What's the fastest way to earn mana?

Question

Title says it all - what's the quickest way to farm mana in dungeon defenders?

Asked by BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft

Answer

The following is the best guide I've found to get to the point where you can reliably farm the higher difficulties. I've moved most of it over to protect against link rot.

Source: Loot Progress path for dummies

Getting the Gear

Suggested heroes: Adept/Apprentice (tower focus), Initiate/monk (tower focus), huntress/ranger (tower focus)

Starting build for each char:

Class: Hero stats - skills - Tower stats - resists

Adept: 0/0/0/0 - 0/0 - 65/120/26/120 - 0/0/0/0

Initiate: 0/0/0/0 - 0/0 - 91/120/120/0 - 0/0/0/0

Huntress: 0/0/0/0 - 0/0 - 120/120/91/0 - 0/0/0/0

Start the map with initiate/monk and play during combat phase with adept/apprentice. Focus on gearing up adept the most, but don't leave initiate left behind too much. OPEN ALL CHEST EVERY TIME.

Do each map as many times as you need to get enough gear to do the next suggested map. Also note, failing for the first time on a map doesn't mean you don't have enough gear, maybe you need to refine your tactic, build order. The original thread contains a diary post showing his gear progression (Here).

Here are some alternate tactics from the same guide.

Map #1: Medium Hall of Court (Pure Strategy or Survival)

GENIE IS REQUIRED. NOT OPTIONAL.

Build from starting mana.

Build before second wave.

Note: Start on wave 8, you finish faster, and if you choose medium PS, then it should be very easy, even naked. If you don't have any gear, just pick up whatever you find during the map. Don't forget to upgrade auras when they are at low health. Some info about Genie. When you are upgrading genie, upgrade the attack!

Map #2: Insane Glitterhelm Caverns (campaign)

Build from starting mana.

Build before second wave.

Optional build with huntress.

The following video is using somewhat modified tactic, because run speed and casting speed is low to play with two chars first wave. The characters are NAKED in this video. (2x speed, so you don't fall asleep)

Note: You can level the genie up very fast here without spending millions of mana on it.

Map #3: Nightmare Endless Spires (campaign)

Note: Chests can contain 90+ upgrade weapons and 60+ upgrade armors even after the first wave. The gear can exceed even ramparts.

Note#2: You can keep farming this in HC NM MM survival mode, and progress towards Map #6 and skip #4,#5.

Map #4: Nightmare Ramparts (campaign)

Start build.

Final build.

Note: The loot of this map doesn't exceed Endless Spires, but wanted to leave it here as a possible alternative.

Map #5: Nightmare Über Lifesteram Hollow MonsterFest

cubicleninja is missing the map, so can't provide layout. Check out the vid!

Note: Can be skipped

Map #6: Nightmare Mistmyre Forest

Idea for this as next step, and tactic by: Mirradin

Video by me:

Part 1

Part 2

As you may have guessed, the best way to get mana is to sell the numerous items that drop during each wave. Remember to pick up items to sell since there is a cap on how many items can exist on a map at a time. This mainly becomes an issue when the waves consist of over 500 monsters.

Once you can farm Nightmare Mistmyre you should be set to get 60+ million mana every 30 minutes. Here is a more detailed guide for farming mana there: How to farm mythic gear & mana (60+mil 30 mins)

Answered by Rapida

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Is there anyway to track which awards have been earned per level?

Question

I'm attempting to finish some of the achievements that require particular awards to be earned on all the levels.

Is there anyway to track how close I am to earning a particular achievement?

Asked by Rapida

Answer

If you click on the crystal in your tavern it will bring up a window showing the statistics for the particular levels. Across the top are the levels of difficulty, by clicking on the name you can see which badges you have earned on each level.

Edit: Aim at the crystal, use the "View your statistics button" F by default.

Answered by Sorean

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How can I tell if an item is better?

Question

I'm currently using an upgraded mini-gun for my ranger. Since I upgraded the gun, I've not had any green thumb items drop.

Is it because the item drops are compared against the upgraded stats or do they compare them at level 1?

So, basically, if something that could be potentially better when upgraded drops does it show up as green?

Asked by Rapida

Answer

The item drops are indeed compared to your upgraded stats. Unfortunately, this makes it so if you're carrying an upgraded gun, only the stuff that's better than the upgraded version will show up as green. This makes it so you have to run around and manually check stuff, which can be quite tedious.

Answered by FAE

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What damage type is a Kobold's explosion?

Question

I've built an Apprentice character that only has about 500 HP and Kobolds in the later waves of challenges have started to one shot my character. This makes it fairly difficult to repair towers once I get behind.

So, I'm curious if Kobold explosions are a specific damage type, like fire, so I could build up some resistances against them so they don't destroy my poor towers only Apprentice build.

Asked by Klokworkk

Answer

The damage type is fire. I would, however, focus more on building so that they won't ever hit you or your crystal, seeing as they get pretty powerful.

Source for damage type: http://dungeondefenders.wikia.com/wiki/Kobold

Answered by Mr. November

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Does the Genie put mana in the bank?

Question

If I've capped my personal mana pool does the Genie put any earned mana into the mana bank? I'm wondering if the Genie's passive is going to waste when I'm capped out.

Asked by Rapida

Answer

No, your Genie unfortunately does not put extra mana into the bank. When you're capped out, your mana does indeed go to waste.

You can use high level Genies on a character with high DPS to max out towers within 2-3 waves. Try to upgrade as often as possible or use your extra mana to power sustained abilities like Monk aura toggles, Squire buffs, etc., though the mana costs of these skills do rise the longer you keep them on, so this is not permanently sustainable.

You can verify this by looking in the bottom right corner of your screen. Whenever you earn mana that goes towards your banked mana (like at the end of waves for items on the ground, at the end of maps, etc.), you'll see your mana amount change. This doesn't occur during Genie use.

Answered by FAE

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What do I do with these eggs?

Question

What do I do with the eggs that I've been finding in Dungeon Defenders? I've got a couple of different sizes, but I can't seem to upgrade them or anything.

Do they hatch into something or are they used to sell for mana?

Asked by Rapida

Answer

Collecting a ​certain number of a particular type of eggs awards players with various rewards. Players must return to their own tavern to unlock their rewards. All eggs are consumed in the unlocking process.

24 Small Eggs - Squire Bunny Costume
36 Humongous Eggs - Mega Chicken pet 

It has been confirmed that there is no current use for the Large, Huge and Gigantic eggs other than their sale for mana. Source

Answered by cedi

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Are enemy spawns in Dungeon Defenders deterministic?

Question

As I'm getting into some of the higher levels (albeit on lower difficulties), I notice that sometimes a path that is open is never followed, due to the way enemies spawned in that wave. This led me to question: are the spawns and approach routes deterministic? Knowing this would allow me to never block certain routes, because I'd know enemies would never approach that way. I'd also be able to develop a circuit of tower repairs if I knew enemies always attacked from one direction first, then the opposite - and so on.

Asked by EBongo

Answer

As far as I've seen for the general case, yes, pathing seems to be generally pre-determined. The only exception that I've seen is when enemies divert to attack players.

In my experience, I've yet to see main paths not be used except when I killed every enemy intent on that path before it could take that path. The thing to note is that the pathing is calculated only to the targets available and generally tries to find the nearest targets to the point of entry. Some enemies will go a little farther if there are multiple targets in range, but I've never seen one cross the entire map to get to a target when another target was nearer. This means that paths between an entry and a target that is quite far does not need the defenses as the enemies won't go that way when there are nearer targets. The problem is that the targets themselves are not always deterministic as in the case of the Christmas level where the targets are selected at random from the pool of targets.

From what I've seen, shields and blockers are not to divert the enemy, but to protect towers and draw the enemy agro towards them. They act more to delay the enemy, possibly exposing them to more damage, than they do as roadblocks.

I find effective strategies to employ are:

• Look for choke points and bottlenecks where you can use fewer towers to greater effect.
• Put towers near entry points to kill enemies early, but out of the enemy path if you can so as to avoid the need to repair. Faster kills = higher score. For DPS builds, you may need to use your towers to draw agro while you navigate the map so this doesn't always work.

Answered by skovacs1

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Is there any advantage to upgrading elemental damage when normal damage has a higher increase?

Question

At the moment, I'm getting staffs with stats like 100 normal damage and 50 elemental damage. When upgrading, I normally get a choice between adding on 9-10 elemental damage or 10-12 normal damage. Is there any reason to ever go for elemental damage in this situation? Does it have a higher multiplier later on? Or is it just for weapons which start out with higher elemental damage?

Asked by Macha

Answer

Elemental and Normal damage all scale up based upon the values they are currently at which is why you see the variance. If you have a higher base damage than elemental damage then you will see the base damage initially getting more bang for your buck so to speak.

However.. Elemental Damage is not capped at the same point-per-upgrade level that Normal damage is. This makes elemental damage able to scale up to larger amounts faster. This is ofcourse tempered completely by the fact that there are going to be quite a few creatures that your elemental damage will have no affect upon.

A nice tool to help you see what affects you will have upon leveling an item can be found here. The tool does appear to see regular updates.

Answered by James

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Where is all the mana going?

Question

I'm wondering where do Mana that falls into bottomless pits goes. Is it lost forever? Is it going into my bank? What happens to it? Should I care of it falling down the pit or not?

Also, Mana despawns after a while... is the same thing happening to that mana?

Asked by Fredy31

Answer

While it's possible for mana to despawn (if there's too much of it around, for instance), I believe that mana that ends up in inaccessible areas of the map would be considered "on the ground" and split between player banks at the start of the next phase:

Any mana crystals on the ground at the beginning of a Combat Phase or at the end of a mission will be split among players and deposited directly into their banks.

This is quoted from the Dungeon Defenders Wikia entry for Mana, although I believe it's also a loading screen tip.

EDIT: And to confirm, a passage later in the page answers the second question:

When the limit on the number of mana crystals on the map is reached, older crystals will despawn to make room for new ones. This limit is 30 on mobile versions. Because the limit is based on quantity instead of value, it is possible for older, more valuable crystals to be replaced by newer, less valuable ones. Crystals that despawn are lost and are not deposited into the bank.

Answered by agent86

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Increase Hero Damage or Weapon Damage?

Question

So common sense would tell me that Hero Damage would increase my damage more then basic Weapon Damage can i get some light shed on this?

Asked by Paralytic

Answer

TLDR: Always boost the weapon damage over hero damage when upgrading.

Here is the damage formula for DD:

Median Damage = ( ln( x + 20 ) * 0.75 − 1.2 ) * y
x = hero damage stat
y = weapon damage multiplier
Minimum damage = 0.84*median
Maximum damage = 1.17*median

From this formula, you can see that there is a decreasing gain rate (due to the natural log) per point you put into hero attack.

Some sample values of % damage gains for some values of x:

• 1-2 results in 3.5% increased damage
• 40-41 results in 1.25% increased damage
• 99-100 results in 0.6276% increased damage

So the question you should ask yourself is, will a single point of hero damage give me a bigger boost than a single upgrade of weapon damage? (The answer is almost always no).

For instance, even if your weapon damage caps out at an upgrade of 50 damage (weapon upgrade cap is a factor of base weapon damage, just using 50 as an example), your base weapon damage would have to be over 4000 in order to make it worth putting 1 point into hero damage to push your stat from 40-41. Since most heros who focus on damage already have some super high hero damage stats, your weapon damage would have to be insanely high to even consider it.

Using the 50 upgrade cap as an example again, if your hero has a hero damage stat of 150, your weapon would have to do more than 11233 damage before you should put 1 point into the hero damage stat.

Answered by yx.

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Does hero casting rate increase in-combat summoning/repairing?

Question

I started playing Dungeon Defenders recently having a lot of fun with it, still trying to figure out what stats affect what. Does increasing my hero cast rate increase how fast I can summon/repair towers during the combat phase?

Asked by Paralytic

Answer

Yes, it increases your summoning and repairing speed in combat, but you get an extra modifier when in build phase.

From the Dungeon defender wiki about hero casting rate:

The Hero Casting Rate stat determines how fast the hero will heal itself, cast, upgrade and repair defenses.

• Having a Hero Casting Rate stat < 0 (negative) will be the same as if it was zero.
• In the Build Phase of a wave, a hero's casting rate is always significantly faster than in the Combat Phase, while still determined by Hero Casting Rate stat.

Like most other stats it has diminishing return, graph from the Stat Progression Graph wiki page:

While leveling it could be a good idea to place some points in hero casting speed, but once you get a good godly set or better gear you should get plenty of points in hero casting speed from items so you can place your points in other stats.

Answered by Blem

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Why do I get zero damage on enemies at the gates, but only sometimes?

Question

I am playing huntress, and probably like most I often camp one of the gates at the beginning of a wave. I've notices that I can shoot into the gate and hit enemies as the come out. Sometimes this does zero damage, and other times it does not. Why does this happen?

Asked by EBongo

Answer

There is a zone of invincibility around the spawning areas to prevent towers blocking spawns completely and killing them easily.

However, If the enemy is a ranged unit, then you can damage them even though they are in the zone of invincibility. This is to prevent ranged units from getting stuck inside and constantly trying to attack you through a wall and thus preventing the map from being finished.

Answered by yx.

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What causes experience discrepency between members of the same party in Dungeon Defenders?

Question

I have started a new hero in the Ranked mode of Dungeon Defenders, along with my brother. Both heroes have started at 0 XP, and have only been played at the same time. Yet up until level 20, I was 5k XP behind, and since then, my character has been steadily going ahead, to the point that I am now 20K XP ahead.

Since we've only compared experience every few level ups, we can't tell which match these differences occured in.

According to this question and the wiki, experience should be shared evenly among all party members, so I don't know what has caused this.

If it helps, his character is a squire, and mine is an apprentice.

Asked by Macha

Answer

There are various Awards that you can earn at the end of a map which can cause this discrepancy. Some of them are flat bonuses, like Knight and Lord, but others, like Invincible (for not taking any damage after the first wave) and Gunslinger (only using weapons and abilities after the first wave) are multipliers (1.2x for those 2 in particular, last time I knew).

For instance, as I was leveling my DPS Huntress, I was able to keep up in experience levels (and sometimes, even outlevel) my other 3 companions because I consistently received the Gunslinger award, giving me 1.2x to my score.

If your Apprentice is using only towers, whereas he is using a mix of towers and character DPS, you may be getting the Master Strategist (used only defenses to harm all enemies after the first wave), which is another 1.2x multiplier.

Answered by FAE

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When is it better to build new towers rather than upgrade?

Question

I'm playing the Apprentice, and I often am unsure how I should invest my mana during the build phase. The cost of creating new towers (40 mana in the case of Magic Missile) seems to be significantly less than the cost of upgrading an existing one (100 for the first level, and 200 for the second, for instance)

Should I focus on building new towers until I've maxed out my total Defense Units? Would 2 towers in close proximity do more damage than one upgraded tower in a single area?

Or will my towers grow significantly more powerful if I upgrade them to the second level at a cost of 100 Mana?

Asked by agent86

Answer

In general you will want to max out your Defense Units. This will actually lead to a pretty good award boosting your XP gains by quite a bit if you can keep the Defense Units maxed out for the entire round with out losing one.

Once that has been taken care of you can start to upgrade. Focus on key choke points and consider upgrading vs repair when appropriate (remember you will suck in any size mana gem around you for being even 1 point below max so that repair can end up being very costly). Also of note, is that while the damage bonus to upgraded turrets is nice you will often find yourself upgrading them more because of their durability. Do not get me wrong, the damage increase is very nice, but knight's defense having more health, the monk auras longer life and the huntress traps more trigger counts are also very key reasons to upgrade them, so they can last with out you being there.

Lastly, as yx. mentions is the blocking of enemies. Some turrets (ie knights) do this better than others (monks/huntress). Controlling the flow of the enemies is also often very key so the quantity of the towers can be more important than the damage they do as well.

Answered by James

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What does “forged by” or “raised by” mean?

Question

On all of the items I've found, there's a blank marked "Forged By" which is filled with "Unknown." I've noticed pets for sale from the tavern owner, and these have a similar "Raised By" attribute, which is so far "Unknown" on every pet I've seen.

What does it matter who forged/raised this item? Can I forge/raise items myself?

Asked by agent86

Answer

When you raise an item's or pet's level up to the maximum, you get your name tagged onto the item, marking that you made the choices in leveling its attributes. It's blank until you max level the item or pet.

Answered by James

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Can mana be recovered into your personal pool, once its in the bank?

Question

I can see when I enter the bank that I can press right trigger to add mana in my personal supply to the bank, and I can then later use it on weapons. I have plenty of banked mana now, is there any way to pull it back into my personal supply (for building towers during a wave when I run out?)

Asked by EBongo

Answer

No, once the mana has been stored it can't be pulled out to be used as building.

Answered by yx.

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Achievements not registering in Steam

Question

I'm playing some Dungeons Defenders solo and my acheivements pop in game, but when I go to my steam profile, everything is still locked.

Do I have to play multiplayer for steam acheivements or did I hit a bug?

Asked by Fredy31

Answer

To unlock achievements on steam you need to play online on Trendynet, as long as it is on Trendynet it does not matter if you are alone or with other people. There is also a small deley from unlocking them in game till they show up on steam.

Answered by Blem

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Good ways to defend against Wyverns

Question

I'm at the first mission where there's Wyverns and I'm getting my ass handed to me.

How do I effectively defend myself against them?

I am an apprentice.

Asked by Fredy31

Answer

As an apprentice, magic missle towers will do the trick for you. You just need to place them in a spot where they will focus on the wyvers and you'll be fine. If it is the map that I'm thinking of, the one where there are 3 doors on each wall away from the crystal, place the Magic Missle towers on the diagonal walkway just above the lava.

Answered by Sorean

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What affects Magic Blockade?

Question

Does stats other than tower health affect the Apprentice/Adept Magic Blockade?

Does Apprentice/Huntress/Monk Guardians have any effect on Magic Blockade?

Asked by Blem

Answer

As the blockade has no attack, no buffs to attack damage, range, speed, or area of effect would matter (0 * anything is still 0 after all).

The Squire Guardian pet would decrease the damage it takes from enemy attacks, up to 16% for a fully boosted guardian. There are also a number of pets that would repair the blockade; imp, engineer, mephisto, cain, etc.

Answered by Kexlox

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Flaming Ulitmate Sword

Question

I played with a Monk on xbox live that was doing 1.3Million dps with his giant flaming sword at level 12.

I am guessing this sword is the result of some quest or premium. The sword essentially maxed out his stats (he did not gain anything by increasing them more with other items) and one slash killed most monsters we faced.

Anyone know what it is or could be?

Asked by Chad

Answer

Mordenkainen's Magical Flaming Dragons is the sword title I believe you are looking for.

It is obtained via the monsterfest challenge on easy/med.

Answered by Foxtrot

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