Xoggoth Strategy

DRAFT in progress

Xoggoth Strategy

At the end of each world, each alliance fights a series of three bosses that squat on the alliance's Altar of Tears. The first two are essentially training wheels - albeit with significant rewards - but the third one, Xoggoth, determines the winner of the world; the alliance that scores the most damage on Xoggoth wins.

This article discusses strategy for beating up Xoggoth. The best players start thinking about this very early on in the world, particularly when it comes to thinking about what to buy in event shops, but it becomes really important in the last 30-40 days when your decisions about what to buy, what to upgrade and so on should be informed by "how am I going to do the most damage to Xoggoth".

How Xoggoth Works

Xoggoth is a single big monster. It has no stats, but changes its resistance and damage through the fight based on the amount of damage you've done to it. In the first round, it has no resistance and does almost no damage. By the time you reach 300M damage, however, 90% of all damage dealt is ignored, and it's dealing very significant damage to your army each round.

Xoggoth's resistance scales per player based on the amount of damage that player has done to Xoggoth. So even though all alliance members fight Xoggoth at once, in terms of damage, each player's attack and defense is calculated separately based on that player's own damage total. This is unlike normal mass attacks, where the whole alliance army is considered as a single "side".

Xoggoth's damage also scales per player with damage dealt, but importantly, Xoggoth deals damage *per unit of upkeep in the attacking army*. So if you have dealt 100M damage to Xoggoth and send 10 axe warriors against him, your army will take exactly twice as much damage as if you'd sent 20 axe warriors (having dealt 100M damage previously). In other words, sending more troops means Xoggoth deals more damage to them.

Xoggoth's damage will be a random type (fire, cold or normal), just like Keepers and Keeperlings. The type will be randomly selected each round.

Basic Principles of Xoggoth

Given Xoggoth's damage scales with your army size, does it matter how many troops you send? Is having a high max upkeep a good thing? The answer is a resounding YES. This is because you will deal more damage per round, so you will get to the same damage total in fewer rounds - and the damage Xoggoth deals in later rounds will be higher because of the damage you did in earlier rounds. So you take (a little) less damage on your army for the same damage to Xoggoth if you can do it in fewer rounds.

Early on, therefore, the goal is to do as much damage as possible. Later on, once its resistance and damage get higher, it becomes a war of attrition where you need to keep churning troops into the maw, each one of which is doing relatively little damage.

Success therefore means: - starting with as big an army as possible - having high damage, resistance, regeneration and HP stats (upgrades on your units, hero skills and equipment) - being able to rebuild your troops quickly - being able to keep rebuilding and attacking for 3 days straight.

So for example while warrior skills help you with combat skills and training speed, mage skills can help you up magic up resources faster for rebuilding, while builder skills give you a larger army and better resource production (as well as getting your troop buildings upgraded more to build faster).

Army/Troop selection for Xoggoth

Each race has many different troops available to them, and various events give additional troop type options. This section attempts to compare them against each other.

Since there are many stats and abilities involved, I have tried to keep this very simple.

• I have assumed that you will get to 50% regeneration bonus (regeneration is capped at 50%). So the troop regeneration value does not matter. If you don't have 50%, then troops that are below the 50% cap will be less useful to you later in the fight.
• I have presented all stats per unit of upkeep (e.g. an archer is 1 upkeep, a grunt is 3 - so this way we compare 1 grunt with 3 archers, normalising for army capacity and Xoggoth's unique attack). This includes build speed, where the speeds compared are "speed to produce X units of upkeep" not X troops.
• I have produced a single defense score as HP plus one third of resistance, since each resistance will only work on 1/3 of attacks. A 2 upkeep unit with 50 HP and 30 fire Resistance would get a defense score of (50 + 30/10)/2 = 30.
• I have shown two values for each racial troop; its base value and its value with all upgrades (10 levels). Completing the Fighter tree and becoming a Guardian both increase troop upgrades by a further level, raising the numbers slightly (typically, +1 to each ranking for each level).

The guidance here is simple - early on (when you start the boss fight), you want troops with a high Attack rating. When you're rebuilding, you will care more about the Defense rating - i.e. how survivable the troop is. (But you will care most about build speed - where cheaper troops build faster - trying to get as many units of attack & defense per unit build time).

During the fight you should be aiming to rebuild with all your barracks buildings at once.

Elf troops
	Base Values		Fully Upgraded
Name	Attack	Defense	Attack	Defense	Build Speed
Archer	16	39	26	50	100%
Firefly	17	47	23	59	96%
Archdruid	16	57	24	76	52%
Griffin Rider	20	55	26	70	46%
Ent	13	77	18	108	33%
Almus	19	59	25	86	29%

This table shows that Archers and Griffin riders pack the most punch, closely followed by Almus. Almus has much better defense than either, however, and that's without factoring in its Blessed Vitality ability for +20% defense to your whole army.

Given these numbers, it would make sense to have an army primarily composed of Almus for the initial attack.

For rebuilds, Elves have to choose between Archer and Griffin Rider, and Archdruid and Almus.

• Griffin Rider has better defense, but Archers build twice as fast. Archers are therefore the best choice.
• Almus has slightly better stats than Archdruid, but again, Archdruid builds much faster, so Archdruid is correct for rebuilding.

Fireflies are cheap and effective - a little shy on damage compared to archers but more durable and build nearly as fast. They will be very valuable during rebuilds. Ents will likely have the least impact on the boss fight for you, but their very high defense offsets their slow build speed to some extent and means there will be plenty around in the later stages of day 3.

Orc troops
	Base Values		Fully Upgraded
Name	Attack	Defense	Attack	Defense	Build Speed
Grunt	12	48	18	66	100%
Wolf Rider	16	52	21	82	96%
Ice Fiend	15	48	15	86	52%
Warlock	19	51	27	75	46%
Arachnid	22	50	29	72	33%
Behemoth	17	71	25	80	29%

Warlocks and Arachnids get the highest damage scores, even before factoring in a Warlock's Battle Rage ability for +15% to the attack of your army. They make good shock troops for the first attack.

For rebuilds, the choices Orcs have to make are between Grunt and Wolf Rider, and Arachnid and Behemoth.

• Wolf Riders a similar build time and better stats, so are the better choice over Grunts.
• Arachnid and Behemoth are pretty similar in stats, but the build time of the Arachnid makes it the superior choice.

Ice Fiends, due to the lack of upgraded attack, are going to contribute relatively little to the boss fight, but they're tough and will keep going to the end. Warlocks will continue to be useful for boosting damage, and are hardy enough to survive better than (say) the Archers and Fireflies that Elven players will be churning out.