Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

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1525

I wonder what may have happened if the majority of GoW’s most active players had chosen to ignore the pursuit for completing high level Delves?

We are halfway in Faction releases now and it seems that FOMO/bragging rights have won, the pretty minor renown rewards and useless Faction pets have always seemed like pretty poor compensation for the hundreds of hours invested.

Meanwhile every new Faction trolls the players with increasingly harder ways to beat Delves with all Faction troops. Still only easily beatable for most if we can throw enough gems on Potions and/or gold to Hoard level.

Just a (slightly off-topic) thought… :laughing:

1526

Thanks for replying @Magnusimus !

The ultimate conclusion I’m going to put in my write-up is: be flexible. Look at the center room carefully, determine if any of the units there are going to be significantly helpful (especially if you use Copycat to multiply it). If it is, I’d put Doppelganger in place of the 2nd slot Mirror Queen, otherwise just keep Mirror Queen there.

There are several rooms with great offensive, defensive, and utility troops (Dwarven Gate, Rock Worm, and Fenrir are just a few), but sometimes an extra source of Reflect and targeted damage is just better.

I’m writing under the assumption that the center can contain any of the Epic rooms listed on GoWDB. If it’s limited in some way, please let me know.

1 Like
1527

Having done all of my F500’s without potions or beyond 185 hoard on HOG (pre buffs) I’ve found Frostfire Keep to be a bit more difficult than I thought. In fact there isn’t really a defined strategy to it, unless you have a mega hoard I think. In other factions, like the above HOG, you can strategise.

The main drawback being that the Frostfire King does so much damage, 135 heavy splash damage. I did it at 300 with potions up to T5 with 2 x Frostfire Wraith and 2 x Frostfire Kings. That doesn’t work really in the boss room without having herculean stats, or so it seems.

I moved to using the Troll, but ofc it’s backfire city and especially so in the boss room, that you only cast it after the AI Troll and even then 15 blue and red leaving 23 blue and red happens etc! It’s ok in middle rooms when they don’t use the colours, but it sort of never works, maybe 1:5 of you matching 4 gems.

So I tried the Hapless Witch today, on the basis that I would use it to single target kill the top troop in the easier rooms with the Wraith and selectively strike at things that are your key targets (Viper, Lady Ironbeard etc). So I got to the end room 2 of 3 unscathed today, once with a Troll, once with Witch and basically got the Wraith down, then bingo it steals 144 life and it’s as if it’s never been touched. Blam, one cast of King and one Witch and I’m done.

So, in other factions we can do certain things, Wild Court, build Wild Knight. HoG, build attack. ASE resummon. Mirrorred Halls, summon a good troop, chip, resummon. Stonesong, use Bladewing’s Lethal and so on.

This one seems to be just another one of the number bashers with Hoard, ala Dark Pits. In fact maybe it’s harder as at least with that death marks can kill.

Wondering if anyone has done it with sub 150 hoard and no potions and how? I did think maybe 3 Wraiths and 1 King and double blue, 1 yellow banner and see if you can just build them like Wild Knight. They at least are durable to skulls, do about 90 skull damage, but then again, 2 Kings gives you damage at least, albeit it’s a paper cut. Other option might be 1 Wraith and 3 Kings and go a double red banner and hope you get them firing fast.

2 Likes
1528

True Hoard:300
Hoard:200
Kingdom Lvl:14
Medals: Anu, 2x Nysha

:heart_eyes:

5 Likes
1529

Are summoned harpies in stonesong supposed to have 3 traits or 2?

1530

Todays delve:
first faction team try:
Dementicore 2 Lyraza Chaoshound

Delve 166 + 50 % Bonus

Won but close and to be true not really a team for 200, 300 or 500

What are your teams builds

1531

Working on Delve 100 with Hoard 199/ 50% faction bonus/ 0 potions

Observations:

  1. Beating the Green/Rare room (or any of the blue rooms) still opens up the next set of rooms.

  2. Do NOT fight the legendary room that gives Tidal. Its kind of an obvious, but you really feel it when you can’t touch anyone with damage outside of slot 1, especially with these inconsistent troops. With the Madness storm going, it can be somewhat hard to get skulls to show up.

  3. Avoid rooms with Stealthy if you can. If the skulls don’t drop for you, it can be a pain to protect yourself.

  4. … and don’t be me and fight Tidal AND Stealthy.

Sister of Shadows wrecked my first 2 slots at Delve 100 with approx 400 ish stats per troop. lol

I doubt this delve was playtested with faction troops. Really feels like its missing an AND clause somewhere instead of 3 underpowered OR options.

I get the feeling the strat will come down to stealing the attack from the first slot so they can’t skull bash you and spamming Lyra AoE to win, but I can’t test it at this difficulty/stats.

6 Likes
1532

I’ll try to remember that 7 weeks from now. Good luck to you this weekend, and to all the rest of the playtesters as well. :smiley:

4 Likes
1533

Just beat Delve 200 with the faction team at Hoard 199/50% faction bonus/no potions.

Its still awkward as hell, but a lot easier since I wasn’t trying to clear every room. Usually by this point, I know what team I want to run for 500, but here? No clue.

More Observations:

  1. When Dementicore steals attack, I’m happy. Otherwise this entire faction is depressing.

  2. After playtesting, I find that I don’t really want 2 Lyras. The only time I want 2 Lyras is when I explode 7 gems. When I do AoE or jumble the board, its just a mana blocker for the 2nd Lyra.

  3. Most of the +2 Purple Banners have -Yellow or -Red. Silver Banner isn’t an option either with -Blue. This makes it really hard to use Crazed Troll and with the Madness storm, I don’t really need the Crazed Troll that much.

Many of the epic rooms that are typically easy are ones you want to avoid due to the way this faction team runs. Viper Nest with Charm, the one with Shadow Hunter due to 2 stealthy troops, Legendary Glaycion rooms, etc. etc. I went with the Legendary Sheggra room since it doesn’t do much against attack steal.

I’ll try 300 with Chaos Hound and see how I feel about it, otherwise 3 Dementicore might end up being used… It would be a shame not to use the Shortlong pet bonus though.

Edit: Tried 300 without potions and got to the last room. My Chaos Hound casted and whiffed heavily. My Dementicores weren’t able to steal attack in time to empty out their attack. A few turns later, their Chaos Hound casted and got some clean hits.

Moral of the story, Chaos Hound is hot garbage.

Did a rematch at 300 with potions (ran out of daily tries) and won. First slot got down to about 74 hp. Not the cleanest win, but not overly in danger.

So, the team I’m going with for 500 is

Dementicore
Dementicore
Dementicore
Lyrasza
Frozen Banner (+2Bl, +P, -R)

10 Likes
1534

I’m up to 300. I’d recommend trying

Dementicore
Dementicore
Hound
Lyrasza

You never really need the third dementicore. The silence/mana drain is nice but inconsistent, and it’s not very useful to drain attack onto your third troop. I found that my first dementicore reliably fills very quickly.

The hound’s skull spam can greatly speed up the fight whenever you’ve neutralized the top troop’s attack. This can save you from taking a random AOE hit. It also has the added utility of letting you resummon (RNG willing). And just to be clear, never cast hound unless the top troop or two has 0 attack.

Lyrasza isn’t really good for anything, but I don’t think there’s anything better to use instead. The jumble is nice, sometimes? Some random chip damage is OK, but you’re never going to cast her enough for the damage to matter compared to your 500 attack dementicore.

3 Likes
1535

Went 300 with Dementicore 3* Chaoshound and +12 attack from Medals
Not really a problem.

2 Likes
1536

@TheIdleOne… helpful as always. I am considering going above 100 horde level for the 1st time because of how difficult this will be outside of events. What’s the gold outlay from 100 to 199?

1537

I spent today around 12 Million from 0-166 but thats mostly that i used common and green thing to level:=)

1538

Beat it (500) on first try with 2x Dementicore, 2x Lyraze with Unicorn Banner. 199 hoard, 50% faction stats and 6 tier 7

4 Likes
1539

Yikes I’ve certainly got nowhere near that much.

1540

Congrats. The 199 Hoard Stategy works. :blush:. And 6 tier 7 isn’t as bad as I feared. Well Played.

1 Like
1541

as i said it was because of the hundrets og low stuff i sacrificed because i wanted to get rif off
and Tydda GZ nice work

1 Like
1542

Thanks. :smiley:

It costed me about 3 mill gold to get the hoard to 199, it’s not that bad I think.

2 Likes
1543

u used 3 nysha?

1544

I used 2 Nysha and 1 Anu medal

1 Like