Before SH v2.0 makes its grand appearance, I wanted to address something that has irked me whenever anyone starts a thread or a conversation with me about the following:
“Why on earth do I lose more trophies when failing my defence, but gain very little trophies when I win?!” – Many players
…accompanied by a string of comments about how messed up the current raiding system is and various insults thrown around.
Well…while the good thing is that this penalty is set for reduction, the honest truth is that this trophy system has not changed since the time I played (which is approximately a year ago).
This time, I promise to keep the post brief.
*Edited: Segment on Revenge & tip to move to the next ranking league*
To understand this, one must first know that the Stronghold trophy mechanism is based on the difference in trophy count between you and your opponent.
This means that if you raid an opponent which has higher trophies than you, you gain more trophies when you win. On the other hand, if you get raided by an opponent with higher trophies, he will get less when he wins. And these scenarios work vice versa.
The key number which you should remember is 51, which is the addition between Victory and Loss trophies. The other figure to take note is 25, which is either added or subtracted by a multiplier to your trophy difference (formula below). To simplify without going into too much math, this can be explained through the 4 possible scenarios of raiding and defending:
Scenario 1
You wish to raid a player who has more trophies than you.
Victory: (More than 25)
Loss: (Less than 25)
Victory + Loss = 51
Scenario 2
You wish to raid a player who has less trophies than you.
Victory: (Less than 25)
Loss: (More than 25)
Victory + Loss = 51
Scenario 3
An opponent raids you, and he/she has more trophies than you.
Victory: (More than 25)
Loss: (Less than 25)
Victory + Loss = 51
Scenario 4
An opponent raids you, and he/she has less trophies than you.
Victory: (Less than 25)
Loss: (More than 25)
Victory + Loss = 51
TL;DR: Trophy difference between you and your opponent determines how much you win and how much you lose.
Putting into Perspective
To put all of this into context with a real scenario, let’s say I, with 2.53k trophies, choose to raid Player X (highlighted in red) and he has 2.69k trophies.
Since I have (a lot) less trophies than him, I’ll receive more than 25 trophies if I win, shown as 35 in the screenshot.
This is paralleled in the sense that if I were to lose, the number of trophies I lose would be less than 25, which is indicated as 16 (not in the screenshot).
Finally, as stated above, the total sum of the Victory and Loss trophies is 51.
If you want to go into the Math though…
Thankfully, while it’s not too complex, it did take some time to calculate since the leaderboards are only accurate whenever they refresh (and you might get wrong readings if you view it at timings where a player’s score fluctuates). From doing a bit of calculation, I managed to figure out an inkling of the formula…well, at least for Master II league.
Taking the same example from above, our trophy difference is roughly 160 and dividing that with the difference between the win and loss trophy count, a constant could be averaged out to be ~0.12.
Hence, since there is a correlation between the difference between win/loss trophy count and the trophy count between the opponents, we can work backwards and create a formula from this:
Using scenario 1: You wish to raid a player who has more trophies than you.
Victory: 25 + (Trophy count* 0.12)/2 (round up)
25 + (160*0.12)/2 = 34.6 = 35
Loss: 25 – (Trophy count* 0.12)/2 (rounded up)
25 – (160*0.12)/2 = 15.4 = 16
I tested this on a few other opponents and this matched up quite well. However, if you find some error in this formulation (especially for out of Master II league), do let me know!
TL;DR: Numbers, numbers, numbers!
What this means
Since we got that out of the way, here are observations that can be explained with this method:
Whenever you enter a new ranking league for the first time, you’ll notice that everyone has grants a higher trophy count when you win, and less than you lose.
Conversely, if you’re close to the top of your ranking league (about 1-60 trophies away from next tier), you’ll notice that everyone on your opponent list gives a very low trophy count when you win, and very high trophy loss when you lose.
How to Excel
Stronghold Raiding is a mechanic which is highly premised on player psychology, and while it is possible to overwhelm others by just refilling stamina with gems, there is also a way to outsmart others to succeed.
(Edit: Segment about revenge removed as corrected by Aqve. After some testing, taking revenge on a opponent does not put you back on his/her revenge list. The reason why the same opponents are constantly raiding you is that they keep seeing you on their opponent list – something I hope the developers could address better in SH v2.0)
Below are some tips for raiding:
If you’re just entering a new league
Initially, you will receive huge losses if you just stay at the new ranking league without raiding, as players you’ve raided before (now with lower trophies) will constantly take revenge on you, especially if your stronghold is easy enough for them.
Hence, to remain at your new league, attempt to constantly raid players with high trophy count >30, this would give you some buffer from the revenge seekers but also less likely to lose too much if these players were to take revenge on you.
Also, this would probably take some time as not everyone plays frequently. I’ve seen players taking revenge even after 2 days of raiding their SH. This means that you might lose quite a lot (potentially up to 50 trophies maximum) when they win, especially if you climb the ranks too quickly. (*Segment about revenge edited out*)
A tip which I received from fellow player Calypso, would be to take revenge on players whom attacked you before, when you decide to proceed on to the next rank. This way, you would be able to cross the boundary without having to worry about placing yourself on their revenge list. Hence, stopping players from the former league sapping your hard earned trophies, and potentially dragging you back.
Speaking of which, another tactic would be to swap out your trap room or certain minions to throw your previous opponents off guard. But of course, this is dependent on whether you have nicely levelled rooms and minions at your disposal…though it might not work at higher leagues where everyone is donning more than one legendary.
TL;DR: Keep raiding high trophy count players at the start to give yourself buffer from those taking revenge.
If you want to maintain your current league
Stay below average score of the overall league leaderboard, as this would discourage players from attacking you since they don’t get too much trophies when they win.This allows you to raid less to maintain your ranking at a relaxed pace.
Staying at the top is a no-no, as most other players will see you as a ‘fat‘ target (high on trophy count for a win), and will not hesitate to take you out since it is a low risk for them to do so.
TL;DR: Being below average in trophies reduces your chance of getting raided often.
If you want to progress from your current league
Should you want to move on to the next league, the best (and cheapest) way would be to wait till your trophy count gets close enough to the top from defence wins (usually <50-60 away from the next league). Make sure that you have sufficient stamina at your disposal and keep raiding high trophy count players to cross the barrier. Beyond which is a whole different ball game, and the higher you go, the more intense competition would be.
TL;DR: Wait for an opening when your trophies are closest to the next tier, then make a dash for it.
Well…turned out longer than usual, but hopefully it was informative enough.
While we wait for SH v2.0 (which might make the figures in this post irrelevant), player psychology still remains the same and perhaps these tips would be useful even after the next update. 🙂
Dungeon Hunter 5 Guide 
For the past 3 months everytime I raid someone… I kill all their mobs but the chest never appears.. their traps or whatever do not die and I just stand there until I am bored and pussed off and then exit and lose the raid. It is total BS and getting old. What am I missing? People certainly have success in my dungeon. Thanks in advance.
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Hi Vince, I’ve had similar problems happening before in the past when raiding.
I hate to break it to you, but this usually has to do the game not ‘registering’ that all enemies are dead before the chest spawns, primarily due to weak internet connectivity. I myself get this problem in areas with poor wifi connections (e.g. subway trains, toilets, underground) and it’s better to rely on mobile data during these instances. Hope this helps!
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Thanks for the input! .. Sadly, in my case, internet is not the problem as I have 1gig up and download speed. and a 2gig Router. so this is not going to be the answer in my case.
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