[Guide] Talay NM HC Suvivial Non-Mixed Solo Clear

[Quetzalcoatl]

Hi Everyone, figured out a build that worked for me to solo Talay on NM HC Survival last night and thought I would share. This would probably be easier to do duo then solo, one person stay north, while the other roams. I'm not sure how the build would fair with more then two players though as I haven't tried this yet.

This is non-Mixed Mode.

The build: (Read rest of notes as the minions are placed in the build to see their number, not their actual position): Build

Test build: Test build I'm still working on tweaking this one. It does seem to be lower maintenance overall. I haven't had time to run it all the way to 30 yet though, made it to 24 before got DC'd from trendy and didn't have any issues with sharken pushes.

Pictures
Blue Dot (Pit East): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...B70D11E6475DC/

Green Dot (Pit West): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...D09F44D09F1CA/

Yellow Dot (Mid Level East): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...2F910867A81B8/

Purple Dot (Mid Level West): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...D39D14C373856/

Red Dot (North): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...044965FCD4D0F/

Yellow Dot (Mid Level East): http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...2F910867A81B8/

Forge: http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...4F08EAD3B3734/


My Stats:
Trapper : 1748/2214/1715/1626
Initiate : 1329/3140/1500/2223

Summoner: 1765/2434/1554/2383 242 Minion Movement Speed
EV Wall : 3643/xxx/xxx/xxx
EV Buff Beam : 2351/3232/1276/1565
DPS Monk : 1864/1884/372/1027 2336 Tower Boost / 1278 Hero Boost w/ DPS Seahorse

Since I don't actually use my countess or app builder on this map, I moved my countess armor to my summoner to give the minions better stats.


Other information:
All Minions are on buff beams with the mage being at the end furthest from the wall. Exception being the forge minions which go on the beam with the mage in the middle. You need to group them as close to each other, at the end away from the wall, as possible with a reflect beam just in front of them, between them and the wall.

All gas traps are buffed except for nothern ones (Red dot)

Don't upgrade the gas traps.

All Auras are buffed.

Purple Dot Lightning Auras should be placed so that they also hit ogres on the level below (Green Dot), once the buff beam is fully upgraded.

In general, Lightning Auras should be placed as far out as possible while still being buffed. Strength Drain Auras should be placed back slightly from the Lightning Auras so that they just barely cover the minions when the buff beam is fully upgraded, to protect them against DEW, and if a wall gets sharkened, Ogres.

For Forge Gas Trap, you need to get naked and place the trap as close to the southwest side of the crystal as possible, then gear back up and build the rest of the traps.

Ogres do sometimes wander up to the Forge Crystal from the west and start beating on the minions. The buff beam needs to be far enough away from the crystal so it doesn't get hit while you run up there to kill it. Yes you do have about 10 seconds or so to do this, in the cases I observed. So, you have to keep an eye on this area for this situtation via your map. It is rare (happened to me 3 times with run starting at wave 18 going through 30).

Ogres will occasionally wander to the yellow dot wall, but the minions there should be able to handle it. I never had to go over to the yellow dot area for any reason. Note that sometimes ogres will walk half way towards the forge crystal just to turn around and walk back to the west spawn and get stuck, so make sure not to run up to the crystal unless you really need to.

Starting at wave 20, you'll need to spend most of your time dealing with the northern crystal (Red dot).

Sharken are a problem pushing the south east wall in the north. Make sure you are up there to buff with tower buff / kill the sharken when they are out.

The other problem spot is the purple dot starting around wave 27, occasionally sharken will get through here as well if the minions are busy with ogres at the wall. My minions were able to deal with 1 ogre at a time just fine in this situation, but if you see two, you need to run (fan jump) down there and heal up the mage / kill the ogres.

Its a proxy build unfortunately, couldn't spare the extra DU, so around every 1000 or so mobs killed, at least for my trap health, you will need to run south and heal up the green dot's proxy trap then run back north again, the rest should be fine until the the ogre phase at the end (ogre phase explained later on). I normally have tower boost going when doing this to heal up the auras down there while I'm repairing the trap, but this wasn't actually needed.

Ogre phase: This build's other annoying point is that Ogres get stuck on the top level in the west. This makes it so that once all the other mobs are dead, there are still 80 ogres to kill, 6 at a time. Making waves take any where from 17 minutes (~wave 24) to 40 minutes (wave 30). Wave 18 through 30 took 5.5 hours. Once all the mobs except ogres are dead run around and repair all the proxy traps. You need to go and aggro these ogres after all the mobs are done and drag them to the west wall of the north crystal (red dot).

You need to play a DPS char (preferably monk) for this so you can plug any holes created by sharken and boost auras / minions.

I welcome any feedback you have. I'm also curious how low of stats this will work with. Good Luck.

[squireal]

Great write up. Thanks for sharing. Will try it later today.

[zingfharn]

We tweaked some stuff on our build last night, and fitted harps (as per jenslars suggestion) to north, but didn't buff both walls. Harps shooting down both lanes combined with a 6 DU buff so that defences can be placed far enough from the walls not to get hit make north total AFK.

Given your reliance on prox mines, you'll struggle to find DU for that, but I've found prox again and again to be lacking punch. I've got a similar EV buffer and a better trapper, and mine buffed do 220k every 0.84s (260k DPS), although only right in the centre. As you get towards the edges, damage goes down. And you need to keep refilling them.

A proton beam is getting more like 46k every 0.09s (500k DPS) at 1 less DU and doesn't need babysitting. Assuming the prox is there to speed up ogre death, then you'll find way better utility through protons.

Also, purple dot, you shouldn't ever see slippage. Assuming purple is mid level west (above the pit). From your picture I can't work out where and how you've set up at all. But, if it helps, Shary grabbed some pics last night and put them in his thread. This is what we have there. Nothing ever slips (and the reflect is buffed so ogres pretty much kill themselves).

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/57...FA1969D2F57EB/

As for sharken bumping north, it's because your gas is too close.
Simple rule: If you can buff the gas with a beam that's just touching a wall, the gas is too close to effectively stop sharks. Also, buffed gas doesn't increase the gas range, just the trigger range. So while it might seem like a wise idea, it's rarely effective in practice.

Here's what ours looks like in case it helps:
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/...A261941844924/

Last night, no knocks.

Anyway, I hope you find some of that useful. Regardless, great build, and gratz on clearing solo.

[Sharyza]

Hi,

first off: congrats to clearing solo. From looking at your build and my own experience on that map I'm going to throw in some ideas here:

Your northern defense:
The left wall really doesn't need to be 3 wide. Instead you could go with a 2DU wall and make that buff beam 1DU longer, so you can stack your monsters a lil bit better. Also, you don't need a 5 DU wall west, 4DU was always enough for us and we had no bugging ogres or anything.
Overall north frees 1-2 DU whether you go for that longer buff beam or not.

East: The wall with only 3 DU seems bold but i like it and will try that

Pit: The left wall also doesn't need to be 5DU in my opinion but zing might beg to differ

Overall: You can either free 3 DU up and use it somewhere else (a second gas trap top?, just something) or shift 1 DU north to buff beam and one to the eastern wall (just to be safe) or leave it as it is since it seems to work out for you.

[Quetzalcoatl]

@zingfharn: Thanks for the input. I'll give proton beams a try. Yes, the proxies are there to speed up ogre killing / DEWs except at the green dot, where they are for killing mobs as well. I'll try that and see if I can to get a harp up north to help with sharken. Would be nice if I could get north a bit more afkable as you have found with your build. For the north, I've put my gas traps so they are to the edge of the lightning aura's range, but still get bumps unfortunately. I think a harp will help there as the lightning aura just isn't enough unless boosted with them having 2.2mil hit points at wave 30. Thanks for the info on gas traps and buff beams. I never realized that they didn't get a range boost only a trigger boost. I'm going to try moving out the gas traps in the problem spots some more and see if that helps with sharken. Yes, the purple dot is the west mid level. I'll take a look at Sharyza's pics.

@sharyza: Thanks for the suggestions. Yeah the 3DU wall and 5DU wall were just a place to spend the remaining 2 DU as I couldn't figure out a use for them and I always forget about proton beams. I never had any issues with east when it is back that far, I never actually had to pay attention to it. The lightning auras will kill any mobs and ogres can't fit through the gap, but the wall has to be placed just right. I'll see if I can get the left pit wall to be 4 and still not have issues with ogres.

Thank you both for the suggestions, this gives me several ideas to try out and see if it gets easier.

[inanimateobject07]

I cleared this map earlier basing the build off your. Nice build overall. However, at the forge, I had to add a wall at west because ogres did come a lot of times. Also I added a wall on the west side of the yellow dot. I'm really curious, why do u not have a wall there since ogres/ mobs come there alot?

[Gilgehmesh]

Why not upgrade gas traps?? Just curious. I find upgrading gas traps help reduce problems with sharkens and Djinns.

[Quetzalcoatl]

I cleared this map earlier basing the build off your. Nice build overall. However, at the forge, I had to add a wall at west because ogres did come a lot of times. Also I added a wall on the west side of the yellow dot. I'm really curious, why do u not have a wall there since ogres/ mobs come there alot?

Congrats on clearing it

I don't have a wall at the forge because the lightning aura and minions take care of all the mobs. As for the ogres that come to the forge, I've found my minions are strong enough to take them out, without my intervention, as long as its just one at a time and the minions are out far enough so that the crystal doesn't get hit when the ogre hits them. First time I cleared it I only got 3 ogres to the forge. Last time it was only 2, and they were actually both taken out before I got there because I noticed them right around when my minions killed them. No crystal damage at all.

For the yellow dot west, this should be covered by the purple dot build. The only thing that should come west of the yellow dot are spiders. Sorry if it isn't clear from the picture, this map is hard to show which level things are on. Both yellow and purple are on the mid level. While green and blue are the pit level.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Why not upgrade gas traps?? Just curious. I find upgrading gas traps help reduce problems with sharkens and Djinns.

The reason I don't upgrade gas traps is because if they have no upgrades djinn will just float right over them, instead of trying to desummon them, to get to other defenses and get caught in them when they reset again. However, this requires them to be able to reset in the time it takes for a djinn to cross from one side of the trigger to the other. The reduction in reset time isn't really that significant between an un-upgraded and fully upgraded gas traps. This has been my experience anyway.

[Quetzalcoatl]

Added Test build to OP. I''m still working on it though, but maybe someone will find it easier to use It definitely seems lower maintenance so far.

Also ran talay NM pure strategy last night (not with this build). Was quite a bit easier then survival and took less time. Got 2 Pet rocks that had 450-550 stats on towers base before upgrades, so while they aren't the 600 you can get from Survival NM HC, they are still decent and should be doable with lower stats, and you should be able to get at least 1 of their stats to 600 with upgrades. I'll work on writing up a guide for that if anyone is interested.