Tips for hard difficulty?

[overtaker40]

I have found normal a bit to easy lately but hard is killing me I just don't seem to be able to last. Waves of enemies start coming faster and stronger and I am overwhelmed.

I feel like there needs to be a difficulty between normal and hard.

any advice on how to survive?

[Kiaren]

For defense: you will need traps. The goo ball at the end of a corridor, and line the corridor with slowing slime and saw walls. Enemies walk slowly down the corridor getting chip damage, and the goo ball knocks them back to the beginning to do it all over again.

Then have at least 3 workshop machines to make tool boxes to ensure the goo ball gets refilled. As long as that goo ball is up, the enemy won't get through. Use the Grant Ressources spell if you need tool boxes quick.

For Offense: it is a rush against the clock. The enemy scales fast. You must scale faster.

In general, focus on one faction first. Then level up another when maxed out.

Demons make a good starting faction, as succubi basically stunlock 1 enemy each. And you will need a Mana Vault anyway (with two mana generators). Get the Advanced spells for Mana Shield as soon as possible, and then upgrade your mana vault to hold more mana.

Undead are great once you get the Vampires unlocked. Generally avoid the Horde if you can help it, they get squished really easy. And a level 1 horde is not even a speed bump to heros in Hard.

Get the potion shop from the Horde, but don't unlock the advanced potions. You will want the healing and speed potions only for the overworld. The speed potions in particular are godly. Use the "grant resources" spell to get extra potions if you are running low.

When fighting enemies, get the healer first. Advanced healers can full heal entire teams every 8 seconds. So unless you are steam rolling the enemy, manually target the healers.

[overtaker40]

thank you

[Calinostro]

There are tons of different ways for beating the highest difficulty. Here is a selection of tips and tricks I learned.

A couple of general things:
- Have a plan and pick your passives accordingly. One go-to for me is 'Subservient Snots', it is a huge advantage.
- Don't throw all your evilness randomly at upgrades, any early spending must lead to a lasting benefit.
- Make sure to level you snots to at least level 4 so that they get ignored by enemies and you can have them operate freely.
- Always build the workshop immediately and get the basic Door.
- Always make sure that all important rooms run at least at 100% efficiency (hence the door).
- Get the prison early to have a source of evilness without leaving the dungeon.
- Once you can fend off initial attacks, build the Voodoo Brew to get the speed potion and, if required, heal potions.
- If you have a map with multiple entries, have your Snots dig passages from one to the other and block the others off, so that you only have to defend one entry into your dungeon. You might dig into spider nests and alike when building the connection, make sure that you funnel the enemies through these spots, they'll clean them up for you ;).
- Some maps have a dwarf base that opens up a pass into your dungeon in the early game. If you see a dungeon entry on the overworld map that doesn't have a match in the dungeon map, there is a base for sure. Some dwarf bases don't have a surface access though. If you know or think that there might be a base, prepare tunneling for it to be able to redirect them when they break through.
- Some maps have a hero portal, where that is the case, you see the portal symbol in the overworld map. If there is one, have an eye on portals opening in your dungeon and kill them quickly.
- If you are playing early campaign missions, always check which level each faction can reach and play the one with the highest level.
- When fighting hero groups look for assassins and direct your group to target them first (slap the assassin to make it the primary target). Assassins don't get attacked by your creatures until no other enemy units are left, this is usually enough time to kill e.g. all you healers. Otherwise, target enemy healers, next.
- Go for the 'Good Beings' as early as you can, they are pretty easy to kill, even with a team that is a bunch of level 2 creatures. The evilness windfall is important in the early stages.

 A bit on factions:
- Don't try to get all classes of a faction early, focus on a subset and unlock more of their perks. Most of the units have powerful level 3 or 4 perks that make them way more effective
- Demons are rather straight forward. Start with 5-8 Succubus and fill the team up with Imps. Demons are powerful but they are glass cannons, make sure to drop them with a good distance from enemies in the dungeon. Always make sure to have enough evilness in reserve to revive killed units. Make sure to have proper Gobbler supply and don't forget to buy and build the 'Need' rooms when they get into the level range.
- Undead tend to be a bit slow in the beginning. Start with lots screamers only and get the temple immediately, undead get way more powerful with minions cast with the blight that they generate in the temple. In the early stages, make sure to grab all your undead and throw them directly into the graveyard to get them healed.
- With Horde, ignore the Gnome and go with Orc, Naga and Goblin only. Assign the Nagas into a separate group (select only all Nagas and press CTRL+1 which maps them to the 1 key. Assign your fighters in the same way to the 2). When fighting in the dungeon, drop the whole team close to the enemy and immediately press 1 to pick up your Nagas and drop them behind your fighters with a good level of distance.

[Mr. Coke]

The best perk combo that i've found is the gobbler slayer and the subservient snots with the dungeon costs reduction. I basically build a massive gobbler farm and max that out asap because slapping gobblers will drop 1 evilness per gobbler. When you have a massive farm with a max capacity of 1200 you can get about 4 gobblers to spawn per second aka 4 evilness per second.

Idk why everyone says to avoid horde though. I always start with 3 orcs/3 nagas when I start a new game. They're cheap and if they die, you can quickly buy a few more. I also work on getting a workshop with about 4 machines and start placing traps (sawblade w/sticky tar/spikes). I like to rush potions with the advanced upgrade to unlock improve dungeon and boost gobbler farm production. Remember, more evilness = more upgrades and abilities/units
I like a mana farm with 4 shrines to keep up with production/usage and get magic batteries so my snots can focus on farming gold which always seems to be my bottleneck.

For the middle of the game i like to buy either tons of goblins or do a mix of Imps and gazers and infernals since they do ranged aoe. Imps also ignore 50% armor and gazers increase fire damage taken.

I've never personally found undead to be super op until way late game but Id prefer 3-6 orcs especially the horde champions since they are super tanky and enough nagas per orc. Demons can regen hp but not until they're outside of combat.

For help keeping your units from dying, keep your creature tab open M and look at which units are getting damaged and micro pick them up (in dungeon) or pull them behind so the enemies attack your other units while that one heals up.

[Thats How We do action in Uganda]

Originally posted by Mr. Coke:

Idk why everyone says to avoid horde though. I always start with 3 orcs/3 nagas when I start a new game.

Because You can get bunch of imps and clear overworld 3 times faster.