Questions about guides, ogres, survival

[Shmidley]

Hi, I recently came back to the game. The last time I played was before any DLC came out. I had all the achievements in the game and 100-200 in stats from my old Godly gear. I've seen been breaking into Nightmare and I now have stats around 300/600/300/600 on an Apprentice and Summoner. I'm thinking about writing a guide based on my experiences, but there are several things I have seen in others' guides that are incredibly confusing to me.

The biggest one is guides that talk about beating the first two waves of Endless Spires being easy but wave 3 being hard because there is "an ogre." That's bogus. There are SEVERAL ogres prior to wave 3.

And I have read elsewhere about there being a handful of ogres per wave on Survival but how it drops back down to only one ogre after Survival Wave 12. Well, on Magus Quarters there are DOZENS AND DOZENS of ogres on Wave 11.

I am also confused when people talk about doing Insane Survival runs on the new maps. That's crazy. I can't even beat the new Shards maps on Insane Campaign. A simple insane mistymire campaign match has an endless horde of 2mil HP ogres that my defenses could never hope to defeat.

I'm also confused by what appear to be absolutely horrible builds people suggest for things like the above mistymire match. How are a couple of Harpoon turrets going to take down 2 mill HP ogres coming from every direction at once? How are they going to take them down during the spider boss?

I feel like I am living in bizzaro world.

[Warmonger]

1. Endless Spires got Ogre on first wave after Aquanos was released. Now I recommend Servants Quarters, which certainly will never get a single Ogre or Copter.
2. Spider Queen is badass, Genie King is much easier to manage. However, I had twice your stats when did that.
3. Harpoons will eventually kill the Ogres. The trick is to hold them forever. I suggest Ogre Crush challenge as a practive ;)

[AeroCloud]

First off, you are still way behind in armor. Once you get to a certain point, there are a lot less options in how you build. If you have too many ogres for the defense, you need a way to passify them, usually a wall that does 0 damage to them, will make them sit there and do nothing. Put your defenses far enough behind that wall and you have awhile. Now with nightmare, those ogres sitting there dont hurt, but what happens is... Your defenses are focused on the ogre, then a shark will come charging through, or djinn will desummon the wall or other towers.

For shards maps, insane+ I recommend having squire/apprentice, huntress, monk (tower), monk (dps), EV and summoner.

Use EV for the walls and Boost beams, summoner for archers and mages. if you build a wall of archers/mages then boost them, they can work for small amounts of ogres as a wall. If there are multiple ogres, minion walls drop pretty quickly. Gas Traps help reduce the amount of enemies that make it to your walls/towers. They also fend off Djinn and Sharks for a temporary amount of time. Tower Monk is required in builds for nightmare+, Strength Drain + Lightning Aura + Ensnare Aura at all choke points where they are attacking will help your defenses last much longer. Squire/Apprentice are the fill in tower, use the extra DU with their towers.

Some of the information you are reading about is old, almost every patch they release changes how many and when something drops. So that information is probably irrelevant anymore.

[What]

Hi, I recently came back to the game. The last time I played was before any DLC came out. I had all the achievements in the game and 100-200 in stats from my old Godly gear. I've seen been breaking into Nightmare and I now have stats around 300/600/300/600 on an Apprentice and Summoner. I'm thinking about writing a guide based on my experiences, but there are several things I have seen in others' guides that are incredibly confusing to me.

The biggest one is guides that talk about beating the first two waves of Endless Spires being easy but wave 3 being hard because there is "an ogre." That's bogus. There are SEVERAL ogres prior to wave 3.

And I have read elsewhere about there being a handful of ogres per wave on Survival but how it drops back down to only one ogre after Survival Wave 12. Well, on Magus Quarters there are DOZENS AND DOZENS of ogres on Wave 11.

I am also confused when people talk about doing Insane Survival runs on the new maps. That's crazy. I can't even beat the new Shards maps on Insane Campaign. A simple insane mistymire campaign match has an endless horde of 2mil HP ogres that my defenses could never hope to defeat.

I'm also confused by what appear to be absolutely horrible builds people suggest for things like the above mistymire match. How are a couple of Harpoon turrets going to take down 2 mill HP ogres coming from every direction at once? How are they going to take them down during the spider boss?

I feel like I am living in bizzaro world.

You may be misreading things. And/or misunderstanding. My harpoons do ~30k per shot in Nightmare, up to 90k when 3* and buffed with a 3* buff beam (Non-active). My Countess has over 2k tower attack. The few towers can take down an Ogre because Ogres are dumb, Mobs are being held back and killed off by traps an auras, and players assist in killing Ogres. The 90k per shot, even 30k can add up quickly against, say, 30 mil HP.

Ogres can be beaten fairly easily since you can make them stand at your walls and observe the expert craftsmanship by placing your Harpoons/Magic Missiles/Bowlers/Fireballs/Minions just a little bit out of his whacking range. He want to get to the source of damage, but can't. He's blocked by the wall but is too dumb to attack the wall. Practice on Ogre Crush, Maybe?

Now, the calming down after wave 12 thing is referring to Mistymire. From waves 9-12 in NM Survival on that map, you'll have a bunch of Ogres incoming. After 12, it'll calm for a few waves.

Also, you're likely understatted, or are using a bad build. Make sure you're using all building character's towers at your disposal! This means Traps, Auras, Squire buildings, and Apprentice buildings! If you have EV as well, use her! Her walls can help you save DU as well as being somewhat tanky. The buff beams are amazing, and Reflects are great. Also, try to make your builds compact. Especially in Mistymire, and in Nightmare in general. Since spiders are spawning, and the have set drop points with a very minor deviation from that spot, you'll want to reduce their total available drop points inside your base, and use as little DU as possible on them.

Now, for the bosses, You'll definitely want a dedicated DPS character out there. Monk works very well since you can hero and Tower boost. Give him a good pet, like a seahorse, and you can dominate Ogres and bosses. A good DPS pet and character is very much needed for the Shards maps if you want to pass without much frustration. Especially while solo.

And most of the info you may have read is outdated, unfortunately.

[Shmidley]

Okay. Everything you guys are saying has fit neatly in with my experiences. I am already using builds that use the concepts you are putting forth, although I still need to refine them a lot (and keep upgrading and replacing gear of course).

What I find amusing is that most of the guides out there talk about doing Insane Mistymire Survival up to wave 20+ as a matter of course, as if a player with 100-200 stats could do that easily. And yet three people now have said that my current (600/300) stats are far too low to be doing such things.

That seems especially weird, though. Why would anyone ever do Insane Mistymire Survival if its that hard? I can't imagine the drops are very good compared to the drops in Nightmare levels.

[Rand0m1zat10n]

The only reason people do insane Shards survivals are for breaking into NM/exp farming.

[Warmonger]

^He didn't understand either, lol.

Mistymire survival on insane won't give you any useful reward. Moraggo and Aquanos, however, drop decent pets. The last one also drops myth gear at wave 20+. Lots of it.
I don't remember any guide mentioning misty insane survival. Where did you find that tip?

[Shmidley]

I have been finding most of my information by googling "Insane Nightmare Progression"

From the dungeon defenders wiki (http://dungeondefenders.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Progression_(or:_getting_into_Nightmare))


You're going to need to start working on Survival mode. Start with Alchemical Laboratory survival on insane (ensure hardcore mode is activated), and see how far you get. If you make wave 20+, then try Ramparts or Summit. If you can clear those, try Mistymire or Moraggo , and so on.

The moderator Alhanahelm also has posted things in new player threads (http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?64727-Insane-Nightmare-Progression) like this one:


Newer maps on Insane have mythical drops- both in high wave survival, and some challenge rewards. Use these to help bridge the gap. It's not really that hard anymore. With a strong Insane character, you should at least be able to to do the early campaign levels on Nightmare, which can also get your foot in the door.

[iamisom]

Probably in CrzyRndm's Nightmare guide (http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?66394-Breaking-into-NM).

[Shmidley]

Oh yea, that guide also mentions it.


When you start into nightmare, you really want to be level 74, so you can equip myths as soon as you get them. At this point I wasn't, so I decided to have a go at misty survival. I made it to W20 with a few changes to the campaign build, and it was a fun and rewarding challenge (ogres go back to one per wave after wave 12, which has 4). 9 million XP from W5 to W20, a mythical pet each time I ran it, and some reasonable gear (I won't be using the gear though).

And he says he wasn't even level 74 yet. So he couldn't have been wearing mythicals. Which meant he had 200-300 stats at best. And he says he got to wave 20 on Misty with a link to this build (http://ddplanner.com/?l=8240,misty-insane-hc-survival). I am extremely suspicious as to how that could be possible. I could always go ahead and just try out the exact build he says he used (and I'd be using Mythical decked characters to boot).

[CrzyRndm]

Oh yea, that guide also mentions it.

And he says he wasn't even level 74 yet. So he couldn't have been wearing mythicals. Which meant he had 200-300 stats at best.
200-400 (More like 350, but I think one hits 400) on builders and I was running round with a DPS squire with 300 damage and HP. I did link the characters that I used

Prox + cades deals with internal spiders.
Str drains mean very little damage gets done to the squire blockades, and I dont have to worry about elemental resistances.
Reversed squire blockades induce derpy ogres:p

[AeroCloud]

Honestly, the best bet for most people trying to get into nightmare with builders has 2 options.

1) Build the best DPS monk they can with As high of resists as possible and join others games

2) Level all builders and slowly progress allowing others to join and hopefully they don't loot everything before you. You can probably start running some nightmares with those stats, but you will need the help of dps characters joining you.

Option 1 is the easiest, as you can loot decent myths for your builders while playing DPS.

Option 2 is by far the hardest as gear progression is much harder than it used to be, it will take more time and patience. But it can be done.

[Shmidley]

Btw, thanks for posting everyone. This game has very cool community.

I'm trying to avoid grouping publically (I don't want to end up getting carried) and I'm not going to buy anything from anybody else. I have a group of friends I play with and I am content to make slow and steady progress. I'm not looking to race through the game (I got too old or something, nowadays I even *gasp* play multiple games at the same time). I've got a lot of downtime at work during the daytime hours, and I'd like to use that to put a guide together based on my play experiences here. I want to avoid including any bogus information. I am thinking it would be a good idea to wait until I've progressed into the 1k+ stat range before posting a guide of my own.

Would you say Misty Survival is very different from Misty Campaign? I would like to try out that build CrzyRndm suggested on Survival, but I have yet to beat the map on isnane.Here is the build I used the last time I attempted it. (http://ddplanner.com/?l=9742,insane-misty) Although I lost horribly to the boss. She was spawning far too many spiders for me to shoot with my Apprentice. Next time I plan to put down some traps and auras with which to fight the boss inside of.

I'm still aghast at the notion that a couple of fireball towers or a harpoon turret could hold a lane! I will have to get there and see it in action myself before I fully believe it.

[grey-1]

Oh yea, that guide also mentions it.

And he says he wasn't even level 74 yet. So he couldn't have been wearing mythicals. Which meant he had 200-300 stats at best. And he says he got to wave 20 on Misty with a link to this build (http://ddplanner.com/?l=8240,misty-insane-hc-survival). I am extremely suspicious as to how that could be possible. I could always go ahead and just try out the exact build he says he used (and I'd be using Mythical decked characters to boot).

When nightmare first became available my lvl 71 countess had stats around 300/370/280/300. And that was farming insane survival on alchem, ramparts, and glitter. I also missed out on all the super loot due to being at work. Just lots of farming and upgrades. I did jump into NM with endless spires prior to all the early wave ogres, sharken, and copters.

I think progression is more of a rock climbing experience than a ladder. The ladder you go straight up no matter how slowly. Rock climbing... well sometimes you move sideways... sometimes back down and over a little to go up even higher.

A good example of this is the ogre part hat reward from the ogre crush challenge. I used a squire build to farm raining goblins nm hc to get the apprentice staff, then used it on my apprentice to farm ogre crush to get a ogre party hat for my monk. And for it is worth your stats should be good enough to do raining goblins on nm hc. Myth gear can drop on the last wave or two. Just spam bouncers around the crystal with a slice-n-dice at each of the stairways on the East side. SNDs go last and you need to dps the first wave (pet helps). After that just stay inside the ring and upgrade/repair while you pet helps kills the mob.

Another example is on misty. The spider queen on nm can easily be handled by a good insane level seahorse from aquanos.

tl;dr version: don't get discouraged, cycle through the various challenges, campaign maps, survival maps, and difficulty settings as progression isn't a straight path imo - but it is there.

[grey-1]

While most of my map clears have been solo, the shards bosses tend to be easier with more than one player (longer though due to the increased hp).

Also I find the barb in turtle stance is easiest for me against.the queen.

[CrzyRndm]

Would you say Misty Survival is very different from Misty Campaign? I would like to try out that build CrzyRndm suggested on Survival, but I have yet to beat the map on isnane.Here is the build I used the last time I attempted it. (http://ddplanner.com/?l=9742,insane-misty) Although I lost horribly to the boss. She was spawning far too many spiders for me to shoot with my Apprentice. Next time I plan to put down some traps and auras with which to fight the boss inside of.

I'm still aghast at the notion that a couple of fireball towers or a harpoon turret could hold a lane! I will have to get there and see it in action myself before I fully believe it.
You have to factor in the proxies as well. With the centers on the edge of the snare, they clear out the vast majority of mobs. Until later waves, the harpoons/fireballs really only have to deal with ogres (and by deal with, I mean hold aggro until a DPS char can make mincemeat of them).

On the queen, I also posted a build for that slightly above the survival part. It needs a few revisions (elec instead of snare in the centre, shift north prox nearly back to the cade to stop spider buildup) to make solo easier, but is otherwise solid.

Your build is solid in principal, but you can change two things to make the boss fight easier.
A) Push the east defenses away from the center. This stops the queen attacking them and leaving a big hole.
B) Aura trio in the middle. Str drain + heal makes her damage significantly easier to survive, elec + str drain clears her spiderlings.

[Warmonger]

I had stats around 700-1200 when I soloed Queen on Insane. It took like 20 minutes alone and defenses barely survived it. I see now way to kill her earlier, since she's tough as ***** and can wipe defenses easily. Definitelly killing her is much, much harder than progressing in survival later. Breaking through QUeen has been discussed so many times I find it ridiculous that everybody forgot about it. You know, people who make these guides have stuff already unlocked.

Minions have been reported as an effective way to kill the Queen now, though.

[CrzyRndm]

Yes, she is hard. Soloing her on insane requires between 12 and 60 million damage and her constant webs slow things down considerably. You *need* a decent build and DPS character.

Dosen't make it impossible though. Insane HC glitter reward weapons get more than 80^ quite frequently which equates to 10k damage on the squire weapon. With that, my DPS squire does 116k auto attack. With BR that jumps to 381k, and circ slice tops it off with the potential to hit 925k twice with BR active.
Given that the majority of damage gets done is a short window, the squires ability for burst damage suits this boss (and then I got flattened by the kracken...)

You know, people who make these guides have stuff already unlocked.
I didn't. I specifically do all work on my guide in open to keep it seperate from everything else. I'm quite literally doing this from scratch.

[jha4ceb]

Servants Quarters is definitely a good way to break into Nightmare. My stats are around 600, and previously I've only been able to beat wave 1 of ES (and get to the penultimate wave of Halloween level) -- but last night I managed to beat SQ on Nightmare campaign and get a bunch more myths in the process.

[Drizzit]

If endless spires 1st wave is a bit too challenging, you could try ramparts instead. It has similar loot after the 1st wave and no ogres or goblin copters in the first wave. The map is small, easy to handle and pretty easy to build. I usually do defences solo with my apprentice. With lower stats, add some auras and you should be fine :)

There are 2 normal ogres in the map altogether, one in the last wave and one before that. If you solo, the ogres always come from the south-west spawn. One of the goblin copters landing places is on the roof, where the ogre can't get to anywhere and they just walk there around and die.

Hope this helps in your progression :)

[gigazelle]

If endless spires 1st wave is a bit too challenging, you could try ramparts instead. It has similar loot after the 1st wave and no ogres or goblin copters in the first wave. The map is small, easy to handle and pretty easy to build. I usually do defences solo with my apprentice. With lower stats, add some auras and you should be fine :)

There are 2 normal ogres in the map altogether, one in the last wave and one before that. If you solo, the ogres always come from the south-west spawn. One of the goblin copters landing places is on the roof, where the ogre can't get to anywhere and they just walk there around and die.

Hope this helps in your progression :)

haha i noticed that the other day :) silly ogres on the rooftops.

NM challenges are an excellent way to find really solid weapons, since even NM weapons only require level 60 heroes to wield. I personally used a 200+ Quiescence (Light Saber from Moving Core) on my Squire and kicked the trash out of everyone. My friend, who was level 70 at the time, got a Goblin's Overlord Charge from Raining Goblins and was doing 500K DPS after upgrading.

[CrzyRndm]

My guide is finally up to date for shards 4 (not finished, just all old stuff is revised). The best map by far for getting those first myth's is misty (or possibly aquanos, which I just realised I forgot to check...).

Basicly, just brute force your way through that first wave with gas + harpoons/fireballs. You then have up to 9 chests all of which can spawn some very decent myths. I got my first myth set in 5-6 runs which has two stats over 600 (and only 2 pieces are really tower spec)

EDIT

Same approach works perfectly on aquanos as well. The sheer number of chests on aquanos actually makes it a better map for those first myths (and due to the choppers being much more benign, continuation through wave 2 might actually be possible)

[Shmidley]

I've now completed the first six maps on NM Campaign, and I got to the last wave of NM Endless Spires but lost due to copters. I haven't seen an upgrade throughout any of this, unfortunately. Its funny, I bring a friend along whose only job is to pick up the mythicals that drop, because I have no time to pick them up since I am too busy slapping down buildings and minions and upgrades as fast as I can.

The strategy I was initially using to handle NM Endless Spires was slapping down magic missile towers all over the place with reckless abandon, which is surprisingly effective for the first two waves. I wonder if that will work on NM Mistymire Survival. I don't presently have gas traps available. Neither my Huntress nor my Squire are at 74 yet, and the thought of grinding Glitterhelm again is too painful to contemplate right now.

Anyway, one thing that I think got glossed over here in terms of guides, is just how much DPS these DPS characters are expected to be doing. I've got a half-upgraded 120^ staff that does about 300k dps at point blank range, but in practice its difficult to get all that in on an ogre. If beating Insane Mistymire for example is assuming a squire who can do this...


With that, my DPS squire does 116k auto attack. With BR that jumps to 381k, and circ slice tops it off with the potential to hit 925k twice with BR active.

... then it sounds like I need to get my Squire up. Amusingly, even if I wanted to keep DPSing on my apprentice I'd need to get my Squire up if I want to farm NM Raining Goblins for an Apprentice Weapon (unless there is some other strategy besides encircling the core with Bouncers).

[grey-1]

When I started running nightmare all of my toons were level 70 - 71. I collected myth gear, but I noticed a lot of godly quality gear that were big upgrades to what I was using. I recommend keeping an eye out for godly gear for your toons that are not outfitted in myths. In fact my actual run experience was clearing the endless spire a couple of waves. I got some myths and those were saved for later. But more importantly I found some great godlies. While a lot of the only had 1^, it didn't bother me since they got my mid-300s tower damage up over 500. And I knew it was just temporary till they were level 74 and I had myth hear for them. So my suggestion would be to not look only for myths but also at the godlies.

Also I don't if how easy boss rush would be on easy/medium/hard or even how good the reward would be, but my insane runs it gave a great app weapon (classic) as the reward. The same goes for a squire weapon on sky city (steam saw). The newer weapons do more damage and so even with less upgrades they can be improvements. (130^ steam saw > 236^ blade).