Medals return in Warriors of the North, and remain an awesome idea, though Warriors of the North has some strange, frustrating Medal decisions.
Also note I'm going by Ice and Fire here, which actually extends the Medal levels from 3 ranks to 5 ranks. So if my numbers seem incorrect to you, that's most likely why. Most Medals just tack on the fourth and fifth ranks atop the existing numbers, but some of them have even their first three ranks tweaked.
Grand Strategian
Level 1
Earn: 20 fights won without casualties.
Benefit: +100 Leadership.
Level 2
Earn: 50 fights won without casualties.
Benefit: +250 Leadership.
Level 3
Earn: 100 fights won without casualties.
Benefit: +500 Leadership.
Level 4
Earn: 180 fights won without casualties.
Benefit: +1000 Leadership.
Level 5
Earn: 300 fights won without casualties.
Benefit: +1700 Leadership
As with Armored Princess, the game only calculates casualties at the end, by comparing against what you started with. If you lose half your army, and then resurrect everyone to full before you win? Grand Strategian credit.
Also note that Grand Strategian has been nerfed hard, with the first rank taking twice as long to get half as much benefit. Ouch.
Still probably my favorite Medal, and one nice effect of it being weakened is that I don't feel like Warriors of the North's early game is outright tuned to the assumption you're getting ranks in it early.
Headhunter
Level 1
Earn: Defeat 10 Heroes.
Benefit: 3 Rage granted at the beginning of a fight with a Hero.
Level 2
Earn: Defeat 25 Heroes.
Benefit: 6 Rage granted at the beginning of a fight with a Hero.
Level 3
Earn: Defeat 40 Heroes.
Benefit: 10 Rage granted at the beginning of a fight with a Hero.
Level 4
Earn: Defeat 60 Heroes.
Benefit: 15 Rage granted at the beginning of a fight with a Hero.
Level 5
Earn: Defeat 80 Heroes.
Benefit: 20 Rage granted at the beginning of a fight with a Hero.
Like Grand Strategian, Headhunter has been nerfed, down by 2 Rage. I've no idea why, given it's a very narrow bonus.
It's still kinda a boring bonus, and arguably even more so than in Armored Princess. One odd thing about Warriors of the North's design is that where The Legend was fond of having extremely uneven battlegroup quality in areas such that you were expected to come back and fight a battlegroup later in the game (eg Greenwort had two stacks you couldn't realistically deal with until partway through handling the Isles of Freedom) and Armored Princess was less extreme but still had most islands have a few battlegroups, particularly Heroes, where they were pretty well out of your league when you were expected to find them... in Warriors of the North, generally methodically clearing islands one at a time is quite practical. It's easier to bounce between islands, picking on the weakest of enemies in Vestlig, then Fastland, then back to Vestlig, and so on, but especially once you're past the early game it's surprisingly possible to basically just stubbornly clear everything off a given map without skirting around any out-of-depth encounters. (Though for some reason the Isles of Freedom are a fairly large exception, with quite a large number of encounters that are massively more dangerous than what you'll be picking on when you first can get access to the Isles)
The relevancy being that where in Armored Princess Headhunter was something where you might occasionally choose your order of Hero fights in part to give you an edge against a Hero you found particularly nasty, in Warriors of the North you'll mostly just steamroll them in the order you encounter them. No strategy to the Medal at all. Boring.
Dragonslayer
Level 1
Earn: Kill 1 Dragon.
Benefit: +5% damage against Dragons.
Level 2
Earn: Kill 10 Dragons in total.
Benefit: +10% damage against Dragons.
Level 3
Earn: Kill 50 Dragons in total.
Benefit: +15% damage against Dragons.
Level 4
Earn: Kill 100 Dragons in total.
Benefit: +20% damage against Dragons.
Level 5
Earn: Kill 200 Dragons in total.
Benefit: +30% damage against Dragons.
Dragonslayer has gone from being something to make your own Dragon better (Which was admittedly sort of thematically weird and creepy. Why does killing adult Dragons help my baby Dragon grow in power faster?) to being... that you kill future Dragons even better-er? Um, yay?
Note that 'Dragons' in this case means Emerald Green Dragons, Red Dragons, Black Dragons, Ice Dragons, and Bone Dragons. It doesn't include, say, Tirexes, even though some mechanics treat them as being basically Dragons. (eg Necro Call)
Also note that it only affects the damage your units deal. Your Spells and Rage moves don't get boosted. For the Viking and Soothsayer... this Medal isn't terribly visible...
I'm not a fan of Warriors of the North's take on Dragonslayer. It doesn't change how you play or experience the game, and its effect is incredibly small. It's basically just a way for the game to pat the player on the head with an illusion of payoff. Disappointing.
Treasure Hunter
Level 1
Earn: 25 chests opened. (Field and battlefield chests both count)
Benefit: Combat experience generation increased by 2%.
Level 2
Earn: 75 chests opened.
Benefit: Combat experience generation increased by 4%.
Level 3
Earn: 150 chests opened.
Benefit: Combat experience generation increased by 6%.
Level 4
Earn: 250 chests opened.
Benefit: Combat experience generation increased by 8%.
Level 5
Earn: 400 chests opened.
Benefit: Combat experience generation increased by 10%.
Treasure Hunter has been nerfed, but it's also been made so you acquire it faster. I'm perfectly happy with that tradeoff, all things considered, though I still wish the payoff was... you know... actually significant. And preferably actually interesting...
Battle Alchemy
Level 1
Earn: Inflict Burn/Poisoning/Freezing 50 times.
Benefit: Burn, Poisoning, Freezing, and Bleeding do 10% more damage.
Level 2
Earn: Inflict Burn/Poisoning/Freezing 120 times.
Benefit: Burn, Poisoning, Freezing, and Bleeding do 17% more damage.
Level 3
Earn: Inflict Burn/Poisoning/Freezing 300 times.
Benefit: Burn, Poisoning, Freezing, and Bleeding do 25% more damage.
Level 4
Earn: Inflict Burn/Poisoning/Freezing 550 times.
Benefit: Burn, Poisoning, Freezing, and Bleeding do 32% more damage.
Level 5
Earn: Inflict Burn/Poisoning/Freezing 1000 times.
Benefit: Burn, Poisoning, Freezing, and Bleeding do 40% more damage.
Note that the in-game description doesn't mention Bleeding being boosted by Battle Alchemy, but it absolutely does get boosted, though inflicting Bleeding doesn't apply progress to the Medal.
This is basically the same as with Armored Princess, but made a bit more general by the fact that Freezing and Bleeding now do damage and get affected by the Medal. And you're going to be inflicting Freeze a lot, so this will level quicker than you might expect, not to mention have a bigger impact than you might expect. It scales slower than in Armored Princess, but in exchange it has a higher max of +40%, which means your damage over time effects will do 7%-14% damage to enemies before stack modification comes into play. Given how often you'll be inflicting Burn and Freeze via Rage skills... that adds up fairly quickly.
You might also notice that 7-14% is pretty flatly superior to Mista's Lightning's initial rate. This is part of why Mista's Lightning is a bit underwhelming: you'll have to wait until next turn for Mista's Lightning to do its percentile damage, whereas if you lob Gudrida's Rage at the enemy before they get a move they'll take damage right now, and it will almost always be better than what Mista's Lightning would've done next turn! Even once Mista's Lightning is maxed out, it can always get a low roll of 1%, too, so it's always a gamble. Inflicting Burn or Freeze with Rage skills is a gamble on the level that you won't necessarily inflict them on any given target, but it's a far more reliable and favorable gamble. So... Mista's Lightning really tends to get relegated to 'My only other Rage-using option right now is Regina's Messenger and I have more Rage than I know what to do with, so might as well toss out Mista's Lightning'.
This, uh, could've been thought out better.
Trapper
Level 1
Earn: Finish off 10 stacks with Traps.
Benefit: +25% damage on Traps, and 1 'friendly' Trap is placed at the beginning of most fights.
Level 2
Earn: Finish off a total of 50 stacks with Traps.
Benefit: +50% damage on Traps, and 2 'friendly' Traps are placed at the beginning of most fights.
Level 3
Earn: Finish off a total of 100 stacks with Traps.
Benefit: +75% damage on Traps, and 2 'friendly' Traps are placed at the beginning of most fights.
Level 4
Earn: Finish off a total of 200 stacks with Traps.
Benefit: +100% damage on Traps, and 3 'friendly' Traps are placed at the beginning of most fights.
Level 5
Earn: Finish off a total of 350 stacks with Traps.
Benefit: +150% damage on Traps, and 3 'friendly' Traps are placed at the beginning of most fights.
See my description in Armored Princess, basically, only with the caveat that Crystal Collector is annoying, but we'll get to that.
Also note that it's not until Level 5 that the Ice and Fire version of Trapper has anything over Armored Princess' Level 3 Trapper. Ouch.
Guardian Angel
Level 1
Earn: Cast Stone Skin, Avenging Angel, Magic Spring, Divine Armor, Last Hero, have an Archmage use Magic Shield 30 times in total.
Benefit: +2% resistance to all damage types on all units.
Level 2
Earn: Cast Stone Skin, Avenging Angel, Magic Spring, Divine Armor, Last Hero, or have an Archmage use Magic Shield 80 times in total.
Benefit: +4% resistance to all damage types on all units.
Level 3
Earn: Cast Stone Skin, Avenging Angel, Magic Spring, Divine Armor, Last Hero, or have an Archmage use Magic Shield 150 times in total.
Benefit: +6% resistance to all damage types on all units.
Level 4
Earn: Cast Stone Skin, Avenging Angel, Magic Spring, Divine Armor, Last Hero, or have an Archmage use Magic Shield 300 times in total.
Benefit: +9% resistance to all damage types on all units.
Level 5
Earn: Cast Stone Skin, Avenging Angel, Magic Spring, Divine Armor, Last Hero, or have an Archmage use Magic Shield 500 times in total.
Benefit: +12% resistance to all damage types on all units.
Guardian Angel has been renamed and its effect weakened, but it's also been made more accessible. I totally understand nerfing it, because a small resistance to everything is surprisingly useful/exploitable, and I especially appreciate how Warriors of the North makes it so much quicker to acquire. Picking up some new Spell choices for grinding it out is also nice.
And of course it actually includes Astral resistance now, unlike in Armored Princess, so... little misleading to say its effect has been weakened...
Not much else to say I didn't say back in Armored Princess, overall. The big difference here is that Magic Spring being an option makes the grind actually a lot less tedious; Stone Skin has a painfully slow animation, and everything else (Aside Archmages using Magic Shield) was more Mana-intensive, which made it quite tedious to grind Guardian Angel in Armored Princess. Grinding Guardian in Warriors of the North is much smoother.
Still not really a fan of the Medal's design, mind.
Blind Rage
Level 1
Earn: Spend 1000 Rage in total.
Benefit: +1% crit chance on all units.
Level 2
Earn: Spend 5000 Rage in total.
Benefit: +2% crit chance on all units.
Level 3
Earn: Spend 12,000 Rage in total.
Benefit: +4% crit chance on all units.
Level 4
Earn: Spend 23,000 Rage in total.
Benefit: +7% crit chance on all units.
Level 5
Earn: Spend 35,000 Rage in total.
Benefit: +10% crit chance on all units.
See Armored Princess, where I didn't really like it. I still don't really like it.
And yes, it doesn't boost crit chance on Spells and Rage. Just units.
Fat Cat
Level 1
Earn: Gold in purse passes 100,000 Gold mark.
Benefit: 2% more Gold from battles.
Level 2
Earn: Gold in purse passes 500,000 Gold mark.
Benefit: 5% more Gold from battles.
Level 3
Earn: Gold in purse passes the 1,000,000 mark.
Benefit: 7% more Gold from battles.
Level 4
Earn: Gold in purse passes the 2,500,00 mark.
Benefit: 10% more Gold from battles.
Level 5
Earn: Gold in purse passes the 5,000,000 mark.
Benefit: 15% more Gold from battles.
Fat Cat is the first of the worst Medal designs in Warriors of the North. To be completely clear, Fat Cat is going entirely off your current Gold supply. If you get to 99,999 Gold, and then spend half of it on some crazy-awesome piece of gear? You've just screwed yourself out of the first rank of the Medal for quite some time to come. It's especially offensive since Fat Cat helps you get more ranks in Fat Cat, even if its actual benefit is rather low, encouraging the player to try to save money in a series where you're constantly burning money on expanding your army, even if you're willing to abstain from buying high-quality gear and the like.
I hate Fat Cat and usually basically ignore it if I'm not fairly close to the next rank anyway, in which case I might avoid spending money for a short period of time.
It's also one of your better choices for burning the auto-rank-5 Medal bonus on if you don't decide to just plan around using that on Crystal Collector. Getting to 5,000,000 Gold is a pain in the butt and takes forever, and the reward adds up over time unlike some of the other Medal rewards.
Gifted Warrior
Level 1
Earn: Finish off 25 stacks with Rage skills in total.
Benefit: 5% more Rage experience gained.
Level 2
Earn: Finish off 75 stacks with Rage skills in total.
Benefit: 10% more Rage experience gained.
Level 3
Earn: Finish off 150 stacks with Rage skills in total.
Benefit: 15% more Rage experience gained.
Level 4
Earn: Finish off 250 stacks with Rage skills in total.
Benefit: 20% more Rage experience gained.
Level 5
Earn: Finish off 500 stacks with Rage skills in total.
Benefit: 30% more Rage experience gained.
I've no idea why Gifted Warrior depicts a Knight, given this is Warriors of the North. The Viking game? In which Humans aren't the beginning faction for the player, and in fact might not be seen at all for quite a while? Oh well.
Also note that only direct damage effects 'count' for Gifted Warrior. Summoning a Lava Golem and having that punch things to death? Nope. Burn being inflicted, and then finishing them off, however unlikely that might be? Nope. The only exception is that, if you manage a kill with Mista's Lightning, that actually does count... which is small consolation, given it has to roll high on a unit afflicted with Blood Mark.
I like Gifted Warrior a lot, though. It gives you something interesting to do in the late stages of a given battle, when you're often high on Rage but don't really need to actually spend it on anything. Gifted Warrior encourages you to arrange to land finishing blows with that Rage for a payoff. Awesome. It also gives you something to do with Rage at the beginning of the game before you've found Christa; this is especially important in Ice and Fire where you might otherwise be tempted to feel like using your Rage is just stealing experience from your units.
One of the better Medals all-around.
One final note: this is one Medal you should probably focus on trying to get ranks in early on if you care at all. The further you get in the game, the less often you'll actually be in a position to finish off a stack with Rage. You'll probably max it eventually even if you don't ever make the effort, mind, so you can feel free to ignore it, but it's probably the biggest example of a Medal you could technically max without trying to specifically get ranks in it where realistically it won't happen or won't happen for an extremely long time.
Also note that the base game mistranslated this Medal so it says it boosts the hero's experience gain rather than Rage experience. That's not Ice And Fire changing the benefit, just correcting the translation. That's a pretty notable oopsie in the base game.
Crystal Collector
Level 1
Earn: Have 30 Magic Crystals in your bag at once.
Benefit: +1 Intellect.
Level 2
Earn: Have 60 Magic Crystals in your bag at once.
Benefit: +2 Intellect.
Level 3
Earn: Have 100 Magic Crystals in your bag at once.
Benefit: +3 Intellect.
Level 4
Earn: Have 175 Magic Crystals in your bag at once.
Benefit: +5 Intellect.
Level 5
Earn: Have 300 Magic Crystals in your bag at once.
Benefit: +7 Intellect.
I hate Crystal Collector, even more than Fat Cat. Unlike Fat Cat's small boost to battle Gold (Which is not remotely your entire source of money in the game, further diminishing its relevance), the Intellect from Crystal Collector actually matters, and it's basically the most perverse behavior/reward scheme possible: avoid spending the resource where spending that resource lets you get more use out of your Intellect so you can have more Intellect to use on those Spells you're not learning or upgrading! It encourages the player to spend an agonizing portion of the game minimizing their Spell acquisition, not because the game has made Magic Crystals a valuable resource in heavy demand or anything natural like that, but because you're waiting for the game to throw enough at you for you to be done avoiding spending them. This also exacerbates Scroll carrying limitations, which is infuriating, and it makes Alchemy even more perverse in its own design on the Soothsayer, whereby it's simultaneously super-important (So you can get Crystal Collector sooner by having spent fewer Crystals on what few Spells you learned) and yet having massive wasted potential until you've maxed Crystal Collector. (Because you're sitting on dozens of Scrolls you're not learning or upgrading)
And since the Intellect boost is a decent reward, unlike Fat Cat the game is meaningfully punishing the player if they decide to ignore this Medal.
Thankfully Dark Side immediately undoes this horror show.
Favorite of the Valkyries
Level 1
Earn: Use 'Valkyrie Abilities' 10 times in total.
Benefit: +10% damage on Rage skills.
Level 2
Earn: Use 'Valkyrie Abilities' 20 times in total.
Benefit: +15% damage on Rage skills.
Level 3
Earn: Use 'Valkyrie Abilities' 40 times in total.
Benefit: +20% damage on Rage skills.
Level 4
Earn: Use 'Valkyrie Abilities' 70 times in total.
Benefit: +25% damage on Rage skills.
Level 5
Earn: Use 'Valkyrie Abilities' 120 times in total.
Benefit: +35% damage on Rage skills.
Favorite of the Valkyries is weird and perverse, encouraging you to, instead of using Valkyrie Abilities strategically, spam them wastefully just so you'll get Favorite of the Valkyries sooner and thus bolster the ever-relevant Rage abilities.
It's not heinous like Fat Cat and Crystal Collector, but it's certainly not ideal, which to be fair is in part a product of the Valkyrie Abilities being somewhat poorly-designed themselves.
I do appreciate another way to boost the damage on your Rage skills, though. It makes Rage damage growth slightly less 'jagged', in that even if you don't invest Rage level-ups in a given skill for a while, it can still get a bit of a boost and so not fall so far behind. It also helps the design a bit by raising peak Rage damage without stacking on way too many Rage level-ups and without letting a player get super-powerful Rage moves super-early, which is what would happen if the damage scaling on moves was just directly raised on the level-up options. (See: Evil Shoal in The Legend, which can potentially be wiping Match armies for a portion of a run) You still ultimately end up with direct damage on Rage moves ceasing to really matter, unfortunately, but it takes even longer than in Armored Princess with minimal new jank.
On a different note, one oddity with Favorite of the Valkyries is that the requirement progression is... strangely non-explosive, all things considered. There are a lot of Medals where the requirements grow fairly explosively, such as Blind Rage, and in a lot of cases it means that you're taking longer to get a de-facto smaller bonus. Favorite of the Valkyries actually has a surprisingly slow growth on its requirements, and the thing is that... before you have Christa, you can't advance this Medal at all. Once you do have Christa, it'll take 100 battles to get to the first rank! Or it would, except you'll get Gudrida and Hilda in short order, suddenly letting you gain an average of more than 5 ticks of advancement in the medal per 20 battles instead of 1 tick, thanks to Gudrida and Hilda not only being present at all but having much faster cooldowns. And while Regina and Mista don't speed you up as explosively, they still further speed you up.
The result is that where most Medals have you get to the first rank reasonably quickly, and then take longer and longer to get to each further rank, Favorite of the Valkyries tends to have the first rank feel like it takes forever to reach, and then you rapidly reach the second and third and fourth ranks, with only the fifth taking anything close to as long as the first.
It's very strange.
... surprisingly, this is actually an enormous improvement over the base game, though. In the base game, you grind Favorite of the Valkyries in the same way, but its effect is instead to reduce the cooldown on the out-of-battle abilities on your Valkyries. This is one of the more stand-out examples of Ice and Fire being a huge improvement, with a related point being that in Ice and Fire the Valkyrie UI elements now visibly track their ability cooldowns.
Yes, in the base game you just have to keep track of it yourself, or keep clicking into Christa's dialogue intermittently until the 'use your ability, please' dialogue appears. It's... about as frustrating as it sounds, exacerbated by the extremely strange decision to make the Valkyrie abilities permanently add an extra battle of cooldown each time they're used. So the Medal was just intermittently undoing a little bit of the increased cooldown, bailing a sinking ship with a sieve instead of providing any real benefit.
Yikes.
As with Armored Princess, some Medals are class-exclusive. Three per class this time around!
The following 3 are the Viking's.
Vampire Hunter
Level 1
Earn: Kill 20 Vampires in battle.
Benefit: +1 Attack.
Level 2
Earn: Kill 100 Vampires in battle.
Benefit: +2 Attack.
Level 3
Earn: Kill 500 Vampires in battle.
Benefit: +3 Attack.
Level 4
Earn: Kill 2000 Vampires in battle.
Benefit: +5 Attack.
Level 5
Earn: Kill 5000 Vampires in battle.
Benefit: +8 Attack.
Note that Ancient Vampires count as well, and it doesn't matter whether they're in human form or bat form.
This is a straightforward Medal. Boring, but okay. It does at least emphasize the Viking is the offensive class of the bunch, as with Armored Princess' Warrior equivalent.
Iron Knight
Level 1
Earn: Cast any of Berserk, Ghost Blade, Battle Cry, Dragon Slayer, Dragon Arrows, and Target a total of 20 times.
Benefit: +3 max Rage.
Level 2
Earn: Cast any of Berserk, Ghost Blade, Battle Cry, Dragon Slayer, Dragon Arrows, and Target a total of 70 times.
Benefit: +6 max Rage.
Level 3
Earn: Cast any of Berserk, Ghost Blade, Battle Cry, Dragon Slayer, Dragon Arrows, and Target a total of 150 times.
Benefit: +10 max Rage.
Level 4
Earn: Cast any of Berserk, Ghost Blade, Battle Cry, Dragon Slayer, Dragon Arrows, and Target a total of 250 times.
Benefit: +15 max Rage.
Level 5
Earn: Cast any of Berserk, Ghost Blade, Battle Cry, Dragon Slayer, Dragon Arrows, and Target a total of 400 times.
Benefit: +20 max Rage.
This remains a baffling, frustrating Medal for all the same reasons it was in Armored Princess; making the Rage class spam Spells to advance a Rage Medal? Why? And why is it still named Iron Knight?
The fact that the list has been expanded helps some, at least, making it less likely you'll spend an obnoxiously long period failing to find a Spell you can use to advance the Medal.
Valhalla's Messenger
Level 1
Earn: Destroy 5 Viking-type battlegroups.
Benefit: +10% to damage for Berserkers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, and Slingers.
Level 2
Earn: Destroy 10 Viking-type battlegroups.
Benefit: +15% to damage for Berserkers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, and Slingers.
Level 3
Earn: Destroy 15 Viking-type battlegroups.
Benefit: +20% to damage for Berserkers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, and Slingers.
Level 4
Earn: Destroy 20 Viking-type battlegroups.
Benefit: +25% to damage for Berserkers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, and Slingers.
Level 5
Earn: Destroy 30 Viking-type battlegroups.
Benefit: +30% to damage for Berserkers, Jarls, Warrior Maidens, and Slingers.
Uuuuuh okay WotN, why not? I guess?
This is one of the more frustrating Medals to be unable to max out via event, as Vikings take so long to show up in serious numbers that you end up sitting at the first or second rank until nearly the endgame. This is particularly crazy-making since it's quite probable you'll have long since lost interest in using Viking forces by the time you've got it maxed!
If you do turn to the units in question, it's a respectable boost to their performance. These four units are even an okay team -Jarls are one of the better targets for Warrior Maidens to revive, for example. So... that's nice? Still a weird Medal...
The following three Medals are exclusive to the Skald, of course.
Purifier
Level 1
Earn: Destroy 10 Undead battlegroups.
Benefit: +1 Defense.
Level 2
Earn: Destroy 30 Undead battlegroups.
Benefit: +2 Defense.
Level 3
Earn: Kill 80 Undead battlegroups.
Benefit: +3 Defense.
Level 4
Earn: Kill 125 Undead battlegroups.
Benefit: +5 Defense.
Level 5
Earn: Kill 250 Undead battlegroups.
Benefit: +8 Defense.
While I don't think Warriors of the North is quite as Undead-heavy as some of the reviews I've seen complain about it claim, this Medal is certainly pretty clear evidence the developers designed the game to have a lot of Undead: the fifth rank takes more than five times as many battlegroup kills as the Viking's Viking-slaying equivalent Medal, and same with the Soothsayer's exclusive Orc-slaying Medal.
Thematically, it's weird that they kept the green class having exclusive access to the Undead-purging Medal. You're a singer of songs who keeps the memory of the old tales alive, what does killing Undead have to do with anything?
Oh well, it's pretty obviously a straightforward port...
Holy Warrior
Level 1
Earn: Cast Negation, Timelessness, Gift, Justice, Runic Word, or Power of Light 50 times in total.
Benefit: +1 to Initiative and +10% Attack and Defense for Vikings, Jarls, and Berserkers.
Level 2
Earn: Cast Negation, Timelessness, Gift, Justice, Runic Word, or Power of Light 150 times in total.
Benefit: +1 to Initiative and +15% to Attack and Defense for Vikings, Jarls, and Berserkers.
Level 3
Earn: Cast Negation, Timelessness, Gift, Justice, Runic Word, or Power of Light 280 times in total.
Benefit: +2 to Initiative and +20% to Attack and Defense for Vikings, Jarls, and Berserkers.
Level 4
Earn: Cast Negation, Timelessness, Gift, Justice, Runic Word, or Power of Light 550 times in total.
Benefit: +2 to Initiative and +25% to Attack and Defense for Vikings, Jarls, and Berserkers.
Level 5
Earn: Cast Negation, Timelessness, Gift, Justice, Runic Word, or Power of Light 800 times in total.
Benefit: +3 to Initiative and +30% to Attack and Defense for Vikings, Jarls, and Berserkers.
If you hadn't inferred, this is Vikings-the-unit-type, not Vikings-the-species with Jarls and Berserkers doubling up or something silly. So it's a weirdly narrow Medal.
And to be completely clear: the Initiative boost is only to those three units. This is particularly obnoxious with Jarls, who have a free Talent that works best if there's a friendly unit going before them, and their base Initiative isn't half-bad in the first place. Vikings and Berserkers also don't benefit as much from bonus Initiative as many other units would, since going Berserk already takes them to obscene Initiative values.
This is one Medal you might not want to grind for at all, between how narrow its benefits are and how there's an element of being actively counterproductive.
I don't even get the thematics here...
Still less terribly-designed than Crystal Collector, though.
The surprising thing is that this is an improvement over the base-game iteration, where Runic Word and Power of Light didn't grind it. Which is to say that in the base game you had to burn Runes to grind this. In Ice and Fire it's possible to just spam Runic Word and use the Runes conventionally; tedious, but at least you only have to worry about Mana running out and the ten-turn limit, as opposed to also worrying about running out of Runes to use.
Ice and Fire also buffed the Attack and Defense boosting: in the base game, it's +1 to each stat at rank 1, not +10%. This is a small change, but still appreciated.
Also note that, strangely, the English version only mentions that Negation provides progress in the base game. It still contributes progress in Ice and Fire, but it's not mentioned anymore. For some reason.
Guardian of Midgard
Level 1
Earn: Finish 20 battles within six turns while having the Edda Skill.
Benefit: +1 round to Edda duration and +5% to Edda 'power'.
Level 2
Earn: Finish 50 battles within six turns while having the Eddas Skill.
Benefit: +1 round to Edda duration and +10% to Edda 'power'.
Level 3
Earn: Finish 100 battles within six turns while having the Eddas Skill.
Benefit: +2 rounds to Edda duration and +10% to Edda 'power'.
Level 4
Earn: Finish 180 battles within six turns while having the Eddas Skill.
Benefit: +2 rounds to Edda duration and +15% to Edda 'power'.
Level 5
Earn: Finish 300 battles within six turns while having the Eddas Skill.
Benefit: +3 rounds to Edda duration and +25% to Edda 'power'.
This is a mildly interesting Medal to me in that it's not actually an automatic Medal to earn over time, but generally speaking you don't really need to go out of your way to earn it.
Personally, I'm not sure why Edda was made both a Skill you can level up and a Medal advances its power and your innate Level advances its power. It seems a bit of a strange thing to have three different angles on the point.
Still, it's not terribly-designed or anything, just... kinda ignorable?
It would help if Edda weren't exclusive to the Skald. Then this Medal would emphasize that the Skald is the best user of Edda, as opposed to being kind of like not having a third Medal at all.
You might notice the Skald has two Medals that are duds on a design level. I'm not being particularly harsh on them because... well... the Skald is much better than the Paladins of prior games were, and is arguably the best class in Warriors of the North outright. Having a couple of dud Medals is helping keep them from being clearly the best class, if anything!
And now the three Medals exclusive to the Soothsayer.
Illiteracy Exterminator
Level 1
Earn: Defeat 5 Orc-type field units.
Benefit: +1 Intellect.
Level 2
Earn: Defeat 10 Orc-type field units.
Benefit: +2 Intellect.
Level 3
Earn: Defeat 15 Orc-type field units.
Benefit: +3 Intellect
Level 4
Earn: Defeat 25 Orc-type field units.
Benefit: +5 Intellect.
Level 5
Earn: Defeat 40 Orc-type field units.
Benefit: +8 Intellect.
Same basic Medal as in Armored Princess, only thematically confusing. Why is a Viking mystic stamping out brutish illiteracy, given the game makes it clear that Viking culture centers around beer, unnecessary violence, and honor? I'm fine with it gameplay-wise, but they even kept the quote. It's weird.
And yeah, we meet some Viking Soothsayers in the game, and they're a bit less centered around beer and violence, but they employ exactly the kind of rolling the bones and so on methodologies we've seen Orcs use in the prior two games. If anything, this is more like stamping out the competition, not stomping thuggish brutes for being thuggish brutes.
Admittedly it's a side effect of being a straightforward port, but... really?
Rune Master
Level 1
Earn: Activate Runes 70 times in total.
Benefit: Runes are 7% more effective.
Level 2
Earn: Activate Runes 210 times in total.
Benefit: Runes are 15% more effective.
Level 3
Earn: Activate Runes 600 times in total.
Benefit: Runes are 22% more effective.
Level 4
Earn: Activate Runes 1200 times in total.
Benefit: Runes are 30% more effective.
Level 5
Earn: Activate Runes 2500 times in total.
Benefit: Runes are 40% more effective.
Note that Rune activation is only credited to this Medal in the first ten turns, just as with Spells. Even aside all the reasons it would be a huge pain to arrange to activate Runes 2500 times in a single battle, it's not actually an option.
Also note that the boost is a percentage increase of the base values. When maxed, Rune Master will thus raise Attack Runes to a 28% boost to Attack and 22.4% boost to crit chance, raise Defense Runes to a 22.4% boost to Health and a 28% boost to Defense, and raise Luck Runes to a 42% chance to get a second turn... for Vikings. All other units will of course have half of all these numbers.
Rune Master is a very weird, out of place Medal. Rune effectiveness is all about an army focus. If this were increasing the number of Runes you passed out to your units, I'd assume part of the intent is that you'd be expected to use such bonus Runes to fuel your Rune Magic Spells. As-is, you're playing the class that's supposed to disintegrate armies with magic and you've got a Medal that... makes your army better?
It's also a Medal that's basically a gimme, particularly in Ice and Fire where units will get Runes from leveling. Strictly speaking you should obsessively use a Rune each turn (Remember: if you can't be bothered to manage Runes yourself, you can tell a Valkyrie to handle it for you) for each unit, even if a given Rune use won't have a chance to benefit them, as far as trying to max this Medal out, but... you can basically just play naturally and you'll get it maxed somewhere in the Isles of Freedom. (Assuming you unlock them ASAP and go to them shortly after)
Acolyte of Odin
Level 1
Earn: Finish off a total of 25 stacks in battle with damaging Spells.
Benefit: +2 Mana restoration speed between battles.
Level 2
Earn: Finish off a total of 75 stacks in battle with damaging Spells.
Benefit: +4 Mana restoration speed between battles.
Level 3
Earn: Finish off a total of 150 stacks in battle with damaging Spells.
Benefit: +6 Mana restoration speed between battles.
Level 4
Earn: Finish off a total of 250 stacks in battle with damaging Spells.
Benefit: +8 Mana restoration speed between battles.
Level 5
Earn: Finish off a total of 400 stacks in battle with damaging Spells.
Benefit: +10 Mana restoration speed between battles.
I have no idea why a Medal themed around magic is using a modified graphic of an Item always associated with Rage. Strange choice.
Also, like with the Rage Medal, this only counts kills caused by direct and immediate damage.
In any event, I like Acolyte of Odin's requirement for a similar reason to why I like Gifted Warrior's requirement, even though I'm a lot more 'meh' about Acolyte of Odin's actual benefit. Like, cool, I gain Mana out of battle faster, that's nice, but I already talked back in The Legend about how that's really more of a Rage-themed payoff.
... which I suppose would potentially suggest the graphic is an indication the development team finally recognized that?
Hmmm. Food for thought.
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I've alluded to a Medal maxer already, and here's how it goes: in Demonis, Archdemon Astaroth can be fought (Though you have to complete a fetch quest with Lew Klisan before Astaroth is willing to fight you), and after beating him you can pick any one of the 12 Medals that's available to all 3 classes. The Medal you pick is then raised to rank 5, and you never have to bother with it again. This is incredibly convenient if there's some Medal or another you just cannot be bothered to do what it demands; maybe you find Guardian too grind-y, maybe you got Trap so late that you're never going to max out Trapper, maybe you just hate Crystal Collector and refuse to play its game. Whichever works for you!
Note that the portal to Demonis gets closed partway through the game. You can eventually open a different route in, so if you didn't take on Astaroth before reaching the part of the plot where the first portal vanishes you can still come back eventually, but it can be pretty irritating to have planned to turn in your next core plot thread Quest and then take on Astaroth and oops you're going to have to either wait a while or reload and deal with Astaroth first. (Though thankfully there will be a Castle autosave for you to hop back to!)
Next time, we get started on Skills, starting with Might.
See you then.