Badge Dojo Fire stage 1

Fire Dojo opens with a board that looks heavier than an opening stage usually needs. Lineup 1 is made of evolved units: four second forms and Azurion, a third form, at the back.

The placement splits the work by lane. Pyrohound holds row 1 of the middle lane and calls up a strong pillar of fire that burns a whole area, with Azurion three rows behind lobbing fireballs that leave enemies burning. Firecoil stands in row 1 of lane 3, ringed by fire that hurts enemies while healing allies near it and raising their attack; Flametail backs it up from row 4 with fireworks shells that explode where they land. Pyroprawn sits by itself in row 2 of lane 1, throwing rapid punches that sometimes set enemies on fire.

Firecoil is the unit that keeps the board alive, because it is the only source of healing. Its ring covers the right side and can reach Pyrohound beside it in row 1, but lane 1 is two lanes away and gets nothing.

That makes Pyroprawn the piece most likely to fall. It has no blocker and no healer, so if the left side breaks, level Pyroprawn first, or rely on Pyrohound's pillar to thin enemies before they get there.

The second stage drops back to base forms, which makes it the real starting point for a new account. Lineup 1 uses Pyropup in row 1 of the middle lane with Ignisnap in row 4, Ashlarva in row 1 of lane 3 with Tindercub right behind it, and Fumekit at the back of lane 1.

The right lane is where the stage is won. Ashlarva wraps itself in a ring of fire that hurts enemies and heals allies close to it, and Tindercub one row back hits groups with chi attacks, dashes forward when it can, and retreats to meditate and heal when it is in danger. Tindercub's dashes keep it inside Ashlarva's ring, so the pair heal each other's mistakes.

Fumekit is the risk. It stands in row 4 of lane 1 with nothing ahead of it and gives off toxic fumes that keep damaging an area and sometimes ignite. That steady damage is useful, but nothing protects Fumekit once enemies reach it.

An alternative for this stage uses evolved units instead: Firecoil in place of Ashlarva, Pyroprawn in the middle, Azurion replacing Ignisnap, Flametail behind Firecoil and Embertail in place of Fumekit. As a substitute, Embertail lays pinecone mines that blow up for light area damage, with a few extra already planted at the start.

Fire Dojo 1-3 starts a four-stage run on one grid, and the board leaves lane 1 completely empty. Everything sits in the two lanes on the right.

The middle lane has Pyropup in row 1 and Ignisnap in row 4. The deeper column is lane 3: Ashlarva in row 1, Tindercub in row 2 and Embertail in row 4. Only Ignisnap and Embertail are evolved; the rest are base forms.

The idea is to let the healer side carry. Ashlarva's ring of fire hurts enemies and heals allies near it, Tindercub fights inside that ring, and Embertail at the back has pinecone mines already planted before the first wave arrives, so lane 3 gets free damage early. The middle lane is simpler, a blocker up front and a shooter far behind.

The empty left lane changes how enemies arrive. Anything that would have come down lane 1 drifts towards the middle, so Pyropup tends to see more traffic than Ashlarva does.

This exact grid repeats through 1-6, and each of the next pages looks at one part of it. For now, the plan is simple: keep Ashlarva alive, because the right side falls apart without it, and give Pyropup enough levels to hold the middle.

The grid has not changed since 1-3, so this page is about the front pair in lane 3: Ashlarva in row 1 and Tindercub right behind it in row 2.

They split the job cleanly. Ashlarva is the sustain, a base-form healer whose ring of fire damages enemies around it and heals allies close by. Tindercub is the damage, hitting groups with chi attacks and dashing forward when it sees an opening. When Tindercub gets into danger, it pulls back and meditates to heal itself, so one bad wave rarely kills it.

The catch is that Ashlarva is the one taking the first hits. It has no protective skill beyond its ring, and as a base form it is fragile. If enemies stack against it, the ring keeps healing Tindercub while Ashlarva itself goes down.

That is why levels on Ashlarva matter more than levels on Tindercub here. A tougher Ashlarva holds the front longer, which keeps Tindercub inside the healing and keeps the mines behind them doing their work.

Ashlarva's evolved forms, Firecoil and later Charflutter, are healers that show up on almost every later Fire Dojo board, so it is worth raising early.

Same board again, and the weak spot is the middle lane. Pyropup holds row 1 of lane 2 by itself, with Ignisnap three rows back in row 4 and nothing in between.

Pyropup is a base-form guardian that raises a pillar of fire to damage an area. It hits groups well, but it has no healing of its own, and Ashlarva's ring in the next lane only helps if Pyropup stands close enough to it. With lane 1 empty, enemies also drift into the middle, so Pyropup usually faces more pressure than anything else on the board.

Ignisnap is the evolved form of Blueflick and shoots fireballs that hit a small area and set enemies on fire. Its burn keeps working after the hit, which suits a lane where Pyropup's pillar is already softening the same group. The problem is distance. If Pyropup falls, enemies walk three empty cells and reach Ignisnap with nothing to slow them.

The fix with Lineup 1 is simple: put levels into Pyropup before anything else. A sturdier front in the middle protects Ignisnap, keeps enemies away from the right lane's flank, and gives the burn time to finish what the pillar starts.

The last stage on this grid is a good check on difficulty. Lineup 1 only needs two evolved units, Ignisnap and Embertail; Pyropup, Ashlarva and Tindercub can all stay as base forms.

Embertail is the unit this page looks at. It is the evolved form of Cindermunk and sits in row 4 of lane 3, planting pinecone mines that blow up for light area damage. At the start of the fight it lays a few extra, so lane 3 already has traps waiting before the first enemy arrives. Mines do the most when enemies are held in place, and here Ashlarva and Tindercub hold the front of that lane, so anything stuck on them is standing near the mines Embertail keeps adding.

If enemies do slip past the front pair, Embertail is the last thing between them and the back of the board, and it is not built to fight up close.

If you are still losing at this point, the cause is usually the middle rather than the right side: Pyropup gets swarmed because lane 1 is empty. Levels on Pyropup and Ashlarva cover most failures here.

The next pair of stages moves this setup over so that lanes 1 and 2 carry the board instead.

The base-form team from 1-3 moves left for the next pair of stages. Lane 1 becomes a column with Ashlarva in row 1, Tindercub in row 2 and Ignisnap in row 4, while the middle lane has Pyropup in row 1 and Embertail in row 4. Lane 3 is now the empty one.

The key cell on this board is Ignisnap at the back of lane 1. On 1-3 it sat behind a lone Pyropup; here it has Ashlarva and Tindercub ahead of it, so it gets far more time to keep throwing fireballs. Those fireballs set enemies on fire, and burning enemies stuck on the front pair keep losing health while Tindercub's chi strikes land on the same group.

The front row also lines up better than before. Ashlarva and Pyropup now stand side by side in row 1, so the ring of fire around Ashlarva can reach Pyropup as well as Tindercub. The middle blocker finally gets some healing.

Embertail's mines sit behind Pyropup, catching anything that slips through the middle.

The 1-8 stage uses the same grid and looks at the empty right side. Here, the fix if things go wrong is the same as earlier: keep Ashlarva levelled, since it now supports two lanes.

The grid from 1-7 stays, so this page turns to the side that has nothing on it. Lane 3 is empty, which means every enemy that comes down the right drifts towards the middle, where Pyropup stands in row 1.

That makes the middle lane the real test of the stage. Pyropup's pillar of fire hits the groups that bunch up against it, and Embertail three rows behind keeps planting mines that go off under anything that gets through. The difference from 1-3 is that Pyropup now has Ashlarva right beside it in row 1, so it is no longer holding a lane without healing.

The left column is the steady part of the board. Ashlarva heals and burns, Tindercub dashes and retreats to meditate when it is in danger, and Ignisnap sets the queue on fire from row 4. It rarely breaks first.

If you lose here, look at how quickly Pyropup falls. It is the base-form blocker taking two lanes' worth of enemies, and when it goes, Embertail is left facing them alone. Levels on Pyropup are the first fix, with Ashlarva second, because its ring is what keeps Pyropup standing between waves.

The next stage puts a front unit in every lane.

For the first time in Fire Dojo, every lane has a unit in row 1. Tindercub leads lane 1 with Embertail behind it in row 4, Ashlarva stands alone at the front of the middle, and Pyropup leads lane 3 with Ignisnap behind it in row 4.

Putting Ashlarva in the middle is the key decision. From row 1 of lane 2 its ring of fire sits between both outer blockers, so it can heal Tindercub on its left and Pyropup on its right, while still burning whatever reaches the centre. No other cell on the board lets the healer cover so much.

The two edges hold in different ways. Tindercub fights with chi attacks and, when it gets into danger, retreats to meditate and heal itself, so it survives on its own longer. Pyropup has no self-healing at all and depends entirely on Ashlarva's ring, which makes lane 3 the side more likely to crack. Ignisnap's burning fireballs behind it help clear that lane faster.

Embertail's opening mines guard the back of lane 1 in case Tindercub gets pushed back.

If the right side breaks, give Pyropup levels. If the middle breaks, the problem is Ashlarva being targeted directly, and levels on it protect the whole front row.

Chapter 1 ends with a board that leaves lane 1 without a blocker. Ignisnap stands in row 2 of lane 1 with Embertail right behind it in row 3. Pyropup holds row 1 of the middle, and Ashlarva holds row 1 of lane 3 with Tindercub behind it.

That left lane is the weak point. Enemies there meet Ignisnap first, a shooter rather than a blocker, and nothing in that lane heals or holds them. Embertail's mines, including the few it plants at the start, are the first thing that hurts them, and Ignisnap's burning fireballs keep working as they walk in. It is a lane that has to kill quickly, because it cannot hold.

Pyropup in the middle stands next to lane 1 and can catch some of those enemies with its fire pillar, so it is the nearest backup. The right side is the sturdy one, with Ashlarva healing and Tindercub dashing in and retreating to recover.

The fix if lane 1 leaks is to level Ignisnap so it kills faster, and Embertail so the mines do more before enemies reach the shooter. Both are already evolved, so they are also the units that carry over best into Chapter 2, where almost every unit on the board is a second form.