Welcome to the most trash map in the entire game. Why is it trash? Well my friend, trash has a name, and that name is Saurian Deathcoils.
In the Dusk Chateau campaign entry we talked about the problem Frontiers has with unfair and unfun enemies, like Blacksurges and Vampiresas. But all of those have absolutely nothing on the Deathcoils. What do you even say about a unit that can snipe your melee units with powerful shots from halfway across the map? They're meant to make heroes, reinforcements, and melee towers largely useless, but there's a reason they're truly infuriating.
We've had several iron modes where melee towers aren't allowed, and in the original Kingdom Rush many iron modes didn't allow heroes either. So the issue isn't that Deathcoils basically disallow melee units - we're used to it (reinforcements excepted). No, the issue here is that you have to have melee units, but you have the stupidly annoying challenge of trying to keep them alive just enough to do their job.
With only two build points right at the exit and three entry lanes nearby (two where the Saurians climb up the walls and the one on the left where the Saurian Razorwings appear), you just don't have enough for a pure DPS solution to keep mobs from escaping (and let's just mention how annoying it is you can't sell the Dwarven Hall that's forced upon you). So you really need your hero, reinforcements, and the Dwarves to hold down the fort, but only a bit of blocking is all that's needed. As long as units get stalled for a few moments, the two Mechas near the exit can take care of anything that gets that far. But with multiple Deathcoils sniping your units left and right, the constant danger is that all your blockers go down, letting mobs slip through to the exit.
So the challenge on this map is to find the build that can take out the Deathcoils as quickly as possible. Besides them this map doesn't introduce anything new compared to the Saurian levels in the main campaign, and if you recall, all we had to do with those levels was spam Mechas. So if not for the Deathcoils we could do the same here and call it a day.
I will say I spent quite some time experimenting with different builds to try to find the best solution. You would naturally think that an AoE solution would be best, since you can't count on archer or mage towers to always target the Deathcoils. However, I tried both Mechas and DWAARPs, but in the end the rather shocking best solution was Archmage spam.
I will say that the build order and placement is pretty key here. Building out Archmages the way that I do maximizes their ability to take out the Deathcoils before they make the turn where the two paths join, which is where they usually get in range of the melee units. You still have to use Rain of Fire occasionally through wave 9 to keep things under control, but after that everything's golden. There are no Deathcoils in waves 10 and 11, so you it gives you plenty of time to build out enough Archmages so that when they do reappear, there's more than enough DPS on the top of the map to take them out before they can become dangerous.
The Archmage spam also turns out to be ideal for taking down the boss, whose name I can't be bothered to look up (something like "Xxxyz" I think). He appears solo for about 30 seconds before more mobs show up behind him, giving the Archmages plenty of time to wail on him. Stalling him slightly with reinforcements means that usually he dies right around the time he makes it to where the paths join, so it's a pretty solid strategy.
So what does all this say for hero grades? Well, just like the last map, Dusk Chateau iron, we have the odd situation of a very difficult map where the difficulty doesn't really change based on what hero you're using. This is yet another reason this map is trash, as all your hero gets to do is stand around occasionally doing a bit of blocking and DPS, hopefully not dying too many times over the course of the map. So I technically have to give everyone 'A's, even though this map is the opposite of trivial.
Kingdom Rush Frontiers Impossible Hero Challenge - Darklight Depths Campaign
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