Was Hosting Free Insane Summit Runs

When my buddy is not online, I host an ANIMUS FARMING lobby. I do this to try and get a good squire animus. My reasoning was, "Huntresses with good DPS are a dime a dozen, and it's such a butt-easy class to play, any of them will do; all they need is a builder to give them a good summit insane setup to maintain."

Good in theory. Bad in practice. Unless I switch to my huntress for final wave, these games only have about a 30% success rate. And it's not that they can't point and click just as well as anyone else (this isn't counter-strike--it takes no skill to hit your target), it's that they don't know how to play the map/play with others.

So, after a couple of days of doing this, I've decided to just skip farming animus without my buddy. And, really, it took a lot for me to get here. The straw that broke the camel's back was a game where my team of 3 high-dps huntresses just went and suicided to the dragon over and over and over again, and upon respawning each time, would hang out in base for a little bit to shoot mobs, getting the place bombarded with fireballs; after a few rounds of this, the base finally went down.

Look, I'm a nice guy. I give a short list of easy rules in tavern--


Please help get me mana first 2 rounds of map.
Please stay top to help defend against fliers first 2 rounds.
I'll do all the building, unless someone has a monk and wants to place the auras 2nd round.
Huntresses, try to take out ogres down below when they spawn.
And, please stay out of base during dragon wave.


Now, if the game starts, and no one is getting me mana, I don't QQ. If I see someone popping chests and taking the stuff out of them, I don't care. If someone's being a jerk, I just ignore them (except for this one guy who was such a douche all game that I kicked him when dragon was <100k HP). If someone keeps going afk during the map, all I do is give a friendly little, "hey playerX can you help me with repairs?"

Really, I'm an easy-going guy. So, why do I have such a low success rate on this map with random people?

The top reason is it's nearly impossible to play with the same team twice. With steam friends broken, and with the game crashing to desktop whenever I hit "return to tavern" after a summit victory, it's hard to get a regular group together.

But, for you newer players, here are the reasons why you are so hard to carry on that map:

1) You don't repair/upgrade. With the team rotating around and upgrading and repairing stuff, most of the base can be at lvl 4-5 by the final wave--there's just that much mana dropping. It makes a difference at the end when the base has to mostly defend itself. Most games, I'm doing 95% of the upgrades and repairs while my huntresses are running around the whole map shooting mobs (making mana gathering sooooo fun for my slow-*** squire).

2) You switch your hero for the last round because you want a different animus. Know what 2 monks, a tower squire, and a tower mage do to the dragon? Jack ****. If you joined the lobby with a huntress, stay a huntress. If you already have a good huntress animus, then get another good one and trade/sell it to get the other kind. It's also ok to ask to switch; say there are 3 huntresses, feel free to ask if it's ok to switch to monk--but don't just do it and assume we have enough firepower.

3) You have no clue how to kill the dragon. If you've never played summit before, and you're not sure how to fight the dragon, say so, and your team will give you tips.

4) You keep forgetting to go kill the ogres. Your 80k DPS is 100% wasted on goblins across the map. Sorry, it just is. Those base defenses have zero problem with all the fodder. All you're doing is spreading the mana drops around the map, and putting yourself in a bad position for when ogres DO come.

5) You offer to help build, but don't know the map. It's nice to offer, it really is, but unless you have run the map a lot, and have a general idea of what needs to go where, you will actually just make everything take longer, since I have to go around and sell where necessary to make the setup work with our DU constraints. I can't say I've lost a game because of this alone, but it's certainly contributed to a lot of unnecessary crystal damage.

Now, I'm going to share with you the ideal huntress that we often won games with:

1) Soon as game starts, huntress runs to grab the 3 far chests, and then immediately back to base to drop the mana on the builder. Not the close chests, not the grate chests--the far chests.

2) Stays to help against fliers first couple of waves, and gathers up mana for 2nd round of building.

3) Runs around gathering mana and upgrading between ogre spawns.

4) Wave 8 and 9, goes down to ogre alley and keeps it clean of mobs to make killing the big ogre waves easy.

5) Meets the dragon at his initial landing point.


That's something most of the game-winning huntresses do. Now, here's some tips on killing the dragon without dying:

• 
  
• The dragon will not warp to another side of the map unless he is harpooned.
  
• 
  
• The dragon will not breath fire when he lands if there is no one in range. If you are invisible, the dragon will not recognize that you are in range, and will just continue to spew fireballs.
  
• 
  
• Fireballs can be easily dodged by jumping right before they hit you. The timing is very easy to master.
  
• 
  
• You can shoot through the walls of the castle to some degree; those square teeth (or whatever they're called) don't stop projectiles.
  

Anyway, that's it. GOOD LUCK!

Your pubs aren't here reading this. Anyone worth half a grain knows all of this anyway.

hmm i am new to this game, and going to finally unlock the summit map...regarding dragon killing, do we have to land him as often as possible? or just use those DPS hero to continuously following him and shoot at him?

Do you want your target to stay in place and only (for the most part) attack you, or do you want him flying around going aerial artillery mode more often bombarding all of your defenses.

Ballista as often as possible.

so how do the player spread be during the boss fight wave? each at one ballista? or got any kind of effective way to do it?

Someone fast gets to a ballista before dragon does and blasts it out of the air. If it goes into offensive mode on a ballista, someone has to time it right to get it.

For the most part, anyone who can shoot at the dragon while it's flying around (reliably with high +projectile speed) should, otherwise anyone who can't is either chasing dragon to ballista it or holding the line back at base. Dragon will not bombard the base if someone is actively assaulting it unless it goes artillery mode in the back of the map, and that's unavoidable.

so running speed is vital then on this map? since need to be able to run around with/faster than the dragon? and how to know where it will land after ballista-ed him? sorry for asking such a noob question since i really don't know

I'd say you were being a fool in all honesty.

If you've asked people to gather you mana and to help repair/upgrade and to dps ogres and they do none of that and instead start looting the drops and you don't kick them because of it you really are begging to fail. People who are clearly self serving *******s will not contribute anything other than making the bosses health increase and should be kicked the moment it becomes apparent they are leeching.

Have a hero monk/huntress/apprentice with at least 70 speed do it. You don't know which of the 3 sides of the map it'll be at, you have to hold shift and pay attention. And you don't necessarily -need- to be as fast as the dragon, but it makes things a lot more complicated if you're slow and have to predict where it'll be. And it leads to more artillery phases.

ok thanks for all the tips =)

and for tower composition, bowlingball towers+ensnare will be useful i think? of course range tower for the wyverns is a must

Magic missile and ensnare should work for the wyverns, but you want to pay attention to them regardless. They primarily only spawn at the first 25% of a wave.

And aura spam everything.

The only things you need to complete the map are
1x Builder who isn't worthless.
1x DPS that isn't worthless.

A single good builder can repair/maintain the entire def and a decent DPS'r can easily kill the dragon. Usually the issue for me is that when I'm on my Squire or App, I can maintain the defence indefinitely, however then I need one of the others do good DPS. If I'm on my huntress, then I can kill the Dragon in 3 landings, however pubs seem completely unable to build/repair properly.

In the end I've found a higher success rate on my App/Squire, since it seems to be a law of nature that there will always be atleast one well geared lvl 70 huntres that joins any game I host.

would you kindly share your build?

Is this an advertisement for people to group with you or just a public service announcement? I'm not sure which.

[QUOTE]The only things you need to complete the map are
1x Builder who isn't worthless.
1x DPS that isn't worthless.[/QUOTE]

Pretty much.

[QUOTE]Is this an advertisement for people to group with you or just a public service announcement? I'm not sure which.[/QUOTE]

Reading is hard.

**** you *******. You're giving guidelines on hope people should behave when grouped with you in pedantic detail. Anyone on these forums already knows all of this so I can only assume you're laying down the law so you don't have to do it in game. Which can either be seen as an advertisement for people to group with you who will have read your little ruleset or a completely pointless public service announcement. Which one isn't clear but either way you should try being civil to people asking reasonable questions.

**** you *******. You're giving guidelines on hope people should behave when grouped with you in pedantic detail. Anyone on these forums already knows all of this so I can only assume you're laying down the law so you don't have to do it in game. Which can either be seen as an advertisement for people to group with you who will have read your little ruleset or a completely pointless public service announcement. Which one isn't clear but either way you should try being civil to people asking reasonable questions.

It's called a rant. Look it up sometime.

... those square teeth (or whatever they're called)...

Crenels, fyi

Me (huntress) and a monk carried two fresh apprentice through insane summit, one of them was afk most of the time, when they were about level 30 (towers starting to be useful) we killed the dragon every time until they were both 70.

Crenels, fyi

Technically, the crenel is the space in between the merlons. I think he was referring to the merlons.

/dictionarynerd

Technically, the crenel is the space in between the merlons. I think he was referring to the merlons.

/dictionarynerd

You are correct. It's been a while since I studied that stuff.

In hard mode single player, there are no wyverns during the boss phase (there are wyverns in last phase, but not any more once the boss spawns). Does the same hold true for insane and/or 2+ players?

In hard mode single player, there are no wyverns during the boss phase (there are wyverns in last phase, but not any more once the boss spawns). Does the same hold true for insane and/or 2+ players?

Yes, when boss appears, there is no more Wyverns in the place. Difficulty doesn't matters.

I've seen your game the past night or 2, maybe someone else but in general - I figured I would join to help out with my huntress - but for some reason I was having connection issues. I'll have to try again tonight - I've soloed insane summit with my squire/huntress quite easily so we should work well together.