How To Slay Dragon's Tower In Heroes vs Hordes

Background and Base Stats

Dragon's Tower is broken up by difficulty level, and each difficulty level has 20 floors. While each floor has some unique aspects to it, we'll first go over the global modifiers.

• No Health Regen: The first big one is that there's no health region. So if you get hit, that damage sticks unless your hero has an ability to heal themselves or shields the damage in the first place. And this persists from floor to floor. So taking damage in floor one will last with you to floor two all the way through floor 20.
• No Starting Upgrades: Your hero pass is worthless here, as is Wizard Amet and Wizard Rope.
• Cooldown Cap: Cooldown is capped at 40%, like in Nightmare mode and hard mode Arena.
• Set Movement Speed: You get a set movement speed of 8, so you don't need any movement speed jewels, and some of the slower heroes get a little faster.
• Max Levels: Like in arena, all of your weapons and tomes get max level, so you get five levels for each weapon and three for each tome.
• No Revives: And lastly, there are no revives, so when your hero's gone, they're gone.

Understanding the Floors

There are also modifiers for each floor. Some floors have 3,500 hordes to clear. These are generally easier floors and just require you to have enough damage to clear out the horde.

1,500 horde floors have two defined segments, usually around 1,000 horde and about 500 horde. You'll get hit with special kinds of mobs.

These could be:

• Kamikaze bugs
• Flying slimers
• Blobs that shoot more blobs all around them
• An archer that shoots three arrows
• Another archer who shoots arrows all around them

And just to make things more difficult as you're trying to avoid those hordes, there's also going to be fire on the floor and spinning fire along with meteors and nets.

As with most video games, don't stand in the fire. Get out of it as soon as you can, although it can make sense to sometimes go through it in order to avoid a stronger type.

Lastly, each floor could have a modifier. Those modifiers include:

• Unstoppable: Hordes that are more immune to stuns and slows.
• Explosive: Hordes blow up when they get cleared out.
• Meat Shields: Tankier or more HP hordes.
• Nets: Nets that can slow you down as you move around. Those nets can actually be pretty tricky and are probably the most dangerous of all the modifiers.

Lastly, it's important to understand that there are featured heroes. These featured heroes get more HP and more damage, and they're going to be crucial to beating higher level difficulties in Dragon's Tower. You're going to want to use those featured heroes if you have them in your roster, but there are a defined set of the best heroes for this game mode, and those heroes are incredibly important. So let's get into them.

More Tips and Tricks

While Hydrobasilisk is the big open secret to clearing some of the harder difficulties in Dragon's Tower, there are some other tips and tricks I've picked up along the way. I've mentioned a couple of tips and tricks already, so I'm just going to stick them here so that they're all in one place.

1. Use the floor to your benefit. That means if you can get away with standing in a corner, limiting the access the hordes have to you, it'll make clearing them much simpler. Heroes like Trapper benefit a lot from being against the wall. That way, they can set traps in a circle around them.
2. Don't be afraid to use your weaker heroes to start a floor. The first 15 to 30 seconds of the floor, you get very little XP, and during that time, you traditionally take some damage. Even heroes like Warlord just don't attack fast enough to clear out the horde before one or two get to you. So instead, you can use a weaker hero and forego that damage that you would have otherwise taken. Now, the horde will eventually get to those heroes, but hopefully it's late enough in the run where you can set up your queens and your knights for a quality finish. Even better, sometimes they're able to survive through one of those event segments, which usually would just mean additional damage for your main hero.
3. Kite the special segments correctly. And those special segments bring me to my third tip. There are certain ways to kite the hordes during those segments. I find that the best way to kite ghosts is essentially in a circle, letting them spiral out around you. The archers, you just want to run away from, as long as they're not on your screen, they won't shoot their arrows.
4. Know how to handle special mobs. Next up is the kamikaze bugs; try and run at them for a split second before you're running away. They need to get close to you in order to stop, but then you should have enough room to get away before they explode. And then there are the orange blobs of doom. Those things are just a big pain in the butt, and try not to be too close to them when they land because you'll get hit by all of their little blobs. Lastly, the charging drakes, the one form of dragon in Dragon's Tower, are easier to dodge the further away they are from you.
5. This is a VIP tip. This game mode is a lot more fun with speed boost. Playing at 1.6 speed takes away a lot of the negatives of Dragon's Tower. That first 15 to 30 seconds that are really boring are now finished twice as fast. Kiting hordes during those special segments actually takes some skill because they're moving a lot faster and you have to react faster. Now, in full disclosure, I was doing it for free this month because I'm a creator and I wouldn't buy it again. But if you have the resources, it is a lot of fun.

6. Cemar's Healing. Cemar mentioned this as a throwaway comment in the main Discord, but it's actually a viable strategy. If you're desperate enough and you have the time, you can load into a floor, stand in a geyser for a couple of seconds, and then load out.

   That'll heal you during that geyser time, and that healing will stick. So, if one of your aces is really low and you're at one of the last floors, it could make sense to take an hour to heal them back up half a percentage point of health at a time.

   Cemar is a raccoon. He's got nothing better to do. And so that's why he did it. And I guess if you're desperate enough, scrounging up for some food, it could be a viable strategy for you.

Queens, Knights, and Pawns

One of the big things about Dragon's Tower is getting you to use all of your heroes. And while all of your heroes will play a role, there are definitely some heroes that are way better than others.

In my head, there are three types: Queens, knights, and pawns.

• Queens are your aces in the hole, your best heroes from the start.
• Knights will help you get through a floor or two.
• And then you have your pawns, which are heroes purely made up to set up your queens.

So with those concepts in mind, let's go through all three categories.

The Queens

The kings of Dragon Tower are the heroes that have some form of self-healing that can do enough damage to actually clear out the horde. So Werebeast becomes your best hero in this game mode. Werebeast's combination of damage and defense lets him theoretically sweep the floors. He can go from floor zero to 20 all by himself.

In a close second is Warlord. He doesn't have nearly as much self-healing as Werebeast does, but he gets enough from his level two forge that you can combine that with his outrageous amount of damage in order to just keep all the horde away while you heal back up.

And then there's the shielding heroes, so Shield Warden and Astral Sage. Both of these heroes have enough shielding to survive through multiple floors of Dragon's Tower. The big thing with both of them is just having enough damage to let that shield generate. Astral, I find, is the one where if you can get to a corner and do enough damage, she can shield your way through the rest of the floor. Shield Warden's damage can be lacking at higher difficulties, but for floors with 1,500 horde where you have to survive through both of those segments, he can be quite strong.

And those four are your true queens, the best heroes you're going to have.

The Knights

Coming in at the next level are what I call knights, and these heroes are good for clearing out one or two floors at a time. These are typically either very high damage heroes or heroes with a bit of disruption in their kit that allows them to survive through the hordes.

I've had a lot of success recently with Tinker, Barbarian, Knight, Monk, and Bunny. Of all of those, Bunny is the pure glass cannon. Either he'll have enough damage to easily clear out a whole bunch of floors or he won't.

Barbarian, Tinker, Knight, and Monk typically have enough damage if you can evolve their weapon in time and then kite out hordes through some of the more difficult parts of it. Again, they're going to take some damage during the run, and so they're only going to last a couple of floors in higher difficulties. But having a hero that can clear a floor or two is important, because there's no real penalty for having a hero fall.

The Pawns

And that's why you have a third class of heroes, your pawns. These are essentially fodder for opening up the floor. Because the first 30 seconds of the floor are the hardest before you have any upgrades, you typically take some amount of damage. Therefore, you can use some of your weaker heroes just to eat up that damage at the beginning and move as far as they can into the floor for one of your aces or knights to replace them.

So that's where having an expanded roster comes to play. There are level requirements for certain difficulties. As you increase the difficulty in Dragon's Tower, your heroes need to be a certain level in order to enter. So Dragon's Tower is meant for players with an expanded roster, and having more heroes that you can at least use as fodder will help you clear out more difficult floors, because even if it takes three or four heroes to clear one, that can be worth it, particularly at higher difficulties.

So, now that you know what the best heroes are, how do you set them up for success? Well, what's the best gearing and weapons?

When gearing up your heroes, you have to pay attention to the modifiers. Remember, there's no regen here, so health regeneration is going to be wasted. Evasion is also damped, so you don't want evasion jewels. The cooldown is capped at 40, and there's no starting upgrades.

Personally, my limiting factor in this game mode has always been damage. So I go for as big of a glass cannon build as I possibly can. That means a Rogue Helm, Rogue Chest, Wizard Boots, Rogue Gloves, Rogue Necklace, and Wizard Ring. That'll get you the Rogue bonus. And the Wizard Boots will help you collect XP as it can be hard to go and collect the orbs when they're amongst a bunch of horde that you haven't yet cleared.

If you're doing easier difficulties, you can put on as much Noble gear as you possibly can, as you will accumulate a nice amount of gold keys over 20 floors.

Alternatively, if you have enough damage, you can run more Knight gear. The Knight Ring in particular can help clear out hordes when a shield explodes. But that's only for late-game players.

During the run, you have to understand where your hero is on the damage and survivability scale. If they have enough damage naturally, like Warlord or Bunny, you can put a higher emphasis on getting defensive tomes and weapons. But if you need additional damage, then you have to focus on damage first.

I typically run Damage Tome first and then follow that up with Ice Wand, Armored Tome, Life Tome, and then I try and get Death Ray from Duration Tome and Arcane Staff.

Now, some of the special weapons that are really strong in this game mode are a five-star Smoke Bomb, a five-star Scrap Hammer, five-star Dynamite Slingshot, and five-star Boar. Workists from my guild, who's one of the best players in the game, swears by Scrap Hammers being the best weapon you can grab in Dragon's Tower. He thinks it's even better than a five-star Smoke Bomb. And I'm inclined to believe him because he's really good.

After you get through your defensive weapon set, I just try and add status effects. Because these hordes have so much more health, something like Poison Dart or Crossbow to get burning and poison on all the hordes can significantly amp the damage of your main weapons.

Furthermore, if you know you're going into one of those 1,500 horde floors where you're just going to need to survive through those two unique segments, it might be better to forego damage for pure defense. So rushing just Armor Tome and Life Tome straight up.

For everyone else, you can focus on your jewels to optimize around those caps. The standard set of jewels I run are Vulnerability, Ultimate Charge, Ultimate Duration, Projectile Pierce, Projectile Multishot, Weakness, and then some combination of Cooldown, Area Effect, and Critical Strike.

And while you're looking for a mix of offense and defense in your gear and your weapons, with your pets, there's really only one choice.

The first big, open secret to Dragon's Tower is the fact that Hydrobasilisk is incredibly strong in this game mode. Because Hydrobasilisk provides geysers that heal you when you stand in them, it's the only form of healing for most heroes. So that creates puddle jumping, which is the strategy that I've named for jumping from geyser to geyser to heal up over the course of a floor.

It'll take about two to four floors to heal yourself up all the way. But if you can successfully stand in the geysers and not take more damage from hordes, you will get healed up and give yourself a bigger margin for error.

If Hydrobasilisk is not providing enough damage or your main hero doesn't have enough damage, you can consider switching out for Crystal Snail. Crystal Snail, at level 500, does way more damage than Hydrobasilisk but doesn't offer any of the healing benefits.

For passive pets, I'm still typically looking for as much damage as I can get. So I go Owl and Pyrogel, or you could run Hydrobasilisk with two snails. That'll give you more HP to survive through a floor, but you're going to have to make up the damage from the main hero instead.

But why are you doing this all in the first place? Because of Dragon Tower rewards.

Okay, let's get into the rewards of Dragon's Tower. These were initially really lackluster, but they've since buffed them up tremendously, and I think they're now really worth your time.

The first reward is that for clearing all 20 floors for the first time at each difficulty, you get additional bonus rewards in the form of exchange tokens and skillbooks. Those skillbooks are really hard to come by, and getting a whole bunch of them, in addition to those exchange tokens, has a tremendous amount of value. Now, it technically doesn't feel great, but those are really worth it. And that's in addition to the hero orbs and exchange tokens you get from each individual floor. And you will get the exchange tokens and hero orbs for any floor you are able to clear that week. So even if you don't get through all 20, you can still get some rewards.

What they've really improved upon are the chase rewards. Now you have access to Minotaur, a hero specific to Dragon's Tower. Based on his kit, he should be a strong hero for this game mode. And then there's Thewark, a unique weapon for Dragon's Tower that should work well in Dragon's Tower. Those chase rewards make doing the grind each week worth it, at least in my opinion.

On top of that, you have access to the original rewards, which are special hero shards for every special hero. Special hero shards can be quite hard to come by, and so this is a nice way to round out your hero pool. And in my case, before they introduced those two chase rewards, my plan was to get Bunny up to five stars. Although I did the math and it is going to take you something like six to 12 months in order to do it.

They've come a long way since the initial release of Dragon's Tower several months ago. It originally lacked a chase system and was way too long, in my opinion. But they've cut it down to 20 floors and introduced a chase hero and a chase weapon, which is exactly what I thought it needed.

Now, the one thing I do think is missing are dragons. Dragon's Tower has one dragon in it. One of those elite drakes. It should have a dragon on the very last floor that's some kind of intense boss fight. That, in my opinion, would bring the whole game mode together.

So take what you learned in this guide and go climb up the 20 floors of Dragon's Tower. Here's to hoping that one day we all get to slay a dragon.