Orcs Must Die!: The Arena (Level 13)
New trap
Pounder – Smashes enemies from above, deals plenty of damage. The upgraded version stuns, and can be very powerful in bulk.
Enemies
Orc Warriors
Kobold Runners
Crossbow Orcs
Ogres
General survival skills
- Archer guardians will be fantastic here where the level is so open
- Make good use of the starting money, build sophisticated trap setups and blockades
- Use blockades liberally to make the space more manageable
- Tar traps, tar traps, tar traps
- Bring some kind of area spell
Five skull guide
The Arena is a very, very strange level. The leaderboards will tell you that, the range is really wide regarding scores. That’s because managing open space is a strange thing in Orcs Must Die! On that note, we have a solution to it, but there are millions of others. Our solution is to cordon off a large portion of the map and focus enemies into one small roofed section in the South West corner. What that means is walling off entrance to the North Eastern room, the North Eastern area (from the room to the center block) and the South Western area (again, room to center block). Sounds complicated, yes, but it’s really not, the idea is to force all the enemies into the South West corner room, maze it up with blockades, and smash them to bits with tar, pounder, and wall blade traps. This strategy takes a bit to get started and requires spell dominance for the beginning of the game, but eventually it’ll all run itself autonomously.
Really, there’s so much openness to this map it’s ridonculous. Feel free to make a big slaughter house with archer guardians as the enemies pour into the small choke point setup and use the coin forge tiles (since they almost never get used) to, well, get more money. It’s difficult to get less than five skulls on this map as long as the enemies are filtered through one choke point, preferably under a roof.
Wave breakdown
- (A – North) Orcs
- (B – West) Orcs
- (A&B) Kobold RunnersGo Break
- (A) Archers, Orcs
- (B) Archers, Orcs
- (A&B) Archers & Orcs, Kobold RunnersGo Break
- (A&B) Archers & Orcs
- (A&B) Archers & Orcs
- (A&B) 1x Ogre & OrcsGo Break
- (A&B) Kobold Runners, Shield Orcs & Archers, 1x Ogre, Archers & Orcs