Some pure faction delve teams’ troops have great synergy with each other. This is not one of those teams. Nothing about this team works well. Let’s do a troop breakdown:
Doppleganger: Transform into an Enemy, and Curse them.
I don’t know under what circumstances you would ever want to play this troop outside of the Delve. The only reason you need it in the Delve is because, for Renown, you need to start with only Mirrored Halls troops, and because the Mirrored Halls troops suck so much, you want to turn them into other troops. That’s the gist of it. I mean, am I wrong? Is that not exactly what it does? You run this troop because you want to copy an enemy troop? Because if you could run any other troop except this, you would… and then what’s it do? It curses them. Why? None of the other troops do anything that interacts with the enemy troops that requires them to be cursed. There’s not a single trait or ability on any of the Mirrored Halls troops that says “Ah, the enemy is cursed, great, now we can do the thing.” Nope. It just curses them, because, more text. It’s “Stealthy” and immune to Silence I suppose because you don’t want your opponent to kill it, lest you turn it into a usable troop.
Copycat: Summon this troop, then summon this troop again, then summon this troop again, then summon this troop again. It refills with a combination of 11 or 12 green mana, and hey, look at that, it makes 10 of those gems! What else does it do? Well, I’m not sure, because you only get to use this when one of your troops is dead. Up until then, you just use it literally to create 10 gems. It doesn’t do anything else before that. It reminds me of Pyggra which creates 5 red gems then explodes red gems then has a chance to summon himself. At least he isn’t part of a delve team. Next!
Glass Golem: There are seven Defender Delve troops in the game right now. I believe the first one was Arcane Golem and it stuns enemies. Damage from skulls reduced by 50% but also it came out when Spell Armor was becoming a thing, so it has 25% of that. It gains Attack with its ability. Green Golem entangles and gains life, also 50% skull reduction. Hammerclaw also 50% skull reduction, gains life, conditionally gains minor attack, explodes a row or column. Mushroom Man is interesting because, while he only reduces skull by 33%, he does gain a lot of attack AND Enrages himself, allowing him to completely ignore enemy traits and deal massive skull damage. Wild Knight also only has 33% skull damage reduction, but gains life and attack, AND Barrier. And then Bone Golem explodes a gem and gains Attack and armor and puts death mark on enemies, with 50% skull damage reduction.
Then there is the Glass Golem. 50% skull damage reduction? Nope, that’s too much. 33%? Hah! Try 25% sucker! Oh uh, what’s he got to make up for that? Death Mark? Stun? Entangle? "Nope, we’ll reflect 50% of damage taken, which will be great since you’ll be taking MORE damage from skulls than other Defender troops, thereby doing more damage with your reflect! Oh cool, uh, does he gain attack then? Enrage? Hunter’s Mark? Stun? Entangle? Nope… he just gains armor, yeah, but he’ll gain WAY less armor than the skull damage he’s taking. “He’s our worst Delve Defender to date. We’re pretty proud.”
The Mirror Queen: If you thought worst Defender was the only thing up for grabs, I’ve got a surprise for you, because Mirror Queen is the third, and worst, Delve Assassin to date. There are only two others: Gargoyle and Bladewing. Gargoyle hits like a truck because he scales his damage (50% splash damage mind you) with all allies attack. The more attack you have, the more damage you deal. Coincidentally, that’s also why Halls of Guardian is impossible to do a pure faction attempt with outside of events, because the enemy Gargoyle will literally one shot your troops. Then there’s Bladewing who, under a Storm, can literally just kill a troop, 20% chance. Lethal damage, nothing you can do about it. So Mirror Queen must be pretty deadly right? We went from colossal scaling splash damage to chance at lethal to… capped boosted single target. Yep. You hit a single enemy with a cap of 32 bonus damage (8 per Reflected Ally). Oh, and you have a huge chance to summon a copy of that enemy that you’re trying to kill, so make sure you’ve lost a troop of your own to make room. And make sure you match some 4+ gems too so you can get Reflect on your allies, and let them get hit so they can deal damage and you can summon more troops. Err, but wait, if you have a spot free to summon an enemy, that’s also 8 less bonus damage Mirror Queen is doing… and it means you were down a troop at the beginning of your turn… but I’m sure you did a TON of reflected damage to the enemy team!
Seriously, this was painful. It managed to clear the delve with a pure faction team with 3x potions of power at level 310, but at 500, I just gave up after a few attempts, because it was pointless. 15 minutes would go by in a single battle and I would just be summoning copies of useless troops waiting for something to happen, or the enemy would be looping summons of Copycat. How dumb.
Doppelganger was actually one of the best troops for factions
Allowed u to copy many different troops
(I did lady ironbeard and dwarven gate to win 1st time thru 500)
Synergy and damage for others could’ve been better
I was trying to finish reading it all, I was, until you said Hall of Guardians is impossible outside of events. Many people, including me, have done it with the daily sigils.
I agree with you in the weaknesses of the tank troop.
But you must identify each troop to the role it will best help you. The Doppleganger will be your sniper, our your heavy attack option, depending on what you get in the middle room, but primarily he will be your first damage option.
The other two below it just function as support, making the fight last long enough until you kill their key troops.
You can fail. We all do, and will continue to! But you shouldn’t say everything is busted only because it’s not working well enough for you at the moment.
Just for the record, I did it with hoard level 161, kingdom power level 10, and 4 tier seven purchases. Both level 300 and 500 pure-factioned first try.
I did it with hoard level 113 I think. 2nd try but it did kind of suck. Takes forever and if you don’t win then it’s going to take forever again. Glad it’s over with.
Let me put it this way. Every tuesday delve I at least do the free sigils, and I usually go Tier 2 for help with mana, and that also is enough to get all the rewards, provided i clear every room.
Mirrored Halls? Forget it. I will not waste any more time on this travesty of a delve.
Mirrored Halls is one of the few delves where you can actually beat it with all faction team. Many have done it first try on lv 500. The secret is don’t even try with faction team unless middle room has Fenrir, Shadow Hunter or Glutmaw that you can copy with Doppleganger.
Now I am curious. How do you survive the Shadow-Hunter room? She OHKOs any troop she hits on my team, and so do the first troop (double true damage if a target has a status effect, like, say, reflect?) and Shadow Dragon.
Keep summoning. It’s not a guaranteed victory by any means but certainly doable. I did lv 500 with SH first try. Worked really well actually because she target enemy queen 1st.
I copied cockatrice and somehow got through it but it was nuts because it can’t steal mana from their top troop and it did not stay entangled long enough.
I enjoyed this delve because I was able to make copies of troops in the middle. One time I copied a splash damage troop and did that to kill them about the same time to avoid infinite summons (test at level 260). Another time I copied Fenris and made more copies of Fenris(level 500), using the top Fenris as fodder, while the second Fenris went to 1000 attack and lots of life. Then some skulls and done.
Lots of strategy possibilities with one team. That made it fun.
I’m glad you enjoyed it. But it was only fun because you lucked your way into the best option.
There were a lot of options yes… But based on those options either made the delve literally take a hour (for 3 matches) or less time but still longer than average.
Delves can be fun… absolutely… But the time it takes has to be proportionate to that fun. Mirrored Halls pure Faction run fails that test like too many other Delves that came before it.
It’s not about luck with this specific delve. You look at what is in the middle room. Is there a useful room strategy, if not then use a non-faction team and reroll again next sigil.
There have been absolute nightmare delves, but this wasn’t one of them. Sometimes I have to brute force with 10-12 tier 7 to make it work. Maybe less with deeds and the other buffs that have been added lately.
In the end, I’ve beaten them all. Delves are rarely easy. Life goes on.
Say hello to Werewoods. Apparently all faction troops have a chance to transform into another faction troop whenever they cast their spell, with only two of them dealing damage, and single target at that.
Delve strategy:
1.) Pray that you don’t get stuck with skull damage as your only win condition for an extended period of time.
2.) Pray that the AI doesn’t transform back to full health/armor while you try to whittle it down.
Looks excessively stacked against going in with less stats than the AI has.
Yeah during the event by the time I completed level 500 without dying with a normal team I had just one shot at 500 pure faction. The amount of time I needed to get trough the first room was already pissing me off. Then I got the kruag room where the worms killed my queen easy. F**k all that shit lol Im not gonna try it ever again (unless devs make total renown rewards actually worth it)
Mirrored Halls is TERRIBLE for pure faction. I’m doing the event and decided to pure faction a one-off. Round 2 was walls, a wall generator, and a troop that destroyed 2 of my pure faction troops upon death. I was left with Copycat and Golem. Somehow I won that round to get to the final room, and after grinding interminably had a power flicker that ended my round.
First - this team sucks.
Second - killing my run on a power flicker is ridiculous. There should be a state save.
