Into The Void -
Soooooo,
Has anyone actually completed today's challenge yet?
4 hours later and I can't get passed Wave 7 - the flyers and the elementals just overwhelm me every time - and that's with the Void Wall drops being 'lucky' and getting more Mana than health/money.
I'm barricading in the mine cart track from the East so that the orcs have to run on the tracks and into the carts, and I'm dropping 'fire walls' parallel to and along the tracks so the orcs have to run along the whole length of them, but there just isn't enough mana for that and the West side and then fliers...
Just checked the leaderboard and only 4 have completed it today?
Well, did it, but did not 5-skull it.
Don't think it'll hold my interest enough for me to get the necessary practice.
Using firewall is suicide IMO. That thing is a mana hog, and mana is your life.
After trying and failing to upload images using the Steam uploader, this is the layout I had at the end of Wave 3
Image 1 : Image 2 : Image 3 : Image 4
Here, I've been trying to force the orcs onto the mine tracks as much as possible, especially on the West side as this has the least amount of mine track for the Orcs to walk over.
As you said Wyatan, even carring the Fire Amulet seems like a waste, so I tried to run without it and just using the Ice Amulet instead - timing the mine carts and Ice Amulet primary so they coincide seemed to help - but I still lose it on Wave 7.
Ah well, I'll keep plugging away...
serenddu,
that's my setup, got me to the final wave with 30 rift points, but then the mana god from beyond the wall wasn't kind to me.
http://imageshack.us/f/94/2012101300006.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/213/2012101300005.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/23/2012101300004.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/222/2012101300003.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/211/2012101300002.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/f/441/2012101300001.jpg/
you need to maze them, with narrow spaces, they might get angry and start hitting the barricades but you have a lot of money in this level so that's ok, and while they are hitting the barricades they don't run to the rift so there you have it.
Here's my take one it. At the time, I got first place. Forget about trapless, no magic and untouchable. Just try to get as many 3x and 4x combos as you can using the windbelt and mine cart.
http://youtu.be/lAbFaSS3_-U
The obvious start is using Barricades to force all the enemies from the right path across the first mine track bridge, then more barricades to force all of the enemies back across the second bridge. Place Void Walls around where you can use Wind Belt to push the smaller enemies into them. But for getting a 5-skull, the real key I found was to stack the hell out of Barricades right in front of the exits. When the large numbers of Ogres and Earth Elementals start showing up in wave 7+, you can stand on the Barricades and shoot them with ice and/or fire. You have all day for your mana to regen while they are busy trying to smash through.
Cheers all for all the help.
I didn't occur to me to make deliberate 'choke points' that the orcs would get stuck at [I even went to the extreme of drawing up Lauferism's layout on grid paper and then tweaking that to add more 1/2 square choke points), but now I get that, I'm getting to level 9, but my movement skills over the barricades now need work...
Tigerstein, are you making a maze for the larger stuff to run thru, but leaving a final gap, or are you completely blocking all the path to the rifts and deliberately getting the orcs to attack the barricades?
Thanks again all :)
Edit: - finally 42nd on the leaderboard!
Completely walling the exits off so that they have to attack the Barricades. 4 or 5 rows of Barricades take them so long to smash through that you have plenty of time to wait on enough mana regen to kill the big monsters.
This was the first challenge I actually found to be a challenge. I hope they make more like it.
I've only done it in co-op but the key to sucess is to maze them. Make the cart work for you, by mazing enemies over the tracks the cart does a lot of damage to the orcs. Freezing air is instant death to them, the ice amulet will be your best friend for stopping air. You can do a lot of damage to ogres by freezing them on the tracks and letting the cart smash into them. You'll also want to use the wind belt to blow enemies into the void walls when possible and not the pits for extra coin and more importantly mana potions.
As an aside, and to dumbly derail my own thread...
Is the damage from the Ice Amulet shared across how many enemies it hits or modified by range? Sometimes, when I got an ogre in the clear, I was able to kill it with 3 blasts, but in other situations, when I hit the ogre with the main blast, not the extra side shots, but it was leading a crowd of other orcs, it seemed to take more that 3 blasts to finish it off as if the damage was being shared across all the orcs I hit?
As an aside, and to dumbly derail my own thread...
Is the damage from the Ice Amulet shared across how many enemies it hits or modified by range? Sometimes, when I got an ogre in the clear, I was able to kill it with 3 blasts, but in other situations, when I hit the ogre with the main blast, not the extra side shots, but it was leading a crowd of other orcs, it seemed to take more that 3 blasts to finish it off as if the damage was being shared across all the orcs I hit?
Great question!
Nfi. Never really been fond of the ice amulet or to be quite honest many of the slower firing high mana weapons at all. I would imagine (from experience) that the three blasts have their own damage and what you are seeing is all three blasts hitting the model of the ogre (which may be much larger than it looks) of course you'd need one of the kindly RE gentlemen to confirm this, but I would imagine the confusion comes form the central blast doing more damage than its smaller side associates.
If I was to put a numeric value on them I'd say 15 / 70 / 15 which is why you 'feel' as if you are hitting normal damage on a solo ogre.
To clarify, if you hit with two projectiles that is 85 damage instead of just 70. But hitting with all three would be a whopping 100 damage.
I might be wrong, but my impression is that damage from the ice amulet is based on the number of projectiles hit. For example if you get close to an ogre and all the projectiles hit, it'll go down faster.
I've uploaded a 5-skull run. (Should be available shortly.)
Not the safest strategy out there (Lauferism or Duvalon's are way safer), but it stemmed from my stubborness and me feeling all Gandalfy. I don't built any behind-the-line safety net because "thou shalt not pass" is the mindset there : if they get through the bridge, you're screwed and may as well restart.
I use exclusively the eastern cart because the tracks are much longer and as such it basically deals with the eastern door on its own. It also deals with part of the western door both through the small portions orcs have to get through, and the larger one they choose to go through : about half of the western waves go through the outer bridge before turning back.
I guess wave 7 is so hard for most people because you get flyers and elementals right at the start : that will deplete your mana pool, and then some. And since that wave comes after your last go break, you'll have spent time building up, meaning what mana potions you had have been busy expiring. So, if you don't have mana potions available at the end of wave 6, you may as well restart. And... when wave 6 ends, hit that "G" key immediately !
Last, pay attention to your minimap : go check any potion lying next to the tracks. Mana potions dropped from cart kills are permanent : do collect and treasure them !
I was also about to say that this wasn't a high scoring strategy at all, but... this happened.
The strategy is basically exactly the same, with one significant change, though.
A master war mage.
Was about to give up on this one but Wyatan's strat is brilliant.
Much much easier. I was only getting to about wave 6, but went straight through with this one. Only just tho had 6 rift points left and died twice.
This was the first challenge I actually found to be a challenge. I hope they make more like it.
I second that!
This was a really good challenge because you couldn't beat it in just any straightforward way. Of course, using the ice amulet to take out flyers, and using the mine carts for what they're worth is pretty obvious, but you'll need more than that to win. I liked the fact that you have to put at least a little thought into making a strategy that works. I hope there will be more challenges like this one. =)
Im thinking about pre-purchasing Orcs must die 2 but im not sure because i dont know how good it will be. Will it be better than the first you guys think? (Im not familair with the series so)
You're a little late. It's been out for a while now.
And yes; its very good but it isn't like the original. It takes some learning.
I'll give it a shot tomorrow. Rogotin mentioned to barricade the east side so they go around the middle hole and walk along the track that goes across it. Is that what you meant? Depending on money you can probably force all the orcs to walk along that track and only leave an opening just before the cart's exit. Otherwise, push things off the cliffs with the windbelt, and lure ogres and elementals under boulder chutes and freeze them with the ice amulet's primary (secondary is very expensive) before triggering it for extra damage.
AKA Duvalon (Steam, leaderboards)