Trials of Fate for Dummies (Mirror of Madness)

Just thought I'd post my Trials of Fate experiences and give some tips to people that are too noob to clear them.
Originally just intended to post this in discussion, but it ended up too long and basically became a guide.

Introduction

Hello, I'm a random player on steam, and this is a guide made to convey my experiences and help anyone to easily clear Trials of Fate. I just wrote it because I was sort of bored, and I might as well do something and pretend I'm being productive.

This guide may not detail the absolute best way to beat the trials, and it's certainly not the only one.
But this is how I managed to get over 100,000 score on each trial on the first try with fairly low effort. This proves that the tactics detailed here are viable. At least until they patch the game.

What are Trials of Fate?

Trials of Fate is a piece of trash new gamemode in TW: Warhammer 3 where you can earn a few worthless achievements and get new parts for Daniel the Daemon Prince to use in campaign! Because everyone plays Daniel, of course.

It consist of five trials; Black Fire Pass, Hel Fenn, Fallen Gates, Altar of Ultimate Darkness, and Realm of Tzeentch.
Our goal here is to earn at least 100,000 points for each trial in order to get all the Daniel parts and an achievement (several achievements, in fact). You may complete these trials in any order and at any time, there is no need to unlock them.

You earn points by killing endless waves of enemies, the race of which depends on the trial.
The trial continues until all your units are dead, routed, or you choose the End Trial option in the pause menu. Or the game crashes.

Available Units

In each of the five trials, you have to use the same premade army, what you start with is what you get. There are no reinforcements for the player.


Army list:

Kysis Crystal-King
Your lord, a daemon prince of Tzeentch. A flying spellcaster with a massive health pool of 21,458 and 700 barrier. He only has 10 armour and pathetic melee stats.

Bound abilities:
Gaze of Fate, 3 uses. Stops a single enemy unit from moving and gives -40 melee attack.
Gehenna's Golden Globe, 2 uses. An extremely powerful wind-type spell with 100% armour-piercing damage.

Spells (Overcast available for all):
Pink Fire of Tzeentch, a breath spell.
Tzeentch's Firestorm, a spell that spawns multiple small moving vortexes.
Infernal Gateway, a powerful stationary vortex spell. Single overcast will kill majority of any infantry unit if it hits.


Laozi Lord of Liars
Your hero, a cultist of Tzeentch. A spellcaster on foot. Just as weak in melee as your lord, but also slow and has a tiny health pool.

Bound abilities:
Magma Storm, 2 uses. An extremely powerful stationary vortex with large radius.
Greater Gate of Tzeentch, 1 use. Summons a Lord of Change. Summoned unit will time out and die eventually.
Gate of Tzeentch, 1 use. Summons a unit of Pink Horrors. Summoned unit will time out and die eventually.

Spells (No overcast available for any of them):
Flame Storm, a moving vortex spell.
Piercing Bolts of Burning, a bombardment spell.
Burning Head, a wind spell. Good for damaging low armour infantry.


Non-hero/lord units (All start at rank 6, gaining slight stat boost):
Chaos Warriors of Tzeentch, 5 units. A good lineholder unit. Shield to defend against missiles.
Chosen of Tzeentch (Halberds), 2 units. Elite anti-large armour piercing infantry.
Exalted Pink Horrors of Tzeentch, 2 units. Solid ranged unit, decent melee stats.
Chaos Knights of Tzeentch, 2 units. Can be used for flanking or shutting down missiles.
Doom Knights of Tzeentch, 1 unit. Flying cavalry, can be used on enemy air or like ground knights.
Soul Grinder (Tzeentch), 1 unit. Melee monster with good ranged attack (mostly against infantry or large).

Mechanics

In each trial, the deployment area contains a Shard of Tzeentch that you begin in control of.
This is a crucial point that you must prevent enemies from capturing or you lose the considerable benefits it provides.

Each unit, whether ally or enemy, has capture weight. Whoever has more capture weight on the point will begin to gradually capture it until they gain control.
Once the Shard is lost, taking it back will likely be very difficult due to the constant enemy reinforcements.

The Shard of Tzeentch provides the following while you control it:
Greatly increased power recharge rate, allowing you to cast spells faster.
Constantly regenerating power reserves, allowing you to keep casting indefinitely.
Increased spell damage done.
And finally, it generates the points that can be used to vastly improve your army abilities.

Speaking of which, possibly the most crucial tools for clearing the Trials of Fate are the absurdly powerful army abilities you get. These abilities can be charged simply by dealing damage to enemies through any means, whether that be spells, unit abilities, attacks or even the army abilities themselves.

List of Army Abilities:
Diabolical Puppetry, your weakest ability. Simply holds enemies mid-air, making them unable to act. Can be used for stalling dangerous enemies, stopping enemies from attacking, or to keep enemy units still while you cast spells on them. Not effective on large units.

Tempest of Blue Flame, an extremely powerful moving vortex that tosses enemies in its way into the air, killing them. When fully upgraded, can move across the map and kill many enemies. Moves randomly, but often in the general direction you aim it. Not effective on large units.

Inevitable Fate, a vortex that you can cast on your lord or hero, causing most infantry sized ground units to be sucked in. During the duration of this ability, you can move the lord/hero you cast it on over enemy units to draw more of them into the vortex. When the ability expires, all units caught in it get tossed away and die. Works on most enemy foot lords and most heroes. Does not work on large or flying units.

As mentioned before, these abilities can be upgraded with the Forbidden Knowledge resource gained by maintaining control of the Shard of Tzeentch. The army ability upgrades menu is located on the bottom right of your army panel, below your units.
Upgrading abilities not only makes them much stronger and reduces their cooldown, it also resets the cooldown of the upgraded ability (except for Inevitable Fate, the cooldown of which is set to 30 seconds upon upgrading it).

Trials Maps & Tactics

Miscellaneous Tips:

The basic tactics I'd recommend for clearing these trials are very simple.
First, do not try to go out to meet the enemy with your army. Instead make some kind of formation, like the one above, to keep them on the edge of the point. This not only prevents the enemy from capturing the point and allows you to effectively guard it until your army abilities are upgraded, but also ensures enemies gather towards one place so you can more easily blast large numbers of them with spells and army abilities.

You don't need to guard the back of your units, generally. 180° arc of units is enough. The enemy won't go for you ranged or flank much except with flying units.

Alternatively, just blob up your units and spam spells and abilities. They do most of the work anyway.

The enemy starts out by sending weaker units, but later more elite ones start to appear.

You can choose to use the firepower of your ranged units to quickly charge army abilities, or try to save ammo for dealing with more dangerous monsters, elite infantry, and flying units.

Since the trial is lost only when all your units are dead, you can keep running away and using army abilities even if you can't stand and fight anymore. Keep in mind that you start losing leadership when your only remaining units are flying. If this happens, you're effectively on a timer where you need to land or you lose.

It's also possible to hide units in forest to delay for a while, if the map features trees. The enemies will likely eventually find them though. This can help get more score if you really struggle.This is not necessary on any map, however.

Army Ability Tips:
Your army abilities do no damage to your units, so no need to worry about them.

None of these abilities are effective on air units!

When upgrading your army abilities, I recommend prioritizing Inevitable Fate and Tempest of Blue Flame first, as they are your main way of clearing mass amounts infantry in the trials.

The cooldowns of Diabolical Puppetry and Tempest of Blue Flame are reset when you upgrade them. The cooldown of Inevitable Fate is set to 30 seconds when you upgrade it!
So don't hurry to upgrade them the moment you can, instead you can use the cooldown resets when you need them.

Diabolical Puppetry:
Just cast in on threatening melee or ranged units to stop them from attacking, or keep them still while you use spells on them. Can also be used to stall, it will stop any enemy infantry that move into it, and has a fairly long duration.

Tempest of Blue Flame:
Don't cast it right on top of the enemies you want to kill, cast it some distance away from them while aiming it towards them.
At highest upgrade level, this ability will move across the entire map, often killing many enemies.
Look out for long lines of enemies, whether they're heading for you or spawning at map border.
This ability can potentially kill a large number of enemies when cast on such lines.

Inevitable Fate:
You should cast this on your lord and try to fly over as many enemy infantry as possible.
It will draw all of them into the vortex and kill them when the ability ends.
Useful for killing huge numbers of enemies massed on top of your troops.

Tips for Specific Maps:
Disclaimer: All descriptions of races or units rosters here are based on what you face in the trials, and may not apply in campaign or multiplayer.
Difficulty ratings aren't official, just my opinion! Which is factually correct and better than yours.

Black Fire Pass (Difficulty: Very Easy):
This map features Greenskins as the enemy race. The starting enemy lord is Grimgor Ironhide. Despite being a foot lord, Grimgor isn't affected by Inevitable Fate so you need to kill him via other means, like Gaze of Fate combined with ranged fire, or in melee.

While Greenskins have fairly strong infantry, they have rather weak missiles and no flying units. Additionally, other than Grimgor and Rogue Idols, they field no other units immune to your army abilities. This means your army abilities are extremely effective here, and nothing can really threaten your lord. Use this to get as much score as you want, simply run away and use army abilities.

Hel Fenn (Difficulty: Medium):
On this map, the enemy is Vampire Counts. The starting enemy lord is Heinrich Kemmler, who you can easily kill with Inevitable fate.

The infantry on this map is still fairly easy to deal with, but you must also deal with a great number of Fell Bats and Vargheists. Both are flying units your army abilities don't work on, and Doom Knights by themselves will fairly quickly be overrun. You can lure them on the ground or use ranged firepower. Also Banshee heroes can't be affected by your army abilities.

Fallen Gates (Difficulty: Hard):
Here, the enemy is Lizardmen. I found this one to be the most difficult map.
Kroq-Gar is the starting enemy lord, but can also be easily killed by Inevitable Fate.
The infantry is fairly decent, but again not at all challenging and easily killed by army abilities. There are no large ground units like monstrous infantry or dinosaurs either.

What makes this trial the most difficult one is the copious amounts of Terradon Riders and Ripperdactyl Riders. Terradon Riders are a flying unit with ranged attack, offering constant but relatively small damage.
Ripperdactyl Riders are flying units that have significant amount of melee attack, though they don't have much durability. Together, combined with fairly limited means you have of dealing with air units, they're quite dangerous.
You may want to use your ammunition on aerial enemies, and use Chosen and Chaos Knights to kill any that get into your backline. If you can't seem to get enough score at all, you may want to run away with Chaos Knights and your lord. You may also hide units in the forest before you get overrun to prolong the game a bit and get more score.

Altar of Ultimate Darkness (Difficulty: Easy)
This time, the enemies are Warriors of Chaos, led by Archaon the Neverchosen.
As befits the Neverchosen, Inevitable Fate can be used to kill him before he can even do anything.

While the infantry sent against you is fairly strong, all infantry are equal before your army abilities. The air units only consist of some Chaos Furies and Manticores. Doom Knights can deal with these well enough, especially with ranged support.


Realm of Tzeentch (Difficulty: Medium-)
Here comes the Tzeentch mirror match. Could this be what the "Mirror of Madness" meant?
The enemy lord is Kairos Fateweaver. He can be easily lured, pinned in place with Gaze of Fate, and shot up. Army abilities won't work on him.

The only enemies you'll face after are endless amounts of mortal Tzeentch units and horrors. Whether blue, pink or exalted. Also the occasional caster. The only difficulty this map has is caused by the absurd amount of ranged units, but they don't do that much damage. It also helps that they come in convenient lines for Tempest of Blue Flame.

Not quite as easy as Warriors of Chaos, but not as difficult as Counts or Lizardmen.

Afterword

After making this guide, I feel like I put way too much production value into it.
Even though it's a waste of time and effort, much like Trials of Fate itself.

Now get out there and achieve those achievements!

TL;DR

Camp the point and spam abilities, lmao

[Siegfried]

Thank you for your Guide. It did work out for me thus far. I have to rematch the Lizardmen then I should be fine.

[Saint Scylla]

Alright, 140K versus the Warriors. Thanks a bunch for your help!

[Tunguska]

@Saint Scylla
Ah, if it's warriors Doom Knights can do plenty of work against their air. Just send them in as soon as manticores or furies approach, and maybe flank furies if they hit your ground.
Also manticores and furies should lose reasonably hard against your ground units. They have no ranged, so they have to land to attack.

If you still can't deal with WoC air units, don't move your lord too far away from your army if there's air coming. Then they'll probably go for ground units first.
You should be over 100k with ability spam before they get any chance to overwhelm you.

Also try and keep moving if they chase your lord with flying units (never directly into flying enemies if you can help it), even if those units are faster they'll take ages to deal any meaningful damage as long as they're melee and you keep running. You generally don't need to use your lord in melee too much, his stats aren't very good anyway.

[Saint Scylla]

Thanks. I've rolled on the Greenskins yesterday but just scored a frustrating 91K against the Warriors. My lord was overwhelmed under crowds of manticores and furies, which prevented me from making the best of Inevitable Fate.

[Tunguska]

@Saint Scylla
You can use guard mode, yes.
At least for infantry, there's usually not much reason to order them to attack at all.
Just let infantry stand there and hold the line while you spam spells and army abilities.

For dealing with flying units, you can try to shoot them. Aside from that poke them with chosen and flank with cavalry if they get behind you lines.

If it looks like your lines are completely crumbling, you should just run away and possibly hide some units in the trees while spamming spells and army abilities to earn score for as long as possible.

Maybe I should record videos of clears for all the stages and post them here too.

[Saint Scylla]

- My units tend to get carried away and isolated. Do you use Guard to prevent them from pursuing enemies?
- How do you deal with fliers since spells and army abilities don't affect them?

[Xen]

I read guides to avoid too much time in boring tasks.
ty for this

[Tunguska]

@Sucessful busynessman
"You could edit it to include tactics like using your lord to fly above massed infantry with the army ability that you lock on a lord or hero for, thats how i got 100k. Also upgrading doesnt instantly reset the cooldown of army abilities for all of them, I think it reduces to 30 sec cooldown on an upgrade."

This info can be already found in the guide, but I edited it anyway for clarity.

[YELLOWSUPERCAR76]

You could edit it to include tactics like using your lord to fly above massed infantry with the army ability that you lock on a lord or hero for, thats how i got 100k. Also upgrading doesnt instantly reset the cooldown of army abilities for all of them, I think it reduces to 30 sec cooldown on an upgrade.

[Gobrinsan]

you are a Legend.