Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems! TACTICS!!! page 2

Originally posted by greg:

I have a perfect rating on almost every level, but I can’t do #11. The shadow boss guy moves too fast. The first hit makes him immune, but he stays immune until he’s almost right on top of my den. I kill him right after he gets a gem, but by then it’s too late. :(

Anyone have any tips? Do I just need to spam the meteor at the last second?

I beat the Shadow Boss(lvl 11) by spamming Meteors, but I started spamming at the beginning, and not at the last second, just wait him to get hit once(maybe he will freeze, and even if he don’t, send the meteors anyway) and start spamming Meteors (press shift to cast multiples Meteors), try to have 500 mana on the last wave to cast as much as you can.

This was my final build:

What is the max level I can level my Overlord up to?

I personally maxed out some skills in the orc tree, and now I’m focusing on undead. Seems to work fine for me so far.

all badges gotten :)

i maxed out all skills as i got my last 3 skill points i got final brillent,so not sure if i can go more

This is my setup for level 15 brilliant. It’s kinda easy, and the only time when you have to use Meteor, is when boss ninja comes. Yes, I built all this towers before I started upgrading them. Yes, I got all this money from cutting trees. Yes, money from cutting trees is from “Cut Down Mastery” skill in Orcs skills tree. Yes, you should place towers on Mana Pools first, and then continue with the rest. This screenshot is done with level 40, but I’m pretty sure you can do thsi with like level 25-30, if you set skills smart.

This should be clear enough, but if it’s not, let me know. I will deliver video.

EDIT: Nvm, here’s the video. :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsSJhFZbrFM

Originally posted by No_Stress:

I beat the Shadow Boss(lvl 11) by spamming Meteors, but I started spamming at the beginning, and not at the last second, just wait him to get hit once(maybe he will freeze, and even if he don’t, send the meteors anyway) and start spamming Meteors (press shift to cast multiples Meteors), try to have 500 mana on the last wave to cast as much as you can.

You can get more shots off with your Crypts by moving them inwards a few tiles so that their range just catches the entrances.

Maxed-out Meteor can do up to 2,000 damage with full mana, which is more than most (but not all) bosses will survive. Combined with a strong initial hit from a tower, it should be more than enough to stop them.

Originally posted by greg:

Maxing out mana-generating abilities along with the orc ability that gives you gold for cutting down trees (and the ability that makes this cheaper) is pretty ridiculous. You can clear out forests and litter the map with towers.

I have a perfect rating on almost every level, but I can’t do #11. The shadow boss guy moves too fast. The first hit makes him immune, but he stays immune until he’s almost right on top of my den. I kill him right after he gets a gem, but by then it’s too late. :(

Anyone have any tips? Do I just need to spam the meteor at the last second?

Well I made it brilliant from my first try – spamming meteors as soon as he comes out and also I had a few crypts upgraded to the max so that their fear ability left him away from my gems.

After multiple attempts to get Brilliant on level 14 with crypts near the entrances I ended up putting burning towers on the high ground near the entrances. This knocked the boss down enough that 5 meteors was enough to kill him without needing to build more crypts to cast a 6th.

Tip for level 15, wait until wave 40 before upgrading towers near the entrances and use meteors as needed to kill enemies that get too close to the gems. This will give your towers near the gems a chance to gain exp so they can be upgraded higher than usual.

I have all the skills maxed and currently at character level 43. There doesn’t seem to be any bonus for gaining higher levels once you’ve maxed everything, though.

Is the “return portal” skill basically junk for hard badge purposes?

Originally posted by Rast:

Is the “return portal” skill basically junk for hard badge purposes?

Yep.

Return Portal has nothing to do with the hard badge ^^. If an enemy has alread touched your Gem you won’t get the brilliant rating anway.

Originally posted by CTSG:

This is my setup for level 15 brilliant. It’s kinda easy, and the only time when you have to use Meteor, is when boss ninja comes.

It’s a good setup, except I had to use Meteor a bit when the enemies chose the side paths instead of going down the middle. I used the Disarm crypts instead of Fear in the top H, but I don’t know if it helped against tricky mobs at all.

For anyone having trouble with any level, try maxing out the mana pool and Meteor discount and damage (optionally also mana regeneration) and keeping 100 mana in reserve, or more if there’s a ninja boss coming up. You may have to try levels a few times as I did, but it should work.

Originally posted by sohryukei:

Return Portal has nothing to do with the hard badge ^^. If an enemy has alread touched your Gem you won’t get the brilliant rating anway.

He means is it pointless to get Return Gem Portal if you want to get the hard badge efficiently and is using points on that skill a waste of skill points.

I tried your strategy CTSG, it doesn’t come even close to working at low-ish character levels. However, I have now managed to brilliant most of them, using this fairly obvious approach (which has basically been said already in this thread):

0. Complete the game. Don’t bother brillianting maps 1 and 2 when you haven’t (normally) completed map 15 a few times.

1. Ninjas are the ones who mess up your Brilliant attempts. A strategy that doesn’t mainly target them will probably fail. A strategy that targets ninjas, OTOH, will probably kill every other enemy type as a side effect.

2. Skill choices: Max out the two green tier 3 Cut Down skills (don’t max out tiers 1 and 2 on the way — upgrade just enough to get to tier 3). Then max out the blue tier 5 Mana Generation skill (taking other mana skills along the way), then max out red tier 1 Basic Training, followed by the red tier 3 Meteor skills. After this, you basically want to take everything in blue skill tree that mentions crypts: start with Freeze (because it applies to even unupgraded crypts), then Fear, then the one that makes them cheaper.

3. I started brillianting things at character level 20 and pretty much did all of them first time. I felt way overlevelled.

4. Start level, place on ALL mana generation spots, cut down trees when you can, etc. For actual damage towers, place only crypts. Tower placement is critical: you need to place towers that can see the end, but if possible, they should be able to see earlier in the map too so that they can gain experience safely. Most maps are designed to allow this.

5. When you see a ninja level coming up, be prepared. The way ninjas work is that they become invincible after they get hit. You must place towers that have full coverage of the entrance, to “tap” the ninjas straight away. You can use any tower for this, although crypts are worse due to their slower firing rate. In map 15 (see image above), I placed two red towers and two green towers at the top of the map on the first ninja wave, then removed them later once I had a lot of crypts up there. Why? Because while crypts are slower, with a lot of them you can get the tap AND the freeze/fear effect, which reduces the likelihood you’ll have to use meteors.

6. Never upgrade your red/green ninja “tap” towers, and don’t bother with the mana generating towers unless they’re placed near the gems. Generally upgrade crypts only (to fear, not mana generation), starting with the back, and feel free to increase the number of crypts whenever you are flush with cash. Remember. with the crypt skills maxed, a crypt has 25% freeze chance when completely unupgraded, and 35% fear chance once at 1k exp — prefer more towers to upgrading past one star where possible.

7. For ninja bosses or massive ninja waves, you can usually get up to a decent (if not maximum) amount of mana in preparation, but with five or six crypts firing on him just as he becomes visible, you’d be very unlucky to not get a freeze or a fear. I usually hover my mouse over with meteor just in case… it doesn’t cost anything unless you actually use it.

All in all, I think maps 11, 14 and 15 are probably hardest. On map 11 I forgot about the final ninja boss — but managed to hit him with five meteors just before he touched a gem. Don’t forget you can hold shift to fire successive meteors.

(After brillianting every level and redoing the last few a couple of times to see if what I was posting was reliable, I’m on character level 29.)

Any tactics on Level 13? It’s the only one i have had trouble with so far, i am level 18 with maxed demon skill tree and working on the Undead tree.

Maxing out only a single skill tree is not the way to go. The key skills to get are Cut Down -cost and +gold, mana pool/mana regen, and Meteor -cost and +damage. Extra tower exp and upgrade discounts, and the top-tier specials are nice too.

Ice crypts are useful at the high and low levels. Burning towers are useful at all levels. Dens are useful as a last stand next to the gems.

i think temples are the best here are the reasons why
1. they reload the fastest
2. the can evolve the either a burning tempe or a raidiance temple that cause extra damage
3.demonds skills can strenghen units attacks
4. although they are weak at the start the can become the best tower ever
and last but not least 5. there continous shot never wears out
i hope this changes your mind about crypts because temples rule and crypts and dens are slow to reload
PS. to get temples to reload quicker use the undead skills.

Brian105, I agree that temples are pretty awesome, but some of your arguments are flawed.

1. Temples have the highest fire rate early game, but late game Orc Dens are faster (and deal more damage)
2. Tower shots do not ‘run out’ – the temple actually deals damage every 1 second, the continuous fire is just for show.
3. The undead skills do not increase fire rate, they increase range. Orc skills increase fire rate.

Here are some ninja killing tactics:
1. The Evil Eye Temple increases damage from spells, so with the All-Seeing Eye and Meteor Mastery upgrades maxed, Meteor will deal 500 damage on enemies under the effect of radiance.
2. Ballistae and Burning Temples can hit stealthed ninjas. Placing a Burning Temple near the beginning of a stage will sometimes allow you to hit a stealthed ninja when another ninja comes onto the stage.
3. With an Orc Den near the beginning of the stage, you can easily hit criticals, which makes it easier for temples near the back to finish them off. With an Undead tower on high ground near the back, it can easily finish off the first ninja with its triple charge.
4. Alternatively, Undead towers near the beginning are very useful – with fear and freeze (and occasionally disarm) they’re great for crowd control, and their triple charges will switch to another target once one of them hits the ninja.
5. Poison Clouds and Blaze help weaken ninjas for quick kills near the end.

Hope this helps!

Sorry for double post, but there’s no edit button. Just wanted to correct my previous post, while the Fire Rate for Demon towers is listed as 1, it actually deals half damage every half second. Either way, the Orc towers outdamage it – although the Demon towers are good for finishing off enemies already on low HP.

I can’t seem to get a brilliant score on 14 and 15. The final ninja bosses on those levels are so fast that if you shoot them at the start, they’ll be at the gems before your 5 seconds is up. So apart from an opening hit of say max 400 damage (triple hit from highest level crypt) you can only damage them with meteor.

So far, so good. 5 meteors should do easily enough damage.

Except the game lags so badly that it’s impossible to hit with 5 meteors. I’m lucky if I can hit with 2.

Kind of sucks. Anyone know a way around this lag?

Originally posted by lolisit0:

Originally posted by vervain :

The game really needs hotkeys for mass meteor spamming. On my computer at least, even with speedup turned off, ninja bosses move so fastly I can only meteor 2x before they grab a gem.

My PC must be old and slow then ( lol ) because I can Meteor x5 or x6 before boss ninja grabs a gem :-)
Hotkey for meteor sounds better than how it is now though.

I just figured out like an hour ago that if you hold shift before clicking buildings/abilities you can spam them. It’s amazing for meteor or cutting trees down. Just hold shift>meteor>click away and you can hit 5 meteors in 1 second.

the best way to beat this game is getting all the points of undead except of the fear thngy, you don’t need that one, you need all the mana you can get. Then continue with the tree cut upgrade from Orcs. With that combo you can build up to 6 towers before start and you can buy all the upgrades. When u got that, max out the meteor spell and then its easy. I’m right now level 22, i have brilliant on all easy and medium and one excellent on hard. But i just began.
AND: get one fire tower at the start, so all ninja’s go in stealth mode directly, then set up all the other towers in the back of the game so the ninja’s get killed when they lose stealth. also get all the mana places so u can use 1 fast shoot and 1 meteor each wave.

This is my second tactic and it owns like hell :)

I would really thanks an image walkthrough for level 14…