Anti-Zombie Strategies

[Shadowdrake]

What's your current strategy in the new zombopocalypse event? Will you farm experience to unlock everything quickly or see how far you can go with your low-level tries?

 

Here's all the unlocked info for the dragon towers:

Spoiler

Green Dragon

HP: 8 · Cooldown: 1 round · Cost: 1

Slams the ground, damaging zombies in all adjacent tiles.

 

Red Dragon

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 1 round · Cost: 1

Attacks zombies in a line, two tiles in front of it.

 

Dark Green Dragon

HP: 5 · Cooldown: 2 rounds · Cost: 1

Prevents adjacent zombies from moving. While on cooldown, attacks immobilized zombies and cannot be attacked.

 

Pink Dragon

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 2 rounds · Cost: 2

Charms zombies in a two-tile radius, dealing damage after the next turn.

 

Shallow Water Dragon

HP: 1 · Cost: 2

Grants bonus XP if still alive when your base is destroyed.

 

White Dragon - Level 10

HP: 2 · Cooldown: 1 round · Cost: 2

Heals surrounding dragons.

 

Magi Dragon - Level 20

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 2 rounds · Cost: 2

Teleports nearby zombies back to the end of the board.

 

Purple Dragon - Level 25

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 3 rounds · Cost: 3

Reduces the cooldown of all adjacent towers.

 

Vampire Dragon - Level 30

HP: 3 · Cost: 1

Moves to attack nearby zombies. Defeated zombies may return as vampires.

 

Bolt Dragon - Level 35

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 3 rounds · Cost: 2*

Stuns zombies in a line, four tiles in front of it.

*In-game display says 1, but actually is meant to cost 2

 

Aeon Dragon - Level 40

HP: 3 · Cooldown: 3 rounds · Cost: 2

Gives your dragons insight into the future, allowing them to attack before zombies.

 

Soulpeace Dragon - Level 40

HP: 1 · Cooldown: 10 rounds · Cost: 4

Destroys all zombies on the board once there are more than ten. Directly targeted by zombies.

 

Ice Dragon - Level 50

HP: 5 · Cooldown: 1 round · Cost: 2

Slows zombies in a three tile radius.

 

Magma Dragon - Level 50

HP: 6 · Cooldown: 1 round · Cost: 2

Attacks zombies in a 2x3 rectangle.

 

Thunder Dragon - Level 50

HP: 2 · Cooldown: 2 rounds · Cost: 2

Calls a bolt of electricity onto a random zombie, damaging adjacent zombies as well.

 

Zombie - Enemy

HP: 1 · Cooldown: None

Marches forward, attacking a non-zombie tower in an adjacent tile. Can do 2 damage on later rounds.

 

 

 

Super Secret spoiler info

Spoiler

Guardian of Nature - Randomly (?) summoned by Ice/Magma/Thunder towers. Only needs one type to be summoned.

HP: Unknown · Cooldown: 2 rounds (?)

Releases a wave of energy, doing 2 damage to zombies in an unknown size area. Leaves after some rounds and can return later.

 

 

 

Ranges of damaging towers:

 

 

 

Example set-up for Exp farming:

 

 

For more information, visit the wiki: https://dragcave.fandom.com/wiki/Rise_of_the_Zombies

Edited October 29, 2022 by Shadowdrake

[Astreya]

I went for a "Polish defence" (flag colours of Poland XD), and so far it looks pretty good:

[Kegluneq]

1 hour ago, Astreya said:

I went for a "Polish defence" (flag colours of Poland XD), and so far it looks pretty good:

I'm wondering if a White Dragon is able to heal another White Dragon, either by placing them next to each other, like in your fort, or one in front of the other. But it seems those Red Dragons are well protected. 

 

Is it actually possible to farm XP, unlocking everything quickly? How? 

[Shadowdrake]

10 minutes ago, Kegluneq said:

Is it actually possible to farm XP, unlocking everything quickly? How? 

 

Yes! Since you only get experience if your base is destroyed, a good strategy is to put shallow waters on the sides of the map with a green shielding them, and leaving a path open directly to the tower. This lets you get a lot of exp in about an hour when it would normally take several hours to get the same without the bonus.

 

Here's an example: 

[Astreya]

21 minutes ago, Kegluneq said:

I'm wondering if a White Dragon is able to heal another White Dragon, either by placing them next to each other, like in your fort, or one in front of the other. But it seems those Red Dragons are well protected.

I'm currently at Round 40 with no dragon destroyed yet. It appears as if the Reds are able to keep the Zombies in check and don't let anything through to the Whites so none of them got attacked so far and the Whites always manage to heal the Reds as soon as they got attacked.

I'm curious how things will look when more Zombies appear in a round, but as the Reds scorch two fields before them, it will probably take a while longer until the Zombies will manage to breach through.

[Crystalluna]

Got round 94 last time, let's see how this next try goes! I've got a row of alternating reds and greens, a row of whites behind them, and a few magis beside the tower.

 

I do wish there was a way to look back through the process of the battle, or the dragons were numbered (Red Dragon #1, Red Dragon #2 etc.), to make it easier to understand what's going on.

[Fly-by-Night]

I just like my board colourful. 😂 It may not be the best strategy, but it could be worse!

[Astreya]

I'm at Round 93 by now, and the defence is still going strong:

[Fly-by-Night]

I'm at 51, but the "swarms" don't look too swarmy.

[Iside]

First line: green dragons plus 2 vampires (especially because I wanted to see how they work)

Second line: whites to heal first line (plus 1 red because didn't have enought points)

Third line: Two whites and three greens guarding the tower

 

I'm starting to think it's invicible 😱

Next time I'l try something much weaker with some shallow water to gain XP instead

[Kegluneq]

@Astreya I actually made a similar lineup of dragons just before I discovered this topic and you're right, this strategy works and seems to hold zombies for a really long time. A few minutes ago I just  couple of screenshots and for the first time I manage to reach round 78 lol, this the before and after scenario xD

https://postimg.cc/k229HJx8

 

https://postimg.cc/LJW44YHN

 

@Shadowdrake thanks for the tip! According to the screenshots I posted above I tried my luck with a couple of Magis in the corners of the board and went to sleep and then found out I jumped from level 27 to level 34 lol. This time I'll definitely go for something like I see in that example. Ir seems no matter the position of the defenses the zombies tend to attack the main tower ignoring corners most of the time. 

[Fly-by-Night]

For those who are interested: My colourful lines were overrun in round 94.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Fly-by-Night

[Astreya]

So I finally got overrun at Round 143 (!).  The ordeal yielded 143 XP (does one get one XP per round as default?) and now I'm at level 37. I'm curious how many levels one can achieve.

[eleutheria]

I've been going with an arrow shaped green-and-white formation!

 

 

so far i've learned that putting greens on the frontlines with a great idea, and that putting reds on the frontlines is not especially useful without a lot of backup

Edited October 26, 2019 by eleutheria

[Keileon]

Some strategies of mine, as well as a fairly popular build on Discord.

 

KEY
 

Spoiler

G - Green
W - White
M - Magi
P - Purple
S - Soulpeace
V - Vine
B - Base
x - Empty

 

Ideal for lower levels where the player has little room; 110-120 rounds
G x B x G
G W W W G
x G G G x

Ideal for max level
x S P B P S x
W W W W W W W
V V V V V V V

Ideal for overnight where the player can't track the board; 144 rounds
x x P B P x x
M W W W W W M
G G G G G G G
x x x G x x x

 

[eleutheria]

Ooo. Keileon, am I right in thinking that, in the second case, the double line of vines and white results in a wall of paralyzed zombies in front of the vines, preventing the unparalyzed zombies from getting through???

[Fuzzbucket]

Strategy? Ha. My strategy so far is to try and get anything to stay on the board. I can't wait till I'm off mobile in a couple of days!

[Shadowdrake]

A feature/problem with the whites and vines strategy is that it's very likely to go on for an indefinite loop; the vines hiding and being healed means that zombies might not be able to do enough damage in one turn to kill them, possibly impossible with multiple whites for each vine. Even if there are no damaging dragons behind the vine/white wall, the zombies just get stuck there and build up to cover the whole map because they can't just walk past the vines either. Obviously this means you can last forever, "winning" an unwinnable game, but this also means that if you're still trying to level up it's a bad idea because starting over gives you no experience, and a little boring if you want to see if you can actually survive with strategy. You can put anything you want behind the vines/whites wall; I recommend including a set or two of trio statues  

 

Update: zombies can apparently do 2 damage on later rounds, which may be strong enough to break the vine/white lines.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Shadowdrake

[eleutheria]

haha, fair enough! "not losing" isn't exactly the same thing as winning

 

I think i'm going to try this strategy next -- i'll let y'all know how it goes!

 

Edit: Update, it died at round 104 -- so, does fine until the damage gets increased at round 100, at which point it goes down HARD

Edited October 27, 2019 by eleutheria

[Shadowdrake]

Updated update: zombies will apparently hit for 2 damage at round 100+, and vines have been upgraded to have 5 health and do damage to immobilized zombies while on cooldown.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Shadowdrake

[Kamoodle]

So far I've been following Shadowdrake's layout example to help farm experience, with the addition of some healers and vine dragons. I was not expecting this layout to last as long as it should've; even the Magi hasn't done anything yet.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Kamoodle

[Shadowdrake]

51 minutes ago, Kamoodle said:

So far I've been following Shadowdrake's layout example to help farm experience, with the addition of some healers and vine dragons. I was not expecting this layout to last as long as it should've; even the Magi hasn't done anything yet.

The vines dragon are probably immobilizing and then killing any zombies getting too close; the magi might do the same. Unfortunately this is somewhat counter to the goal of getting them to kill the tower so I would advise changing those vines to reds instead in the next attempt, if you want to protect the shallow waters but leave the tower path open.

Edited October 27, 2019 by Shadowdrake

[Crystalluna]

1 hour ago, Kamoodle said:

So far I've been following Shadowdrake's layout example to help farm experience, with the addition of some healers and vine dragons. I was not expecting this layout to last as long as it should've; even the Magi hasn't done anything yet.

 

Here's the layout I've been using for XP farming. It's almost over in a dozen rounds, and I've got a lot of shallow waters.

[Kamoodle]

14 minutes ago, Shadowdrake said:

The vines dragon are probably immobilizing and then killing any zombies getting too close; the magi might do the same. Unfortunately this is somewhat counter to the goal of getting them to kill the tower so I would advise changing those vines to reds instead in the next attempt, if you want to protect the shallow waters but leave the tower path open.

 

Instead it ended up being more of another endurance experiment. I'll keep going until I do eventually lose to see how far I'll prevail.

 

At least the zombies don't stack on top of each other, which was something else I feared from playing Plants vs. Zombies. No pumpkin dragons to hurl pumpkins at these zombies though.

[Crystalluna]

And now it's time for experiments, let's see how long this setup lasts!