Barely!
2 Likes
I easily cleared at level 100. But level 200 is impossible at the hoard level 100 for this exact reason. When you combine the “luck factor” that’s been a nemesis for years. Combined with weak troops that we are forced to use. You have a winning formula for getting long time players to quit on a weekly basis. When the future of the game is a constant kick in the head. I don’t blame them for having enough with it.
When I first started playing. There was a strategy known as “skull baiting” to give players a reasonable chance against the AI no matter what. Now it’s a constant knife in a gun fight scenario.
Until they rebalance the gold economy to offset the ridiculous cost of treasure hoards. I refuse to take my hoards past level 100 on purpose. Having all the pets to Mythic level was already ruined by cosmetic pets. So the faction pets being at Mythic doesn’t appeal to me. Nor does being the first to get the extra life or armor stat.
The Delves are just another great example on how the devs have no clue what their customer base wants or expects… Oh wait… Sirrian knows how difficult the Delves are…laughs about it with friends. And the next Faction released after the QA is the most difficult one of them all to clear. 
4 Likes
To be fair with all the “random crap that can or cannot happen” Luna can always be a prob, like in one of the last runs i did, got at boss after clearing all rooms np, Luna manage to cast once and pam! everyone frozen and death marked, hero died at soon was my turn lol.
As for faction runs did 100 (used 3 luna’s and 1 popbunnycorn) then tried at 210 and failed miserably x3 (using today 3 delve attempt, yesterday stupidly wasted event sigils lol) doubt i will bother again, even more cuz right now gone even further.
Or maybe tomoz will try with a horde of rabbits, tbh am not so sure about luna, the explosions look nice for new year eve but many times leave some nice skulls rdy for the ai (and ofc my tropps evade well as concrete block), even the debuff, with 3 luna casted 1 after the other filled a enemy team of all kind of crap only to see max 2 turns after all back to normal.
I will be leaving the Warrens at level 50 and use it to farm. No interest in this faction or delve.
At least the next one looks interesting.
Seen i started not so long ago that game (around 7 months) am missing tons of stuff, as in weapons and 24 myths troops too, but i find warrens lot easier than hog, am using a lame team.
Irongut, Dawnstone, Egg thief and Cedric, and for now can still clear it all np (except dwarfs room that i leave alone haha), sure is still only lvl 250 or so, but at lvl 210 hog give me more troubles.
Yeah, count me in the group that is getting turned off by the randomness of The Warrens. I’ve tried a few times now to clear level 200 with a faction team. If there is a strategy available, I haven’t found it. It just seems to boil down to “get lucky before you lose your troops to skull matches”. And unlike Crypt Keepers, there isn’t a tank like Lady Morana that helps to extend the match (Agile is in no way a replacement for skull reduction) and give you time to cast a bunch of spells.
I haven’t had problems yet with an off-faction team, so I suspect I won’t have too much trouble getting to high levels that way. But I can’t see the winning path—even at level 200, let alone 300 or 500–with the faction team.
Edit: I suppose I can just skip levels 200+ with a faction team, if I can guarantee I can beat level 500 with an off-faction team. 500 (Hoard) + 1000 (levels) + 500 (no casualties) + 100 (faction) still gets me to 2100 Renown, enough for the second Hare-o-Plane reward. I guess I just won’t ever get that pet above level 10.
Edit again: yes, further upgrading my Hoard is an option, but it seems dumb to spend millions of gold and all my remaining high-level treasures. All that buys me is one or two additional skull drops at level 200 (let alone higher!), and I am loathe to spend that many resources for a few more throws of a loaded die.
2 Likes
I would say 200 is possible but I refuse to try again now.
I had it. I had Luna on one hit. No other enemies left. And she killed all four of my troops with a combination of casts and maybe 4-6 skull drops that I never even saw.
I’m just gonna blitz up to 500 and leave the faction team stupidity for when the devs eventually fix it so its semi-doable.
5 Likes
As you correctly note, the devs are acutely aware of what they are doing.
The “luck factor” these days, is an invisible difficulty setting that is unchangable, only moves upward in difficulty, and generally contains modifiers that appear to be similar to “on any new set of gems that fall onto the game board, there is a X% chance to for those gems to automatically contain skull matches or a match 4/5 that is beneficial to the team”. That percentage modifier appears to continually increase as the invisible difficulty setting rises, and appears to be potentially iterative up to the combo breaker limit (which is how the AI can drop 3 skull skyfall matches in a singe move to instakill a barriered hero, and yet the same thing can happen to instakill several units on the AI team via a Mang’d hero from a seemingly innocent 3-match).
This modifier works in both directions equally, both for the player and the AI (hence the technically correct statement that the game AI is fair). However, because of massive stat inflation on higher level enemy teams, the effects of the modifier heavily favor the AI… unless of course one heavily invests in a Hoard.
The clear intent has been since the implementation of delves was to redirect all funds that are heading to guild LTs to Hoards. On the last dev stream, Sirrian quipped that the problem with delves wasn’t that gold investment costs were too high, but rather that there was a lack of opportunity (shards, treasures) to enable additional significant gold investments in Hoards.
And now, we have a delve is is practically impossible to clear without very significant Hoard investments. This is likely the future of all yet to be released delves.
What the devs want will almost never be what the players want. The devs are actively working to break the behaviors of how the game functioned for the first 3 years over the last year, slowly but surely. In my personal opinion, the other shoe has still yet to drop, but it will soon. All that is left of the “old game” is Explore/Arena/Treasure Maps/PVP (and I would also argue Guild Wars in its current form). It’s not a matter of “if” those modes change, but rather “when” to emphasize the new desired player behavior wanted by the devs. And when they do, if will surely emphasize fueling Hoards over almost else.
Until then, there will be increasing “hints”, such as longer minimum-length delve runs and faction teams that are increasingly incoherent with each other until players “get the message”.
Cosmetic Pets = Pay-to-Win at the pet game. See Kingdom Power Stars 13 and 17. Cosmetic pets have a kingdom assigned to them. For ~3000 gems, players can buy out the star 13 roadblock, or count as one of the two required mythic pets at 17. Yes, cosmetic pets are optional, but there are players that will bite on the opportunity to have those kingdoms ready to go on day 1. That, and all 34 Overworld kingdoms will hit these roadblocks at some point in the future, which will increase the attractiveness of mythic’ing a cosmetic pet upon their one-day-per-year release.
As Sirrian noted in the last stream, anything new that is entering the game has to recoup its development costs, which means everything is going to be monetized one way or the other. Those costs to players just might not be immediately visible at first, but become very relevant at a later date.
8 Likes
I don’t know how i did it but managed to do lv 200 faction without any lost troop
Yeah i am on my way to buy lotto ticket 
Yep, Faction team at 200 is quite hard. I don’t even think I’m gonna try 300 for Legendary pet. I’ll just shove it on the corner with Sea of Sorrow later. At least I have renown from beating it at 150.
At first try, somehow, I managed to all 4 rooms before with no lose.
Then of course, this happened. 
3 Likes
With an all Faction team?
I’d like to see that SS. 
8 Likes
I’ve got a lot of meme options for this.
Suffice to say its not going particularly well…
1 Like
I’ve been trying with an all-Faction team at 220,
hoard level 100 (last win was ~100). I refuse to try the 200 or 210 options (
), since I assume the difficulty will be similar, but it’s definitely halting my progress/using up my daily delves.
So is 200 the furthest anyone’s gotten (with an all-Faction team)? What combos are we using?
I’ve been trying with LK, Bunni, Bunni, LK, most recently.
It took forever to finally reach the last room with full team, at Hoard Level 150. And now… look at that ridiculous amount of red gems!
I tried so hard, and got so far…
Has anybody successfully cleared level 500 in The Warrens with pure Faction team? I’m wasting sigils everyday trying but no luck. Can anybody recommend a team/strategy? Hoard is level 100 at the moment but I may consider a level 200 if necessary.
The only one I’ve cleared (with a faction team) is Primal Rift, though I can see Hall of Guardians working out with a silly amount of luck.
Incidentally, “silly amount of luck” is what it would take to beat Sea of Sorrows and The Warrens with their faction teams.
By comparison, getting lucky 12 times with Lady Morana (having her spell proc—get your mind out of the gutter) is a breeze.
2 Likes
Ah the difference is that I can see a silly amount of luck working out for HoG. I can’t quite imagine it for those lol.
Morana is theoretically the easiest way to get a faction team through. Why I’ve gotten Primal first is beyond me.
1 Like
I’ve got to the final room at faction 500 HOG several times with hoard of 124 but it’s not the final room that is the problem it is the first room and the crap shoot of the middle room. I hated raising the hoard tbh too. I worked out that a perfect strategy requires around 30 mana for SS, 3 or 4 fills of Eth Sentry (30-40 mana), 1 fill at best go with Arcane Golem, maybe 2 (10 mana each) and a cast of your Gargoyle, before either Gargoyle cast (14 red/brown). If their Silent Sentry receives attack from Eth Sentry at all it fails too. With raising the hoard over 100, you can survive one cast of Gargoyle but just hope it doesn’t hit your third troop as you will have no armour to convert to attack.
I’ve been at it most days for 2 months and there is a strategy but all it takes is the wrong middle room and you might as well forget it - first go today is scaled court…
I’ve tried 2 x Gargoyle, which may work better for the middle rooms, but just means mana appropriation is slower.