Dungeon Defenders Genie Swirling Guide

Dungeon Defenders Genie Swirling Guide by Mang

The Idea

Genies. They give you mana when you hurt things. For upgrading your map fast, it’s kind of a big deal. It’d be nice to know how to maximize mana returned, and minimize upgrade time.

The Problem

The higher your listed weapon damage, and the higher the damage on the genie, the more mana you get, but the formula caps out fast for weapon damage, and scales horribly for genie damage.

Long story short is that everyone has weapons that hit hard enough to cap out the mana returned, but you can up that cap by upgrading your genie damage. The relevant formula is:

70*((GenieDamage/12)^0.23)

Only problem is that this formula scales like a garbage can. Here is a nifty table to explain why:

Genie DamageMana Returned
1152200
6716300
23460400
29004420 (blaze… actually 420 is awesome, read on)
61897500

I’ve seen people with 50k+ genie damage. But you simply have no chance to get up to 500 mana per hit, and you got a lotta towers to upgrade and not a lotta time.

But you want ridiculous amounts of mana! And it’d be nice to not have to find an Ult genie with 400^

The Solution

Learn to “SWIRL” your genie, and use an appropriate weapon to do so effectively.

1) Hurt something, your genie gives you some mana and starts swirling.

2) Near the end of the genie’s swirl (but before it stops moving entirely), get multiple hits of damage in

3) There is a brief window of time, perhaps 0.2 seconds, where the genie mana proc can be duplicated

3b) With a 10k damage genie I can consistently get a full 2000 mana bar, over and over.

4) It is easier with a weapon that has multiple projectile

5) It is easier with a weapon that pierces, so you can hit multiple mobs

6) It is easier on targets you don’t instantly kill, so you can actually get multiple hits in before they die

7) Considering Jester is the fastest upgrader and can also carry 2 weapons (one can be for real DPS, the other for genie swirling), they are basically MADE to do this

8) Don’t ever upgrade your genie’s damage again (or at least stop once you hit 29004, keep reading!), just feel free to upgrade the hero stats.

Any monk weapon’s ranged attack or Apprentice staff that has multiple projectiles, when used at point blank range, is guaranteed to get multiple hits in consistently. For a gun or sword, it simply needs to swing or shoot fast, and you’ll get an extra proc or 2, but likely not a full bar.

The single best weapon I have found for genie swirling is a Van Wolfstein, which is a Huntress reward from Halloween Spooktacular 1 or 2 (prefer 2 so the stats and damage don’t suck). It can also be found as a random drop called a Lupine or a Wolfhunter or something. It pierces, shoots through walls, has up to 5 total projectiles in a tight clump so you can multi-proc consistently at long range, and it shoots very quickly. I can proc a full 2000 mana bar with a 1000 damage genie with one of these things — more than 10 genie procs per swirl. Yes, its base attack is automatically electric damage, and no it is not an excellent DPS weapon. But it is hands down the best weapon for upgrading a map.

If your timing, accuracy, hero cast speed, and personal hand speed are good enough, you can proc a full bar of mana, upgrade a tower from 1-star to 3-star, and resume shooting fast enough before the genie finishes swirling that you’ll instantly get another 2000 mana just after you finish upgrading. A 1220 mana tower upgrade every 2 seconds.

I have finished full-upgrading an Akatiti NMHC build by the middle of Wave 11.

To create a supply of mana for your builders, or just to troll your friends, when near the end of a combat wave, press M to drop all your mana right after a genie swirl, but keep swirling and dropping all the mana you create. You can generate dozens of big blue mana chunks in a matter of seconds. It is both hilarious and useful.

Genie swirling For The Win.

So… how do I get a genie? :

Hall of Court survival wave 15 and Tavern Defense survival wave 15 are the two guaranteed ways to get a genie if you have never encountered one.

But honestly, the way to get a GREAT genie is unfortunately just as a random campaign reward for completing one of the later campaigns on a high difficulty. Tavern Defense / Akatiti / WW(?) can award genies as a random item at the end of the campaign, and they can have MUCH higher stats this way than can ever be rewarded from survival.

So… how do I get a Van Wolf? :

Van Wolfstein is a huntress reward for completing either challenge, Halloween Spooktacular 1 or 2. Halloween 2 is much harder, and will give a Van Wolf with much better stats.

Truly the optimal weapon is not a Van Wolf, but a random drop Lupine or Wolfhunter’s bow. They are superior because they have elemental damage in addition to their base which actually counts as twice as many hits for the sake of genie swirling. These random drop types can be found on the ground in several of the harder maps (WW for one) as well as randomly rewarded for completing one of the later campaigns (again, WW is an example).

By request, a Supplementary Video of me speedrunning Akatiti NMHC:

You’ll notice a particular demo of spam mana dropping around 13:55, as I’ve finished upgrading the map.

Bonus info, courtesy of EC-10:

The formula helped me the most. I personally feel the perfect genie damage value is 29004. It gets you exactly 420 per tic. This will fill your mana in 5 hits. To fill mana in 4 you need a genie with over 65k damage. This will also allow you to star a tower in 2 hits and 3 star in 3 hits.

This also allows you to have full mana and upgrade something to 3 stars and only need one hit to up another tower to 3 stars.

Genies upgrade 80 dmg per ^ (ult is 140 per ^), so this would take somewhere between 113 (20k base) and 200 upgrades (15k base) on a high tier genie to reach, which is quite feasible (many fewer upgrades if it’s ult).

I have since upgraded my genie and gotten its base dmg to over 29000, and EC-10 is totally right, it is a definite sweet-spot for genie damage.

Hope you learned something today!
-Mang

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1 Response

  1. Ben says:

    Great guide man, I’ve got some updates to add.
    -I’ve gotten 2 ultimate genies from WW both with almost 20k mana base! so winter wonderland is deffinatley a good place
    -also recieved a trans van wolvstien from WW which will make a great mana gun too. thanks for this information I’ve seen people do this but didnt know the tricks.

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