"Orcs Must Die!" Catch-All

I finished this last night and had a lot of fun. My favorite trap combo was the upgraded swinging spike with upgraded tar underneath. In the maps where there were two paths I could just stack a bunch and ignore one side. That last level was pretty tough. I think I ended with only 18 points left.

The variety was great as well and the tech tree paths gave you a lot of freedom to tackle levels different ways. I will probably pick up the DLC during the Steam Christmas sale.

I love these small focused game experiences this gen.

Stele wrote:
Lars wrote:
Stele wrote:

I ended up revamping my strategy on the final level halfway through, when I had spare money. Instead of funneling the two sides without ballistas to my defense on the two ballista sides, I ended up tearing down my barricades and making defenses on all 4 sides, all 8 paths. :lol:(

That's what I did from the beginning as well. Started with some archer guardians spread out on the battlements around the rift, then added more defenses as I got money. Managed to beat it on the first attempt.

I restarted after wave 2, when I figured out which door they were coming from next and was able to adjust accordingly. But beat it the first time after that.

Cheater.

I forgot to mention, for those who are struggling, the first thing I did was use the steel weaver to get the +66% gold from kills from guardians and traps, then I put 2 guardian archers on the battlements at each corner. That way, I had total room coverage, and where I positioned them, they could fire down the hallways a little. As I got money, I put more archers spread out along the battlements, and added a few paladins near the rift, along with getting all the +guardian upgrades from the steel weaver (recharging health, fire arrows, and paladin stunning attacks) That gave me a lot of gold, which I was then able to put the maces at every entrance, along with tar pits. I learned in this map that there is a limit to how many guardians you are allowed to have out at 1 time. The last couple waves were crazy, with fire arrows flying everywhere, paladins running around hitting guys, and coverted ogres fighting for me. Wish I had video of it.

BNice wrote:

I finished this last night and had a lot of fun. My favorite trap combo was the upgraded swinging spike with upgraded tar underneath. In the maps where there were two paths I could just stack a bunch and ignore one side.

Same here. That is a brutal combo, on any map with the ceiling low enough. Especially with no fliers.

Now that I've had a chance to try out wall blades, consider me a believer. Massive PUNCH out from the wall, and they can take out multiple orcs, so they are really good in choke points. They just completely evaporate anything in the tile.

The spring trap is pretty amusing too. In the 2nd map (The Fork), I created a 1 tile choke point from the fork to the entry hall, and put a spring trap ejecting outward. I couldn't stop laughing as orcs flew through the air to an acid bath.

So I had spring trap out, tar, then wall blade (choked with a barricade on the right). pretty fun (and funny) setup.

Yeah there was one lava map where I used spring traps. And then upgraded them to affect ogres. Laughably easy, and funny.

Clicked twice I was laughing.

Yeah, since I'm now replaying through without the Satchel Ogres have become a big problem. I am still playing purist (without the traps I'm not supposed to have yet), so I don't have the Weavers. I am getting very annoyed trying to complete Twin Halls. I'm sure I could have 'passed' it, but I want to do better than that, dammit. Been working mainly with alternating tar and spring traps between barriers so far but that leaves me having to personally defend against the ogres and I'm not doing that very well, gonna experiment with filtering them into spring traps and wall blades next, maybe boom barrels when I know an ogre is coming.

Before you get access to spells fighting ogres is all about headshots and leading them in circles so that your traps can get em. Once you do have spells ice bolt is really powerful (unless they are ice ogres in which case you need fireball). Here is something a lot of people don't know about. The crossbow and bladestaff have alternate attacks! Try them out with RMB. The crossbow one is a stun bolt and it works on ogres.

Axe traps are nasty. If you are trying to do a trap purist run. The best opening combo by far is using the wind belt to throw groups of orcs into wall blades.

Wall blades are great, I'd use them in conjunction with the pendulum axe and tar+barricades to make my patended zig-zag of death. I'd have an opening on one side of lengthwise barricade, with a barricade further back with the opposite side open, with one or more pendulums+tar in between, swinging the entire length of the little zig-zag the orcs had to walk through. Because the orcs we focused into choke points at both barricades, I could have up to 6 wall blade traps (room permitting) that the orcs had to walk through.

This got me through more levels than I can count, although looking back on how the score system works, it almost seems too lethal, it doesn't generate much in the way of combo points.

I've never used brimstone, I was under the impression that it went away after a while and that made it seem a little useless to me, but perhaps I'll have to give it a go...

Well I finally beat the last map but only got 1 skull. Considering I have 5 skulls on all the other maps, I feel I'm in the right to say the game doesn't ramp up to the last map very well. Also, the exploding kobolds definitely are not going for me. They are bee-lining for that rift like nobody's business. I guess it's time to start memorizing at what waves and what doors they come out of because I really have no problem killing off anything else as long as my barricades stay up.

Redwing wrote:

I've never used brimstone, I was under the impression that it went away after a while and that made it seem a little useless to me, but perhaps I'll have to give it a go...

Yeah the description made me think that too. But it basically just has a cooldown period where it isn't burning, then it fires back up again.

Stele wrote:
Redwing wrote:

I've never used brimstone, I was under the impression that it went away after a while and that made it seem a little useless to me, but perhaps I'll have to give it a go...

Yeah the description made me think that too. But it basically just has a cooldown period where it isn't burning, then it fires back up again.

When brimstone traps are hot they have enough heat to light two orcs on fire, after which they go dark to recharge. If you put them too close together the burning orks will activate more than one trap, so spacing them out is key. Right in front of the gate is a great place to put these.

I like em because they torch kobolds and the orcs with shields. They don't have much of an effect on ogres though,

Once you get autobalista and sprinkle them around, both ogres and fliers go down with little difficulty. The ballista arrows have a short stun too. This has to be one of my favorite traps. Arrows and spike traps taking the top honors.

So I replayed Arena. The first time I had completely missed both that I could barricade the center and that I could put crushers under the balconies. All I did the first time was put tar pits in front of the doors and use the satchel/fire ring to torch orcs, and spent the rest of my money on a ridiculous number of archers to attack the rest of the orcs. That worked pretty well.

It was far more fun to build a death tunnel of wall blades and crushers under a balcony and funnel them through it. Towards the end all I had to do was stand there and watch all the little red dots disappear in the lower left corner of the map.

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

LilCodger wrote:

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

Oh yeah that one sucked. The key is, fliers only come from one side. So a few archers over there can take care of most of that.

And then instead of building by the portal, where there's no ceiling, I built my traps down a little farther, where there was a low bridge. Then I could build a Mace trap on the underside of that, and set up my normal mace + slows.

I still only got 4-skulls but I can't remember why. Need to try that again myself.

LilCodger wrote:

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

Is that one of the multiple entrance maps? I'm fairly sure that with some of those the only way to get through the early waves without some getting past is to learn which waves come through which portals and frantically sell and relocate all your traps between each wave.

I'm on a roll now! Friend me up and see if you can top my scores.

Sonicator wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

Is that one of the multiple entrance maps? I'm fairly sure that with some of those the only way to get through the early waves without some getting past is to learn which waves come through which portals and frantically sell and relocate all your traps between each wave.

That's one where speedsters come out of both doors on wave 3. I tried again after posting earlier and it was ugly.

Sonicator wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

Is that one of the multiple entrance maps? I'm fairly sure that with some of those the only way to get through the early waves without some getting past is to learn which waves come through which portals and frantically sell and relocate all your traps between each wave.

Rift in the middle, north door and south door. Both doors go down a hallway and back before having a run at the rift. Two portals right next to each other that land you at the end of the hallways.

First wave orcs and fliers in the north. Second wave orcs from the south. By the fourth wave you have orcs, fliers and kobolds from the north, AND orcs and kobolds from the south.

I have succeeded in the fourth wave once or twice, but at some point a damn kobold gets past everything and ruins the five skulls.

LilCodger wrote:
Sonicator wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Man, "The Squeeze" can just kiss my ass. For the life of me I cannot get through even wave four without something getting to the rift.

Five skulls suddenly became really damn difficult.

Is that one of the multiple entrance maps? I'm fairly sure that with some of those the only way to get through the early waves without some getting past is to learn which waves come through which portals and frantically sell and relocate all your traps between each wave.

Rift in the middle, north door and south door. Both doors go down a hallway and back before having a run at the rift. Two portals right next to each other that land you at the end of the hallways.

First wave orcs and fliers in the north. Second wave orcs from the south. By the fourth wave you have orcs, fliers and kobolds from the north, AND orcs and kobolds from the south.

I have succeeded in the fourth wave once or twice, but at some point a damn kobold gets past everything and ruins the five skulls.

That one's a beast, took me ages to get 5 stars on it.

Spoiler:

That one you definitely have to do the selling/rebuying trick. From memory the only way I found to reliably get those kobolds was to do a barricade + grinder(s) at the final set of stairs on the lower side, start at the bottom and quickly nail as many kobolds as possible with the lightning ring (reserving some mana) then take the portal up top and kill all the top ones, relying on the grinder to get the stragglers at the bottom. I may have also had to use the spike log thingies on that wave too. I didn't use the grinders much in the rest of the game because they jam so easily, but they're very good for mopping up kobolds due to not having a reset time between enemies while they're going.

Spike logs? Where?

EDIT: Just fired it up... son of a...

This should be much easier now.

So, can someone explain how combos work? I think I'm a little too efficient.

My favorite has to be using barricades to create a choke next to a row of wall blades, with tar under the wall blade. It's almost too lethal.

Also, I just got the "Guardian Limit Reached" message. Apparently you CAN have too many arrow guardians.

Lex Cayman wrote:

Also, I just got the "Guardian Limit Reached" message. Apparently you CAN have too many arrow guardians.

It's a combined total of Archers and Paladins.

Also, I still failed to stop the runners on The Squeeze. I did go back and get another of my 5-skulls I had missed though, and got a top score on friends list. Still, only 2000-something worldwide, so not as good as my other.

Lex Cayman wrote:

So, can someone explain how combos work? I think I'm a little too efficient.

Combos work by having them go through multiple traps.
For example, having the orcs being affected by tar, brimstone, arrow trap, wall grinder, fire belt, sword, flaming elf arrows, lightning bolt

See a nice video I just found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI7f_...

Right after I posted that, I decided I'd just go to Youtube. I get it now.

I don't think I have time for this.

Comboing is a completely different game, and one that you should really only be trying once you have beaten the game on apprentice and warmage and have upgraded your traps to the appropriate level.

Tip for the Squeeze. You unlock the Grinder on this map. Barricade to the wall + Grinder on both sides = win. Add some arrow guardians and you're set. If I remember correctly, the flying imps only go out of one exit, so you don't really have to worry about the other exit too much.

A trick I hit on before I got the upgrades on the swinging mace and tar is to use tar + barricades, this way:

++| --- |++

with the swinging mace along the middle path. This forces orcs to walk through three full squares of tar, and before it's been upgraded, that's enough to get about 95% of them. You can further upgrade that with a grinder on the far side to catch stragglers, but that's pretty expensive.

Basically, using the barricades this way forces them to walk lengthwise down the mace's path, through all three squares of its swing, instead of just crossing it. It appears that buying the 'speed up timed traps' from the Steel Guardian may also speed up the mace swings, but I'm not certain of that.

Once both the tar and the mace are upgraded, a simple double-line of tar with a mace over the second line will kill almost everything but kobolds and ogres, without using barricades -- this is a fair bit cheaper, and immune to sappers. Some will leak through, so you have to keep an eye on it, but it'll just be a few.

Phew, finally 5 skulled all the maps on war mage. It took me awhile, but I found a decent strategy for finale. Barricades + decoys with coinforges under them and archers in the first 4 waves, then sell everything during the break and spam the middle section with archers and decoys.