed outright when trying to deal with the tools they bring.

One of the hardest parts of the Shadow Wars stages are keeping up your defenses over the long course of multiple sieges. If your Captains start dying, you may find yourself spending lots of time between sieges trying to find replacements.

With this in mind, the most important thing you can do is recruit more Captains from the attacking force. Unless an attacking Orc or Olog has Iron Will, you can hop from one Captain to the next and dominate them as they fail to take your Fortress. Not only does with make up for any allies you lose in the fight - but you can put them to work right away by commanding them to stay and fight, which takes an attacker out of the equation and adds a defender to your ranks.

In a good run, you can turn almost the entire attacking army of Captains and Warchiefs to your side, and then pick and choose who you want as your Warchiefs for the next siege in that region. If they die defending your fort shortly after being dominated - at least they did some damage instead of being dead by your hand.

Two things can lead to your defeat - Talion being killed in battle, and all of your capture points being taken. Depending on the number of Capture Points, you'll need to divide your time equally among them, and force out any enemy Orcs and Captains who are standing in the circle.

It's important to note that if any of the enemy forces take over a Capture Point, it will trigger part of your fortress walls exploding, and a new Captain not part of the original assault team will join the battle. This can get extremely dangerous when you're already tasked with defeating all the incoming attackers, so denying them additional reinforcements can help you survive.

As mighty as you are, your safety is of primary concern in a Fortress Defense, and getting killed can cost you the battle, making you waste time taking it back again.

Be sure to inspect all incoming Warchiefs to learn which ones you can recklessly charge at, and which ones are better left to your team of defenders. Assassins especially, with their No Last Chance bonus, should be avoided in case they get lucky and end the battle all too soon. Instead, consider sticking to the rooftops and sniping at foes until you see them broken, then quickly hop down to dominate and recruit.

Since Talion has a host of new skills after becoming a Ringwraith, you can make use of these in your Fortress Defense. In particular, the ability to raise the dead is very useful when Orcs on both sides of the battle start dropping and you find yourself in need of reinforcements.

Be sure to also work towards getting the Raise Dead upgrade that lets you bring back fallen Captains and Warchiefs to your side, as even in undeath, they are a force to be reckoned with.

If you really need more able bodies to help defend a fortress and aren't having any luck gaining new Captains - remember that you can buy War Chests to gain several new Followers and deploy them immediatley. While they may be random in their class and perks, they are garunteed to be around Talion's current level, and can be deployed to any Region you need help defending.

If you don't feel like spending real money to get new Captains (and you shouldn't), remember that the Silver War Chests only cost in-game money and work just as well. Even better, do some Online Vendettas and Online Conquests to earn free Vendetta Chests, and gain Spoils of War points that go towards getting even more free chests full of Followers.

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