Cave 17 – is it at all possible to complete w/o FB?

[Pydi]

Im level 50 experience, main headgears at 10 , rest mostly 9. Completed every cave so far with 3* using only pig allies.
This one, I barely scraped 2* at the first 3 wave level with Paladin , Princess, and Pigiana combo.
Second level (5waves) got to wave 5 only once, only one bird left, and not for long…

Other combos performing even worse.

It may be a nonissue to most players, but I remember there are a precious few out there who still try to avoid using FB (like myself).

Anyone like to share their impressions/progress?

Topic

[Jim151]

I’ve gotten through 6, but it tales a lot of potions. Fortunately I had over 300 of each, so it’s not an issue. I use paladin with primal set, and wizard with lightning, plus piguana or prince, and a lot of veggie cakes.

[MusicOfTheApes]

Did all the levels for 16 and 17 with paladin and wizard (like most of the other caves) 3 stars everywhere except for the boss of 17, got 1 star with these 2 and 2 stars with a pig ally.
Needed veggie cakes though for cave 17 :p

[BINH]

i never use FB friends

[Pydi]

Thanks for the input Jim151 and MOTA.
I got so hanged up on Phoenix set for the sake of higher resistance, that I completly forgot what the Lightning does different.
Primal set I presume , only because, its the highest ranked set? (In my case both items level 47 v Titan 43/45)
And what sets did you use for the birds MOTA ? Same as Jim 151 ?
Guess I’m off to the bakery… ;)

[Jim151]

Yes, most powerful. All my other Red weapons suck

[MusicOfTheApes]

I was level 45 at beginning of cave 16 then grew up to 50 by beginning of 17 (with some xp potions).
Had paladin with dragon breath set and wizard with phoenix, both class 10 (these are my only two though, all the others are around class 8, 3 more class 9 and 7 class 7. Not a hardcore player :p
(And yeah belong to the anti-Facebook community;) )

[Pydi]

Looks like there is still hope for us, non-FB grinders. :)
Thank you again for pointing me in a good direction Jim151 and MOTA.
Paladin lvl 10 with Primal set 47/47 and Wizard lvl 10 with Ligthning set 43/43
in combination with any pig ally (even McCool carried me throught 7 waves at lvl 3)
and moderate suplementation of cherry juice and veggie cakes, does the trick of getting 3 stars on the first 3 lvls of this cave. Will update on future progress.

I also got to lvl50 exp in cave 16 and some grinding at SRC. And yes, those exp potions did come in handy ;) My dragon scale set blows so bad, it hurts.

As for the set levels, there is sth strange going on since the level for set items started showing. I’m 100% positive I did not roll at GPM any of the hammers from GrandSlam set since well before lvl 40 exp and yet one of them is at 47 now and the other at 43 and as you can imagine I never use them separately…

[Jim151]

In level 17 I take a peek without an ally first to see if the first wave is brutes or a lot of minions. I use Porky with the brutes (cave 5 I believe is all brutes for 9 or 10 waves. Used a metric ton of veggie cakes on that one), and piguana on the minions. With a lot of minions, I like to use piguana’s buff on the other 2 and get a lot of bonus attacks. With the brutes, porky’s extra hitting power helps, as I am very aggressive with the cakes and do my best to not let any brute attack. The key is who gets knocked out and when.

[Jim151]

I have only 2 starred cave 16 boss, but I have a plan. Wizard with lightning, and Tricksters with artillery, any pig ally, and lots and lots of veggie cakes. That should do a minimum of 7000 per round, and likely more depending on the critical hits and chain attacks, up to about 12,000.

[Pydi]

Before I started this tread, I left a comment under the boss fight walkthrought for cave 16. Combo for 3*. No cakes, just a little juice.
I did it once and never went back to check if it still works.
Princess wig is lvl 10 and Honey set is 47/47.

So are all Matildas sets, for reasons unknown to me. Not a complaint, just dont understand how it works. I thought , the set item lvl is connected to the bird exp lvl at the time when you roll it on the GPM, and I know I didnt re-roll any of them since maybe lvl 40 (and definitely not all at lvl 47).

For caves with Brutes only (or any other “fat” pigs who charge before they hit) combo of Knight(?)(the one with 55% resistance boost) with GrandSlam and Princess with with Doom and Pigiana is much less “cake intensive” and also yields 3*. The only thing to look out for is that Red has more health then Pigiana before you smack any villans with Matilda.
Good luck.

[Kookaburra67]

I don’t have a FB account and I have managed to 3 star all cave levels. Using my level 10 Paladin/Dragon set and level 10 Lightning Bird/Phoenix set. Was able to get through cave 16 with just those 2 birds until the boss where I used Prince Porky. Cave 17 was a different story. I had to use Prince Porky on most of the later levels. I just waited until he was available again. On the cave 17 boss I just ended up tossing one of the Mighty Eagles at him that I got from the daily rewards recently. Cave 17 #9 was a pain. I was very careful to keep my health all the way up and the rage chili filled with potions.

[Pydi]

Thanks kookaburra67 for typing that up.
Mine Dragon set is so weak, its not a feasible option for me, but maybe other non-FB grinders will find it usefull.

Progress update:
Level 5 (10 waves with trasure chest): tried agresive combos (Paladin/primal+ Wizard/lightning+ Pigiana or Porky) and got blown off the water 4 times in a rather spectacular fashion, loosing quite a few potions and cakes in the process.
What finally got me throught (2*only) was Paladin/grand slam + Princess/doom + McCool. Slow and painfull but will take it for now.
Level 6: Paladin/grand slam + Wizard/lightning + Pigiana
Level 7: Paladin/grand slam + Wizard/lightning. Started as a recon visit, but before I knew it, I was half way throught, so decided to feed them some more cakes and potions, and 3 stared it with just two birds.
Level 8: Paladin/grand slam + Wizard/lightning + Porky. Let’s just say that all three of them had quite quite a feast on cakes and potions.

and McCool was used up for yet another try at 3 stars in Trick and Treat Dungeon (Friday).
In cooperation with Paladin/Grand slam and Wizard/lightning, gorging on cakes an cherry juice they finally managed to beat my last missing star out of Darth Pig.
Yuppie for me! ;)

[KillerKea]

Of course you can complete all caves without Facebook friends. However my biggest problem is that the game is so unreliable it crashes all the time. 3 out of 4 times the game crashes on me on the last wave. Usually it is after I defeated everyone and get to do the wheel spin, but it can crash on earlier waves too. I never watch the free video to get a potion anymore since that usually causes it to crash. About half the time I get credit for completing the level when it crashes during the wheel spin, otherwise I’m forced to conquer everything again. The game is no longer fun and makes me want to avoid future Rovio games since things will only get worse because they keep laying off their employees.

[Pydi]

That wasn’t so obvious to me when I started this tread Killerkea, but, as it turns out, with friendly advice from fellow nesters, the answer is definitely yes.

Another 26 juices and 14 cakes later I completed level 9 (3*) with Paladin/Primal ,
Wizard/Lightning and Porky. The same combo helped me to 3 star lvl 5.

I gave the Dark Shaman couple of tries, following the suggestions outlined in relevant posts on this forum, but finally fed him a can of sardines and I’m not planing to give him another thought.

I’m fortunate to play on the latest generation of Ipad, so the game is not crashing on me so often, but even with this hardware is “iffin” far from stable. The quality of coding is progresivelly deteriorating with each consecutive update and that’s rather undeniable.
And I can see no reasonable argument for making a fairly simple game, like this one, so “hardware hungry” , that one can’t play it on second generation ipad comfortably. Any further deliberations on that topic probably deserve a separate tread on different forums.

Thanks for all the help, and may you enjoy this game despite the corporate greed doing whatever it can to ruin the experience. ;)

[GrauGeist]

I just finished 16, and am starting Cave 17 with <100 Cherry Juice 2.

I’m getting my ass handed to me on the first flag, so time to see what works, given that I’m also stuck with borrowing pigs.

[KillerKea]

@graugeist You are almost at 1000 stars. Be sure to get 1000 before the 5x rainbow riot next week. That way you’ll be able to get some good items from the enhanced GPM to make the rest of the cave a lot easier.

I think having lots of burning veggie cakes will help more than the healing potions, but both are needed.

[GrauGeist]

Yeah, that was the plan.

Cave 17 is pretty hard, though. The stuns are bad stuff. If I can get to 7, I’ll have 1,000

[KillerKea]

@graugeist If you 3 starred everything previously, you only need to get a total of 4 stars in cave 17 to get to 1000 stars. The first 2 battles in cave 17 are 3 & 5 waves so you shouldn’t have too much difficulty with those.

[GrauGeist]

I’ll have to look at the other missing stars then.
____

I had completly forgotten about the Friendship Gates!

2 Gates
= +12 stars
= 1001 total stars
= APM in plenty of time for the 5X.

Yeah, I burned 50 LCs, but it’s a sunk cost, so not terrible.