How To Beat The Dungeon In Heroes Hordes

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.

• There's a Standard cooldown cap of 90%: So you want to optimize your gear and jewels to get to 60% in the detail screen.
• You still get an additional key chance from gear: So consider clearing the dungeon in as much noble gear as you can.
• You get to double rewards at the end of the run: So boost dust as much as your can.
• Recovery Tome and Movement Tome are disabled: Like Nightmare Mode, you won't be able to evolve boomerangs or divine aura..

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.

Strategy for Maximum Horde Kills

Your goal is to clear horde in under 5 minutes 2 minutes (Updated in a later patch) to beat the stage. It starts at 1,000 horde, increases to 1200 around stage 200 and adds elites at stage 300.

The best way to clear mass amounts of horde at early stages? Don't move. However, when you hit 300+, you will need to remove some farming gear and start to kite elites and horde.

You're goal is to move as little as possible to maximize your DPS and score, but you will obviously need to move around early to collect experience orbs. 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. Removed in patch.

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 path to victory in the dungeon begins by selecting the right heroes.

Much like the Guild Event, your goal is to kill as many horde as you can within a set time period. That makes the best heroes ranged with a lot of damage. Ranged heroes let you kill horde before they even get on the screen, while melee have to wait for them to get in range.

You just have to decide if you're here to top the leaderboards or farm.

With that in mind, here's an example list of the best heroes, not in order:

Best Heroes

• Bunni
• Assassin
• Energy Mage.
• Astral Mage
• Artificer
• Oracle
• Clockwork Mage

Later Stage (300+) Best Heroes

• Warlord
• Monk
• Clockwork Mage

For farming, if you can swing the damage needed to clear the stage, you can consider the dungeon a farming run, and Santa would be your best hero for clearing it.

But again, most any ranged hero is better than a melee hero, except for Dark Ranger. Don't ever play with Dark Ranger.

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.

Total optimal gear is something like Rogue Helm, Rogue Chest, Ranger Boots, Rogue Glove, Rogue Necklace, and either rogue ring or wizard ring. Wizard Ring at Ascended+, rogue before that.

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.

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.

Stages 300+

As you get past stage 300, you will need to focus more of your weapons on disruption. That means Ice Wand becomes a top priority. That will give you the needed time to keep horde away.

Special weapons like Mighty Borer and Scrap Hammer also become significantly more valuable at higher stages.

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, however there will come a point at later stages when you will not be able to farm it..

And because I get asked this all the time, here are what I think are the best pets.

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 Owl, Crystalsaurs, and Pyrokraken as potential passives.

• Crystalsaurs & Blazetail: Max DPS late game legendary pets.
• Hydro Basilisk: One of the best for dealing damage at range.
• Storm Griffin: Strong ranged pet.
• Pyrokraken: A good secondary option for extra firepower.
• Emberpaw: Useful for sustained DPS.

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 in terms of dust and scrolls.
• 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. With the shortening of time from 5 minutes to 2 minutes, the new system clearly wins out, but you do need to do it daily.

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.

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.