Dungeon Defenders Death From Above Hard Solo Guide

Dungeon Defenders Death From Above Hard Solo Guide by Bhelrudan

I had gotten a few questions recently on my setup for DFA Hard Solo, so I decided to make this guide to show you how I do it.

What you’ll need-

A dedicated tower build apprentice – (My stats are 138 tower hp, 167 tower damage, 101 tower speed and 98 tower range.)

A dedicated traps build huntress – (Mine is at 131 trap count, 128 trap damage, 108 trap speed and 115 trap range.)

A reasonably decent aura build monk – (Mine is at 97 aura time, 118 aura damage, 101 aura effect speed, 111 aura range)

And a decent DPS hero build character capable of 20k DPS, and with sufficient health and resistances to survive killing a pair of ogres. You’ll also want a decent animus on this character. Any class is capable of filling this role, but if you’re having trouble, a squire with a good animus works exceptionally well.

The setup-

First build phase-

Start with your tower build apprentice. Start at the north and gather all the mana chests, moving south. Place your first magic blockade on the far southern section of the map between the two grates as shown here.

Next, move up to the ledge south of the single crystal, and place towers along the edge facing south. You’ll be making a total of six magic missle towers and two fireball towers. Start with three magic missle towers, then the two fireball towers in the middle, then the remaining three magic missle towers. The fireball towers will face directly south, and the magic missle towers on either side should be aimed such that they cover the fireball towers and magic missle towers on the other side, as shown here.

Now move up and place a magic blockade next to the rooftop in the path of the northern ogre, at the top of the stairs on top of the broken tiles. This magical blockade is not meant to stop the ogre so much as to buy you a few seconds to catch it as it moves south, or as a safety net should you die.

Finally, place two fireball towers on the peak of the rooftop as shown here.

Once complete with the first build phase, your map should look like this:
(The 2nd blockade is missing from this screenshot because one of the 10 mana pieces fell off an edge. The blockades arent needed until later waves, so this isnt a problem. I only put them in on the first build phase because the mana works out perfectly to do so.)

First Combat Phase-
Just stick near the 2 fireball towers on the rooftop in case of any fire immune wyverns and gather as much mana as you can. This phase should be no problem whatsoever.

Second Build Phase-
You should be able to build all the remaining defenses you need in this second build phase.

Start with two magic missle towers, one on either side of the fireball towers on the peak of the roof. As before on the other set of towers, angle them so that they cover the fireball towers like so.

This will be the last of the apprentice defenses. Once placed, hop over to your traps build huntress.

Now place an ethereal spike trap near where the chest appears on the ledge near the single crystal. It should look like this.

Next, hop down below and place an ethereal spike trap, a proximity mine trap and an inferno trap right in front of the magic blockade you placed earlier. This will be the last of the traps you’ll need. Now its aura time. Swap over to your aura monk.

Now you’ll need an ensnare aura on the ledge to help with wyverns. It’ll go right on top of one of the magic missle towers, like so.

Now drop down and place a strength drain aura over the magic blockade and trap set on the lower pathway. This will help keep the ogres from destroying your blockade.

Now move up to the rooftop for your last bit of building. You’ll want to place an ensnare and an enrage aura on the rooftop in front of your towers. This will slow the wyverns coming from that direction enough for the towers to handle them, or at least to survive while you drop down to handle ogres.

Your final build should look like this:

Now you’re all set to switch to your hero build character and start combat phases.

Combat phases

During the remaining combat phases, you’ll stay on the rooftop near your towers to help with wyverns, then drop down to kill the ogres approaching from the north, then immediately back up to assist the towers. You may want to practice the jump onto the rooftop a bit, as getting stuck below on the later waves can cost you your towers on the rooftop if you arent quick.

Do your best to gather as much mana as possible, and upgrade as follows. During build phases, priority for upgrades goes to the defenses to the south. These need to be completely self sufficient so they needed to be upgraded well. By the last wave, all towers to the south should have been upgraded 3 times, the magic blockade and ensnare aura 4 times, and the ethereal spike trap on the wall 2-3 times. The lower traps and the strength drain aura can be upgraded when you have spare mana, but not enough for an upgrade on the other defenses there. During combat is when you’ll have a chance to upgrade the towers and auras on the rooftop. Ogres will give you 600 mana each, and with 2 ogres a wave plus wyverns, you’ll get to points where there is more mana down than you can carry. This is when you’ll want to upgrade the towers and auras on the roof. Don’t bother with the magic blockade to the north. The towers and auras on the rooftop should have been upgraded 3-4 times each by the final wave.

Do your best to assist the towers on the rooftop any time there isnt an ogre needing killed. You really should never have to go towards the southern defenses.

A few other points to keep in mind-

-The ethereal spike traps to the south are close enough together that they trigger each other, so the charges will go down FAST. Make sure to repair them every wave, and you may need to quickly run down midway through the final wave to repair the trap on the ledge. Make sure to do this when theres a break in the wyverns coming from the north.

-In later waves there is often a large wyvern that will come from the north from a different path than the majority. It will pass over the ballista and often stop to attack your magic blockade. Make sure you kill this wyvern as if it gets past unnoticed it will make its way to a defenseless crystal.

-If you’re playing on a squire, there is a great tactic to take some of the pressure off of the towers on the rooftop. Move towards the edge of the rooftop, far enough away from the towers that wyverns hitting you wont hit the towers as well. Then use your block ability. You’ll sit there and take minimal damage from the wyverns while your animus will kill them, and the towers wont take any damage.

-Dont die! Its worth equipping some gear to increase your HP and resistances, or to spend the mana to heal yourself if you think an ogre or the wyverns may kill you if you dont. If you die to an ogre, that ogre will then quickly smash through your magic blockade and make its way to your crystal. Not only that, but even if you do manage to kill the ogre, you’ve lost any mana you may have been carrying, putting you behind on upgrades and repairs, and you’ve left your northern towers unassisted for a long period of time. Those towers aren’t meant to be able to stand alone, so dying can possibly result in those towers being destroyed.

I hope this guide is helpful. Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

Guide to Soloing DFA Hard by Venetian

I notice that a few people have put up guides for soloing DFA easy and medium, but for some reason nobody’s done a hard difficulty guide. I’m aware that UC2 is finished, so this is just to help people out. (and because I’m bored).

IMO soloing DFA medium is a waste of time, the animuses are shocking. DFA hard you get some very decent animuses (best I’ve gotten is a 151/5/+1). I believe that to get an animus with a base of +2 you need to do DFA Insane which, according to my experience anyway, isn’t possible to solo.

Note, this guide is not for noobs. You will need very strong TOWER-SPEC apprentice, huntress and decent monk auras.

Okay here we go.

Wave 1
Get all the chests, this will equal 600 mana.

Use your trap huntress first and build two ethereal traps at the solo xtal. Put them as far out to the edge as possible. You’ll notice on the edge that there are little “blocks”. Put one spike trap on the block that is slightly to the left of the solo xtal (when you’re back is to the xtal). The other spike trap goes on the block that is second from the furthest right block. Then switch to apprentice and put a fire tower on each of the blocks I’ve just mentioned. The fire tower on the left block should face straight, with perhaps a ten degree incline to the right. The fire tower on the right block needs to be positioned in a North Easterly direction.

You should have 280 mana left. Build 3 fire towers behind your inital two towers. Each of these towers should be built n positioned such that their range covers both the fire towers at the front. (so when birds are attacking your front two fire towers, the four behind can kill them). Remaining 40 mana, build one magic blockade in each of the positions shown.

End of Wave 1 should look like this (theres one extra fire tower in the picture there woops)

During wave one, use your dps huntress with a genie and stand on the roof. dont kill the birds until they are flying over the roof so that you can collect the mana they drop (you’ll need as much mana as possible).

Wave 2
Don’t bother repairing anything for this wave. Collect all chests and transfer mana to your monk. Build another fire tower with the other three positioned behind the two front ones at the solo xtal, a slow aura at the solo xtal such that the aura covers both of your front fire towers. Then build a strength drain aura at both of your magic blockades. For the south ogre, build a slow aura at that magic blockade as well.

Transfer mana to your trap huntress and at the north ogre blockade, build a spike trap, a fire trap and a proximity trap, all directly on top of one another.

Whatever mana you have left goes towards making the same trap set for south ogre. Im sorry the aura dont come up very clear on the simulator picture. This is what you should have roughly before beginning wave 2. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have enough mana to complete the south ogre traps/auras yet.

Once again, switch to dps huntress with genie and do the same thing as before. Make sure you collect all the mana from the ogre too. Tip: if you stand right on the peak of the roof with your view fully zoomed out, you can just hold the attack button and your huntress will automatically turn back n forth between the ogre and the birds.

Wave 3, finish the south ogre build I mentioned above, build one more SQUIRE blockade down there to block it off (build this slightly to the side and in front of the app blockade) and then repair everything. (If you’re wondering why i built the south ogre traps over there and not on the south board walk like you would do with ramps/dfa easy/med, its so that the ethereal traps dont set one another off. if they do, your ethereal traps will run out of charges (mine had 45 charges and they’d run out about 2/3rds into the wave for the final 2 or 3 waves).

With left over mana, the order you should upgrade things is this: south ogre auras to level two, south ogre blockades to level 2, then upgrade the solo xtal aura once, then upgrade the two eth spike traps at the solo xtal as much as you can along with the two fire towers at the front.

And that’s it! From about wave 7 onwards it is safer to use an animus rather than genie. If you are worried your south ogre blockades will fail, I suggest you do what I do. That is, have a separate set of gear that is purely for defense health, and equip that before you make your blockades. Also, if you want to upgrade more stuff, you should use your demon during build phase to repair everything (they dont repair traps tho) so that you save some mana to upgrade other things. These measures take a bit more time and are much more effort and more drastic than what you would do for other maps, but as I mentioned earlier, this map on this difficulty will push your tower spec heroes to the limit so every little bit helps.

NOTE: YOU MUST STAY ON THE ROOF ALWAYS. THE NORTH OGRE MUST BE KILLED FROM THE ROOF (or else the ogre will follow you and the ogre can walk around the solo blockade that is up there.)

As a reference, my tower spec heroes are this:
Def HP/Def Speed/Def Damage/Def Range

140/170/90/110
99/180/94/119
126/160/120/82

as a guide, you’ll need your traps with as much Def HP and Def damage as possible. Def speed is a bonus but for this map, Def Range is useless.

Your App towers will need as much Def Damage and Def Speed as possible. Def range is a bonus. You’ll need decent Def HP though because the birds will attack your front two fire towers.

Monk aura needs decent HP (enough to last the round) and other than that just as much Def Attack as possible. You’ll need a decent amount of Def Range too.

My DPS only has a 1174/8 valor with 9 reload but it does 26k dps since it has +177 hero attack.