Kingshot Helga

Full background story

At first glance Helga looks like anything but a warrior: hair long and gentle, clothes fine, voice quiet enough to be mistaken for shyness. Then she steps onto a battlefield and all of that falls away. Her lance is long enough and sharp enough to open a line of shields like a seam, and mounted, she comes down on an enemy formation like something out of a nightmare they didn't know they'd have. Valkyrie is the word people reach for. If you've made an enemy of her, the only sensible thing left to do is hope she's in a merciful mood.

Quinn is about the only man in town bold enough to claim he's her match, and he has said as much to her face more times than anyone's bothered counting, always followed by a confession of feelings that Helga turns down flat, every single time. It hasn't cured him of trying. His latest declaration: "I have to find out once and for all which of us is stronger, on the field or off it. Until I know, I'm not leaving this town."

Helga was born into a Viking tribe in the far north, daughter of two warriors well regarded by their people, and she was riding a moose before most girls her age could saddle one alone. Her gift for combat showed early too, but so did something the tribe had no name for: a refusal to keep making war the way her ancestors always had. Out hunting, she found herself unable to shake the feeling that life shouldn't be taken so cheaply, that there was something sacred in it worth more respect than her people gave it. The doubt kept growing. What could possibly matter more, she started to wonder, than simply living at peace with the people around you?

That question put her at odds with the tribe more and more as she got older, and one day it broke into the open. The warchief announced a fresh campaign, another round of raiding and plunder on top of the oppression he already kept his own people under, and Helga's temper finally gave out in front of everyone. It cost them both. The warchief couldn't let the insult go unanswered, so he handed down his judgment: Helga would fight the strongest warrior in the tribe, his own champion, to the death. It was meant to be an execution dressed up as a trial.

She won anyway. She cut down the champion in front of the whole tribe, and her victory bought her the one thing nobody expected her to get: her life, and a moose to ride away on. So she left, and she never went back.

But that single act of defiance never stopped eating at the warchief. What if letting Helga walk away only proved that a warrior could choose for herself when and where to fight? Once one person got to make that choice, his authority as chief meant less than it used to, and a tribe that stopped listening to its chief was a tribe some other, more united band of Vikings would swallow whole and put in chains. So after Helga vanished, the warchief turned on his own camp. Anyone whose loyalty looked less than absolute got driven out without mercy. It took him ten years of that to finally earn the title he wanted: Viking King. Even now, that old grudge against Helga still sits in his chest like a coal that won't go out.

Word has just come in from a scout: a lady warrior in traditional dress, unmistakably familiar, has been spotted in the new lands. It looks like another campaign is about to begin.

Skills

Conquest skills fire in the Arena. Expedition skills fire on rallies and the world map. A hero who carries one can be dead weight in the other.

Conquest

Antler Assault

Antler charge deals Attack×160-224% AoE damage, knocking targets back and stunning them for 1s.

Spear Charge

Deals Attack×150-210% damage to the target.

Fury

Passive: on taking damage, 10% chance to gain +4-12% Attack for 3s, stacking up to 5 times.

Valiant Fury (Exclusive)

+10-30% damage dealt.

Expedition

Oath of Guardian

8-40% chance to reduce damage taken by 50% for all squads.

Echoes of Valhalla

+5-25% Squads' Attack.

Nature's Balance

+5-25% Squads' Lethality.

Zeal (Exclusive)

+5-15% Rally Squads' Lethality.

Power of the Deer (Talent, always active)

+2-10% Attack and Defense for all deployed soldiers, even off the march.

Best pairings

• Pairs with Howard in the paid Gen 1-3 lineups: he tanks with Shield Block while she leads the charge with Antler Assault's AoE stun and knockback.
• Her stun and knockback stack with Jabel's Gallant Throw pin to lock down more of the enemy formation than either alone.
• From Gen 3, Jaeger's Rumormonger raises damage taken on whoever she's stunned, so the target eats her full Antler Assault hit instead of a fraction of it.
• Shares the off-march Talent mechanic with Amadeus — building both compounds the same always-on garrison buff.

• Howard
• Jabel
• Jaeger

Other Generation 1 heroes

• Amadeus
• Chenko
• Jabel
• Olive
• Saul

Frequently asked questions