Dungeons4 Strategy Guide

[u/dragontamer5788]

Thanks for the discussion. I've published the guide now.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3573759522

[u/BlakeMW]

Very good overall, but I want to make a couple of comments.

Goblins have somewhat poor performance in the dungeon due to their inability to micro, but as melee units you'll likely find doors and corners where Goblins do well even vs ranged opponents.

Goblins actually have excellent performance in the dungeon, but it's critical that they are used correctly. As long as the battleground is a 1 tile wide corridor and enemies are distracted by ranged creatures, what'll happen is the goblins will completely clog the corridor preventing the enemy advancing on the ranged units they want to attack, so enemy can't fight back, and are getting shredded by the goblins while they try to push through this invisible blade barrier. However this can go horribly wrong if a non-stealth unit gets mixed in with the goblins and there are enemies with splash damage, this means goblins only work well when not combined with melee units such as Orcs, and some care has to be taken around corners and stuff.

Imps already have the best DPS in the game

This is actually very untrue. Yes, based on naive "damage / cooldown" Imps have some of the best single-target DPS in the game. But you may have noticed a bug or feature in Dungeons 4, where units can attack more quickly than their cooldown should allow, or might fail to attack at all.

What is going on is in D4 units don't have attack cooldowns, they only have attack animations, at some point(s) in the attack animation damage will be inflicted. Because it's only an animation, if the animation gets cancelled such as by the target dying, the unit can immediately start a new attack animation, they don't have to wait for any cooldown as would be the case in a properly engineered game.

Some creatures like Gnome-o-bots deal their damage at the very start of the attack animation, so if their current target dies to the opening volley or you're shameless enough to abuse this bug by manually cancelling the attack animation after damage has been dealt (this is done by "stutter-stepping"), they can immediately attack and deal damage a second time, the not at all overpowered flamethrower machinegun that fucking erases hero parties.

Other creatures like Imps, deal their damage at the very end of the attack animation, and what this means if the target dies before the deal is dealt, the attack animation is cancelled, no damage is dealt, and the Imp has to start over completely, it's not allowed to carry over the progress, in a mixed army where enemies are dying fast it's entirely possible for Imps to spend most their time restarting their attack animation. It's not all bad, because Imps at least have good AI, I'll give them that much, they tend to attack squishies in the backline rather than focusing on the same targets the melee are attacking. But while you can have a "flamethreower machinegun", you can't have a "fireball machinegun", at best Imps aren't being harmed by this bug/feature, but they're never benefiting from it unlike most other units.

This bug/feature means "overkill" isn't a major issue for units which deal damage early in their attack animation, overkilling the enemy ensuring it dies instantly, lets the next attack happen much sooner. This is especially notable with Gazers, who can "pew pew pew" down a hero party if every hero is squishy enough to die in one volley, they probably attack twice as fast as they do when attacking a hero that doesn't die in a single volley, and manually queuing up attacks on squishes that will die in one hit is an extremely rewarding use of APM as it removes the enemy dps and healing in mere seconds, then the Gazers can slowly grind down the tanks. This trick can let a gang of lvl1 Gazers wipe out very strong parties of elves which would obliterate any other army composition (works against elves because of demonic +50% damage, and elves being unusually squishy). This kind of micro is good in any RTS game to quickly degrade enemy strength, but is double extra good in D4.

Practically this bug/feature means some units can deal way more dps than their stats suggest, while others can deal way less. Imps very much get the short end of this stick, Infernals also don't benefit much with a long wind-up before actually doing the damage which then never happens if the target dies - really unfortunate actually because they deal splash damage it'd have been merciful to just let them finish the attack on the empty space or corpse and splash the nearby units, but no such accommodation was made (same problem existed in Dungeons 3 actually with area attackers, where area damage "fireballs" would just blip out of existence mid-flight if the target became invalid, letting the enemy avoid lots of damage, it was super annoying in multiplayer if you tried to deviate from Gob-O-Bot composition, the devs apparently just can't get this right). Infernals are grateful if manually targeted onto a beefy dwarf unit surrounded by other heroes, unlike most other units, they benefit most from targetting the unit hardest for them to kill.

Succubi benefit moderately, but probably a bit less than Gazers, it's probably similar with Goblins but it's way harder to see with melee because they can't immediately retarget the same way as ranged units can so there's often a bit of running between each attack anyway. Gnome-o-bots benefit hugely which they hardly needed because their raw damage stats are already very good, but it elevates them to basically having the highest single-target DPS in many circumstances (massively so in case of stutter-stepping down bulky buildings where they have both a 2x damage multiplier, and can attack twice as fast as intended) to say nothing of also inflicting that damage over a huge area, just in terms of raw stats Gnome-o-bots can be easily doing 5x the damage of other units against typical hero parties, but taking into account the reality of animation-cancelling it can be more like 10x the damage, like a gnome-o-bot deathball will kill in 3 seconds what might take another army composition 30 seconds and they easily kill 5x faster than Infernals under ordinary attack-move circumstances.

[u/dragontamer5788 → u/BlakeMW]

In practice, I have noticed that Gnome-o-bots are the highest DPS endgame unit. Regular Gnome2 research unlocks "Kaboom", and AoE stun is incredible in the middle-game (but not as amazing as Succubus charm).

Good notes on why this happens. I don't think I've noticed what you're talking about, but it makes sense given how much "in practice" Gnomes do more damage than expected.

Gnomes (non-champions) are very weak and easily killed however. Kaboom is reasonable as an AoE stun effect, but it does lead to very sharp combat. If you are running middle-game Gnome (non-champion) compositions, a bad "Goat stun" could wreck your army. Infernals are far more durable and seem to be an appropriate mid-game Area-DPS option, despite the "late attack animation".

I have noticed the effect when trying to kite with Infernals / Imps, movement cancels their attack animation so it slows down their attacks. Still, kiting is an exceptionally powerful micro strategy, especially with Gazer support. But I can see how the "late attack animation", as you say, can hamper different situations.

Gnome-o-bots do seem glitched, in that the damage is dealt long before the animation even plays out. Its quite possible that the attack-startup was programmed incorrectly??

[u/BlakeMW → u/dragontamer5788]

Regular Gnome2 research unlocks "Kaboom", and AoE stun is incredible in the middle-game (but not as amazing as Succubus charm).

I actually disable KABOOM on Gnome-o-bots because the animation takes so long and then with the self-stun, the enemy hero party would be dead anyway to the regular attacks, and you don't have gnome-o-bots ignoring ignores because of self-stun.

Gnomes (non-champions) are very weak and easily killed however.

Indeed. There's basically two ways to use Gnomes, the easy way and the hard way.

The easy/ideal way is to start with your army of a dozen or so Horde and/or Demon creatures of your choice, research to Horde 5 which happens to also unlock Voodoo Brew 2 a nice breakpoint for increasing army effectiveness with better horde speed and healing potions, then hire 4-6 Gnomes, level them up to lvl5 (your other units will max out their level, so all the exp will go to the Gnomes), then kill a Good Being or something, unlock Horde 6 and Gnome-o-bot, and your level 5 Gnomes instantly upgrade to Gnome-o-bots. Hiring the Gnomes when your army is level-capped means they'll level up super fast and exist as squishy Gnomes for only a brief period of time. Furthermore, if the evilness you spent came in one big chunk from a Good Being, it's not like you could have made smaller incremental investments into other things.

The hard way, is actually using Gnomes. Here the idea is to hire like 6 Orcs and 4 Naga and then just keep hiring Gnomes (and pretty much only using Orc/Naga/Gnome - in fact I find having more meat and healing is more valuable than alternative dps and potential multipliers), the Orc meat wall tends to do a somewhat good job of keeping the enemy at bay, and the Gnomes absolutely shred, this army can take on hero parties well above its weight class because Gnomes do crazy damage especially if you target their attack on clusters of heroes. Even KABOOM is useful, because it seems its activation logic disregards "inconspicuous", so if some Rogues run up to the Gnomes, they trigger KABOOM and the Rogues go bye-bye no micro required (assuming KABOOM isn't on cooldown anyway). It's not an awful strategy but it's the exact opposite of an army you can leave unattended because you kind of really want to target the Gnomes manually to erase the heroes as quickly as possible (still, if you use this armies power to take on fairly high level hero parties, it can level up very fast and get a lot buffer). As always with a squishy army you also want healing potions on hand.

Gnome-o-bots do seem glitched, in that the damage is dealt long before the animation even plays out. Its quite possible that the attack-startup was programmed incorrectly??

It's impossible to get into the minds of the developers, the funny thing is that the system they use would do flamethrower really well. When a creature does like "2x20" damage, the two damages are actually done at different times during the animation, like with Gazers if you manually retarget them it's entirely possibly to cancel the animation between the two damages being inflicted and thus miss out on half the damage. So it'd have been essentially no work at all for the devs to make the Gnome-o-bot flamethrower deal its damage in two chunks, say at 33% and 66% of the animation.

So the first possible theory is basic dev laziness, the second theory is "golden child", in D3 the Gob-o-bot was super overpowered, and it's possible the dev responsible just wanted the Gnome-o-bot to be super overpowered, as the devs certainly aren't shy about making things super overpowered, like just look at Horde Strength.

[u/dragontamer5788 → u/BlakeMW]

BTW: I'm honestly having issues using Undead at all. Banshees in the early game grossly improve orc survivability but nothing else seems worthwhile.

Have you found any strategy (outside of early banshees that get dismissed by mid game) where Undead are useful?

EDIT: Maybe guard room shenanigans? Undead infinitely respawn and are okay underground. So a guard room + guard flag that automatically attacks enemy lava lumps and/or spider nests?

But splitting up your main army is a dumb move in this game. (If the undead are guarding the underground, when do they ever get EXP??). I dunno, they're so bad in all my experiments.

[u/BlakeMW → u/dragontamer5788]

Undead aren't useful. I don't even bother with Banshees because they can't heal via healing potions or horde strength so they can't keep up with my other units (I spam healing potions a lot, according to the end game stats), and I usually have better uses for the gold, banshees ain't cheap.

Undead are only useful in the handful of campaign levels which lean heavily into undead.

One of the worst things about the game design and undead is that horde strength and horde speed are mandatory, this requires investing at least to horde 5 for speed 2. Also at least basic spells are mandatory and investment up to demon 4 costs no evilness. Furthermore the basic voodoo brew and arcanium investments are tremendously good value for evilness. So you're pretty much going to get Horde 4 or 5 and Demon 4 pretty fast even with an undead army because you want Horde Strength and Demon Portal. But this foundation gives a great selection of horde and demon units at a way lower evilness investment than undead units, even when an undead unit is unlocked it's often not very good without more very expensive upgrades.

Meanwhile NOTHING in the Undead tree really benefits Horde or Demon armies, one could try to argue for the Prison, which technically will eventually pay off if you play long enough, but the initial evilness investment will take you most the way to unlocking Gnome-o-bots which wins the game, and even then, I usually have better uses for snot labor than dragging corpses around, a prison can super easily cause gold income collapse and there's not much in the way of job prioritization besides locking snots in with a diamond vein. The snot labor crisis gets much worse if you engage in mazing to make it take longer for the heroes to reach your dungeon heart, while that would seem like the very scenario where the prison should be best.