Dungeon Defense: Invasion of Heroes — Guide, Tips and Tricks

Contents

Dungeon Defense Guide — Team

Main

Your main character has, roughly, the power of two mercenaries (each merc has 52% of the hero’s power, but if you have legendary merc and merc king talents, each merc has 69% of the hero’s power), so you should prioritize promotions and skill bonuses on them first. However, focus your medals on upgrading your legendary accessories before promoting (The reason your main does most of the damage is that whoever hits the hardest will predominate the damage done by a disproportionate amount—for a variety of reasons which we haven’t nailed down yet).

in the beginning, whoever you get your first legendary necklace with, you should run with (make the most of having an awakened character AND their legendary necklace)
Of all the starting character’s Snake seems to be the best damage dealer.
Orc’s awakening is very helpful because his vanguard skill will double your dungeon HP, and he is also very powerful against bosses.

Later on, the strongest leaders would be Nameless, Mr. Blade, Love (with short circuit talent for bosses) and…among the Spirits, nature is probably the strongest because of bash, but fire is also a good choice (If you lead with water, you can’t do tower 29, and with dark, your special will sacrifice too much life.)
Eye does great mass damage but is not as good for bosses, so Day 1 will be harder. He will become very powerful once his unique skills are maxed out, though.

Party Choices

Character Guide.

Remember you can swap out members late game if they use the same weapon (or once you have special enhance from the hell store. This will let you select a weapon to get enhanced anytime an equipped weapon of a higher level gets enhanced.). However, the skill points will be (more or less) evenly distributed, which isn’t optimal.
Scientist is very important: Slime, Eye, Light Spirit
Bank skill increases bank’s income 175%! Get it from: Wraith, Water Spirit

Builder is essential: Orc, Ogre, Nature Spirit
Bounty Hunter can bring in significant income when paired with $ rings and necklaces. The Skeleton and Living sword are, as of v1.91.6, probably the weakest in battle, so switch them out late game once you have special enhance (As of 1.92 Living sword seems stronger, especially with water dungeon bonuses)
Healers are helpful, but Sunstar’s healing is currently underpowered. Death’s is strong when you have his legendary accessories. Snake’s healing is only going to get you a little health back. Nature’s regeneration is however, very powerful and helpful.

Good mass damage dealers are Eye, Love, Ogre with Legendary necklace, Nameless, and (kind of?) Awakened Slime
If you’re running hell with Nameless as your main, keep in mind that some characters will benefit from the penetration bonus if you have awakened skeleton—this excludes dimensional attacks (Blade, Sunstar), lasers (Eye), and lightning (Love).
Once you are earning hellstones, running with Orc and Ogre is nice because they can both benefit from the Huge Weapons skill bonus. The same goes for Flame lance and fireballs for Wraith and Slime, and assassinate with Snake and Goblin

Love is very powerful, but Eye is very useful because of his scientist skill and can also do excellent mass damage. Eye is also cheaper to promote, and doesn’t cost 200 hellstones!
While you might find Mr. Soul a bit more powerful than Wraith, he is no banker. once you start promoting it is good to focus on 5 or 6 characters (bounty hunters being the 6th, and you should promote last)
Try to balance your physical and magical weapons to deal with mutations, armored and magic enemies, and have an easier time with certain trials. (Also consider mods: daggers are better for anti-magic mods (905%!) and swords would be better for rend, taking advantage of the anti-armor skill)

Recommended Parties, starting with Main

Note that once you have special enhance, you can start with a bounty hunter and sub them out when it gets tough. Make sure you have a builder (Orc/Ogre/Nature), and until you can inherit weapons, a blacksmith.

Starting Party: Snake/Orc with wraith, slime, and ogre/orc (bash is very useful!)
Using Orc as a main at some point would be good to give him more talent exp—no matter what your party composition is late-game, having master builder sooner will considerably improve the ‘boot time’ of your runs.

Orc/Snake with Ogre/Snake/Goblin/Orc, Wraith, Slime/Eye (research), Living sword/skeleton (Bounty hunter)

Blade/Eye with Orc, Wraith, Eye/Blade, Ogre (great use of hell store upgrades)
Snake/Orc with Snake/Orc, Wraith, Slime/Eye, Goblin (make the most of assassinate in hell store. Water dungeon: Sub wraith and slime for ogre and Mr.Soul?)
Nameless with Orc, Wraith, Eye, Living Sword or Slime/Eye

Blade/Nameless, Love, Slime, Wraith, Orc
Love, slime, wraith, orc, ogre (great use of hell store upgrades)
Love main (dmg×3,rend,magic,asp mod), blade (cri, Aspx5 mod), ogre (axe, aspx6 mod), wraith (wand, duplicate love mod), goblin (dagger, dmgx5, ASP mod). For late days, 600+ I swap wraith with snake Special mod (dagger, dmgx5, ASP mod) (thanks, Wesley L., G+ community)

Consider slime as a replacement for Goblin, at least in the beginning, for scientist bonus, and some players have found better results with slime (Thanks, XymnalaSylph)

The Spirits are a very strong and balanced team. Lead with Nature if you are going past day 800 (take advantage of bash in both regular attacks and the festival special…frequent mutation skill loads also help keep waves at bay. This might actually be the stronger choice after day 800, when you can focus on bash) Otherwise, use fire as your main.
They are the most expensive to promote, but you do get to focus your hellstones on only one skill. And, even at level 80 they can easily outpower level 120 tier one / starting characters, even though they both clock in at half a billion medals, and despite the damage bonuses of promotion levels 100 & 120)

Smells Like Team Spirit

Fire might be your strongest main, because of his crit damage bonus when enraged. On the other hand, Nature’s bash skill is strong late game, and more frequent mutations help keep the enemy at bay—especially ranged attackers. The bash also works with the elemental festival, of course.

Nature’s mutation skill works against all bosses! Yes, even tower bosses! It just…takes a while.
If you begin your run with a bounty hunter for $$$, you can leave their weapon unequipped until you want their help (change up your special enhance every once in awhile between their weapon and Dark’s katar) which will save you some money. If you use skeleton as your bounty hunter, then you can give him hand me downs from light spirit.
Since promotions are so expensive, focus on your main and make the most out of it in the hell store raising hero atk and elemental blast (which will also help your mercs). Increase your merc attack in the hell store enough that you will be able to take on towers 28 and 29 in particular.

Promote Water after your main, because she’s all alone on level 29, and the only one with a magic weapon for -physical damage mutations. Additionally, her medicinal steel is very effective (Give nature 10 implosions for extra opportunities to stun, as well as use an axe with asp mods)
Tower 29 you really have to play defensively. Put the all skills necklace on nature for a bump in regen, 4 defense rings and the defense necklace. (The nature dungeon or dark for this. Dark is probably better at first because it’s easy to get 10 defensive talents and the HP bonuses are so high, which makes Nature’s healing work even better)
Generally, balance hell store purchases between hero and merc attack, but put a little more in elemental blast (especially now with talent bonuses!). If your main is at a higher promotion level, then focus on hero atk, but once you have 2 or more spirits at the same promotion level, focus on merc attack being higher.

Promotions

Focus on promoting your main first, then your mass damage dealer (eye, love, slime, ogre, death)
Promote bounty hunters last since they are the weakest
If you can’t beat the bosses on hard to get the “by day x” bonuses (except maybe tower 28 or 29), then you should probably drop down to an easier difficulty level. Insane is even better, with triple the rewards if you can manage by the bonus date. —Note that the difficulty on insane ramps up with Tick-Tock and again at the trial of strength. It may be worth it to focus on beating Floor 26 by day 800, and finishing the last 3 trials on hard for the bonus, because the last 3 are so much more challenging on insane.

Some character cost more to upgrade, so there may be a stretch where it’s better to have a level 60 orc then it is a level 60 nameless, even if nameless is your main.
Generally, focus on promoting one character at a time and getting them to the next unlock before moving to another one.
Each promotion level increases a character’s overall damage by 1%; at level 100 this would stack with the 50% bonus to make 150%. (Thanks Vince T. for research)

Promotion costs and other goodies can be found in this tool.

Equipment

Weapons

The blacksmith mod is essential for making your modifications much, much more powerful. Combine with the all skills necklace for a little extra. Note that you only need the blacksmith mod trait when you are modding a weapon. The weapon is permanently enhanced with the benefit from the blacksmith mod.
Before you can auto sell weapons, max out the weapons store quickly so you can have a check back for high quality legendary weapons early game. Tip: You can change the filter to sort the weapons according to their quality% for the inventory and the store.

It is less than a 0.1% damage increase if you upgrade a 99.90% weapon versus a 99.99% weapon. After you’ve reached hell you can afford to raise the max quality of a weapon beyond 100%, so it is not recommended to spend too much time finding a ‘perfect’ weapon.
Recommended loadout for mods:
- You might want a crit mod in the beginning, but once you have maxed out the rebirth store’s crit bonus, you will have 80% crit rate. Once you are in hell and have +20 mods, it’s a waste for 20%, given that rampage and fire dungeons can increase your crit rate too.
- The best damage output is from 4x dam, 2x asp (except for bows: replace asp with reload). If you are struggling with the -reload mutation, then switch out an asp for reload, and put some rebirth stones into mutations 🙂
- If you want to use another mod, like crit, rend, or anti-magic, then the best damage output is neck and neck between 4x dam and 1x asp, or 3x dam and 2x asp. More damage will help against reload mutation whereas the asp will hurt; more asp will help against -attack speed mutations. Overall, 4x dam and one asp seems a better fit, but this may also depend on the weapon type—monster weapons are already very fast.
- Generally, Crit, Asp, Reload (once you are in hell), and the rest damage.
- Late game, if you have a character with rampage you will probably only need crit mods for trial #30.
- Asp is also very helpful with skills that accumulate damage or generate extra damage for the party, like Blade upon criticals, or stun and suppress when used with the water dungeon. Usually in 10 waves you’ll never get to full power unless you hike up your attack speed (Thanks, Wesley T.)
- Reload speed will become an issue with day 900+ mutations in hell. If you have a character with the party skill “moment,” or Slime’s concentrate & scribe, then you might replace reload with damage, or consider having at least a couple mercs having reload mods to give you that versatility.

Consider having your main focus on normal enemies (14/21 enemy types), and your mercs to focus on armored (3/21) and magical (4/21). These mage and knight killers would also do well to have giant slayer talents for bosses.
- Daggers with an anti-magic mod can get 905% antimagic. Consider having someone with an anti-magic staff or monster weapon, working with the anti-magic skill. This will give you two mage killers, and help you in case of -75% physical/magical weapon mutations.
- Wands with an anti-armor mod also give very high vs. armor damage. If you have two mages, give one an anti-magic staff and the other an rend wand. Also, give a physical weapon a rend mod: javelins have 60% against armor, blunts 50%, axes 35%, and Katar’s 30%. Any of these, when combined with anti-armor skill, will be powerful against armored enemies.

Accessories

You can only buy a ring or necklace when you don’t already have it, so if you want to have more than one of a ring or necklace, buy it sooner than later (but for accessories earned through achievements, you are limited to owning one only!).
Accessories you will make use of forever, with maxed out stats:
- Necklace MK-22, 30% experience and Gold (from battle only, multiplies with bounty hunter skill)
- Necklace MK-14 +3 All skills. This is useful for many, many things.
  - Level 6 potential, useful for building skills quickly, especially builder, scientist, blacksmith & bank
  - Reduce actual build cost by an additional 12% with builder level 76
  - 6% bank bonus from bank skill level 88
  - -27% repair costs for repairman, and +.03% natural healing for (Nature spirit only) The healing boost is helpful on tower fights you are playing defensively, especially level 29.
  - Additional modification boosts for blacksmith skill
  - Fire spirit haste to 23%, if you are speed grinding this doesn’t hurt.
  - So many shurikens for living sword. Consider other skills that max out at 10 or fewer levels.
- Necklace MK-41 +250 health, +15% evade. This is useful to put on your main in tower lvl 28&29
- Necklace Mk-43 +60% daily research, +75% gold.
- Ring MK-1 +200 health, 10% evade, 10% damage reduction. Also very useful for tower 28&29 for characters that can’t do any damage. (You’ll want 3 or 4 of these)
- Ring MK-2 +65% gold, 20% damage. Put one of these on every party member as long as you can to increase your income, especially when combined with bounty hunter skill.

Focus on acquiring and levelling up your legendary necklaces and rings before promoting much—you’ll get more out of it.
For those using Ogre because of the synergy between his necklace, which makes his “huge weapon penetrates indefinitely” and stun skills, the necklace effect has been replaced with % damage increase per penetration in the most recent patch. The effect description in the English version has not been updated, so it will still show “huge weapon penetrates indefinitely.” This slightly reduces Ogre’s utility as a stunner.

Dungeon Builds

Day 1, buy what pays for itself in a day—a few banks and statues, depending on your achievements and light dungeon levels. Purchase more after you have the 15% reduction from architecture research.

At first, Focus on statues and then banks (especially after stock market), mixing in labs and exp bonus (relaxation room? ok…).
- As long as your battles are very easy, don’t spend on hp and regen until it’s dirt cheap. Build up Hp as needed for tower fights. Start building regen more intentionally if you are ending battles without full health.
- Don’t use dungeon repair. Regen is far, far cheaper. If you find yourself using it a lot in the first 20 days, you may want to drop a difficulty level or change something else up.
- Don’t forge training unless you need it, or its dirt cheap…or you want to take on the tower bosses early so you can just let it run on its own for awhile.
So long as all the achievements are earned and the bank skill is maxed out, the best income results from a 1 Statue to 2 Banks Ratio.
Consider having Orc or Ogre in your party for their miner talent, if only for the first 100ish days—it will make enhancements much cheaper so you can focus on banks, statues, labs, and relaxation rooms.

Keep auto item sale on “do not sell” until you get an auction house. Then switch to “sell all except legendary.” You’ll need to buy 5-10 extra storage around day 20—they should be pretty cheap by then, though.
However far you think you are going to make it on your run, stop buying banks and statues about 300 days before. The lifetime profit from your investment is likely less than the cost of your upgrade. Use this tool to calculate if you like.
Once you have AI build, activate the nature dungeon with your builder wearing the all skills necklace (12% build cost reduction!)
- AI Builder: The easiest way to maintain the 1:2 ratio is to build 1 statue and 2 banks with 3 or 4 repeats. AI Builder cannot maintain this ratio forever, however. This order will eventually lead to more statues, for example 1100 statues to 2000 banks; this is more profitable than 1000 statues and 2200 banks, however, so this IS the best order. At that point however, just flip their order in the AI builder for a few hundred days or until the balance is restored.
- Always prioritize banks and statues with AI build, however. Once you are around the last 300 days of your run, switch AI build off and go to light dungeon (for statue bonus) and focus on buying HP and regen only.
- Starting ratio: labs 1, bank 3, statue 2, relaxation room 1 (change order if you like, but this tends to keep a good balance of experience and economic gains)

When you are no longer buying banks, switch to light dungeon for statue bonuses, and put the all skills necklace on your banker. (6% increase in banks…but remember to turn off AI build!)
Elemental Dungeons: Although it will slow you down some, switching between light and nature in the early days will give you a stronger start. I’d recommend doing so at least until training kicks in (day 18ish) or your auction house is ready (day 33), or day 80ish when you have bank maxed (because statues generate so much of your income until then) to as late as day 100 if you are still new to the difficulty level and could use greater income.

Laboratory

Research points are never lost, so if you earn 500 research points in a day and the project you are researching only costs 150RP, you have 350 left to apply to your next project. So, consider doing doing a small project before a big one; you might be able to get both done in the same amount of days.

Extra mod research is useless if you are using legendaries as their slots are already maxed out.
Research bonuses don’t apply the day you complete research, but for the battle/day following. So the day before stock market completes, you are still probably better buying (huge) statues.
Recommended research plan (early game):
- Architecture, mini bank, calculator, mall, education…
Mid Game (max necklace, scientist)
- Phase 1: Architecture, mall, education, mini bank, calculator, guild, guild bank, mine (fast, leftover goes to next), huge statue, supply, smith, armor+, scope, stock market,
- Phase 2: magic+, training, battle exp, anvil, enhanced stone, hospital (fast), ancient statues, dungeon flag (fast), auction house
Late game: (maxed out research, max necklace, scientist)
- Phase 1, $ in 10 days: architecture, mall, education (exp bonus!), mini bank, calculator, guild, guild bank, huge statue, mine (fast, leftover points go to next one), stock market,
- Phase 2, 9 days: supply, smith, armor+, scope, magic+, training (day 18, equip high level inherited weapons), battle exp, anvil, enhanced stone (now a good time to start auto-enhancing)
- Phase 3: Ancient statues, auction house (& switch from do not sell to sell all except legendary) and shoot for whatever will increase your damage most.

Reincarnation Bonuses

Rebirth Store

You start collecting rebirth stones after day 100 and earn increasingly more each day, capping out at day 1000.

Features: Focus on the these first as they will help you save time/free you up.
- Autobattle or Double Speed > Faster enemy spawn
  - Auto-battle allows frees you from having to do anything in battle, but initially autobattle reduces your damage by 50%. You can reduce that penalty via the Ruby Store, or temporarily disable it so long as you are touching the screen to manually attack (until you have the penalty at 0, you should do this for bosses, the end of endless waves, or whenever you struggle on a run.

Stat Upgrades:
- Phase 1 normal to insane: balanced upgrade: research power, weapon damage, boss damage, crit rate, crit damage, attack speed, reload speed, daily enhancements and mastery requirement,
- Phase 2 end/god: level + in new game, gold in new game, dungeon max hp, dungeon hp regen, item selling price, more weapon damage
- Phase 3 Early Hell: inventory cap (keep all your loot until you have auction house), more weapon damage
- Phase 4 More Hell: weapon damage, damage reduction, item max quality.
  - For the most efficient way to increase weapon damage and % quality use this tool from the community on Google Plus.
- Phase 5 Suck it Orpheus: same as before, but when you find yourself able to beat all the bosses on time but getting a lot of game overs after day 850, you should invest in mutant growth inhibition.

Team: For achievements, you’ll definitely want sunstar and nameless. You’ll likely want Eye in your party. Blade tends to be more powerful than Nameless, especially against bosses, but these characters get tweaked between versions and everyone has a preference. They are both strong. (note: for blade, get at least 1 crit and 2+ asp mods to be sure he maxes out his crit bonuses for prey.)
Here is a simple, but precise tool to calculate if it is worth it to upgrade max item quality or bonus weapon damage. It breaks down to this, however: Divide your bonus weapon upgrades by 100. That’s how many WBU upgrades 1 max item quality upgrade is worth. Estimate the cost and compare for the best value.

Ruby Store

Ruby stones come from Endless waves.

CAUTION do not upgrade starting weapon level before reading:
- 1) You should upgrade weapon level requirements and starting level to max before you even think about the starting weapon level upgrade. Even then, max damage reduction and put some points into boss damage. These all benefit day 1 and your entire run.
- 2) For day 1, your hero is given a random level 60-100 weapon which will still have higher DPS than your inherited weapon until you have ~25 upgrades. So plan on saving 15,000+ rubies for it. (Thanks, Mike S.) ruby upgrade chart
- 3) Once you upgrade the level of inherited weapons your mercs will not be able to use them until later, which can weaken your start. Your main will have to be strong enough to go the first ~20 days more or less on their own.
- 4) Once you start, consider stopping for a bit at level 63. If you follow my research plan, by the time you have training you’ll be able to equip them on your team the same day—and before the first tower fight.

Recommended Upgrades:
- Phase 1 normal to insane: Inherit a weapon or two: It’s a pain to mod at first, and you want to keep your 99.9x’s weapons.
  The auto-features are all helpful, with the exception of auto-repair.
  Put a little in +character damage, dungeon damage reduction, and boss damage.
- Phase 2 end/god: Once you you have some good rings, unlock them. Stop at 5 inherited weapons, then add more to auto battle and boss damage, and awaken your party, with your main last (since they can awaken at level 400) Make sure you have legendary ring and necklace for your hero, max them out for day 1.
- Phase 3: Once you have special enhance from hell store, you definitely want 6 inherited weapons, but you may want more to play with different characters. Continue with phase 2. Before upgrading inherited weapon’s starting level, save up rubies. Once you upgrade, your mercs will be weak, so you need a high level item for your main to counteract that. 15,000 rubies will get you level 50 weapons to start.
- Phase 4: Once you have level 200 inherited weapons, you may as well get 30 of them, that way you can sell them for some extra money at the beginning (You’ll more than 4x your investment by selling immediately versus waiting for the auction house)

Hell Store

Collect hellstones manually from the hellstone button in your notebook. You will get hell stones for hitting target days a number of times. 1x, 1x, 2x, 2x, 3x, 3x, 4x, 4x, 5x, 5x, (and then 6x? Not sure since update)

Phase 3: +9 to max mod level! Cheap and empowering.
- Damage reduction will cost you 360 to max out. If you are finding you go from full health to game over quickly, spend some stones here.
- Prioritize hero ATK and their skill bonuses before over your mercs.
- If you are running with Orc AND Ogre, they both benefit from huge weapons. Same for Snake and Goblin with assassinate, and to some degree with Wraith and Slime’s fire magic.
- Best features: no mod level drop (guaranteed mod upgrade!), special enhance (lets you sub out your weak bounty hunter because you’ll have another weapon ready), and AI build.
Phase 4: Love is pretty expensive to unlock until you get to hell 5 or so. It’s probably better to power up eye’s auxiliary laser with those 200 stones. (But hey, the reset is there…however, it’s only free at first, then it costs rubies, starting at 1000.)
Going back to party composition a moment, consider investing in skills that multiple characters can use—huge weapons make for a strong Orc & Ogre combination. If you run with Snake as your main, then replace your bounty hunter with the Goblin in late game to make the most out of assassination.
If your hero and mercenary attack bonuses in the hell store are equal, then each merc will do nearly half the damage of your main. Altogether, however they do 2.08 times the damage of your main. This means that you should upgrade hero attack and promote your main, then focus on skills and promote your mercs, and then once two or more mercs are on the same promotion tier as your main, bring merc attack up to par with hero. The exception here might be when pushing to a new difficulty, you’ll want your hero to be stronger since they are the only ones who can use your inherited weapons in the first days. (But then if you’re struggling that much on day 1 you probably aren’t ready for the next difficulty)
- Use this tool to calculate the ratio between your base hero and merc’s damage (does not account for promotion levels or hell store skill upgrades)
- I did a number of trials of this, based on comparable weapons, levels, and equal promotion levels on a party of spirits. Comparing a group with a level 30 upgraded hero vs. 30 mercs, the mercs outperform by 10-15 days. Spending the same amount of hellstones, however, gets each up to upgrade level 21 and 17-22 days beyond the hero maxed out.
“I have confirmed that huge weapon bonuses does not work with [Nameless’ immense] sword. I have also confirmed that penetration bonuses does not work with Mr Eye and Ogre with necklace. I have confirmed that soulbomb skill increases damage of soulbomb but used mercenary cap and is based off of mr death staff, instead of main character damage at 50% (necklace proc)” (Source: Wesley L., G+ Community)
Hell Store upgrades costs and planning tool.

Elemental Dungeons

It’s hard to confirm this, but between dev comments and anecdotes, Elemental dungeons gather experience in 100 day increments and also cap out at day 1000. Higher levels of difficulty have higher rewards.

Once you pick an element, you are stuck with it until you either get the seed at the top of the skill tree, or buy the IAP to get all the seeds (a pretty good investment, imho)
ONLY the selected dungeon’s talents apply. So no 40% reduction to building and doubling of statue income at the same time 🙁
Yes it is going to take a long time to get those seeds, but experience does go up more at higher difficulties.
The active dungeon gets 100% experience when you reincarnate; seeds get 50% (Thanks, Kus3)
Once you have a spirit you can unlock a new dungeon, but stick it out and earn that seed so your dungeon can earn experience passively.
You get more EXP for the selected dungeon on rebirth, compared to the seeded dungeons. It doesn’t matter what dungeon you use during play, just the day# and the selected dungeon before you reincarnate.

Recommendations:

1st) start with nature for the builder bonus. The damage reductions are also useful against tower bosses.
2nd/3rd) Go to fire or light. Fire is going to be a strong offensive dungeon for the rest of the game (although nature will get very powerful too). Light dungeon will let you double statue income which is also pretty handy….Personal preference.
4th) Water can be very powerful if your characters can stun or slow, but it’s real damage potential doesn’t open up until you have 30+ talents.
5th) Dark’s massive HP gains can be useful for bosses. If you have a healer in your party, then the defense talent can be very useful, as you can hover some at very high defense. The dark hunts damage bonus to normal enemies doesn’t seem to apply to the last 3 trial bosses, which is a shame. This dungeon is versatile, but I can’t say we’ve found a best use for it yet. Note: Gangrenous plague is lowers enemy current HP, not max HP, so this synergizes with fester wound. With both maxed out, you will start out with (theoretically, I’m not sure how if it’s a 1:1 calculation) a 30% ATK bonus against every enemy (also works against trial bosses, although it appears more like 15% than 30.)

Dungeon Talent Recommendations

Fire: #1 fierce flames, #2 burning flames, fiery fury, (fissure if you aren’t putting crit mods on your weapons) #3 flame shield, #4 fissure, ignite flame storm (note: you will get haste from the fire spirit eventually. It will speed up your run, but only at the end, since you should be using light and nature for as long as you possibly can to maximize income—otherwise you’re nerfing your end-run…or maybe you are overpowered and should head to the next difficulty level?)
- Flame shield appears to max out at +60% defense with a party crit rate of 500%. (Thanks Benholio)
- Fire dungeon’s haste is more effective than Dark Gate in terms of saving time, but if you want speed you might consider including fire spirit, even if temporarily.
Water: #1 water drench, #2 undersea hunt, #3 raging tides, smithereens, #4 freeze/water pressure
Nature: #1 Nature Scenery, #2 tree bark, power of life, one point in impact soak, blossoming life, #3 thick roots, more impact soak. (You might want herbs, but if you have nature spirit, reset and put those points in blossoming life)
Light: Light barrier x1, flash x9, Statues, #3 Light blessing, resist pain x1, Divine land, moat / unified strength
Dark: this really depends on how you are playing…
- If you want to grind with Dark Gate, we can say that the you still acquire the gold and experience you would have gotten without it activating.
- If you want to use it against bosses, #1 dark protection, #2 fester (mix with dark pact if you are herocentric), dark moat, #3 toss up: gangrenous or dark pact, depending on your team and if you are using it for tower 28 and 29. (And if you have nature spirit, dark madness is not as useful)
- Endless: #1, dark protection, dark hunt, #2 dark moat, monster hunt, dark madness/dark pact, #3 cursed land (for ranged attackers), fester wound OR gangrenous plague

Character Talents

As of v1.92.2, all mercenaries will get 10% of the talent xp that your main acquires. Once your main has the fateful talent, then everyone on your team earns 50% of their talent xp. (Talent resets are being prepared in a later update, thanks Dev!) For specific character talents, please see the character guide. But in regards to general talents:

Resurface memory makes a huge difference. If you apply it to your main hero, then you can fire and rehire your mercs at that level. (I would recommend having your mercs invest in dragon slayer instead)
Dragon slayer also increases damage to trial bosses! (Thanks, Wesley L.)
Legendary Mercenary only works if your are a mercenary, and Mercenary king only works if you are the main. It would be nice to have them be interchangeable, but the dev clearly made two separate talents here, so he has his reasons 🙂
Fateful group—if you earn this for 1 character, does it earn it for EVERYONE? Unknown.
Some
- Trials increase exp the same, no matter the trial difficulty
- The farther you get in endless waves, the more exp you get. It’s totally worth running waves a few times in case you go on a spree and push 5-10 waves further (and after day 1000, you can run multiple waves in one day)
- In the case of trial 30 at least, the earlier you beat the trials, the more exp you get (61 days .009 gain, 8 days .005 gain. (unknown if this is still true if you can continue days past trial 30)
- the higher your # of days, the more exp you get. (day 1119=0.654, day 1147:0.671, day 1172:0.683)
- So if you reincarnate and a bit short of getting another talent, you can reload and try getting a few more days or to try your luck with endless waves a few more times—getting 20 days and 10 waves farther made a difference of .14, as one example.

Progressing through Difficulties

In the Beginning

Focus on accomplishing as many achievements and quests as you can, like getting to level 20 with every character. These achievements give their own bonus but will also increase your statue income significantly.
After earning the easier achievements on one difficulty and, push the next difficulty level what achievements to earn a few more achievements, then drop back down to get the harder achievements. If you can get to day 300 on one difficulty, you can probably get to day 100 in the next. (at least that’s what our models predict for hell level difficulties…can anyone confirm?)
Have a blacksmith in your party so you can mod your weapons more effectively. Ogre’s miner skill will also reduce the price of modding. Before you reincarnate, mod and enhance as many weapons as you can afford (for achievements).
While you might be able to skip easy, you will miss out on 150 rebirth stones. (Is this worth it? I’m not sure what the reincarnation rewards are on easy/normal anymore)
If you luck out with a legendary accessory, consider running with the character who can use it as your main. Focus on enchanting it before promoting much.
At first, auto-battle will drop your main’s attack by 50%, but by simply touching the screen you get 100% damage; so there is no need to turn the feature off.

General

If you can, time your runs so you get to day 900+ around bedtime, you can let your party slog through as far as they can overnight. It’s no time for you, but they’ll be stronger for the endless waves.
Elemental dungeon exp and rebirth stones cap at 1000. In terms of rebirth stones, reaching day 500 earns you about a 1/5th of what day 1000 will get you, but the rewards ramp up from there.
There is little point in going past day 1000 except to strengthen your party so you can get more rubies from endless waves.
Guild rehire vs. economic boon: Once you have guild research, you can re-hire your mercs at a higher level. However, this will mean your bank, scientist, and builder skills will be much lower than they otherwise would be if you got them to that level with those skills preferred. You shouldn’t really need them at level 100 (if you have the beginning level bonus maxed out) near the beginning to survive, anyway—if that’s the case, you may want to drop a difficulty level.

Hell

Upgrading your starting level of inherited weapons will help you on day one, but make sure you have invested considerable rubies into character damage first, because that will benefit you for your entire run, not just the beginning. (see notes to this effect in Ruby Store section) I did not use this upgrade myself until hell 4 or 5, but once I did I appreciated how it streamlined the first days and saved some money.
Once you are at 4x for collecting hell stone rewards, you are probably ready to go to the next difficulty (difficulty seems to ramp higher after hell 7 though). So, 2 or 3 runs Before you bump to the next difficulty, invest in max item quality a few times all at once. Then you have a few to runs to collect great weapons before tackling the next level of hell.

When am I ready to push for the next difficulty level?

If you push to the next difficulty level and cannot get to day 1000, you probably aren’t strong enough for many tower level hard bonuses, and you will always be a run behind getting some hellstones. It’s also a huge time suck because of all the game overs.

This chart is based on equivalent rebirth stone rewards. At your current level of difficulty, your day 1000 rebirth stone rewards will be reached at day 735 of the next difficulty, and the enemies will be about the same—although the mutations may be a little more severe, and you will be at a lower level fighting at day 735 vs. 1000.

Even so, if you are at day 1180, you can probably push through to make it to day 1000 at the next level, but it is probably going to be a long slog the last ~150 days, and you likely won’t be able to kill the bosses (except maybe with a spirit team, thanks to Nature’s healing you can survive what will be a very long battle!).

Generally then, consider making it to day 1200 before you push on to the next difficulty. If you are getting a lot of game overs after day 900 but can kill the bosses without major difficulty, consider investing in mutant inhibition at the rebirth store.

Although the rewards are greater, it is a real time suck to get so many game overs after day ~850. Continuing at the level you are on with fewer game overs may actually be faster. especially since you don’t have to really sweat getting a strong start. Consider using the dark dungeon’s dark gate or fire dungeon’s haste to speed things up.

Grinding / Speed Runs

How long do I grind out on a difficulty before moving on? How can I quicken my runs to day 1000? Thoughts:

In addition to the 2x feature in the rebirth store, the fire dungeon haste talent can increase game speed 30%, and fire spirit’s haste skill 20%
At the end of your grind you might turn off “enemies spawn faster” if you are getting overwhelmed; this may help you push a few extra days.
If you are really looking for an edge because you are on day 999, you might turn off 2x speed, as there is some people have reported this helps as well. Maybe it has to do with the shots that are too fast for the frame rate being combined (this was in one of the update notes), and having an increased number of special attacks, or maybe its bunk data.
Fire Dungeon’s haste, beats out dark gate in terms of speed.
With Fire spirit wearing the +3 necklace (for level 23 haste) and the FIRE dungeon with max haste, results show 20 battles in 4:30 to 4:40 minutes.
With Fire spirit wearing the +3 necklace (for level 23 haste) and DARK dungeon with max dark gate, results show 20 battles in 4:48 to 5:26 minutes.
It’s not much of an edge, but the fire dungeon is more consistent on its time and always faster, at least with the fire spirit.

Tower of Trial Bosses

cloud saving & loading before a tower fight does not net you a different reward. It seems to be predetermined.
After Day 500 there is no more 1 floor per day restriction.
If you can’t beat a tower boss by the bonus day, beat it at the highest difficulty you can, because boss difficulty increases with day count! Note: This makes the last few floors particularly difficult, as your more powerful skills have probably already been maxed out; you aren’t getting much stronger. (thanks, Cozy Mango & ArtNJ
INSANE difficulty give you a bonus deadline—ignore it, and use the hard deadline because the boss will be easier to defeat that way. (This might be a bug)
After 500 days, you can make multiple tower fights in the same day. If you LOSE, however, it seems like the boss might get tougher the following day. (can anyone else confirm?)
Keep in mind that trials scale to difficulty level. With some trial and error, you will find that your performance on trials can be a good indicator if you are ready for the next level of difficulty.

Level 13 Twins: note that, even though your hero is alone, your merc’s party skills will still have effect! The 2nd twin has a shield so you will only get a couple hits in before it goes up and you are a sitting duck. If you are struggling, consider another asp mod and/or more hp.
Level 15 Math Teacher 1: The faster you answer the question, the more time you have to hit him. When the question pops up, you can pause the game and think. You can still see the equation in the bottom corner. Mod more anti-magic to your weapons if you are struggling.
Level 19 Death becomes Birth: Just kill them until all the little ones are dead, they split in half when they die, until they are too small to split again.
Level 20: There’s a timer in the bottom right. That’ show much time you have left! Increase your dps.
Level 24 Tick Tock: “if you don’t have enough damage to kill it in the first couple second you need to tap on the timer circles before they expire (i suggest doing it when it’s around 1s)”
- You want to wait until the very last second to click the clock. The longer you wait, the more time the next one seems to have. I think that the clock gets shorter each time based on time-remaining on the last one. Eventually the bad guy will get to attack. Click the clock and then the next one immediately to stop his attack and allow your guys to attack again. Then repeat.
Level 25 Dristram: Touch each portal until one turns blue. That’s the first in the sequence. Now touch another. If you are right, it will turn blue. If you are wrong, you start all over. Continue by trial and error until you find the right sequence. When they are blue his defenses will go down.
- Turn OFF 2x speed if you are struggling, or mod anti-magic into your weapons.
- For insane difficulty, it can be worth changing any crit mods you have to anti-magic, especially on your main character. You’ll be able to use it for this tower fight, and usually immediately after for Math Teacher 2 (who is actually easier to kill than Dristram).
Level 26 Math teacher 2: same rules as the first one.
Level 27 Balance: Relax. Let the red bar fill a bit, then push the + or – to make it go the other direction. Just keep it going back and forth without going to either end. If you push on + or – twice in a row, the bar will fill faster, do not panic if that happens, a single press on the other one is enough to let it change direction again.
- For Insane difficulty, put your phone in airplane mode—notifications can mess up the balance bar inputs.
- Turn off 2x mode if you are struggling with the balance part (Thanks, Wesley T)
- Weak to (looks like a “normal” enemy—dark hunt, agony (dark spirit), slayer (Mr. Blade) confirm?
Level 28 Strength Trial: Equip defensive necklaces and rings on your main and everyone with a magic weapon. Fire dungeon is helpful—try to take it out before it gets close.
- Weak to does not appear weak to anti-magic or rend, so if you are struggling, switch your mods away from those to 4x dam, 2x asp (no reload mutations so you’re fine) Dark hunt does not appear to help..
Level 29 Magic Trial: Just like 28, but get all your physical weapon characters buffed defensively. If you only have 1 merc with a magic weapon (like a spirit party) it is better to play defensively with a nature or dark dungeon. If you are struggling with this one you might also special enhance an extra wand (more DPS than staff) and sub out one of your characters (the medals are, imho, worth it) Also consider switching characters out to have orc & goblin—even if they can’t attack, respectively, their skills give 2x hp, warcry damage bonus, & swift, and +100% critical damage. Wraith’s resonance will also increase the effectiveness of warcry and swift.
- Weak to (?) does not appear weak to anti-magic or rend, so if you are struggling, switch your mods away from those to 4x dam, 2x asp (no reload mutations so you’re fine). Dark hunt does not appear to help.
Level 30 Perfect Defense: Fire dungeon is practically a must here, unless you are running with 5 spirits in which case you can play it defensively with nature or dark. Make sure you have at least 1 crit mod on your weapons. If you are struggling, it may be worth it to switch asp and reload mods for more crit. Also consider adding the goblin to your party for rampage and +100% crit damage.
- Weak to (?) does not appear weak to anti-magic, rend, so if you are struggling, switch your mods away from those to 3x dam, 2x asp, 1x crit. If you are using fire dungeon, make sure you have 600% crit rate between your party so you maximize the flame shield. If you have characters that don’t need the crit mod because of rampage or photoelectricity, then do 4x dam and 2x asp for the greatest DPS.
- Also, dark dungeon’s dark hunt, with 100% attack to normal enemies, doesn’t seem to help (or maybe it does, but at half efficacy—as gangrenous plague appears to do?)

Other Tips

Beginners:

You can hold your finger on the screen to attack continuously.
The Auto-battle feature is interrupted by touching the screen—use this to negate the damage reduction.
Make sure you collect rewards from quests after reincarnating
Once you have enough auto-features, leave the game running overnight to max out your run. Just try to get as many tower fights in as you can first, for bonuses.

Advanced:

Day 1, prefer potential in all of your mercs. Cloud save before you battle. If you don’t get at least 2 mercs with level 1 potential, reload your cloud save and try again. Get level 3 potential as quickly as you can, without driving yourself crazy 🙂 Then focus on builder, scientist, bank, and bounty hunter.
When hiring a mercs later in your run, try to look at their skill tab before you hire them, if they do not have the skills you want, then just close the hiring window and reopen it, their skills get rerolled, so you do not have to reload every time from cloud save.
If you have a strong party, you might consider unequipping your bounty hunter and putting their weapon on special enhance. It will cut your enhancement costs by 20% and in the early days, get your strongest characters more quickly up to the highest level they can use. And, the weapon is ready to equip on them if you need their attack at any point.
When you upgrade your Max Item Quality, it is helpful to do it 4 or 5 points at a time. Here are some clever ways to use special enhance to actually use the new weapons you are finding on that run after upgrading:
Only have 3 party members equipped at a time. When you are no longer getting 15 upgrades per day, equip someone else so that you do. In this way, you can get 450 special enhancements in 10 days.
Make sure that every equipped weapon is at a higher level than your special enhancement weapon, or you will get less than 15 upgrades to it per day.
Hot phone a concern? Resting it on a large metal surface will help conduct heat away from your phone.
Between all the skills, upgrades, promotions, how does the damage stack together?
100% Attack due to Promotion Badges means you’re doing twice as much damage (tier upgrades aside) than if you have 0% Attack from Promotion Badges. (Thanks, Vincent T.)
2100% Attack from Hell Stones means you’re doing 22 times more damage than if it was 0% and so forth.
(Thanks, Vincent T.)
If your main hero has resurfaced memory, than all your mercs will benefit if you rehire them. Just be sure to do well before a big fight so you have time to enhance your weapons accordingly.