How to upgrade your Lupine Bows(Van Wolfsteins) properly!

A simple guide on how to upgrade the crappiest of Lupine Bows you find into something pretty damn useful so you can leech as much mana from enemies as possible(more on this in the FAQ section).

FAQ

First of all a quick FAQ
*Skip this if you know everything about Lupine Bows, eg: what they do, where do you find them, etc.*

What is a Lupine Bow? How do I find/unlock it?

- So, first of all for those who don't know what is a Lupine Bow - it is a Huntress weapon first released in the Halloween Spooktacular Part 1 under the name - Van Wolfstein. Lupine Bow is it's core drop name. Before you find the core drop version, you need to unlock it by completing Halloween Spooktacular 1 or 2 on HARD or LOWER difficulty by using a Huntress / Ranger in the final wave.

So what is the difference between a Lupine Bow & Van Wolfstein?

- Well basically there is only 1 major difference The Van Wolfstein will never have any additional "elemental damage" as compared to it's core drop version. Both will do Electric damage by default but the Lupine Bow can also do either - Electric, Poison or Fire elemental damage. Note that the Lupine Bow can also drop without any elemental damage as well, thanks to our beloved friend RNG!

Can't I just use the reward weapon?

- Reward weapon will be the Van Wolfstein and it won't have any additional elemental damage as explained in the previous point, hence rendering it pretty much useless if you are shooting at enemies that are electrical immune. Since an enemy can never be immune to more than one elemental type-damage, you are always guaranteed to hit them if you have a Lupine bow with either Fire or Poison elemental damage.

Ok, then where else can I find the core-drop version?

- Now, once you unlock the Lupine Bow, you can randomly find it in a few maps but the catch is since it is a Huntress/Ranger weapon you will have to play as either one of those characters to find it. This weapon drops in the following maps(and more) - Tavern Defense, King's Game, Temple of Love(as a random reward), Halloween Spooktacular 1 and 2(yup!), etc. You can also play as a Jester, but you will get a mix up of all 4 class weapons there by lowering the chances for Lupine Bows to drop.

Where can I get the best one?

- In my experience -- Temple of Love. It has a very high chance of rewarding Ulti, Ulti+ or Ulti++ Lupine Bows, but it is a tough challenge to do on NMHC, a must try on Insane though! You can check out my very well detailed Temple of Love NMHC guide here: Temple O' Love - NMHC Mega Guide. If you are into survivals, then King's Game NMHC Survival is a great place to find one.

Is it good for DPS?

- No, It does very low damage, thanks to the nerf soon after the release of this weapon. Therefore basically it's pretty bad for DPS.

Then what is it good for? What is so special about it?

It is probably the best weapon if you want to leech/milk mana during combat phase, which is a critical part of the game on most maps -- more mana = more upgrades = stable defenses! This weapon works in perfect tandem with the Genie pet that gives you mana. Lupine Bows are simply put -- the "noclip" version for projectiles, i.e. they can pass through objects and enemies and pierce multiple enemies at once. They also have quite good shooting speed and on top of all that multiple projectiles in a low spread area.

What is this thing about mana leeching/filling you keep mentioning about?

- Umm, here: a very in-depth and well explained guide about Genie Swirling and how to gather mana quickly. Genie Swirling[www.dungeondefenders.com], by Mang. The guide will explain you all you need to know about Genies and some more info about Lupine Bows. Read it if you already haven't.

What do I need to know before I start farming/looking for it?

- First of all, an ideal Lupine Bow is one which has either Poison or Fire elemental damage. Why so, you'd ask? This is because not having any additional elemental damage limits you to only electric damage. For example, if you face an Ogre or even an Orc, who happens to be the last enemy of that round, you cannot leech mana off him if he is immune to electric damage. And more often than not, Ogres are the ones you will be leeching most of your mana from since they have very high health and hit-area(for your weapon to hit it with all 5 projectiles) and you can basically upgrade entire lines of defenses in one wave itself if you are quick. Hence if you have a Lupine Bow with either fire or poison, you can tank him and keep re-filling your mana stock to maximum in every 2-3 seconds.

So, then what is the purpose of this guide?

- Well, I've seen people using Lupine Bows and upgrading them in a very horrible manner. Therefore I finally decided to make a simple guide on how to upgrade even the crappiest of Lupine Bows you find into something pretty damn useful.

Well, that was a pretty long FAQ!

Yes it was! People have some misconceptions about this weapon, so I tried as much as possible to clear any doubts.

Requirements.

• A Godly, Myth or higher Lupine Bow. Myth is the absolute perfect quality you'd want. Higher qualities means more upgrades and already higher stats so you can use it as a "sort of" stat stick, but they are by no means necessary.
  
  
• Must have poison or fire elemental damage.
  
  
• About 70+ upgrades.
  
  
• Positive projectile speed more than 5k starting preferred.
  
  
• Can have negative reload speed if high clip size i.e. something above 500+ clips.
  
  
• Roughly 200m mana for upgrading.
  
  
• An extra projectile stat. Pay attention to the ones you pick, a few may have no extra projectiles.
  
  
• At least more than 1 ammo. If it has 1 ammo, it's useless because Trendy still hasn't gotten around to fix the 1 clip bug where you can't upgrade the clip size as it will always be stuck at 1. As of a Patch 8.20, this seems to have been fixed by the CDT. You won't be finding any more 1 ammo, or 1/1 or 10 damage weapons.
  
  
• Hero stats are pretty much optional, wouldn't hurt to have them though.
  
  
• A working computer, LOL!

The "How to upgrade".

This is explained in the following visual:
*If you have problems reading the text, please click on the image. I've uploaded it in it's original size.

On a side note, it is a good practice to shoot your weapon on the Tavern Dummy after every 5 points you put in base/elemental damage to see what your current damage number is.

The final product.

The following picture shows you the final product after upgrading!

Note: At the time of taking this screenshot, the Tavern difficulty was probably not set on NM. Please note that on NM your weapon will do Almost 1/5 or 1/4th the damage it does on Insane or lower difficulties. Therefore, while the damage in this screenshot may look high for a Lupine Bow, if you followed the steps correctly about upgrading it, then you will be fine!

As a reference, here is the image and damage of my current Lupine Bow that I use, along with my Hero Stats(don't mind the similar Cast Rate and Wheelo stats!):

• My current bow spawned with an already high base damage(slightly higher for my taste), so I only brought the elemental damage to its level.
  
• As I've mentioned, Myth and Trans Bows are the absolutely best you'd want since they tend to spawn with significantly lower base damage.
  
• Ult, Ult+ and Ult++ for the Lupine Bows aren't really that good since the chances of them spawning with very high base damage is quite frequent.
  
• You'd want to avoid any Lupine Bow that has more than 1000 Base Damage.
  
• Contrary to popular perception --

  this weapon is not about the stats

  rather about how well balanced your Lupine Bow damage is relative to your current Hero Attack stat.

Conclusion.

Now that's a pretty good Lupine bow for milking mana, right?
Who would have thought that you can make the most out of it given it's crappy stats?
Well now you know you can, and you don't even need to pay obnoxious amounts of mana and/or other currencies for it!

End note.

Thanks for reading the guide, hopefully it will help you!
I'll add more content and keep the guide updated from time to time, but for now this much should be enough!
Please leave your feedback and feel free to ask any questions, clear your doubts and point out any mistakes that I may have made unknowingly in the guide, I'll correct them whenever possible!

Click here to check out my other guides!

<3 Mambo.

[Penta]

This was awesome! Now i don't have to worry about mana all the time thanks!

[Black Mambo № 5]

To anyone reading this guide: As I no longer play (or intend to play) Dungeon Defenders (outside of events) -- if you feel like this guide needs updating etc. Feel free to contact me, I'll add you to this guide as a maintainer and you can keep it updated if you wish!

Mambo!

[Green Wizard Puff]

Sure you can follow a guide. Or, you can just do you. Its a game at the end of the day.

[Iron]

Hi, nice guide, thank you for it! It is useful to know that in game the Lupine Bow can also be called Wolfhunter's Bow, they are the same weapon.
It would also benefit the guide to explain the reasoning behind the specific upgrade strategy. You go into great lengths about what to do, but not why, so it took me quite a while to finally understand that we are aiming at a very specific DAMAGE OUTPUT while upgrading. Everything you spoke of came into place after that revelation :D
Can you also tell me if 1200 is the damage cap you think is best? I've leveled up and got higher stats so i'm now doing 1500 dmg, should i just get a new bow to lower the dmg?
Regards

[Black Mambo № 5]

There is a upper limit on damage and mana returned, so if the final damage is crossing the threshold, then you don't get "more" mana.
An example for simplicity's sake -- assume you get 100 Mana per hit from a genie at the max of 1000 damage(on the dummy) with a weapon.
Now, using the same genie and keeping all the hero stats same, if you have a weapon that does 2000 damage, the mana returned will still not be changed, i.e. you will get 100 mana per hit. So what that means is -- 1000 damage is the threshold for that particular genie, therefore beyond 100 damage, mana returned won't increase.
On the flipside, if you have a weapon that does 500 damage then the mana returned will be less.

In case you want more in-depth details on how the genie works, take a look at this thread -- https://dungeondefenders.com/1/topic/91151

[Punished Sigma]

so do you get more mana from it the more dmg you do?

[Hurricane]

Thx for the guide. Now I can have the best lupine bow to farm mana like crazy!

[Black Mambo № 5]

Yeah, no worries. Mainly this weapon is just for getting tons of mana during combat phase.
So it really doesn't matter that much if you have one with 120 upgrades, and having more upgrades is always better. But like I said it's not necessary and makes only a marginal difference in stats.
Glad to have been of help!

[Flochon]

Thanks for the anwser!
Yeah after realising that monster were dropping it i switched to my huntress to make sure that i find some and monsters actually loot a nice amount of it each wave so ifound one with 120 upgrades and some stats for a dps hero so i'm fine with it :) i first found one with 220 upgrades but after upgrading it i realised that it has electric elemental damage.. oops but the one with 120 is more than enough!

[Black Mambo № 5]

Yeah, the ones one the ground are pretty good by themselves. So you can just pick them up while the monsters drop them to make sure they don't vanish away later on. But it's not necessary that you pick up them during ongoing rounds, the drops that stay at the end are probably better ones anyways.
In case of not finding enough of them on ground, make sure that all of your 4 or however many characters you put in a round are Rangers / Huntresses. That way the dropped weapons will only be of this class and not any other class, which increases the drop probability of the Van Wolf weapon.

Also, just make sure the ones you picked up are AT LEAST Mythical in quality and have a Fire or Poison elemental damage, from there on you can sort and select the ones depending on their stats rate of fire, clip size, reload speed, projectile speed, etc.