Minecraft Legends has a series of post-launch content planned, coming in the form of "Legends." Each Legend is a special challenge mode that asks players to complete an objective, either alone or with up to three allies and gives a reward on completion.
The first Legend added to Minecraft Legends is called "Portal Pile" and is a defense challenge. Players are given a single Village and Fountain to protect and must withstand 20 waves of increasingly dangerous Piglins pouring in from three directions. As the waves grow more intense, players will need to make excellent use of defensive structures and mob commands if they hope to seize the day and claim their reward. Players are given access to more buildings, higher mob size limits, and higher resource storage limits as the waves progress.
Waves 1-5
During these first few Portal Pile waves, players will want to fortify the area immediately around the fountain and spawn some golems to serve as a mobile defense force. The enemy mostly consists of basic Piglins at this stage, So players shouldn't have too much difficulty fending them off. This changes pretty quickly, so using these early waves to get walls, towers, Carpenter Huts, and even a Masonry or two built will be crucial to success.
Most importantly, players should put up a decent wall or two between each Portal and the fountain. They don't need to be complete, but they need to be directly between the fountain and the Portal. This is to prevent an instant loss when wave 5 throws a nasty surprise at players in the form of a swarm of Piglin Seekers. These explosive Piglin bombers will charge directly for the fountain, detonating as soon as they reach a structure.
Players should send their army to intercept and eliminate as many Seekers as possible, ideally with ranged attacks, and trust those walls to soak up any that make it through. Players who survive Wave 5 are past one of the mode's nastier surprises.
Waves 6-10
After Clearing Wave 5, players will gain access to Skeletons, which are fantastically effective ranged units that can pick off troublesome foes, like the aforementioned Seekers, very easily. Additionally, Skeletons can shoot over walls, so multiple layers of walls protecting arrow towers and Skeleton Squads can be a very effective defensive strategy.
Using the advanced commands to place melee units just outside the wall but still within range of the Skeletons will provide an extra buffer to prevent tankier foes from breaching the wall before they die. Melee Units should be reinforced with a few Mossy Golems to keep them alive since resources for spawning more mobs are sparse in this mode compared to the main campaign. On the subject of melee units, Zombie spawners will become available at the start of Wave 6, along with other redstone structures. Zombies can be fantastic for body-blocking gates and fending off foes in close combat and can be very tanky with help from Mossy Golems.
Players should still be putting down Arrow Towers to provide extra covering fire and should start building Kaboomery structures to empower them with explosive projectiles and greatly enhance their destructive capability. When it comes to placement, players should try to overlap the area towers cover so that they focus fire on key defense points. Watch for areas the enemy tends to attack in the largest numbers and reinforce those spots with extra turrets and mobs. When a wave is only coming from one direction, players should grab extra troops from locations not currently under attack as necessary to fend off the hordes.
The further players get, the more they'll see of the Piglin's more powerful units, so it's important to keep an eye on the incoming horde and move stronger units to deal with the larger threats.
Waves 11-15
After Clearing Wave 11, players will gain access to the Blast Tower, one of several special towers that can also be located during Minecraft Legends' main campaign. Players can only build one of these in this mode, which is costly. Despite that, the Blast Tower is excellent at pushing back enemy waves and disrupting them, thinning the herd before they can even reach the bulk of the defenses.
Placing this tower in whichever direction enemies were breaching the most during earlier waves and ensuring a protective wall surrounds it will greatly amplify that area's defensive capabilities.
If desired, players may dismantle this tower to gain the ability to build it again in a new location, as is the case for all the special towers. After Wave 12, the Stun Tower will also become available.
This Tower periodically releases an AOE stun that cripples incoming enemies and leaves them open to attack while also pushing them back. This should be placed to protect the Fountain or in a position where it will stun an incoming horde and leave them in range of retaliation from nearby towers and ranged units.
Wave 13 adds the Frost Tower to the selection, and this can stop incoming foes in their tracks while also covering a wide range. With good placement, this can lock foes in place and leave them in perfect position for arrow and scatter towers to tear through them.
After Wave 14, players are able to build the warrior spawner. These powerful units can deal a ton of damage with their axes but are expensive to spawn and should be used sparingly, ideally under the direct command of the player at all times. By this point, players should have reinforced the Fountain with inner and outer walls, supplemented with arrow turrets and some well-placed gates to get the player's army around more quickly. It's a good idea to put scatter turrets near gates to deal with enemies attempting to break them down.
Clearing Wave 15 unlocks the First of Diorite Spawner, allowing players to spawn a powerful Golem who can spawn its own squad of additional golems in combat. This can be useful to keep alongside the player, supplementing their mobile force with spawned golems and occasional melee attacks. Players likely won't need more than one of these, but it is possible to spawn one golem per spawner, and they can be respawned for free by returning to the spawner after they die.
Waves 16-20
These waves have the Piglins throwing everything they can at the players, spawning wave after wave of their toughest units. With well-constructed defenses, upgraded and improved throughout the previous 15 waves, it should still be pretty straightforward.
Replace lost units whenever possible, but spend Lapis sparingly since there's a finite amount per wave. The huge magma-spewing units should be taken down first since their projectile weapons can cause a lot of damage to defensive structures.
Clearing Wave 16 unlocks the spawner for the First of Stone, whose building-crushing boulders aren't terribly useful in defending the Fountain. It can still be handy as a tough respawning unit that can hit groups of enemies with its boulders but is one of the less useful First mobs in this challenge.
Wave 17 brings the First of Brick, who can deal decent damage but mainly serves as a hard counter to ranged attackers and should be positioned to protect skeletons and towers from incoming projectiles. The First of Brick's deployable shields will render the area it protects much harder to assault.
Wave 18 unlocks the First of Oak; it's a powerful ranged golem that can pick off enemies from a distance with its attacks. This Golem works well as part of the player's mobile force, tearing into tough groups of enemies and reinforcing any area that seems to be faring poorly in a given wave.
Wave 19 is a brutal assault from three sides that will test the village's defenses, but proper preparations over the previous waves should allow players to handle it and Wave 20 just fine. The sheer volume of incoming foes does mean players will need to stay on the move and watch each direction, reinforcing areas as the enemy tries to push through. With the challenge cleared, players will be prompted to claim the Portal Buster Skin from the Marketplace as their prize.
Minecraft Legends is available for PS4, PS5, PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.