Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

Looks very close. Hopefully you will manage it upcoming week.

I’m sure it will be fine once lycanstupidity goes away. It hasn’t been pointed out much but having a near-permanent red/purple storm only makes things worse regarding purple->lycan gems …

So clearly this faction being released during this wretched pathetic campaign* is not a coincidence, we know better.

(* that’s wretched and pathetic relative to the usual amount. I already need to rein in my cursing about campaigns on a regular basis as it is, its freaking difficult.)

Check my thread, experienced the same thing yesterday and the day before. I am not gonna destroy another screen.

The one faction I would try during Lycanthropy is The Labyrinth. I’m sure it could/would backfire, but if you get into a Horned Guardian vs Horned Guardian stalemate, you can try to Lycanthropy the enemy…

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So there is a chance for me to max it without 300 hoard level afterall ?

without having tried it myself, maybe.

The biggest problem of this faction is largely the unkillable enemy Horned Guardian in the last room and Lycanthropy can change that.

Your Horned Guardian is pretty valuable and the longer you can keep your full team alive, the less likely it’ll be hit by Lycanthropy as well

I’d concur with this. Before I did it potionless I had numerous attempts where it was HG v HG at the end, and I ended up retreating, as theirs goes off the scale. All you need is theirs to be hit with Lycanthrophy and yours not. You might have to chip away with your tooth pick for a while, and avoid all those Lyco gems, but it would be easier.

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Finally got Palace. Rather lucky than good. ONE attempt today (used three to clear campaign task, had one left sitting on Palace from before), caved to 2x speed to avoid the double skulls which was probably the most excruciating thing I’ve ever seen. Went down to one troop on one hit nonetheless and it wasn’t even a Warrior.

(I had a 3v1? But then it turned on me. “Oh its just their rare troop” that still does 260 damage a hit.)


Warrior
Warrior
Indrajit
Indrajit
3x Nysha
Hellclaw Banner

Just deny red > yellow > purple > green at all times. Hold Indrajit casts (and secondary Warrior casts) for when you can’t do that. Also very very important to avoid letting the board reset after your turn, because you tend to just get skulled in the face, so holding casts for when there’s clearly just one move left is also really useful.

If their Mage casts, pray? More often than not it just fills the board - particularly if we’re keeping red and purple off the board as much as possible - but having your lead troop burning is usually not great.

I actually didn’t clear 500 with a non-faction team and just poured everything into this, hence the 2,490. Awkward.

100 hoard doable.

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Beat The Labyrinth with no potions, Hoard 199, 50% bonus, 2 Nysha, 1 Anu. medaled troops

final thought: EZ Clap

Room 1: It got a little dicey for my 2 Mechataurs and King Minos from all of the shuffling, but I managed to delay it long enough to get Horned Guardian back in slot 1.

Room 2: Glaycion, Winter Wolf, Ice Troll, Snow Guardian. The enemy team shuffling made it a bit easy. Glaycion never got a cast off, but it got close to full. Snow Guardian hit me a few times, but I had enough stats to take it. First slot Winter Wolf with Hunter’s Mark is a little scary, but nothing fatal thanks to barrier.

Room 3: Kruarg the Dread, Rock Worm, Cockatrice, Ice Worm. It wasn’t too bad, though I had to make sure I got rid of Rock Worm asap. Unfortunately, there’s no real way for me to win it fast enough to prevent my last troop from dying. (King Minos) Thankfully, I don’t “need” the 50% mana start. Kruarg gets +2 Red and +2 Green from the faction banner, unblocked. lol.

Room 4: Started with 3 troops. Thought I had a good start, knocking HG to the back.

However, they killed off my 2 Mechataurs before I can finish the enemy HG off. This happened though.

The rest of their team fell like dominos.

Mammoth did get a cast off with no barrier on, which hurt a little bit. New Lycan change made it weaker at least.

Team:

Horned Guardian (the only thing that really matters)
Mechataur
Mechataur
King Minos
Maze Banner (+2G, +2R, -P)

I definitely had a feeling the strategy would work, though Lycanthropy wasn’t that common in my matches. If I didnt land that Lycanthropy early, the match might have gone way longer.

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Two in a week for me!


Lycanstupidity finally actually helped. Pretty sure I cleared the entry and the tier 5 room in the center without much issue, did lose my Huntsman in the tier 5 but Tomb Spider is pretty intimidating to replace it. Boss room I think lycan got maybe three of them? And then Giant Spider summoning an itty bitty Spiderling while webbed just let me cruise through and let them take all the skulls.

This is probably the state of this delve now, even after the campaign. Maybe a bit less, I was able to get a few more applications via gems. But the status effects being thrown all over will include this now.

Running this with anything besides triple cleanse medals is, obviously, a really bad idea.

I had Huntsman, double rogues and then Matron. Merlantis banner.

(Oh and obviously at hoard 100. Because I refuse to raise it higher.)

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Always reminds me of this :sweat_smile::

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The only time ever Lycanthropy did a good thing. Ever.

Hoard 199 + 50%; Orpheus medals; Labyrinth banner
Horned Guardian
2x Mechataur
King Minos

Room 1 - no problems.

Room 2 - Pyggra/Pyggra/Lord Ember/Sheggra.
Sheggra turned into Wererat, one of my Mechataurs turned into Hyena (on first opportunity with cleanse medals). Other noteworthy thing was them always getting skyskulls after Pyggra cast.

Room 3 - Baby Dragon/Baby Dragon/Dragon Eggs/Venbarak.
Only my Guardian lived, everything else died. One of Baby Dragons turned into Elemaugrim, other turned into Drake Rider (and subsequent Drake).

Boss room - single Horned Guardian against full enemy team…
Double Ly gems on turn one - Horned Guardian cleansed, Mechataur turned into Rhynaggor so I didn’t have to worry about getting silenced anymore. Shuffling enemy troops around and slowly chipping away until it was Guardian against Guardian…phew, those Lycanthropy gems took like forever to randomly fall, their Guardian cleansed another five times (so - six in total) before finally, after about 40 minutes, turning into Amarok; and then I sighed - oh, damn, don’t you dare devour me if barrier happens to be down! He cast once with my barrier up.

I’ll take this outcome, but it doesn’t change overall aversion against Lycanthropy (one swallow, as they say, doesn’t make a summer).

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I don’t think giving someone hope that they can tackle the labyrinth is actually even a good thing. Nobody should have to be subjected to that thing on the sole basis of “maybe this dumb lycan gem thing can cripple them instead of me”. Even if it works!!

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Omgomgomgomg. Just cleared Lyra pure faction 500 with hoard 200, no potions. I can’t believe I am going to say this but, thank you lycan!

One of my troops lycanned into Queen Aurora who barriers, so I had her and three Hounds that kept summoning each other and skulls. Then, the boss Lyra lycanned into Rover which gave my team yellow.

Ommmmggggg.

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Congrats! That one was a pain in my butt for soooo long

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Your post inspired me to try it and got it done in 3 attempts. Last room I was down to Matron with 40 health against a full health Rogue and after the 3rd time casting the 10% hit I couldn’t believe it haha. Thanks for your post

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Dark Court L500 potionless second try
Hoard 111 + 50% (+ campaign week 10 + all kingdoms to L15)
Dark Knight (elite gold)
Kelpie
2x legend with Fell Roost banner

Middle rooms were
2x Pyggra/Lord Ember/Sheggra and
2x Gorbil/Plague Rat/Hex Rat.

Had one Kelpie devour in a run that I lost, nothing in final run but a few lucky deathmarks.
No lycanthropy on enemies, twice on me in boss room - first legend turned into Pharao Hound (helped a bit with barriers), other legend into this flaming horse when we were left one on one.

Just keep them strategically drained and slowly chip away - got to the boss room with full original team, but then the skyskulls started to fall.

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Mirrored Halls, Wild Court and Amanithrax done in the last two days. I must say lycanthropy is really growing on me it’s a massive help for pure faction runs. What’s the minimum hoard I would need to have a chance at The Labyrinth? The plan would be to get lucky with lycanthropy.

Dark Court done, 100 hoard, 50% bonus.
1 Orpheus, 1 Nysha, 1 Anu for the boss room, 3 Orpheus room 1 and 3 x Nysha for the Tier IV and V.

Dark Knight
Kelpi
2 x Leanansidhe

Didn’t do it on PC so didn’t record it or get so many screenies.

I honestly don’t think you need 2 x Leanansidhe, 1 is sufficient. Kelpi works when you let opponents get as much mana before they cast, and easier to fill with blues.

First room, 3 Orpheus. Key is do not keep skull hitting to reset deathmark, try and skull, fill, cast, manipulate mana and skull again after 2-3 turns. Let them skull you if you are barriered and full of mana, and they are death marked.

Tier V - Webbed Court - Dark Maiden and Co, long battle, all out on trying to devour Webspinner and avoid being hit hard by the Tomb Spider. Devoured webby when at 14/15.

Tier IV - Worm Tunnels - Really tough to beat with the worms doubling up, but I managed to shut them down as much as I could with drain, and skulled Kruarg down. Made it a very long battle. I devoured Cockatrice near the end, so controlled brown and managed to fill the Legendaries just enough, let skulls hit barriers to scrape through, while draining.

Final Room - Fairly easy. I nearly beat it Monday with my second try, but their Kelpi as the sole troop left, devoured 2 of my 4 troops and skulled the others.

Strategy same as room 1, let their legendary have as much mana as you can get away with and Kelpi it. That way you can avoid being 2 skull hit and done.

I devoured the legendary, skulled away their Dark Knight, with the leggies doing some damage and traded skull hits for barrier when full. Deathmark killed their Sluagh and then just kept draining their Kelpi. I did let Dark Knight die to trading a skull hit so I could drain it, to stop it’s chance of devouring and turning the tide like on Monday.

Just Hellgate without potions, still not interested in trying too hard, it’s ridiculous.:slight_smile:


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Finally finished Hell Gate without potions. Hoard was 309, Kingdom 15, and an unknown number of attempts. Team was Charonas, Fury, Lemure, Judge of the Dead, Hell Gate Banner. I also made several runs with a second Lemure in the first spot - felt about as viable as this one.

Center rooms were Rat Pack (no devours, thankfully) and Frozen Cavern, where I lost Charonas. Last room, had little luck with Death Mark until the last troop, but Lemure got an early Attack debuff in on Judge, which helped us survive by skull-baiting until we could put some damage out. All 3 survived, all 3 were one-shot by the end.

Cleared both Indrajit and Dark Court shortly after their releases, so I’m back to 100% no-potion clear for all delves.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I left Fury’s 2nd and 3rd traits locked so I didn’t have to deal with Bonestorm in center rooms.

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