Unholy Invasion

Surprise! I’m back!

Actually, more like re-summoned by GL to continue my posts. 😀

Truth be told, the lockdown has given me some free time on my hands so I can work on other things as well. That’s when I got approached by GL to continue my blog…

However, it is not to say that I’ll be having regular updates like in the past, since I still have work to complete before the lockdown ends. What’s more, I’ve been playing very sparsely since my last post to focus on my research and have been quite out of touch until recently.

As such, the agreement is to have upcoming posts geared as a collaboration between me and the devs…so you can expect enticing things like:

• More accurate and detailed information
• Concept Art/Screenshots
• New gear reviews
• ….and more!

Let’s get to the topic at hand:

*Before I start this post, I want to give special thanks to the kind folks of Queen (SG Guild), Enoemos, Someone & Rita for this post. Queen helped me get up to speed about the higher waves of unholy invasion and Enoemos provided me with extremely detailed information about the wave spawns and trap rooms. 

This (not-so-new) game mode of Unholy Invasion (UI) is DH5’s take on the battling endless waves of monsters in a gladiator style fight to the death. It was first released in mid Aug ’19 (Update 35) and has a fairly straightforward objective: – kill as many monsters as possible before the next wave of stronger monsters spawns….and yes, try not to die. Don’t forget that playing this gives you a chance for the all new Chakrams weapon too!

The newest legendary weapon type: Chakrams

In this post, let’s review the fundamentals of this game mode: (a) Basic mechanics of Unholy Invasion: Spawns, Trap Room; (b) Strategies: Gear, Priorities; (c) Rewards; (d) Discussion and Suggestions.

Edit 1, 27/4/20: Needed to do some minor corrections after I watched a video of myself playing in this week’s dark room. 

Edit 2, 01/5/20: Updated portal mechanics, monster limit and clarified some details.

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Basic Mechanics

(Edit: Credit to warmonger for point out that the energy refill cost is incremental.)

UI takes the concept of infinite waves and…well..butchers your character with it.

In general, it’s a survival game mode with a leaderboard that lasts through weekdays, starting on Monday and lasts till end of Friday. Each week has a different element which changes the trap room design and special boss(es) that spawn along with it.

UI is similar to Wanted Challenge (WC) in that it has a separate energy system of 5 ‘orbs‘ and it takes 20 gems to refill all 5 orbs if you run out. This refill cost is incremental, which increases by +5 gems per refill (i.e. 1st refill: 20; 2nd refill: 25 etc.). The natural recharge rate is significantly longer with 1 orb recovering every 3 hrs. Also, UI also has auto-play and is rush-able. But to rush a certain wave, you need to clear at least 20 waves higher than the specified wave option. For example, if you want to rush wave 61, you need to have cleared till wave 81.

Difficulty cranks up the higher the wave count

Basic Mechanics: Spawns

(Edit: Wave timer count written as progressively longer, wave summary modified)
(Edit2: Portal mechanics and monster limit added)

The mechanics are simple: Monsters, both normal minions and champions, will spawn randomly from several of the 8 portals within a room full of traps. Between each wave, there is a 1 second pause, before a timer activates to signal the next wave. The initial timer starts from 4 seconds, before increasing by +1 second every 20 waves (e.g. waves 1-20: 4 secs, waves 21-40: 5 secs…so on and so forth).

With every 10 waves, more portals are made available and active. Available portals are where monsters could potentially spawn from, while active portals are those that are spawning monsters. The number of active portals are about half of the number of available portals (eg. wave 70 has 7 active portals & 3 available portals). So at higher waves, there are increasingly more portals where monsters can spawn from across the map, so you’ll need to do more running to clear them out.

Active portals are indicated on the mini-map by lit icons based on the spawned minion element

What’s worse is that the monsters don’t die off automatically but will stay in the map until killed. So if you’re not fast enough at killing, you’re in for a bad (laggy) time in later waves.

Thankfully, as clarified by Someone, there is a monster limit of 50 in the room at any point in time. This means that if the monster count hits 50, it will not continue spawning new monsters until one is killed.

The element of the spawned minions/champions for each wave is random, so there’s a chance of getting the same element in a row. This means that you could get lucky by having elements that are weak to your own gear…or vice versa.

Not forgetting that there’s also the special boss featured on the wave selection screen. These are either legendary champs or Wanted Challenge bosses (e.g. Nature: Nature custodian; Light: Kara, the World Bonder etc.). There’s no way to miss them as they are distinctively larger compared to your average minion or champion. The bosses also have higher stats than the monsters of the wave and all the abilities you would expect if you meet them outside of UI.

Nature custodians as special bosses are a lot larger than their usual size

The minion spawning cycle is in multiples of 5 and goes something like this:

• Waves 1-3: Random minions of random element;
• Wave 4: Champions of random element;
• Wave 5: Specific champions of the week’s element or 20% chance of spawning special bosses.

Each wave gets progressively tougher as the minion stats get boosted the more waves there are. As a gauge, fighting with ~50k attack, 40k def (dark) in the light room got me up to wave 60+ easily in this light themed UI run. However, things get very chaotic past wave 70 as that’s the point you’ll need to work fast before you get swarmed quickly.

Edit: Don’t be discouraged though, as the same set got me to wave 90+ in the dark room. I kept getting stun-locked in the light room thanks to Lightning Colossi.

Yeah, getting a bit rusty on the leg work 😐

TL;DR: Minions of random elements spawn every wave and get stronger the higher the wave count. Higher waves get slightly more time to clear the monsters before the next wave appears.

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Basic Mechanics: Trap Room

The room map is in itself another can of worms on its own.

Every element theme has a different map with a unique design consisting of familiar traps found in both solo missions and stronghold raids.

Fire room has multiple dangerous traps with ever-constant fire spewing burners and spikes (Credit: GL, DH5)

The traps don’t just deal damage, but have the same special abilities of the traps found in these rooms. For example, the Light room has three main traps: the invulnerability tower (from guardhouse), the electric stunner thingy (from Stockade) and the cobra shoot-y trap (from missions). The invulnerability tower causes minions to be invulnerable when they are within its aura of influence. It also cannot be harmed using ranged attacks when active.

Like the minion spawns, these traps activate more frequently as the wave count goes up. Using the invulnerability tower as an example: on lower waves, you can destroy the tower and it stays inactive for a long while. But it will keep regenerating rapidly on higher waves, making it such that monsters in the center will constantly be immune to damage.

Interestingly, the damage inflicted by the traps are non-elemental and aren’t affected by the element armour advantage/weakness. This means that if a poison flower trap from the nature element deals ~115 damage per tick on fire, it also applies the same ~115 for dark.

Even if traps are non-elemental, wearing dark in a nature UI will pose a challenge in higher waves

Another thing which I found intriguing is the design of each individual element room. Like trap rooms, every element has its own…peculiarities. Nature slows and poisons, but there are safe spots to avoid the arrows and flower auras; Fire burns and damages often, but has a spacious circular room to run about; Light room traps damage you less, but ensures that you’re flat on the ground most of the time etc. etc.

If you’re curious about the design of each element room, perhaps I can do more detailed posts about them in the future.

TL;DR: Traps are out to kill you too! Every element room is designed differently with different traps, and the traps regenerate faster at higher wave counts.

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Strategy

Strategy: Gear

(Edit: Added smoke veil image, added crystal body chance as recommendation)

The goal for UI is to wipe out as many monsters as you can per wave, but also to (more importantly) stay alive…without potions

Of course, it goes without saying that high attack and defence stats will get you far into the wave count. Equipping gear that is strong against the element of the week helps too when facing off the special bosses.

Other ways are to rely on AoE skills with long invulnerability frames during casting, such as Mist of death or Ice stalagmites. Pair this with a High HP/Hit value (>200) and the relevant elemental skill cooldown and enjoy a full HP bar if enough monsters fall into the AoE range.

Mist of Death is a good way to inflict AoE damage and recover lost HP

I find Draconid Outburst and Malevolent Rush nice skills to use on a large group of monsters too. DO is a cast-and-run multi-hit spell that helps you regain HP from a group of monsters. MR helps with mobility across the map esp when surrounded. This also knocks-down regular minions along your rush path.

Moreover, about the new summon belts….I don’t have one personally yet but I assume they would make decent decoys. Unfortunately, as highlighted by Enomos, these will teleport to your location if you move too far away from them. This means that the other hostiles being ‘aggro-ed‘ by this summon are going to focus their attention onto you instead -.-‘

For defensive items, Smoke veil is a good option for increasing your dodge even while stunned/frozen/knocked-down, while Frost shield works well on both defensive and offensive with its slowing whirlpool.

Smoke Veil helps increase dodge and reflect projectiles, but it doesn’t negate existing DOT dmg

Traits-wise, I would believe that (traditional) offensive magical properties/traits will help a lot by keeping your damage high, like Critical Hit chance and damage, Berserker, together with the all useful Bloodrage that will trigger frequently. This helps your AoE skills to 1 Hit KO minions quickly.

Naturally, dodge and run speed traits are your pals here to avoid getting hit physically. Max. dodge (70%) also keeps you from getting hit from special skills that might stun, freeze or slow you. Furthermore, having stun or slow resistance won’t hurt, especially if it comes along with your good gear sets and if you’re in a light or water room..

Keeping bloodrage up can help with finishing off champions of the opposing element quickly

And yes, the new magical properties will be something I’ll look at in the future since I’ve yet to be acquainted with them.

(Edit: I find the new protective shield traits, specifically Crystal Body Chance, does very nicely here since it keeps you alive by increasing def with a HP shield.)

I generally find that ranged weapons (Staffs and Crossbows) with good attack speeds help a lot for larger rooms, since it helps you kill off dangerous monsters that spawn far away. With a constant bloodrage up-time and high enough attack stat (>50k), most of your hits against regular minions will be 1HitKOs. This reduces dependency on your skills, allowing to recharge.

TL;DR:
Skills: Mist, Ice Stag, SV, MRush

Offensive: Bloodrage, Crit Hit Chance/Damage, Elemental skill cooldown, Attack Speed, Berserker

Defensive: HP/Hit, Dodge, Run speed, Stun/slow resist

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Strategy: Priorities

(Edit: Added some new monsters into the lists)

Now that you’re suited up for UI, surviving needs some strategy too.

Running around the room constantly alone isn’t going to be effective if the monster count keeps increasing. Sure, it helps with getting flanked on all sides by monsters, but you’ll need to kill quickly as you go along so you get enough (social) distance between them.

At higher waves, there’s a need to prioritise the types of monsters you’re going to take out first. Those that are to be watched fall in the ‘high‘, ‘mid‘ and ‘stop-waiting-around!‘ categories.

High priority monsters are those that often deal stun, stagger, knock-down or exceptionally high damage. These are:

• Lightning Colossus – Artillery mode, long stun, stagger
• Ignicore – high DOT, extremely fast, armour shred
• Wicker beast  – knockdown, DOT, extremely fast
• Succubine – knockdown (melee and long-ranged), extremely fast
• Gatekeeper – spawns gargoyles, totem increases def, stun
• Any of the special bosses – generally dangerous w many abilities

The constant spawn of lightning colossus, together with the stun towers, can get you fatally stun-locked into a corner

The mid priority monsters are those that take time to build up heir skills but become deadly before you know it. Either that or they have trap or homing skills that are difficult to spot amidst the ensuing chaos.

Basically, don’t take too long to kill them!

• Corvus – Blind, Relatively fast
• Naga Tidesplitter – AoE whirlpool attack and slow
• Warlord – spear attack gets increasingly faster per throw, causes knockdown
• Fire Colossus – high DOT, artillery mode
• Dominator – damage reflect, try to avoid hitting them if you have Bloodrage on, causes knockdown, warcry increases crit and atk of nearby minions
• Ice Colossus – freeze, artillery mode
• Warmage Sentinel – homing knockdown/stun attacks go unnoticed
• Spirius – heals self when damage during special atk, spawns meroes that heal upon death
• Ranger – long range DOT, slow/stun traps go unnoticed
• Assassin – armour shred, bind traps go unnoticed

The last category of ‘stop-waiting-around!’ monsters that literally waste your time. These have long invulnerability frames or high armour during their transformation and/or special attacks. To deal with these, it’s best to recognise their abilities to attack them only when they drop their guard.

In short, don’t just stand there, you have other monsters to kill!

• Ethera – ridiculously long transformation sequences, high def when chains swirl around her, also falls in mid priority since her long ranged chain attacks deal knockdown
• Acolyte, Harbinger – long invulnerability/air time, revives
• Mossback – long air time, self-activated shield makes constant attacking a waste of time
• Monkey – long periods of invulnerability, stun, stagger
• Wolf – long periods of invulnerability when approached, stun, stagger

Mossback Dragons are annoying to deal with due to their long air time and protective shields

Moreover, I need to reiterate that the random element order of the waves means that surviving partially depends on a bit of luck. Getting champion monsters of the element that are weak to your gear helps a lot in getting through to higher waves.

Lastly, do remember that the traps are all out to kill you too! Most will be indestructible so you’ll need to avoid them by not standing in their aura of influence too long as they will constantly damage or incapacitate you (eg. stockade’s stun towers).

TL;DR: Prioritise monsters to kill, don’t linger for too long at one spot, and keep running about to avoid traps and attacks

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Rewards

(Edit: Added that badges are dependent on minion kills)
(Edit2: Clarified on monster badge bonus property)

For a brutal survival game mode, UI features some pretty decent rewards.

Clearing every match of UI earns you a batch of monster badges – the main currency which determines your participation reward and your rank (and reward) in the leaderboard. This is dependent on the number and type of monsters you kill throughout your room (i.e. regular minions give least and special bosses give most). Like Wanted Challenges and Citadels, the monster badges refresh every new element (i.e. every week) so there’s no carrying over.

Participation rewards include mastery crystals like Decanium and Decanene, and sanctum keys

The participation reward consists of gems, rush tickets, Kyandite dust, specific UI chests (purple) and T3 and T6 mastery crystals. This gives players another much-needed avenue to earn the mastery crystals that were once exclusive to the Arena and tiered Guild shop. Additionally, leaderboard rewards can earn you UI Master chests (gold) that have the chance of dropping Chakrams and other S-tier gear.

The main grind of this game mode is for Kyandite dust – a special resource that helps to duplicate equipment or minions for mastery if you don’t have extra of them. The amount of dust needed to create a duplicate item based on a percentage chance of success, and this scales according to the rank of the gear/minion. Nonetheless, I would say this is a good move towards f2p since it enables the potential to create duplicate items that you didn’t have the luxury to obtain from chests. Or…well…if you’re p2w, it is a way to quickly overpower/flexing on your peers by making another M7 nightmare custodian by saving up tons of dust beforehand.

More dust, more luck!

Chakrams are probably the reward most sought after. These can be obtained through the leaderboard rewards or UI master chest. They not only have a cool spinny mid-range attack animation, but most of them have a great attack stats and traits as well. Chakrams also boost the number of monster badges earned, making them more useful in this game mode.

Besides chakrams, badge bonuses also come from trinkets earned and crafted from certain Citadel runs. Do note that this bonus only applies to non-rushed attempts, so you’ll need to do a manual run to reap those extra badges.

Edit: As Someone pointed out, not all Citadel-earned trinkets and Chakrams have the monster badge bonus property. A general guide is those items that lack this property are the circular Citadel trinkets and event-based Chakrams.

Leaderboard rewards grant players UI Master chests and Chakrams

TL;DR: Rewards extend from mastery resources to dust for creating duplicates for mastery. Chakrams are neat semi-ranged legendary weapons that help give badge bonuses.

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Discussion and Suggestions

I would say that design of Unholy Invasion has been implemented relatively well with late game players f2p players in mind….which is undoubtedly a good thing since late game content was rather lacking at the time paused on DH5.

The level of difficulty also helps in giving end game players something test their mastered M7 gear with. Previously, it was restricted to fighting other players’ avatars in Arena and strongholds in raids. Perhaps ToE comes close but the experience doesn’t scale up as quickly. In comparison, getting up to a challenging wave in UI can be done quickly  without having to leave your phone around and wait for your character to clear the dozens of ToE wave points prior. Oh, and it doesn’t require keys like sanctum.

The randomness helps to keep every run refreshing, though sometimes annoying if you keep encountering champs that are strong towards your armour. What’s more, being able to enter at a specific wave count also helps in charting out and testing a new strategy.

Personally, I find that the way UI has been integrated into the game is quite refreshing. Unlike the other game modes, it has an optional feel to it as it has long energy recharge times and it’s being tucked away in the special events menu. Thus, this could further emphasize its nature as something meant for late game players who would go out of their way to invest in (eg. like Sanctum).

Starting at a lower wave count helps to build up the monster badges, but risks overcrowding before you hit your target wave

As someone who is busier now, I find that UI is more like casual once-a-day game mode that doesn’t take too long per run (besides the first attempt each week of course). For example, if you start at wave 81, it takes a little under 3 mins to get you to wave 100.

However, my one major gripe is that it might be the sheer number of monsters will overwhelm not only your character, but your phone as well. Running on a semi-damaged iPhone X, I get an increasingly warm phone once the screen is about more than a third full of monsters. This inevitability leads to crashing for weaker devices, which means that you don’t get any of the rewards. Because of this, players might stop the run prematurely before the room gets filled with monsters.

Perhaps a potential solution to this would be to allow more time for players to take down monsters at certain wave counts. These ‘stop’ points will give players a longer duration to clear the waves to prevent overcrowding (eg. 15 secs instead of 7secs for every 20 waves). Naturally, it might helps weaker players climb to higher waves, but if their gear doesn’t cut it, then the extra time won’t help them being overwhelmed.

TL;DR:

Positive – Good avenue for testing out gear, difficulty appropriate for late game players, optional game mode that doesn’t get rubbed in your face;

Negative –  laggy or crash for slower devices.

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Okay, that’s about it!
A long post but hopefully you learnt something from this.

Stay safe and sane during lockdown!