Wildfrost has a lot going on under the hood. With two lanes, 12 potential guys on the board, a full deck of cards, and later on, random charms, things can get busy very quickly. Throw in various symbols and status ailments and have a recipe for disaster. It’s this overloading of information that will kill you more often than not in this game.
Thankfully ailments and symbols aren’t that difficult to understand in a vacuum, and this is where this guide comes in. We are going to break down every status, and how these will affect your play in Wildfrost. Every ailment can be used by and against you, so love and hate them. It’s the only way.
More Wildfrost content:
Woolly Snail | What Is Wildfrost | Naked Gnome | Sacrifice Guide
Block
Starting our proceedings is the most annoying of all the effects in Wildfrost. Block is painfully difficult to apply to your team. Not only can it be random, but the effect also tends to appear on fairly weak-out-of-the-gate Companions. Enemies love it though, and you will hate it as a result.
Block ignores all instances of damage, and then the value of Block is reduced by 1. It doesn’t matter how hard you hit, or what form of damage you inflict, you break a single block. Where this gets annoying is when you have to fight certain encounters where enemies can rock up with 5, or even 12 Block. As of writing, there is no way to bypass Block – you just have to slam your head against them until they eventually break.
Bom
Bom is one of the strongest effects in Wildfrost. As you will soon discover, most effects are temporary. Bom is a permanent buff to the team that applies it. Not only that, in all of our time in Wildfrost, we never saw an enemy (that we can recall) that had access to this ability.
How Bom works is that for every Bom on an enemy, your damage is increased by 1. This never ticks down, so it functionally acts as a powerful buff to your team’s damage output. Bom is outstanding and can turn a weak team into one that is seriously threatening. If you have a strong team? You are probably going to win with a good enough Bom engine.
Demonise
Demonise is one of the more common effects in Wildfrost, and it will appear on your cards as well as in your enemy’s pool of effects. Demonise doubles the next instance of damage. Multiple stacks of Demonise allow multiple hits to deal double damage.
Demonise is terrifying when used against you, but amazing when used against your enemies. Similar to Bom, Demonise can be a substantial buff to your damage. Unlike Bom, Demonise won’t make your weak Companions stronger due to the nature of doubling. Despite this, Demonise is a common effect we have found great success with. We recommend running Goat Statue whenever you get the chance for the best application.
Frost
Frost is simultaneously a nightmare and a lifesaver. Frost reduces a target’s next attack by the value of Frost. This can even take you into the negatives, although this won’t heal enemies (thankfully). Frost is not all that common in Wildfrost – at least not for you. We can recall maybe 2 Items that apply it, and not Companions spring to mind immediately.
That doesn’t mean it’s bad, however. Powerful Items like Frost Bloom can turn a defeat into a victory in a pinch. Frost is especially good against enemies with Frenzy as the Frost effect will last for all hits in the Frenzy chain – not just the first swing. This is not an intuitive interaction, but it’s one to always keep at the back of your mind.
Haze
Haze is very rare in the grand scheme because it is stupidly powerful whenever anything has access to it. How Haze works is once you have Haze applied, your next attack will target your team. This effect only appears in a couple of encounters in the late game in Wildfrost, but it will end runs if you don’t prepare for it.
What’s more, every Haze card you have access to has massive drawbacks. For example, the only companion slowly kills your team for the effect. One of the Items is Aimless so you have limited control over it. As a result, we rarely bring Haze into our decks, but we always plan to shut our opponents down.
Ink
Speaking of which, that’s where Ink comes into play. Ink is an effect that largely exists on your side. It’s also really powerful against very specific threats. How Ink works is that any text effects are removed until Ink runs out. This is a game changer because the text on cards is what makes most enemies threatening.
For example, Makoko gains +1 attack every turn, and attacks every turn. This ramping of power can get out of control quickly. Throw Ink on him, and he will stay at 0 Attack until it wears off. Since 0 attack is still a hit, you can use Teeth or Smackback to punish him for daring to strike you.
As a side note, many of the most powerful effects in Wildfrost are tied to minions with bad stats. Ink cripples these enemies, You may think Snow is a better choice, but we will cover that when we come to it.
Overburn
Overburn is ludicrously powerful but requires a fair chunk of dedication to pull off. Overburn causes enemies to take the value of Overburn in damage, once the value of Overburn equals or exceeds their current HP. Not only that, they explode and everything in their row also takes that amount of Overburn damage.
Overburn is one of the most effective ways to kill groups of enemies. If you can get Overburn on someone with Barrage, you can chain-explode entire waves of enemies. There are so many ways to stack Overburn, and we would consider Overburn more valuable than actual Attack stats.
Do note, Block completely shafts Overburn as not only does Overburn knock off just one point of Block, but your entire Overburn stack is removed afterwards. We would like to see Overburn be used as a hard counter to block, but alas, that isn’t the case as of writing.
Shell
Shell is an effect that can get out of control and makes certain enemies far more dangerous than they have any right to be. Shell is a second health bar that needs to be removed before you can kill an enemy. It’s incredibly valuable on your side, and infuriating on your opponents.
Shell is a more readily available, but weaker, form of Block. Several Companions interact with the mechanic, with Kernel and Chompom being the two big ones. Chompom in particular can scale to ludicrous heights. A powerful way to increase your team’s survivability.
Shroom
Shroom is nightmare fuel and something that can be used to great effect once built around. Shroom is a poison effect. Every turn, a target afflicted with Shroom will take damage equal to the value of Shroom, and then that value is reduced by 1. This is one of the only ways to deal damage outside of activating your Companions.
Shroom can end runs if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there is no way to remove it once it is applied – well, not without Recalling. If you bring Shroom to use against your enemies, however, you will find an effect that is well supported. Not only do you have access to a wide selection of Companions who can use Shroom, but some powerful Items AND Clunkers make Shroom far more dangerous.
There are even ways to turn Shroom into a spreading, never-ending plague that slowly works its way through every enemy in your way. One of our favourites.
Snow
Snow is the first effect you are going to have access to. Not only does Snoof – your first pet – have access to it, but one of your first Items is Snow Stick. Snow freezes an enemy’s Counter and all of their Reactions. This is very powerful as it acts like a Stun for lack of a better word.
Snow will be used in every deck because the effect is just that good. We recommend bringing MORE snow when you can, with Snowcake being one of our favourite cards, period. Do be aware that many enemies have Snow resistance, so these enemies should be a high-priority threat. However, not all bosses have this buff, so it’s always worth keeping them around. This is a game-changer against the likes of Klunker and Heart Of The Storm.
Spice
Spice is a well-supported effect that is hard to pull off despite that. How Spice works is, the effects target gains a damage boost equal to their Spice value. Once they attack, the Spice is removed. A temporary damage buff. You can find this on Companions, Items, Clunkers, Enemies, bosses – you name it.
Spice on your side of the board takes a lot of work to get set up effectively. Spice used by your enemies is terrifying and should be approached with caution. Not many encounters use it, but the ones that do can overwhelm you with ludicrous damage numbers. Consider using Clunkers or Block to negate these huge damage spikes.
Teeth
Teeth is one of the most common effects in the game, and it is used by enemies all of the time – especially once you throw in some Modifier Bell Charms. Teeth deals damage to enemies when they attack you equal to the value of Teeth. Teeth often has a scaling element for both you and your enemies, so bear that in mind.
Teeth is excellent on its own and works wonders on throwaway units like Summons, or tanks that can take a hit. Not only that, when it comes to “On kill” triggers, Teeth count as a kill. For example, if an enemy is killed by Teeth whilst attacking Big Berry, Big Berry will trigger her AOE heal.
Teeth on enemies need to be taken seriously, however. Consider avoiding them entirely if you can, or using Items to kill them slowly over time. You don’t want to attack directly into a Teeth enemy unless you have a seriously high HP pool or an effective means of healing.
That’s all we have on Wildfrost for now. Be sure to check out our Guides, Lists, and Walkthroughs for more Wildfrost content.
