Delves: Strategies, tactics and tips

So its slightly easier to get to the SoS boss room with the faction team at Delve 300, but I forgot how obnoxious Sea Witch is. You miss badly, its lights out.

I could beat it, but since Mershark is casting for 71 td, I’d have to upgrade my hoard more than I already have to survive it more consistently and I don’t really want to.

1 Like

Sometimes I really hate this game. Got the Xerodar in the last room down to 144 HP.

It wasn’t a Xerodar cast that killed me, it was a missed skull from a pattern I didnt see and a lucky sky fall skull drop. Sigh.

So the threat of the team is the Leech and Ocularen. The enemies the Watch Mother respawns isn’t the most harmful and at that point your Watch Mother can start healing your troops if you think you have wiggle room. Their Xerodar only hits the front 2 troops, so if you can keep your team fully stocked and not let yellow/skulls line up, it can’t really do too much to you. Hopefully the skull patterns are nice enough so that you can get a few more hits in than they can.

Maybe the game pitied me, because I should have died many times over. The AI ignored skulls 3-4 times or more during the beginning of the boss room.

Beat the baby dragon room, before I forget. TDS respawned into a Baby Dragon that respawned into a Shadow Dragon.

Killed the enemy Xerodar with my own Xerodar cast, seemed fitting (and least risky!)

Forgot to take more screenshots, but took a xbox clip of the end of the match. Killing Xerodar took 5 minutes, so that’s all I was able to record lol.

I’m getting too old for this!

15 Likes

Well done man, what a massive accomplishment.
Still working on getting Delves to 500 here and then i’m give it a shot (current delves are 500, 500, 440, 330)

1 Like

Congrats! Can you share the faction team used and tactics?

1 Like

Ocularen Leech, Ocularen, Xerodar, Watch Mother (Ocularen Banner). I would have preferred some kind of +2 green, +1 red or even +2 red, +1 green but it doesn’t exist yet.

Most of it is pretty “simple”. Use the Ocularen Leech, steal as much attack as you can and skull bash. Ocularen can be used on alignments to either refill Ocularen Leech, to do some chip damage (50+ dmg casts add up when you refill yourself), or just create more greens for the Leech.

Watch Mother can be used to resummon or heal your troops, depending on what 2nd room you’re facing. You typically don’t want to heal as long an enemy Ocularen is alive, as then the targeting likes to get switched to the Watch Mother and things start to become dicey quickly. Resummons are okay usually as the 2nd slot typically gets pecked once or twice by Ocularen.

Xerodar is somewhat more difficult to use. You don’t actually have to wait for alignments and yet you don’t always want alignments. You want to use Xerodar in a way that minimize getting a skull hit returned on you.

That basically covers most of it.

14 Likes

Thank you so much for sharing!

1 Like

So I asked this in the developer stream with Sirrian tonight:

How do you feel about delve 500 with the faction team in its current form?

paraphrased answer: “Its too hard, looking into it, have some solutions, would need an update. Aware”

10 Likes

I think the faction team needs to have higher stats so it isn’t so lopsided. Perhaps some kind of additional bonus for the team that scales into later levels - perhaps have the treasure hoard bonus stats be doubled or something for the faction team.

Might be worth thinking about an increased bonus for faction teams with all four troops - or diminished with less than four troops, whichever.

I know this is totally a wrong topic for this question. Sorry.

There should be a “ask small questions here and get an answer” -topic. The question I’m about to present is one of those that I keep thinking often and search forums for several minutes. Sometimes I get the answer, often not.

OK, here goes:

How many shards approx. do you need to ascend all troops from a faction?

Rare troops seem to be hardest upgrade to mythic from shard drops, so if a stat I found here: Underworld Stats - Google Sheets is even remotely correct, you need 0,23x = 91 → ~395*20 shards = ~8000 shards. Correct?

From my personal experience maxing out the factions without orbs this is accurate.

Results can certainly vary, i believe i spent more than 9K shards on Crypt Keepers and roughly 7K~8K for Hall of Guardians and Sea of Sorrow each.

4 Likes

Thanks, that was fast and very informative.

Yeah it took me 8200 shards to max SoS

1 Like

took me 8200 as well to max out sos, mostly the struggles of getting the rare to mythic.

So I’ve been working on hitting Delve Level 500 in Crypt Keepers with the faction team of 3x Lady Morana + Grave Seer. I have the hoard level at 166. And I have not been able to get past the 2nd room.

I can win the first room consistently, but the 2nd room always decimates me.

For those that have succeeded, are there any further tips or is it really just pure luck? Been trying for about a week and a half and it’s really starting to feel like a fool’s mission. Does placement of Grave Seer matters? I’ve tried having him at 2nd spot and 4th spot. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I kinda tried the same at lower lvls though (300) and gave up aswell, once managed to take last room down to only grave seer vs my last morana but ofc he won :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s all down to have luck with morana skill, even in the video way above you can see in the successfull run that he casted morana 3 times and got the kills 3 times in a row.

Seen anyway you get the pet without bothering with faction team i will just clear it with other troops and wait for faction team until they fix it (there’s a thread about a dev saying it need to be reworked somewhere)

1 Like

About 90% luck and 10% not giving the AI too many mana/advantages (missing 4 matches, playing defense, not getting bonked by skull hits etc).

I’d say Grave Seer in the back, only because it’ll block Lady Moranas on the Red color otherwise.

It really depends on what 2nd room you get, luck on killing those threats asap, then keeping that luck through the 3rd room.

4 Likes

8,000 shards is rough to farm out at current rates.

Some mudflation with additional sources of shards needs to happen.

This is pretty much where I’m at, though my hoard level is 100. I’m not happy with it.

Theory crafting time:

Which troop is the better 1st slot choice for the Primal Rift faction team? Dark Dryad or Green Golem?

At first glance, it seems like Green Golem is the better choice. Alderfather can respawn it, it has 50% skull reduction, heals itself, and can entangle on skull hit. All are great things.

However, Green Golem can be entangled, which is very detrimental in the mirror match.

Dark Dryad’s skill buffs the 1st troop, so it happens to buff its own magic, it’ll make future buffs much more efficient. It also has immunity to entangle which is important to the mirror match. The one downside is that it only has 33% skull reduction (and can’t entangle on skull hit).

So on paper, Green Golem may be better in the 2nd and 3rd room and Dark Dryad would be better for the 1st and 4th room. Since you can’t swap order mid-delve, which would be better?