Wolves at the Door Guide

[lupious]

I haven't seen a guide for Wolves at the Door in awhile, and not a full on guide, so I thought I'd post one.

**Important Notes**
1. Please note this is not the ONLY way to beat Wolves at the Door. This is just one way that works. There are other strategies that may be better suited to your play style.

2. Wolves at the Door is random town event that appears once you have at least 4 lvl 5+ characters. It is strongly recommended to be prepared for the event before leveling characters to lvl 5+. This means knowing what party you will want to bring ahead of time. If you skip the event, you lose two building upgrades.

3. If you fail or abandon the event after starting it, one of your characters permanently dies.

4. Cheating the event: If the event pops up before you are ready for it, simply send four level 1 characters in to die and then replace them afterward. This way, you don't lose any high level characters and you can just replace them afterward.

5. Beating the event: Remember to always continue the event after you beat the boss. If you go down, there is a room with a bag on the ground with trinkets, often times Ancestral trinkets. The two times I've done the event, there have been no mobs down there. I don't know if it's random or if there are never mobs down there.

Party
Hellion OR Houndmaster, Man at Arms, Jester, Vestal

1. Man at Arms is required for this strategy. The boss throws a bomb on a random character which eventually explodes for massive damage. It will one shot a lot of characters. Man at Arms Guard and high defensive capabilities negates this.

2. All the mobs and the boss are susceptible to bleed. Hellion, is slightly better in my opinion for the fights leading up to the boss. Iron Swan makes quick work of the back lines, which are the primary stress dealers. Honestly though, they are pretty interchangeable. If you choose Hellion, put it in spot 1. If you choose Houndmaster, put it in slot 2.

3. Jester is in this party for it's double bleed (Harvest) and stress healing (Inspiring Tune). Nearly everything leading up to the boss, and the boss, causes massive stress damage. It's very easy to hit 100+ stress very quickly if you aren't careful. Leading up to the boss, you want to use Inspiring Tune to keep your party's stress level as low as possible so that you can focus on bleeding during the boss fight and not have to worry about stress healing. IMPORTANT NOTE: When the fight first starts, be careful not to use Harvest if it's going to hit the bomb pile. The bomb pile has riposte. Wait until he spawns minions. Either use Slice Off (if he's in position 2) or buff your party with Battle Ballad.

4. Vestal is in this party for, well, you know...healing.

Trinkets
Trinkets are very important in this event! Choose your trinkets carefully.

1. Man at Arms: During the boss fight, you're really only going to be guarding and your Man at Arms is going to be taking massive damage. Thus, you really want to go with defensive trinkets. Anything with +protection or plus dodge is good, though +protection is safer since dodge is never guaranteed (Example: Tough Ring and/or Sun Cloak). +healing received is good. (Example: Recovery ring gives a massive +40% healing received) Bleed resist is also good since just about everything causes bleed (Example: Cleansing Crystal).

2. Hellion/Houndmaster: Accuracy is highly important as all the mobs have really high dodge. You typically want at least one of your trinkets to be +accuracy (Example: Sun Ring). You have a fairly wide choice for your second trinket, but I've found +Bleed damage or just straight up +damage to be good (Example: Bleed Amulet is an ideal choice since it gives +30% bleed skill chance AND +20% bleed resist).

3. Jester: Pretty much the same as Hellion/Houndmaster except your second should absolutely be + bleed chance. So one accuracy, one bleed trinket.

4. Max healing trinkets (Example: Junia's Head, Sacred Scroll, Tome of Holy Healing, Chirurgeon's Charm).

Supplies
Take all of the shovels, bandages, and medicinal herbs. You don't need keys, holy water, or antivenom that I've seen. I'm not exactly sure how many torches or food you need, but I maxed out on those to be safe.

Initial Fights
When you first start the event, the map is not revealed. You have the option of going left or right. I haven't found a difference. You'll get random human fights along the way. As stated earlier, a lot of things cause stress damage. Deal with those first, including the AOE gunmen in the 4th slot. Their AOE does stress damage. If you're finding that you're not able to keep up with the normal damage though, you may need to focus down one of the primary normal damage dealers first (I've never found this to be an issue though). There will be an optional room off to the right or left (depending on which way you initially went). This room has a bag or chest on the ground after a fight which can, and often does, hold Ancestral Trinkets. Just keep going up until you reach the boss fight.

Boss Fight
1. NEVER hit the bomb pile. It has riposte.

2. The boss will throw a bomb on a random person/location. Once he does, simply guard that person with your Man at Arms so it hits your Man at Arms. Once it goes off, your Man at Arms will take the damage instead. Keep repeating this, always guarding the person the bomb is on so that the MaA takes the damage.

3. Focus down the boss with bleeds. I'm pretty sure he respawns his adds if you kill them (don't quote me on that though as I can't remember for sure), so it's best just to keep stacking bleeds on the boss non-stop. Jester's Harvest which hits slots 2 and 3 are great because it will kill one of his adds eventually as well which gives you at least a turn without one of them hitting you.

4. Remember to use your bandages, as needed. Additionally, you can use medicinal herbs to get rid of debuffs (from Slice and Dice).

5. See #5 in the **IMPORTANT NOTES** Section

Hope this helps! Remember, this isn't the only way to beat this event. This is just one way that works.

[Arrrtyom]

I wonder if a party without MaA is reliable. I had Cru-HWM-Vestal-PD on my first try (reynauld and dismas party lol) and I had a few death's doors, so that's not really reliable .No one died though, heh heh. I guess the only other option is a party with occ, heard that damage debuff works on the vvulf when he makes the bomb explode.

Also isn't there a guides section? If you post here the post will disappear eventually.

[Solo Death]

Originally posted by Artyom:

I wonder if a party without MaA is reliable. I had Cru-HWM-Vestal-PD on my first try (reynauld and dismas party lol) and I had a few death's doors, so that's not really reliable .No one died though, heh heh. I guess the only other option is a party with occ, heard that damage debuff works on the vvulf when he makes the bomb explode.

Also isn't there a guides section? If you post here the post will disappear eventually.

Not really. You could, in theory, do it with a HM protecting everyone instead, but dodge chance is just not as safe in an instance like Vvulf as protection is. It could work though, considering Guard Dog's dodge buff is ridiculous.

[Arrrtyom]

Originally posted by Solo Death:

Originally posted by Artyom:

I wonder if a party without MaA is reliable. I had Cru-HWM-Vestal-PD on my first try (reynauld and dismas party lol) and I had a few death's doors, so that's not really reliable .No one died though, heh heh. I guess the only other option is a party with occ, heard that damage debuff works on the vvulf when he makes the bomb explode.

Also isn't there a guides section? If you post here the post will disappear eventually.

Not really. You could, in theory, do it with a HM protecting everyone instead, but dodge chance is just not as safe in an instance like Vvulf as protection is. It could work though, considering Guard Dog's dodge buff is ridiculous.

Just checked the wiki and apparently bombs away has an accuracy of 224%(!!) so LOL it'd be quite impossible for the HM to do that assuming the wiki is correct.

[Solo Death]

Originally posted by Artyom:

Originally posted by Solo Death:

Not really. You could, in theory, do it with a HM protecting everyone instead, but dodge chance is just not as safe in an instance like Vvulf as protection is. It could work though, considering Guard Dog's dodge buff is ridiculous.

Just checked the wiki and apparently bombs away has an accuracy of 224%(!!) so LOL it'd be quite impossible for the HM to do that assuming the wiki is correct.

Seems a bit excessive lol.

[lupious]

There are other strategies that WILL work, I just don't think they are as reliable as the Man at Arms strategy. With the Man at Arms strategy, it's a cake walk. You can play around with the other classes you bring (like two Houndmasters for example), but the strategy itself revolves around guard. If you don't have a Man at Arms, you can use a Crusader with his guard ability, Bulwark of Faith, but it's strictly worse than Man at Arms' Defender ability. I've also heard of strategies using Occultist's Weakening Curse ability; however, it's just not as reliable since it can be resisted. Will it work? Sure. Will it be as reliable as the Man at Arms strategy? No.

[LaserGuy]

Occultist ability is persistent though (especially if it crits), you can hex him once or twice and then you'll get a few rounds where your Occultist can heal/attack. Vvulf's debuff resist is only 60, so with a 40% trinket you can easily reach 95% chance of debuffing him.

You can also kill the barrel, though it's hard to consistently hit above 25 without camp buffs.

Alternately, with a very high damage party, you could probably just ignore the barrel and the bomb both, and just drop him really quickly (2-3 rounds), using weak healing to stay above death's door if necessary.

[Hedning]

Don't forget shovels. You need all 4 to get to the bonus room (it's never guarded). The side rooms (always guarded) also have ancestors trinkets in them if you are in good shape to continue after beating vvulf.

Important to note is that while going up to the boss every other fight will be the difficult enemy type, the other will be regular brigands, so use the regular ones to stall and heal up on.

I've found the the hound master's stress heal is good enough for the fight. Most of their stress attacks are aoe and for aoe stress the hound master is actually stronger than the jester, so I have a hound master in the back row. The guard and self heals (shouldn't be used but is there just in case) makes him a safer option than the jester.

When he is not needing to guard someone else using riposte is very effective for the maa since he will riposte on vvulf and not the barrel, so make sure you are activating it as much as you can. For this reason I also think a trinket slot can be used for sun ring, and since his prot will be maxed anyway the other will be the cleansing crystal.

[Arrrtyom]

Originally posted by Hedning:

I've found the the hound master's stress heal is good enough for the fight. Most of their stress attacks are aoe and for aoe stress the hound master is actually stronger than the jester, so I have a hound master in the back row. The guard and self heals (shouldn't be used but is there just in case) makes him a safer option than the jester.

Heh, it's always awkward when the hound's been howling for the whole day but no one gets relieved of stress. On a side note, I rarely ever use the jester anymore. Either I suck it up with the crusader's low SPD and use him as dps/stress heal/camper, or just stun the ♥♥♥♥ out of everyone.

[lupious]

1. I did mention taking all the shovels in the "Supplies" section.
2. I dislike the randomness of Houndmaster's stress heal for this encounter personally. It will work, but it's also possible you get a round or two of it not hitting the correct person, or one person being more stressed than others and it not hitting that person/not doing enough. The Jester's stress heal, while single target does much more, especially when a character gets really stressed. The single target isn't really a big deal either because after the first two mobs of a 4 mob encounter are dead, you have 3 characters to keep stuff stunned while you heal away everyone's stress before the fight ends. Ideally, you want your characters at little to no stress during the boss fight so you don't have to stress heal at all and can focus on bleeding. I also like the Jester's buff in this dungeon for the Accuracy boost (the speed and crit boost are nice too of course). Thus, my personal preference is Jester, which is not to say it's a must have. Like I said, you can play around and do stuff like two Houndmasters if you want or you can go with a completely different strategy, like the Occultist one.

[GZstar]

I think, it is enough to guide people to bring men-at-arms to the fight and to mention that stress is an issue in this mission and to advice people to bring a stress healer which is capable to hit rank 3 targets in terms of stress management.

Houndmaster also normally seems to be a more suitable advice because the fight happens early after reaching champion level. To spent all the ressources in leveling up houndmaster which fits in nearly any party composition maybe is better than to spent them for jester not many people like playing champion missions with in common.
You did not have this problem, because you did a lot of farming before entering champion levels but normally people have a problem in terms of money at this point.

In a guide personal preferences should be marked as personal preferences to make it possible to distinguish these ones from the decisive points in my opinion. You just seem to like to mix guide and personal experience a little bit to much in my view. That sometimes is a little bit
irritating.

To the supplies maybe the need of bandages and shovels should be emphasized a little bit more. Food an torches you need in normal quantity. Herbes you do not really need not using hellion and holy water is great to protect against bleeding if taken just before the boss fight.

Beside this points I like the guide in common.

[razorblade02]

I beat him without problem, I don't remember my party but no one died and I didn't have the man at arms, just more than vestale for healing. Just some heroes at agony but it's pretty normal.

[GZstar]

Men-at-Arms is recommendable. I did win without him as well in my first game but it´s a risk undoubtedly, whatever you do instead. The fight really is easy if you do it the right way like the guide describes it.

[lupious]

Originally posted by GZstar:

In a guide personal preferences should be marked as personal preferences to make it possible to distinguish these ones from the decisive points in my opinion. You just seem to like to mix guide and personal experience a little bit to much in my view.

I've said that about a million times. I prefer the Jester but there are many other choices (like double Houndmaster or Houndmaster/Hellion). I still feel the Jester is the BEST choice for this dungeon, but as I've said a zillion times, there are definitely other choices, which you could certainly argue (though I'd disagree) are better.

Speaking of the Jester in general, I don't know why people are so down on him. I love him in Weald and Warrens. I walk out of those dungeons, even on champion level, with no stress on any characters and never having even come close to dying. It's slow, but safe. I prefer the safe route. One of my favorite champion level Weald parties is Hellion, Man at Arms, Jester, Vestal. It's slow, but about as safe as you can get. Man at Arms guarding Hellion for the fights with Giants, Jester bleeding and stress healing (mainly stress healing). It makes champion level Weald a joke (Warrens too, though I tend to avoid Warrens because I can walk out of there with no stress, no diseases, a perfect run, and then get a disease on every character after the dungeon is over - so annoying).

Jester is one of the first characters I tend to level up. If I do a dungeon without a stress healer, and my party comes out mid-high stress, I do a dungeon with the Jester next with those stressed characters to get rid of the stress. I literally never have any characters on my character list with more than 10 stress more than one week.

[GZstar]

I understand you, but for a player who does not know anything about the game your guide would be more helpful if you just would not mix your own preferences with common valid tips. So anybody is nearly forced to read the discussions to find out what really is important and where you can do things different without risk. You just provoke these discussions to your guides - which I personally have no problems with, just to mention. But maybe players needing a guide may have problems to understand you this way or are forced to do unnecessary things to follow your guide.

You maybe like playing Jesters but it´s a fact he is not liked too much in common.

[lupious]

Originally posted by GZstar:

I understand you, but for a player who does not know anything about the game your guide would be more helpful if you just would not mix your own preferences with common valid tips. So anybody is nearly forced to read the discussions to find out what really is important and where you can do things different without risk. You just provoke these discussions to your guides - which I personally have no problems with, just to mention. But maybe players needing a guide may have problems to understand you this way or are forced to do unnecessary things to follow your guide.

You maybe like playing Jesters but it´s a fact he is not liked too much in common.

Again, as I've said, I feel the Jester IS THE BEST CHOICE. It's not a personal preference. I think it's the best choice. I then go on to say there are other ways to do it. What exactly would you like me to do beyond that? Give a party I think is worse? List every possible party combination? The very first thing I say when the guide starts is "Please note this is not the ONLY way to beat Wolves at the Door. This is just one way that works. There are other strategies that may be better suited to your play style." Every single thing about this game is "personal choice."

You're certainly welcome to write your own guide that doesn't include the Jester. I think that would be your personal choice though.