Map: Crunch
Loadout: Blunderbuss, Boom barrel, Archers, Decoy, trap trinket, guardian trinket, Tar trap, arrows, coin forge, flame scorcher
Strategy: I had a fuck of a lot of resets on this map, most I had in the game. There are two immediate problems here. A: The sheer number of heavies on the map will overwhelm even Paladins in seconds. B: There are four rifts and no central choke point until the rifts. I tried various setups and got overwhelmed by wave 4 every time. You have no magic ot control the horde and that really hurts.
I used Decoys on a lark and cleared it fairly quickly. The trick is to set up a Coin Forge/trap section in the long hallways that your archers can reach. This slows down the waves starting from the top of the level nicely. You can set up a similiar trick near the acid pits by the rifts for the other two gates. The trick is to invest a lot of coins in the decoys and make sure each one has a decoy up by the start of each wave. The decoys massively slow down the waves, that gives your archers more time to handle the heavies. Boom barrels were as usual invaluable for handling heavies that got close to the rift. I three skulled this map and was happy with it. At this point in the challenge I dropped the five skull requirement, since I was getting quite enough challenge just surviving.
This and upstairs downstairs were *extremely* unpleasant. More than anything else, lots of ways for the enemy to go is bad news. Whoof.
Map: Mirror Image
Loadout: Crossbow (Fire), Boom Barrel, Archers, Decoy, Guardian Trinket, Rift Trinket, Spore Mushrooms, Dart Spitter, Coin Forge, Floor Scorcher
Strategy: Pretty standard. The first few waves were hell thanks to no magic, but spore decoys handled the fucking trolls and the decoy/coin forge/dart spitter kill box more or less made the main sections managable. I lost a few rift points here, but mostly managed the map okay. The lack of heavies here was a nice change of pace!
Map: Wind up
Loadout: Crossbow (Fire), Boom Barrel, Barricade, Guardian Trinket, Rift Trinket, Dwarves, Dart Spitter, Tar, Floor Scorcher, Arrow Wall
Strategy: This is as easy as lategame maps get. I barricaded up the rift, set up one kill box with dwarves on the bottom. I set up a bunch of traps upstairs as well, since the majority of enemies come from that way. I three skulled this due to a glitchy barricade, but five skulling it would be pretty doable otherwise. I high recommend throwaway barricades on the last few waves for the sappers.
Map: Twisted halls
Loadout: Crossbow, Boom Barrel, Archers, Guardian Trinket, Rift Trinket, Haymakers, Tar, Grinder, Floor Scorcher, Barricade
I set up a grinder killbox near the first set of stairs, then just spammed flame traps and tar near the main ones. I hit the guardian limit here- my archers kept getting sniped by cyclops and Gnoll hunters. Wave 12 involved jumping down to where the cyclops come out and spamming boom barrels to kill them and the goblin shamans- so worth it, those fucking assholes would have killed the Archers I had set up to deal with the fliers. I barely five skulled this- I was seven seconds from the par time and barely killed the last few enemies with boom barrels before they hit the rift. Oh yeah. Haymakers near where the fliers spawn? A good idea for the last few waves ,since thunder bats are very good at killing archers.
This challenge was frustrating at points, but was still fun. It says something that the hardest, most obnoxious level (Upstairs downstairs) is one that is cake normally on nightmare, and that one was still easier than Chilled caverns. Fuck Chilled caverns so much.
I may run the classic levels with this setup, but I strongly suspect that only the finale and the squeeze (oh god, tons of heavies and fliers) would be challenging.
