Weekly Path Adventure: Tellstones, Mirrors and Fiora
Path Database writer Conansson walks you through this week's Path adventure.
Hello, my name is Conansson, you might know me from the Path Database, the Path Ratings or the unofficial Legends of Runeterra Rulebook. I’m going to walk you through this week’s Path adventure featuring Darius, Nautilus and Fiora.
The individual fights are randomized for each player, so I’ll be focusing on the Bosses in this guide.
Starlight Portal: 1,5 Star Darius
I’m going to skip writing an in - depth guide about this week’s 1,5 Star adventure as it gives the player a beneficial Power, making it easier than the 1 Star stages if you choose to play a Demacia champion, which is also my tip if you struggle with this adventure. Both my Garen and Lux are 3 Stars, which wouldn’t make for a very interesting fight.
Miniboss: Tahm Kench
The miniboss of this week is Tahm Kench from Bard’s 2 Star adventure in its weaker version, only giving +0/+2 instead of +0/+3. Keep an eye out for Boxtopus and keep a removal spell for Tahm Kench, for example a Single Combat. The fight has some access to healing with Health Potion, Wish and Astral Protection, but is usually easy to push through with a decent midrange gameplan.
Boss: Darius
This version of Darius is from the Jinx 2 Star adventure and focuses on spamming units and eventually slamming a discounted Darius. Try to remove Citybreakers early and trade on the board and you will eventually win since the only scary spell in Darius’ deck is Culling Strike.
Shadow Portal: 2 Star Nautilus
The 2 Star Shadow Portal is a little more interesting since it adds the special power from Mirror Mage in Annie’s 2 Star adventure, but once again gives you a tellstone bonus if you play Shadow Isles. My Gwen is already at 3 Stars and I just did a Veigar playthrough last week (also most cards are Bandle City anyways). The last option is Evelynn, which has a few Shadow Isles cards, but she’s one of two champions I didn’t unlock yet.
In the end, I decided on going with the overpowered 3 - Star Gwen at Lvl. 13, although that made the run very easy. (Note that you can also play non - SI champions, but if we get such a special power, I want to take advantage of it).
As for Items, I went with my favorite Laurent Bladerack and Ravenous Hydra as common item, which actually works towards Gwen’s Levelup.
Miniboss: Sejuani
Sejuani unfortunately doesn’t have a single card in his deck that creates a card, making him an odd choice for the Mirror Mage stage.
His deck features less stats than usual since he doesn’t have the +0/+1 passive from the Nautilus stage. As long as you keep up with units early on, you should be fine. Watch out for Sejuani herself, who likes to challenge your low health units. If you have a full board, you can overwrite the unit with Vulnerable to not give her the option to challenge it for damage.
I had a pretty funny build at this point, being Mono - SI with only one card outside of the region (Crashing Wave). My support champion Hecarim had Quickstrike Blade, starting a free attack and instawinning every battle on turn 5.
Boss: Nautilus
The final boss Nautilus also doesn’t create any cards outside of Jaull Hunters, which makes the Mirror Mage a 0/8 blocker for the most part. Try being aggressive, as he can snowball pretty fast if you let this fight go Deep and power out cheap Sea Monsters.
It took me a moment to break through because my Ephemerals dying kept healing up the fight, but in the end, Gwen is just OP and it’s pretty impossible to lose with her at 3 Stars due to the lifegain.
Note that Yipp’s Genius works with cards that have reduced cost through the Tellstone power, making my Shark Chariot a 5 attack unit when it first came down.
Overall, the Mirror Mage didn’t matter for most the run, only once when it double the one damage spell from Petty Officer. Playing with cost reduction effects is fun, but rather easy, so you shoudn’t struggle too much even with lower star champions.
Dark Star Portal: 4 Star Fiora
This week’s 4 Star adventure was actually really interesting and I enjoyed it a lot because the extra mana on some encounters forced you to interact with your gameplan instead of just stomping them.
Seat of Power can add some extra damage, but you can use it to your advantage with Fury/Lifesteal or just sponge the hit with Tough.
Withstand is a special rule that snowballs really quickly, which made me choose the third - best champion in Path (after Jinx/Gwen) if you’re just going for a secure win: Bard.
Now I know that this is a controversial take since a majority of the playerbase thinks Bard is weak, but I collected most of the decklists in the database with him and his lategame is insane. You outscale everyone and get a bunch of free keywords, most importantly Lifesteal, which means that you can just take damage early on and heal up later.
For relics, I like to get extra keywords on both Bard and my other units to increase the odds of rolling into Lifesteal. You can go Chameleon Necklace, but I don’t think you need the extra Chimes since you win the lategame anyways and Bard himself isn’t the strongest card. Note that I choose Armadillo Cloak over a rare Relic since it means you can just block Sand Soldiers forever and there is no good rare keyword (Galeforce just recalls your Bard, which isn’t what you want, you can go all Overwhelm, but I don’t have that Relic and like the extra suriviability).
The playstyle of dragging out a fight to heal up isn’t the most fun, but is almost guaranteed to lead to a win against most stages.
We start on Draven’s 2,5 Star Noxian city map. You get a triple choice after the second fight and a guaranteed shop in the middle. Afterward the miniboss, there are two paths and a shop in between.
I started the fight with Quick Draw heading into Noxkraya Arena. Having a way of mana acceleration is very strong in every deck, especially in Bard, where you autowin the lategame. The fight itself was rather easy, since you can just trade with their big units and eventually, they run out of cards.
After the fight, I picked up more healing with Kindly Tavernkeeper.
As support champion, I got offered a fancy Leona and decided to try her out. Xerath is really hard to make work since you don’t get any landmarks to start with and Braum was just a a bit too expensive at 6 mana.
For the first fight, I chose the Path of the Champion Item chest. You still want to get more Bards into your deck since that increases the amount of Chimes you get. Kato the Arm is usually the easier fight over the Dauntless Vanguard (which is the version from Garen 2 Star), but both are managable.
Try not to trade mindless and instead use Challenger to win the combat. If you let their board unchecked, this fight can scale quite a bit with Reinforcements and Withstand. This picture shows you the power of lifesteal though: I messed up the order on Cosmic Binding, but having two 5 - attack Lifesteal units meant that you can just take all the damage and are fine anyways.
I then decided to go for the fun Swole Squirrel fight over the tricky Arena Bookie, which started out a bit scary when they attacked with a 2/2 Young Witch turn one, doubling her power. The deck is ultimately a joke though, having cards like Cloudrinker and Health Potion.
The shop gave me Bouncing Blades, a really strong power vs Gangplank because you can blow up all his Powder Kegs.
Miniboss: Gangplank
This version of Gangplank is arguably the harder one, immediately summoning The Dreadway to the board and also having copies of it in the deck. Make it Rain with Charging Sigil I is also brutal if you’re unprepared.
The usual strategy still applies though: You want to build up a big board and then win the fight in one hit, while controlling the board beforehand. What’s funny is that Withstand was buffing up the Powder Kegs, meaning that I couldn’t kill them anymore with Blade’s Edge.
In the end, I damaged Gangplank a little bit by just challenging units, but Bard scales very quickly and we were able to Overwhelm him pretty decisively for the one turn kill. Remember, it’s better to take it slow than to rush it and lose to random burn from The Dreadway.
I picked up Crush adding another keyword to our units and further increasing the chance of rolling Lifesteal. The path lead me to another Champion Node. Both these fights have big guys in the end and powers that have marginal effects, which lead me to Raz Bloodmane, who’s significantly nerfed from Path 1.0 and only debuffs on attack now. With big units, we discouraged any attacks in the first place and soon outscaled the fight. Watch out for Raz himself coming down if you let the fight go on too long.
I got really lucky seeing yet another Champion Item node here, going for the Savage Reckoner over Tianna (which is just random Demacia units + Inspiring Light).
A trick you can do with Armadillo Cloak Bard is that you can Blade’s Edge him to trigger Fated for a free +1/+1 and +2 on the level up. When in this fight, you want to kill the units before combat and avoid giving them good attacks for free. Crescent Strike was really helpful in stunning them, I also had Frostfire Gauntlet on my Kindly Tavernkeeper.
Fiora actually got a big buff last balance patch, which made me really excited to try her out. Stuns are generally good vs her as well as just playing big units and reminding yourself that she plays no combat tricks outside of Fiora’s Riposte and even that isn’t a big issue as long as you have Bouncing Blades.
The hardest part is to not randomly pick up Armed Gearheads, Poros or similar Items/Powers on the way, but we managed to stay away from those.
In the end, our gigantic Bard that got boosted by Fated + Blade’s Edge as well as Fury pushed through and we won without ever leaving a fight below 35 Nexus Health.
Notice how I kept taking more and more keywords on Bard, trying to maximize the odds for Lifsteal. Grit also works really well on him since it accelerates the levelup immensely.
And that’s going to be it! The Tellstone adventures were a bit too easy for my taste, but the 4 - Star fight was quite interesting and required some real strategy. Thank you for reading and I’ll see you next week for another guide!