General helpful tips

You will find some general informations to rock the game.

Forging

Through the game you will get the ability to create and enhance weapons. You can find 3 different smelters.

• Steel Smelter (worst)
  
• Durium Smelter (meh...)
  
• Arcadium Smelter (awesome)

Please dont bother using the steel one. You already have a set of steel equipment on you. You could upgrade them by adding lifeforce but ... it really does not do the trick. Trust me.

My tip is to not forge anything till you get the Arcadium Smelter. You will gather a hugh amount of gold to this point. You should already have some significant amount of lifeforce too.

The Arcadium items really need MUCH lifeforce. Please refer to the section of this guide called "farming" for some advise.

Here is what I think is the best combination. Mentioned in the order you should aquire these.

Arcadium Sword
Put only brown minions into it to max the damage. Dont bother the firedamage, you wont need this. Critical is not needed too! You could put some (50-100) blue minions for knockback in, but ... well it is more annoying than helpfull knocking enemys off their feet.
You will get a sword, so powerfull it will kill most enemys with one or two hits.

Arcadium Armor
Put most of the minions for damage reduction. Add 100 for regeneration, dont bother the other 2 options. You will aquire an amor, that makes you nearly undefeatable. If you have the sword and this, you wont need the minons anymore.

Acradium Helmet
It gives you a +10 minions to control. 50 minons ... that is really awesome. But be carefull not to get them killed all together ;D
Oh and as I wrote just before, you wont need that amount of minions any more ;D

Farming Lifeforce

You will find youself forging, not having enough minions to complete the item at once.

500 minons sound awefull much (near the end of the game you might have around 500 browns, maybee) and this is only one item.

The solution is pretty simple. Go the the arena of your tower (remember? that location you are told you can fight already defeated creatures!?). Near the end of the game you will have access to the "Beetles".

• Fight Beetles (drops brown lifeforce)
  
• Blind Beetles (drops blue lifeforce)
  
• Smaraged Beetles (drops green lifeforce)
  
• Magma Beetles (drops red lifeforce)

These options spawn 25 Beetles of the kind you have choosen. Each Beetle will give you 3 lifeforce on dying; that makes a total of 75 Lifeforce per round.

IMPORTANT TIP
If you dont have any Arcadium Items, be warned. Dont rush into them, or they will rape your ass!!! The tactic of choice is to gater around 10 blue and the rest brown minions. Enter the arena and set a point for the blues in the left corner. Set a point for the browns like 10m ahead to the enemy.
Now try to lure SOME (2-3) of the beetles to your minions and help defeating them! The blues will revive fallen minions. Reorganise your minions after each killing and keep repeating till all beetles are dead.

If you have the Arcadium Sword (als mentiond in this guide) with max damage, you dont need your minions any more. Leave them in the pits, ignore Gnarl telling you to take them with you and enter the arena. Start at one side (left or right) and fight the beetles. You will need around 1-2 strikes to kill them. This is way more faster then the first option, but will need some skill. Dont rush in too hard, or they will sourround you and ...

If you have the Arcadium Sword AND the Arcadium Amor, you are well prepared. You dont need to bother anything. Just rush into the middle of the beetles and kill them.

[Kroe]

Good tips but for Legendary difficulty i dont recommend skipping smelter stages specially the helmet, those extra minions are really helpful specially since ur horde will die ALOT.

[Fane ioVoieVod]

Thank you for the guide, what is the best way to farm equipment for minions?

[hulk2004]

for farming reds use reds to not die to the fire

[Luckscrow]

if you need minions for a helmet, just use greens. just grab as much in greens in the dungeon as possible, spawn the puff beetles, go to the left side (or right, your choice) walk up till a bug spots you, and just rush em. no tactics or anything, just storm them from the side. they wont overwhelm and kill you, and it goes really fast. sure a fair amount of greens die (i had an average of 10 casualties per match) but the amount of lifeforce and the short amount of time it takes per battle more then make up for it.

[MonkeyMummyMoney]

For farming In the arena Greens are better. The Beetles wont see the Greens and the Green are going to insta-kill them. Blue's are hard enough to get as is, there's no need to put them in situations that could possibly lead to them dying.

[Crazyonehull]

cool thx

[dragonking9746]

So when forging what form of math should one use

[dragonking9746]

what about steel swords and armor

[nuju888ice]

I've found the Dwarven Warriors to be a great farming choice for browns, equipment, and gold. Once you have Arcadium armor and weapon of choice, you don't even ahve to risk minion lives

[khermage]

To farm gear for your minions, use Zombies. Individually they only have a small chance to drop loot, but quantity makes up for it. Greens are especially hungry for gear.

Best for farming is to use all of one color, as when you get minions from a spawning pool it gets the most recent minions used. So 10 each of brown, red, green, and blue fully equipped, means #11 of each type will be without gear. If you have done Arena farming of 40 each, then you have 40 of each minion type with good gear (great when you need good reinforcements).

My tactics for Arena gear farming is:
1) Put a marker on the left side for all your minions
2) Lure some Zombies to follow you, use your minions kill the Zombies
3) If loot drops, sweep the minion swarm over the loot. If any of them can use the gear, they will stop and pick it up (loot will disappear over time)
4) Go back to step #1