Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

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997

As I posted in the faction thread:

This faction is literally worse than Dark Pits for level 500 4x Faction.

I mean, it looks like it is on the right track in terms of being an actually competent faction team. It has a Nyx clone for Mana control, along with Bone Golem being a great source of Death Mark that can allow the team to kill troops of arbitrary toughness.

The problem is that all the faction troops are immune to Death Mark, meaning you have to defeat 2 of your 3 battles without Death Mark. And without Death Mark, we have… about 34 AoE damage per cast, or 17 attack per cast? How many times do you expect to be able to buff your troops until they get skulled to death?

My ideal faction rework is to make the faction teams VIABLE in Delve. Crypt Keepers, Primal Rift, Sea of Sorrows can be easily beaten at level 500 if you’re competent and lucky (Hall of Guardians and Fang Moor are kinda on the edge there I guess), the Delve Strategies thread has proved that. All-Seeing Eye, The Warrens, Dark Pits, and Silver Necropolis can’t compete at all in the high levels though, and that’s a serious problem.

A simple fix would be to replace Undying with something else. The Faction has plenty of Cleanse and Bless anyway, they don’t need it.

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998

Sea of Sorrows? Please explain?

Yet All-Seeing Eye has been completed by multiple people at 500…

999

Sea of Sorrows scales well. You can loop with Sea Witch on Hammerclaw to boost its health and Enrage it, with Deep King boosting its attack. I’ve been attempting the 4x faction team at level 300; I haven’t quite beaten it yet but I can tell it’s quite doable.

Have you beaten Dark Pits at level 500? Explain why not and you know the problem Delve is having right now.

Is it really that hard to make a competent faction? All Silver Necropolis needs is to replace Undying with something else and it’s quite possible to beat it if you have a bit of luck (I’d be using Bone Golem/Bone Golem/Draugr/Vanya Soulmorn).

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1000

Then you have no clue what you’re talking about if you think the Sea of Sorrow faction team can survive 500 waiting for Sea Witch to help scale Hammerclaw with the AI The Deep King hits for 133 True Splash Damage to 2 targets while you’re trying to punch through eHP: 989 or eHP: 1483 with skull damage on a troop that can heal itself 132 life per cast. Oh and Sea Witch easily healing 130 HP per cast which can undo a good amount of chip damage you’re doing. Mershark hitting for 129 True splash Damage while starting 6/12 mana and unblocked on both colors really doesn’t help either.

You need an extreme amount of hoard to contend that because Armor doesn’t help one bit in this fight.

Delve 500 stats:

Hammerclaw: 498 Armor, 491 Life, 256 Atk, 131 Magic (Gain 132 Life)
Mershark: 487 Armor, 500 Life, 244 Atk, 127 Magic (Deal 129 True splash damage)
Sea Witch: 491 Armor, 504 Life, 129 Magic (Give 130 Life to an ally)
The Deep King: 497 Armor, 503 Life, 259 Atk, 131 Magic (Deal 133 True splash damage)

All of the factions that can do 500 don’t struggle with 300.

Dark Pits would be a lot easier than Sea of Sorrow by default.

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1001

Afraid I might be unable to finish the event with just Tier 4 and already lost 1 Valraven, I choose use daily Scrolls to play in actual Underworld to try Faction team Challenge. Spending all sigils, I only get to Level 180 today. Did it on first try! :grin:

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Original team is Bone Golem/Vanya Soulmourn/Vanya Soulmourn/Draugr, Silvergale banner.

Got Wild Pack’s Den in the middle. Lucky to get quite a beatable room. Enter Boss room with full team. Lose Bone Golem quite early in the game, and get first Vanya killed by it later as well, as I didn’t pay an attention to its 200+ attack, thinking I could survive 1 hit. :face_with_head_bandage:

Spamming your Bone Golem to get high attack and skull-bash them all to dead might be a viable solution, but for me, I rarely cast it unless necessary. I think filling Vanya and repeatly cast her at this level work well enough. If you can prevent their Vanya to not cast much by draining her mana, you can survive for quite a long time.

Level 200 should be doable in a few tries. I think I will try at Level 300 later. Might need a bit higher hoard level though…

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1002

Delve 300 with the faction team (no potions):

1st battle is still a joke

2nd battle: I thought I was screwed against the 2x lamia room, but Bone Golem casted 2 deathmarks and both triggered the 1st turn it could, saving me from the 2nd charm hit. Was able to skull bash the other Lamia with a meager 125 attack and overpower the Naga Queen right after that.

3rd battle: My Vanya casts for 42 before boost ratio and their Vanya has 307 Armor and 310 Life. 12-15 casts to kill doesn’t feel like a terrible idea…

The battle has been surprisingly easy since the AI is too stupid to ignore filling everything but Vanya Soulmourn, buying me way too much time to constantly cast my 2 Vanyas.

I can’t toy with it forever, but the enemy Draugr currently has 383 attack with their Vanya at 175 HP from the original total. - mid-match commentary

In the end, the strategy worked as the enemy Bone Golem couldn’t get past my 1st slot and I won moderately easy with the Enemy Vanya Soulmourn only casting once.

Shout out to TimeKnight for suggesting the Vayna Soulmourn casts. I’m sure others are probably screaming duhhhh, but there’s a bit of a difference between 42 AoE damage and 112 AoE damage thanks to potions.

Done on 1st try. No more daily delves or I’d try 500 without potions lol.

Faction team I’m using: Bone Golem, Draugr, Vanya Soulmourn, Vanya Soulmourn (Silver Banner)

Draugr in front of both Vanyas since it can be easily resummoned anyways. Silver Banner as Bone Golem and Draugr both have great uses in the first 2 rooms and sometimes the 3rd room. Usually I’m filling Vanyas with Purple since I leave Bone Golem full in the 3rd room unless its necessary to cast.

I think this faction team could be done at Delve 500 with Hoard Level 100 if you get lucky with Death marks in the 2nd room and only let Vanya cast once. She only casted once here and I could have kept going for another 5+ casts or so without major danger.

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1003

Its definitely possible to do Silver Necropolis with Hoard level 100 no potions.

Got to the last room 2 for 2 tries.

First time the board shuffled, gave the AI a 5 match of yellow and …well 2 Vanya casts is game over.

Second time, I got the enemy Vanya down to 157 HP, but the AI got 3 skulls in a row and the entire board was skull trapped after. They had their full team, but once Vanya is dead, its just outplaying a Bone Golem with way too much attack lol.

This is the easiest faction team currently by a good margin. (even without potions)

Edit: Got to the last room 3:3, but the 3rd time the middle room was the Rock Worm room, so I lost my last Vanya. Will have to wait till tomorrow because of lucky skull drops. Again.

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1004

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Can confirm the factiion only team that TheIdleOne suggests works at level 500. I got through at first attempt, so perhaps bought a few too many potions…

Thank you for sharing your team @TheIdleOne

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1005

Can I join the club? ^^

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Bought tier7 five times
Video coming soon of course

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1007

Bought T7 enough to have sigs to try a faction team…7/8 times?

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1008

Question for @jzg and @TheIdleOne: when you do the high-level Delves, do you fully clear each floor? I find myself running dry on sigils much faster than you guys did, since I am not seeing Valravens often enough. I bought tier 7 once, have never had a Valraven escape or lost a Delve, and am out of sigils after floor 300.

1009

my numbers in the other thread were based on full clear. it’ll be a lot worse if you skip rooms (less encounters)

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1010

@Grundulum I did all full clears up untill level 420. Then when I saw that I’ll have enough sigils to finish and to try pure faction twice, I started doing only 3 rooms per level

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1011

Here is the video btw of a pure faction run

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1012

so… made it to the delve 500 final room 5 out of 6 times at hoard 100 with no potions.

the 6th time, I got dominated by Sacrificial Priest/Dokkalfar spamming AoE out the Wazoo. Was impressed how quickly they both filled repeatedly.

Didn’t have great runs in the last room today, Necrocorns got some good loops that outpaced me. Lost around the halfway mark.

Someone else will have to prove 500 is doable without potions. I 100% believe it is. I’ll have to take the easy way out while I still can. (faction event)

2 tries at Tier 4 purchase. The successful try, Vanya never casted. I legit wish it was my delve 100 no potions run.

Feels dirty to have such an easy win.

(Admittedly, I’m guessing that the win would be equivalent to the halfway point of no potions?)

(1st run, Vanya casted once, then I killed their Bone Golem and Vanya got a 2nd and 3rd cast too quickly once BG was out of the way)

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1013

AH but you paid how many gems to get to 500 already? I’m gonna wait lol. We’ve got their planned faction 500 solution coming, and this one is doable without potions supposedly? I’m good. Don’t need to spend on T7. Nope!

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1014

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4* 200?

1,910 gems

a numerical answer to a rhetorical question :grin:

Could have done it for 200 gems cheaper I’d imagine, using free faction event sigils or free daily delves (or both?) 400 gems cheaper, maybe? I couldn’t sit around tapping my foot to play a little bit more!

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1015

Dunno what’s the deal on paying some gems to get rid of a painful burden like delve.

As a freeloader here i had np saving gems to get x10 tiers 7 of pots and still got way more than enough to make green doomskull weapon +10 right away next week.

That delve event give quite some golds too, i started with around 3 millions, raised hoard to 124 (dont recall at how much i was after that) and now got 5 millions (without having to bother with the stupid pvp that’s a pain in the backdoor and give me like 4k a match).

Delve can be done without them yes, for free yes, well, we can go anywhere on foots too then and save a lot of irl money then but how many does?

Couple of days ago i tried the “easiest” of all delves, Primal rift, wasted one hour and didnt got past first room, why? is already a pain get the stupid first troop killed with alderfather entangle and then you gotta pray to get the treant, something it never happened (in one match summoned 5 more golems…).

Crypt? tried for some weeks back then, sorry, my luck isnt high enough to get 3 cast of morana istantkill in a row like we seen in the only video posted so far, more likely mine do at best 1 kill out of 10 casts and usually, just to laugh at me, on last troop when is at 20 hp.

On a side note potions also solve another prob not related to delve, even if we get the FOURTH ToD in a row without any heroism before room 25 potions make you totally immune to dumbfox.

So, thank you for the potions devs, then, if someone wanna hoard 37476677 gems to show off and wasted 1524 hours in the stupid delve, their choice.

If they make lvl 500 faction easy, well, i wont cry for sure, like portraits in 2 days then wil lhave all at 2500, meanwhile for every new delve defo am going to save gems and use pots.

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1016

So now that as long as you pay enough gems level 500 is trivial, I sure as heck hope I don’t see a drop in the pressure to redesign Delve.

When you turn around in 3 weeks and claim “it’s fine, you can do it OK with potions now”, I want you to think about what “This is doable if you spend 800+ gems” means. That is pay. To. Win.

I don’t care if you have 10k gems stored up because you’re some B1 superstar who never has to spend more than you take in. You are, at most, the top 1% of the players. Don’t claim a design that works great for you is feasible for everyone else.

I’m really frustrated because I have no doubts in 6 months, zero people will be allowed to complain on the forums that faction 500 is too difficult without being dogpiled by half the participants of this thread saying, “Better save up your gems.”

This is not a solution. It’s a paywall. If this is how the devs are going to approach faction 500, I want a 1000 gem orb of power.

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1017

I suspect that potions are the devs approach to making faction team lvl 500 success more attainable. Which in turn means that most who are targeting the maxed out pet and 2500 renown will have to go for it during the faction event when potions are available. So you’ve got to spend big and sacrifice the majority of your weekend to capitalise. That option isn’t on the table for most of us. Which makes it yet another cash drive exercise, parting the player and his dollar to buy the pet and renown during a narrow window of opportunity. The only positive is @idle has made good faction team progress without potions while everyone else just seems to have ignored the daily potion free delves. So let’s hope this is not the promised solution. Potions to me feel like transient exploits that are allowable because you have to spend gems to get them. That’s not a level playing field by any stretch of the imagination.