Finaly got it!

[Governor Mojo]

Finaly got the Sweaty war mages achivement, so happy!... Really hard one to get. You guys also trying to get it?

[Mez Koo]

I'm now part of the sweaty war mage club, man was that annoying grinding runs for good threads and least crappy maps and distortions but that's rouge like/lite for ya, run into the wall until you break it lol.

[avc145]

Didnt even try, right now the balace of Difficulty 10 is terrible, pretty much forces you to use the same 4 or 5 traps and all others are kinda useless.

Every other OMD game gives plenty of setups choices and almost all traps was viable, even on higest difficulty.

Difficulty 10 is simply not fun, no variety at all, ts basically use this strategy or fail.

[Mez Koo]

Originally posted by avc145:

Didnt even try, right now the balace of Difficulty 10 is terrible, pretty much forces you to use the same 4 or 5 traps and all others are kinda useless.

Its less about balance and more about the traps that slow down enemies the most and maximize damage in a single square. I didn't use wall blades and bomb dispenser because of their damage I used them because they can stack on top of each other easily having 2-4 wall traps damaging a single spot. I also haven't used tar since OMD2 but I used it in D10 simply because I needed them to spend as much time as possible in the squares and that goes for the flip traps as well keeping the normal orcs out of the kill box to focus on the big guys. Then I used the shock trap again to maximize damage in one spot as it not only has max range but also has the ability to zap things in other squares. Only thing I'd say is a must is ice lance simply to freeze hunters trying to kill you or anything that gets through the kill box you need to finish off.

There is a surprising amount of variety but everything has its purpose and wall blades, tar, bomb dispenser, shock zapper, and ice lance are just the most versatile and can be used pretty much anywhere. There are plenty of other loadouts you could use if the map allows for it for example you could go with ceiling pounders, wall chargers, saw blades, and ice vents to accomplish similar results but that requires more specific short tunnels which is rarely ideal with limited barricades and rift corruption in D10.

IMO map balance is the bigger issue than trap balance in addition to a lot of characters just aren't D10 viable.

[Mez Koo]

Originally posted by avc145:

Every other OMD game gives plenty of setups choices and almost all traps was viable, even on higest difficulty.

So we're going to pretend that OMD 2 or 3 didn't have their own meta of best traps for the hardest difficulty? IIRC:

OMD2: ring of lightning, archer spam, spore mushrooms, swinging mace, floor scorchers

OMD3: stone staff, soul jar, trap reset trinket, ceiling laser, butterflies

Originally posted by avc145:

Difficulty 10 is simply not fun, no variety at all, ts basically use this strategy or fail.

There's a reason its called the "Sweaty War Mage" achievement, it goes with most other games if you want to be at the top you gotta play use all the best things to get to top. The biggest difference here though is the randomness nature of the threads and since you start with none you gotta use the best loadouts and strategies to be able to start and then hope you get a good string of powerful threads and less annoying distortions. It took me about a week of grinding to finally crack that D10 mission 5 and honestly with the threads I got in mission 1 it made such a difference not to feel even feel like D10 on mission 2 onwards and I didn't even get the ogre/troll flip thread or poison execution thread but getting stun chance on wall blades, second shock zapper charge, and double damage on frozen enemies was a huge boon from mission 1.

[avc145]

Originally posted by Mez Koo:

Originally posted by avc145:

Every other OMD game gives plenty of setups choices and almost all traps was viable, even on higest difficulty.

So we're going to pretend that OMD 2 or 3 didn't have their own meta of best traps for the hardest difficulty? IIRC:

OMD2: ring of lightning, archer spam, spore mushrooms, swinging mace, floor scorchers

OMD3: stone staff, soul jar, trap reset trinket, ceiling laser, butterflies

Originally posted by avc145:

Difficulty 10 is simply not fun, no variety at all, ts basically use this strategy or fail.

There's a reason its called the "Sweaty War Mage" achievement, it goes with most other games if you want to be at the top you gotta play use all the best things to get to top. The biggest difference here though is the randomness nature of the threads and since you start with none you gotta use the best loadouts and strategies to be able to start and then hope you get a good string of powerful threads and less annoying distortions. It took me about a week of grinding to finally crack that D10 mission 5 and honestly with the threads I got in mission 1 it made such a difference not to feel even feel like D10 on mission 2 onwards and I didn't even get the ogre/troll flip thread or poison execution thread but getting stun chance on wall blades, second shock zapper charge, and double damage on frozen enemies was a huge boon from mission 1.

If you type OMD2/OMD3 Rift Lord/Nightmare Map Whatever on youtube you will see tons of videos of people completing the mission with a variety of setups, including without using or using very few of the meta traps you listed.

If you type OMDD on youtube 90% of the videos are on D0, one or another on D5 because that difficulty is still fun and almost no one plays D10 (ofc some guys play, but too few).

Every D10 video seems a copy paste, same traps, same strategies, see a D10 video is simply boring.

On the other games, if you want to be sttuborn and didnt use meta trap you could, there was plenty of videos of players in rift lord/nightmare doing lots of creative stuff.

But being fair, Stone Staff was ridiculous good in OMD3, because it was by far the best answer to flyers, maybe Stone Staff and a few other traps (lasers and briar specially) was too good in OMD3, but it was a minor miss balance of these specifics traps.

In OMDD D10 the entire game balance is broken, we are not talking of buffing/nerfing 2 or 3 traps, this difficulty need a complete overall tweak on damage/HP numbers.

[(X-1)L8_2_DI]

I found it miserable and dissatisfying. It was deeply frustrating and irritating to be denied for some ridiculous cheesy reason. This is in contrast to, say, DLC1 for OMD1, final level, which is really hard to 5 skull, but deeply satisfying to try. If they'd made it 4 maps instead of 5, it would have taken the bitter edge off trying.

[Mez Koo]

Originally posted by avc145:

If you type OMDD on youtube 90% of the videos are on D0, one or another on D5 because that difficulty is still fun and almost no one plays D10 (ofc some guys play, but too few).

Every D10 video seems a copy paste, same traps, same strategies, see a D10 video is simply boring.

In OMDD D10 the entire game balance is broken, we are not talking of buffing/nerfing 2 or 3 traps, this difficulty need a complete overall tweak on damage/HP numbers.

Did you not read anything I said? I'd say 24 out of the 34 traps are viable in D10 and those that aren't are because they're just too niche or just straight up useless.
Arrow wall just sucks.
Ceiling laser is too big and relies on threads too much.
Spike trap is just over shadowed by other floor traps.
Cursed ground is also too big and takes place of more useful floor traps.
Hookshot is hookshot, its okay in niche situations but in D10 coin is too precious.
Poison Gas Emitter is taking the place of other ceiling traps when you can use poison flower outside of kill box.
Ripsaw I honestly can't talk about as I haven't used it but mostly because its way too big.
Spike wall again too big.
Wall Scorcher is... another arrow wall, with threads its probably okay.

To further reiterate D10 might as well be a different game since everything is so centered around maximizing damage in a single square most of those "too big" or has a better substitute might as well not exist. Why would you use 2 ceiling lasers that are effectively 1 trap in 3 squares when you can use 3 shock zappers that are essentially 6 traps in those 3 squares same with spike wall, you could use it and might even do well if you have physics threads that affect trolls or ogres but you're taking up 2 spots that can also have 4 wall blades in that space of 1 spike wall.

I also have to bring up the level designs when I talk about the "too big" traps where a lot of the time you just don't have room for spike walls or ceiling lasers furthermore a lot of maps have high ceilings where you can't use stuff like swinging mace or poison gas emitting which also extends to other good traps such as ceiling pounder or haymaker which leads people to useing melting pot and shock zapper because they have the range for all situations.

They could probably just straight up double the damage and half reset time on spike wall, spike floor, arrow wall, ripsaw, etc and they'd still be useless in D10 because they're very inefficient in a kill box or the level designs.

D10 is supposed to be hard and only for top players to push against if you don't think its fun then don't play it and stick to like you said D5 which I agree is a good balance between difficulty that still feels like a challenge but everything isn't a boring bullet sponge. D10 isn't for everyone and should stay that way, I wouldn't normally play on D10 but there was an achievement for it so the challenge itself to get it was fun.

[Jay]

No. I don't really care about achievements.

[DUKAPb]

Originally posted by avc145:

Difficulty 10 is simply not fun

Nope. Difficulty 10 in solo - biggest fun. I got so much fun from getting it. None from other Orcs have not so high challenge. Its was awesome!

I hope that the developers will not stop at the achieved results and in the near future will please us with new content with new achievements that will be as difficult as these achievements for 5 waves at max difficulty

[DUKAPb]

Originally posted by avc145:

Every D10 video seems a copy paste, same traps, same strategies, see a D10 video is simply boring.

Can you share some videos? I feel like I was playing with a different set of traps, and throughout the entire time, I was improving the principle of building a base by building it in a more suitable place.

[Mez Koo]

Originally posted by DUKAPb:

Originally posted by avc145:

Every D10 video seems a copy paste, same traps, same strategies, see a D10 video is simply boring.

Can you share some videos? I feel like I was playing with a different set of traps, and throughout the entire time, I was improving the principle of building a base by building it in a more suitable place.

Just search difficulty 10 on youtube, its mostly wall blades, bomb dispenser, ice lance, tar, flip, shock zapper, poison flower. There is some variation depending on threads and map but those are the most versatile and probably most used. Ice vents, ceiling pounds, wall charger, and morning stars are great too but too map or corruption dependent. As for strategy, building up a powerful kill box is great and all but you're going to need some ice traps to take care of some troublesome flyers or hunters which is usually where the ice lance or vents come in addition to catching any of the big guys that get through.

[DUKAPb]

Originally posted by Mez Koo:

Just search difficulty 10 on youtube, its mostly wall blades, bomb dispenser, ice lance, tar, flip, shock zapper, poison flower. There is some variation depending on threads and map but those are the most versatile and probably most used. Ice vents, ceiling pounds, wall charger, and morning stars are great too but too map or corruption dependent. As for strategy, building up a powerful kill box is great and all but you're going to need some ice traps to take care of some troublesome flyers or hunters which is usually where the ice lance or vents come in addition to catching any of the big guys that get through.

Yeah, I watched and I used another builds. I have not used 5 of 7 of your traps, probably. So?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420585752
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3419806241

[Mez Koo]

Originally posted by DUKAPb:

Yeah, I watched and I used another builds. I have not used 5 of 7 of your traps, probably. So?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3420585752

You literally have tar, ice vents, wall charger, saw blades, and magic orb and Max to top it off.

[DUKAPb]

Originally posted by Mez Koo:

You literally have tar, ice vents, wall charger, saw blades, and magic orb and Max to top it off.

???

You wrote 7 traps that you think are the most effective. I only used TWO from your first list. I have a different set. If I don't use these traps, there won't be any free ones left.

There is no obvious imba hero here, which was in Orcs 3. Max is not the only choice here. You can go through with other heroes. On YouTube they go through with them.

[Jay]

Originally posted by Mez Koo:

You literally have tar, ice vents, wall charger, saw blades, and magic orb and Max to top it off.

Yea, and that's not the list you claimed was meta.... so his point stands.