World 5: Tartarus

Duskvine living plant creatures, Dark Elves of the Myrk, and being of Living Lava now rule these underground tunnels. Help the Dwarves reclaim their lost kingdom under the mountain

To unlock this world, you first need to finish World 4 campaign. Then you have four options of unlocking this world:

1. Hero awakening ranks sum up to 22.
2. Own 12 heroes.
3. Spend 150 Tournament Coins.
4. Get it using real money (at the moment 4$).

Tips for unlocking HERE.

**Maps:** W5 map pictures are found here

## Campaign Progress Unlocks

There are 40 campaign levels in this world; this makes a maximum of 120 stars.

* Level 130 unlocks Leif to be bought and W5 Endless mode
* Level 140 unlocks Caldera to be bought
* Level 160 unlocks World 6 to be bought or opened.

## Towers

For more detailed stats on the towers, upgrades, build cost, etc. please refer to this spreadsheet, or look at this Reddit post for simplified (but not 100% accurate) description.

### Dwarf Warrior Tower

 A Brave and Sturdy Warrior of the Dwarves ready to defend. Melee fighter who Levels Up in Power as he defeats enemies.

Enhancements:

* **Whirlwind** - 1x - A mighty spin of the sword cuts enemies in all directions around the Warrior.
* **Invigorate** - 3x - When striking an enemy, some health is returned to the Warrior

Upgrades:

* 6 stars - Warrior's Spirit - When close to death the Warrior will experience a burst of strenght.
* 8 stars - Intense Training - The warrior will gain more experience and grow in strenght faster.
* 10 stars - Regeneration - When not engaged in combat the warrioir regains his strength.

Anti-air?: ground only (whirlwind can damage air units but only cast when ground units in melee range)

*Tips: Generally bad, overpriced tower. Terrible at stoping enemies and probably worst troop tower in game, yet you just have to use it sometimes anyway (due to some enemies present). 1) **No upgrade**, generally best path is to ignore all enhancements and once build don't upgrade it, rather save gold for other tower upgrades. 2) **whirlwind + one invogorate** depending on heroes you use leveling-up is worth when extra tanking is needed mainly boss lvls 150 and 160 (never rush upgrades other towers should be priority, only upgrade right after units die to ressurect it).*

* *Idea behind tower is good and if you manage to level it up during match it's pretty great in campaign mode. But in reality it takes forever to level it up, basically only way to level it is to move bunch of units into one spot (so if there are more enemies coming they don't run through while your one dwarf is busy dying to two units), and don´t put any other tower or hero near so those dwarfs get killing blows, since they only get experience from their own kill strikes...) if you set it up this way you might get one or two dwarfs to max rank just by the time you about to finish match... utterly idiotic system...*

### Blunderbuss Tower

 A Dwarf with a Blunderbuss blasts enemies from range. Effective against ground and air targets.

Enhancements:

* **Precision Aim** - 1x - An uncharacteristically focused shot with improved damage against blind enemies.
* **Sniper** - 3x - A long range, high damage shot, which leaves the enemy vulnerable

Upgrades:

* 6 stars - Flak Burst - An aerial burst that hits all flying enemies in an area.
* 8 stars - Armor Piercing - An attack that breaks ground based enemies' armor
* 10 stars - More Powder - The blunderbuss is stuffed with more powder for a stronger shot.

Anti-air?: 2 attack type: 1) ground only - single target + armor break from Armor Piercing + 2) air only - aoe unlocked with Flak Burst (same dmg no Armor Piercing). 3) Precision Aim - target ground only, but aoe damage both ground and air. 4) Sniper - ground and air

*Tips: Generally both enhancements are worth the gold. 1) **Precision Aim** except for Helios and Sethos (And Sethos' R6 Sandstorm) there is no hero who can blind enemies, so this is only ever worth if you use one or both, or if you first build Mushroom tower with **spores** enhancements nearby. If you do it's good source of damage. If you don't blind enemies it's waste of gold. 2) **Sniper** always upgrade atleast once, 2nd and 3rd upgrade is generally worth too.*

### Geargrinder Tower

 A mechanical flying marvel made by Gnome Engineers. This flying attack platform is an effective damage dealer.

Enhancements:

* **Revealing Flare** - 1x - A flare that reveals all cloaked enemies
* **Bombing Run** - 3x - Bombs Away! Damages enemies in an area

Upgrades:

* 6 stars - Extended Range - A larger fuel tank allows a wider operational range.
* 8 stars - Rocket Attack - A super rocket deals damage to an area on the ground.
* 10 stars - Concussion Missiles - Standard mini-missile attacks now have a chance to stun.

Anti-air?: ground and air (except Bombing Run target and damage ground only)

*Tips: always worth building, but upgrades are generally situational. 1) **No upgrade** due to high gold cost somewhat low impact upgrades can be ignored based on what heroes you use (if you don't need to reveal cloacked enemies), without upgrades mainly used for anti-air stun (from 10 star upgrade - Concussion Missiles). 2) **Revealing Flare** only worth to reveal Myrk Archers, always on your one Helicopter moved ahead of chokepoint (where will Myrk Archers concentrate to attack from range), as it will reveal enemies around helicopter. 3) **Bombing Run** only worth upgrading once to gain second aoe effect (tower's third way to reveal cloacked units). Additional upgrades can in theory help reveal some units as you gain 2nd and third aoe bomb target. But 2nd and 3rd upgrade is mostly just very overpriced extra damage.*

### Gloom Shroom

 A Poisonous Mushroom with a mind of its own. Releases poisons that damage enemies within an Area of Effect.

Enhancements:

* **Spores** - 1x - Spores that cause blindness to enemies
* **Mitosis** - 3x - Fungus multiplies on an enemy paralyzing it and causing damage over time

Upgrades:

* 6 stars - Lingering Poison - Poisonous spores linger longer and deal damage over time.
* 8 stars - Rapid Growth - Attack range increased.
* 10 stars - Positive Reinforcement - This special gas strengthens allies.

Anti-air?: ground and air (base attacks only trigger when ground enemy in range but affect air units too).

*Tips: both enhancements are almost always worth it. 1) **Spores** generally worth to reduce damage to your units and to prime for Blunderbuss' Precision Aim aoe. 2) **Mitosis** always worth rushing one upgrade. 2nd and 3rd are generally worth (to reduce CD and get CC faster), but only after you build up everything else you need.*

## Enemies

All enemies (including bosses) along with their stats, skills, damage, etc. are listed here in spreadsheet.

For enemy kill counts toward Achievements and Daily Missions visit W5 enemies HERE.

**tips and comentary:**

* Myrks (due to cloak) mainly Myrk Archers can be problematic. Luckily there are many tools to deal with them, mainly flare, but simply damaging them will decloak them and all W5 towers have some aoe. Can also summon units near them to engage them, adding value to fee, connie, narlax and heroes with teleport.
* Note that cloaked enemies can't be affected by many negative effects, however most negative effects are cast along with damage effect revealing them in process (Yan's and Azura's active skill do no damage so never waste them on cloacked enemies).
* Narlax's pull has great value here due to larger than normal amount of enemies (since some can spawn other units), and all towers having aoe + mushroom tower mitosis CC, and even blind and heal pair well with him.
* Always have some unit in each lane or summons ready to stop Pango and Lava Pango rolling.
* At some maps there are cracks in lane where Lava Snails summons from instead of normal lane entrances. So watch those especially if near exit.

## Strategies, tips and comentary:

* For Campaign and Legendary:
	+ Leif & Caldera: **Leif** is amazing for campaign, if you don't have Necro-Connie almost must have and worth for next world. If you have necro-Connie can be skipped. Trashy for Legendary (rellies on ranks and can't rank up within one wave). **Caldera** is bad for campaign (need atleast R5 to be worth and mostly useless for next world), skip for sure.
	+ Dwarf: generally you want one dwarf per lane/exit close behind chokepoints so Pango will have someone to crush into and Myrks someone to stop and attack (or skip them entirely on smaller maps you can cover with tanky heroes like Necro-Connie).
	+ Mushroom: you always want 1-3 mushrooms to CC, heal, blind and low dmg aoe around your chokepoint.
	+ Geargrinder: you usally want atleast one flare + bomb1 helicopter ahead of chokepoint to deal with very pesky Myrk archers. And move others as close as you can to chokepoint with 1 bomb upgrade to do aoe and stun flyers there.
	+ Blunderbuss: mainly build them around chokepoint for ground aoe armor break, if you enhance mushroom with spores(blind) also enhance these blunderbuss with Precision Aim. Others outside of chokepoints only go full Sniper and ignore precision Aim. Otherwise better to use Geargrinders or emergency dwarf towers.
	+ Heroes: Since you can now get **Necro-Connie** in W4 just rank and use her!!! = profit. **Efrigid** R4+ is great as usuall (and almost mandatory for lvl.140).
		- Generally Tanks and harder to kill melee are nice here, due to need to larger amount of enemies and Aoe damage and CC. **Narlax** can be amazing since there is much aoe amongst towers and many enemies, so pull have really great value, just beware if you new to to him to not tank with him just pull (follow with good active like Mabyn's terror, R5Smoulder's stun) and move away. If you bougth **Helios/Sethos** they are pretty good here. **R3+ Fee** and **Lance** are pretty are ok. If you went full-on **MasamuneR6** or **HoganR5** are great (lower ranks don't really work). **Mabyn** is nice if you don't frontline with her (pairs well with Narlax). **Smoulder** R4+ is nice as flyers can sometimes be problematic (need R5 or6, if you use Narlax).
			* Ideal team: ConnieR5 +EfrigidR4 +Helios/Yan/Leif
* Endless:
* Challenge: N/A no challenge in W5 yet.
* Realm Siege: early same as campaign, but as difficultly rise, low damage CC heroes won't cut it anymore, good tank/way to stop enemies required, etc. For towers, make use of blessed spots (avoid mushrom and warriors on blessed spots, and put mainly Blunderbus or to lower extent Geargrinder there) and buffing blessed tower spots (Helios/Yan/Leif) is high value.
* Tournaments: W5 maps atm only show in Master+Legendary group never in lower league. As usuall with each wave difficulty goes up, until tower damage mostly doesn't matter anymore.
	+ Always build 1-3 fully upgraded Mushroom.
	+ 1 Blunderbuss at chokepoint to armorbreak ground enemies can be useful, but mainly avoid this tower.
	+ Mainly build unupgraded Geargrinder towers to stun flying enemies (unupgraded so they don't waste even micro-sec casting flare or bomb and focus fully on anti-air minigun stun. One is worth ahead of chokepoint with flare+bomb1). Don't group them but spread them all over (to prevent them from all focusing same target and wasting mini-stun.
	+ Due to general S\*\*T-iness of Dwarf Warrior it is not useful for stoping enemies (often great to have 1 somewhere behind chokepoint to stop Pango or other enemies that might slip through). However it's basically necessary to use many of them to distract very frustrating teleporting boss (move all units into one group so boss will teleport there, to prevent him using ranged instakill atacks on your heroes). On largest of 3 currently available maps, you can do 2-4 groups if they're far enough for boss ranged attack and force teleports inbetween.
	+ Heroes: mainly geared towards melee hard to kill heroes who can also affect flying units. And away from squishy ranged heroes. Connie is amazing to tank bosses, but have to be babysat. Caldera, Lancelot, Narlax, Raida, Koizuul and Shamiko are MVP of W5 tournament (Cyra/Elara should also be great here in future). Azura, FeeR7(+Connie), Smoulder, MasamuneR7 or Mabyn should be nice aswell in theory, but are hard to get value from in practice.
* Extra notes:
	+ You can extend your dwarf warrior range: step1 build geargrinder (has higher range) > step2 move helicopter where you want your dwarf > step3 sell geargrinder and build dwarf > he will move into that position even if its further than dwraf tower range and remember it for rest of a match undless you move rally point elsewhere (even if you sell tower again or build other towers). If you set this up on wave0 you won't lose gold by selling tower.

## Level-Specific Strategies and Tips

Can always just search on youtube for eg. "realm defense 130" and try to emulate what you see.

### Level 130

 Leif's Boss Level (Leif's unlock). **TLDR Use Necro-Connie summons to tank boss = win.** Boss only comes when starting last wave. Boss is not focused on moving to exit, instead it will move to nearest hero. When it kills hero it will move to nearest anvil to rank up. From which he gain big boost and extra abilites (?should be same benefits as hero Leif gains? but he has much bigger base stats). Then he continues same 1) chase hero > 2) kill it (should insta kill average hero you should have at that point in campaign) > 3) go to anvil and rank up > 4) repeat previous 3 again. To succed it's crutial to not allow him ranking up. It should not be as hard to stop him though, no matter if he moves to hero or to anvil he will always stop to fight if engaged.

You basically have 3 options:

1. best - tank him with Summons - Use Necro-Connie (or even !!!basic old-connie!! is great for this specific level), he will still mainly one shot summons (except bunny momma/spiritual mother), but you should have plently of bunnies (can always use Yan/Helios to haste Connie for shorter CD).
2. ok - tank him with heroes - If you don't have Connie get her already!!! If you refuse (or out of gems atm) tanking only with Fee's wolfs should not be possible and you will need to utilize some heroes. This was quite hard before awakenings as most squishy starting rank heroes were one shot, and if you rushed through campaign and have only base rank heroes this will be hard. With higher rank heroes it should be fine use tankier heroes like Lancelot, Sethos, Narlax. Or at worst squishy but high dodge heroes like Mabyn or Masamune. HoganR5 can be pretty nice too, due to great lifesteal (if you went that way for some reason).
3. worst - let him chase you - at rank1 his movement speed isn't best, so you can just use any non-slow hero and move him around always running away from Leif (this is really stupid and hard to pull off, it needs great positiong so any other hero is not closer in range etc, he will kill any nearby troops you might have there for other enemies, etc. It just take too much effort. Only do this stupidity if you really have no heroes capable of option 1 or 2.
4. towers - depends on what heroes you use, best to copy youtube. Mainly go geargrinder and some blunderbuss to deal with flying units, one mushroom with mitosis on entrance is always great. If you use weaker heroes and lancelot dwarf wariors near entrance where you tank are great.

### Level 140

 Caldera's Boss Level (Caldera's unlock). Boss only comes when starting last wave. Unlike Leif boss behaves normally and move to exit unless stopped. **He basically has immunity to damage.** This immunity is striped away when he is in **frozen state**. This Can be achived by Using **EFRIGID** or Freeze potions. UNCONFIRMED but when freezed probably also takes 2x damage from Efrigid's dmg spells.

* *Actually spreadsheet is wrong on this, he doesn't have total immunity. He might have 100% physical damage armor, but "only ;)" ~99% spell damage armor. This armor probably can't be lowered by armor break, atleast not normal blunderbuss armor break. This is basically immunity for campaign purposses, but later in RS you can see he can take low damage from spell damage and eventually be taken down, even if not striped of those immunities by freeze. Also he has no way of blocking damage that guarantees % of Hp done, like Raida's R5, Cyra's R5 or Elara's Galactic burst. So team like R5 Raida+Cyra+Connie can easily beat him without freeze.*

Boss itself does pretty hig damage + has strong aoe spell, this can be pretty deadly to low rank heroes. Do not attempt to tank it with weak heroes.

Ideal campaign team: EfrigidR4 +ConnieR5 +Helios/Yan/Leif/Lancelot/Narlax/Mabyn/Fee/Masamune (third hero basicaly ordered from left/best to right/worst) Helios, Yan, Leif best. Lancelot good for shields. Narlax for pull. Mabyn's fast move+mines+terrify great for lava snails and bats that get through your towers. Fee nice range+wolfs for snails, etc. Masamune quick move and teleport to deal with enemies when needed while others focus on boss. Sethos or Hogan can also be usable if you focused on ranking them instead, any high rank hero you have will proabably do.

Also this is map with many crack in lane where Lava Snail come from, if you're not careful you can lose some map HP from them.

### Level 150

 "Rick and Morty" Boss Level. *What to say this boss isn't that tough (although will be nightmare in tournament)*. Mainly he doesn't try to exit level instead teleports between your Heroes trying to kill them and prioritizing your squishier ones. he will also use ranged attacks when not engaged and teleport is on CD.

Generally avoid squishy ranged heroes here and have atleast one good tank or necro-connie. Pay attention to boss when he's ready to teleport he will throw his rider and then teleport either to him (very rarely), or to your squishy hero. Before emerging there is cracking earth animation, move your tank there asap and your weaker ranged away.

You can take advantage of this and basically have your heroes only in two positions under towers to take damage (but in relative safety of myrks and other enemies, middle lane probably ideal). and just move them between those two positions so boss is forced to go there. While your tank is busy with boss, you will likely need to use some dwarf warrior towers to tank enemies, since level is pretty high on annoying enemies like Pango's and Myrk's.

ideal campaign team: Leif +ConnieR5 +CalderaR5/Helios/Lancelot/Sethos/Narlax >> Efrigid/Yan/Fee/Mabyn/Masamune/Hogan (they're ok but not ideal, depends on rank as usuall)

### Level 160

 Ancient Tree Boss Level. He will be present during entire match, but unkillable until he joins battle at last wave when like normal boss will move towards exit unless engaged. Prior to last wave he will do 3 (all extremly annoying) things:

1. long range, sizeable damage attack that focus heroes>troops>summons this will be very annoying to your squishy ranged heroes (have them atleast on outskirt of mushoom range for extra heals)
2. summon Pixies (3/4 flying & 1/4 ground) - extra units with ranged attack that stop to attack closest enemy in range, and move toward mid lane exit between each attack (basically aditional thread to your squishy ranged heroes if you don't kill them before they get past your frontline.
3. shake ground - 2,5sec global stun with 10s Cooldown (yes you will basically be stunned for one fourth of this match) this is extremly annoying to disrupt your spellcast

ideally you want to go either:

1. Atleast One Tank - Leif/Lancelot/Narlax/Sethos/Caldera + Connie + other tank/Yan/Helios/Efrigid/Mabyn/SmoulderR5/BoltonR6 (build mainly dwarf warrior and based on how much anti-air you have between your heroes some blunderbuss and geargrinders). 2 mushrooms with mitosis in middle are always great. Possibly ideal team Connie+Leif+Narlax
2. Three Tanks - Leif + Narlax + Caldera/Lancelot/Sethos/HoganR5/MasamuneR6 (if you go 3 melee ground mainly, you likely can handle ground units, but will have problem with flying. Along with 2middle mushrooms with mitosis, build 1-2 dwarfs per lane to help with tanking and focus mainly on blunderbuss and few geargrinders to deal with flying units)

Even though Narlax have hard time with all stuns here, map is layed out nearly perfect for him and pull should be of great value( pull to center between 2 mushrroms with mitosis, blind + blunder precision aim aoe is nice aswell.

*P.S. Lvl.160 is arguably one of, if not "the hardest" Realm Siege map, avoid as much as possible.*

## Completion Rewards

Rewards per level for three stars completion in this realm. Each level experience is **divided** somewhat equally between your heroes. If you don't complete Normal level with 3 stars you will get half the experience, and second half once you do. If you don't complete Legendary on first try you will get half the experience, but second half is lost as successful try after that won't award any experience.*Tip. Can watch an ad to double your Potion reward.*

Quest = gems awarded for quests. Legendary quests are awarded once all 5 corresponding maps are finished.

*Rewards (mainly experience) was changed few times over the years and might change again in future.*