Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

Well one thing is for sure, this QA team is consistent. Just not the consistent that you would deem professional.

2 Likes

I purchased Tier 5 Seven times. Hoard Level 100 with 50% faction bonus. Faction Pet Upgraded to Legendary. One of each troop.

I attempted Pure Faction at levels 100, 200, & 300 outside of the event. Losing my single attempt at 300. I then did 300 & 400 previously in the event to try and practice an approach to tackle 500. Relying on the Instant Kill seemed very unreliable, so I chose to go the route of removing all enemy Attack and hopefully last out the battles. This run was my first attempt at 500 PF and I’m thrilled it worked out, even if just barely escaping with the victory. Good enough to earn 60k Renown and rewarded with +1 Armor.

9 Likes

Faction mirror match on floor 300 (tier 4 potions and my last sigil) devolved into “everyone has no attack, who dies to deathmark first”. Not really too happy with this faction… and I won the thing.

2 Likes

This was how I won at 500. It’s a viable strategy, but you risk dying in real life before the death marks trigger.

4 Likes

Pure faction was very easy at 500, albeit I have +42 from 6 Potion of Power. However, that had nothing to do with how I won. Basically… as long as you keep the enemy webbed and their attack lowered, there is relatively nothing that can kill you. Deep Elven Rogue is the best troop you have, since it eliminates Attack on enemy targets – extremely important.

150 True Hoard and a lots of luck

4 Likes

Eldrazhor complete.

All factions back to being complete without potions :blush:

Hmm, this was a tough faction. If you aren’t lucky, this one will take a while.

I have had some appalling luck with it.

Firstly, medals.

You really need all 3 Orpheus medals to get past the first room, with 2 Rogues. I lost so many troops to death mark. Forget the stats, the whole objective is reapplying status and staying alive. There are two real problems in the first room, skulls, oh crikey skulls, skulls, skulls, and death mark (and even worse death mark and stun).

I have tried every combination, 2 x Rogue, 2 x Huntsman, 2 x Matron. Generally reaching the boss most runs, but always running out of attack/steam and relying on Matron to lethal opponents. If you are really lucky you can do that, but it’s spectacularly unreliable.

So room 1, 3 Orph

Secondly, teams.

I beat it with Huntsman, Rogue, Matron, Magus – 2 x Woodland banner. First time I used that composition and banner. Mostly went Merlantis banner to feed Rogue, and ran either 2 Rogue or 2 Matron.

2 prior efforts today was Huntsman, 2 x Rogue and Matron, with Merlantis banner. Each time at the boss, 0 attack, and either 1 dead or 2.

You also have to look at the paths. The outer paths on this faction are not easy. We have no skull mitigation, not even a dodge. All it takes is a sky cascade and someone dies. My troops always died vs the likes of 4 Leprechaun. Mimic ripped me a new one, Bats are problematic with stealth and low damage, Bandit the same. Worms were horrid and so on.

So going down the middle was perhaps the best option, and you need to consider what you are facing. Xathenos and Skeleton was pretty tough, as was Bone Dragon and co. Orcs are probably the hardest one as you only used red with Spider, and ideally you want that to pop in boss room.

I beat all of the middle rooms, but not without usually incurring casualties. The best room to beat is possibly Glaycion in the middle, and maybe Dark Maiden and Co. Try and steal attack, web the Snowman and the Winter Wolf vs Glaycion.

Thirdly, medals again.

This is where the faction is annoying, as vs the middle rooms, the need for 3 Orpheus is not as important. Yes, you can use them vs freeze, but I generally went with an Anu and 2 x seasons, or 2 x Nysha, depending on who faced.

The most annoying thing is forgetting to change medals back for the final room… I must have done it a dozen times and each time it was really annoying. I don’t understand why we can’t have a medal select screen at battle time, to change them each time, but we’ve railed about that a lot…

So, remember to change medals back. If you want you can keep them the same of course.

In the boss room, I went 2 x Orpheus and 1 Nysha.

Fourthly, Huntsman

Don’t, do not, don’t cast Huntsman unless either you have clipped attack with Rogue at least once, or are desperate to reapply a status, or have no choice.

Devs are very clever with explosions, with no skull protection, it’s an accident waiting to happen.
Most of the time the worst problem is skull trapping, and running out of viable moves. I had major issues with shuffle, shuffling boards for AI skulls.

Use Huntsman all the time when AI has 0 attack or is sub 50 attack, or entangled any time, reapplying that web helps reset status.

Strategy

One strategy is getting lucky death mark kills and lethal from Matron. It’s against you. The AI has a penchant for first turn death mark kills, players don’t, and it’s anecdotally not close in delve. When I got a death mark kill, it led to a 0 attack troop dieing and the Spider spawning and skulling down etc.

Try and fill Rogue, don’t cast Huntsman ever before Rogue. Cast rogue on their Huntsman, reduce that attack. Don’t try filling Matron, let it fill naturally, keep filling Rogue and get as many 4/5 gem matches as possible. See a troop with a status effect and can apply one, do it, it resets the whole lot (Thanks @Jonathan).

If you stun the Huntsman, go all in on it to kill it so Tomb Spider won’t spawn.

Watch for death mark, and keep cleanse medals on.

For the win, I ran Huntsman, Deep Elve Rogue, Matron Velenne and Deep Magus. I had barely ever used Magus, it’s not that good at all vs the mirror, but vs middle rooms, it is more effective. It gave me something like +18 magic, probably about 10 more than with 3 faction troops, so I went with it. I hoped I could use it to reapply effects. It did actually do that in the final fight.

First room, came out unscathed, all 4 troops intact, not close to losing one, which was not the usual scenario. I entangled Tomb spider and kept casting Huntsman on it while whenever possibly taking skulls and it never came out of the entangle.

Middle room – I have done all middle rooms for a while now. It was Glaycion/Winter Wolf/Ice Troll and Snow Guardian.

Everything on Glaycion til you get the attack low. I entangled it, so switched to Winterwolf, or Snow Guardian if it was webbed. I killed Glaycion before it could cast, through Hunter’s Marks with skull hits.

Fired Velenne at Winter Wolf, cast Magus. No death mark kills or lethals, so it was slow. I managed to suppress one of the damage dealers, but you can’t deny 4 different colours for long. Eventually Winter Wolf killed Hunstman, then cast on Tomb Spider to leave it Hunter’s marked. A 3 match of vertical sky skulls got me, but managed to suppress magic and attack to leave with 3 troops.

Boss room – flipped medals to 2 x Orpheus and Nysha. I would have liked the Anu, but it’s not about speed, it’s about avoiding skulls really. Tomb Spider down was a big loss, but yesterday i got to their last troop without it too.

Starting Board, AI Rogue’s attack was most unfriendly…not sure why it’s 23 higher than 2nd best, but…

So 2 skull hits from anything kills a troop

I managed to Hunter’s mark Huntsman and Death mark with first cast of Rogue. The most important thing was I also stunned it…

Wind forward a few turns, and I had been reapplying status. It was a race to kill it while stunned and I managed to skull it with Hunter’s marks on it. Didn’t cast Matron or Magus, and got a web from a 4 match that reapplied status. No Spider to deal with, hmmm…

Then it was slow going, not filling the bottom two troops and stripping attack from Matron. I managed to get it to 14 attack when it had the usual shuffle and cascade but with 14 attack it did nothing much.

No point lowering that attack, as Rogue had not been hit by anything heavy, so I went onto Magus. I did however pop a death mark on their Matron, so tried to reapply and took it to 0 anyway. So now every cast on Magus, reapplied, until got a death mark. Managed to keep at it and it died to Death Mark after about 8 turns, hit it 5 times with web and Rogue, and Magus came in handy with a curse to reapply all effects. Bit of chip damage too :stuck_out_tongue:

Reapplied/reset the Death mark with Rogue on Magus.

By now, no attack on bottom two troops and usually at this point no-one has, but I prevented a 3rd cast of Rogue by denying blue and keeping Matron for maybe 15 turns alive, to let it take green. Skulled Matron out, when full, then second cast of Rogue on their Rogue, I entangled it. Couple of 4 matches and skulls, and got to here.

Hoard was 185, 50% bonus for the magic kingdom.

It’s doable at 100 with crazy luck, like the video! Realistically you aren’t going to kill 5-6 troops in a run with lethal or death mark. I got 2 in this run, no Matron and I aimed to get both by reapplying as soon as I saw Death Mark.

So, back to all done without potions. :blush:

16 Likes

Surprisingly little (no) discussions going on about Emperinazar.

I’m a little late to the party, but better late than never I guess.

Beat 200/300/500 with no potions, all first try. Hoard 199, 50% faction hoard, epic pet for 500, medaled troops

Used 2 Nysha, 1 Anu Medal

On 200, I used Kobold Knight, Kobold Magi, Emperinazara, Emperinazara (Kobold Banner). I didn’t like the idea that if I lost my Knight, I’d lose all of that boosted damage from Ezara’s 3rd trait.

On 300, I used Kobold Knight, Kobold Knight, Emperinazara, Emperinazara (Kobold Banner). I didn’t like having only 4 colors to grab and blocking the 2nd Knight. I did lose my Knight here and was actually happier to resummon a non-Knight.

So…

On 500, I used Kobold Magi, Kobold Knight, Emperinazara, Emperinazara (Kobold Banner). Hear me out.

K.Magi isn’t being used for damage; its being used for mana generation. Its a great way to break the stone blocks and to grab loose red/blue/green/brown gems to gain mana that isn’t really matchable otherwise. It can also be used to break skulls that look threatening.

K.Knight the tank being in second slot doesn’t sound like it makes sense, but you’re protecting it so you can match 4/5 matches with 2 Ezara to gain 4 life/4 magic. That damage will add up fairly quickly, made easier when the Magi breaks dead columns and bring in fresh formations. If/when they kill your top slot, your 2nd slot will be buffed up a bit to stall long enough to resummon up top.

not using Kobold… I think skulls are the most threatening thing in this faction. Making more with this troop didn’t appeal to me. I rather win the long but safe race.

Why 2 Ezaras? passive stat gains and being able to sit on extra life gain is nice. Having 2 life gainers makes it extremely hard to punch through after the early turns.

I’m basically under the assumption that the first slot is going to die anyways, so I may as well make the most of it with the Magi.

I went the 5 room top route, since the middle had 2 deathtouch rooms (tome of evil, and wraith/dark troll/spectral knight/keeper of souls) and the bottom route was a glaycion and the divinia/krystenax treasure room. … yuck to both.

The first 4 rooms were really easy, no troops lost, nothing to talk about. shrug

Boss Room:

The most important part is not to do too much in your opening moves, because the Bonestorm is very dangerous.

From what I learned on 200/300, once you can clear the top 2 troops, you basically win.

The resummoned troops come in weak and the Magi just doesn’t do much damage.

80 attack vs 260 attack. Big difference.

Anyways, I was struggling to keep the Magi alive… everyone else got healed like a champ, but Magi was taking a bit of a beating (I lucked out with Kobold getting 2 extra turns, but its 3rd cast made skulls). Got to this point of the battle:

I actually failed to notice the Doomskull match, but it didn’t really matter since I summoned after the skull exchange.

From that point, I played fairly loose, only topping off to 1k life when the Ezaras reached about 800ish hp. I was trying to let my top slot die to get another Magi back but couldn’t. I think I got a Knight, a Kobold, a Knight again and ended with a Kobold.

I was about to let the 2nd Kobold die before I realized it was in range to win the match anyways lol.

The summons weren’t too much of a problem. (though there were a lot of them). At 16 mana, it wasn’t to hard to play defense to slow the enemy resummons, while my K.Knight got stronger over time. You’ll eventually be able to punch through to hurt the enemy Ezara when it has an empty side and it only summons 1 troop.

Potions vs no potions? These battles felt like very slow battles, so if you hate battles that drag on, go potions. Otherwise, its not that bad without potions (can’t really speak for no faction bonus/100 hoard though).

13 Likes

After 30 minutes in boss room…
Hoard 111 + 50% with Kobold Knight/Kobold Magi/2x Emperinazara; faction banner; Orpheus + 2x Nysha.

I decided to go long route through level 2 rooms - Lava Cracks (Flame Troll/Fire Lizard/Hellcat/Hellhound), Webbed Halls (Spinnerette/Tomb Spider/Giant Spider/Dokkalfar), Bat Cave (3x Bat Swarm/Crimson Bat).

3x Tier 7 (minimum for doing the faction during release event) got me to 480, after that I used all three daily delves for this - 490 & 500 non-faction, final sigil for 500 pure faction - I must admit it went a lot better than I had expected.

8 Likes

Full faction was easy but took forever with that infernal healer in last spot.

5 Likes

Hoard Lvl: 100 + 50% (3x Nysha)

7 Likes

Saw 41 minute run time and thought that seems about right lol

3 Likes

Saw 41 minute run time and thought “I just remembered why I don’t bother with Delves any more…” :yawning_face:

2 Likes

One thing i still dont understand. When i start my video i tried Lvl500 for the first time, a lots of troop has died during the run and in the end i receive the (no casualty) points… hmmm.

at level 150 and burnt out.

I had the same thing happen in one of my non-pure faction runs… my hero with Sentinel died to a ton of skulls in the boss room, but my Angry Mob summoned an Angry Mob and I got the full 30 points at the end of the run. shrug

I used an angry mob team too but I used Barbarian since I’m leveling that. HKI Angry Mob EOE Divinia. No problems and very fast.

Was it replaced with the same troop?

Completed Emperinazar without potions - back to all complete without potions :slight_smile:

Hoard 100, bonus 25%, first attempt today’s daily delve.

Completed the event this morning, with 3 x T7, Valraven popped today and not yesterday.

2 Nysha/1 Anu, (first room I had 3 MoS by accident) Emperinazar Banner (you might want to consider a banner that gives red - see later).

Kobold Knight
Kobold Magi
Emperinanazara x2

I medalled Gold Knight, Silver Magi and flipped a bronze on Emperinaz, but no need if don’t want, just keeping up with medalling a little.

Room 1, 5 minutes playtime, all intact on exit. Room 2 - went the Tier 2 rooms. - Hidden Nests, nice of those troops to give so much Brown… all intact -12 minutes.

Room 3 - Dark Temple - (spiders) - lost my top troop to Dark Priestess mega skull spam, soon restored, about 12 minutes (webs slow down a fair bit).

Room 4 Smuggler’s Den (pirates) - can be a problem room without skull protection, but pretty easy, 7 minutes all intact.

Boos Room - 5

Took me 45 minutes, but I wasn’t playing all that time, maybe 30-35. Fairly straightforward, avoid skulls at the start. Try and fill both back troops. Cast your Magi and remove the blocks early on (best part of the faction as those are real problems in faction delves). Generally I was holding the Knight and using it to take down the top troop only when not much chance of filling Magi. The stun comes in handy.

You could possibly do this faction faster with a red/yellow or brown/red combo banner, so long as no minus green or brown. You could also run 1 Emperinazara and 2 Magi’s I suppose. I was not threatened at all really. Only a mega Dark Priestess cast wiped one of the troops and my back 2 troops were on 1k health etc.

Anyway, it’s a good delve for people wanting to try factions, patience is key in this one. :slight_smile:

Starting board

Ending board

24 kills in all

First daily

Nice to get done and no need raise hoard and get nearly all chaos shards back. :slight_smile:

8 Likes

I used this build with 2x Nysha & 1 Anu
In the event with Tier 5 x5 and hoard level 100 with 50% bonus. I had recorded the run, but the 45 minute file got corrupted and can’t watch it back.

image

I initially tried 2 attempts with only a 25% faction bonus, and both times didn’t look at the battles through the middle and faced the battle that entangled on skulls. That just made the battles hopelessly long.

The 3rd successful attempt also had that battle through the middle, and legendary Goblins on the bottom, so took the top route.

Seems the best approach for the final battle was take out the lead troop, so the summoned troops with lower attack fill that spot. Then go after the last troop when you can, while trying to increase your health as much as you can. Once you get rid of that last troop, the battle is manageable.

Be ready for a long round.

Nice to se @xolid99 & @TheIdleOne still pulling off the battle outside the event. I don’t even want to bother to attempt that. Nice work.

5 Likes