Anyone have tips for a defender team that doesn’t get rolled? I have two maxed out legendaries (one ascended to mythic) with all traits, a maxed epic with all traits, and me, a level 20 Sorcerer with all traits (team score of 7,000+). I hardly ever lose a battle when I invade (always going up against the highest level option), but I’m easily at 20% at most when it comes to defending. What is so foolproof that even the defending AI can’t screw it up?
The key to defending well (not that I can pull this off!) is to create a team that the AI can not fuck up to badly. My wife has managed to put together a decent one that wins fairly often, but I would have to ask her what it is. You can start though by avoiding any troops that require deciding when to use their abilities. Mercy is a good example. In combo with Valkyrie, it’s a devastating one-two, with Mercy creating yellows that fill up Valkyrie, who then creates blues to fill up (in my case) Abhorath and Emperor Khoresh. But the AI can’t do that. It will fire off Valkyrie or Mercy seemingly at random, and Mercy is particularly bad here because she needs to have the right combo of purples and yellows. So this is a great offensive team, but a terrible defense team.
Good defense teams have to take advantage of the AI’s propensity to fire off abilities as soon as they are filled, and should have a lot of passive traits that it can’t screw up. Not that I take the time to figure this out, as I don’t play nearly enough to make it worth my time, but the defense teams I see that win against me tend to be either super high-health teams, teams headed by reduce-skull-damage troops (Knight Coronet, fully traited, is good), and teams with traits that sap my stats ruthlessly.
Yeah, I really like my Knight Coronet, but I still get rolled, heh. That Gorgotha? with granite skin is mean (75% reduction from skull damage).
Another thing I notice is I target enemy teams with a 4500-6500 rating (my own is about 5500), and once in a while they disguise their rating really well and it shows up low while they have a strong team hiding behind it. I would imagine those guys/gals end up with higher defense records.
I forgot to add that Crimson Bat teams tend to wreck me too with their true damage to all ability. Some teams have their magic so high they only need to fire that off twice to wipe out my entire team.
True damage is the bomb, yep. My rating is like 5800 and I can beat teams 2k higher…or lose to teams 2k lower. It’s weird.
A fully-traited Gorgotha is actually the vanguard of my team. I just let the AI go for skull after skull while I build up my abilities. But both true damage and stuns (which turns off Granite Skin) can be brutal.
The point about firing off abilities as soon as they’re ready is a good one. My team does require some finesse. I’m running Gorgotha, Giant Spider, Staff of Madness, and Spooky Imp. Since the staff and the Imp both feed off purple, the AI spamming the Staff probably keeps the Imp from getting enough juice to fire. When I’m playing, I usually hold off on the staff until the Imp can boost its magic a bit or transform one of my opponent’s heavy hitters into a Wraith.
Hmm…going to have to think about this one a bit.
I picked this up recently and have a few questions/could use a few pointers.
I basically played the starting kingdom quests until I couldn’t progress (I’m at the “pass the 3 statues quest” and having a lot of trouble with phase 2, still). So I did some challenges but those started to get difficult so I unlocked a second kingdom. Rinse, repeat (but I didn’t do as many challenges; I need to go back and do that). Then I purchased a third kingdom and followed the same pattern. For some reason I found this one easier (not easy) and managed to unlock the “guide” card and also explorations (which have been tough, overall. I think I am 2-2 on them). I decided to unlock a fourth kingdom in the meantime.
I still have too much trouble in the starter and “mechanist” kingdoms (I think I’m on the final quest to kill Carnifex, or do something with him in any case). I’ve played with my army composition a bit. The 3 kingdoms worth of questing and challenges I have done have left me with quite a few cards, almost too many to properly experiment with.
What should I be doing with gold? I did spend 3k to open 10 chests once. but otherwise I’ve only unlocked kingdoms or horded it. I think I have 6k currently.
When I got my first few duplicate cards I went and started ascension on those cards. Is there any reason to hold onto or put to other use (disenchantment) duplicates? I haven’t been disenchanting any so I don’t know if the returns for that make it worth doing. I’m tempted to start just so I have less clutter. But then I don’t know what cards might be secretly op.
I’m currently playing with Hero, a demon thing whose ability gives +6 to a random skill if it kills someone, the djinn, and something I got in the spider forest who can transform all yellow gems into the color of your choice + heal the first character.
For the longest time I used Gorgotha, Abhorath, Chimera, and Faunessa (whose attack uses the targets attack value, which is great for those killer attack stacks). But this was a pure damage approach, and it was limited. The one I use now is more of a finesse set up, and in addition to being more fun, is more effective.,
I’m hardly an expert, though I’ve been playing steadily since release (though I’m a piddling level 250, while all serious players at 1000+). But I can go over a few things that work for me.
Gold goes to the guild usually to get the rewards and mana boosts. But until you unlock all the kingdoms, use it for that, then for upgrading the kingdoms. Higher level kingdoms grant more gold per day, as well as other income.
Ascending units is necessary to level them up further. I still have zero mythic units, and hence, no level 20s. So save the dupes for ascending, don’t disenchant them. You can get souls in many other ways.
Use glory to get the featured cards and packages each week, usually 300 or 400 glory. These are nice overall.
Gems are good for gem keys, which have a good chance at better troops.
Kingdoms also level up by doing the challenges (boring as hell), and by ascending and traiting troops from that kingdom.
That brings me to traits. Traits are the key to good units overall, and where I am lagging behind. Each troop can have three traits, which get progressively stronger (usually, though not always, depending on your style of play). They require minor, major, arcane, and whatever the big ones are trait stones, which drop randomly, in packages you buy for glory or real money, and which can be farmed via exploration fights. These really define your builds.
The best way overall to get money and stuff is PvP. Which is really just you against another player’s defense team, but w/e. The AI is predictable, and will always act in the following order: four of a kind, three skulls, three of a kind/use ability, the last depending on…dunno, RNG or something. So use that to your advantage. Leaving a three skull match (which you have determined won’t kill the first guy on your side!) is a great way to force the AI into doing stuff that is suboptimal.
Building a team is a matter of taste. For instance, early on I always used my character + weapon, but now I rarely if ever do. You gain experience even if your character is not in the fight, and after a while your other troops are much better in general. But experiment with the classes, etc. Oh, and buy armor if you can. It makes things much, much easier. Anyhow, the first unit at a given time is the one that hits with skulls that match, so the traits there can matter a lot. It also gets hit by the enemy’s skulls, so the traits that dodge or mitigate damage from skulls are good to have. There are also traits that give to you or take from the enemy skill points, and often the former apply only if the unit is in the number one spot. On the other hand, some units have abilities that only work if others have died, so they need to be at the bottom. You need to also think about the abilities of the enemies. Some attack top, some the bottom, some top and bottom, some are choices. These can affect your choices, especially if you pay the 50g to scout the enemy before a match.
Early on, do the Arena. It’s fun at lower levels, and you get a taste of various troops. It costs 1000g, though, which you make back if you win like three battles or so.
So my current team is leveled (the non leaders are roughly level 5-6; my hero guy is a good tank ATM and so stays in the front spot), and I actually snagged a trait on my Void Abyss Thingy Dude (-2 to all enemy skills to start the round). I have other cards I can unlock traits for but I am unwilling to commit the resources at this time, as I don’t know if I will like them yet or because I don’t like the trait (e,g. “+2 health to all humans”).
I just lost a pvp match when a dog archer used lightning arrow. It split 8 damage evenly among the first two spots and then did 7, 7, I think 5, and I couldn’t really see the last damage number while I felt out of my chair but the point is it killed the tank and VAT Dude and just left me completely wrecked. The skill description said it did additional damage based on # of living people but that seemed a bit excessive. I don’t think the card was especially rare. Fuck that noise I want one now. Hmmm, I may have miss saw the damage on the first hit but I would swear VAT Dude got hit for two separate pieces of damage. Anyway, I just ran into another one of these guys and the followup hit did 11, 8, 6, and who cares because once again it devastated my party.
Is PVP the best way to get souls? They’re coming in so slowly. Mostly in bunches from opening chests. I would like to level troops more but currently can’t (I have enough that I can probably level a new card I like to 4, currently). I also found some “[environment] traitstones” which I assume are used to unlock the most powerful traits since so far I just see the minor/major/whatever the third category of mana stone is.
It’s a fun game. It makes me pine for PQ a little, but I could never go back to that game (the fact that stalemates essentially eliminated whatever you were building up just killed me in the end; it’s the one thing I would have changed about the game; I prefer how Galactix and Gems of War handle it, honestly).
Early on souls can be hard to get, yeah; you could consider disenchanting white cards for souls but really in the long run that’s not a good idea IMO. PvP, Arena, (a guild of course), and there are some troops that give additional souls when they do certain things.
I have a lich which can get souls on ability but it seems a paltry amount. Meant to say, thanks for the tip about upgrading kingdoms. I think the tutorial gets you to do it but I played that a ways back earlier this year and had forgotten. Pouring gold into that currently.
Sounds like the Qt3 guild is full up so I’ll try a random guild maybe, once I’ve unlocked and decently leveled enough kingdoms (I have a ways to go there).
Thanks for guild invite guys. What a differnece it makes getting all the stuff (keys, sould, honor, etc) from the weekly reward. I went from having rares in my deck to have a legendary and a bunch of ultra rares.
It looks like the best way to get the weekly seals and contribute to the guild is to mainly participate in PVP, does that sound right? Also it looks like it is best to save your seals and open all the packs at the end of the week.
I will check out the roster and believe there are a couple I can drop soon. Let me look them up and give them a PM first if I can. There is a definite incentive to have at least semi-active people with the seal system, as you have noticed, as during the week if you get more activity, you unlock higher level cards available when you spend your seals. We hit 10,000 as a guild a few times, but we don’t hit that every week.
In the meantime, what is your invite name in case you still want in?
There are a few that haven’t registered on the activity flag for 175 days and I would like kick some out so we can make room for new folks that can gain the advantages the guild can offer, and help us hit some seal tiers if we can.
I don’t know the forum names for these folks and will shoot @belouski a PM.
Bobehm
CFDEngine15
You guys rocked it early on and a super help getting the guild going, but if you are willing to make room, that would be awesome. If no luck finding you in a few days, we may have to drop you anyway. Just pop back in and request an invite back in and we can see what we can do. (It may be possible I can’t kick some as I think these guys were original members and maybe higher ranked than I).
Exactly correct.
As a new player souls are hard to get at first. You need to be saving all your gems towards getting the two highest tier armors. One of them (Celestial) gives a big boost to souls gathered and the other gives a big boost to gold (Dragon). Getting those armors should be your number one priority for spending gems. Then once you get some of the troops that increase the amount of souls you get per battle you can combine the Celestial armor with your souls farming team and get a lot of souls pretty quickly. Right now my main team includes the Dragon Soul troop and I get 68 souls every battle. That adds up in a hurry. I have over 100K souls currently.
The main thing you need right now is to get in the guild. That will increase the number of troops that you have by an enormous degree very quickly. It will also allow you to save up gems and other resources very quickly. Save your glory to spend on the weekly glory chest rewards.
One thing that you should NOT do is play the challenge battles (that you’ve unlocked by doing quests in kingdoms) until you have your Celestial armor. Once you have that armor, you can do the challenge battles and earn double the amount of souls as the reward that they give. So, a final challenge battle normally gives 100 souls. With the armor, you get 200 souls. That’s important because challenge soul rewards are a one time deal. You can fight the challenges as many times as you want, but you only get the extra soul rewards the first time you do them. So, save them for later if you can.
As far as troops go, up to around level 50-100, a goblin team is one of the best non-legendary teams you can have. The lowly goblin that was included with your starter troops is actually one of the best troops in the game. Once you get in the guild, you’ll quickly get other goblins you can add to your team, giving you a lot of team bonuses. They’re a great team early on.
Indeed. While at the higher end goblin teams are not as effective, at the low-medium level they can be very strong, especially with traits. A traited-out goblin team just keeps getting extra turns and is infuriating to play against.
My in game name is Peacedog and I would dearly love an invite.
Thanks everyone for all the tips. I’ve only done a few challenges so I haven’t wasted too much there. I actually have several of these goblin troops (shaman and I think the boar rider) so I think I’ll do some experimenting with them. I actually liked the starter goblin a lot - low mana cap and he can target anyone. But I ditched him while experimenting. At least he’s like level 5 or 6 because I had leveled him some.
I’ve quite enjoyed the demon guy but he is fickle. I’ve been relying on him to do damage, and using the Dark Maiden to convert yellows to brown or purple (favoring then in that order due to banner choice) to keep him topped off. The nyph was wasting space (she was ok until I got the maiden) and I switched over to the winter knighbt, who makes a nice tank although it takes feeding him mana. I was in a good spot there, however (he takes blue and green I think? I’m mostly giving him blues and had no other uses for it). I think I might switch the main hero to using a tome that can destroy gems, assuming it does an actual explosion (I’m not sure, I need to read on it).
I have spent zero: glory, gems, well I guess that’s it. So I’ll save for those things (armor, the card packs). I continue to funnel gold into kingdoms, and I am doing more pvp because I rather like the asynchronous nature of it and it’s more match 3 mayhem. Except seriously fuck lightning arrow in the eyes.
Looks like only the guild master can kick people and I sent @buzznaut a PM to kick a couple people I talked to in PMs and to send you an invite, @peacedog.
I am in. Should I be saving Guild Seals for anything?
I have not taken my newly buffed skill levels for a spin yet, heh.
I think we are supposed to save them until the end of the week when we have upgraded our guild chest.