Trap Room Part 2.5: Seashore Retreat

Busy schedules!

If you’re wondering what happened to the continuation of the Weapons introductory post, let’s just say that its still baking in the oven. But first, something which is more relevant and up-to-date for your literary enjoyment: Seashore Retreat.

Seashore Retreat is the latest trap room that made its debut in a previous update’s advertising video. While not only surprising people with an ‘alleged‘ Water Ethera champion, this water trap has been well designed for the new edition of SH v2.0 with the 5 minion slots within.

In the same vein of the previous trap room posts (which I do very much need to update some of them), let’s explore this new trap in terms of planning and strategizing for it.

Correction edit on 31/10/16: Embedded tridents do damage you!

This post was written during the time of Update 13. If it changes in the future, it’ll be revised accordingly.

Also, if you’ve missed the previous posts:

Part 1: General Overview
Part 2.1: Valenthian Guardhouse
Part 2.2: Ashkardian Crypt
Part 2.3: Nettle Grove
Part 2.4: Ruby Temple
Part 2.5: Seashore Retreat <- You’re here!

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Seashore Retreat

Room Type: Status Inflictor
Room Size: Borderline Medium-Small
Element: Water

Background

According to the developer and card description, the Seashore Retreat is haunted by the Water spirit/witch, inducing silence as a mandatory means to instill peace…which doesn’t really make much sense since weapons are loud as well.

An observation would be that the interior architecture of the room is strangely reminiscent of a Roman bath house, which explains why it has ‘Retreat’ in its name. However, it which makes one question why it is listed under Forsaken Sands (which reflects Arabic/Egyptian origins)….oh right, the update

Greek Ionic Columns (at the side) contradict my argument of it being Roman though

Nonetheless, this has piqued my interest in terms of historic architectural settings and perhaps I’ll do a separate post on this for those who are interested.

Description

For those who have yet to realize, the graphic on the Seashore Retreat trap room card is showing a trident that is embedded within the ground. An imagery which is representative of how the silence mechanism works within the trap.

A trident’s end.

To put simply, the room triggers silence upon first entering the raid, by launching a trident into the air and rooting itself into the ground. This is indicated by swirls of water gathering around the two pillars and a blue circular pulse on the ground (similar to a faster Ice Colossus‘ bombardment attack) which shows where the trident will land. The landing of the trident takes between 1-2 seconds.

After affixing itself to the ground, the Water Witch (a blue hologram model of the Ethera) emerges and induces a unique status effect, Silence, after one second of the trident’s landing. Silence affects you wherever you might be within the map, so there’s no escaping it and you’ll be able to see an overlay of bubbles on your screen.

Bubbles!

In order to remove silence, it is necessary to destroy the trident by regular weaponry (be it ranged or melee). At T6, the trident has approximately slightly more HP than a turret within the Valenthian guardhouse. Once the trident is eliminated, another second or two is needed before you regain the use of your skills.

A critical detail which I missed out: The embedded trident is able to pulsate a shockwave every 2-3 seconds. This shockwave damages and knockdowns the raider if he/she is within the blast radius. Hence, it is imperative to take it out as soon as possible or destroy it from a distance.

The trident will launch again after a duration of 10-12 seconds continuously until all minions within the map are cleared. Thus, this makes it necessary for you to constantly keep an eye out on where the trident might land…which is usually your last position when the water starts to swirl around the pillars.

Those slowing Shallow pools

To make matters worse, shallow pools within the map cause slow upon stepping into them. This could be increasingly dangerous when coupled with other water type minions that slow (more on that later).

Getting slowed (and then knockdowned) in the pools almost mean certain death

This narrows your path down the lateral and longitudinal aisles of the room, as stepping into the water instantly makes you subjected to the additional 40% damage on slowed opponents (at T6).

The good thing is that doing a dodge roll can cover the narrowest part of the pool, allowing you to escape being slowed.

Optimistically speaking, this trap does not deal damage to you directly. (Correction: the trap can damage you directly if you get too close to the embedded trident)

Considering the silencing and slowing properties of the Seashore Retreat, these combined would be un-remarkably disruptive and enables the minions around you to whittle your HP down faster than you think.

TL;DR: Silence from the trident and Slow from the pools.

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Strategy

With the advent of SH v2.0, I discussed briefly that it is recommended for raiders to have all sets built equally to tackle any elemental trap room. With the increment in minion stats and trap room bonuses, having the right elemental build for a particular trap room makes it all the more imperative to have.

(1) Elemental Type

While many might charge into it with a well-built light set, do remember that a healthy number of these traps have opposing Dark elemental minions. Some of which with equally high dark minion permanent bonuses to make up for them not being buffed by the trap. Hence, it is not surprising to see a 10k minion attack/armor stat even with dark minions within.

Nonetheless, Light gear (with a backup nature weapon) is still the best bet as the less buffed dark minions would be able to fall relatively quickly if you concentrate your fire power on them early. After which, the water ones wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Light excels best over water, even against the buffed Mezzogian

TL;DR: Light still fares the best here, with a backup Nature weapon to clear the opposing dark minions.

(2) Play Style

Secondly, the infuriating aspect of this trap room originates from unfamiliarity of its mechanics. Although these have been introduced above, it is also necessary to consider how you usually raid:

A) Dependent on Weapons

If you’re a heavy user of weaponry to fight off minions, being silenced should not be much of a downer and your main concern would be avoiding the pools of water instead.

As mentioned above, simply stepping into the pools warrants extra damage from the minions around. This is worsened as slow is able to cumulatively stack. What this means is that while the pools reduce your run speed and attack speed, minions with the slow ability can also cast it upon you, reducing your speed by another notch. Such makes your character immensely slow….ironically…really quickly, to the point of a snail’s pace if you get affected while in the pool.

And yes, most water minions are able to slow…so go figure which ones you really need to take out fast.

Not a very nice position to be in

Furthermore, a good idea would be stick to the left and right extreme edges of the room and traverse up and down. This will prevent you from accidentally walking into the water if you stray too far off.

TL;DR: Avoid the pools, traversing the sides as a precaution.

B) Dependent on Skills

On the flip side, if you’re one who constantly relies on skills such as Fire cone and Ice Stalagmites, you’re in for a bad time.

Although the first trident is unavoidable, destroying tridents and ending the match should be done swiftly before things get out of hand. Fortunately, something which I would like to highlight would be the numerous lag times before getting silenced.

In fact, once the trident lands, there is a second of lag time before silence gets triggered. A well-timed Area of Effect (AoE) (Predatory Instinct, Static Burst, Ice Burst), persistent zone (Ice Stalagmites, Entangling Vines) or a Damage over Time (DOT) (Fire Cone) skill can easily shatter the trident even at T6 to get rid of the silence quickly. Haste before the trident lands is great with a light weapon and Ray of Darkness also works well if you accidentally walked too far away from it.

This strategy is masterfully documented in Aqve Teig’s video:

Also, do check out his growing youtube channel here! 🙂

Another suggestion would be to go get yourself a nice light ranged weapon (staff or crossbow) as that would quickly help you to take out the trident if you’re standing from across the room. You can also use the two statues as cover from continuous projectiles being launched at you (eg. Mezzogian, Assassin).

And yes, the previous strategy applies of avoiding the pools applies as well. Just stay away from them and unless you’re absolutely sure that there’s nothing around you.

TL;DR: Blow up the trident quickly when it lands using hard hitting skills!

(3) Optimal Route

Like all the other trap rooms, there is an optimal route to take to make things easier, such as not triggering certain minions or making it possible to kite minions towards you.

For one, NEVER go down the center aisle as this will attract all the minions towards you and having to deal with all 5 at once is admittedly difficult, especially if all 5 are champion-types.

As the trident will always land close-by, the first trident will be in the center lane, slightly above where you’ll spawn at location (1). Thus, removing it quickly is of utmost priority before moving to location (2), which are the extreme ends of the room, before the top most minions start to see you. The side, of course, is determined by the strength of the minion at that corner, always rolling to the weaker one to take it out.

At location (2), the trident should also land in your vicinity, making it easier for you to destroy it without having to face the other minions far away.

Hover around location (2), killing the bottom most and middle minions before going to location (3). This will then aggravate the upper most minions, which shouldn’t be that difficult to take out considering that other 3 should be dead by then.

TL;DR: After finishing off the first trident, roll to the extreme left or right to avoid triggering the upper row minions.

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If you’re building one

With the current limitations of 5 minions per setup, minion choices are definitely very much vital to make all 5 worthwhile. Optimizing based on the room’s elemental colour, the additional traits and its interior architecture are some of the considerations you might want to make.

Nonetheless, the good thing is that, like the Valenthian Guardhouse, this trap is somewhat universal. This means that regardless of elemental minions you put in, this trap would still be deadly…to some extent of course.

(1) Elemental Types

First off and without a doubt, Water and Dark minions are your main priority.

The great thing about Water minions are that most possess the slowing trait, making it more deadly to your raiders as described above. Thus, placing some water Champions, such as Ice Colossus, Mezzogian and the recently improved Naga would warrant a high chance for those sweet defense wins.

As a balance, Dark minions would be there to counteract the Light type raiders who invade your stronghold. It’ll be best if these dark types possess a slowing ability as well to benefit from the trap room, such Ravager, Ethera and the soon incoming Lord of Eve with his fixed phantom wave strike.

TL;DR: Water and Dark minions are the way to go here, especially those with slow.

(2) Bonus Types

Referring to minions that would also benefit from the room’s special ability, bonus type minions, for this scenario, are those who can induce slow and are appropriate for the room.

Teleporting minions or minions with long invulnerability frames also do very well as they keep your raiders chasing them around the room or waiting around avoiding attacks, which means more opportunities for them to step into the pools or more instances of silence.

Some of which that can be considered, but outside of the Dark and Water elemental types are:

• Assassin: Armor Shred, Teleporting
• Cicatrizer: Jumping, buff nearby ally armor
• Mossback Dragon: Flying, Vomit damages, slows and regens HP of ally minions

TL;DR: Other minions to consider include those who can slow and/or teleport or with long invulnerability frames

(3) Placement

Not much can be said about the position of minions within the room as it is fairly straightforward.

Given its relatively small area, the back row is most likely going to be your support type minions (Hexcaster, the must-have Gelid Voror) or those whom you prefer not to die so quickly (eg. Prophet, Witch, Ethera, Naga, Mezzogian, Kringle, Harbinger).

Front row would naturally be your defenders (Turtles, Cardinal, Kenashi Warrior), melee strikers (Ravager, Pumpkin Ghoul) or Chaser type champions (Corvus, Succubine, Lord of Eve, Warmage Sentinel).

In the middle, you can place a Frigid (T6) Ice Colossus here to shower your opponents with frost bolts upon entering the room. This would slow them down and reduce their chances of destroying the trident too quickly.

Frankly, placement wouldn’t matter much once the minions start swarming

TL;DR:
Front Row – Chaser Champions, Defenders, Melee Strikers;
Back Row – Support, Artillery Champions;
Middle Row: Anything hard hitting and durable

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Alright, that about wraps things up.

Since this is a relatively new trap that has been released, do let me know if I missed out anything or if you have any strategies which you’ve found that works out for you.

And yes, my other posts will come in due time too! 🙂