Twisted Fate is too Haaaaaaaaaaard!

[Starbreeze]

Wahhhh!

Seriously though, is anybody else struggling with this map? I mean, I don't play it easy, I use the blood rune on every map 'cause not even one hero should get through imo. But I'm regularly losing to a rider-less horse! I kill the riders and then the horse randomly runs into my hell portal or whatever and then it's game over thank you very much!

I'm not sure what to do. Any tower setup I've tried I get beaten by a riderless horse or the last two waves crush me because I put up too many defenses against riderless horses.

Is anybody else having this problem?

[Swordmouse]

IIRC when I did it, I used push traps with the map's wall spikes, and demon portals to hold the heroes there. And of course, barricades to funnel the heroes into those lanes. Push/spring traps into pits/spikes are incredibly effective and efficient, even OP, and should free up a lot more resources for other things. The "Dungeon heart" can also be barricaded on three sides, allowing for more concentrated defenses, should horsemen/thieves get through the outer defenses.

Horsemen are indeed incredibly annoying. A couple things I've noticed: Bolt traps with long lines of fire are surprisingly good against horsemen, as one horseman will trigger the trap, and get himself and whatever is behind him killed, even if it's half a map away, thus giving the trap enough time to reload. Combining those with slime traps seems to work fairly well, provided it's a stream and not a flood.

Another thing: horsemen can get "caught up" in your friendly units, allowing them to be cut down much easier. 2-3 upgraded demon portals combined with firebat eggs can bring horsemen to a dead stop, especially if enemy heroes are already gumming up the works. In either case, you probably want a grinder trap or two as the last line of defense, but not so close that a riderless horse wanders into your portal.

Best of luck!

[Starbreeze]

Thanks for the advice, though I have difficulty with that. I had luck before trying to herd the enemies through the spike tunnels however on one of the final waves, dwarves come in and blow up the barricades. So, I've been trying to focus my defenses on the small hole there and using the free barricades to shore up the hole behind them, so the enemies have to go up and around. It defeats the horsemen most of the time, however the final rush always gets through.

[Swordmouse]

Well I won't say the spike tunnels are the only way to go, but if you're having trouble with dwarfs in general, there's a few things I've noticed:

A couple well-placed inferno traps+slows (slime, black holes, freezing etc) can sometimes be enough to keep them away from your barricades.

Dwarfs will only target barricades if they pass within 2 tiles of them. This means you can sometimes place barricades far back enough that dwarfs will ignore them, and that can be used on Twisted Fate as well. :)

If they're going to hit your barricades, you can wait until they're 1-2 HP and then upgrade them for cheap, completely healing them and increasing their HP pool besides. Lastly, don't forget about the repair tool.

Not trying to push you towards barricades (the beauty of games like this is finding what works for you) but I thought I'd share some general tips. :)

[Tschilumbu]

this was my setup when i beat twisted fate with 8 runes active, maybe it helps.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=606078758

[Starbreeze]

Oh! Interesting, you piped all the heroes to the same side. I'll have to try doing that.

[Starbreeze]

Aha, it worked!

[Tschilumbu]

Grats!