Tomb of Horrors (ToH) Guide
By Ysera (Tillia).
Tomb of horrors, reffered to as tomb or ToH in short, is a game mode that becomes available at level 40.
It consists of 12 consecutive stages, each a battle with a single round (unlike campaigns, raids and challenges where battles may consists of up to 4 rounds or waves of enemies), where you have to defeat a 5 hero enemy team. You cant use friend’s hero in this game mode. The battles have no time limit (unlike battles in raid, arena and tournament), so you can take your time. If you lose a battle you can re-enter it with another team and try again. There is no other way to progress in tomb except by winning and moving on to the next stage, you can’t skip a stage.
The 12 stages of ToH are “invisibly” divided into 4 sets of 3. Each set of 3 stages is more difficult in terms of enemy power as previous set, while within the same set the first stage is easiest, the second is intermediary, and the third is usually very difficult. Because of this sometimes the first stage of a set will be easier than the last stage of the previous set. For example, if we count all 12 stages of ToH, stage 4 of ToH will be easier than stage 3, stage 7 easier than stage 6 and so on. The most difficult stages in tomb will be stages 3, 6, 9 and 12.
The power of the enemy team is determined by the power of your top 5 heroes (your 5 heroes with the highest power), and it will always be less than the summ of your top 5 heroes power, significantly lower at the start of ToH on stage 1, and almost the same at the end on stage 12.
There is no healing or ressurection in between battles, but you do get a 10% heal on heroes that survived the fight when you win.
There is no limit to what heroes you can use or how many times you can use them, as long as they are still alive (didnt finish a fight dead).
I have heard from other players that the difficulty of each set of 3 stages is based on your surviving top 5 heroes, meaning that if your top 5 or some of them die during a stage, the next set(s) of 3 would be lower in power and based on your surviving heroes, but i can not confirm that. I have often had heroes from my top 5 die in ToH and i didnt notice any decrease in difficulty. Then again, i might be wrong, or the decrease might have been too small for me to notice. Anyway do not rely on that. Take good care that your strongest heroes dont die during ToH, or you will have a hard time finishing it.
In between fights your cooldowns do not refresh, when you finish a fight and start the next one, your skills will still be on cooldown, so manage cooldowns properly, using basic skills towards the end of a fight which you are about to win, so bigger skills are off cooldown when you start the next one.
You can quit a fight and re-enter it, either with the same team or a different one. There is no penalty for quitting, and all heroes keep the health they had at the time you quit (both your heroes and enemies). If you quit and re-enter you cant ressurect a dead hero on your team, once you quit while it is dead, it will stay dead and unusable for the rest of that particulat tomb run, but on enemy team if there are healers that can ressurect, they will do that if an enemy hero was dead when you quit. Skill cooldowns will stay the same for your heroes, but they will refresh for the enemy team if you quit (the one major disadvantage of quitting and also why enemy healers will be able to promptly ressurect dead enemy heroes when you quit and re-enter a fight).
Buffs and debuffs are lost when quitting both for your team and the enemy team, and this is the main reason quitting a battle is a used trick in tomb. You can use it to shake off the death debuff on your heroes ressurected by xaart, or you can use it to get rid of a buff on an enemy hero – such as magnus’s death evading buff put on by his taunt skill – quit while he is low on health but has this death evading buff on, re-enter and kill him before his turn comes and he has a chance to re-apply the buff.
What happens if your team dies? you cant use it for the rest of the run. But you can use a different team to clear that stage. Also when your team dies, the enemy team will keep their health and their cooldowns, and lose any and all buffs and debuffs. It is a common strategy among players to pass particularly difficult stages by using “suicide teams” which are solely aimed at getting the enemy team to trigger it’s cooldowns, then die and make room for your main team before those cooldowns refresh. This trick requires a somewhat developed roster of heroes, which cant be too weak, or the enemy team will slaughter them with basic skills instead of using cooldowns.
A particular case is enemies with cathbad or cathbad and dreverad duo. At the start of the battle cathbad’s passive will act as if it is the beginning of the battle – it doesnt matter if you quit or used a suicide squad – cathbad and dreverad will start the battle each time with fresh shields on. In this case plan your battles accordingly so you can either finish the fight in 1 go, or kill cathbad before quitting/sacrificing your team.
At level 40 and up, untill around level 60ish the enemy team composition will be random, you might even see legendary end game heroes, and/or rare heroes you won’t encounter anywhere else anytime soon, on the enemy team, but dont panic, you will find them beatable at this level and in those circumstances.
Starting somewhere around level 60 or 70, the composition of the enemy team will become determined by the teams around you in your arena – this is when you need to start to worry a little. The enemy team will be a team from your arena, but with 1-3 heroes replaced with other random heroes, and with power based on your top 5 heroes power.
If you dont have trouble beating the enemies around you in arena this wont cause you much trouble, but if you dont….. Also unlike arena where any kind of win counts, here you need 3 star wins or you might not have enough heroes to finish tomb.
The randomness of the 1-3 replaced heroes counts a lot too. You might get a copy of a typical barbs team from your arena (denaya, swamp killer, bellara, lucky, magnus) where denaya is replaced with let’s say torak or infernus, and that would be an easy team to beat. But you might get the same barbs team from your arena where let’s say lucky or magnus or either swamp killer or bellara was replaced with 7knives – this would be a tough team to beat.
To have an easier time clearing ToH it helps to have more usable teams than just your main. A back-up team or 2 may save your tomb run. Or having 8-10 heroes you can mix with each other to make different good teams, so if 1 or a couple of your heroes die you can replace them. Healers are very much needed, since enemies will focus them first, it’s good to have back-up healers.
There are a few teams that can clear by themselves and also on auto full 12 stages of ToH on most days. These are wild elves – untill your arena fills with teams with roinar and/or naja (beatable if there is no enemy roinar and you focus naja with targeted auto). Druids – unless enemies are barbs. Archons – best team to auto through tomb is blue artus (it may still die to an enemy naja team or barbs with 7 knives). Dont worry if you dont know what these teams are, by the time you get them you will be all too familiar with them.
Since the game is everchanging and evolving there might be more teams great for tomb, so far these are the ones i am certain of.
High damage teams, great for arena, like dark elves, aoe teams and bomb squads, barbs, in essence teams that rely on burst damage, arent suitable for full clearing of ToH on auto, and might not be able to clear a full tomb run even on manual.
Teams otherwise not good for any kind of timed battle because of time outs might do well in tomb, for example Artus Magnus Sacrif Dreverad Cathbad, and also Cernoul Dreverad Cathbad Maedb Magnus. These are a kind of team that kills very slowly, but are also very hard to kill, unless they face a meta barbs or dark elves team.
It is noteworthy that in early game teams of magnus with lucky and azariel and 2 damage dealers that work well together (for example mizuhiko and taneda, or tiros and roinar/mizuhiko, or rok and any of the previous 3 i mentioned, etc) can auto through all 12 stages of tomb. This lasts untill the arena around you matures and grows and teams of random heroes begin being replaced with meta teams (meta=most effective teams available). Depending on your arena rank and how fast your arena matures around you, this happy time can last a good while, but it won’t last forever.
Tomb of horrors refreshes daily as long as you’ve used up all 12 battles the day before. If you havent, then a refresh button in the lower left of the ToH main screen will become available. By either using the refresh button or finishing the leftover battles from the day before, the tomb refreshes with a new set of 12 battles. If you have leftover battles from the day before and dont refresh or finish them, you will miss out on subsequent tomb runs, you can only store 1 tomb run this way (thanks to the refresh button).
Storing a tomb run this way is usefull during the clan quests which counts ToH battles, you can do 2 full runs on the day the clan quest resets to tomb, and 1 more run after your daily reset and before clan quests reset, bringing you to a total of 36 tomb battles within the 24 hours of the clan quest. You should check with your clan first though, some clans have a policy of 24 battles per clanmate, so all clanmates can claim rank 1 during that quest (since only 360 battles total are needed to max this clan quest).
For daily quest that requires a tomb battle, even a failed battle counts. You can just enter battle and quit to complete your daily quest, while saving the full tomb run for clan quest.
Rewards from ToH include experience points, silver (quite a nice amount which scales up with player level), healing kits (86 from a full 12 stage tomb run), 10 gold and other small amounts of goodies from last stage, and shards from the last 3 stages. There are 1-3 shards for 10th and 11th stage and 1-4 shards for 12th stage (on rare occasion stages 10 or 11 might not give any shards, but that is a rare unlucky occurence). The shards are limited to kobolts, demons, undeads, ra’chne, dwarves (except Trorin). As of a february 2022 update, last stage also always gives 1 Pride shard.
Be the first to comment