199 is where the magic upgrade is. 200 is just a life upgrade that brings it to +73 life/+72 armor. Even less balanced 
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Yup. Hoards are balanced at (11n + 1) levels , where n is the number of full upgrade cycles for a Hoard.
That’s 4 Life, 4 Armor, 2 Attack, and 1 Magic per “cycle”, every 11 Hoard levels. As stated by @TheIdleOne, the Magic point is always the final one in every 11-point cycle.
Funny coincidence is that 100 is conveniently one of those balanced Hoard levels [(11 * 9) + 1] = 100.
6 Likes
Finally beat Dark Pit after 9 days. Hoard is already at 122. Harder than it looks. 
It’s a frustrating thing to face after my Delve absent. It’s mostly because I’m dumb to keep changing strategies and stubborn to beat near-impossible Legendary rooms. Shimrra’s plan somehow doesn’t work for me.
My tip for it is to always take the longer Rare/Epic path, unless Legendary room is Frozen Cavern/Webbed Court. Other Legendary rooms are too risky, you won’t survive with full team.
My team is Sledgepaw/Hex Rat/Hex Rat/Rattigar, Slayer Banner. Changing first troop to Plague Rat if you will take Legendary room.
My middle room are Ghosty Tomb and Dragon Hatchery. Facing Boss Room with full team. Should be possible at just Hoard Level 100 as well. I’m just in a hurry so I increase it more to make it faster/easier.
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To be fair, mine was basically luck. You came out better than I did, I only had one surviving troop.
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I totally agree with the comments in this thread. So far I’ve done all factions to 500 but have rarely attempted to use the faction team at lvl 500. I don’t see much point because my avg horde is 100 and even if I wanted to spend all my gold (which I don’t) I don’t have the time or the desire to farm shards etc day in day out. Potions? Don’t care. I just do each faction each month as cheap as I can, bag pets up to 2100 renown and forget about it. It would be nice to be able to select delve difficulty once a faction has been completed though, to try and boost overall renown. Respect to idle and those with the patience to succeed with faction teams. As things are, that’s one achievement I have written off.
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Anyone who has beaten high level Hall of Guardians, what is the best team for the 4x Faction, and what is the best strategy for going about winning with it?
There’s a few variations, so I don’t know what “the best” team would be.
I used Silent Sentinel, Ethereal Sentry, Arcane Golem, Gargoyle with the Bear Banner and not the faction banner.
So here’s what you do need to consider.
Gargoyle hits really hard.
Ethereal Sentry applies a huge buff as long as the troop has armor. Since there’s no way to regain armor, this strategy has major drawbacks.
The hall of guardian team bonus is a whopping 15/15 life/armor when maxed, 14/14 at legendary I think? and 12/12? at epic? Someone may need to correct me. 8 armor because lolnopet for 4 unique construct is also a decent base. Armor is needed for ES buff.
The only thing stopping a full team of ES and Gargoyle (besides bonus stats) is that they both use brown, but you don’t always need to cast ES and you don’t always want to cast Gargoyle so you need to be able to fill both relatively quickly.
Arcane Golem is decent to add in since it provides a stun that removes spell armor for Gargoyle to do even more damage. The stun can also make skull bashing easier. The light storm it provides can be a very big benefit sometimes.
Silent Sentinel vs ES in the first slot: A second ES does good work. The problem is that at 25% skull reduction, it dies in 2 hits and the AI gem generator has not been kind with skulls. Silent Sentinel can stall long enough to survive multiple hits and can enchant under those situations.
2nd Gargoyle in the first slot: Didn’t try it, didn’t like the color block. Yeah, it would be similar to SS color blocking yellow, but SS has more utility. Worth trying it if you like it, I guess.
Strategy:
First 2 rooms: ES buff the first slot a few times, then skull to win or gargoyle cast.
Last room: In this order: Pray the board doesn’t suck (red/brown heavy). Pray the board doesn’t suck (multiple early game skulls). … Pray some more the board doesn’t suck (any cascade can lead to a bad time). Pray no random skulls show up in the early moves in the game. You can’t afford to get silenced and you can’t afford to take the hit either lol.
You can’t afford to take a Gargoyle hit unless you have a hoard number that nobody has. We’re talking one shot kill unless they have 50% spell damage reduction, and the splash damage it does is nasty too.
From there, your top troops are going to die. There’s not much you can do, so I just buffed Gargoyle at the back (where I think its best protected from the enemy Gargoyle splash damage) and prayed that I could play keep away with the brown/red gems long enough to win.
Edit: There are different strategies. You could buff your 1st troop and try to skull bash through the last room as well. I didnt feel lucky enough to pull that off.
10 Likes
Post-update:
One of the new Ultra-Rare ( III ) rooms: The Bone Pile, now grants opposing teams Frozen on skull matches for the rest of the delve. Beware.
EDIT: Also beware of the new Rare (II) room, Smuggler’s Den, if you do not have a team that can target individual units. A Bonnie Rose team is going to bring the hurt. This room is harder than it’s rarity class suggests.
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So I have Crypt Keepers to 500 and Faction to 200 - so am shooting for big game here
Am I behind the 8-ball because Grave Seer is L20 and so self enchants every time?
Are there additional tricks I need to know about regarding the Ladyx3 Seer team or is it really just heavily luck based (so just keep grinding and pray)
Also, I have Dark Pits to 300 - does anyone have a suggested Faction team for 300 OR do I just push on and hope the dev’s find a decent solution to delves in the future? (Or work on other factions and keep a holding pattern in the short term)
Thoughts?
Pretty much that. Grave Seer is not there mainly for enchanting, but to create more purple gems to increase insta-kill chance.
Even 200 is already ridiculously hard, dued to random skyfall-skulls and no healing/summoning. If you want to beat it at 300 , you probably need close to Hoard Level 200, and hope to have crazy luck on your side.
So my suggestion? Skip and go straight for 500 to be done with it, waiting for solutions later.
I’m currently #22 on our informal leaderboard on Lyya’s site and my only 500 faction team win is with Primal. My highest otherwise is all the way down on 220.
500 with a faction team clears are a bad joke at the moment.
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Thanks - seems like spending the time pushing forwards with other delves is the better option than taking long shots
Not a cheap strategy by any stretch of the imagination but if you have Zuul’Goth ^^^
And if not, just replace him with Irongut when colors allow it
3 Likes
Finally did it, woohoo!
As other players have said already, Treant is the key to everything. Original team is Green Golem/Dark Dryad/Alderfather/Alderfather, Merlantis Banner.
Middle room is Vampire Hive and Rocky Cavern. Tricky Rare room got my 2nd Alderfather killed by Wight. Rock Worm’s room is quite funny, as with Treant removing all Brown gems, combined with non-stop entangle, it’s almost completely harmless. 
Get lucky with in Boss room and kill their first 3 troops quickly, but losing original Treant to Infernal Armor. As they have no direct-damaging spell now, the rest of the match is quite safe, but very slow dued to endless summons.
I would probably return to HoG again. Glad I take a detour here after TheIdleOne beat me to it there. Now I finally get that Exalted Achievement! 
23 Likes
Congratulation time Knight! Very well done.
At least with crypt keeper, morana has damage reduction., and in rift, you got treat and entangle.
But for hog, it’s just stupid extreme.
I think it is very doable if they allowed the weapon guardian Crown to be considered a troop.
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Just a suggestion for the upcoming Silver Necropolis: I’d use my team from Sea of Sorrow: Titan + Yasmine’s Pride / Ketras The Bull / Spiritdancer / Megavore under Wild Plains banner.
Just curious: what I’ll be using in a yellow/blue faction? No Yao Guai, no Ketras…
Irongut? Tesla? Mang?
Maybe. Or maybe Sentinel + Earth’s Fury / Ubastet. But it’s more tricky.
So some The Silver Crypts Faction team notes (no potions):
Delve 100: Extremely easy, easier than Fang Moor and Dark Pits. However its a dangerously slow team, one which may cause problems depending on what middle room it is. (Dwarves with death mark immunity comes to mind, which is what I got). Worth noting Bless blocks mana drain, which I totally forgot. Makes defending against Vanya difficult once blessed and makes the troop do very little if the entire team is blessed (not hard for them to stay in a bless loop)
Confidence level is mixed for anyone not doing it with potions.
Delve 200: Still without potions (using free delves). The first room is nearly harmless, although rather loopy. Basically a freebie here.
My middle room was the Shadow team. I filled Bone Golem and casted on 3 skulls. I forget the proper order of events, but the Shadowblade died to Death mark on the same turn it was about to cast. +1 to that. With good early mana, I ran away with the match and a Death mark killed the Shadow Dragon. Rather easy.
3rd match: Bone golem had 160 attack after 1 cast. I can see the problem at 500 here… 209 attack after the 2nd cast. Enemy Necrocorn managed to cast twice in a row and filled an empty Vanya to full.
I won, but left with my troops at Draugr 13 HP, Vanya Soulmourn 22 HP, Vanya Soulmourn 22 HP.
There’s no answer to Blessed Vanya Soulmourn doing way too much damage lol.
I’m pretty sure 300 can be done at Hoard 100, but will take a few attempts (which I won’t be waiting for more than 1 attempt)
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