Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

Yep 1 cast only. More or less what I did with added bonus of killing first purse before he cast. :slight_smile:

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When working on delves with just your 3 attempts per day, at what level did you stop trying to defeat all the rooms and just focus on beating the boss room?

I’ve noticed luck seems to change for the worse in the V rooms around level 230.

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Personally, I only do full-clears during Faction Events. Never really seems worth it, otherwise.

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For me shards are at a premium so I do all rooms in daily delve where possible.

I did Fell Roost recently full clears from scratch, bar a few in event. I then resumed after event from 340 I think. I think at 440 I lost a troop to death mark first turn etc, so skipped next run as a full clear in daily and then did them all fully to 490. I skipped through 500 as room in way had Wraith and death mark on skulls. Did all of Fell Roost with Finesse, Shahbanu, Gavel and Irongut.

Generally will do full clears for all dailies, but been caught out by stuff like death mark on skull hits before, so I tend to skip lethal opponents that aren’t in the way from time to time.

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When the goal was progression, I always did runs straight to boss room. Once you have all delve troops at mythic, and ~9000 shards - you don’t need more. They’ll come naturally anyways.

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Fell Roost Complete Potionless

Hoard 100, bonus 50% (it is a magic kingdom after all!)

Team
Undead Drake
Nocturnia x 2
Fell Dragon Egg

Banner - Fell Roost 2 yellow, 1 purple - green
Medals 1 Nysha, 1 MOS, 1 Anu
Elite troops - nil

Pre-battle, no faction attempt in faction event; took it to 340 I think in there, then levelled it with daily delves.

6th attempt, 1st attempt with Mythic Nocturnias (orbed it and forgot to level, yep had to orb it, insufficient shards)

Rooms
Ice Cave - Glaycion/Winter Wolf/Ice Troll/Snow Guardian

Spider Nest - Tomb Spider Cocoon Spiders x 2, Giant Spider

First room
All fire on Glaycion, managed to stop it team wiping with a cast, did not cast Undead Drake at all, let it die to single skulls with Fell Dragon full. Kept resummoning Drakes to start with, but just kept hitting it with Nocturnia’s. Tactic was to let the first N sit until second full, then hit with both. If there was a skull and Egg was full, I’d take it, otherwise I let Glaycion kill the first slot. I’d faced it before a couple of times in this delve and my skull hits raised it to 1 hit with skulls, so tried to avoid that, and just watch for having a full egg and potential for cascade. Also need to be aware of Arcane on Snow Guardian. Fortunately, only Snow Guardian can reach Nocturnia 2, if you can avoid Glaycion matching doomskulls etc. It cast and missed, summoned the Fell Dragon and although it mana blocks on purple, it does a little damage. In end, killed it, then set about Snow Guardian, splash from N’s had impacted on Winter Wolf and I could kill it okay. Killed that and Snow and then eventually took down Ice Troll.

I came out with 3 Nocturnia’s and a Dragon Egg.

Spiders, threat is Tomb Spider, so mainly took red and brown, took that out fairly early, then the summoning starts. The web from Cocoon is mildly annoying, but with 3 N’s, not too bad.

Final room

Entered like so;

Lost first N to Drake and it’s spell, and nearly lost the Egg it summoned on death, 7 health…

Started to hit AI N, wanted to kill their Drake for chaff summons, but unfortunately it was on a mission to obliterate everything.

I mean it’s over really, but

I got to this point at 14 minutes;

I was 6 short of killing it, seemed okay, just keep the one Nocturnia alive… I suppose an extra Nysha would have killed it by this time.

Anyway, they killed my N and I was stuck in a cycle with no way of killing that bottom N, with the wrong things being summoned.

I killed it eventually 5 minutes later, but it summoned a full egg, which really extended the game.

No Nocturnia’s

Starting to get fed up with that bottom Egg…

More promising

In the end, got a Nocturnia;

Tactics?

1 100 hoard and no bonus = 1 shot range for AI Nocturnia. Probably the same with 25%.
2 Fell Dragon Egg for me was still 1 shottable even with 50% bonus. 135 health, but even with 4 diff troops (which you don’t want) that’s in range of 140 true damage Nocturnia, which also gets 1 magic for every AI cast. Ideally you want your troops with 150 life.
3 Another issue with life is AI Drake does 254 skull damage, plus will usually match a doomskull or two if it explodes and strikes with skulls. You are very close to 1 shot skull range, plus the minor explosion. I know with 50% a skull hit from it left me with 7 health, so watch that.

Couple of pointers I picked up via the thread. The last room presents a dilemma. Ideally you want to deny brown, watch purple filling the Dragon and dripping into AI Nocturnia and kill Nocturnia early. However that Drake can impact on slot 2 very easily at low hoard, in that a double hit and explosion will make slot 2 open and vulnerable to skulls. In this game, Drake recast from it’s first cast and that can be really bad.

So the dilemma is kill the Drake or Nocturnia. I chose a half way house, spells on Nocturnia, summons and skulls on Drake. In the end, their Drake went crazy. Higher hoard allows you more time to soak Nocturnia damage, deny brown all the time, and use that on your N.

With more hoard, you kill the Drake first, get chaffe in top slot and meat shield, deny brown. With less hoard, you rely on summons so much and taking down that bottom Nocturnia.

It’s one that is easily doable with patience, don’t cast the Drake unless you are hitting the summoned troop and your Egg is full.

So, in better shape towards all potionless, got back on track after a long month of trying Sunken Fleet.

However, 4 tough ones left.
Sea of Sorrows
The Warrens
Werewoods
Lyza’s Lair

2 at 500 awaiting starting, 1 at 460 and Lyza back at 240. I am back up with shards a bit, will do some today and maybe just level the other two with full clears and see where I am. :slight_smile:

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once delves started i tried doing full clears with pure factions,
than i stopped doing pure faction full clears and went for other teams to go with full clears (that was probably somewhere when crypt keepers was released)
than i switched to shortest path do boss clears to get everything up to 500 (that was when i crafted myself HKI, cant remember what faction was up those days, maybe frostfire keep /amanithrax ?)

i did daily full clears of hall of mirrors at lvl 500, when i hit all factions @500, but after getting some lazy drops from lvl 9/10 chests i stopped doing daily delves (was at the point where everything was @500, and only pure faction was missing + i didnt need shards while having ~10k of spare ones, after getting all delve troops to mythics)

currently trying to do every new faction up to pure 500 on it’s release weekend, and as long as i can support it with gems i’ll probably do it, (unless another Lyrasza’s Lair is released, hate that one, too much RNG for my taste)
also using daily delves to push pure faction while having hoard between 100 and 123 (123 is max i got while getting hoard quality up to lvl 10), using teams/strats from this topic

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I took a break from City of Thieves (and WoT), and finally got lucky with Crypt Keepers. +380 renown for my troubles, and +4 Purple foods…Minito Mori glitch back in the day.

Friendly Reminder: Silver Necroplis event Tuesday for all the new folks needing Life and Death. I’m noticing less and less of it in PvP. gl hf

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If you see the currently ingame available calendars it seems there is no new delve in July as after the invasion weekend we see a bounty scheduled not a delve event.
Any ideas?

I’m guessing on the 17th?

That seems later than normal though. I guess the 5.0 update is messing up/changing timing of events

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@Sytro — please do let me know if any notes I made could be elaborated upon to make your go in Hall of Guardians any better; I try to be thorough, but might have left out something important if reaching the boss room is still proving difficult.

To all else: beat Fell Roost potionless, but not as impressively, I think, as others have already demonstrated:

Hoard 122
Blighted Lands level 14
Legendary Helmut
3 Medals of Seasons
Fell Banner (to quickly refill eggs)

The hardest part is easily the second room. None of the dragons are really built to deal with the sorts of teams you’re up against: Xathenos hits too hard after one cast, Spectral Knight will end you if you manage to kill him; Orcs can tank endlessly (though perhaps not if you get lucky summons); Glaycion is obviously dangerous, but even more so with the backups giving hunters marks and free-targetable damage (re: Snow Guardian can go suck on his carrot); and any other room I’m forgetting is equally awful, trust me. Getting past the V room is (mostly) luck, I think.

The V room I beat was Glaycion, and only because it didn’t get a doomskull cascade. I targeted the wolf primarily, hoping that mana-thieving all the purple and brown would be enough to stop the jeopardy of Glaycion. Worked out.

I don’t really remember the third room—too many doomskulls to the face taken today for my thoughts to be clear—whichever one is the easiest. The team I had at the end was: Bone Drake (what I wanted) / Nocturnia (wanted) / Fell Dragon (was supposed to be Nocturnia) / Fell Dragon Egg (wanted).

I only won the final battle because there was enough mana on the board to fuel me, and not enough to fuel the opponent after. That’s it. Never ran into situations where I had to take skulls and provide the opponent mana, either. So: luck.

I spent every cast of Nocturnia I could get on theirs. My fell dragon I cast on Bone Drake, to get a dragon into that slot that had less attack with which to hurt me. Got especially lucky when the summoned frontline ended up being a Nocturnia (I think maybe even twice!), which really helped mana block the major danger on the other side—she was dead before she got a cast off. That was key—that’s all it takes, is extraordinarily good boards.

What little “strategy” I can offer is this: if your Nocturnia’s are gone, you’re in trouble; if your eggs are gone, you’re in trouble; if you don’t have either, you have lost. And losing seemed to, for me, follow a similar pattern: eggs would end up on top, Bone Drakes on the bottom, and my inverted team would be unable to claw back.

So I eventually stopped casting eggs if I was trying to replace the last spot with an egg (which seemed to me to be an essential victory condition) UNLESS I had no choice because I had no Nocturnias with which to summon eggs; this brings to light the other major area of luck in the delve: as bad as summoning is in Mirrored Halls and—worse, Stonesong Eyrie—this is a sort of weird hybrid of the two where you have lower chances of getting what you want but more agency in the attempt. Just so, you know, you can be disappointed when the wrong thing gets summoned, or Nocturnia doesn’t leave you with an Empowered Fell Egg (I got one each time on the successful run—often did not on the runs I failed).

Anyway, good luck to all, in the Underworld and in the Wars to come.

I lay this down only with the hope that it might be found helpful to someone in The Horde

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@Magnusimus

it’s perfectly fine, i got to boss room few times with my my full team, but guess that missing that 25% on hoard (only lvl 13 in whitlehelm atm) from whitehelm is what’s stopping me from beating it (at most i was able to kill off silent guardian and gargoyle, but my gargoyle wasn’t able to push trough the last 2 guys…)

Werewoods down, potionless.

Very nearly did it yesterday as shown, will delete that now.

I had been using Werebird, Werebear, Tobern, Werecat and the Meteor banner for most of my efforts. Very handy for Tobern’s.

Drawback was the weakness of the bird to skulls at faction 500 and agile on opponents. The advantage was obviously Hunter’s Marks. However with Tobern able to hunter’s mark the first two on cast, and sometimes having 3 or even 4 Toberns, I figured the Bear, would work better with guaranteed hit with first enrage if you explode him. He also has a measly 20% skull protection, which is better than 0.

Also, get something in the banner to help fill it. The standard Werewoods banner

So went with;

Werewoods Banner, 2 red, 1 green, -1 blue

Werebear
Werebird
Tobern
Werecat

A lot of stats from 4 troops and max pet, 50% bonus. Hoard 220. I figure it is doable sub 200, but for me it was irrelevant if I want to do all without ever beating them with potions. Time/speed of winning with daily delves is better for this method.
2 MoS, 1 Anu

Gold Werebird/Werebear - didn’t bother with Cat or Toby.

Shard situation, spent 11k shards to raise the hoard.

Out of first room, with no changes to the team. In here, the strategy is not to allow their Bear to hit you while it’s enraged. So, take him out without using explode on your bear if you can, then explode once you have hunter’s on the Werebird.

Don’t think anything transformed.

Second room - Faery Ring

Main issue - Glitterclaw at the back and Toadstool transforming.

Went through fairly easy, crashed Tobern to stop Glitterclaw, making sure no skulls align, so no blue for it to convert. Once you kill Fey Cap, only enchant on red for them, so you can force fire Tobern’s to try and get any changed troops back, with full health. A few changes, had 2 bears and no Tobern at all at the end.

Third room - Viper’s Nest - possibly easier than some of T4 rooms, pretty convincing beat down of that, but order ruined. 2 Tobern’s, 2 Bird’s. I hit Venoxia for 800 skull damage though with a large swathe of brown to skulls.

Next room 4, Witches Coven T3

Aanother transform, and after a cast of Bear, it changed to Tobern. There followed at least 10 agiles from Sylvasi, even aligning 16 skulls on brown, it agiled 3 of the 4 matching 4 matches of skulls. In the end, I nearly killed Hag before it with chip damage from bird and cat.

Boss room

First Tobern changed to a cat early on, not much use I thought… stats down a little, but 2 x Tobern could raise them sharp.

but he does triple damage with 13 red… so fired on their Cat, ignored that 6 damage Bear so as not to waste a full load of Tobern on 6 health.

It worked out, did that twice to within 2 lots of skull matches to kill it. My Cat did turn into a
Tobern on 2nd cast, but board very heavy for Tobern. Then started casting 2nd Tobern with first full, to try and keep at least 1 Tobern.

AI Tobern didn’t cast once.

3 left now, not quite sure where to go Lair, Warrens or SoS. Hoards are all 100, so need some investment! :slight_smile:

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Warrens or SoS - I did Warrens with hoard 200. Regret spending gems/potions on SoS with hoard 200.

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Congratz!!!
Thanks to you (and everyone on this treat, obviously); we finished all 21 factions potionless :sunglasses: :100: :raised_hands:

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I’m changing my farming delve (from WC to CoT).
So

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Yo my friends. here is a spreadsheet that i use (work in progress :sweat_smile:):

It has alot of curiosity about factions in general.

With this spreadsheet you can compare things, prepare strategies, …

Its my first time using Exel, im still learning :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Very handy to see all the records in one place, wasn’t sure about the hoard levels on some of them. Thanks!

Successfully did Warrens without potions at 202 Hoard, 2 Nysha/1 Anu, level 14 kingdom and good luck.

Used the Luna, Luna, Bunnicorn, Luna team.

Good luck to all attempting and thanks to all those who did it before to help me out!

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This is my basic guide for all factions. I only finish up to half of Hard section, so I have collect some data of the rest from here, so thank everyone for sharing!

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