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Heroes Community > Heroes 5 - Temple of Ashan > Thread: Secrets of destruction revealed - playing Dungeon faction
Thread: Secrets of destruction revealed - playing Dungeon faction This thread is 61 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 ... 10 20 30 40 50 ... 57 58 59 60 61 · NEXT»
feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 21, 2007 12:32 PM bonus applied.
Edited by feluniozbunio at 22:17, 16 Apr 2007.

Secrets of destruction revealed - playing Dungeon faction

Hey

I've been playing dungeon for some time already and having some successes.That convinced me to create topic to describe strategy i use. Some things have already been said in different topics but i felt the need to create new topic for it to sum it up. There is one topic : "Dungeon the weakest faction?" but i don't think its even close to weak so i don't want to write there.

Ok , i think i can start now
In my opinion dungeon faction is much more about hero than units. Choosing right skills is vital. They are :

-exp racial skill and all perks
-exp destructive magic- secrets of destruction
-exp enlightenment - intelligence
-exp sorcery - arcane training (you dont need training if you play Sinitar)
-exp luck - soldiers luck , warlocks luck

Thats the core of my warlocks build. as you can see its quite a lot of skills. it is not so difficult to get it on large maps. on small maps you usually need to cut something but playing on smaller doesn't require that much firepower so its not really a problem. All those skills increase your magic abilities which is essential in this strategy. i have tried to play without any of those skills and its HUGE difference. There are some slots free still but it should be left   as they are unless you get all of those. Take needed perks always first because it may not appear later, the same with starting new skill tree. There might be a problem when you get basic skill needed and needed perk. Its tough call, you really need soldiers luck and empowered spells , i think rest can be sacrificed to make sure you have right core skills. Just remember that taking skills like warlocks luck can postponed because it appears almost always (or always) when you lvl up. so you don't need to worry about them.

Another thing is spells and artifacts and stats. Well, basically, its all about luck here. Generally, you look for combos: slippers+meteor shower , fire cape+fireball, icy neckless+circle of winter. Its like 90% of times you should have an artifact, than you just need right spell. If you don't have spell/artifact in your castle you need to look for them on map. If you can get two combos, do it, if your opponent get a damage reduction artifact you will just use other combo. Beside of those you need +def arifacts and whatever +def boost the map offers.

Now few words about economy. There are two things to worry about. One is crystals. You need them badly, I don't know what Nival was thinking making cost for this faction but those amounts of crystals are ridiculous. on poor maps like peninsula there is almost no way you can build all necessary buildings because crystal mine is on the middle of map (often guarded by elder druids) and you end up without upgraded creatures which suck. So keep an eye on crystal mine.
Another thing is gold. I don't know is it those artifacts that cost that much but no matter what map i play i ALWAYS end up not recruiting some stuff because of gold shortage. Matrons are just a dream. I take couple of them just to be spellcasters (not upgraded). I have found out that taking gold from EACH chest is essential to warlock. You WILL need those money eventually.

Edit: Correction here, you can take exp from some big chests in first week.  

If you are planning dragons resource silo may be considered, otherwise , don't bother - this faction needs more crystals than sulfur.

Now ill notice that i start with Yrwanna which helps a lot so if you choose different hero it may not be so effective strategy due to fewer fury numbers and them being much weaker. I know that some people see it as overkill(Doomforge) i thought the same some time ago. But Towerlord got the point, you need them strong to be effective on bigger stacks. Also, you need them strong to be able to kill all high lvl creatures like unicorns nightmares and  or hordes of minos or squires  early on (1-2 week that is). It's very dangerous to do it having 11 not boosted furies. You are not so committed to your spells and can save mana more often.

Ok now some tips and tricks about creeping. I must say i have played dungeon for very long but i still learn new techniques of creeping. Now i can creep about 3/4 guardians first week. All you really need is furies and scouts(any other creature fits here as well). One thing i found very useful is such deployment

F-All your furies A-stack of 1 scout

__
F
SS
SS
S

You can kill many things with very little losses like this.

There are some tricks with shooters too but those are needed to be careful with , ive lost all my furies twice already because of it.

You place only 5 stacks of 1 scout (if you have second hero nerably and have area spell like fireball circle of winter or better you can give him rest of your troops and go with 7 scouts only) and just blast any ranged creep with spells. You need to take into consideration total strength of your army and strength of creeps. The more advantage you have the more chance for them to be in fewer stacks . If there is 3 guys you just blast them one by one with anything, you should be left with 1 scout out of 5. if there is 4 stacks you need area spells.
Theres also ATB starting bonus danger. Even if you attacks unit with 8 initiative they may act before you and then you need to escape losing everything. So as i said its risky but sometimes its worth the effort
(one time i got slippers guarded by horde of archmages and ive killed them losing 5 scouts or so on week 3)

Quick creeping everything in sight is very important as you need crystals gold artifacts and stats badly.

About units. The force of your army are DEEP hydras and GRIM ridders. On big maps dragons kick in(ive never EVER built its upgrade in my life(did i day that those prices are insane? - i use fort very often). Now it depends on who you play against. Against necro you can be offensive as their creatures are so pathetic that with 5 luck and some morale boost you can handle them without magic even (watch out for frenzy and puppet master tho)
If you play against offensive race you need to focus on your survival.  Hydras are the key. Don't, rush just let you spells do the job. Kill low tier units with your units, spells will handle the big guys.

The beauty of this army is that on big maps you get area spells which do 1k+ damage without luck. U just need to make sure you can survive long enough to make use of them. thats why you should buy all cursing artifacts possible against might armies. I've had 3,5k meteor shower  few times and this is something one doesn't want to mess with.


 

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 21, 2007 01:40 PM bonus applied.

Yup, that's how it works Briefly.. Good job.

If you didn't got the correct spell for the correct artifact, don't panic. Yet. There's still the secrets of destruction perk which gives you a lvl 1-3 spell (along with +2 knowledge ofc). So, you have a LOT of chances to get what you need.

Also, elemental chains are suprisingly good. +30% damage on top of a 4k implosion means extra +1k damage!!! So after killing what you must (like, hunters), look for a way to trigger some chains. Strictly endgame stuff, but suprisingly good. Do I need to mention that implosion on air creature is simply WICKED SICK?

Now.. artifacts.. to be honest I'd rather buy an extra artie rather than dragons (which are good in tanking, and may even kill something, but come very late). Sar-Issus artifacts are obviously wonderful toys for warlock, but -morale or -luck artifacts also work wonders, because they let you last longer. If you have them, you may want to take only 1 tankstack with you, say, all the hydras and minos and leave the raiders and matriarchs home. The problem is to guess how long can you hold on. You will be forced to run if you run out of mana, so better try to predict how many creatures the enemy can kill before you reach 0 mana.

And, visit EVERY marletto tower and arena you see. Build up your defense. Place hydras in the corner and use the defend option for them if the enemy has a lot of big walkers. Use your army to kill whatever you can, but try to lose as little as possible in progress. Say, killing djinns with focused strike of all your units may be a nice idea, it lets you go after the titans immediately.

Another point, skill priority. The best way is to take the new skill each level up. If you are offered advanced luck and basic enlightment, take enlightment. Why? Because you already have luck and it WILL appear, sooner or later, and enlightment may be gone forever if not picked early.

My priority of upgrading skills is as follows:
- Destructive - important in earlygame so each of your spells uses the biggest damage formula possibe
next
- Sorcery - Never fight shooters/casters without this
next
- Luck - For the warlock's luck
next
- Arcane Training - very useful
next
- Warlock's luck
next
- Enlightment - nice, it may give you like +5 SP in the end, but if you take it at level 18-20, nothing bad will happen (if you can last without intelligence)
next
- Intelligence - especially good if you have a bit of knowledge already.


Finally, teh creatures:

Assassins - meat. Use 7 single assassins to attract shooters and blast them to pieces. Very good with Vayshan, too. 40+ assassins is a neat melee force in 1st weak and it has a good poisoning ability to help the creeping.
Bloodfuries - Great for exp farming. Creeping zombies, golems etc. always has the highest priority - free exp, which leads to free SP and better skills. Later on they are suprisingly good bait. Most probably the enemy will either charge with one of his fast melee stacks or kill them with some kind of ranged force. and this is GOOD! Because by doing so, he kills 80 cheap furies and saves the hydras, and in the next turn the spells fry him and he has no ranged unit to damage hydras without destroying his own formation..
And if he does not.. furies may actually score decent damage if you give them enough time. So he probably will. Furies are very cheap and it's not a problem and every turn of hydras and matriarchs being alive buys more meteor showers and implosions.
Minos - If you creep extremely fast, you may run out of cheap assassins. Minos take their place here, but it's like forcing the body to burn proteins instead of fat/carbohydrates. Do it only if there's nothing else to do, because with some +def arenas/arties minos become another nice tank, and they protect matriarchs well.
Lizards - A lucky strike of those creatures can do INSANE damage, taking their def-lowering special and warlock's ATT. So, you may even try and use them that way.. who said you need the spells only? Try to damage some treants or other high-hp creatures with them. For some reason, they never did well tanking... Their stats show them as great tanks, but they died very fast for me. Duh.
Hydras - Highest priority unit, regenerating, insane 90%+ survivability, great special (if you've blasted all the shooters away the enemy has to gang around hydras to kill them and a lucky hydra retaliation may do insane damage since it will hit every stack around it..). Get the hydra lair ASAP.
Shadow Matriarchs - very, Very, VERY, VERY useful creature for a magical warlock. Three reasons:
1.Takes care of counterspell
2.very durable!
3.if you want to use raiders, confusion may help so they will suffer only 50% dam from retaliation
4.slow. If the enemy lacks cleansing or haste (rare, but..), it will buy you a bit of extra time!
Black Dragons - if you can get them - do so. Just remember to keep them at bay, don't send them in the first turn to burn teh enemy stacks(although it's tempting to do so, but it's not heroes2/3/4 ~~). They can score big damage (with your luck, they may even do a LOT of damage), and are quite durable. Too bad they are extremely hard to get, so level5 guild has a higher priority.Unfortunately.


About the town: Get assassins and furies, than the cityhall, then resource silo, then level 3 guild. Aim for the hydras and matriarchs first, than build the rest of the dwellings (without upgrades). Deep hydra upgrade comes next, then Level5 guild, finally dragon spire if you couldn't afford it earlier and the rest of upgrades. Ofc it's not a must, sometimes it's better i.e. to get hydras faster and rush the enemy..

And the last thing, the brief strategy vs. each faction:
haven - rushes on sterile maps work fine (blow the griffins away and you're the winner..). Don't wait too long anyway otherwise, +13 cavaliers/week is deadly, and antimagic+ressurection kills like 70% damage you can do.
inferno - two words, METEOR SHOWER. With the horde of creatures (gated+normal) it's guaranteed you'll hit many stacks..
sylvan: rush'em to death, kill the hunters and it's over. Do it early
Necropolis: Bah, even with boosted numbers they won't be able to kill you before the spells will get them(usually..), not much of a problem. After all they lack morale, luck (usually again -_-), high ATT and all those things that make knights so nasty.
Academy: Do it early or face the consequences (Magic mirror, strong resistance arties, motw+ressurection and so on)
Dwarves: In lategame they will demolish you (rune of elemental immunity lasting whole combat, dwarven luck, rune of ressurection+ressurection spell.....), you MUST rush here!

that's the way of my warlocks

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 21, 2007 01:54 PM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 13:57, 21 Mar 2007.

I must say something which may be controversial. I generally don't build lvl 5 mage guild. Boosted area spells work much better. Don't need implosion most of times. (i can imagine some situation that may be very good tho, its just that most of times other things are better). Besides u still have 50% chance to get armagedon which is useless
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 21, 2007 01:56 PM

Well deep freeze will change it to 33%s

And I like implosion.

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dschingi
dschingi


Famous Hero
the guy with the dragon golem
posted March 21, 2007 01:57 PM

I'm sorry to go off topic but I have to say it:
You two seem like twin brothers to me!
Sorry again...
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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 21, 2007 02:02 PM

Were from the same country
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ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted March 21, 2007 02:08 PM
Edited by ZombieLord at 14:09, 21 Mar 2007.

Quote:
who said you need the spells only?

You did

Quote:
I must say something which may be controversial. I generally don't build lvl 5 mage guild. Boosted area spells work much better. Don't need implosion most of times. (i can imagine some situation that may be very good tho, its just that most of times other things are better). Besides u still have 50% chance to get armagedon which is useless

Agreed too expensive for a risk to get a useless spell (Armaggedon) or an almost sucky spell (Implosion)

Quote:
And I like implosion.

Implosion sucks it is rarely better than area spells (and has crazy mana costs). Just my opinion

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 21, 2007 02:16 PM

You really want to kill the master hunters.. or something similiar.. implosion is your best bet

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ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted March 21, 2007 02:23 PM

Yes I agree, but with area spells you also hit something else... even Treants may prove annoying at the end (esp. if you're out of mana)

The thing is, that Implosion doesn't do much more damage than Meteor Shower. How good is to kill twice more hunters? Are the remaining ones really THAT scary? Scary enough to make you place magic guild lvl 5 and cast a spell only on them and not on other creatures too? (and Meteor Shower has a huge range, for example)

Implosion may be good in some situations, but it's not worth the resources and risk if you ask me

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TemjinGold
TemjinGold


Known Hero
posted March 21, 2007 02:51 PM

Quote:
The thing is, that Implosion doesn't do much more damage than Meteor Shower. How good is to kill twice more hunters?


Err... I'd say killing TWICE the number of hunters is quite good...

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Pomo
Pomo


Famous Hero
The lone peasant
posted March 21, 2007 03:03 PM

But quite often there won't be twice as many to kill...
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 24, 2007 11:43 AM

Today I'm gonna play versus a great haven player on LAN (with a warlock ofc)! Prepare for screenies and wish me luck!

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ZombieLord
ZombieLord


Promising
Famous Hero
that wants your brainz...
posted March 24, 2007 11:51 AM

Good Luck May you crush those Marksm... Paladins!

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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 24, 2007 11:53 AM

Paladins. From what I heard, the guy is a paladin lover.

And he loves anti-magic.

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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted March 24, 2007 12:40 PM

Expecting the best out of you!
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Map also hosted on Moddb

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 24, 2007 05:51 PM

for me worst matchup is academy. I've played against few very good academy players and its really hard to beat good academy player. Heaven is much easier to beat.
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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 26, 2007 11:53 AM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 11:54, 26 Mar 2007.

Since i joined a clan i have had plenty of games as dungeon(all of them ) and i thought I could add few things about some matchups.

At the beginning i will make an assumption of my hero build as it can beed fount in my first post.

I'll start with Necro.

I've lost two games to this faction so far. And i think there are some lessons to be drown from those games.
First game the guy caught me while i was creeping. It wouldn't even have been bad thing because i wanted to blast some of his troops and run but unfortunately it turned out he had shackles and the match was over before it even begun.
Now, you can either take your army with you when you are planning to go close to his areas or have second heroes to sacrifice just to check if he has the shackles(assuming he has them equipped).

Ive been using "having army" strategy for quite long time and having some wins on my account.

But then there was another game. Guy had like all dark spells available + phoenix+ raise dead that was resurrecting 15 liches. Phoenix wasnt so good. it took off some pressure out of his troops , true but havent done much on its own. SLowed down  
by matrons got 2 area spells and he was done. The thing that finnished me of was frenzy + puppet master My raiders killed my hydras and he eventually took care of raiders while they couldnt retaliate. (all games before i got good resistance - 45% most of times) and usually my opponent managed to cast only 1 or 2 spells entire battle.
I did some mistakes this game(including misclicking placing meteor shower, and bad decisions during combat). By the way, that game all i really used was magic (almost no melee attacks) and i still managed to blast most things in his army. I didn't enough money to retreat early which was HUGE error. I retreated with few remaining raiders. Next day i blasted all his troops exept 2 stack of liches. i couldn't kill all of it because he ressurected one stack while i was killing the other (he got exp sorcery too) and i eventually lost due to not having enough troops. All in all this matchup is basiclly about avoiding getting frenzied or puppet mastered to death. If you can do it, you won. In few of my games i CRUSHED my opponent with might of my creatures ONLY(all of his spells were resisted). So imagine , your  troops kill him, your magic kills him, only threat is those 2 spells.  

About Heaven and Sylvan. In my few games against those factions it always have been close call. Each lucky spell counts. Each Artifact counts. Each unit counts. You just need to squeeze as much as you can  from what you can get. Those guys kill fast, you need to keep with his pressure. There is no real advice here.Kill most damaging units as fast as you can is the only thing that comes to my mind.
I can say i got lately one game where first time i saw real power of battle griffins. Those guys really tear apart everything with their morale diving.
I haven't played 3+ castle games so i don't know how this matchup would be look like on those maps. At the beginning i thought that 2 castle maps are too much advantage to those castles. After few games i think its not as bad as it may look like. All my games on Battle for honor were very close. Some of them i won and lost some too. I think those are cool matchups, very exciting.

Ill write about Academy other time.

I haven't played against inferno.. guess nobody like the castle (or is too weak). The same with Fortress.



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Elvin
Elvin


Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
posted March 26, 2007 01:44 PM

Actually both are fun to play and are quite powerful on their own right. However, inferno has a slower creeping in the first 2 weeks and fortress has excessive resource requirements. I should note that both are hard to master and require careful skill-picking.
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Doomforge
Doomforge


Admirable
Undefeatable Hero
Retired Hero
posted March 26, 2007 02:43 PM

You haven't played inferno? Well it used to be my favorite town in the beginning, but the deleb-only strategy bored me quickly. Dungeon offers a bit more fun that the plain old "rape every creep on the map with the ballista".

I'm surprised you lost against necro(IMO the weakest castle against dungoen) but to be honest I never take raiders with me against necropolis. I really don't want them to kill my hydras: Necropolis units are not very tough, so I can stall well without that extra stack of lizards, and the danger of your enemy taking control over your force doesn't exist that way. Ah yes, shackles are extremely deadly, that's why I begin to like taking some of the safety-units with me (like a few matriarchs and minos) just to be sure that I will manage to win against a mediumsized army with my spells. That's the safer way, although obviously you can't use the free townportal trick that way. Pity.

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feluniozbunio
feluniozbunio


Promising
Supreme Hero
posted March 26, 2007 03:06 PM
Edited by feluniozbunio at 15:14, 26 Mar 2007.

Quote:

'm surprised you lost against necro(IMO the weakest castle against dungoen) but to be honest I never take raiders with me against necropolis.


I know i'm a noob Overconfidence killed me.
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