Dungeon Defenders Endless Spires Hard/Insane Solo Guide

Dungeon Defenders Endless Spires Hard/Insane Solo Guide by Bhelrudan

Theres been a fair amount of interest in Alien Swords, and by extension, Endless Spires on the forums lately so I decided to post a guide for the setup I use to solo farm this map on insane. Its a good map to farm for mana as you get about the same mana as you do in maps like Summit or Ramparts, but it only takes about 20minutes. You also have good odds of GEPs, godly weapons, etc. Anyways, on to the guide…

What you’ll need-
A strong tower build app. Mine is at 140/168/108/124. You’ll need stong towers for this map, as you’ll have ogres and wyverns coming from multiple directions, and your towers are going to be the the most important part of handling them. You’ll want your best tower gear on your app.

A strong traps build huntress. Mine is at 132/150/102/104. Your traps are going to handle bulk of the creeps. They’ll also help take down the ogres, but they dont have to be anything insane so long as you are quick in helping against them.

A hero build character capable of ~20k or more DPS. You’ll also want good hero speed and build speed as you’ll need to be able to move around the map quickly, and repair traps and towers along with dealing with ogres. An animus or fairy are recommended for this character.

The setup

First Build Phase

You’ll start on your trap build huntress. Head for the first mana chest just north of the spawn point, then head up to the stairs to the north and put down an inferno and gas trap.

Then grab the next mana chest to the north, then drop down to the lower level and grab the chest there before heading up the stairs to drop your next trap set. You’ll start with a spike trap at the top of the stairs, then a prox mine trap, a gas trap, and finally an inferno trap at the bottom of the stairs, like this:

Now grab the mana chest just south of the forge, then head around to the stairs on the other side. Here you’ll mimic the trap set on the other side, other than you’ll skip the prox mine trap for now since you wont have the mana for it.

Now head up to your first trap set and to the upper walkway to the last chest. If you’re on insane difficulty, creeps will be spawning at this point. Go ahead and ignore them for now, and head to the final mana chest. You’ll likely miss some if not all of the mana from this chest as it tends to fall off the walkway. Grab what you can, then jump on to the chest, then down to the stairway below. Remember, the edges of the walkway dont stop your movement here, so be careful not to fall off. Use the mana you have at this point to drop the prox trap on the 2nd lower stairway, and then move up to the north trap set to gather some mana and drop a prox trap and spike trap here as well. Once all your traps are down, try to gather up as much mana as possible before heading into the next build phase.

Second Build Phase
Drop the mana you have on your huntress and then swap to your tower app. You’ll move to the southeast crystal and drop one fireball tower and two magic missle towers behind the crystal facing east like so:

Now you’ll head to the single crystal up north, and toss a magic missle tower here to protect this crystal, like this.

There are quite a few dark elf mages that spawn from the north stairway area and they have a habit of summoning skeletons off the edge of the stairway and therefore bypassing your traps. This tower will make sure that happening once wont end your game early.

Now make a round through your trap sets and put a magic blockade in the middle of each spike trap at the end of your trapset. This will stop ogres from making their way to your crystals. If your blockades and traps are strong enough, they can manage an ogre on their own, but its best not to risk it. Also keep in mind with just one blockade, ogres can occasionally get past the blockade without destroying it. This rarely happens, and if it does, the ogre will be very low on HP. You can easily take out the ogre at this point. Just make sure you do so as if left alone, they will take out your towers and then your crystal.

Now for the final defenses. Head back to the south east crystal. Here you’ll summon one more fireball tower and two more magic missle towers. The fireball tower and one of the magic missle towers will go to the north of the crystal, facing south east so they can hit the wyverns coming from the east and the south. It’ll look like this:

The final tower on this side will go south of the crystal, angled the same way.

Now you’ll repeat the same setup for the west crystal, facing west rather than east obviously. This will finish out your 82 DU. Your final build should look like this:

Now switch to your hero build character for the remaining waves.

Alternate setup
One possible alternative to the setup above is to remove the magic missles tower near the single crystal in favor of putting double blockades at the end of each trap set. This will ensure that ogres can never bypass the traps without having to completely destroy them. The drawback is that if a single enemy falls off the stairway onto the lower level and gets past your northern trapset, they can get to the single crystal, and depending on where you are in the map, you may not be able to reach them in time to prevent the crystal from being destroyed. I prefer the single blockade method, but its up to you which you prefer.

Combat Phases
For the remaining phases, keep traps repaired, spend mana on upgrading the towers around the crystals, and help in killing ogres. Also, make absolutely certain that your magic blockades are repaired before a new set of ogres spawn. Allowing an ogre to reach an already damaged blockade will likely cause you to lose that blockade, which is not good. So long as you do what you can to keep the towers around the southern crystals upgraded and your blockades repaired you should be fine. Make sure you grab the items dropped by the ogres, as they have a good chance of dropping godly weapons and GEPS.

-Dealing with ogres
The ogres are going to be your main concern in this map, so a few tips to help in handling them:

The north ogre always comes out at least a few seconds before the others. I’ll generally try to spend all the mana I have upgrading the towers around the 2 crystals, then head up to the north ogre spawn point when I know hes about to arrive. They always will come at roughly the same time in reguards of numbers of enemies killed in a wave. You’ll get a feel after a few times through as far as when to expect them. Kill that north ogre, then head to the south ones. By the time you get there your traps should have them at very low health and they’ll be easy to finish. Keep an eye out for ogres sneaking past the single blockade, as that can occasionally happen as mentioned above. Also of note, the southwest ogre sometimes gets stuck in its spawn area. If this happens, he, and usually about 3-5 archers will just stay inside the door area until you go and attack them. This helps quite a bit in insane difficulty as it allows you time to repair and upgrade as you need without a timer to worry about. Once you’re done doing so, just head down to the spawn area and attack or allow your animus to attack the enemies inside the door. This will trigger the ogre to leave the area and allow you to kill him. Just make sure he isnt within the purple aura area outside the door as he will be immune to damage until he leaves that area. Other than that, have fun with triple ogres!

Good luck with your Alien Sword farming.