Buddelmuddel

Hello,
I occasionally play lvl 10 with players who have no experience at this level.
I notice that most of the cases where we lose the game, it's not a question of difficulty but rather of time.
21 min.. That doesn't leave us a lot of time. I wonder if we could increase the time allotted by 2-3 minutes.
Thx

So first of all, its nice that i did get pretty objective replies. In my answer I still wouldn't quote and answer to each single thing said, and would rather write it general.
 
I do have played a few speedruns, I believe we had a rank 1 in blight, king of giants, ascension and passage to darkness, end of the raven and empire, and siege of hope ofc. Monstly I played it one month cause, back then you needed some rank 1 to get the xp for the higher pve rank. Not sure about bad harvest, I believe i played a few games as a feeder in 2009 not sure, if it ended up in a rank, additionaly i did play it 2 times in the carry position but to make it through without dying once I believe I would have had to played it 4-5 times at least, not sure.
On blight I had the carry position and on king of giants I stayed t1, on the empire and end of raven I didnt do much. On all the maps I did not develop any strategies, maybe on blight a bit, because its next to passage to darkness and ascension map 3 the only maps i do sometimes play.
 
As you know I mostly play battelground and I had forgotten about decomposer. But even on battleground I realized if someone has a better time, the person, usually uses a different strategy or deck. You can play the map in a hard or use some speedruns meta deck which usually is pretty easy, but for the last minute it gets a bit difficult.
 
Back then lost spirit ships were meta. Like I said before with wheels or stoneshell, you basically you dont have to look at the monitor to clear the map. But if you play them with motivate, and no defensive spells just more damage spells, then it gets a little tricky, if you have to direct the skyelf additionally and defend somewhere else too.
One of the last speedruns that I did play was lvl 10 solo. I believe I had 25mins with ships in the speedrunway played, then I tried the green batariel, whichwere like about 25 mins too, and without wheels you had to look out for him a bit. Then I tried the black batariel with frenetics, which took then 20 mins, and it was pretty relaxing to play. Then I did look at Treims replay so when I switched the red start to black, it were about 18 mins, I still missed some cardes like nether warp green and 1 other. Then it would have started to get a bit tricky when you have to work with 2 batariels at the same time on the map it gets a little harder.
 
In the campaigns even if you only have your t1, you still have to do your job and focus in a speedrun. Its just not the same complexity as on a carry position in a speedrun.
 
Right now its a bit sad that even in battlegrounds you dont play the map in its usually way, but warp over get the t3 fast, maybe 1-2 players feed. As a battleground player this is a little sad.
 
But to summarize, when I do play with people in lvl 10 that have high ranks in campaigns or even battleground nowadays, they pretty often do not play well. Im happy if they have a basic understanding of how a lvl 10 works, and when im lucky they can adapt to the situation that occurs.
They usually play better then just random unknown players, but not as some unranked players who play battlegrounds more often. Personally the way I play the lvl 10  is that everyone get their t2 alone and you only help if someone needs it. Also you take the t3 alone or together, no orb give ways. The orb giveaway make it easier but takes the fun out of it. If you played a map a bunch of times and then you see it with speedrun techniques its pretty painful to watch.
 
To summarize it again, in a speedrun where you only get t1 you still have to focus, but its easier then when you would have to play till t4. Aditionally some cards just make the game easy, which are usually t4, or with ami or enlightment t3. Without ami and enlightment, to clear a map with just t3, or just t2 is a lot harder. And if you can skip those its easier but again its takes less skill.
 
Would put it this way:
Imagine there was a battleforge, the same as this one only there is a t1 card for 50 energy which kills all opposing structures and units. Then basically all would think this card should be nerved except maybe the one person with the best computer, you was able to use it first and get all the rank 1s.
Then the card get neves to t2. Still people think the card is too good. But now there are already a bunch of people who perfected their t1 and think the card is fine, and they put work into how to get to the t2 the fastest. To the onces who woud like the map to be played till t4, and in a way the game is played usual they say, this is speedrunning, if someone doesnt like it they should play casual.
If the card get reworked to t3, then there is t1, t2 to play and a bunch more people will like it to stay because you can use more techniques to get to the t3 fast.
 
Right now, you basically skip the t3 with enlightment and amii. And you skip the t2 if possible with nether warp. Its fine but makes the map a lot easier. And if you are someone who plays the maps from t1 to t4, and people are suprised about the good times that some people achive, its awkward.
 
Ok, as a last summary, if you want to play with me randoms lvl 10, and you have a good speedrun time somewhere then its a good start, and we can work with that, but there is a pretty long way to go.
Additionally it would be nice to see the times of players who played the maps in the usual way, and to see in which time they can do it. And then compare your own times to them.
 

I would fix the the decomposer bug, so that it only targets your own units.
 
It would bring a little more skill into speedrunning. Maybe even add that every position has 4 orbs that they can take, and none of the other positions can take them. Additionally make ami monument and enlightment t4.
 
When you are a new player you do think that a good time is associated with good players, but 85% of the needed time is determined from your deck, your strategy and AI understanding. Basically the last minute decides how well a team has excecuted a map, and not if they were 5 or 10 minutes faster. Although to understand the AI and play around it, does take a little skill.
 
If the campaings would be played properly there would be a little more diversity in ranks, and it would be more incentive to play the maps, cause not everyone could do them easily. Its a little sad, when 1 players who knows what he is doing achieves a better time, then when 4 people know what they are doing, but they play the game instead of feeding.
But then again, if it would be more known that good times do not have to be associated with good players, then it wouldn`t matter in the end. Although it would be nice if you play a map normally in a good way, people could see that you played it well. Maybe there could be 2 rankings, one with every bug abuse possible. And one where you play the map in the casual way, just efficient.
 
Additionally I would add maybe 200 more energy on camapign maps, so that the start isnt so dang slow.

The thug change to unity ability is much much better than the building looter only ability
from back then. Idk, why this popped up 1 year after I wrote it, but dang I was salty
wasn't I?
 
Edit blurb 7/3/ 22
------------------------------------------
 
This is a balance change observation. I'm going to break down why I think the Thug Balance changes did not work.
 
I am writing this down knowing nothing will revert, but as an exercise to explore why no one has been thrilled and
it would have been better to do nothing in this case.
 
PVE Broken--------------------------------------------------------
1st off, pve Fire is dominated by Mine and Eruption already, Most of the time, hp matters less when the enemy is that weakened or disrupted, you don't tank in pve t1 fire, you kill or unit spam it dead. HP Regen, range and utilty tools like No summoning sickness, swift and L size are more important in pve t1 fire. Looting pve units was the thug's only previous niche. Remember this.
 
2nd, in PVE, Thugs are in a tough spot compared to North guard, Spearmen, Insert shadow t1 melee, because Scavengers are almost the exact same 60 power unit Thugs are, except better. Giving thugs 720 s dmg, same as scavs does nothing in PVE. Because Scavs have chad slowing and swift, Thugs have +100 hp and loot +power from cpu buildings. That's a fat zero power gained because cpu pve buildings have no power costs, useless. Also, see above about why more hp in pve mostly useless. The result is obvious, now pve players mostly have converted to Scav, Nomad and Sunstriders when they have chance because the thug's new advantages are mostly useless in Fire t1 pve. Essentially, thugs losing unit looting means Scavs are now better in every way that matters.
*edit: would also like to add and remind people, even if Scav equivalence issue is removed, Wreckers are 10 power cheaper (50) , have spearmen range behavior and are overall better even without factoring their game breaking ability, So it's actually even worse for thugs.
 
You guys also broke a niche classic Lost Souls Era deck where you grab a bunch of thugs next to healing and then trigger chaos warrior ability to fight each other to gain power. The new thugs are next to worthless for this as they only get power from buildings. This was THE only way to get free power in the entire game since lost souls and u guys broke it cause pvp. Cool coool coool cool cool. Wow.
 
See my frustration below.
 
PVP more of the same--------------------------------
 
Giving thugs with the attack statline of Scavs while looting buildings has pleased no one.
They're still doing the exact same thing except now buffed to kill defenders instead of trading card charges evenly with them.
And they still give free power. Like what changed? The niche thug strategy, if anything is stronger as they're now even more cost efficient backdooring
as always.
 
Overall worth.-----------------------------
This is I believe an example of where old thugs should have been kept. Because the new thug balance is basically the same annoying ass in pvp except buffed in their intended pvp role so it feels even shittier to face when working properly, while completely broke useless for pve usage now.
 
So we broke thugs for pve, and the same unpopular thug play in pvp is just as strong now in a different way. I would not call that a win, we're back to the beginning with a now completely PVE useless card.

------------------Disclaimer------------------
I wrote this guide without access to the game and do not intend to update it anytime soon. I apologize for all inaccuracies due to my limited memory. The vast majority of things should be actually correct, but I might've missed a few smaller things that i probably wouldn't now.
Also note that the metagame in some areas has evolved since the game has been accessable again. This mostly manifests in the fact that Lost Spirit Ships became a lot more situational and Batariel is often the way to go instead, even against Lost Souls maps. This happened because Batariel is a lot better understood in its limitations and players got better at playing around those limitations which are especially relevant to Lost Souls maps.

If you want to see the theories described here in practice you might want to check out following thread where I upload solo speedruns of 1, 2 & 4 Player maps pretty much whenever I play them: https://forum.skylords.eu/index.php?/topic/6281-treims-motm-solo-speedrun-archive/
 
Apparently images originally attached and referenced in the explanations just ceased to exist for some reason. For the full guide please go to the END of this post and use the dropbox link attached there to get access to the full guide.

2. General Information
 
2.1. Spawn Mechanics

First of all: Spawn mechanics in rPVE are very simple, they are following only 4 rules:
 
Whenever you attack a unit from an enemy base (except the spawns), every camp that has a direct path to that attacked camp will start spawning units. A camp has a direct path to another camp when you can go there without facing any other camp on the way, its direct. You can go from camp A to camp C without the need to go through Camp B. When such a unit is spawned, it will always directly attack your monument, that was the last one you have built at the time the enemies spawned, monuments that weren't built up, but were in progress, when they spawned count as a 'full' monument. Any monument you build after they spawned are not relevant for that specific spawn. Whenever a camp started spawning units, it will not stop until you kill the spawn building. A camp can only spawn new units if the complete previous spawn gets killed.
Example:

In the picture I have named camps: '1','2','3','4','5'
The arrow symbolizes your attack, so the following will happen:
When you hit the first units from '1', '2' and '3' will start spawning as their is a direct path from '1' to them.
Nothing will happen to '4' and '5' as they do not have such a linkage to '1'.

After '1' is cleared you could go to '2' or '3'. In this scenario we will go to '2'.
When you attack '2', '4' will start spawning units as they have a direct linkage.'3' will still spawn units, as it can't stop; '5' will still do nothing; '1' doesn't exist anymore.

Next step would be to clear '4'. As soon as you attack '4', '5' will start spawning units due to their direct linkage. '3' still spawns units, '1' and '2' doesn't exist anymore.


2.2. Base structure & how to find the 'right' spawnbuilding

So a base is always built up like this (with more or less paths to it):

First of all you need to know that in every base there is always only 1 spawn building, if there is a 2nd one that could potentially be a spawn building as well (just from the way it looks), one of those is fake and will never spawn any units. There's a way to identify the correct and the fake spawn building with 100% security. In order to do so you need to know following things:
You will have several entries and one of them is the 'main entry', you can always recognize the 'main' entry on how the base is aligned.
In this case the 'main' entry is 'entry 1'. You can recognize it as 2 towers are directly oriented to that entry (they are always on the left and the right of that entry), even though you might get into the base from entry 2, 3 or 4, '1' will always be the main one.
With that knowledge the spawn building that spawns units is not random at all anymore, its 100% predictable which of them will be the 'right' one.
When you would run into the base from the 'main' entry, it is ALWAYS the spawn building on the right side of the base. If you ever think it's not, well better check if you have the main entry identified correctly.
 
2.3. The issue of close camps and trapping spawns.

I bet most of you (if not any), already had this: you're into a battleground game and you pull the aggro of the t3 when trying to take t2.
This often happens (95% of the time), the spawn of the t3 will somewhat pull the whole t3 base to your t2 base. In very rare cases, the aggro range of the t3 includes the t2. In all the other cases the spawn will just 'ask for ally help'. That actually means that you can avoid those attacks from close camps by 'trapping' the spawn in-between t1 and t2.
Every fraction (fire/nature/frost/shadow) can do that, some easier some harder:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: http://listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=g52hV...ade_Expert Frost: Kill the melee units, take aggro of the archers with one unit and run to t2 with another one, you can take a well when the archers are NOT in range of it, otherwise its a gamble, if they switch their focus. After that spam some ice barriers and kill the squad you held aggro with. (if you are confident in your skill, you can try to do the same as with nomads, but its much harder as you can not run through them to do damage. You need to use master archers and stop the attack of them at the exact correct time, so that the bolts doesn't finish off the whole squad, but only parts( that works because every unit of the squad needs to get killed by a single bolt) Shadow: Basically same game as with frost, kill the melees, pull the aggro of the archer squad with one unit and take a well at t2 with another unit, kill that one after. Build Soul Splicer in-between t1 and t2 and kill some units next to it to, to fill it up. Then just press 's' with the squad you have aggro. By the time the soul splicer is empty, your aggro unit is dead and the soul splicer is destroyed, you should have enough energy collected to clear t3 easily. (You can try the same as mentioned in Frost, as it will lower the damage of the squad you gain more time) Nature: Kill the melees or the archers, take aggro of the other one with a shaman and build t2.. done. Extra tip: When you face lost souls and the spawn includes a lost dancer you are the luckiest guy in the world. Use any squad unit (windweavers/forsaken/northguards/master archers, etc.,etc.), kill all other stuff but the lost dancer, and press 's' with your squad unit. When the lost dancer attacks it, the squad will split up and stay like that, any following attack of the lost dancer on that squad will do no damage anymore.
This also works for close camps at from t3 to t4.
3. rPVE/Battleground 1 Player

3.1. Map structure and general principles
First of all I would like to show you the general structure of a lvl 10 1 player Battleground map, you will need to understand this in order to follow some of my thought process.



In this case we start at the bottom of the map. That is because it easier to explain it that way, but it doesn't matter if the map is twisted 90°, 180°, or 270°. The principle stays the same. You see that the way will split up right in front of your t1. The t2 will always be at the end of the way that goes to the edge of the mini map. Notice that the way to the camp that is closer to the centre of the map will always be way shorter and you might get problems with pulling the whole camp and or shamans if any exist in that camp. That is important as you want to avoid attacking anything from that base, because it will force another camp to spawn units as well, it makes it way harder to defend. You always want to rush to t2 with the smallest possible amount of energy being used - in other words as soon as possible. At that rank on the map you will always have 2 camps next to your t2, while t3 is always above on the next rank of the map. You always want to clear that as soon as possible as well, without using to much power in defence for the units that will attack your t2. Next to your t3 you will always find 2 other camps and the t4 on the exact opposite of the map.
From that point on you will have 2 more ranks on the map with each 3, rarely 4 camps. That means in general you have to clear 6-7 bases after you cleared the 'real' t4 base.
Whenever you reach a base you basically want to destroy the 'right' spawn building before it can spawn any units, as those can respawn the whole base. Which would cost a lot of time.
3.2. Common t1- t4 strategies

T1: Enemy - Bandits:
Fire: Get 3 nomads (green), kill the melee part of the spawn and kill the most part of the archers, you want of the squad of 6 archers that maximal 4 are alive, so your nomads always stay healthy. For the last few hp you need to take away from them, you can just through them. It is very necessary to hold position (press 's'), so that the nomads don't attack the archer squad. Demonstration: There's some additional information I want to mention: This only works when your monuments can NOT attack the spawn, it will kill them slowly but not for sure. That makes it very important to be careful with the positioning of the spawn.
Shadow: Almost always your first choice to go. You will need forsaken or Nox Trooper (I personally prefer forsaken because- of their passive and because Nox Trooper aren't very good against squad units, which you will mainly face at t2). Key cards are forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. You basically want to build up the soul splicer at the exact range, where you don't aggro the t2 and then build just enough forsaken to clear the camp. You want to use 3 frenzied forsaken (in some cases with very bad spawns and unit positioning you might need more) to clear the spawn building, while you focus on taking down towers and those annoying mana wings with the other forsakens first. As soon as the first forsaken (not frenzied) hits a point where he has half of his hp left, motivate them. So the soul splicer can heal the rest up in time. Sometimes its worth/necessary to get a skeleton warrior in front of them to tank up a lot of damage. That is the case when you have a t2 base with bunch of units. Defend with 2 forsaken. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Frost: If shadow isn't working great against the enemy try frost. Key cards are frost mage, ice barrier and homesoil. If you face those annoying spearmen that can't get knock backed summon 2-3 master archers in order to kill the spawn building, as frost mages aren't really good against those due that they cant attack the spawn building properly. Defend with 1-2 frost mages, if the spawn includes spearmen use 1 frost mage and 1 master archer. Spawn behind the monument and don't worry about enemies focussing on the monument. Fire: Only good in very rare cases. Mostly when you have these windhunter thingies AND you're having a close camp. What you want to do is: Spawn 3 nomads (green) set 1-2 mines and use 4 eruptions to kill the spawn building. You can defend with makeshift tower or 1 mine. Key cards: Nomad (green), mine, eruption. If necessary you can add sunstriders against those mana wings. After that you want to set up 3 blaster cannons (red) and build another nomad. So you have 4 nomads. Then set 2-3 mines in front of the t3 base and pull the whole base into your mines and blaster cannons. You run in the t3 base and clear the spawn building with eruptions. Mission accomplished. I got an example video for you: http://listenonrepeat.com/?v=8EkqkzbuLw0..._von_Treim Nature: Never viable, units and spells are just to expensive and following orb order is not better than frost. Basic information: in 95% of the maps you should be fine with spawning 6-8 units to clear the t2.

T1: Enemy - Stonekin:
Shadow: Same as Bandits, but you will almost always need to have skeleton warriors on top of the soul splicer. If there are those crystal fiends at t2 you should prefer nox troopers over forsaken as well, just to avoid the knock back, as well as being able to kill them very fast with the 'overload' ability. You will need immediate motivate in order to clear the spawn building with nox troopers though. In general 4 should be enough for that. Frost: You will often need some master archers on top of the frost mages, as they're not very good against the crystal fiends with their non targeted damage. You need to focus on them before killing the spawn building as they do so much damage. It's very likely that they respawn if you only use frostmages as well. I recommend using at least 3-4 master archers to kill the spawn building. Fire: not viable Nature: not viable  
T2: Enemy - Bandits:

Your second orb is always shadow. You always want shadow phoenixes to clear the t3. If you started shadow t1 you can even build up resource boosters already. Those are a must in every deck.
If you have those windhunters at t3 use spawn 3 shadow phoenixes use the embalmer shrine (you want to build up 2, so you can have the effect up all the time) and clear the base next to your t2, kill the spawn building in 100% of the cases and find the right target to get all 3 phoenixes back. That way you made those 3 phoenixes 'voidless'. That means they're not binding any more energy in them. You get all the energy back (into the void pool) when they attack. That way you can spawn 2-3 more phoenixes relatively fast and attack. You need 5-6 of them as 2 will get paralysed and might get focussed down before they are able to attack. If there are no windhunters just use 3 shadow phoenixes and enjoy to clear your t3 very fast.

T2: Enemy - Stonekin:
Basically the same as for against Bandits just with some special cases. You will most likely face constructs and tortuguns and t3 that means you need 11-13 phoenixes.
In order to get 13 phoenixes very fast, you need to modify the way you get the  phoenixes voidless by a little bit. You want to basically get 3-4 (depending on how many you can get back when attacking) and attack  the base next to t2 again. But this time use a unit in the base that is far enough away from the spawn building, that the spawn building will NOT die. You will just fly away with your 3-4 phoenixes and let whole base respawn just to spawn 3-4 more phoenixes and now kill the base entirely (don't kill towers or anything if phoenixes wouldn't revive from it).
that way you will have 6-8 phoenixes already and can almost instantly build 4 new  and your good 2 go.
Pro tip: Some of those tortuguns have a ranged anti air attack (just as the normal tortuguns have). Those will destroy a lot of phoenixes if it hits and your attack will most likely fail. In order to prevent that 'stack' the phoenixes on top of each other.


If you tell 12 phoenixes at the same time to go to a certain map point they will automatically get in the formation you can see on the left side of the picture. However you can pick small groups or even single phoenixes and all let them go through a certain point and press 's' to stop them from moving right when they're in that point where you want to stack the phoenixes. If you stacked them correctly there should maximally die 1 or 2 of them to the tortugun, as they will fly in basically the same point all the time.
If there are windhunters in that base you might want to consider to send 2-3 units in front of the phoenixes to tank their paralyse and damage. If you started frost you can use coldsnap to just freeze them.
In some cases you will face something that is even more annoying: you might have to deal with deepgorge towers that will attack your t2 when you try to build it up. Those bases will get pulled when the spawn hits the t2 definetly. You have to trap the spawn in-between your t1 and t2 as mentioned in 2.3.. In those cases you need to get a bit creatively. You do not want to take the wells and only take the monument. You can either defend it with skyelf templar and trap the spawn with ice barrier spam, what is really expensive though (if you are not able to kill the most part of the archer squad and only leave parts of it alive) as you will need some time to get enough power in order to be able to attack t3 OR you use warden's sigil and just shield the t2 over and over with 2 of those and trap the spam with 2 warden's sigil that give each other a shield. I prefer the green one over the blue affinity due to the healing that helps much against the trapped spawn.

T3: Enemy - Bandit:
Get 3 cultist masters and a Furnace of flesh (if you didnt build one yet, I recommend building one already at t2) + amii monument.
Latest point you get your resource boosters is when you hit t3.


T3: Enemy - Stonekin:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Should be a nature orb. Get amii-monument with nature aswell. Switch the frost orb into shadow if you started frost t1. Do not build t3 shadow just to get the resource boosters, but rather get it for frenetic assault. Its not worth it if you just build them now as you don't need a whole bunch of power  anymore until you're totally fine. Enlight Batariel (red).

T4: Enemy - Bandit:
Spawn Lost Spirit Ship and clear the map. Use heals and buffs to keep them alive.
I recommend to only use Lost Spirit Ship (red) so you can use flame crystal and motivate to buff them up. Use rifle cultists and offering (green) to get enough charges. I recommend to send 1 rifle cultist right behind your frontline so you get ground presence close to your main army and you're able to spawn them without them having to run a very long way to your troops.

Extra information: If there is a boss with a lot of hit points you can use a fallen skyelf and his 'tainted disease' to kill those faster . You need to be very careful with the timing though at it gets completely reset if you are not able to kill the boss in the time 'tainted disease' is active. I only recommend using this if you have a free slot in your deck that you don't really need.

T4: Enemy- Stonekin:
Get 2 shrine of war to permanently have the void manipulation active and just buff it with spells. You can get those by switching the amii-nature orb into a fire orb. You also need that to get disenchant against the windhunter paralyse.

Extra information: if there is a boss with a lot of hit points on the map, such as command walker (not sure if he was called like that, I mean that super construct thingy): You can use Bloodhorn(s)(purple) with his 'tainted enrage' and unholy hero to basically kill those in few seconds as batariel is very slow against bosses.
So your end orbs would be like that: shadow, nature, nature, fire.
This being said I would like to present you some very standard decks for a Lost Spirit Ship and a Batariel deck.
 

I did not explain every card in detail but the one I didn't mention pretty much are explaining themselves.

One last shot on this topic: Most of the time you will need to learn how much units you minimally need in order to clear t1-t3 just by trial and error.
This is especially true for the fight for t2. You will probably need several tries until you find the correct units to focus and when to change the aggro.
Just don't get frustrated if it doesn't work in the first few tries ^^

3.3. Pathing

Okay so at this point it starts to get a bit more complicated. In order to find the optimal path to run you need to always keep in mind these 3 basic variables:
The strength of each camp The strength and way spawns will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. To 1.:
It doesn't really matter to much for Batariel decks, you can steamroll them anyway and you should always have enough power due to shrine of war. You just need to take care that you don't get to the very high damage bosses to fast as you don't have enough power to support 1 or 2 bloodhorns and a batariel early on the t4 phase.
Crucial point for Lost Spirit Ship, you really want to kill the easier camps at first, as some camps are just to strong for few Lost Spirit Ship. Either it takes forever or you will just get wiped out. In order to use that time correctly try to kill easy bases at first. You really want to avoid bosses with high hit points until the very end.
I'm talking mostly about the command walker as those literally take forever without at least 7 ships and a fallen skyelf.

To 2.:
As you want to clear bases with your Batariel and only send your bloodhorns in after the base is dead (except the boss) just try and let them sit back on ways where spawns will pass by. This requires you to study the ways certain spawns will go.
Basically you want to avoid spawning too many units at your base to defend as that binds power that might be necessary for buffing and healing. Sometimes you can use Lost Spirit Ship that you would use for motivating in your base anyways to defend, but you need a bit of luck to have the power for that at the exact right time. That means you basically want to defend most, if possible spawn the rifle cultist and spawn a Lost Spirit Ship next to him that can then be added to your troops straight away. Sometimes you need to kite a bit in order to have enough power.
In both cases you want to prevent that very strong spawns hit at your t3 as you will often times just loose the game by that.

To 3.:
With both decks you want to avoid going unnecessary ways. That means you need to find the way with the shortest distance to run by clearing all camps. Often times there is not a perfect solution that would include you running every way exactly 1 time and never run out of a base in order to reach the next one. If you remember the picture of 3.1. (or just scroll up to it again) you have exactly that case given. You need to run backwards from at least camp 7 or 10 depending on which one you want to do first.
I played exactly that map in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EkqkzbuLw0 (you might remember it 30x15file:///C:\Users\Niklas\AppData\Local\Temp\OICE_BB1A28E5-6F75-4C7E-BE57-31B96B37F208.0\msohtmlclip1\01\clip_image001.png). Even though I didn't use amii-monument in that game due to a challenge I had with a friend you can see the path I took after I had t4. This ones doesn't really give you a big task of finding the best path just because of the limited amount of Lost Spirit Ship I had and the fact that bases on top (8,9,10)of the map wouldn't be possible for me to clear due to their insane strengths. As well as the point that the chance of pulling the whole base 9 while mainly attacking cap 8 is kind of high due to the fact the whole camp is built up in a very small place and Lost Spirit Ship sometimes move weirdly through that. Even if I made it through that one it is likely that if I attack camp 9 I would pull camp 6. Those risks just shut down the only other efficient route in terms of point 3.

To sum this one up: Its very necessary to know a map very good in order to be able to combine the 3 above listed variables well enough to find the optimal path. Often times you will need to gain that knowledge just with trial and error even though it will get much better the more experience you have with combining the variables and overall speed run experience.

4. rPVE/Battleground 2 Players

4.1. Map strucutre and general principles


So obviously you have 2 starting bases on a 2 player map. These are basically identical in structure. Both have 2 direct ways away from their t1 to 2 outer camps. In-between those you will face a third camp. A nice little fact to take note of: If the t2 is at the left/right side of his t1, it will be on the same side for player 2 as well. This is always the case. There is no separate bases for t3 and t4, but both monuments are in the same base. The T3/4 bases are always directly linked. On the way you will face 2-3 camps (most of the time 3). Rest of the map is split in 2 rows with each 5 bases.
The basic concepts of 1 player rpve and what you want to do and avoid are similar: Destroy the correct spawn buildings as soon as possible and try to not use to many resources in defence.
 
4.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Stonekin
Basically you are doing the same like in 1 Player rPVE, for both players.

T1 - Enemy Twilight
Shadow: Standard t1 with forsaken, soul splicer and motivate. Attack the spawn with 3 frenzied forsaken and kill the units with the rest of your forsaken. If have got Twilight hags at t2 you can use skeleton warriors to absorb the damage and use knock back with them, 1 should be enough though. If you face those annoying parasite swarms, either take them down very quickly or just start with frost. Frost: Standard t1 with frost mages, ice barrier and home soil. If you face twilight hags I recommend some master archers to have an easier time on focusing on them and the spawn building. Parasite swarms are no problem due to the knock back of frost mages. Fire: super situational. I don't recommend it 99% of the time. Nature: Not viable Extra information: This is the case for both players. I recommend one of them to start shadow, so you get some early embalmer shrines for t2 shadow phoenix. T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
Shadow: Only viable for 1 player and only if the t2 doesn't include lost vigils. The other player will need to support the shadow player with massive fire spell spam. Use skeleton warriors only. Frost: Not viable Fire: If one player starts shadow support him massively with 2 mines and 4 eruptions on the spawn building at  least. That's 440 energy minimum. You can add a defensive mine to defend the spawn near t1 to that if you wish. Notice that this will slow down the fire player massively but will speed up the other player massively. If there are lost vigils though you are forced to play fire with both players. The concept stays the same though. One player will support the other one with spells. You want to support the other player with at least 2 mines and 2 eruptions on the spawn building. Blaster Cannons are a must have. You want to start off with 3-4 nomads (depending on how good you can pull and how fast you can erupt). Start of with 2-3 blaster cannons (when you build 2 you will most likely need to erupt 1-2 times unless you're a bit lucky with the focus). You want to set up 2-3 mines at the place the ground units will attack your blaster cannons. Placement of those can get tricky, depending on which enemies (trees, manabeasts, lost dancers, etc) you will face. After you set up yourself or your team-mate, pull out the whole base into your blaster cannons and let them switch focus, until you run into the base again and kill the spawn building. In optimal case you want to kill the spawn with the eruptions as well. Set a defensive mine to defend t1. You want to basically support the other player with basically ~60% of the total energy costs for spells that is necessary to clear the base. The supporter should NOT build any units or buildings until the t2 of the other player is cleared. The supported player will go t2 afterwards. The supporter will try to clear his base mostly alone, most of the time he will get only 1 mine and 2 eruptions. Notice that you need sun striders to trap those annoying lost dancer spawns. Nature: Not viable
T2 - Enemy Bandits/Stonekin
Bandits and Stonekin T3/4 is built up identical, so I'll just sum them up. You will face either 2 constructs, 2 tortuguns or 1 construct and 1 tortugun. Sometimes you will face Windhunter's in addition to that. Most of the time you will have at least 1 guy starting frost t1 so you will have coldsnap most of the time for those annoying dragons. You need again ~12 phoenixes to clear the base 100% calculating that you might 1 or 2 before you can attack the spawn. In order to get them fast you will need to make them voidless again, just as described in 3.2 T2- Enemy Stonekin. When you face that long range attacks from tortuguns just stack them as described in there as well. You will most likely have to defend against a bunch of spawns, you can leave some of them alive to defend against that. The rest you can kill near a furnace of flesh to get some void power back. Clear the dragons with frost mages/ master archers/ forsakens.

T2 - Twilight
Most twilight t3's aren't really strong, you will most likely need 5-6 phoenixes for an easy clear. Just care about those parasite swarms. If they are able to make your unit beyond control you might screw up. Just make sure you give them right target to attack before you lose control.


T2 - Lost Souls
So this one can get kind of tricky. You will most likely face a lot of units at t3 and I recommend using around 10 phoenixes. In order to do that you will need to make phoenixes voidless. But you need to take care that they don't die when you fly into a base or leave it. Lost vigils kill phoenixes really fast. In order to do that you probably have to fly from weird angle into them or have to attack units that you wouldn't focus  on other wise. For example little squad units. Those die basically from 1 phoenix, you need to make sure that all phoenixes you send in attack that unit. Do that by stacking them, so they all reach that unit at the same time.
Those weird angles and unit focuses are sometimes even necessary for t3/4 attack. Especially if you use less phoenixes as possible. Try to clear any air units with either a nomad spear, sun striders or blaster cannons. Use your phoenixes to defend the spawns.

T4 - Enemy Bandits
In 2 player maps you will often face a major amount of bosses. I recommend at least 1 player uses bloodhorns to kill the big bosses. You will probably need to split that one up from the rest of the troops, so that the bloodhorn can take care of bosses that are alone in their base while Lost Spirit Ship clears the rest of the base and just run from boss to boss. Batariel can  be an option here as well. You need to decide individually, what is better --> trial and error.

T4 - Stonekin
Most of the time Batariels will be faster than Lost Spirit Ship against Stonekin maps. But Lost Spirit Ship can be an option for some maps --> trial and error
I recommend Bloodhorns as well.

T4 - Twilight
Hardest T4 in the whole game. There is basically only shit available and you can get wiped out with everything quite easily. You need tons of crowd control. Both players need to have oink and at least 1 freeze (such as coldsnap or maelstrom) to cc those wrathgazers. In some bases you will face 4-5 of them+ spawns. Personally I play bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ship against that, you can add 2-3 green gemeyes for the extra crowd control. Earthshaker is a must to get rid of the willzapper buildings. I do not recommend to split up at the last rank of bases. You will need every single unit you can get. Sometimes you can't even clear those easier t4 bases alone. Batariel is not an option. Path finding becomes very important at this map, because you can not defend your base with a single t4 unit, due to wrathgazer spawns. You need to kill every spawn on its way to your base with your main troops or it might get messy.
If you want even wheel of gifts can be an option. Shrine of war is a must.

T4 - Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ship - Spam. Incredible Mo with yellow ability is a must. It prevents the lost dragon debuff and so you got a pretty easy time with your Lost Spirit Ship. You can add a Bloodhorn and send them behind your ships to clear the bosses. Do not run into bases with it though or it will get just get killed instantly. Shrine of war is not a must, but I highly recommend it.  Batariel is not an option as you have the anti-spell aura buildings and any spell you use in advance of entering the base will get deleted by those nasty lost dancers (that's true for wheel of gift, incredible mo, spells, etc --> never build those buildings against Lost Souls unless you have a lot of air units). That will cause your batariel to just get destroyed in later bases.

4.3. Pathing

This one gets a bit harder than for the 1 Player maps. So what you basically want is both players to clear their last bases at the exact same time. Then you did everything correct. However in order to find both paths that are optimal you always have to keep the 3 variables in mind:
The strength of each camp The strength and spawns that will try to run down your base Most importantly the general map structure, that includes the ways you are allowed to run (the ways from base to base) as well as the position of certain camps on the map. However you need to now keep in mind for yourself and your team-mate that it might be an easier or harder to get to t4 due to probably stronger spawns, bases, etc.. So there might be camps that you can clear at a certain time. The map structure will most likely not be mirrored exactly so that one of you will have longer ways to certain key points of the map.
Might be easiest if I just explain with the help of the graphic above in 4.1..
I assume that that map is a bandit map and you both decided for Lost Spirit Ship. The camps in-between got cleared by you with 3 Lost Spirit Ship and you both are back at your t4 with 5 Lost Spirit Ship in total.(That's a typical scenario. You clear the easy bases between the t4's while your waiting for enough power to spawn enough Lost Spirit Ships to start fighting the bigger bases). You have similar power and start at the same time running from t4. Notice that this is just a model.
So this is basically the perfect situation to plan routes. In this case Player 1 wants to go clear camp 10 --> camp 9 --> camp 11 --> camp 16 and camp 17. Player 2 wants to clear camp 13 --> camp 12 --> camp 16 --> camp 15 --> camp 14. That is because Player 1 has a sub optimal way to go as they have to run a certain amount backwards (out of camp 9) and has an extra camp before reaching the very hard camps. In order to compensate for having a longer way than player 2, player 1 gets 3 easy camps and 2 hard camps to clear while player 2 gets 2 easy and 3 hard camps to clear.
This gets even more complicated if you assume that in certain camps are bosses of different strength or only 1 player has a bloodhorn. I hope that the base concept of this got clear with this easy example though.

5.rPVE/Battleground 4 Players

5.1. Map structure and general principles


So as you can see in the image above, you will face again the split way at t1 meaning that as soon as you attack you will get attacked at your T1.
Notice that the T2 is for all players on the same side of their T1 (in this case right side). T3 and T4 is pretty standard as 2 players share those bases with each other. In-between the T4's of the 2 sides you will face 1-2 bases, and in the 2 ranks after T4 you will have each 4-5 bases. The spawns that will come from T3 always attacks the outer players (1 & 4). Therefore they will have more of a supportive role in the game as they aren't able to build up their t2 army as soon as the inner players (2 & 3).
The basic principles pretty much stay the same: Kill the 'right' spawnbuilding as soon as possible and do not use any more power than necessary for defence.

5.2. Common t1-t4 strategies

T1 - Enemy Bandits/ Stonekin/ Twilight
Player 1 will support Player 2 and Player 4 will support player 3. Therefore the outer positions will start with fire while inner positions start shadow for early access to resource booster. Depending on the strength of the camp player 2 and 3 will get 1-2 mines & 3-4 eruptions on the spawnbuilding. Depending on the map Dreadchargers might be a thing to destroy the spawnbuilding if you 'only' get 3 eruptions. No need for skeleton warriors.
After that outer positions can try and clear their t2 by themselves or wait for the inner players to help clearing them.

T1 - Enemy Lost Souls
This one can get really tricky. If you only get 1-2 manabeasts or treespirits + only squad units, your good to go and just do the same as against Bandits, Stonekin and Twilight. But most of the time you wont be that lucky and face lost vigils in addition. If that's the case you will have to choose one guy who starts shadow, so either position 2 or 3. Who starts shadow depends on how easy the T3 will be and how well he can reach other parts of the map from his side of the map as this guy will have quite significantly more power than everyone else. The other 3 will start fire and just support the hell out of him. Erupt the spawnbuilding (each vigil needs 5-6 eruptions when buffed up, depending on how fast you can erupt). I recommend 2-3 mines and as many eruptions as necessary while the shadow player will tank the damage with 2-3 skeleton warriors (unholy armour obviously active). After that the other inner player will get supported by the 2 outer players and himself. He can take care of the vigils with help of Blaster cannons. I recommend 3-4 nomads for that + 2-3 blaster cannons. Outer players are just defending themselves against the T3 spawn and gather power.

T2 - Enemy Bandits/ Twilight
Most likely very easy camps. 5-6 shadow phoenixes should be enough to clear T3 and T4, unless you face a boss at t4 or have those nasty windhunters against you.

T2- Enemy Stonekin
You will most likely face constructs and/ or tortuguns again. Means you need to summon 12 phoenixes again by making some of them voidless in the first place. Pretty much same as in 4.2. T2 - Enemy Stonekin. I recommend not to clear T4 unless you are 100% sure you can do it as some of the spawns can get really nasty, especially if they are coming from the after T4 camps (bunch of shields and those bandit snipers) and you really want to have some shadow phoenixes to defend against that.

T2 - Enemy Lost Souls
You will most likely need 10-12 phoenixes to clear t3 and help your team mates on the outer positions to clear their t2. Outer positions will spawn a bunch of sunstriders for lost vigils while shadow phoenixes take care of the big ground units (treespirits & manabeasts). I recommend using 4-6 shadow phoenixes for that depending on if those ground units get shielded or not. (Man beasts die from 3 phoenixes and 5 if shielded, treespirits from 4 phoenixes and 6 if shielded).
You will most likely get massive spawns from the camps after T4, those can include 2-3 treespirits/manabeasts, 2 lost vigils, several squad units and those shield lost wanderers. That means you will need several phoenixes to defend against that and something anti air. Sometimes a mark of the keeper is worth thinking about.

T3 - Enemy Bandit/ Twilight
Basically skipped as T4 is already cleared. Outer players building shrine of war. Against twilight healing gardens and wheel of gifts CAN be built. If you want so outer players will do it.

T3 - Enemy Stonekin/ Lost Souls

One of the inner players will go amii-monument and clear the t4 of his mate (against Lost Souls most of the time the shadow player). The other side can try ashbone pyros with frenetic assault/ infect/ soulshatter. Shrine of war is build by outer players again. Against Lost Souls incredible Mo with 'benevolent Mo' effect is a must, also build by outer players.

T4 - Enemy Bandit
Lost Spirit Ship Spam supported by bloodhorns(red) for the outer players (they might have some lost spirit ships in the end as well). I highly recommend using red Lost Spirit Ships only as you can use motivate + flame crystal to increase their damage significantly. Use Bloodhorns for the bosses.

T4 - Enemy Twilight
Mix of bloodhorn and Lost Spirit Ships. You will need a lot of crowd control to be able to deal with the wrathgazers. I highly recommend earthshaker for destroying willzappers. Always run with 2 people (I recommend 1 inner and 1 outer player) or its very very likely that you get wiped out. Batariel CAN be an option for 1 or 2 players (I recommend 1 maximum). You need the ground presence of the bloodhorns but be careful to keep them alive.
Same deal with Lost Spirit Ships and flame crystal.

T4- Enemy Stonekin
I recommend a mix of Batariel and Bloodhorns as Lost Spirit Ships have huge problems with the high hp buildings and units of stonekin.

T4 - Enemy Lost Souls
Lost Spirit Ships are the only way to go here. Incredible Mo prevents Lost Dragon debuff from them. Have bloodhorns always 1 base behind them and send them in after the base is cleared to kill bosses (be careful at the hellhound as he can 'eat' your bloodhorns) otherwise your bloodhorns will just get killed by necrofurys and even your ships have a harder time as necrofurys can deal damage to them when they focus a ground unit right under them. Batariel is not an option in here as lost dancers will deny all the buffs you want to send at him and necrofurys killing him super fast then.

5.3. Pathing

Basically the same as for 2 player maps but now you have to also coordinate 2 more players, which can lead to some weird routes especially for the outer players. Expect to have a power deficit on one side of the map making that side a bit slower by clearing camps and overall starting to clear camps. It becomes very situational in 4 player maps even though basic concept stays the same. Most of the time you will need to change up your original route to go by quite a bit as its hard to calculate strength of each player at every time in the game correctly and you will most likely have mistakes in there which is changing viable routes completely. Learning by doing is the only way to find correct routes in 4 player maps.

6. Cards that can be very useful but are very situational (mostly for 4 player maps)

Netherwarp - Porting over walls.
Portal Nexus - Viable with ground units only, makes ways shorter to the next base and avoids long ways back out of bases / dead ends - mostly use for stonekin maps
Tunnel + Burrowing Ritual - Having few units that are mostly air and in a dead end? use this - mostly useful on twilight maps
Mark of the Keeper - Defending against heavy Lost Souls spawn on your T3
Witchclaws (red) - Sometimes good in 2 player maps to clear out the spawnbuilding when its very far back.
Stone of Torment - Avoiding to pull out shamans from bases.
Matter Mastery (green) - Some Bandit Maps having this nasty Rioter's Retreat towers, matter mastery can be an option if the rest of the base is very weak and you are getting strong spawns.             
Frost Bite(purple) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player).      
Mumbo Jumbo (red) - Alternative to Fallen Skyelf when not using 2 shadow orbs and having a free deck slot. Used against bosses to increase the damage they take( mostly used in 2 and 4 player)

Constructive critics and comments and improvement suggestions are very appreciated. Feel free to ask any kind of questions as well. Leave a reputation if this was helpful

At this point a special thank-you goes to @Kiwi, that helped me with my english for this guide and @ladadoos who made the graphics, you are awesome

Thanks for reading.
P.s. as the attachment upload doesn't work for me i will add a dropbox link where you can find a pdf with the whole guide: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6kgyobccr9u03hd/Treim's Battleforge rPVE Speedrun Guide.pdf?dl=0

So, right now, there started to be a reasonable amount of lvl 10 players, which is good.
I would give some tips for advanced lvl 10 gameplay, I know its the beginner guide, but I think its also good to keep it together:
 
To keep a healthy mental in lvl 10:
- you probably wont win every match except when you have a very experienced team, with decks which are build to win
- not every fraction has the same difficutly, and not every map in each fraction has the same diffcutly:
  so there are maps with air units at the start, with towers, without them and camps at the t3 camp or without it
  the difficutly varies immensely if there is air, and also if there are camps at the t3, expecially for certain positions, 1,4
  it also varies immensely depending on the fraction starting from bandit, to twilight to stoneskin to lost souls 
- not every position has the same difficulty
  this is probably the most interesting point:
  pos 2 is the best position, then position 3, then 1 and then 4
  when you play with me i will usually be on position 2. Mostly it is the position, where i can clear my stuff easily and i am able to help the others to get to their spheres. If im on position   4,  my impact on the game is slimmer.
  in 50% of the games there are camps at the t3, so when they get triggered, which can happen from the inside player or the outside player the outside players have to cope in the worst   case with 3 incoming waves. On those maps it is good when you have an experienced inside player who helps you.
- generally when you are the better player, start inside, position 2,3 and help your outsides
- position 4 gets the least amount of energy income. It is good to change the position every match, or you build a low energy income deck especially for position 4, or just dont get frustrated if it is not the game of your life and you will maybe have to get carried through the map.

Meanwhile questions that arised or that i was asked:
 
- the orb is always from position 4 to position 3
- if there is a tower or flying the general map difficulty will be higher
- position 1 and 4 will get incomings on some maps, pls play green or blue here
- map difficulty: bandit - twilight -stoneskin - lost souls
- position 4 will often not get their second orb, if you are a new player this is the position with the least impact, start here and look how the other play the map
- try to build all building as a team that affect all players: start with fountains of rebirth, incredible mo, shrine of war, wheels, healing gardens
- for lost souls map generally 2 fire start decks are good
- put in a t2 and a t3 unit. Cave: tortuguns at t2
- i did adapt the card suggestions, one bracket ( means kind of playable, maybe even good when you are experienced with it, two brackets (( means decent, but if all 4 of you have a deck like this you wont make it
 
EDIT: Motm is bandit this month again, so i heard - good for practice and starting out

Link there -> Irysunna's Dashboard
 
Big up to @Hirooo & @RadicalX who post those PvP decks in the first place.
 Thanks @MephistoRoss, @Pritstift for all those data on PvE maps, time, replays...

It would be nice to see if the suggested map is motm. Sometimes you don't wanna play a speedrun, and at the moment the offered map in the lobby is seen as random althought it is the motm. If it is easy to do, it would be nice if the random could be changed to motm.

It would be nice to see if the suggested map is motm. Sometimes you don't wanna play a speedrun, and at the moment the offered map in the lobby is seen as random althought it is the motm. If it is easy to do, it would be nice if the random could be changed to motm.

For all who would like to get into lvl 10, at the moment the map of the month (motm) lvl 10 for 4 players, is probably the easiest lvl 10 map there is. Just play it a bit, you can still experience how the start works and how to get to t2, which is the first and one of the biggest difficutlies on lvl 10 maps.
 
EDIT: Also the 1 player motm map this month is very easy and good for beginners, but its a little harder then the 4 player map 
EDIT2: did solo it by the way, although it cannot be seen anymore, since now so many played it (-:

Hey Leute,
ich wollte euch mal mein Video über Battle Forge zeigen, es ist eigentlich mehr an Leute gerichtet die Battle Forge nicht kennen damit unsere Community hoffentlich wächst. Ich liebe Battle Forge einfach und ich denke das man das im Video auch raushört. Ich werde auch noch mehr über Battle Forge machen    Ich wünsch euch allen noch viel spaß beim zocken. ( Sorry für den Cringe haha)