I got 2nd…2nd to last!
2nd to last is my usual sweet spot! lol
This is proving to be my problem, too. I understand why there’s no ability to save and return, what with the game nominally being aimed at MP, but I’m hard pressed to get through a whole 30+ round match in one sitting most of the time.
If I remember correctly, you can play against bots without the time limit
Yes. You can play bots with the regular timed game, or with it requiring you to hit a button to continue. When playing with regular timing, you can also hit a pause button at any time to pause. You can also leave the ai game, and have the option to resume it later.
The challenging level bot is pretty good. I’ve only managed a 2nd and 3rd against it so far. I’ve led for most of the games, but it gets some good comps and stomps me.
Played a couple rounds of multiplayer last night as well. Got a 5th the first game, and 2nd place in the 2nd and made the mighty rank of upstart 2. :)
Yah the bot games are tough on challenging. I’ve spent most of my time there, just so I can take whatever time I need to study all the units and synergies. Being good at this game in multiplayer pretty much requires you know what every unit is and does, and what synergies you are trying for, there’s just not time in multi to suss that out on the fly really.
How important is it to know Dota heroes and stuff? I’ve never played, but the current auto-chess craze is grabbing my interest.
Not at all. I’ve hardly played any of the dota games. The games all tend to have an encyclopedia to help you learn about the units, and items in the game.
A tutorial:
I’ve been working on figuring this out as well. I actually just beat the challenging ai for the first time by a decent margin having 48 health left. This was probably the first time where I’ve purposefully swapped out say a level 2 bounty hunter (tier 1) for a level one templar assassin (tier 4), and similar things. Keeping the alliances, but over time upgrading them to higher tier units. I think I ended with:
- lvl 2 Tide Hunter
- lvl 2 Kunkka
- lvl 2 Lycan
- lvl 2 tusk
- lvl 2 treant protector
- lvl 2 lone druid
- lvl 2 Medusa
- lvl 2 wind ranger
- lvl 2 techie
- lvl 2 alchemist
It is fun trying to figure out strategies for this. It is also hard being patient and hoarding gold so you will have enough bank later to do things.
Does it feel to anyone else like Armor is a little overtuned? Once I got the sixth pip of Armor, I was basically unstoppable.
I had my first perfect game last night (winning with 100 health), and learnt several things in the process:
- 2 star shadow fiend is as much a beast here as it was in the original mod.
- 2 star slark does almost as much damage as the shadow fiend, but it’s damage that is all on the backline of the opponent, so is just as valuable!
- A 3 star tank (like an Axe) with that item that reflects 30% of all damage against the attacker has alot of value.
Yeah, shadow fiend is a beast. I’m enjoying the global buffs, and trying to build around some of them.
Do you mean the Warrior alliance? Armor is a unit stat, so I don’t know how you get pips of that. If you think that 6 warriors is unstoppable, just wait until you see the item named “Unstoppable”… :-P
But yeah, I find that Warriors are my frontline of choice, but it’s just since they changed the Knight synergy to be so unreliable, and since leveling up Druids become so expensive.
I’ve been doing a lot of Warrior+Hunter+Warlock builds today, and won three out of four games (though still in Upstart). The synergies just interlock really nicely. The funniest game was one where on round 19 I still only had two 2 star units (both tier 1; IIRC Drow and Axe). But I also had like a 15 round win streak; the only loss was on round 4. It was all built around Unstoppable (keeps warriors alive for two second after they die) and Tooth and Claw (Savage units build up stacks of bleed status effect on the opponent with each attack).
OK, OK, yes, Warrior. Whichever one it is that gives the armor bonus. And yeah, Warlock is awesome too.
My last match I went for a magic-users + healing build, and did pretty well. Admittedly, I’m sticking to the AI for now.
The biggest revelation for me was to find that you should be doing your buying and selling and planning for the next battle while your dudez are fighting the last battle. The timer is very tight, and clearing out my bench while my guys are fighting is a big help.
My most consistent team is:
2 Druids
2 Warlocks
4 Trolls
2 Bleed
1 Demon
What are your favorite combos and bonuses?
Lol…I just had 100 health in challenging dif, 1 enemy left on the board with 8 hit points, I lost. Too funny.
I never got into the original mod due to the clunky UI, but Dota Underlords is addictive and fun.
I just got my 2nd multiplayer win in ~10h playtime. Both wins had lifesteal (warlocks) + Drow (attack speed aura) + good item combos (Luna w/Mask of Madness, Arc Warden w/Refresher). In the first I went big on sustain, in the second I forgot to place my unit on round 1, went on a losing streak, but got a Summoner’s Stone + Druids setup going strong.
Some tips: The things I tend to get wiped by are early 2* or 3* units (AKA luck), superior mana generation, and high-tier AOE abilities. Unit and item synergy can be more important than stacking Alliance bonuses. Know when to: save up, sell units for the interest bonus, or spend everything to secure a comeback or lead. You are buying from a shared and limited unit pool, so read your opponents’ boards.
I’m really sold on holds and disrupts at this point, especially AOE disrupts. The troll shaman is a good example, on paper it doesn’t look like much, 32 DPS, 0 armor, but that chicken debuff is a huge game changer, even late game. DPS happens so fast in this game, if you can stop the other team from doing, even for a very short time, you have a huge advantage. Trying to put together the ultimate stun/chicken/slow team right now lol. So much fun.
Whatever it is that drops the poison AOE is murderous. I’ve wiped on that like 10 times already.
Alchemist? I love him. It gets pretty busy on the screen when you have Shadow Fiend, Alchemist, and Tide Hunter all popping off their aoe.
I’m still trying to figure out when is a good time to rotate out of alliances. I had started with a scrappy/inventor comp, but I wasn’t getting drafts for them and ended up with a 4 druid comp, but nothing really tanky to soak up damage.