At last we have a bit of fun again! This map does a much better job of finding the sweet spot between trivial and frustrating. The tricks here are nothing new - just overwhelm the player with Pterodactyls and Prehistoric Dwarves, but the dynamics of the maps make for a good challenge.
I spent a lot of time making this one a lot harder than it had to be. I thought at first the best strategy would be an early prevent defense - jam up the Dwarves and Geomancers at the middle entrance so the Venus Flytraps can't fling them across the map. However, it turns out it's a lot more effective to just go with a conventional chokepoint at the upper left exits.
And this is possible because it takes a full playthrough before you realize that the only mobs that exit via the bottom left are Quarry Workers and Velociraptors, so it needs a lot less attention than the upper left. However, there's a huge caveat to that, but first let's talk about one of this DLC's dirty tricks. Sometimes when you hover over a new wave, it will just say "Pterodactyls". However, it will turn out that it's not just normal Pterodactyls, but the ones carrying Prehistoric Dwarves - that's a huge difference. But here's another dirty trick relating to the bottom lane. In some of the later waves Pterodactyls carrying Dwarves come out of the middle entrance on the right. If you hover over the wave indicator, not only does it just say "Pterodactyls", but it indicates they path up to the top left exits. This is true, but, if you damage them early enough so that they drop their Dwarf, the Dwarf will then path to the bottom left exit. And since you probably have only a modest chokepoint there designed merely for Quarry Workers and Velociraptors, things go sideways really quickly. It's really sneaky and I learned my lesson the hard way, not building up the towers near that entrance to deal with the boss until after the last Pterodactyl wave.
Speaking of the boss, he's sadly pretty trivial. He has good magic resistance, which is rare for a boss, but he's so slow that if you put a couple of Bone Flingers right next to the entrance they can take him out before he gets hardly anywhere. A disappointing end to an otherwise good map.
Impressions
Overall it's not a terribly hard map once you get a good build strategy down, and nobody gets worse than a 'B'. The biggest thing asked of your heroes in this one is to take down Prehistoric Dwarves that manage to get to your last line of defense and prevent them from breaking through to the exit. As such, Margosa is the only top-row hero to earn an 'A'. In Beast Form her self-healing is strong enough to keep up with the damage from Dwarves (something that can't be said about Jigou), so she can tank them indefinitely, which means she can either kill them outright or stall them in front of your towers while they assist.
Final Grades
- Veruk - B
- Asra - B
- Oloch - B
- Margosa - A
- Mortemis - B
- Tramin - B
- Jigou - B
- Beresad - A
- Doom Tank SG-11 - A
- Jun'pai - A
- Eiskalt - A
- Murglun - A
- Dianyun - A
- Jack O'Lantern - A
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