High-End, End-Game Catch-All (Traitstones/EXP/Souls, NOT Gold) Farming Teams with Difficulties

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Okay. So I watched a video by @KrudlerTheHorse where he showcased his traitstone/souls farming team and recorded a 20 minute sample of his results for dissection. You can find that here:

I, unfortunately, don’t currently have the means to record, but I wanted to dissert a few options.

Disclaimer:

These teams rely on having fairly high stats. Therefore, having a five+ stars on ALL magic kingdoms and attack kingdoms is practically a must; with some of them even benefiting from have five+ stars on defense kingdoms. In addition, they are also heavily reliant on having most traits completed on the troops used for these teams. Furthermore, full guild bonuses will only aid your fight. That being said, let’s carry on.

Normal, Hard, Warlord One Teams:

Bloodsucker:

Banner: Lion Banner, Dragon Banner or Holy Banner

Crimson Bat
Crimson Bat
Valkyrie
Mercy

Priority number one is filling Valkyrie. Once she is filled, do NOT cast until there is guaranteed 15 base mana on the board (before bonuses). Cast C Bat once BOTH are up.

The downside to this team is fighting multiple Legendaries. This is the reason that Crimson Bat is leading the pack; his third trait while allow him to clean up any stragglers after two Bat casts, since Bat deals double skull damage on wounded enemies (lower than starting health, NOT affected by armor).

The Queens’ Decree:

Recommended Banner: Lion Banner or Frozen Banner

Queen Mab
Queen Mab
Valkyrie
Mercy

Once again, your first priority is filling Valkyrie. Likewise, you don’t want to cast your first Nevermore (Mab skill) until you have BOTH of them filled. If it will help your cause, you can wait until the enemy has some mana (for additional damage) or wait until there is 13 or more blue on the board (for an additional turn); both are recommended, but neither is necessary and can even slow you down depending on how long it takes.

The cons to using this team can be serious inhibitors. These team is relatively useless versus any enemy with Impervious or Mana Shield. Legendaries may slow down this team, but they have higher than average mana pools which can be exploited in your favor.

Normal, Hard, Warlord One, Warlord Two, Warlord Three Teams:

Morthani’s Manifesto:

This team is inspired by the one that @KrudlerTheHorse used in his video.

Recommended Banner: Lion Banner or Dragon Banner
Recommended Class: Sorcerer with bonus on Magic

Morthani’s Scythe
Valkyrie
Green Slime
Rowanne

Staying consistent with the running theme, Valkyrie being ready to cast is of the utmost importance. It is advised to try and cast Valhalla (Valk’s skill) on brown gems, since they are not used at all on the team. Once she is casted, and both Rowanne and Green Slime are filled, examine the board and see if there is any guaranteed places where Green Slime can trigger a four+ combo. If there are not, you can risk it or cast Thorns (Rowanne skill) instead, then cast Green Slime. Afterword, cast Morthani’s Scythe. The skull creation should clean up any left behind from Scythe’s skill.

The downsides to this team are few and far between. One noticeable infraction is the fact that this team can have some variance issues, due to both Sludge (G Slime’s skill) and Morthani being somewhat influenced by RNG (Random number generator). However, the Hero front-running is a somewhat a counter to any unforeseen events, since it’s durability is so high. Green Slime can easily be replaced with Giant Spider to offset some unpredictability, but it does cost two more mana to cast.

Rowanne’s Reign:

This is the team that I use most often, but it is the team that requires the most five stars.

Recommended Banner: Lion Banner or Dragon Banner

Valkyrie
Rowanne
Rowanne
Mercy

Steps to success:

  1. Fill Valkyrie
  2. Fill Rowanne (x2)
  3. Wipe enemy team
  4. Rinse
  5. Repeat

The team is virtually infallible. The only true detriment to this team is Rowanne taking damage, as it will severely diminish your DPS (damage per second, but… I guess that doesn’t really work in Gems of War… DPC? [Damage per cast???]). This is somewhat countered by having both Rowannes positioned in the center of your deck, since the only way they can be attacked is by enemy troops with specific targeting (most spells either attack the first or last troop).

Warlord Four Teams:

Honestly, I don’t have any that are consistent without costing you too much time and spoiling your RoI (return on investment) for your time. But, I do have a bonus team.

Warlord Four EXP/Traitstone/Guild Seals Farm Team:

Recommended Banner: Holy Banner

The Insatiable:

The GREAT Maw
Infernal King
Courage (STRONGLY boosted by 3rd Trait; otherwise, you can swap with Bone Dragon/Sheggra)
Mercy

Finally! A new objective. You want to fill Maw first, constantly scouting the board for the potential four+ gem clusters you would have if you cast Divine Grace (Mercy’s skill). Cast Sandstorm (Maw’s skill) on the most potentially dangerous enemy, then focus on filling Infernal King (can some times be filled as a by-product of Sandstorm). Once Courage is full, cast on skulls (can potentially loop).

There is very few things that can slow this team down, but I can list some with their counters:

Gorgotha with 3rd trait – Devour Gorgotha.
Full team of Impervious – Highly unlikely, but your damage output would still wipe the team relatively quickly.
(with Courage) Team doesn’t use brown after Maw casts – Not directly used, but IK’s Inferno does utilize brown which fills Courage.
Slight RNG based – No solution :frowning2:

As a final note, you can use Bone Dragon/Sheggra instead of Courage if you don’t want the brown mana from Sandstorm to go to waste, although it will still be transformed through Inferno.

Edit:

I really wanted Courage to work in this team, but through more testing with him subbing Sheggra, I found that his spell is far too unreliable; even with a high amount of skulls/red gems on the board. It constantly misses four+ matches and sets up the enemy in a position where they can just pummel the living **** out of me. I would advise using Sheggra instead of Courage. Overall, it just has better synergy.

Final Thoughts:

You can crunch the numbers all day, you can revise the teams, you can search for the archetypal compostion… But this is a match-3 game, and as such, it is subject to RNG. Although these teams are honed in on speed, the inevitable variance villain will some times impede on your runs; there is nothing you can do about that. These are the optimal teams that I have discovered through a bit of trial and error, but they aren’t perfect by any means.

I don’t mind at all if this thread also doubles as a proving ground for others to exhibit their creations. Feel free to share teams that you have found to be fast and efficient. Please include suggested banner, class (if applicable), and course of action.

If your still reading this, thanks for your time! :wink:

6 Likes
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I’ve settled on an explore team that is a mix of the above:
Mab
Valk
Rowanne
Mercy

Why one of each?
The freeze + potential extra turn from Mab makes games go faster by minimizing the amount of time you need to wait for the AI. But with massive split damage, Rowanne is so much better at cleaning up. With all 5-star magic kingdoms and Rowanne at 35-37 armor, it clears almost all Warlord II explores with one cast of Mab and one cast of Rowanne, meaning it wins on turn 1 quite often. As above, you’ll almost always want to fill both Mab and Rowanne before casting Mab.

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I have been using a variety of different teams for speed farming Explore but this one has been fun and hits
ALL areas of need:

Dwarven Banner +2 brown

Draakulus** (working on getting 3rd trait)
Valk***
Hero***: Archer class w/ Mountain Crusher
Tyri*

I fill the hero with a single match 3 brown and he generally fills Tyri, who I use to fill Valk by destroying Yellow Gems. Valk then casts to fill Draakulus.

It is fun, consistent, and provides Souls, Gold, and Maps!

Enjoy! :wink:

4 Likes
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That’s a pretty good one. The only downside (like my Mab team) is if the enemy has Mana Shield or Impervious, but there isn’t very many troops that have them, so it’s fairly safe. Being able to team wipe in on turn on Warlord 2 is definitely a plus.

1 Like
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Nice. This looks like a pretty strong team. One suggestion/question, though. Wouldn’t the team benefit more by having Crimson Bat in first? While Draakulis is still tankier, C Bat still provides +16 health per cast and frees up purple mana that would otherwise be blocking Tyri, in addition to dishing out higher True Damage. Hope you don’t mind my critique. :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

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@Phaethon

No worries thanks for the suggestion.
This team was stumbled upon because I was trying to find a team FOR Draakulus, but yes, CBat would certainly run well up front with this line up.

Also, just FYI- Draakulus is Red, Blue, Green, so purple flows freely to Tyri, but playing CBat would send BOTH Green and Purple her way, effective speeding it up even more! :wink:

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Yeah, luckily I mainly explore Ghulvania and Maugrim Woods, and those traits are really rare there. At worst, it takes an extra cast of Rowanne if those traits do show up, but sometimes the same two casts will still wipe the team if enough of the troops are low armor+health (commons and rares instead of epics and legendaries).

I suppose switching it to Valk/Rowanne/Mab/Mercy could be better in those cases.
I want the flexibility to be able to fire off Mab and get the extra turn before the first Rowanne cast, so it would help refill Rowanne for the 2nd cast sooner this way.
I might switch to that for farming kingdoms with lots of Mana Burn immune troops.

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This was my previous quick clear team. I recently found I could shave just a slight amount off my average time by putting in Soothsayer instead of Mercy and using the Lion’s Banner. You are far less likely to get those turn 0 win setups, but also far less likely to have to go 3+ turns before finding a valid setup to charge and cast valk. Put sooth in front so you can ignore skulls if facing kingdoms where Touch traits can ruin your day, like Blighted Lands’ frequent appearance of Herald of Chaos or Dark Maiden in Zhul Kari. I just use a lower difficulty when fighting in kingdoms where impervious is more common, like Pridelands, so I can still do the 1-2 punch and take everyone out most of the time without needing to refill.

2 Likes
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Whoops! I meant green not purple. :cold_sweat:

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AWESOME! I skimmed quickly, and I’ll read again and more thoroughly when I get back from my evening AA meeting.

Glad I could inspire some discussion on this!!!111one

edit: For those wondering, now that I have a bunch of kingdoms up to double-magic-bonus, I did a few runs yesterday with the team shown in the video, wherin at one point I maxed out at 90.2 souls per minute!!

1 Like
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Yeah, I definitely agree with Lion’s Banner. There shouldn’t be a need to refill Mercy via Green gems.

So I’ve tried Sooth a bunch on this team and others (especially with Khorvash and Bat where the extra magic gain goes toward true damage). But I find that I end up more frequently stalling waiting for a good blue set up before casting Valk. And in the end, I always switch back to Mercy. I don’t really feel like I get stalled out with Mercy. I find that casting Mercy even without making a match is often useful because it sets up multiple yellow 3 gem matches and removes a color from the board. The resulting board is easy to predict too, so I can avoid handing the AI a match 4/5. Having purple completely removed from the board seems to help a lot once Valk is filled. Sooth more often leaves the board too mixed up to do a good Valk cast.

In my mind, it certainly feels slower on average with Sooth. But maybe I should try actually timing both setups over the course of a few hours…

Good point about Dark Maiden. That would be worth switching to Sooth.
If you’re going for speed, I wouldn’t bother with Blighted Lands. Ghulvania gives the same stones and has way easier opponents.

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Glad to hear that. Eventually, I’m gonna run some tests on these teams to test their souls per minute, but I have no idea when. :sweat_smile:

I’m likely gonna run them for an hour. I think this will be enough to reduce the variance a bit, but not so long that I get burnout from the teams. One thousand PvP matches with a dual Mab team on my second week of playing the game did a number on my psyche. :dizzy_face:

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I generally farm in Explore mode, mostly for Souls and Arcanes. This team is very fast on Normal/Hard but as enemy Life goes up, so does the match time.

Valkyrie / Crimson Bat / Mercy / Spirit Fox

Number one priority is obviously filling Valk, so I have her in the #1 slot. Mercy will hopefully fill her but if not, she’s not having Red blocked by the Bat. On Normal/Hard, there’s a good chance the Bat can one-shot the entire enemy team but if not, I have Spirit Fox sitting in the rear. Fox’s 3rd trait is Empowered so she’s charged and ready to take out any leftovers after the Bat casts. It doesn’t hurt that both Bat and Fox have Cursed, which can potentially reduce the enemies’ initial Life by 2 (or 4 if you’re really lucky).

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Yep. I used to use a similar team when I was farming at normal/hard difficulty. If you’re lucky, Mercy’s Blessed procs on magic, too; further boosting Bat.