I still have a few days to reach to 500, but I would like to finish this without potions. My current hoard is 155 with 50% bonus. I remember hearing that this is quite doable with this setting, just wondering what others used to complete it and how difficult it was.
What team did you use?
What strategy did you use?
How many attempts did it take?
What room is preferable as the third (just before boss) room?
Anything else to be careful about?
Looking at the troops, I see two options for team composition:
Warrior / Warrior / Indrajit / Mage: (More tanky, relies on the warrior heavily)
Warrior / Indrajit / Indrajit / Mage: Less tanky, relies on Indrajit’s damage more.
Considering that my magic won’t be high enough at hoard level 155, I was thinking that #1 would give me more chance. If I do go with #1, I think the strategy is similar to other similarly structured hoards, which essentially boils down to buff’ing Warrior long enough so that it can take down enemies one by one with skulls. Would you agree?
155 and 50% should be sufficient as I did it with 111 and 50% - it didn’t really take that long but I can’t tell the exact numbers because - again - I kept trying sporadically, not all days, not all sigils.
The winning team was 2x Warrior/2x Indrajit (I also tried with 2x Warrior/Mage/Indrajit a few times but didn’t like the way Mage tended leaving whole board for enemies to use, so - sorry, girl, you’re not on my team).
The basic strategy is, as you say, buffing Warriors (especially top one) enough to take them down with skulls rather easily; Indrajit is not a reliable source of damage (magic stat is too low), it’s just for small pokes and hopefully getting rid of weak stragglers.
Read a few posts from here down for some more detailed explanations.
The path to the boss room can be success on most times, but in the boss room you need to be pretty aggressive, firstly to get rid of their tank and then to get rid of Indrajit who does massive damage. This is the reason why I ran double Indrajit so that with extra turns you get double chance to burn the front tank this way, instead of using double Warrior. Casting Mage will burn front tank aswell but everytime you cast your Mage, there is risk that it backfires badly. You pretty much have to take all purple matches in the boss room so it isn’t very good idea to spam Mage and generate more purples on the board. Mage is basically your hail mary troop in the boss room rather than a mana generator, what she is in the other rooms. In the boss room you either succeed with extra turns and skull matches, or fail miserably when their Indrajit and the other spell damage troop get loaded. I’d suggest to avoid “Aflame” rooms (Lava Cracks/Infernal Den). Optimal hoard level with 50% boost is close to 200 IMO. I tried this daily for about a month. The boss room is pretty brutal.
Hoard 167 (+50% bonus from Kingdom Power Level 15)
Warrior / Mage / Indrajit / Hunter – i.e., the “One of Everything on the Menu, Please” approach
Anu / Seasons / Orpheus – i.e., the “I’m too lazy to switch my usual medal paradigm” approach
The posts above pretty much sum up the “strategy” – pump the attack on the Warrior, light the lead enemy on fire, skull the lead enemy to death. Speed is the key, because the lack of healing turns this into a “damage carnival” and that’s a tough race to win with the stat disadvantage. Even with the accelerator through the Warrior’s ability to cream a burning enemy with skulls.
Hunter was there to sponge Green, to provide an alternate method of summoning a Hellstorm, and for targeted spell damage at times it would be useful. Not often, but every bit helps. Indrajit does a lot more damage and is more efficient on a “damage vs. mana” basis, but you can’t depend upon him hitting the target you want until you’re down to two enemy troops.
Mage has a real chance to backfire, but I liked the ability to guarantee lighting the first enemy on fire. Plus you’d get a good board just as often.
The pathing helps to a fair degree. Some of the “early middle” rooms are simply bad – Cedric = NO! and Leprechauns can ruin your day with sky-falling skulls – but the ability to pick any of the six “late middle” rooms allows you to avoid a lot of unpleasant stuff and you’re almost certainly going to get a Tier III or Tier II room that works for you.
Getting to the boss room wasn’t the most difficult task in the world, even at lower Hoard levels. Beating the boss room is problematic, because you won’t last long if the enemy gets to casting.
EDIT: One sneaky little thing for that boss room. You don’t want to over-amplify your Warrior’s attack while the enemy Warrior is still alive. Especially if you set the enemy Warrior on fire. Because Infernal Armor can mess you up with the reflected damage from a skull hit You want to kill the enemy Warrior quickly, but you don’t want to kill your own Warrior at the same time.
I gave two tries and this is much harder / brutal than I hoped for. The team’s durability is very low, so any bad luck with skulls / spells adversely affect you. Let’s see what happens …
This is actually an interesting one. I used the following team:
Warrior x 2 / Indrajit / Mage
I tried a few times with Warrior x 2 / Indrajit x 2, but things did not go the way I wanted. I would imagine that if you get lucky enough that team should clear as well.
Strategy is damn stupid as all mentioned above: buff first warrior fast and enough so that you start killing all through skulls.
The path DOES matter though. Especially second room. I would argue that there are some second rooms that are close to impossible to clear; so you have to get lucky, at least lucky enough again. In my final run, I don’t remember the second room, however, for the third room, I was again lucky to get the one that grants “agile” to the whole team (I think this is the thieves). This actually made the final fight possible, I think, since my front warrior ignored at least one skull hit from enemy front warrior. Still, the team is so fragile (or glass cannon) that if things go bad (e.g., you cannot buff enough or you get hit by enemy skulls frequently), then it is game over. Nothing to do. At least, this happens fairly quick so that you don’t lose much time.
