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The third climate inTerra Nilis the arctic, and so while temperature is just as important as it was in the tropical climate, players will need it to go both high and low as they progress. This makes the arctic map, the Volcanic Glacier,the trickiest one yet.
Fortunately,Terra Nilgives players the tools they need to adjust the global stats and place the four new biomes the game asks for. This includes a variety of climate buildings and even a new way to generate power. This guide will help players understand how the Volcanic Glacier changes the nature of the game.
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Stage 1
Like other areas, the Volcanic Glacier map is randomly generated, but it includes several dry riverbeds, lots of frozen ground, ocean on two edges of the map, highlands, and several smoking fissures.Toxin Scrubbers, Irrigators, Solar Amplifiers, and Excavatorsare back from earlier maps, and the climate tab starts with both Cloud Seeders and Combustors.
The new building in the list is theSeismic Detonator. Players can place the Detonator on any land tile, and it will immediately explode, turning land tiles in a radius into dry riverbed tiles. The explosion also detonates any fissures in the area, turning them into magma vents that fill all the nearby riverbed tiles with lava. Keep in mind that Excavators can also explode fissures.
Filling 100 tiles with lava will unlock a new building: theGeothermal Plant. The Plant is a new source of electricity, and it’s much more effective than the Turbine. A Geothermal Plant can connect to 10 objects instead of 6, and it can reach buildings up to 8 tiles away. Geothermal Plants must be built over lava (though not an active magma vent), but three tiles through the center of the Plant are enough. In addition, the Plant will melt all the ice in a radius around it.
Melting the ice is important becausetheToxin Scrubbercan’t clean frozen ground. This makes them much less effective at first despite the Geothermal Plant’s larger radius. On the other hand, many of the tiles in the Volcanic Glacier are ash instead of toxic soil, and Irrigators work just as well on ash as they do on clean soil. Either way, it’s a good idea to melt the ice before trying to cover the map in greenery.
Speaking of which, the Volcanic Glacier once again introduces a new global variable:toxicity. Fortunately, none of the optional goals or biomes like toxicity, and the way to get rid of it is to use plenty of Toxin Scrubbers as usual. Here are the new optional goals for the map:
Looking at this list, there are a lot more conflicting requirements than in either of the previous maps. In addition, while all the goals prefer high humidity, one of the biomes will only spread when humidity is low. This meansthe best order of action is the following:
To help this process along, players can unlock two new buildings in the climate tab. Create 200 greenery tiles to unlock theDehumidifierand create 200 clean ocean tiles to unlock theFlash Freezer. Both can only be built on rock tiles, and both require power. The Dehumidifier dries up greenery and other biome tiles to reduce the global humidity, and players will need snowfall or an Irrigator to bring these tiles back to life. The Flash Freezer covers nearby tiles with snow or ice sheets, but it doesn’t work on rocks. The more tiles it freezes, the lower the temperature goes.
One last thing to keep in mind is that players should be very careful about when they start the snowfall. Like the rain and thunderstorms from before, snow will clean up every corner of the map and bring toxicity down to zero, but it’ll also freeze lava into rock and cover some greenery tiles with snow, snow that won’t melt again even if players bring the temperature back above 0 °C. Players should be completely done with the tundra and forest biomes before activating the snowfall to avoid causing themselves any headaches.
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Stage 2
When stage 2 begins, players get access to four new buildings. The Monorail Node and Arboretum are back from before, while the Biodome and the Radial Excavator are completely new.
TheBiodomeis a new Irrigator upgrade. However, this upgrade only works on Irrigators that are on hills and highlands. Biodomes create the tundra biome, but players can only place them if the global humidity is 35 percent or lower, with the ideal range being 25 percent or lower. Players should note that tundra tiles can spread onto lower elevations even if Biodomes can’t.
TheArboretumworks exactly the same as it didback in the River Valley map, but it creates the boreal forest biome instead. Players can create ash by using the Solar Amplifier to burn tundra or the Combustor to burn greenery, but the map also features some ash and burned buildings from the start, and greenery also burns to ash when it’s adjacent to lava. Overall, boreal forest isn’t hard to build up.
The other new tier 2 building is theRadial Excavator. This digs out the ground in a circle around the excavator, turning it into dry riverbed. This will also ignite fissures, and any active magma vents nearby will fill the space with lava. However, if it’s snowing, the riverbed will instead fill with water that immediately turns into ice.
The rest of the tier 2 buildings must be unlocked before using. 300 lava tiles will unlock theIgneous Heatsink, which needs power but will freeze lava into rock in a radius around it. It also lowers the temperature a little, and players can use the new rocks to place Flash Freezers and drop the temperature even further. Players should avoid placing too many heatsinks since one or two snowfalls will freeze all the lava not protected by Geothermal Plants, making it a much more effective way to get rocks.
The last tier 2 building generates both of the last two biomes. After covering the landscape with at least 300 rock tiles, players will get to use theAlgae Greenhouse, which is yet another Irrigator upgrade. Place it on an Irrigator near some rocks, and it’ll cover the rocks with the lichen biome. Lichen prefers low toxicity, so players should start the snowfall before building this upgrade.
The Algae Greenhouse also generates the fourth biome, the kelp forest. This works just like the Coral Lab from the Desolate Island: build a Monorail network, use it to drop the Greenhouse into the ocean, and watch as the seas fill with kelp. The biggest difference is that building a Monorail network is much easier when all the rivers are full of frozen lava.
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Stage 3
This time the tier 3 buildings don’t include any surprises. The full list is available immediately, and it includes the Airship, Recycler Station, Recycling Beacon, Recycling Silo, Rock Hopper, and Animal Observatory. As always, players must find at least three of the following animals to complete the map.
The strategy for cleaning upis the same as the Desolate Island: build a Monorail network, use Silos to recycle buildings too far from the Nodes, then disassemble the Monorail starting at the farthest ends.
Terra Nilis available now on Android, iOS, and PC.
