Challenge 5.4 Advice?

[Yoreki]

We are currently trying to do challenge 5.4, playing duo. It's.. extremely tough? We beat it on difficulty 3 so far with reasonably few attempts, but even just difficulty 4 seems insanely hard. Probably doable with a good map, but restarting rPvE a douzen or so times to get a bandit seed just to then lose to a bad map layout or enemy variations is extremely frustrating. I would imagine this to be a lot easier if the map of the month was decent, so you could tailor your deck to the map - tho not like there is that much wiggle room with just T2 cards either. Maybe we just suck. We feel like T2 fire is just not strong enough in terms of survivability / options. We also struggle with fliers a lot on maps that spamm them, since pre-T3 fire seems to be decently weak against fliers in general.

Our current approach is strikers for T1, which easily works to clear T3 or even T4 with fire force (B) and some artillery support. But from our experience that's where their survivability ends, since soon enough stuff will deal so much damage so quickly that they just all wipe. Be it from T4 units, or certain bosses like the Twins (bandit horses). And then without a frontline it's kinda hard to keep the damage dealers alive. We do check camps and if there is troublesome units in them, pull them into, say, towers or morkley traps, but this is not always possible - and sometimes you just get attacked from 3 sides at the same time. We usually run out of time with 2-3 camps left on difficulty 4 on decent maps.

Any advice is welcome. Be it strategies, meta knowledge, or just telling us to get good lol. There is probably people who did this on difficulty 8, which seems impossible even conceptually to us^^

[Treim]

Here's the a run we played a couple days ago for that challenge on difficulty 8.
We reset a couple times for a bandit map to give a bit more leeway. And we did fail a couple camps with semi wipes.

Usually the best way for this to work is for players taking roles: 2 tank players (strikers/Rageclaw --> if out of charges Burning spears), 1 building nuker (fire dancer --> if out of charges Skyfire Drake /Gladiatrix), 1 dd (gladiatrix--> if out of charges Skyfire drake).
Fire dancer focuses buildings. If spawners are too far back everyone erupts. Gladiatrix targets high priority units. Tanks tank. 
Fire Force blue is really usefull. Tank players preferably start Strikers as they are useable all the way to the end. Suppression the artillery always --> Determine 1 player who has that job before the match.

You can heal between some camps at rallying banner or other fast construction buildings if necassary --> you cant do that after every camp as you will run out of time that way.
Try to plot your path in advance by scouting the layout through fog of war (the outline is visible even without vision). Try to plot a path that avoids the harder camps for later to have the opportunity to build up an army while simultaneously minimizing incomes  so you need to bind less power and attention for defense at your wells.
Always move as four. Voice comms make this a lot easier so you can communicate the important bits (erupt spawner, need to heal at building before next camp, need help defending incomes, I am out of charges and build X going forward, etc.).

2025-08-19_23-27-59_RPvEFourPlayers_diff8_s63715_Treim_Wanky_[GM]LEBOVIN_[GM]Gam3over_time_0_19_52.0_v273.pmv

[Yoreki]

Thanks for the reply & replay, i checked it out. Would you say it's a lot harder on duo maps compared to 4 player maps, or should it be doable too? The 4 player maps seem a bit less "wild" in terms of layout, compared to what we usually have, but maybe that was just a good map. We dont regularly play 4 player rPvE so i wouldnt know^^

Edit: Also, is there a general rPvE guide somewhere? Mostly for the not so obvious mechanics "you just have to know". We played back in 2019 but i feel like i knew a lot more little details back then than i do now lol. Stuff like the behavior of when what attacks you (and what to pay attention to to prevent that from happening), or where to find monuments, and so on. In the replay you kept one unit of a squad alive at some point. I remember doing that in the past.. but not why - i think if the "wave" was still alive the camp did not send a new one? Well, stuff like that.. my mind is a bit foggy and it seems like it's hard to find a location listing all these little bits of information. 

Edited August 22, 2025 by Yoreki

[This Is Halloween_2]

6 hours ago, Yoreki said:

We are currently trying to do challenge 5.4, playing duo. It's.. extremely tough? We beat it on difficulty 3 so far with reasonably few attempts, but even just difficulty 4 seems insanely hard. Probably doable with a good map, but restarting rPvE a douzen or so times to get a bandit seed just to then lose to a bad map layout or enemy variations is extremely frustrating. I would imagine this to be a lot easier if the map of the month was decent, so you could tailor your deck to the map - tho not like there is that much wiggle room with just T2 cards either. Maybe we just suck. We feel like T2 fire is just not strong enough in terms of survivability / options. We also struggle with fliers a lot on maps that spamm them, since pre-T3 fire seems to be decently weak against fliers in general.

Our current approach is strikers for T1, which easily works to clear T3 or even T4 with fire force (B) and some artillery support. But from our experience that's where their survivability ends, since soon enough stuff will deal so much damage so quickly that they just all wipe. Be it from T4 units, or certain bosses like the Twins (bandit horses). And then without a frontline it's kinda hard to keep the damage dealers alive. We do check camps and if there is troublesome units in them, pull them into, say, towers or morkley traps, but this is not always possible - and sometimes you just get attacked from 3 sides at the same time. We usually run out of time with 2-3 camps left on difficulty 4 on decent maps.

Any advice is welcome. Be it strategies, meta knowledge, or just telling us to get good lol. There is probably people who did this on difficulty 8, which seems impossible even conceptually to us^^

So Treimadvice is good, but there's 1 more for 4 player.

The trick is, once you get to your T4 orb, to ignore as much as possible "lower" camps and rush the upper ones. This is because the ennemies send stronger and stronger waves based on an activation pattern : lower camp get attacked, an higher one is now active and will start sending stronger waves. After you attack it, an upper one will do the same.

So the best strategy is to find a bandit map that allows to "climb" or go easily toward the latest camps, ignoring as much as possible the others. You'll need pyromaniac & perhaps the anti air gun to hold weaker attack waves of the 1st camps, while you go deal with the later ones. After dealing with he later ones, you go deal with camps in the reverse order (so laatter & stronger camps far away from T4, then more & more near your T4).

For units : strikers, and then rageclaw for more charges, fire force B, banner for quick building to heal nearby, gladiatrix G for hitting, also scorchling now that you don't have desynchro with them, firedancer player for buildings & spawners, skyfire drake if you really have used all gladiatrix & scorchling charges. For spells, lavafield is useful at T2, and wildfire can hit hard boss & XL units. Of course mine & eruption. You can also take suppresson to deactivate buildings like bandit arty & bandit multi-shot tower.

Edited August 22, 2025 by This Is Halloween_2

[Treim]

28 minutes ago, Yoreki said:

Thanks for the reply & replay, i'll check it out. Would you say it's a lot harder on duo maps compared to 4 player maps, or should it be doable too?

Edit: Also, is there a general rPvE guide somewhere? Mostly for the not so obvious mechanics "you just have to know". We played back in 2019 but i feel like i knew a lot more little details back then than i do now lol. Stuff like the behavior of when what attacks you (and what to pay attention to to prevent that from happening), or where to find monuments, and so on.

Duo should be harder. You have 7 minutes more  but the camps have the same strenghts so the unit limit and card cooldowns work against you here - probably doable though.

Some of the general mechanics are explained here (especially spawn mechanics). I haven't updated the guide in a decade (holy crap it's been a while), so most of the meta strategies have changed. The general stuff should still be correct though. Maybe you have to have a glance or two in the text to find more specific stuff. I probably mentioned the logic for where t2 monuments are located somewhere. I had illustrations for some of the stuff I explained but they stopped working sometime during forum changes and the like. There is a dropbox link at the end of the post however with the full .pdf document.

 

9 minutes ago, This Is Halloween_2 said:

So Treimadvice is good, but there's 1 more for 4 player.

The trick is, once you get to your T4 orb, to ignore as much as possible "lower" camps and rush the upper ones. This is because the ennemies send stronger and stronger waves based on an activation pattern : lower camp get attacked, an higher one is now active and will start sending stronger waves. After you attack it, an upper one will do the same.

So the best strategy is to find a bandit map that allows to "climb" or go easily toward the latest camps, ignoring the others. You'll need pyromaniac & perhaps the anti air gun to hold weaker attack waves of the 1st camps, while you go deal with the later ones. After dealing with he later ones, you go deal with camps in the reverse order (so laatter & stronger camps far away from T4, then more & more near your T4).

I did mention that - just more briefly:

 

39 minutes ago, Treim said:

Try to plot your path in advance by scouting the layout through fog of war (the outline is visible even without vision). Try to plot a path that avoids the harder camps for later to have the opportunity to build up an army while simultaneously minimizing incomes  so you need to bind less power and attention for defense at your wells.

 

[This Is Halloween_2]

Actually it’s more the opposite of what you said, you need to plot a path to the harder camps 1st, while avoiding weaker ones for later.

I know it sounds counter intuitive, but it is the most efficient way of dealing with the map.

[Yoreki]

Thanks for all the advice again! That guide, albeit a bit outdated, was definitely what i was looking for to refresh my knowledge. I remember i read it in the past - danke :)

I thought i'd nicely wrap this thread up by updating on progress: after losing a couple more times in 2-player rPvE (yes, still on diff 4, as embarrassing as it is lol) we gave in and tried the challenge in 4-player rPvE and it's a lot easier in comparison, even without voice communication. Despite a major (preventable) group wipe towards the end and the overall shorter time limit, we finished with minutes to spare. Night and day compared to how it goes in 2-player. I absolutely see higher difficulties being possible with a reasonably competent group now.

So to anyone stumbling upon this thread in the future: i strongly recommend doing this challenge, or any other rPvE challenge for that matter, in 4-player rPvE. 

[Stippy]

On 8/22/2025 at 5:31 PM, Treim said:

Here's the a run we played a couple days ago for that challenge on difficulty 8.
We reset a couple times for a bandit map to give a bit more leeway. And we did fail a couple camps with semi wipes.

Usually the best way for this to work is for players taking roles: 2 tank players (strikers/Rageclaw --> if out of charges Burning spears), 1 building nuker (fire dancer --> if out of charges Skyfire Drake /Gladiatrix), 1 dd (gladiatrix--> if out of charges Skyfire drake).
Fire dancer focuses buildings. If spawners are too far back everyone erupts. Gladiatrix targets high priority units. Tanks tank. 
Fire Force blue is really usefull. Tank players preferably start Strikers as they are useable all the way to the end. Suppression the artillery always --> Determine 1 player who has that job before the match.

You can heal between some camps at rallying banner or other fast construction buildings if necassary --> you cant do that after every camp as you will run out of time that way.
Try to plot your path in advance by scouting the layout through fog of war (the outline is visible even without vision). Try to plot a path that avoids the harder camps for later to have the opportunity to build up an army while simultaneously minimizing incomes  so you need to bind less power and attention for defense at your wells.
Always move as four. Voice comms make this a lot easier so you can communicate the important bits (erupt spawner, need to heal at building before next camp, need help defending incomes, I am out of charges and build X going forward, etc.).

2025-08-19_23-27-59_RPvEFourPlayers_diff8_s63715_Treim_Wanky_[GM]LEBOVIN_[GM]Gam3over_time_0_19_52.0_v273.pmv 178.88 kB · 19 downloads

But fire dancer is not nature nore twilight is it? I though only those two can be used.

[WindHunter]

4 minutes ago, Stippy said:

But fire dancer is not nature nore twilight is it? I though only those two can be used.

This thread is for Season 1's Challenge 5.4.