Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

[xolid99]

Twice in a row on daily delves, with SoS faction troops that only do True Damage… your team generates both colours for Lady Ironbeard and blue for Dwarven Gate who barriers it and gives it 5 mana each time.

If ever there was a good reason for updating the amount of daily delves…

As it is, it’s one daily delve today for me, and in all fairness, I also had Dark Monolith that deals double damage if you hit it for true damage… So in reality, 3 daily delves down the drain.

I’d pay gems for a reshuffle even, for a punter’s chance.

[xolid99]

All factions (so far) complete without potions.

Highest I’ve done a faction 500 with potions is 310.

The final one, Sea of Sorrow. I did to 180 in a recent faction event to gain shards.

Hoard 210 - 50% bonus
1 Nysha/Anu/Seasons - final room 3 x Nysha
Sea of Sorrow Banner
Hammerclaw/Sea Witch/ 2 x Deep King

Team can be a little flexible, I did use 2 Sea Witch/Mershark/Deep King to get beyond things like 2 Lamia or try to get past Ironbeards, but vs the final room, you need that Hammerclaw I think. You certainly need damage.

Path:

First room no issue, just have to watch their Mersharks and cast your Witch on who they hit, and on Hammerclaw.

Room 2 - Remnant/Hag/Poison Master/Magnus

Pretty steady, Hag cast attack on itself twice, so just threw all Sea Witch on a full Hammerclaw and filled both Kings. Avoided skulls from Hag and Magnus with submerge. All intact at end.

Room 3 - Fangblade/Naga Queen/Viper/Venoxia

Pretty easy really, more or less ignore casting Sea Witch all time, waited to fill Kings, Viper hit Witch so casts thereafter on her with full Hammerclaw. Then enrage for Hammer and Kings whittled them down.

Final Room same principle but with more care. Didn’t really have any bad luck for once, no real good luck.

Sadly not many images, just near the final one.

I managed to avoid Mershark beating me solo, which is what happens in this room, as their Deep King is blocked a lot. So I have tried my own Mershark to compensate, but decided to go all in on magic and see if I could beat them to the punch.

Strategy, fill Hammerclaw and Witch as fast as possible, leave Claw full, unless you are unable to fill Witch. Cast Witch on Claw for the enrage, try and fill both Deep Kings. Watch for their Mershark filling very easily.

Generally it always gets to the point where you are using Sea Witch to heal what Mershark hits. This then comes undone as missed blue and brown matches from Sea Witch’s cast, leaves one Deep King cast to team wipe.

Today, I got 2 Deep Kings off, before Mershark cast. It hit my witch twice, and splash twice onto top Deep King.

Got to a point, where I had a couple of skull traps vs taking out their Mershark or casting Sea Witch to save a Deep King. Went for the cast, on the weaker Deep King. Removed one set of skulls but Mershark with 5 true life left, killed Sea Witch.

Took skulls, and left Hammer full. Filled both Kings, their Deep King cast but didn’t kill me, just had 27 or so life left. I was able to cast 2 Deep Kings in a row, killed their Deep King.

So Hammerclaw and 2 Deep Kings vs their Hammerclaw with enrage. It 1 shot my Hammerclaw with a skull, then did same vs 1 Deep King. Left me grabbing calculator as could take a skull or cast, skulls were enraged and just enough to kill it.

I will now be able to start generating shards and hopefully get ahead of the curve for future factions, or at least give myself a chance to gain shards and treasures in between faction runs.

I won’t be able to fully complete the Tinkertown troops next week, but by playing the faction, should get close at the end of the weekend.

Factions?

I think the worst faction is Lyrasza’s Lair, not that it perhaps isn’t the hardest, but because it is just funless. Similarly Fang Moor is funless/souless.

Hardest faction, I would say Frostfire Keep, and it is also an enjoyable/challenging faction, which gets my vote.

I think the devs should look at some of the rooms, such as the Spider/Cocoon room being on the path there in Lair. It took me 2 hours to get past it on one occasion, and it summoned 40+ spiders. For sure, leave the hard rooms, they will require potions, but those rooms on the magicless factions could be changed. Keep the difficulty - fine, but the time element is unrealistic.

Also, as said before, having an option on daily runs to /shuffle the delve for a gem cost, would be fine. I also think, adding an extra delve attempt temporarily on say vault weekends, 1:4 weekends would be something that shouldn’t effect the bottom line maybe, and really be nice for players. The gnome tracker was a great addition, it would be nice to accompany it with the extra delve etc (after all it would reduce farming time, so a win-win?)

Other option, kingdom level somewhere gives an additional daily delve.

[TheIdleOne]

@xolid99

I think the devs should look at some of the rooms, such as the Spider/Cocoon room being on the path there in Lair. It took me 2 hours to get past it on one occasion, and it summoned 40+ spiders. For sure, leave the hard rooms, they will require potions, but those rooms on the magicless factions could be changed. Keep the difficulty - fine, but the time element is unrealistic.

congrats on your delves

I’m not sure if I’m reading your comment correctly, but you actually have multiple path choices for Lyrasza’s Lair.

Main Room → Rare/Ultra Rare/Ultra Rare → Legendary/Epic/Legendary/Epic → Boss Room

So, if spiders were a problem, you could fight one of the two other fights.

[xolid99]

@TheIdleOne

congrats on your delves

I’m not sure if I’m reading your comment correctly, but you actually have multiple path choices for Lyrasza’s Lair.

Main Room → Rare/Ultra Rare/Ultra Rare → Legendary/Epic/Legendary/Epic → Boss Room

So, if spiders were a problem, you could fight one of the two other fights.

Thanks

Yes you could, I think my pathing combinations/options on that day were all not great, as the Tier IV/V rooms in the route pathways were all bad, except an easier Tier IV room accessible by the Spiders. A couple of the tier 3 rooms are tougher than almost anywhere else in Lair too, due to the random nature and slow casting. Cyclops room presents a problem for example. Ancient Golem with Impervious does too. Night Hag fills from your storm etc.

I know that the choices were all bad, but do regret doing that room. I failed on that run anyway

[MarioDaems]

Congratulations! Amazing job you did there!

[igniteice]

Today I had one of my best run attempts ever of Fang Moor pure faction @ hoard level 300. I made it to the boss room, but unfortunately things didn’t work out. I managed to get a nice set of casts off of Chief Dargon for pumping my attack up (needed for when he inevitably dies). My typical team composition is:

Here are my bonuses:

I use 3x Medal of Seasons for +12 Attack/Life/Armor, as there’s no reason for Magic – the extra life/armor/attack is much more useful and relevant given how you win. +12 Magic from Nysha would only increase the damage that Horned Asp does and increase how much Attack Chief Dargon gives, but 12 is a very small amount of Attack to gain, when you can already start with that much more just using different medals.

By far the hardest room you can get is one that gives enemies Entangle when they deal skull damage. If you get that, you’re pretty much toast and you won’t win. The Naga Charm room is also quite devastating, but not impossible, you just need to kill them before they get too many charms off. Let them cast their empowered charms before you use your first Chief Dargon cast.

Last, Setauri is an absolute trash troop, and almost always a trap. At minimum he creates 6 skulls, and at max he creates 14 skulls (2 for each bleeding enemy). Unless there is an ungodly amount of skulls already on board, like 12+, and you can create 14 more, you absolutely do not want to cast him unless you have no other options.

It will absolutely backfire, because more often than not, you set up skull matches for the enemy as much as for you, and you won’t survive them, especially in the boss room.

I’m planning to pump up the Hoard level even more this Friday once I get more Sacred Treasure and Genie’s Lamps. Unfortunately my coffers are getting pretty thin right now and it costs a fortune to upgrade.

In fact, to get to level 400, I would need to use 419 Priest’s Chalice and all 141 of my King’s Crowns at a cost of 38.8 million gold. If I wanted to only use King’s Crowns, I would need 351 of them and the cost would drop to 24.8 million.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to 400 anytime soon though. I would need 111 Genie’s Lamp and 15 Sacred Treasure at a cost of 8.7 million, assuming I can even get 15 Sacred Treasure on Friday. I might have to settle for significantly lower Hoard Level runs though…

[xolid99]

@igniteice

I’m not sure I’ll be able to get to 400 anytime soon though. I would need 111 Genie’s Lamp and 15 Sacred Treasure at a cost of 8.7 million, assuming I can even get 15 Sacred Treasure on Friday. I might have to settle for significantly lower Hoard Level runs though…

It could be worse. I have had 0 of the last three treasures for some time. I only got some by doing Tier V in the Tuesday run and leaving sigils spare.

I’ve probably used several hundred Priest Chalices as well in the past few months.

I also for a long time have had 0 shards on many occasions, after guild tasks and following faction 500 losses.

The useless coin purse needs obliterating off the face of the earth as well.

[ChunkyMono]

@xolid99

The useless coin purse needs obliterating off the face of the earth as well.

It would be nice if we could smelt them in the forge to craft other treasures, similar to ingots. We can already sacrifice Mab for souls, and grind Feyrie into pet food. Why not Sacks of Coppers → Brass Rings → Silver Cups → Tarnished Crowns → Lamps?

The XP loss might not make it worth it in all cases (I is bad at teh maths), but I don’t use Coppers and Rings past Hoard 100. I never have enough gold, even for the cups most times.

[igniteice]

Another day, another attempt at Fang Moor. This time I’ll talk about the rooms along the way to the boss. First, here’s the room I’m currently in:

This is the third room. In this room we have an enemy team consisting of Golem, Tome of Evil, Void Portal, and Sacrificial Priest. The Golem will wreck your armor quickly. He explodes a gem, then eliminates, at level 500, 87+ armor from all your troops. He has 50% skull damage reduction, bonus brown mana, and only costs 8.

Tome of Evil sucks because he death marks one of your troops, and none of them in pure faction are immune to death mark. Void Portal is useless. He doesn’t do anything, but he is immune to bleed, so that’s annoying because you can’t whittle down his health (and 10 damage a turn adds up…)

Sacrificial Priest is awesome, because he’ll kill his own allies or himself. Fantastic. The scatter damage is minimal (approx 45 damage to each of your troops).

Don’t bother ever casting Setauri, because the max skulls you’ll be able to create is 12, since Void Portal can’t have bleed on it. You’ll need a ton of skull damage to kill Golem, but that’s no different than fighting against Chief Dargon in the boss room anyway. You’re on kind of a timer though, because you want to kill Tome of Evil before it casts, otherwise you can just straight up lose a troop and the run is over.

Generally speaking I spend most of my turns using Chief Dargon and Shaman of Set to refuel him. Here I’ve killed Golem and Tome of Evil hasn’t gotten a cast off yet. You can see I have sufficiently high attack – now I can concentrate on skull matches. Notice Setauri has full mana and can create skulls. Don’t do this, it’s a trap!

Instead I used Shaman of Set to make red gems. You’re just trying to cycle the board to create natural skull matches. Nothing fancy. Tome of Evil dead:

Now, like I said, Void Portal doesn’t do anything because the enemy has no souls. The only thing I need to worry about is skull matches, which will definitely kill me eventually. They have 166 and 185 Attack. That’s 83-93 damage, and I only have 161 health left now (I took a hit after the last screenshot).

Okay, Sacrificial Priest has sacrificed himself:

Notice Void Portal has 610 combined armor/health and I have 652 attack. So one skull match and they’re dead … same for me though.

Okay, well, that sucks. I had to make a move that wouldn’t give them a skull match, but they got falling skulls and killed me. It did set up a 4 skull match for me, but it doesn’t matter now.

Victory, but time to retreat, because I lost my tank. Woohoo, 4 chaos shards and 580 souls!

[Lorien1973]

I maintain my belief that Fang Moor is the hardest delve. Dark Pits is second.

[Grundulum]

Stonesong Eyrie, assuming summoned AI troops still come in at level 250/500, surely has to be near the top.

[NerdieBirdie]

I beat SE a while back at a pretty low hoard level, not because it’s easy, but because I’m stubborn and kept trying it again and again and again… It’s so up to chance it’s ridiculous, and I’m more than happy to never see the Faction again!

[beeflog]

Stonesong is a 3-room delve, with an instant-kill troop, 2 mana generators, and a mana-drainer+healer, plus your own troops can summon to replace lost chaff. It’s thousands of times easier to reach the boss room than Fang Moor or Dark Pits, and still hundreds of times easier to win in that room; It’s an RNG-fest, and frustrating to lose after a long grind, but not nearly as stacked-against-you as Fang Moor or Dark Pits. I did Stonesong with level 100 hoard and a pile of patience (about a month of trying every few days).

[igniteice]

It is without a doubt the hardest, although I should preface that by saying I’ve done a ton of other delves using potions, like City of Thieves. But Fang Moor is still incredibly difficult.

• 4 rooms to get to the boss
• None of your troops gain armor or health
• main mode of damage is Skull damage, which means killing enemies one at a time
• You can explode a row, or create red gems, or create skulls. All can result in RNG destruction of your own troops.
• The only spell damage you have is a single target splash.

Now… let’s compare this delve to something like Hall of Guardians. Silent Sentinel can gain life, enchant your allies, and silence enemy tank. Gargoyle does scaling splash damage. Arcane Golem can stun all enemies. Ethereal Sentry can boost attack. I completed that pure faction run at hoard level 199 without potions.

I completed The Warrens pure faction without potions at hoard level 220 and I made a detailed post how I did it (after weeks of trying at 199). But even it was easier than Fang Moor, because Warrens you get tons of control.

Crypt Keepers I completed pure faction no potions at hoard level 200. Crypt Keepers is MUCH shorter to reach the boss than Fang Moor, but they are very similar in nature. For instance, both of them give you a beefy tank (Lady Morana is 65% damage reduction though vs 50% for Chief Dargon).

Instead of splash damage though, Spectral Knight does true damage, which is doubled if the enemy has a status effect – which can happen easily since Nightshade can stun/freeze/disease enemies. Also Lady Morana can instant kill enemies with a scaling boost (number of purple gems, which thanks to Grave Seer is semi-controllable).

Here’s a complete breakdown of my delves:

Delve	Renown	Best Delve Defeated	With No Casualties	Faction Team	Treasure Hoard Level	Potions
Fang Moor	2120	500	500	120	300
The Warrens	2500	500	500	500	220	No
Crypt Keepers	2500	500	500	500	200	No
Hall of Guardians	2500	500	500	500	199	No
All-Seeing Eye	2500	500	500	500	195	No
Silver Necropolis	2500	500	500	500	159	No
Stonesong Eyrie	2500	500	500	500	159	Yes
City of Thieves	2500	500	500	500	157	Yes
Primal Rift	2500	500	500	500	147	No
Werewoods	2500	500	500	500	144	Yes
Amanithrax	2500	500	500	500	125	Yes
Wild Court	2500	500	500	500	113	Yes
Sunken Fleet	2500	500	500	500	111	Yes
Frostfire Keep	2500	500	500	500	106	Yes
Lyrasza’s Lair	2500	500	500	500	104	Yes
The Deep Hive	2500	500	500	500	104	Yes
Fell Roost	2500	500	500	500	102	Yes
Dark Pits	2500	500	500	500	100	Yes
Depths of Sin	2500	500	500	500	100	Yes
Illithia	2500	500	500	500	100	Yes
Mirrored Halls	2310	500	500	310	100
Sea of Sorrow	2500	500	500	500	100	Yes

[Lorien1973]

@Grundulum

Stonesong Eyrie, assuming summoned AI troops still come in at level 250/500, surely has to be near the top.

Disagree. SE is annoying cuz of the summons; but there is only 1 room to get through - and you can pick your adventure, too - so you can pick an ‘easy’ room. RNG can make this a very easy runor a very annoying run.

In Fang Moor, it is guaranteed a painful run, though 3 rooms. And you have to use skull damage; so 3 or 4 slot true damage troop is going to kill you - most likely.

(I omit start room and boss)

[xolid99]

It’s not just the number of rooms to go through, it’s what you face in those rooms vs your team capabilities, plus what mana you generate. For example, some factions you feed the opposition better than yourself. Like Shaman of Set in Fang Moor, it’s a disastrous troop for feeding the enemy.

Having done all without any assistance of things like bless, barrier, 25% skull reduction, explosions/enchantments etc, never mind the stat bonuses, the hardest two factions imho are Frostfire Keep and Fang Moor.

Some factions have really benefitted from the additions to the game, such as hoard bonus, whereas others are completely luck based.

Disagree with Warrens being controllable, you can’t control the yellow random explosion(s) (unless you drop doing 3 Luna’s, which I belatedly did) Also, AI dodge vs your dodge has never been properly checked to see if the AI at L500 dodges more than us at L20. Anecdotally for me, it dodges more. Fortunately the supporting cast in the Warrens is better than some, making it not the hardest faction.

Fang Moor, half of the runs are very difficult because bleed on things like Dark Monolith (and it is almost always in 1 of the rooms) means it hits you for double damage and usually very easily. Incidentally, two Dargons are better than one, if you lose one, you can still defeat the final room, if you have none, forget it. Same premis with Sunken Fleet and TMQ.

Frostfire Keep because of freeze and the sheer power of the AI Frostfire King, and you being frozen, and the fact that targetting is random. Without potions it is tough. One good thing is you can get lucky and get away with no T5 room to reach the boss room, if the delve creation gives you that fortune. Frostfire Witch does target but is a poor troop. Also, unlike SOS, the damage is normal damage, so random damage just does nothing to the AI team with 1000 health etc.

I did say Frostfire Keep was harder than Fang Moor the other day, perhaps it is not, I forgot how putrid Fang Moor was

There are quite a few torrid factions, Lyrasza’s, one can get really fortunate and do it around 200, then you can have terrible luck and be still trying it at 300.

Dark Pits is tough, but you need to go round the outer path, and you can get fairly lucky with rooms. Also, you can target with Hex Rat, and fill it okay.

If you have troops that randomly target, the factions become harder too.

[xolid99]

@ChunkyMono

It would be nice if we could smelt them in the forge to craft other treasures, similar to ingots. We can already sacrifice Mab for souls, and grind Feyrie into pet food. Why not Sacks of Coppers → Brass Rings → Silver Cups → Tarnished Crowns → Lamps?

The XP loss might not make it worth it in all cases (I is bad at teh maths), but I don’t use Coppers and Rings past Hoard 100. I never have enough gold, even for the cups most times.

I’m all for making it something of use.

I know it’s part of the common/rare/ultra rare/epic/legendary/mythic system throughout the game, but 5% is useless to hoard level because of the additional attachment of XP and failure rates.

You can use a common troop in T3 pvp -Thrall/Bogstrider/Guardians etc.

You can use common ingots to make rare ingots to make other ingots etc.

Coin purse - maybe convert to something usable.

[TheIdleOne]

That’s why its worth having more than one Chief Dargon on the team. You’re almost expected to lose at least 1 in the boss room.

I absolutely despise Setauri since I get enough sky skulls in a delve run, but some people swear by it.

[igniteice]

It comes down to the bonuses for me. With 4 unique troops I get 23 Attack, 3 Magic, 6 Life, and 52 Armor. If I drop down to 3 unique troops, I get 11 Attack, 3 Magic, 6 Life, and 29 Armor. That’s a loss of 12 Attack and 23 Armor just to have an extra Chief Dargon. I don’t consider it worth the loss, considering that if I play it right, I won’t lose Chief Dargon at all, or at the very least, I’ll have him going into the Boss room, and I’ll have enough Attack boosted that it won’t matter to have a second one.

(I also never cast Setauri though – unless I can create the max 14 skulls and there’s already 12+ on the board and I’m desperate.)

[TheIdleOne]

So early notes:

1. Tinker Town pure faction is stupid. lol (attempted and beat 100 + cleared all rooms, no potions)
2. The game loves to get me stuck with Detect-o-Bots that refuse to self-destruct.
3. 15% feels like 80% or 5% (arbitrary numbers). doesn’t feel like 15%

I’m very likely going with

Smash-o-bot
Smash-o-bot
Smash-o-bot
Tink Steamwhistle
Tinker Banner

You just get stuck with Detect-o-bots, so there’s no point in running one.

You just get stuck with useless troops, so having 2 Tinks will leave you less slots to work with.

I doubt I’ll change my mind later, but we’ll see.