Orcs Must Die 3 is an indie action-shooter, tower defense game, where you have to keep hordes of Orcs and other monsters at bay with an array of magical weapons and devious traps in four campaigns that take you to some interesting locations. against all kinds of enemies. Plus, there are other game modes like Endless and Scramble that add extra variety.
There’s a lot to learn in the game and mistakes can cost you a few skulls in your final grade, if not outright causing you to start the level all over again. With these few tips to get you started, you’ll be mowing down monsters and getting five-skull figures in no time.
7/7 Play with a friend
As with most things in life, the more the better. While Orcs Must Die 3 is a fun game to play solo, it’s definitely worth playing together. With a friend by your side, you can pull off strategies that are difficult or even impossible to do alone, and you are able to bring twice as many different traps and weapons between the two of you.
The game is also much easier as a pair, even with the greater number of enemies the game throws at you to scale up the difficulty. Since the number of paths does not increase to account for the second player, there is a net gain for the players because you have more people to cover each path. Plus, you know, playing with friends is fun.
6/7 Don’t be afraid to pay back
Besides laying down traps and mowing down hordes of enemies, OMD3 is about experimenting. In that vein, you can upgrade your traps, trinkets and weapons at will and without loss, repay the skulls you’ve used, all at once or on certain items and try different configurations.
Since the stages have unique layouts and different types of enemies, there isn’t really a perfect gear, so you may even want to pay back your skulls and reinvest them level by level. Please note that you cannot refund skulls spent on skins or unlocking new weapons.
5/7 Go back with new gear
Due to the way progression works in this game, you’re not likely to get a perfect score on every level on your first try, but you’ll still earn new skulls as you progress through the campaign.
As you collect skulls, unlock weapons, traps and upgrades, you’ll want to go back to levels where you don’t have 5 skull figures and use your new gear to perfect the levels, most of which have been made much easier with your new powerups.
4/7 Prepare well before starting a level
Each level is unique, with different entry points and routes that enemies can take to your canyon, as well as different enemies that you will encounter. You can see what kind of enemies you will face when selecting a level and prepare your gear accordingly.
When you’re actually in the level make sure you have the right gear for it because setting a trap will lock your gear in place. Make sure you also scout the level before you start.
While the minimap does a good job of showing you the paths the horde will take, it does a poor job of showing verticality. Better to explore a new level so that you have a better idea where to place your traps and which side the enemy is coming from.
3/7 Creating Choke Points (Barricades Rule)
You’ll find quite quickly that enemies take separate routes to get to your Rift, making it a juggling act that can lead to you losing Rift Points quite quickly when you finally drop the ball. You may also find that catching every route they can take is economically taxing, if not impossible.
The best way to deal with all directions of enemies is to collapse them into fewer paths. That’s why barricades are probably the best trap in the game. While they don’t deal direct damage, you can use them to redirect the hordes to a few paths – preferably just one if you can. You can then fill those few paths with traps at a much more affordable price.
Be careful not to completely block all routes to the Rift. Enemies will take a detour if this is the only route available, but if you don’t leave a route to the Rift at all, they’ll destroy your Barricades instead.
2/7 Check your enemies
You can see what kind of enemies are coming your way in the level selection, which is very useful to help determine what kind of gear to bring to a certain level. While you don’t know each enemy’s abilities by heart, you should be on the lookout for a few traits to be prepared for.
For example, winged enemies are Flyers and take more direct, alternate routes to your Rift, also ignoring most of the traps on the ground. You should also watch out for fire-based enemies as some of your best traps are fire-based, which they are immune to, so you’ll have to change your game. If there are enemies larger than standard Orcs, expect them to hit hard, be slower, and have a ton of HP. And if they’re Kobolds with bombs on their backs, they’re Sappers – the bane of your existence.
1/7 Be prepared for juicers
Unfortunately, even the best-oiled death traps and killboxes are undone by Kobold Sappers, who run as fast as Kobolds and target the best path tool in the game, the Barricades, blowing themselves up to damage and destroy them.
There’s little you can do about them in terms of traps, as they tend to run faster than most traps can jump, with the exception of Tar Traps, which do no damage, and Brimstone, which drains quickly. The best thing you can do is listen to the telltale noise their deployment makes and watch your mini-map for yellow dots, which you need to track down and destroy before they approach your defenses.
Yellow dots generally symbolize enemies targeting your barricades, such as Dynamite Archers and Firelings – which spawn from Fire Elementals that spawn from Fire Lords. But of these, the Sapper is by far the worst.
0 Comments