The Dungeon event in Heroes vs Hordes has changed significantly. It's no longer a weekly event you finish while you sit on the toilet. It's now a daily grind with new mechanics, making it a more time-intensive event but with the potential for better rewards.
Let's see how we can best use your non-toilet time to maximize your rewards.
In this video, I'll walk you through how to deal with the changes to the reworked Dungeon Event. I'll cover the following topics:
- The New Mechanics
- The Best Heroes
- Optimal Weapons, Gear, and Pets
- Strategy for Maximize Your Score
- Comparing The Rewards & Progression
Like many other parts of HvH, the biggest rewards from the dungeon rework come from consistently clearing it. So load up your favorite hero, put on your fanciest gear, and get ready to destroy the dungeon.
Dungeon Mechanics & Modifiers
Before you run face-first into certain doom, it's better to understand what you're getting yourself into. With that in mind, let's go through the new mechanics of the Dungeon. While they provide some modifiers in the description, there are three hidden ones they failed to mention.
Let's dive into it.
- Reduced evasion & regeneration: This means that horde are more likely to hit you and that it will take longer to get your health back. If you are getting hit by horde, you run has gone sideways. So this is a non-factor until much later stags.
- Movement speed locked at 9: The important part here is the "locked" mechanic. That means you automatically get 9 m/s, it is not a cap you need to hit. You do not need to stack movement speed gear or jewels to get the benefit.
- Enemies immune to instant kill: This means that you don't want to run assassin jewels and that you won't be able to do a Pirate Queen cheese focused on instant kills.
- No hero immunity: Blade Master takes the big hit with this one, he won't be able to utilize his ultimate. And to a lesser extent, ascended Knight Chest loses it's luster. I'm guessing this will be a bigger factor in much later stages of the event.
While all of these modifiers are stated, three unstated non-modifiers that are important to know about.
These are the same as normal mode, but it is important to confirm as they can be stealthily changed in different game modes. Thanks to Poopa, HaxSennin, and MarioVX for doing god's, i mean the dev's, work in Discord.
Ok.
Now you that you have a quick background on Dungeon mechanics, let's move on to why you're really here, to pick the best heroes and set up your gear to maximize your chances of clearing it.
The Dungeon Video Guide
The Dungeon Strategy
Your goal is to clear 2400 horde in under 5 minutes to beat the stage. The best way to clear mass amounts of horde? Don't move.
Can't make for much more exciting gameplay than that!
So you're goal is to move as little as possible to maximize your DPS and score. You will obviously need to move around early to collect experience orbs, but try to stand still as much as you can between those pickup movements.
Like adventure mode, you get healing and magnets at 3 minutes on the timer and around 50 seconds on the timer. You can use those to your advantage to minimize your movement. If you can consistently clear horde before they get on the screen, you don't have to move after the 3-minute magnet.
Doesn't get more exciting than that!
The Dungeon Gear
Now on to optimal gear.
You choose your gear like you choose your vegetables, farm fresh or processed.
For those too op to be this far into the guide, throw on Noble gear and run your farm. May the key odds be ever in your favor.
For everyone else, you want to maximize DPS. There are no special mechanics to weapon leveling, so don't cheese +1 starting gear like in Arena. Instead, go with max DPS around rogue, ranger, and wizard gear.
| Helm: Rogue | Gloves: Rogue |
| Chest: Rogue | Necklace: Rogue |
| Boots: Ranger | Ring: Rogue |
Total optimal gear is something like Rogue Helm, Rogue Chest, Ranger Boots, Rogue Glove, Rogue Necklace, and either rogue ring or wizard ring.
Some people swear to me that wizard ring is just so much better than rogue ring. To them, I would just say, I bet you think the earth is a sphere.
The Dungeon Weapons
Your priority weapons follow the same concept as heroes. You want ranged weapons that can reach the edge of the map. That being said, you do need to survive early in the run, so make sure you don't sacrifice max DPS later in the run if you can't survive early in the run.
Fire Orbs
|
Bombs
→
Chain Lightening
→
Crossbow
So here's been my standard weapon priority so far:
- Bombs: Massive AOE damage always tops the charts.
- Fire Orbs: Fire orbs are what I was talking about a second ago. By the end of the run, these won't be doing any damage. So, if you can substitute them out, you can probably net a higher score.
- Chain Lightning: Next priority.
- Crossbow/Ice Wand: And round out the build with a crossbow or ice wand. A point or two in Ice Wand early in a run will dramatically increase your survivability.
If you're lucky enough to have acquired special weapons, consider lantern, borer, and/or daggers as replacements for fire orbs, chain lightning, and crossbows. I don't have any of them.
I you want to maximize your gold farming, rushing experience tome should let you hit max levels and provide some additional gold. Just don't lose a torch in the search of minimal extra gold.
The Dungeon Jewels
Jewels will either max your dps or max your farm.
Ultimate Charge
|
Ultimate Duration
→
Vulnerability
→
Cooldown til 60%
→
Projectile (P)
→
Area
→
Explosion
Like pretty much everything else, your best jewels go for max DPS. That means the two ultimate jewels from guild runs, vulnerability, followed by cooldown until you hit 60% in the details screen. Once you're at 60% CD, you can consider high-level projectile jewels, aoe, and/or projectile speed based on your hero. But at that point, you're in late game and I'm not telling you anything new here.
For max farm, it's the highest level key jewels all the way down.
The Dungeon Pets
And because I get asked this all the time, here are what I think are the best pets. I don't have Owl or Storm Gryphon, so I'm less familiar with their mechanics.
You generally want the highest tier RANGED pet you have as your main pet and the next two strongest as your passive pets. You want a ranged pet as your main pet for the same reasons I've been harping on.
So a typical build early game would be Pyrokraken main with Emberpaw and a random striker passive. As you progress, an epic like Hydro Basilisk becomes your main, with Emberpaw and Pyrokraken as your passives.
Eventually, you'll get an epic main pet with epics as passive, but that's for a different video.
- Hydra Ballast: One of the best for dealing damage at range.
- Storm Griffin: Strong AOE potential.
- Pyro Cranking: A good secondary option for extra firepower.
- Ember Pod: Useful for sustained DPS.
The Dungeon Best Rewards
Old System
- One run per week.
- Weekly progression towards hitting stage 20 and a cap on rewards.
New System
- Dungeon now resets daily, requiring a minimum of 7 runs a week based on new torch currency.
- Guaranteed keys are awarded based on stage. You get gold keys on multiples of 5 like 100, 105, 100, and silver keys in-between.
- An unlimited number of stages to progress through.
- Rewards Scale with Stages: Higher stages offer better loot.
- No Torch Purchases with Gems: Torches are only available through real money purchases.
The big thing for me was understanding how the reward systems compare. I've seen people way smarter than me do the math on Discord. Base level, i you do the standard seven runs per week, you should net out to slightly more key, assuming the RNG gods don't get to you.
However, you get additional daily torches from hitting VIP Level 4 or buying the monthly hero pass. That means, at most, you can run 3 per day. Note that you cannot buy additional runs with gems.
If you have access to these additional runs and the time, really important, IF YOU HAVE TIME, you will net out to WAY more keys per week than with the previous dungeon setup. The difference is you are going to need to run it 14 to 21 times compared to 1. At 7 minutes per run, thats ~1.5hrs over the week compared to ~7 minutes before. That will net you out to potentially 20+ more silver and gold keys if you can swing noble gear.
So, if you have the time, the damage, and the ability to not get bored, this is a nice perk to the Hero Pass and VIP4.
If you don't have the time, at least remember to hit "Quick Raid" each day to use up the torches. This button gives you the reward from the end of the previously defeated stage but without keys and the ability to double the reward. So, just use it if you don't have time to run the dungeon that day.
The Dungeon Summary
And that's the new dungeon. I think, all in all, the changes balance out to a buff, IF YOU HAVE THE TIME. The additional time suck justifies the additional rewards, particularly for VIP4 and Hero Pass runners.
