Quick Start Guide for Tower Keeper Newish Players ------------------------------------------------- Version 1.2 This will be my last update most likely. Most recent game update upset me and I believe this game is dying off. I am getting attacked less and less, and harder to find matches. The recent updates look like a cash grab. -- Jacked up the gem price of Void Cores by 50% (!) -- Re-added annoying behavior where you have to shuffle heroes from tower. -- Added new Pay2Win hero for 25 bucks. Or spend tons of gems and have a useless one star, level 1 hero. -- Added pay2win potions which are only buyable via gems or $$$. -- Trying to address inability to find PVP matches by giving 3x rewards on weekends. A sure sign that the user base is dropping. INTRO: ------ Tower Keepers is Ninja Kiwi's latest entry in the crowded set of pay2win collection/RPG type games. I didn't like it at first, but it has grown on me. YUCK! ADS GALORE!! ------------------ The first thing you will notice is the ads are truly ridiculous in this game. It is pretty much unplayable and they really should have had zero ads until level 10, then half ads to 20, then full ads. This would let you play for a while and decide if you want to "buy" it. As is, I expect the ads will run off a lot of new users which is unfortunate because I am enjoying the game now. Basically you have to treat this as a paid game and buy the $5 gems for 30 days. It removes the ads and gives you a solid benefit, relative to the other lousy options. Buying a "cleric pack" is also an acceptable cheaper option at $3 as he stays useful. The mage pack and fighter pack outlive their usefulness fairly rapidly so I'd avoid those. Any other packs are just too overpriced to consider. STARTING OFF: ------------- The tutorial is pretty decent and will give you the basics. I will go over individual sections and add notes. You get a Fighter and a Cleric and a Mage. When playing early, you will get Stones that you can throw into a portal which is likely to unlock new heroes As you get each hero unlocked, you instead get a Soul Stone which can make your hero stronger once you get enough of them. You will see quickly the Shop where you can hire more heroes. DO NOT DO IT! You will barely have enough training points to max a party of 4 dudes, so getting more guys is useless and a waste of money. (Exception: The common KNIGHT is a great tank and super cheap. Get em!) As you play you will get Stones to throw into a portal and it gives you one soul stone. IF you don't have that hero yet, it gets unlocked instead. Thus, you WILL pick up uncommon/rare heroes to replace existing ones naturally. The Fighter however is really the main hero you want to get rid of. DO NOT ever buy Soul Stones for an existing hero...its a huge waste of money. At level 20 you can decide for yourself about getting common/uncommon stones as they are much cheaper and there are a few good common heroes. Basically, SAVE GOLD to buy a Blackguard. DO NOT USE GOLD on stupid stuff like learning crafting recipes, soul stones in the shop, crafting stuff, etc. Once you own Blackguard you can disregard this... except for the buying soulstones in the shop part. This might seem contradictory in some regards but the chances of getting an epic hero unlocked from a normal stone is very very tiny. It takes a lot of golden stones to unlock one too, and a blackguard is a HUGE boost in power. Thus worth it to get him early and start pumping him up. HERO STATS: ----------- When you unlock or buy a hero, they start as 1 star. This means they can only have two active skills and one passive skill. They know only their first skill which is a fast basic attack or heal in most cases. They have to learn their other skills from scrolls. You can use the green book points which act as universal scrolls that you can apply to any skill...as long as you know it. All skills are limited to a certain level...4 I believe. At two stars which is pretty easy to obtain, a third active slot opens up which is a HUGE boost! At four stars, the second passive slot opens up. Depending on the hero this can be extremely powerful, or just so-so. As you gain stars, the maximum level of your skills continues to rise, along with the amount of points needed to level up that skill. EQUIPMENT: ---------- Each hero can have a weapon and armor, based on what they are able to use. At first you will not find much. By the first boss in campaign this changes, especially if you grind the bossfight several times which I recommend. Every weapon has several stats, some of which are a bit confusing. A damage stat adds that amount of damage to every hit's damage. Some weapons also have a damage TYPE where all the damage from the stat is separated out instead. For example, a 50 point normal weapon might hit for 163. But a 50 pt fire would hit for 104 +59 fire for example (factoring in Attack vs their defense). This is good for piercing Armor. Note that overall damage appears to be chopped up when doing damage over time attacks. So a 30 damage weapon seems to add +10 to each of 3 ticks of a poison cloud for example. SCALING NOTE: Weapon damage adds the same overall damage to ALL SKILLS no matter what their cooldowns are! What this means is that skills with Fast cooldowns tend to get more out of their weapon damage, vs those with long heavy hitting skills. This is one reason why Blackguard is so good... with 3 SHORT cooldown skills, the super-rare weapon I got for him early thx to guild really pushed him and made him a monster. Ditto with Shaman whos weapon type not only does a TON of damage, but he attacks super fast. HEALING on the other hand gets pooped on and gets ZERO benefit from +damage. Armor has an Armor percentage rating which reduces all physical damage by that percentage. Just like Resists. This stat is quite a bit more important than the defense stat! At level 30 a hero might have 500 attack and defense. So a +20 defense difference is fairly trivial compared to an extra 5% of damage reduction. Items also have various other random stats of all types. In particular, the Magic Resistance trait is very strong because it adds resistance vs ALL magical type attacks! 10% Magic Resist is like having 10% in a lot of various resist types. Attack/Defense boosts the hero's stat accordingly and is nice to have, but less important relative to the armor/damage stats. Enchanting boosts Attack/Defense values and costs gold. I would put up to +2 on green equipment, +3 on blue rare, and +4 on super rare. Combining levels up your weapon which boosts its Armor/Damage/Attk/Defense. You ONLY want to combine Rare or Super Rare items. SLOW LEVELING: -------------- In some games like this, you want to actually slow down the leveling up process of the player. This is because PVP and some PVE is based on your level. In this game this is not very controllable because most things grant XP. However, there ARE a few things you can do to either get loot without XP or at least maximize the loot you do get for the XP "spent". I will point these out as we come to them. Basically, for each food you spend you get that much player XP. As such, you can actually put yourself behind the curve by using your food too efficiently... in other words you will level faster but get less dailys, weeklys, tower, etc that gives you power without XP. For PVP, the XP is based off the total level count of the heroes you send in, so four level 20s = 80XP. The TL;DR version for slow leveling is this: -Feasts DO give you XP but their rewards are pretty efficient. -Wizards Tower gives NO XP and are basically "bonus". -Daily quests, daily journeys, daily rewards, weekly rewards, Guild items are all no XP. -Never do a campaign without a Chest or a FindLoot reward. -Catacombs will level you up really really fast. Rewards drop off quickly. NOTE: Losing a battle in Catacombs or Campaign is really bad. You get ZERO loot, but still get 1/2 normal XP. Obviously this is not helpful... If you are going to lose, you need to QUIT the battle instead to avoid XP gain. Ditto with PVP fights. DAILY QUESTS: ------------- All of the dailys give you rewards with NO XP, so they are bonus loot that makes you stronger relative to your level. Always do these! ONLY REROLL quests you cannot reasonably do, such as 20 catacombs when you are level 16. Or win 10 PVP Duels, etc. Note that you can easily do the "use X type dude" by running Campaign 1-1 for a whopping 4 food no matter how many dudes you include! DAILY JOURNEYS: --------------- All journeys are unlocked by doing Stuff. Basically any kind of fighting will progress the bar, or other food usage such as Feasts. The first journey gives rewards and puts the chosen hero out of commission for a certain time period ...well, sort of. The second takes 4x longer but gives 2x the rewards. The third takes 8x longer but gives 4x the non-soulstone rewards. You want to use the preferred hero when possible or the rewards are cut in half. But this is not always the ideal strategy as we will see. What they DO NOT mention is that the more rare the hero, the longer it takes! For the first journey: A common takes 30 minutes. Uncommon takes 1 hour. Rare takes 1.5 hours Super Rare takes 2 hours Epic takes 3 hours. The ideal use for these journeys is for up and coming heroes that you are not currently using, but intend to use eventually. For example, you unlock a shaman but hes useless with only 1 star and 1 skill. So you send em off to boost his stars and skills and it won't affect you at all. These are also useful for currently used high rarity heroes but you have to be smart about it. For example, you unlock the blackguard and start using him. The first quest is the best... 3 hour cooldown. With some ad watching you can bring this down so that you are ready to go by the time your food regenerates after a lunch break. The second quest which is 12 hours is good for overnight usage for an epic. You never use the 3rd quest for an epic that you are using obviously with 24hr cooldown, but try to use up-and-comers, or rare/superrare. Ideally preferred heroes because the last quest gives some decent gems and you hate to get that halved. This is FREE LEWT so take advantage! BUT, you do NOT have to start questing as soon as they become available. Pick an intelligent time to start each one. i.e. at night for the 8-12 hr ones,etc. As of the last patch, a PVP duel team member IS available to go on journeys and can still fight! This is likely a bug due to the new feature, but is very nice for level 30+ when you have to have THREE teams of heroes. This means you can send your secondary guys off on long quests with no drawback. WEEKLY REWARDS: --------------- Several activities in the game provide rewards on a weekly basis. These rewards change every week, so one thing that has great rewards one week may suck the next week. All of them place you into a tier.. top 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 1%(!). Each tier has a reward. Always check each activity to ensure you don't drop out at the very last minute (say to 11%). The activities are: -Your Guild's Overall Ranking -Catacombs -PvP Tower Attacks -PvP Duels Somewhat related is the Festival. It lasts for 6 days and gives rewards based on how many points of whatever you spend. i.e. Gems, training points, scrolls used, etc. At the last few days of a given festival, try to SAVE UP ALL YOUR STUFF until the next one fires. I put off training for example except for my key 4 and when the training festival came, I had a lot of points saved up. Problem is you have no idea which type of point to save, and a given festival rewards could be utter junk. However, this tip might get you a bit of extra leverage for free so keep it in mind. Just don't WASTE points (especially gems!) simply to get festival points. PARTY COMPOSITIONS: ------------------- You start off with your Fighter up front and everyone else in the back which is your cleric and mage. Then whoever else you wind up with. The first thing you want is a TANK. There are two varieties of such. First is a "soft taunt" which means he is the dude standing in front while everyone else is in the back. Thus, he absorbs all MELEE and some line attacks, but cannot stop ranged. The second variety is a tank that actually has a taunt which forces enemies to only target them with all attacks. The fighter is decent but he is NOT a tank. He is more like a really bad blackguard. You want to replace him ASAP with an actual tank. Options are: Knight, BLACKGUARD, Paladin, Cavalier, etc. PLATE MAIL users. There are a few dudes with Taunts like the samurai who is tough but not really a tank, so I wouldn't use him as such. You might use him as a back-row offensive-tank that forces ranged attacks to him, while a non-taunt blackguard tanks the melee hits in front. You will then use the Warrior in the back row until you find a Samurai,Shaman, Spellsword or other DPS to replace permanently. The Knight is common and most likely who you will get in the short term. He may even be worth buying in the Hero shop for cheap if you see him. He gives a solid boost to your capabilities. I recommend keeping the Cleric around. His armor is decent (Chain), and his heals are solid. Resurrect can really help a lot! You will want to keep the Mage for a while too. His damage output is quite good and his area effect makes him solid for tower attacks and campaign. Once you start PVP though, he becomes a liability in many cases. NOTE: While you will collect new heroes often, DO NOT try to level them all up!! Early game you just cannot do it. You MUST focus on 4 primary heroes. You can occasionally pick 1 and boost them to try out and can put em in your Tower. But don't try to keep everyone up to date by default. You will wind up with a bunch of half-leveled heroes that don't do anything. At some point you may want to assemble the IDLE TEAM. This is blackguard, cleric, druid, and a 4th. Takes a while to win, but they are extremely hard to lose with. Great for kicking off a battle and going idle for 5 min. In general however if you are not "idling" you want the blackguard front, a cleric and/or druid, and two area effect high damage dealers such as Archmage. Or mage,warlock,archer,whatever. Archmage rocks and does tons of damage. Necro,Warlock are ok and self-heal but their damage isn't as impressive. A tanky DPS such as shaman is a good choice too. I personally play Archmage/Mage combo right now since each new map I can open with two big Area Effect soul skills. Remember...you get soul energy by DOING DAMAGE! Not by healing and sitting around taunting. A defensive team can be very powerful, but it won't get much in the way of soul energy. In PVP this can be surprising at first as an offensive team just keeps pounding you with soul skills while your bar barely moves! NOTE ON COMPOSITION PRESETS: Every zone saves your last preset list of heroes. i.e. Campaign, PVP tower atk, PVP duel, catacomb, wizard tower, etc. Heroes will disappear if unavailable due to tower, journey, etc. COMBAT SYSTEM: -------------- While not entirely accurate think of it like this. At the start, everyone rolls initiative for all their skills. Say blackguard rolls 87,73,79. His short cooldown skills all get added at slot 187,287,387, and so forth. His medium skills are at 273,473,673... Long skills are 479, 879... Everyone adds their skills to the timeline tree and then the empty slots are discarded and that is your combat queue. Hence, having a 3rd skill at 2 star does NOT mean your other skills happen less often. It means you act MORE often. I don't actually know what the difference between Short,Med,Long skills are so I'm just providing a guesstimate, nor do I know exactly what the time values are. But this gives you an idea how it works. The queue is subject to realtime change when heroes get stunned, killed, boosted cooldowns, etc. Note also that the defenders tend to have their long cooldown skills available a lot more quickly than expected. This is very noticable in enemy tower attacks with their triple shot ballistas and cannons. OVERVIEW/THOUGHTS ON HEROES: ---------------------------- My ranking in parenthesis (). COMMON: Fighter(3) - Tough. fast cooldowns, but weak overall damage. Not a tank either. Weak soul skill. Get rid of him ASAP. Cleric(8) - Fairly tough. Great heals. Recommend Leader passive to buff party resists, and Quick Heal, Party Heal/Nuke, and Cleanse heal over time. Get a weapon that provides some DEFENSE if possible since he will only have one offensive attack with a long cooldown that also heals. Bloodied Axe is a good midgame choice. Mage(6) - Solid damage. Good area damage. Better than many more rare options. Fireball is very nice, decent cooldown, AOE. Acid lance, Zap are best other dmg options. Freeze damage sucks. Dont need Shield. Sadly, he is outclassed by the epic archmage. Pay2win rite? BUT, funny thing happens when you get the epic staff! It adds so much extra damage per attack that the lower cooldown of the Mage actually makes him a bit stronger! Go figure. This is particularly true of the soul skill. Knight(7) - Plate user. Tanky. Buffs party Atk/def with soul skill and it can stack up. Recommend using his taunt skill, then armor-breaker and basic attack. Use of parry will make him even tougher to kill at the cost of offense. All his passives are solid. Archer(4) - Focuses on 1 target damage and is a bit tougher than Cloth users. Avoid double shot due to LONG cooldown and no targeting. His self-buff is very good as its effectively a second quick shot...OR could buff head-shot for HUGE dmg. He is not an IDLE hero though. Need to target manually for best use since his strength is being able to put all his damage on a backrow enemy. He is also fairly squishy even though he wears Leather. Finally, his damage seems rather weak compared to the melee guys. Sure he has range, but I am not sold that this is worth the fairly lame damage output. Mystic(2) - Support hero. Don't really like her. Too squishy and lacks dmg. Thief (5) - Squishy damage dealer with single target damage ability. He does have the ability to hit a back-line foe with a long cooldown ability that does a TON of damage when boosted by his passive. Great for PVP burst damage. Too easily killed though to be very popular. I have noticed that his Self-Poison ability seems to endlessly stack up such that he is hitting super hard at the end of a long fight. He might be due for a ranking rethink once I get a chance to try him more. UNCOMMON: Warlock(5) - Similar to mage except more damage over time. Due to targeting mechanics, tends to "waste" damage. Can self-heal which is nice but not super necessary. Overall tends to do less damage than Mage when I compared stats over dozens of fights. Thought she requires less babysitting due to self-heal for campaign. She DOES have an option to damage herself and use two skills and a passive to buff them. This turns her more into an archer-type character. Self-damage is dubious though. Witch(3) - I'm not a fan. Wierd support hero. Squishy and self-heals. Damage is meh. Pirate(4) - Support hero with two ranged skills which is nice. Plus party buffs and a ranged 1 target soul skill for sniping. His pistol volley seems to do a LOT of damage surprisingly. His passives are kind of weak and the other skills are mediocre. Paladin(5) - Tanky hero that can give bonus health (better than healing). He has an odd assortment of skills though. Not very straightforward. Turns out that bless only works on one ally though. No true taunt. Berserker(4) - Tough leather using hero that uses a wierd weapon type. He hits very hard, but all his attacks are quite slow. Some damage himself. Thus he is not good for campaign in general, but his high bursty damage can really help in PVP. His soul skill does a freaking TON of damage to every foe! Looking at him again, he seems to have good scaling potential as he can do crazy AOE damage, get boosted by his Reckless passive, then when he kills something, he has another passive which can restore health for it. Unreliable but if it works, it has potential. Monk(???) - Cloth wearing melee attacker. I am told he is actually a strong tank! One of his passives gives him a ton of armor and another adds a good scaling PERCENTAGE attack/defense boost. He has several stunning attacks. Overall however, he feels like a Bad Blackguard but I have not given him a fair chance either. Yep...I was right. He is a Bad Blackguard basically. :-) Sorceress(4) - Cloth caster similar to wizard. Soul skill does one of 3 random effects so it is not as reliable. She only has two damage skills, with one having to be something defensive or a short stun. RARE: Amazon(6) - Chain using melee warrior. Focuses on lots of burst damage. Soul skill resets all her cooldowns so she can deliver lots of damage fast. The main disadvantage is that all three attacks are melee-only, so is stopped by a beefy tank easily. Best used in combo with some armor-breaking/debuffer. I have not gone with the Amazon yet, and based on my PVP, she might need a better ranking. As the game progresses, she seems to lose strength. She just does not seem to scale the way other heroes do. Spellsword(5) - Chain using warrior that can also use Ranged attacks. Main fame is able to DISPEL buffs with his soul skill which can be awesome for PVP. Damage seems mediocre but removing a taunt and taking out their squishies makes him underrated. Wouldn't want him for campaign/catacomb though. Or tower. He is kind of a specialty item...great in certain situations but so-so in others. Passives are a bit weak. Samurai(6) - Tanky damage warrior. Only has 2 damage skills though, with some enemy debuff and other random stuff. Melee damage soul skill is just a 1 target melee true dmg attack which is ok. Pretty good, if uninspired passives, one being offensive and then two different defensive ones...a resist and an armor. Thus, he can swap between offense and tankiness nicely. He is interesting in that he can run Taunt, stay on the back row and soak up any ranged attacks while a front-row non-taunt like blackguard soaks melee. This gives you full taunt coverage and reduces Line-attacks and lets you run non taunting frontliners, while maintaining solid damage. Barbarian(7) - High health but leather armor. Strong soul skill that is Ranged, does some damage and reduces Defense significantly. She has 3 offensive skills including a ranged Leap Attack and Line attack...both with longer cooldowns but high bursty damage which is good for PVP plus ability to hit backrow enemies. Endgame, she falls off though because her weapons aren't all that great. Druid(7) - Leather wearing healing/nature oriented caster. Has multiple decent heals, but also 2 reasonable offensive spells. One slows the enemy and one bounces around several times but can't be targeted. Soul skill is very strong and heal over time on the entire team. No more waiting for a tank to die then rez them! Particularly good against enemy area-effect damage. Entangle is definitely useful and does so-so damage. Her huge heal over time and cooldown boosting heal are very good 1 target heals. Cyclone is a bit weak damage wise, even with passive. Swashbuckler(3) - Turd of a damage dealer melee guy with high ability to dodge and counterattack. With the right equipment and support he can be overpowered. Ive fought one who literally dodged 10 attacks in a row and counterattacked each. Ive fought a lot more who just got killed in seconds and didn't do much.. SUPER RARE: Shaman(9) - Another tanky DPS. Has two damage skills on short cooldowns with choice of several self-buffs to boost damage. Really strong passive skills! Versatile. Soul skill is uninspired melee attack only. It does benefits from his self-buffs and general OPness, so it is worthwhile. Note that shaman scales really well because Fist weapons are very strong and his passive buffs are extremly powerful. By 4 star he is a beast. Cavalier(4) - Tank. Taunts, tough, has long cooldown decent damage skills that can hit everyone or hit a row of dudes. Wierd soul skill that buffs party dmg but makes party TAKE a lot more damage too, so timing is very crucial! He lacks the Knights toughness passives and his attacks are super slowww. Ninja(5) - Cloth wearing meleeish fighter. Soul Skill stuns everyone and poisons making it annoying. Has several ranged attacks available. Squishy though and cannot go ranged-only. Dart ranged attack is weak. Kensai(7) - CLOTH wearing melee fighter. Kind of squishy, but does lots of damage. Soul ability is 1 target melee damage...but is true damage. Still, he brings the 'tings. I kinda preferred amazon though who is beefier. Well, turns out that Kensai seems to scale better. He has skills that boost his damage by a PERCENTAGE which when combined with his medium cooldown AOE attack, can be quite powerful. He also boosts crit which is a pure damage multiplier which scales better than any flat attack boosts. Warmaster(5) - Chain using support warrior. In D&D a Warlord Leader. He has one long cooldown melee bash that does high damage. Other abilities provide offensive and defensive buffs for the whole party and let them act more often. Good in a turtle team (Tank, Cleric, druid, warmaster). One passive is solid, but the other two rely on him taking damage to be effective. He is good even with weak equipment since he buffs the rest of your team. EPIC: Blackguard(10) - My favorite hero. Plate mail using tanky dude with 1 target damage. Has three damaging abilities which is great. A double swing with fast cooldown plus a SICK ranged attack with SHORT cooldown that HEALS HIM for full damage dealt, plus an armor-breaker melee attack. Can also use a stun or a dodge to add versatility as needed. Offensive or Defensive passives too for more choice. GET HIM! Has a RANGED DAMAGE STUN as soul skill. Necromancer(5) - Warlock 2.0. Still sucks. Has self-heals for some reason but is squishy cloth wearer. Not enough ranged damage. Too much junk and melee. He does have some interesting debuffs however. Legionare(5?) - Dunno honestly. Can rez entire party but only once per fight and it is pretty cheap to cast apparently. In general, enemy not exactly gonna save him for last so he can do that though! He is pretty tanky, uses plate, has a leap attack and true strike. He is an interesting general purpose guy. Archmage(8) - Wait..theres a common Mage and an epic ARCHmage? As separate dudes? Seems legit. Basically a nastier but slower attacking version of Mage. His soul skill is better than Mage doing the same thing though a bit more expensive to cast. Other attacks are very similar. Basic ranged attack, a Line ray attack, an AOE (his is poison),a huge slow ranged attack for PVP, and a disable. Archmage consistently outdamages Mage in all my stat runs...until recently. His passives are HORRIBLE. The Mage's single talent is literally better than both Archmage Armor and Resist talent combined!! Ranger(3) - Support archer that can Taunt(?!) and boost her Health and attack with her soul skill. She has one ability to continuously boost how much damage she deals vs a single enemy, along with 3 offensive attacks. You can use the short cooldown doubleshot for higher damage vs random targets, OR focus your attacks/debuff on a back row enemy. She seemed strong. Using her however, I was not impressed with her damage, same as archer. PAY2WIN: Valkyrie - Beats me. Doesn't seem all that good, but thats likely because everyone who has her, does so at lower stars than their other heroes. Premium hero only. CAMPAIGN: --------- The campaign is huge and divided into chapters. There will also be one or more special campaigns that reset daily and give a particular resource. First time to beat a map, you get a Chest with bonus loot. RULE #1: NEVER run a map without a chest or a Find Loot. (a hovering picture of one of your heroes which indicates winning will give a scroll and/or Stone for that hero) There are so many chests available that redoing a dungeon with no chest should never be necesssary. EXCEPTION: Re-running a BOSS FIGHT (on normal) is actually a pretty good idea. Especially the first boss and maybe 2nd and 3rd. They are MUCH more likely to give item drops which are rare early on. They give better loot too relative to the XP given, even though the fights take longer (5 maps vs 3 or 4). RULE #2: Every day, all the campaign maps will be littered with one GREEN CHEST which has special loot... IF you have that map unlocked! What this means is two things: First, always check daily and run all Green chest dungeons. Secondly, the more campaign you have unlocked the more green chests spawn! RULE #3: Unlock as far as you can on NORMAL mode to unlock more chests per day as above. Furthermore, the chest rewards I believe are SET and based on the level they ASSUME you will be when you complete them. As such, if you are say level 30 but can pull off campaign 5, then you can easily pick up level 38 items and rewards. Sure they might only be rare or uncommon but at level 38 they are still useful! Way better to get them earlier than later when they suck. Unlocking the hard/extreme maps are not as important as advancing in Normal mode for these reasons, but it is definitely better to run them instead of re-running normal mode with no chest! The downside is that the FIND LOOT seems to randomly pick a map that you have unlocked...so if you unlocked really hard maps you may wind up getting them in the find loot! (see next section) RULE #4: DO NOT necessarily take all 4 dudes. The food system is kind of wierd in that each one has a Minimum and a Maximum food value. Therefore, on an easy dungeon you cannot exceed a certain food value. In these cases, you mine as well take all your dudes to beat it quicker. However, MID-TIER dungeons have higher caps which you can avoid to some extent. Say you are level 20 and the Find Loot is a level 12 dungeon. DONT send all 4 dudes as it will cost 80 food lets say, which would cap at say 48 food. Instead, send a single awesome dude for 20 food instead and you will get the SAME LOOT, and only 20XP instead of 48XP. This gets you a little bit ahead of the curve. It also means you can do more stuff in one session by conserving food. HERO FIND LOOT: --------------- Every hero you own has an 8 hour timer and you can click the Find Loot to see a particular map on the campaign you have unlocked. It will give you a scroll at the very least and maybe a Soul Stone. At first do this with every hero you own. Later you will usually only bother with the important ones. This is because overall all Find Loot does is ensure a scroll is for a particular hero... you dont really get More Loot so its similar to running a normal dungeon with no chest, except there is a chance of getting a soul stone. For more rare heroes, this chance is REDUCED quite a bit. If you do Find Loot, remember that most of the dungeons will be pretty easy so follow RULE #3 and only take as many dudes as you need to win. Preserve food. Note that like the green chests, it will pick from available campaigns. UNLIKE the green chests, advancing further is slightly counterproductive as it can make you fight hard/expensive fights instead of easy ones. But overall, getting more green chests and advancing the rewards is more important. You do not HAVE to click the button to Find Loot. When doing campaigns you may run across them. Whether you use the clickey or just do the dungeon manually the end result is the same. BUYING A HERO: -------------- As I said earlier, you don't want to buy new heroes as you will generally get them anyways from Stone throws. However there are two exceptions. The mighty BLACKGUARD is Legendary and costs 100,000 gold. He is WORTH IT! You will be very unlikely to unlock him naturally, but he is KEY to the game. Blackguard uses the Plate armor and is very very tough. By standing in front he soft-tanks most damage in PVP and PVE. This means you want to invest all your cash into the best plate mail you can craft, since it will protect your entire party. You get a LOT of leverage out of it. The Blackguard also has THREE damaging attacks, and you can swap in a Stun and a Dodge capability. The ARCHMAGE is the other good Legendary, doing a ton of damage. Think Mage on steroids. Slower to act, but very hard hitting. He is lesser priority than the blackguard however. Never buy STONES for them though...at 25,000 per stone that is insane! I would only buy stones for COMMON heroes only, particularly the Cleric and maybe the Rogue since he might be better than I thought. FORMATIONS: ----------- You can pick from 3 formations. Note that MELEE works just fine from the back row! Moving melee damage dudes like Shaman, Amazon, etc from back to front is usually not helpful. It helps in PVE to spread out the damage somewhat, but means you lose the efficiency of the blackguard as a damage sink. Once you get a blackguard, stick with him forward, and 3 behind. Note that whoever is behind the Blackguard is more open to LINE attacks and gets beat up a bit more. Make sure your cleric is not there as he is your best healer and can REZ anyone who dies. But not if HE is the one who bites it. TARGETING: ---------- You can click your dude and they will have a target sign on them. They will then receive ALL BUFFS and HEALS whether they need them or not! This can be really great to keep your tank alive and prevent stupid things like your cleric dropping a heal over time on an uninjured dude to remove a near-useless debuff! But be careful that your other guys don't get killed. You will have to shuffle the targeting around some as it really sucks when your full health tank gets all the heals when not needed and someone else dies. Similarly targeting the enemy works well with a few exceptions. IF you target a backline dude, this can actually hurt you. ONLY your ranged attacks will hit him, and the melee attacks will then spread out over all your opponents! You usually want to focus someone down instead of wounding everyone. Also, if you target a back dude then all DOWN THE LINE attacks will NOT properly target the guy in front so the targeted baddie gets hit! They will just randomly hit something. So be ready for that. NOTE you can tap somewhere on your side of the screen to UNSELECT your hero, so it goes back to normal semi-intelligent targeting. Ditto with the enemy side. Basically it would be nice if they applied a bit more basic intelligence to the targeting system. A healer should never do an instant (non heal over time) to a full health guy ever, if there is no other effect (such as cooldown reduce). Line effects should target the right dude to try their best to hit the target. Taunt overrides the targeting system. If an exclamation point is above someone it means taunt is up. Anything targeted will always hit that enemy. Note that a back-row enemy can taunt. This will similarly force all RANGED attacks to hit that enemy, but you can still target melee attacks like normal. FEAST: ------ Three feasts are on timers and doing one is like running a hard dungeon or two for free. You still get XP and similar loot as a dungeon. Think of Feast as a "quick loot" capablity, sort of. However a feast is more efficient than a dungeon. A small feast may eat 120 food, but it tends to give around 100 gold, 80 skill, 60 gears and maybe a scroll or two. A dungeon that costs you 120 food would tend to give less overall rewards. The midtier feast is more efficient than the first one, and also provides a portal stone. which are important and pretty rare in dungeon drops without chests. Huge feast drops golden soulstones. I only use these now and ignore the weaker feasts. TOWER: ------ Your tower can be attacked by others so you can fill it with defenders. Those are monsters you captured from elsewhere. Early on, there is little point in defending your tower. You dont get enough monster drops to properly defend, and you level up so fast that they get outdated quickly. And you don't want to combine any monsters either which wastes gold. However you always want some hero defending. Every 24 hrs you can get a soulstone for ONE defender. This is really great for blackguards and other hard to advance dudes. Right before the timer, exchange your real defender with BlackGuard or whoever. Collect the loot, then swap back after collecting. ALWAYS EXCHANGE. Don't remove all your heroes ever. Make sure to remove any other defenders though so only the target hero is active defender when the timer ticks! Note the 24 hr time ONLY RESTARTS AFTER you collect. So try to collect ASAP to keep the collection time relatively constant. Until level 20, DO NOT Craft any machines to help defend! Do not combine any monsters as you don't get much for it and want to save cash. DEFENSE: --------- Once you hit around level 20, it becomes feasible to defend your tower since everyone slows down leveling. Thus you can kind of keep up with your monsters better. Cash is not as much of a problem by now too. Also, winning a tower defense gives you some free PVP prestege and guild marks which will make your guild happy. It also gives some random defending hero some scrolls and a soul stone! So while you will only get attacked once or twice per day on average, eventually working up a decent defense is somewhat worthwhile. And satisfying! It turns out that a well balanced defense...sucks! Every attacker will pretty much come in with a healer and some damagers and a tank. A well balanced defense with tanks up front simply will not do enough damage to outpace their healing! You give them a long boring slog but won't win. Thus, there are a few viable defense options. A) Use a taunt hero (Knight, Samurai, Cavalier, etc) in front and have damage dealers such as cannons in the other slots. Having 1 good support guy is ok too as his healing helps keep you up longer and he still should have some offensive zap. This seems to be the best overall strategy and a great reason to level up more of the tanky guys. Cavalier actually kind of works here since you are All-In on damage. Knight is excellent too. B) Use a bunch of warrior class bruisers up front, 2 damage dealers back and an Area Effect guy such as a Mage, Warlock, etc. Someone with a significant soul skill that hits multiple enemies since you know there will be 4 of em. A variation on this theme uses a WALL in front of your hero for protection. Best bet is two Runic Guardians and an epic Wall front, with your hero behind the wall, and then 2 damage dealers of your choice...likely Monsters so you can use the extras you get. The Sneak Attack guy and the Cloud+Fireball+Zap guy are the best bets I've seen. Poison is nasty too since it is harder for tanks to deal with. C) Use a burst damage composition. Since defense seems to go first and has their longer cooldown skills available early, a damage dealing hero plus a bunch of damage dealers such as triple-ballistas can really hurt an enemy force before they can do much about it. It likely will not win by itself but it will weaken the enemy such that the next floor is much more likely to win. Since the cannons tend to die quickly, they will do their damage and not give the enemy much chance to build up a lot of soul energy and recover health before the next floor. D) An interesting alternative is the UberTank style which has ALL tanks and healers. A cleric in back or legionaire can resurrect killed dudes or a ninja can spam annoying aoe-stun smoke bombs and RUN YOU OUT OF TIME. This is excellent vs more defensive tower-attackers. NOTE: Walls have been buffed hugely so putting one wall in front of your hero is very very strong. Use a Mage/Archmage/Shaman to deliver heavy damage with their attacks and spammed soul abilities. The wall will block any ranged attack which is extremely strong. ------ One more thing. FLOOR ONE is the ONLY really significant floor. When they begin, they have NO Soul skill and no queued up attacks. Your defense seems to have an advantage in that their longer cooldown skills tend to fire faster than expected. Thus, your defense can actually make some headway before their heals and soul skills hit. By the time they advance past floor 1, they will have queued up skills ready to go and soul skills they can use to kill your key dudes before they can even go! Therefore, you have to BRING IT HARD on floor 1. If you don't really hurt them badly, the other 4+ floors or whatever won't matter. ------ Another thing. In general, avoid tanks. They just don't do any damage and you WILL LOSE a long fight. Be careful not to overuse support characters. You don't want 7% dodge or heals for the most part (unless you have a true Tank such as knight defending). You want to deliver damage! ----------- At 20ish, it becomes viable to combine crappy monsters to level up your good ones. Obviously only do this with at least RARE, ideally Super Rare. Only combine the ones that have 50% bonusus for same type. EXCEPT for tanks...they are crap so use them whenever to combine. CRAFTING: --------- You want to IGNORE crafting until around level 15. It is just a waste of money. Crafting anything costs a fortune and you wont make anyting good anyways. If you DO make something, it basically guarantees that you will find a similar drop for free 10 minutes later... trust me. :-) However, once you have Blackguard, you want to start learning recipes. First and foremost, research PLATE MAIL! Start advancing that until you get as far as you can reasonable obtain for quite a while then MAKE SOME for your blackguard. You should be able to get to the rare (blue) one. Chainmail is ok too as a second priority. Your Cleric may need some better armor once you PVP as he gets targeted first by all ranged attacks. Next up, go ahead and learn Blackguard weapon (1 handed stab). In my ideal party he is the main damage dealer. A good weapon can also provide some defense for him. Ditto with 1 handed axe for your cleric. Blood Axe for example can help his survivability for pretty cheap. For machines, go down the CANNON/damage line. And then the Warrior line going back and forth. at level 25ish, you can go ahead and craft some triple ballista or lightning ones for damage, and some warrior golem dudes for up front if you dont have a taunter on that floor. Basically, once you can make BLUE stuff or better, it will be extremely unlikely for you to just find something comparable. Closest bet will be your guild invests into something tasty. My guild gave me a level 35 bloodseeker super rare for my blackguard making him my toughest hero AND my highest damage hero. To reiterate, you want to LEARN the recipes long before you plan to use them because it takes forever... you do NOT want to actually MAKE anything until at least BLUE level! The exception to this is anything that does not require purple crystals. Your yellow ones are pretty limited at first but at 20, you start acquiring them and can even get them regularly in tower,weekly,etc. But it is still pricey so you ONLY want to get absolute KEY items such as the 1 set of plate for your tank and maybe Cleric armor for pvp IF needed. USING GEMS: ----------- There are a ton of STUPID ways to waste gems in this game. Basically you want to get some PERMANENT VALUE out of them when you use them. That means, using them to hurry up research or a travel quest is an abomination You throw a LOT of gems away for no real benefit that lasts. Paying to refresh an opponent is really cheap but it adds up. I'd avoid it. Paying 50 gems to refresh Wizards Tower is a RIP OFF. It just rerolls the floor which only marginally changes the composition! Paying to get a hero leveled up is horribly expensive. It wanted 10 gems to get my hero 11 training points (out of 1700ish). Ridiculous. Ditto with boosting your crafter dudes, etc. The best use of gems is during the Gem Festival where you get free bonus stuff for using them for whatever. However, make sure have a good use for them. DONT throw away gems just because of a festival. From here you have the choice of converting to Gold, Training stuff, or crafting stuff. Gold is good at first and you might consider it to help your early game if you have the daily gems. But by 20, gold is not worth gem cost. 400 gems would give you 20,000 gold. Training stuff is fine, but you dont get much for the cost. By level 20, using 400 gems for 10 random scrolls, 2k gold, stones is weaksauce. Crafting seems by far the best option. The first option is meh. I'd avoid. The 1300 gem one takes a while but gives you two VOID CORES which are pretty much unobtainable. They want 10 bucks for 4 of them in the store! These are used for all purple (super rare) recipes. The 2700 gem one is MUCH better but its very hard to save that up. With daily gems it will still take the full 30 days most likely. The game is pretty stingy with gems. Still, the result is worth it. TEN void cores instead of two for 2x cost! Purple recipes start at about 2 void cores each for reference. Epics cost 8-20. They just introduced Daily Deals which are pretty decent surprisingly. These can be a good way to get a specific something that you are lacking. I got 4 void cores for 400 gems which seems reasonable compared to the 2700 gem option above that gives you 10 with random lesser stuff. AAAND of course they nerfed this and made it 150 gems per core now. The 2000 gears for 100 gems was also a great deal. 1k training points for 400 gems was today's offering...absolutely trash! So don't assume they are all good deals. Compare ALL deals to the baseline values above..i.e. 100 gems = 5000 gold at the very worst. Better yet, compare to the 2700 gem option above. PAY TO WIN: ----------- There are also things you can buy with cash directly such as Gems, Gold, etc. In general these are a terrible idea. Gems are nice because they can be used for a huge variety of other things as needed. The 50 gems per day is BY FAR the best deal, with 1500 gems for 5 bucks. And it removes ads as weve gone over before. Buying gems to use NOW costs way more, even with the current "sale". Its like 20 bucks or so for 2500 gems I think? A truly horrid deal is the 4 void cores for 10 bucks, for example. You can pay 20 bucks and get near 2700 gems, buy the Master crafter pack and get TEN cores plus a TON of other awesome stuff (as we saw above). Daily deals have cores for 100 gems each (or was it 50). Way better. So basically ONLY buy gems if you feel you must pay 2 win, and try to stick with daily gems which are 3 times more efficient. I don't recommend guild marks either. For 5 bucks you get 15k points which can buy everyone 5 portal stones. Thats 50 gold stones and 200 regular which is pretty good! However, you only get a tiny fraction of that so unless your entire guild is up for it (unlikely), don't do it. Sucking up to the guild is nice, but with 50 people they won't remember it for long so you can still get KICKED if you are doing big one time purchases and not actively boosting your prestiege and doing it the normal way. The pay2win cash grab keeps coming. Now there are potions. DONT BUY. They suck. 200 gems for 5 crap potions that make zero difference in any fight where you'd need em. GUILDS: ------- A guild can be private or public. You want to join a public guild right after youve done some PVP and understand how it works. Then save up all your attacks. Join one, then IMMEDIATELY do Tower attacks or duels to get some prestiege built up so you are less likely to get kicked. You probably will anyways at lower levels, but you never know. After I got booted several times I joined Yard Trash and amazingly didn't get kicked. I got lucky and wound up in a guild with some really nice people. I was a lowbie but they saw I was trying. Guilds are PVP ONLY. That is the only way you can contribute. By doing PVP you get prestege for the guild. You also get Marks that you can spend on items that EVERYONE will get once unlocked. With some luck you can obtain some sweet gear. I got a level 35 purple sword for my Blackguard when I was like level 20. :-) Duels are annoying until you get the hang of it, but attacking towers is actually kind of interesting and not hard. You can easily get your prestege from doing that alone. Even defending your tower can get enough points to avoid the Boot. To do well at the game, you really do need a Guild. The weekly rewards are nice, but the contribution items are just crucial. This is how you can get top end crafting items that are normally just not very obtainable without pay2win. CATACOMBS: ---------- These unlock much earlier than they should. These are very random fights that cost a lot of food and are equivalent to a hard dungeon run. Instead of chests they give points that unlock more and more rewards. AND, every week they give a reward based on your ranking overall. On my first fight as a level 15, I beat up some level 8s...then some level 15s. then ran into level 34 monsters! Yikes! Shockingly they pooped all over me. When you are level 30, a level 50 monster is hard but not impossible. You can 
deal.  But at 15?  A 35 monster can literally 1 shot you.

Catacombs fights tend to take forever and are super boring.  You want to use a
defensive IDLE composition such as my Blackguard,Druid,Cleric,Warmaster.
If playing actively, you want a Cleric/Druid, a blackguard tank, then two big
damage dealers such as shaman/archmage, or even mage/archmage.

Catacombs also ADVANCE your level really fast!  This is not necessarily good as
you want to slow down some to collect the XP-free rewards such as Dailys, and
the efficient Feast rewards.

I pushed pretty hard one week to hit 4000 points but honestly it was not worth 
it.  As you go further the fights get even LONGER and harder.  I thought I could
hit 6k but 4k was about as much as I could stand.

Therefore I recommend trying to get to 500 or 1000 points at level 20/25.
At first, rewards come every 20 points, then 50.  But at 500, it leaps up to 
+250 to 750 and 1000.  THEN, to +500(!) to hit 1500,2000,2500,3000,3500,4000.
Those are painful and not worth it generally speaking.

But getting a few hundred points will get you a 25% weekly reward or better.  
Adjust as needed at the end of the week to not juuust miss a reward tier.

There is one other thing.  IF ANYONE DIES, you get DOCKED points for it!  You
still pay the food and get the same mediocre loot.  But 2 dudes die?  You get
half the catacomb points!
Thus, having dudes like Archmage requires you to manually play so you can rez 
them before winning.
If you are idling basically, stick with a tanky-DPS group and healer.



WIZARD TOWER:
-------------
This consists of single room dungeons that increase in difficulty as you rise
with better rewards.  Note that the tower only resets EVERY MONTH(!) so 
go ahead and periodically play it. 
Note that there is NO XP for these fights!   That means it is BONUS LEWT!

Once you get beaten, if you can win with 1 more ticket, do it.   Otherwise just
wait a while.  Tower aint going anywhere.  Level up more first.
I generally wait till I have a Daily quest to do one.

If you go too fast, you will hit The Wall like I have. Almost 2 weeks left and
at 26, I have three level 63 monsters waiting to 1 shot my level 32 dudes.
One beholder thing and 2 uber rogues.

I tried the GEM REFRESH which is a rip off and it rerolled to basically the 
exact same composition except 2 beholders and 1 ultrarogue.  So...don't ever 
do that! It does NOT reset to floor one like I had thought!

I finally saved up 10 tickets which let me keep retrying the floor using all
short-cooldown tanky damage dealers.  I finally chopped up one of the beholders
and then won pretty quick after that.

Next level was hard too because of two level 68 healers!  After a few tries I
managed to wear one down.  The other dropped pretty fast. Then killed the rogue.

But then guess what?  Next 3 levels were TRIVIAL!! And rewards were great.
Go figure.

PROTIP: If you are against HEALERS, and your party is about dead, you can QUIT
instead of just lose.
This is especially important if they have a HEAL in the action queue.  DONT let
em get a free heal if you are out of gas.  QUIT out instead!

They just added a Tower Boss at level 31.  He took me about 10 tickets to win
at level 34.  Ugh.  After that the tower resets.  But by then, I have 1 week
to go and 0 tickets.  Hence, I still have to wait a week because I dont want
to unlock the junk rewards then have it reset!

Feel free to try the Boss but you will get pooped on.  Turns out there is not
even a Quest for beating him!  Rip off!!


ENEMY TOWER PVP
---------------

We have discussed defense of tower, so lets talk beating down the enemy towers!
First thing to mention is that PVP is the only way to contribute to your GUILD
which can get you a lot of powerful stuff for free.
Also there are weekly rewards so doing some tower hunting is worthwhile for that
in addition to daily quests for tower and rewards for winning.

The main thing I do not like is the matchmaking... there is only ONE enemy and
you have to pay gems (NO!) or watch a stupid AD to reroll.  You dont have much
info beyond this, except by looking at the rewards! 

In particular look at the trophies granted as this will give you a general idea
 how tough they are. Pay2Win losers might be fully stocked with lots of nasty
stuff and stomp you, whereas people 4 levels higher than you will be beaten 
easily.  All of this should in theory be reflected in the rewards obtained.

For the most part, treat the tower as a dungeon.  Bring healing, a tank, and
some damage.  You will use the same exact 4 heroes that you have been boosting
all along.
Too much defense and you are vulnerable to getting stalled out of time.
Squishy heroes run the risk of getting chopped up by enemy ranged foes.

The main strategy is to KILL THE HERO.  There is one per floor and as long as 
they are alive, they will spam their Soul Skill.  Even if the hero is tanky, it
is still worth dealing with them to shut down their skills.

Second strategy is that Floor 1 is mostly what matters.  THEIR dudes start with
their skills loaded up...even longer delay ones!  Which means they fill their
soul bar faster.  You however take a while to get going.   Thus, floor 1 is the
hardest.
If you can survive floor 1 without too much damage, you will probably win easily
since your attacks will all be queued up and carryover to the next floor and you
have soul energy.

Remembering that soul energy is gained from doing DAMAGE, target the weakest
frontline enemy (or their hero if he is not blocked or a tank).  So you want to
inflict damage so you can get enough energy to Regenerate or do a big AOE to
get the ball rolling.

Speaking of which, once a victory is basically won, DO NOT USE soul skills 
except heals.  You WANT the fight to drag out so you can heal up and reduce
soul cooldowns and be ready for the next floor!

There is not much else to say I don't think.  Tower is MUCH easier than Duels.

Right now I use blackguard, druid, mage, archmage.  It generates lots of
soul energy, clears pretty quick, and Druid heal mitigates a lot of damage.
After floor 1, a quick Meteor/Rain/Stun combo will immediately take out most
enemy heroes and half their defenders.  Clean up repeat.
As a bonus, the mage/archmage get around enemy walls nicely and they overwhelm
any stall-tactic defenses.


ENEMY DUEL PVP
--------------
Duels are hardmode for getting guild points.  However, they are the most 
interesting and challenging part of the game.

Early on it is very frustrating because you get matched with someone higher
level who stomps your face in.  At level 15, 2 overlevels is a big deal!  
Not as much at level 35 for example, although the playtime difference between
35/37 is a lot moreso than 15/17.

The idea is to build a team.  At first, I'd pretty much recommend just going
with your normal campaign team.
You can stick with the tank and cleric for sure.
However you might wanna remove some of the squishy characters like Mage in 
favor of tanky DPSers like Samurai, Barbarian, Shaman, etc.
Mage clears campaign better but the above resist enemy concentrated fire.

A basic strategy is to try to combine a lot of burst damage onto one dude before
the enemy can heal it.  Resurrect is pricey and if caught off guard, takes too
long to get the energy to use it.
Ranged attacks are particularly attractive...especially with long cooldowns.
If you can use your barbarian -defense debuff on a target, then immediately
Throw Weapon at whoever is in front and then Leap Strike it...they take a ton of
damage.   Followed up with a ranged damage spell, you can take someone out fast!

You always want 1 tank forward, 3 guys back.  NEVER PUT THE CLERIC behind the
tank!  That makes him take bonus damage from any line attack.  Put the most
expendible or tough dude there.

Ive had great luck with a super tanky team.
I use Blackguard with Bulwark passive and all 3 offensive skills.  He has great
platemail and sword courtesy of guild/craft.

Druid with Cyclone,entangle, and the heal that buffs cooldown speed which 
usually lands on my Blackguard.  Her soul skill is awesome for negating their
AOE damage.

Cleric uses quick heal, cleanse(remove stuns,etc and heal over time), and
the Nuke/Heal party, with Leadership passive for resists.

Warmaster uses the big slow attack plus cooldown and damage boosters.

All of them effectively buff the heck out of my overpowered blackguard who does
most of the damage.

---
Now I actually do the complete opposite.  Tanky works well, but you don't get
much soul skill energy.  Thus, I now have two main strategies:

A) Knight top right with Taunt.  Doing so negates any LINE damage from OP Shaman
which is good.  Bad news is that when taunt goes down, your frontline is
vulnerable which is bad.  So you decide whether to go 3 front or 3 back.
Then, add 3 damage dealers.   I went with Mage/Archmage/

B) Tanky DPS:  I use blackguard front , kensai, shaman , Cleric back.
Cleric healing is not all that great but Rez is super annoying and forces them
to focus the toughest blackguard instead of high damage other two.
Cleric also gives a big Resists bonus.
kensai/Shaman also have nice line/AoE abilities.

NOTE:  Healing does NOT SCALE for crap in this game and is UNAFFECTED by your
improved equipment.  Thus, healing just tends to fall off over time.



-------
At level 29, go for the big weekly reward.  you can ONLY be matched with 29 or
lower!   Take advantage!

At 30 something awful happens.  You have to have THREE teams and its best 2 out
of 3.

My dirty strategy is to use level 1s for the initial team, then my best team 
for #2, and another team for #3.

This destroys many low 30 players like me because they cannot field a full 12
man team for PVP, plus man the tower.
So they put their best 2 teams at the beginning.

Eventually this will stop working as everyone levels up their guys.  By 34, I
gave up this strategy and put my 2 best teams forward.

You could consider making team #2 suck however. So if you win the first, you
concede #2 and force them to use their sucky #3 team against your #2 one!