The days were counting down, and decisions I made weeks ago were now coming into play. I would soon know if I made the right choices or if I should focus more on simpler things to get my village to survive the incoming attack.

At this point, I had realized that if I tossed things over my village's fence. In the morning, swarms of my villagers would come out and haul those needed supplies to their proper storage to be used for crafting purposes. This would end up saving me a lot of time and giving a lot of villagers who were not so great at doing what they were supposed to be something to do.

Just two days before the invasion was yet another blood moon. It was also now winter. I was just trying to get back home after a long day and many nights of grinding materials we needed to progress some building upgrades.

It seems like this attack was meant to soften me up a bit. To delay any last-minute preparations that were underway. As I now needed to heal up and fix a bunch of broken fencing.

That cold, cruel night, then came invasion time. There were loads of enemies all over the place. I ended up going for the biggest of them all. Somehow, I was hoping that if I took him out, that would be the end of it.

After taking some nasty damage. While it only deals a couple of bars' worth of damage back. I pulled back a little. I was going to need to wait for others to jump in to help take out the main guy.

So, I resorted to hitting and running around. I knew a lot of these creatures I could kill without taking much, if any, damage. I also wanted to help any of my own villagers who were taking on some of the smaller attackers.

Occasionally, I'd blow a horn that would cause my village to go on alert. Summing its defenders out of their slumber. Since the attacks seemed to come in waves, there would be moments when everyone went back to bed. Allowing my village to take some heavy damage before everyone was back out defending it again.

It became clear not that far into the fight that this invasion was going to come at a heavy cost. Not only where some rather expensive to replace or repair buildings getting burnt to the ground. This invasion force was in fact that. Nothing I had dealt with up till now.

The pain then started to be felt. As those who were manning the guard post barricades started to get killed. Granted, a few of them were just brought into the village only days ago. I kind of had a feeling their chances of survival were going to be quite low.

After a while, I was so low on health that I had to give in. I ran back to my house and started to heal up a bit. It was not ideal. Getting killed was also not ideal. While I was resting to recover some health, my people kept up as good a fight as they could.

Regaining enough health so that I felt like I could at least do something and not get killed. I charged back onto the battlefield. It was at this point that I started to see just how badly the condition of many builders was. Some were far beyond just needing a repair and would require a full rebuild from the ground up.

I just wanted to take out as many enemies as possible at this point. It seemed clear that taking out their leader was just not going to happen. The best I could hope for was to try to limit further damage to the village and any more deaths.

I ended up losing six good men that night. We, however, survived to fight another day. For now, I decided I'd leave the gravestones of those who did not survive where they are. Many were all clustered up on the main town road. They must rain on their leader like I had, and it did not go well.

The only good thing that came out of this was having lots of corpses of our enemies to skin. We would be getting a lot of bone fragments and other things that could be used in crafting. Not really a fair trade-off for the damage we took. It was at least better than nothing.

Large sections of the fence were also destroyed. The vermin were already sneaking in, trying to cause further trouble. My first order of business was to get our main fence back up. I’d then work on restoring buildings and getting some interior defenses back up at a later point in time. I was just trying to stop the bleeding at that point.

I then went around to do a tally of who we had lost. The last thing I needed was finding out we lost our cook or something and ended up starving to death in winter. Thankfully, he was fine. The bulk of our losses were just those that were put in charge of defending this place.

As if adding insult to injury. Shortly after, we got another blood moon. I had not even recovered from the invasion itself. There were still some gaps in the fencing, with even more being created now.

It seems this attack was meant to sweep up what little could be left. I can only imagine how many survived the invasion with very little left. Just to get wiped out from the next blood moon that way too quickly.

At least I was back to full health and ready for another fight. My head was shaking at seeing the further fencing that would now need to be repaired. At least no further buildings took any large amount of damage.

Final Thoughts

You could say spring could not come fast enough this time around. It would take many days to recover from all the damage done. All just to find out that another attack would be coming again around the same time of year. It seems like this is just something I'll have to deal with yearly.

At least now I have an idea of what I'm dealing with. We should be better armored and trained for the next invasion. That is assuming we can get over an even bigger issue that is ahead of us.

The once massive forest that I built on the side of is just about gone. It seems I need to expand a forward village elsewhere and send all my gathers there. While keeping the crafters back at my main village.

That alone is going to require some scouting for a new spot. Setting up the right logistics to move goods back and forth between the two villages. I’m also going to need a decent number of people to pull that off.

Just as quickly as the invasion had ended. It was already being moved to the back of my mind. It was now spring, and I had time to resolve some other massive issues first. At least I was hoping I did. Time will only tell if I'm able to overcome the new challenges that I'm facing and be ready for the next invasion.

Information

Screenshots were taken, and content was written by @Enjar about ASKA.

Disclosure: A review copy of the game was received for free.

Disclosure: This content was written during early access.