Tips

[Squeaky McGee]

Some general tips on things that may not be immediately obvious.

• Despite the description, Chuck’s rage attack is not random. It will always launch 5 attacks from your birds in successive order starting from the first. This means that if you have 3 birds, it will launch attacks in the order 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. The order of your birds is fixed based on the order they are encountered in the game, so it will always be Red > Chuck > Matilda > Bomb > Blues. This means that Red and Chuck will always get 2 attacks. Blues will always get 1. Bomb will get 1 attack unless Blues are also in the party, and Matilda will get 2 attacks only if Red is not in the party. If one of your birds is knocked out, or you have only 2 for some other reason, the first bird will get 3 attacks and the second will get 2. This should also help you do the math to decide whether Red’s or Chuck’s rage will do more damage against a single target. (Edit: description was changed, so it no longer says random.)
• There’s a big difference between Counter and the other abilities which cause damage to attacking enemies. Counter will only activate if the affected target is alive and not stunned at the end of the attack. This means if you can do enough damage to kill the target, or you can stun it, you don’t need to worry about its Counter ability. This includes multiple attacks from Chuck’s rage attack.
• Multiple damage-over-time effects can stack, but only if they’re from different abilities. Thus, the Druid’s, Rainbird’s, and Rogues’ abilities can all affect a single target, but attacking a target which already has the same effect on it will do nothing but do the initial damage and prolong the DoT for another turn.
• The same goes for damage-increasing buffs, including Tricksters’ Cheer ability and any of the buffs from Bomb. This is less obvious because they use the same graphic, but the damage does stack.
• If you hire a friend for a battle (either another human player or one of the pig hirelings, or even a Mighty Eagle’s mercenary), you can replay the battle as many times as you like for more rewards, without having to wait between battles to hire another, or pay a second time for a mercenary. This is useful if you want another chance at the battle, to get more stars, more loot or experience, etc. As soon as you leave the battle, however, the usual 12-hour wait kicks in. Apparently the latest patch changed this. How annoying.
• For Chronicle Cave battles, if you don’t know what you’ll be facing, you can always start the battle with just 2 birds to get a feel for it, then leave and come back with the proper hireling. This will prevent you from wasting a hire on a bird that will be useless on that battle. This does not work for Daily Dungeons however (except the first time.) If you leave the battle for any reason, you’ll have to wait a week to try again.
• If there is a Big Boss enemy in the battle (or anyone else with the Charge Command attack, forget if there are others), pay attention to the order of attacks. When his ability activates, only pigs who have not already used their turn will attack. If he’s the first to attack every round, he’s more dangerous, as every pig essentially gets 2 attacks. But if he’s the last, he’s mostly harmless, as only the Big Boss himself will attack. They appear to have now fixed this one too. Are they using this thread as a bug-report list?

Feel free to add your own.

Topic

[Danke_]

@squeakymcgee most of the high end players know those facts, so the tips are mostly addressed to early game players, but that doesn’t mean those facts aren’t true at the end of the game. To be a bit more clear, the DOT damage it’s a sum, the damage increase/reduction it’s a multiplication of the base damage and the precentages i.e: 100* 80%*45%*160% (some players may think that it’s the base damage multiplied by the sum of the percentages, but only 0% can make a target deal 0 damage) Also, a well known fact it’s that enemies give more points when killed in fewer turns. All dungeons when first discovered have a max level cap for the enemies inside (wich it’s the level of the player at the moment the dungeon has been discovered) They won’t level up until the dungeon has been beaten for the first time(even if the player’ll level up in meantime). After the dungeon has been conquered for the first time, the enemies’ll level up normaly. Note: the Chronicle Caves are affected too, each cave being considered a dungeon with multiple stages.

[AMslimfordy]

Just a quick note about the first bullet (Chuck’s Rage Attack). We believe that the “1-2-3-1-2” ordering is a bug in recent versions. Prior to the global release, the attack order was truly random.

[KillerKea]

So prior to the launch the same bird could attack 3-5 times?

When exploring a multi-wave area or gathering ingredients sometimes I like to only use the Wizard because 5 attacks from him usually clears the first wave. You still get 30,000 points from having a single bird vs 3 x 10,000 points for 3 undamaged birds. Wizard with Captain is more effective, but that is an extra swipe. Of course you need to have the golden chili to use these strategies.

[Squeaky McGee]

@amslimfordy – I’m not so sure that’s a bug as an intentional design choice. If they already had the random feature working, it’s kind of unlikely that they’d switch to sequential attacks by accident. The only bug I’d say is that they didn’t also change the text of the description to match the new behavior.

Thought of some more. First might be a little obvious since they even try to point it out in one of the tutorial levels (the first time you encounter Prince Porky), but it has some more subtle implications:

• Effects which trigger when hit are especially effective against attacks which hit more than once. This cuts both ways. If an enemy is protected by a lightning shield or similar, you should avoid attacking it with a bird who has multiple-hit attacks. Likewise, if enemies have multiple-hit attacks, you can really take advantage of these effects. One of the best examples of this is the Maelstrom battle, with one enemy who hits 5 times with every attack. Using the Mage’s Shock Shield will cause it to be hit 5 times for a total of 375 (modified by attack power) damage. But my favorite technique for this is the Wizard’s Energize ability. With 5 chances for the Stun to hit, it’s almost guaranteed. And 5 hits fills your Rage Chili up fast as well. Note that it mostly only works for effects which have a constant magnitude effect, not ones which scale based on damage. So the Rogues’ Cupcake Trap ability isn’t any more effective, since it’s just 100% of damage dealt, whether it occurs in one hit or multiple.
• Damage over Time effects are unaffected by buffs or debuffs. While the initial attack damage may be increased or reduced by such effects, the recurring damage will always be at full strength. It is also not affected by Dodge or Ironclad abilities on enemies. If the initial attack is within the range where it’s possible to hit the enemy, then the lingering damage will occur even if it is not.
• Harmful effects are always dealt out in the first hit of a multi-hit attack. If the first hit misses (due to the enemy being Ethereal, or if you get a Critical Hit on a Dodge enemy which makes it go above their Dodge threshold), the effect will not be applied, even if the subsequent hits do hit. There’s not much you can do about this, but one thing to be aware of is to avoid using Critical Hit weapons when fighting enemies with the Dodge ability, for example.
• An exception to this rule is the Dispel chance. Using a Dispel weapon is more effective with a multiple-hit attack, and can be a good way to take out enemies with powerful protective abilities. (Using an ability with 100% Dispel chance is better, of course.)

[Woods]

@squeakymcgee Here’s a little tip:

Always bring a “dispeller” into a battle. Lighting Bird, Capt’n and Tricksters are perfect dispeller. But this also depends, as some enemies don’t have any buff move or health regeneration move. If you can, bring a bird that can remove all harmful effects too.

[MVNLA2]

@squeakymcgee — These tips are great! Thanks!

[Squeaky McGee]

More Chuck (Norris?) Facts:

• Lightning Bird’s “Lightning Speed” move can be performed even on a bird which is stunned, causing the stunned bird to attack. It stays stunned, of course, but this is a great way to use the ability of a stunned bird if you aren’t able to cleanse them. (Especially useful in Cure Caverns, where the stun effect CAN’T be cleansed by any ability.) I found this worked well with Paladin – if Red got stunned, you could still use him to heal the party by having him attack through Chuck. Probably good with Cleric too.
• The secondary damage of the Wizard’s “Chain Lightning” is unaffected by buffs and debuffs. Only the first target receives more or less damage. The rest are the same. Possibly applies to other multi-target effects? Must check other Chuck classes, and also Blues’ Spies.

Not Chuck-related but:

• The annoying Mimic ability (used by Frost Shamans) has one loophole. In order for it to steal the healing from an affected bird, there must be a living pig to steal it. Where this helps is, for example, if there’s only one pig left in a wave, which can be killed by the Paladin, but the Paladin is currently Mimic’ed and has the lowest health, and you don’t want to waste a turn cleansing him first, go ahead and do the attack and kill that last pig, and the Paladin will be healed even though he has the Mimic curse on him because there’s no pig alive in the current wave, even if there are more waves coming.

[Woods]

@squeakymcgee Whip Up or any increase damage move on Spies only deals more damage on the target, other pigs receive normal damage.

[chinolatino]

This is probably a dumb tip, but it made the game easier for me. I replayed each level until I got 3 stars. In doing so, I gained experience and snoutling. I would also reply WCP while watching TV, got every strong and the the game became a breeze to finish.

[FlashBakes]

In a fight against large numbers of fairly weak enemies or against a single very large boss that likes to summon, I find that a team consisting of Paladin/Princess/Adventurer Pig or Cannoneer is pretty much indestructible – use Princess to direct all incoming attacks to one target, put the Paladin’s Devotion on that target, and use the Adventurer or Cannoneer’s Counter ability on Paladin. Paladin then counters every attack, making damage inconsequential and putting much bigger dents in the enemy than he otherwise would, and in between refreshing buffs your other birds can also attack normally.

Adjust this when fighting pirates by replacing Princess with a higher-damage AOE bird like Spies or Wizard (Wizard for faster rage building via using his buff on Paladin, Spies for additional healing; use whichever you prefer or whichever is available for borrowing) and use Devotion on both allies, because Dirty Tricks will prevent Princess from directing the enemies.

Unfortunately this does not work in Cure Cavern because the Counter ability tends to get dispelled by the enemies there, and if Paladin becomes stunned the whole thing breaks down, but I’ve had good results everywhere else.

It also won’t work on Ninja enemies with their dodging that prevents the Paladin’s heal from going off. However, there may be some possibility of a variant to this strategy using Archers’ Ambush ability instead of Cannoneer/Adventurer, though I have not investigated this option.

[TheBirdBrain]

Does anyone know if the Canonneer’s Cover Fire Ability and the Guardian’s Overpower ability stack to reduce a pig’s attack power by 45%? Would be useful if it does against hard hitting pigs. I also wonder if those+ the Guardian’s Aura of Fortitude would pretty much ensure your birds take 70% less damage from any pigs.

[Danke_]

@thebirdbrain Nope. The mathematical ecuation for the damage dealt/recieved it’s not a sum, it’s a multiplication: 75% (Guardian’s ‘OP’ ability) * 80% (Canooneer’s Cover Fire ability) * 75% (Guardian’s Aura of fortitude supportive ability) The Result it’s that the enemy will deal only 45% of the total damage, the same as the Knight’s Shield.