Orcs Must Die Ogre and Gnoll Hunter Killing Guide

Orcs Must Die Ogre and Gnoll Hunter Killing Guide by Rogotin

I’ve noticed a few questions people have been asking in threads on and off and I think that a Q&A thread is in order to get a few things out of the way and make peoples play life well, a little easier I’d hope. Here goes anyway…..

OMG! Ogres and Hunters are killing me! Help!

Now, when faced with one of three kinds of Ogres there are a few things that one wants to optimize before going ahead and taking them on head to head. I’ll list the ogre types bellow and how to deal with each one effectively.

Basic Ogre Killing Strategies and Hunter Gnoll Killing Strategies

Ogres

You’ve all seen the Ogre charge furiously through your traps before wiping out you, your archers, your family, you’re pet dog fufu. But what a lot of people don’t seem to realize is there is a lot they can do to help prevent an ogre from tackling its way through your front line.The basics are –

Frost Ring:

This bad boy is inevitably one of the most useful tools in the game. In itself not doing excessive damage, it is effective against all ogres for letting you set up a large quantity of head shots on your target. You want to Main fire the ring so the Ogre freezes, preferably while standing in your traps. Spamming this end over end is really not recommended, you will rapidly run out of magic – however you will notice that re-freezing ogres can occasionally be ignored. The ogre is frozen, unfreezes, gets hit by the frost shot and doesn’t freeze. Do not let this deter you, I like to do the basic rotation of Freeze, crossbow till Unfrozen, Freeze, Freeze, Crossbow till unfrozen, repeat till dead. While it uses a little more magic, you won’t get those nasty mishaps where it gets through the lines.

Secondary Xbow:

Occasionally (usually when you’re high scoring) the xbow is the only thing you have available in your arsenal. Secondary fire is at times your only way to hold an Ogre down. You usually want to stun the Ogre IN your traps, and unleash crossbow hell on them. Try to get its attention and dance it back and forth through the traps instead, especially if you’re using the storm cloud to help kill orcs – as the secondary will run you out of magic very quickly unless spec’d with extended stun.

Frost Fire Combo:

I haven’t seen this mentioned, but I’ve used this to great success numerous times. Freezing a target first then hitting it with a fire ball seems to do excessive damage to the target. I have dropped normal ogres in one freeze shot and two fireballs, doing great damage to anything around them too. If you find yourself having trouble with ogres and have some spare room, this is easily one of the best combos to use, especially when talented.

Explosive Barrels:

Both the Decoy and the Barrel ‘o’ Fun are extremely valid options when it comes to Ogre hunting. Placing a decoy down can often save your life and do great damage to the Ogres. They tend to prefer beating up your dummies than they do beating you. You can even place a few side by side for a chain reaction to guarantee you’ll turn that pesky Ogre into Ogre Paste. I like to put a few side by side just to make sure the boom is big enough. But be warned when using normal barrels that Archers can set them off. Also, with normal barrels, an interesting tactic is to hold the barrel, and let the Ogre hit you. Often this can lead to excess damage to the Ogre sending him nigh into orbit. You on the other hand do suffer the standard stun that results from such a hit.

Staff Melee:

That’s right. I went there. People the staff is bar none your BEST ogre killing tool. It does huge damage to ogres, and is by far your fastest way to take one down. It requires what I like to call ‘stance dancing’ and this is where you need to understand an ogres movements. Your basic three movements that you need to notice from an Ogre are: Club Swing Fist Swing Charge The club swing is the ogres RIGHT hand attack. The ogres fist swing is his LEFT hand attack. Both attacks stun, but you need to recognize which is which because whichever animation winds up, you want to run towards the OPPOSITE arm, and step behind the ogre. Doing this will usually allow you to get away from the stun and give you a few seconds to swing furiously at the ogres back doing huge damage. This is especially effective on ARMORED ogres who do not have much in the way of weaknesses, you can rapidly deplete an armored ogres health simply by dancing circles around him. The charge usually occurs when the ogre is ignited with fire. This is often bad because he will run through traps at a rapid pace before hitting you. I recommend hitting him once while he’s charging to get his attention, then drag him back through the traps before stance dancing him.

Shrooms:

Shrooms are expensive. At 1200 / shroom for one Ogre on your side you’re best finding an alternative generally. I don’t like them but a lot of people have used them to great potential. I find for High Scoring scenarios they are completely useless. But for 5 – Skull … meh they are blah. I recommend that you DO try using them, see how they feel and test out your own. I’ve had some interesting experiences using them to capture Hunters who then charge off excellent distances to kill anything they can but they often get overwhelmed quickly and die.

Steel Weaver:

Steel weaver OGRE POUNDING upgrade is by far one of your best ogre killing options if you are using push or spring traps. Launching them into Lava / Acid / Back into your traps is an excellent option any time you’re playing. And if its available in your arsenal I highly recommend this upgrade, Thanks tmanpdx for pointing out I missed this one.

Secondary Ice Ring Freeze + Staff

Turns out this is an exceptional combo also. The AOE Ring Freeze freezes everything in the area leaving you to safely dispatch of those pesky ogres. Thanks to Jarr3tt88 for bringing this little piece of art to my attention.

Fire and Ice Type Ogres

These are like any other Ogre except they are immune to their own type (eg fire to fire, ice to ice) and the other type is highly effective. So versus frost don’t try freezing, hit them with a fireball. Again I would just stance dance them with a staff as your best choice in either scenario.

Armored Ogres

These are the bane of my existence. The only real ways I’ve found to deal with them are Floor Flame traps. I have no idea what the deal is with these but they seem to do excessive damage to Armored Ogres – That and the good old Swinging Mace. Between these two freezing or stunning the Ogre inside the trap killzone should make short work of them. Just make sure not to focus too much on the ogre and let other orcs through. If one does get through, secondary Xbow fire / Freeze Ring to get its attention and do Xbow Headshots. Lightning ring does mediocre to little damage to it. Your best bet is to bring it back through your traps and let them deal the damage. UNLESS you have a melee weapon – then STANCE DANCE!!

CRAP! Hunters Sappin’ Mah Archers!

These guys are the bane of my existence. But that’s usually easily fixed. A few easy tips:

Know your map!

If you’re on nightmare you should know what wave they are on, go get them.

Watch your Minimap!

Random red blobs running over your barriers or in your archers is a clue something is WRONG.

Now there are a lot of people out there that have problems with these guys, I don’t. Because I know a few simple tricks:

Lightning Ring:

The lightning ring is by far the best way to kill a mob of them coming down on you. Because it hits many targets at once you can easily 2-3 shot multiple hunters in a group while backpedaling furiously, and aim for the closest target. Often running circles and letting them group up will make this task easier, but do not let them hit you – they have that damn poison.

Spike Trap : Explosive Barrel – COMBO:

This one doesn’t seem to get used much, and to be honest it is my FAV!! Its very simple, take one spike trap. Take one explosive barrel. Put explosive barrel on spike trap in path of gnoll usually between gnoll and its path to your archers. Gnoll steps on spikes, gnoll go boom.

Decoy:

DECOY DECOY DECOY people, this is one of your best traps. A self exploding, time buying, one slot trap that will save your archers getting drilled. Putting a single decoy in amongst your archers can save you a huge amount of pain and suffering later on. This is by far the most effective way to keep them safe. You can even place a decoy somewhere else on the map, you’ll find the hunters will usually go for it first.

Wind Belt:

Wind belt DOES work on these guys. If you have one handy, blowing them into lava / acid / water / other or even blowing them off archers is a great way to keep your archers alive during combat. Another thing you can do is have a barrel handy, blowing a barrel into a Gnoll with the wind belt can allow you to deal with one rapidly and easily, it should be more than dead after a barrel hit anyway.

Anything I missed? I’d love to hear about it. Post below.