Merge & Blade

Merge & Blade

67 Achievements

2,400

41-54h

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Challenger

Challenger

Complete all challenger stages

50

0.5%

How to unlock the Challenger achievement in Merge & Blade - Definitive Guide

In order to unlock this achievement you must complete the five Chapters in the Challenge mode. Should you fail at any point you will need to start over from the beginning.

The goal during this run is to unlock Barbarians, these units will tear through the final wave with only a few healers in reserve to keep them topped off.

Whilst it is impossible to provide an exact step-by-step guide to achieving this due to the randomness of unit spawns, I will provide a list of the upgrades in the order that I bought them. Hopefully, this will allow you to manage your Gold and give you an idea as to what to aim for.

Before we get into this, however, I'm going to provide some tips for beating this game mode effectively:
  1. Firstly, you will want to try your best to focus on merges of five or more where possible. This will increase your Gold gain and make it easier to afford the upgrades.
  2. Secondly, remember that sometimes it is better to have more units than fewer. If you only have a couple of turns left in the preparation phase, consider whether it would be best to avoid merging and leave it for the next phase. This is particularly important when you have an abundance of Archers, you don't want them turning into Priests that have zero combat capability.
  3. Thirdly, the below list is merely the path I took, and you should be prepared to deviate if necessary. I believe the only upgrades below that truly matter are for the Academy, Priests, Spearmen and Barbarians. You can likely get by without the others.
  4. And lastly, Remember to use smart Unit placement. This means putting your Spearmen and Barbarians up front, Archers in the second rank, and Priests in the third row.
With that out of the way, you can find the order in which I purchased upgrades below:
  1. Upgrade Academy to Level 01
  2. Upgrade Academy to Level 02
  3. Upgrade Academy to Level 03
  4. Upgrade Transport Route to Level 01
  5. Upgrade Archer to Level 01
  6. Upgrade Rogue to Level 01
  7. Upgrade Academy to Level 04
  8. Upgrade Transport Route to Level 02
  9. Upgrade Archer to Level 02
  10. Upgrade Priest to Level 01
  11. Upgrade Priest to Level 02
  12. Upgrade Archer to Level 03
  13. Upgrade Academy to Level 05
  14. Upgrade Priest to Level 03
  15. Upgrade Spearman to Level 01
  16. Upgrade Spearman to Level 02
  17. Upgrade Spearman to Level 03
  18. Upgrade Barbarian to Level 01
  19. Upgrade Barbarian to Level 02
  20. Upgrade Barbarian to Level 03
  21. Upgrade Priest to Level 04
  22. Upgrade Priest to Level 05
  23. Upgrade Transport Route to Level 03
  24. Upgrade Rogue to Level 02
  25. Upgrade Rogue to Level 03
  26. Upgrade Barbarian to Level 04
  27. Upgrade Priest to Level 06
  28. Upgrade Spearman to Level 04
  29. Upgrade Archer to Level 04
I used my remaining Gold before the final round to upgrade my Footman and then the Blacksmith.

Whilst I believe buying the upgrades in the order shown above should more or less guarantee victory (unit placement and luck dependant), it is by no means a perfect order and you should be prepared to deviate in the order of upgrades if you find yourself using more of a particular unit. The only exception to this would be the Priests. Upgrading them is super important as it will keep your most powerful units alive for longer.
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21 Mar 2023 23:15

16 Comments
This is helpful but I still haven't been able to unlock achievement.

I think one thing this guide is missing is the critical importance of getting combo matches, especially triple combos and matches of 5 or more. These radically boost the gold gain and make it easier to upgrade.
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By Like A Bob Ross on 10 Apr 2023 00:59
I decided to run it again to see what strategy I had employed. Although after beating the Roguelike Mode my skill level is pretty high at this point so I had no trouble beating it again following my strategy, even managing to beat my previous score by 3k (Which likely means I used many more combos this time around, something that became ingrained after playing the Roguelike Mode where combos are incredibly important).

It appears I do use a fair few combos in the early stage, but I hadn't really added this to my guide as it is just something that as you say, comes naturally to me.

I'll update my guide to add some tips for beating the mode. Thank you for the suggestions!
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By masterelliot994 on 10 Apr 2023 23:30
Aiming for combos shouldn't be necessary, as I don't recall getting too many of these... However, getting matches of five or more should be very doable, especially in the earlier stages.
Have you been able to get enough gold to upgrade to Barbarians?

I am hesitant to add your advice to the guide as more effort should be placed on getting higher-level troops onto the field in larger numbers than trying to aim for a significant number of merges.
An important thing to remember is that it's sometimes best to avoid merging... For example, having three Archers is often better than having a single Priest.

You should also try and avoid merging too many high-level units into a single unit. For example, you wouldn't want to merge seven Priests into a single Spearman as this would set you back quite a bit in terms of your numbers and ability to heal.
Two separate merges of three and four would be preferable however as you would end up with two Spearman, which would create a very effective frontline and put you closer to getting a Barbarian onto the field.
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By masterelliot994 on 10 Apr 2023 11:28
I've tried your suggested order (and a few subtle variations of it) several times now and it always stalls around the end of chapter 4 because I'm stuck stockpiling cash and my troops become too weak to keep up with the enemy growth.

I'm in the middle of a run right now where I'm doing much better because I've been focusing on combos, as well as buying the cheap troop upgrades earlier. Good combos can net you several hundred if not a thousand gold without even fighting an enemy. They also effectively give you free turns, delaying the need to upgrade transport. I'm way ahead of upgrade schedule now because of it. I'll update when the run is complete.
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By Like A Bob Ross on 10 Apr 2023 22:04
You definitely don't want to be holding onto Gold if you can help it, and you should be prepared to deviate from my suggested order of upgrades...

The only other thing I can suggest is smarter unit placement. Having Priests in the third row, Archers in the second and Barbarians and Spearmen in the front row.

Just remember that having numbers means far more than lots of Gold from merging too often. You should be aiming for a full field of decent units if possible.
I personally found that you really only need to worry about smart unit placement in the fifth Chapter as it is by far the longest and most difficult.
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By masterelliot994 on 10 Apr 2023 22:26
Great guide, very helpful. Got it on my first run. 58715 score.
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By Mr Rodster on 12 Apr 2023 23:15
Worked like a charm! Thanks dude!
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By Vok 250 on 26 Apr 2023 23:02
I think the biggest takeaway for me was to try and match five or more of the same type to get the extra moves. thanks for the tip.
I would suggest if it helps people, that since reaching priest rank can really drop your damage, I actually put off the priest unlock upgrade for a while. I beat the third stage by building an army of loads of archers. I was able to make money enough to quickly upgrade past priest to the spearmen.
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By Fluke939 on 19 Jun 2023 22:50
I agree @Fluke939, which is why I mentioned being careful with upgrading to priests in my second tip. I've had a number of runs in different modes come to an early end when I ended up with one too many priests from an unintentional merge chain that resulted in losing several archers...
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By masterelliot994 on 19 Jun 2023 23:19
Round 8 out of 10 on level 5 so many times I lost count. Done with this shit game. As for getting a barbarian, I'm not even close.
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By o Heres Jonny o on 08 Jul 2023 14:45
So this did not work for me either. I upgraded to Barbarians on level 8 or 9 and was able to get 2 of them and upgrade them several times. They died pretty fast. I think having the 6+ spearmen would have been better.
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By Hexa Fox on 29 Jul 2023 19:43
In my experience, Spearmen will get decimated by the final boss. It didn't matter how many Spearmen I had.
The ideal number is three Barbarians, but it can be a close call if you don't have any priests to heal them.
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By masterelliot994 on 29 Jul 2023 19:47
Nah, this guide worked perfectly 1st try. I tried to do it on my own and failed, but this... chef's kiss. I did buy 1 level for the swap so I can dodge when I needed to because any unit can die fast if paired against the wrong match up. I didn't even buy the last 4 items on this list. I had 5k in my pocket on the last round and just forgot to use it. gg
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By Lw N1GHTM4R3 on 23 Aug 2023 23:02
I used this guide and it worked well. Definitely need to make sure to get the 5+ matches consistently. I had 6 barbarians in the last few levels and that was more than enough. Thanks for the help!
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By FaintKitten3455 on 18 Nov 2023 20:16
That guide on the order to buy things was immensely helpful, thank you for the great guide!
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By omgeezus on 04 Feb 2024 16:35
Update: I just completed the achievement by focusing on both combos (in the first 4 chapters) and getting to the Barbarian. Here's a video I just took that shows why combos are so essential (+9000 gold in one turn):

https://www.xbox.com/play/media/LPFZQG8JWH

My hunch is that your solution was working for you because you were getting combos out of habit or accidentally. Without the extra turns and gold combos provide, I found it impossible to have enough gold to stick to that upgrade schedule.

Feel free to update your solution, or if you prefer I'll add my own. Either way, your suggestion to focus on getting academy to Barbarian was super helpful. Thanks!
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By Like A Bob Ross on 10 Apr 2023 22:44
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There's 5 stages, not much to add but

- buy transport routes whenever possible
- Get the academy to at least spearmen
- buy unit upgrades for Rogue and beyond when possible

Focus on smart placement ie, have archers and priests in the back, Rogue and Spearmen infront
use your swaps during battle to set up merges for the next screen when needed

Took me a few tries. I feel like adding turns made the difference for me so heavy emphasis on upgrading your transport routes. If anyone has any helpful tips to add, comment below :)
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12 Mar 2023 03:48

5 Comments
Thank you! Got it first try with your tips. I barely won that, I had only 1 spearman left and one last hit from the boss would have killed it. I finished with a score of 34427, tell me guys if you beat me :)
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By Icarusael on 13 Mar 2023 17:06
This guide didn't help in the slightest and I ended up failing on three separate occasions, although I did make it to the final wave and only had the LizardKing left on each occasion.

Thankfully, I was able to figure out a solution for myself and will write my own guide to that affect...

@Icarusael, I managed a score of 37,471
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By masterelliot994 on 21 Mar 2023 23:03
@masterelliot994 Gratz on the win and guide
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By ELiXiR ERROR on 22 Mar 2023 11:39
Thank you. I'm sure your strategy will work for some, but for me, I found it relied a little too heavily on luck with only Spearmen
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By masterelliot994 on 23 Mar 2023 11:11
This strategy worked for me while the other one never got me close to winning. Spearmen require a bit less RNG to set up (I only needed 3) and the 4th one never even needed to hit the boss, but of course I had a 4 priests and some archers scattered around.
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By MikeBut on 13 Mar 2024 01:45
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