Introduction

Creature Quest features 3 unique game play modes that should all be taken advantage of to make the most progress possible. In this article, I will be focusing on the PvP (player versus player) Dungeon Challenge mode from a defensive point of view to better help you design a formidable defense in order to repel would-be attackers.

This posting will be using knowledge/terminology previously discussed in my New Player’s Guide.

Video commentary

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What is the Dungeon Challenge?

Challenge Dungeons are the weekly PvP (player versus player) ladder. You are able to create a dungeon with your own various sized creatures and then use your Challenge Points to attack other players. Each offensive and defensive victory awards Prestige (points that correspond to your numerical ranking) while failed defenses lose Prestige. There is no penalty for failing an offense. To better facilitate fairer match-making, players are divided up into Gold, Silver, and Bronze tiers.

In addition to Prestige gains/losses, players are also able to acquire Energy as a reward so it can also be viewed as an additional source of Energy to continue playing in Quests or Battle Tower.

Players will be able to gain progression rewards as they achieve new Prestige milestones that include Gold, Gems, Diamonds, Tokens, and Diamond Idols.

At the end of the weekly event, your numerical score (based on Prestige level) will determine your final rewards that can include Legendary Creatures for the Gold tier. As such, it is well worth investing the time and effort to climb as much as possible.

Goal for Dungeon defense

Naturally the goal is to successfully repel your opponent’s offense as well as making your dungeon as unappealing as possible to would-be attackers.

For the most part, your defense win percent will be significantly lower than your offense percentage as people can preview and counter each floor accordingly. As such, you want to do as much as you can to minimize the chances of actually being attacked through intelligent Creature choices, synergistic colours, many awakenings, and combo dots.

Failing intimidation, being able to remove one or two Creatures early on can both ruin their chance at a combo multiplier as well as possibly removing a key Special Ability.

Dungeon defense

There are two distinct modes within the Challenge Dungeon: Offense and Defense. The Offensive component has you running with your team of 5 Creatures against a rival player’s dungeon (will be covered extensively in a subsequent article) whereas the Defensive aspect has you designing a 3 or 5 floor dungeon with Creatures of varying sizes to defend your Prestige.

The 3 floor dungeons always uses the same set of Creatures, but the 5 floor variant changes from week to week. Thus, you will need to have a wide array of Common, Rare, Epic, and Legendary Creatures on hand to fully populate your defense each week. In addition to each size, you will also need to have both flying and ground Creatures which further diversifies your defense options.

Since you are required to use creatures of all sizes, the defensive aspect is less Pay-to-Win as you can only use 1-2 Legendaries per defense and must go out and acquire the smaller creatures for success. Furthermore, due to the rock/paper/scissors colour counter flowchart aspect in Creature Quest, inherently powerful spawns will always have varied counters to them.

3 floors or 5?

The simplest answer to this question is Quality > Quantity. If you are just starting out, chances are you may be able to perhaps fully populate a 5 floor dungeon, but the quality of each Creature may be severely lacking or using the wrong size in each slot. As such, you should opt for the size that you can best populate.

If you end up having low level, underevolved, or the wrong sized Creatures in your Dungeon, you are simply handing over free mana to your opponents as they can either ignore them or kill with a few basic attacks and generate free mana.

Size matters

When selecting Creatures to populate your dungeon, you are able to select from a range of sizes for each slot along with flying or ground units. For example, a large flying slot can only be occupied by a small, medium, or large flying Creature. However, you should always opt for the largest size possible.

You do this because larger Creatures have a higher level cap, stronger weighted stats at an equivalent level, as well as more threatening special abilities (generally speaking). The only real exception to this rule to using the largest size Creature possible is if you have a 4 dot, fully awoken smaller Creature as that will have comparable stats to it’s larger alternative.

Combo Dots are life

The number of combo dots your Creature has will directly correlate to how fast they attack in your defense. As such, three or four dot Creatures will be of the utmost importance when you are Questing or summoning. I release a little/big cheer of joy whenever I acquire a three or four dot Creature as they will significantly bolster my defensive capabilities.

As such, you should keep all three or four dot Creatures you acquire during your adventures.

Awakenings are massive boosts in power

Awakenings occur when you fuse a duplicate Creature or appropriate essence and these dramatically augment a Creature’s potential to perform as it can increase level cap, upgrade their Special Ability, as well as improve base stats.

While it may be hard to full awaken a Creature, try to utilize those that have higher awakening levels in your defense as it makes a significant difference as well as making you look like a less appealing target due to the red stars.

What type of Creatures should I use?

Once you have a deeper pool of Creatures to draw from, you can begin to choose more ideal defenders. While each colour has an inherit weakness, we can make broad generalizations of which style/type of Creature works best. This is done by categorizing the style of their Special Ability and their potential to cause harm to your opponent’s team.

Healers are bad

For the most part, healers are a poor choice as they allow for easy stalling and mana regeneration for your opponent. This is because they have no threatening aspect to them as Basic Attacks tend to be trivial by comparison to the output of Special Abilities. Whenever I see a healer that does not abide by my two exceptions, I instantly think “easy stalling floor” as I can nuke down the other Creatures and then happily dance with the non-threatening healer.

However, there are two exceptions to this rule: the first floor and Creatures that can resurrect.

The first floor of your Dungeon will most likely be the most challenging one for your opponents due to the fact that they start at 0 mana. This means they will only be able to deal damage with Basic Attacks and this means your Creatures are relatively safe from being bursted down. As such, having a healer on floor 1 can prevent them from killing a key defender as they will bring it down to low health, but the healer will top them right off. This means you have a much higher chance of picking off one of your rival’s Creatures as yours live longer and can continue to hammer them with Special Abilities.

On the other hand, being able to bring a dead party member back to life is tremendously powerful as it means you can potentially revive an Epic or threatening Creature. This can cause your Opponent to divert damage to your healer and thus allowing your real threats to continue their assault. Furthermore, a resurrected Creature does not grant additional mana when killed.

Stuns are amazing

Each time your Creature takes an action, all the timers of opposing enemies also tick down one. This leads to careful planning of when to use your Creatures and the ordering is important for both mana generation and combo potential. In addition, you have to use all 5 of your Creatures before you can use them again. This can somewhat be referred to as a “turn’ but stuns can disrupt this process.

Stuns will prevent you from using your own Creature for X number of turns. This means they will not generate any mana, they will not donate their combo dots as mana, and they will be unable to use a Special Ability or basic attack. This also means they cannot help combo your other Creatures so you will be dealing less damage that turn. Furthermore, at the end of your turn cycle, all enemies will tick down one turn for each of your stunned Creatures.

For example, if you had 2 Creatures stunned, your turn would consist of using the three remaining ones. After each Creature is used, each enemy will have their timer reduced by one but will also have two reductions for each stunned Creature after you use your usable Creatures.

This is terrible situation as you not only lose the ability to use your stunned Creatures, but also have all enemies perform additional actions.

As such, it is wonderful to incorporate stunning Special Abilities in your Dungeon defense. This is important on floor 1 when your opponent is most vulnerable due to starting with 0 mana.

Single Target nukes are preferred

High Single Target (ST) damage is wonderful in dungeon defense as it can enable your Creatures to potentially burst and kill one of your opponent’s cards. This tends to be most potent against your opponent’s healer.

For the most part, healers tend to have lower Hit Points and if you are able to successfully remove them on floor 1, your chances of defensive success dramatically climb.

Area of Effect or random targets are less ideal

Compared to ST damage, Area of Effect (AoE) abilities are less ideal as their damage more widespread. They may hit more targets and have a greater overall output, but the damage each one receives is lower overall. This decreases the chance of you actually removing one of their Creatures as an AoE heal will quickly restore the party to full health.

Damage over Time is good for floor 1

Damage over Time (DoT) is another form of damage that has two phases: the initial damage and damage that occurs over the course of several turns. If the DoT can burn for its full duration, it is actually higher damage than almost any other variant of Special Abilities; however, if cleansed off or you advance to the next floor, the DoT is removed.

As such, DoTs tend to be strongest on floor 1 because your opponents tend to spend the most time there. This is because they  do not have Special Abilities ready to nuke your Creatures or a cleanse for the DoTs. This dramatically improves the chances of a DoT ticking for the entire duration and possibly removing a Creature.

Building your dungeon

Taking all of the above points into consideration will certainly make your defense more formidable, but you can further enhance your defensive capabilities through intelligent colour coordination.

Creature Quest utilizes an elaborate rock/paper/scissors gameplay that helps ensure no one team reigns supreme as they will have natural counters due to colour weaknesses. The following Colour Counter Flowchart can be accessed ingame via the Question Mark button:

This knowledge can be used to help counter common or popular team compositions. For example, the water Siren is probably the most popular healer available as it is part of the rotating weekly Epic dungeons which means everyone can acquire a fully awoken one.

With that information in mind, loading up on a yellow/electric heavy floor one is a Fantastic way to directly counter her usage and sway would be attackers away from your dungeon.

Create bi or mono-colour floors

Provided you have options to fill your dungeon, you should try your best to create bi or mono-colour floors. This is both to help counter various team compositions as well as helping your own Creatures target the same enemy.

For the most part, the targeting system in Creature Quest works by simply attacking which ever Creature you can deal the most damage to. If your floor is rainbow in nature, you will be scattering your damage evenly across your opponent’s team and not actually killing anything.

By layering your floors by colour enhances the chance to pick off one of their Creatures. This is partially due to the fact that most people try to run a few different team compositions in order to maximize their combo synergy. Thus, if you present your opponents with a colour heavy floor, it may lower their motivations to attack your dungeon if they fear losing one of their key cards early on.

Another thing to consider is how the colour flowchart works in that having opposite covering colours help protect each other. For example, a fire heavy floor is countered by water, but electric punishes water while wood can be burned by fire. Thus, a fire and electric floor will be much better protected overall.

The following example is taken from the number 1 ranked person in my Gold tier (PierciT):

  

This is a wonderfully designed dungeon as it features 3 mono colour floors with amazing damage nukes on each. Floor 1 helps ensure you cannot bring wood cards while floor 2 trumps any water Creatures you used to help overcome floor 1.

I want to stress that the first floor is the hardest one and if it is well populated by threatening Creatures, it will prevent easy stalling and continue to force you to use what few Special Abilities you have in order to survive.

Choosing your Boss floors

Boss floors can be filled by your Legendary Creatures and provided they are not a dedicated healer (Kirin, Druid, etc.), they can essentially be your most developed one provided you have limited options. Naturally, you would try to weave your colours leading up to their floor in order to remove their threats, but that is not always feasible for the average player.

If you have a deeper pool of Creatures to work with, you should try to use Legendaries with counterattack abilities or those with resistance to stuns and crowd control.

Counterattacks occur when hit with a Special Ability and can range from stunning back the casting Creature, self healing, or any other mechanic you can imagine. Because your Bosses are vulnerable to stuns and silences, having a built in counterattack is the best way to help break up their combos and offense as these can occur even when stunned or silenced.

For the most part, a Boss can one shot a single Creature and the key is having them survive long enough to strike.

Expanding upon that, Bosses with stuns or self heal are dangerous once they are able to attack. The stuns will cycle their own abilities out again while the self heal can help replenish their own health pool and possibly force out another wave of Special Abilities to kill. This can leave your opponent with fewer options for the subsequent floors and possibly end their run before your second Boss.

Another workable option is a Creature with exceptionally high LUK value as it can naturally resist debuffs. This can also be achieved through raising the level cap to 105 through awakenings.

Example Boss synergy

A great example is the Phoenix (wave 5 of the above example) who is what I like to call a pub-stomper. The Pheonix will self heal when they cast their Special Ability which will place a DoT on all opposing Creatures that will instantly kill one of them. In addition, the Phoenix will resurrect itself upon death and begin the cycle of horror anew.

The simplest solution is to bring a cleanser to remove the DoT and again the most common solution is the water Siren. Thus, populating your earlier floors with electric nukes (such as the above mentioned Kangaroo) will increase your chances of removing her before they can even reach your Phoenix.

Conclusion

Dungeon defense is much more complex than simply throwing together a mish-mash defense of Creatures. By carefully planning out the order in which they face your defenders as well as colour synergy and lethal Special Abilities can dramatically improve your chances for success.

Taking all of the above points into consideration, you should try your best to prioritize Special Ability type > size > combo dots if you have a larger pool of Creatures to choose from.

However, even the most well designed defenses can fall and even the top ranked players in Gold have at best a 50% win rate (which is actually amazing) and the key is to design a dungeon that is as off putting as possible for your opponents. If your opponent has to go back to the team building menu to design something to counter your dungeon, you have done a good job and possibly avoided an offense due to them potentially attacking an easier target.

Let me know what you use to populate your Dungeon and what strategies you employ to counter your rivals.

Happy Questing!

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