Two months after release, most players are now nearing 100% completion on the Lord Of The Ring’s unofficial prequel Middle-earth: Shadow Of War. If you’ve already acquired every skill for Talion and thoroughly dominated every fortress in your bid to stop Sauron’s shadow from spreading, there’s good news, as new content just arrived for everyone in patch 1.06.
Even if you didn’t buy the DLC or season pass, all players now have access to the updated endless siege system, which lets you play out as many fortress siege defenses as you want from now to eternity.
Ready to get started in a non-stop stream of huge battles? Below we cover everything you need to know to survive each of those sieges and come out with some awesome loot.
Starting Shadow Of War’s Endless Siege Mode
The newly added endless siege mode is an extension of the 10-stage Shadow Wars segment in Act IV that leads to the game’s true ending. If you’ve done the Shadow Wars, then you pretty much know what to expect from endless sieges.
If you haven’t gotten that far yet, then first complete the Shadow Wars to gain access to the new sieges. Each additional siege in this new mode is initiated in the same way as before, by going to a mission start point at the front of a fortress in any region.
Although players in the forums have been hounding the developers to turn endless siege mode into something more like a power struggle mission — where it takes place with or without you in a set number of turns — at the moment, that’s not how the system works. You get to choose the time of the siege, which means you have infinite time to prepare.
As always, the Nemesis system picks randomized orcs for these sieges, so you may actually end up fighting fewer Legendaries and Epics than you did in the Shadow Wars … or you could end up against a flood of higher-level orcs with insane defenses. It’s all the luck of the draw.
Starting a new siege
Preparing for Shadow Of War’s Endless Sieges
Victory in any siege is usually determined before the battle even starts by thinking ahead and planning according to your enemy’s capabilities. Before getting into strategy though, you want to have every orc defender on your walls at your current maximum Talion level.
Be sure to scour the area for high-level orcs and place them on your fortress walls in the Army screen. If they lag behind you in level, throw them in pit fights or send them on power struggle missions to increase their abilities.
If leveling up old captains is taking too long, of course you can always kill your current roster and then recruit new ones that show up by advancing time at a Haedir tower. This is all made much easier if you put a fully upgraded wealth rune on your ring, as that automatically increases a dominated captain’s level by 5!
If you have the Slaughter Tribe Nemesis DLC, the Slaughter tribe missions are incredibly helpful on this front, as those captains are almost always at your level or higher.
The wealth rune is your friend when it comes to recruiting orcs
Don’t forget about the loot boxes here, either (and I don’t mean those higher-quality ones that cost real money). Shadow Of War absolutely throws in-game Mirian at you in a constant flood, and you can use that to buy the standard loot boxes that come with two captains and a training order.
Always having a steady supply of captains around your level is helpful, but it’s the training orders that you really want to get your hands on. Training orders give your captains bonuses such as a flaming weapon, a new skill, a mount, or even a gang of defenders.
This can turn a standard orc captain into a powerhouse instantly. A ranged captain mounted on a caragor with a cursed weapon and a gang of olog-hai defenders is nothing to sneeze at.
After selecting the mission, always be sure to choose the option to select siege defenses, even if you did that in the Army screen already. The reason to go back is that you can see every single attacking enemy captain and get their full stats without having to go through the normal process of hunting down a Worm.
The advantage here can’t be overstated. Use that knowledge to tweak your defenses, and swap out your defenders for maximum effectiveness. For instance, if several of the attacking captains have the Beast Fodder weakness, obviously swap out your defenses to include caragors, and then put in orc captains who come with a gang of caragors. Even if they are lower level than your current defenders, they will take out the attacking captains much more quickly.
On the opposite side, if several orc captains are immune to fire, there’s not much point in having fire walls, flaming arrow archers, or caged drakes in your defenses, and you might as well switch your summon ability from drake to graug or spiders.
Finally, always be on the lookout for the “No Chance” skill on the list of an orc captain’s strengths. This is the kiss of death in siege mode since Talion dying in a fight immediately ends the siege. Even if you have perfect defenses, this can cost you a fortress very unexpectedly.
Checking enemy strengths and weaknesses
Surviving Shadow Of War’s Endless Sieges
Every single time a siege begins, Talion’s first order of business should be to take out the siege beasts by hitting the glowing blue weak points with arrows to blow up their ammo. This drastically reduces the pressure on your capture points since your defenders won’t be getting pounded by fire, poison, or curse ammo hurtling out of the sky.
Assuming you don’t miss at all, that means you’ll be down 4 elf shot when you take on the first orc captain, so keep that in mind if you are fighting someone who is immune to executions or stealth.
Focusing fire on the siege beasts from the battlements
After the beasts, it’s time to hunt down each captain and let your orcs worry about defending the capture points. This just can’t be overstated — unless it’s a high-level legendary captain and you want new loot, do not ever kill the enemy captains!
You are basically giving away a free resource by killing captains. Instead, dominate them and then set their order to “stay and fight for me.” This shifts the battle decisively in your favor, turning captains against their former troops and replenishing your reserves in case any of your captains have been killed.
Finally, remember how we mentioned orcs with the “No Chance” skill? Never tangle with these guys in close melee combat, as siege battles are too chaotic to leave to chance when that orc can immediately kill you with one lucky shot. Take them out from range up on top of a building, or if they are arrow-proof, summon a graug or your bodyguard to deal with that orc.
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Those are all the basics you need to know to survive every single endless siege battle the game can throw at you! If you need help with any other part of the game, from picking Talion’s best skills to finishing off those elusive Bruz quests, check out our full list of Shadow Of War guides here.
Have any other tips for us to try out in siege defenses? Let us know your preferred Shadow Of War siege strategy in the comments below!
