update: with the newest version this solution is a bit outdated and nearly useless. Now it is possible to buy potions during an event. You can buy the last potion a couple of times and increase your team stats until you be able to defeat level 500 with your faction team. This is way faster than increasing your hoard level that will take forever + the other potion effects will be also helpful. With other words: You can invest a big amount of gems to make this achievement so much easier.
Keep in mind a normal faction event only last 24 hours, so make sure you have the time to fight all the rounds to level 500 + have enough gems to buy enough delve rounds, because your potion bonus only last for this specific event and disappear afterwards.
I'm thinking about deleting my solution, but maybe some informations are still somehow useful?
outdated solution:
This guide gives you general information about the delve system, but all team and battle suggestions/advices are for completing the
Crypt Keeper faction. Keep in mind they probably release easier to complete factions in the future that will not be covered here, because the solution is already long enough. I still hope to help you guys out and wish you the best of luck! Now let's start with the actual guide:
+++ INTRODUCTION +++There are currently 6 factions and your goal for this achievement is to reach the highest renown in one of them. There are 4 criterias that you have to max out. You have to finish a level 500 delve with any team, without losses and with 4 faction cards. You also have to raise your hoard level to 100. The beat level 500 with faction cards is the hardest one and probably the last challenge you have to complete to max out your renown.
You start with faction level 20 and if you choose and win the fight at the right side you raise all dungeon levels by 10. Also setting up new level records during a faction event raise your dungeon level. There is no way to lower your dungeon level afterwards, so keep this in mind. To fullfil the criteria you only have to win 3 fights and in the high level area even these 3 fights are going to be brutal.
1. Setting up your Farming DungeonChoose a specific dungeon and make sure you stick to level 20 all the time. This allow you to rush through you daily delves without wasting more time than necessary. As a nice side effect this "easy mode" dungeon is also a great place to farm runic stones of a specific color. The only thing you want to max out is the quality level. It's also a good idea to pick a dungeon with the biggest possible amount of rooms, because this gives you one more chance to level up your chest at the end. The Hall of Guardians and the Sea of Sorrows as example have 9 rooms instead of 8. My suggestions is to use the Sea of Sorrows delve as farming dungeon, because it includes 4 potential colors of runic stones.
To improve the quality level you have to trade in treasures to level up your hoard. Each treasure have a upgrade quality chance. Example: Coin Purse = 5% Chance, Gold Ring = 10% Chance, Priest's Chalice = 20%. You can trade in 5 items at maximum and all of will raise up your chance. This means trading in 5 chalice items have a 100% chance to upgrade your quiality. However: You probably prefer to have 5 of the 20% chances to improve your level maybe more than once.
2. Collecting chaos shardsWith your farming dungeon you obtain around 200 chaos shards each day. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Of course this isn't the fastest method to collect shards by any means.
Faction events as example are a great way to make progress. They always start at level 20 + you benefit from your hoard bonus. With a good team and a huge stat bonus, it's possible to obtain many chests with a big reward multiplier. If you invest gems in the shop section, you buy more delve fights and treasures directly. So people with too much money could buy as much treasures as they want or can afford.
As i said before, faction events also raise your dungeon level permanently. So i'll ignore the faction event for the Sea of Sorrows (or whatever dungeon you picked to farm) to keep it at level 20.
3. Creating TeamsIt's really important to have a perfect team that can handle fights in the high level area. Your teams are limited to the 2 faction colors. So you need more than 1 team to be able to benefit from several faction events. Mythic troops have 3 colors and a better chance to match with 1 of the required colors. So with more factions in the future it's probably possible to "recycle" some great troop combinations.
One other guide here on TA shows a video with a team that's really worth to get.
Dragons Eye was nerfed and now creates baby dragons with higher stats, but after some testing it seems to be still a pretty good team if you ask me!
These are the troops for a Crypt Keeper delve team:
Hero (Titan Class) > Dragons Eye + 10
Rock Troll
Ubastet
Yasmine's Chosen <*optional, not a must have troop, more info below*
could be replaced with: Megavore (8% insta kill chance), Queen Mab (freeze effect), Queen Titania (faery fire) or any card of your choice!
You can unlock the weapon with 250 wins with your dragon hero class.
Rock Troll is an epic troop you maybe already have.
Ubastet and Yasmine's Chosen are mythic troops. Both can be craftet for 4.000 diamonds, 20.000 souls and 10 celestial traitstones each. I'm one of the unlucky guys that needed both cards, but after crafting Ubastet i did it without Yasmine's Chosen. Trade in your diamonds for Ubastet first, because he is vital for this strategy!
strategy with this team:
Rock Troll load up your weapon and Ubastet and give you some board control and most likely a barrier for hero for matching brown gems. Your weapon transform an enemy to a baby dragon with 50% of these stats and let some gems explode, loading up your mana as well, Ubastet kills the baby dragon as soons as it's weak enough + another troop instant. Yasmines protects you from skull damage, but could be also replaced by other supporting troops. That's the short version.
It's important to use the titan class with at least level 70. The skill tree offers perks that raise your mana gain from brown stones with stone mastery. Storm Aura gives a chance to let brown stones appear in the begining of the fight. Rock solid gives you a barrier and protects you from damage. The last trait of this class also gives you 50% mana at the start. That gives you a faster chance to transform a dangerous enemy troop.
Ubastet attacks the 2 weakest units and if one of them die, the other one also gets destroyed. Dragons Eye was nerfed with the last title update. Before the update, the weapon created a baby dragon with pretty low stats that could be killed with ubastet in one hit. Now the baby dragon have 50% of the level the transormed card had. However... it's still super good for a couple of reasons.
First of all the new created baby dragon have no traits active and is way less dangerous than any normal troop you met durings this dungeon. Beside of killing the traits, you lower the level and stats by 50% AND the card start with 0 mana. That means you steal mana as well. You can't decide which card is transformed into a baby dragon, but if you hit the same card again you will lower there stats again. That means a level 500 turns into a level 250 baby dragon and the baby dragon can be transformed into a 125 baby dragon and so on!
The damage Ubastet do depends also on the attack value of the enemy teams and that's a great thing and makes it easier to kill a baby dragon, especialy if you fight against a team in the upper region. Rock troll doubles the amount of brown stones and spawn 3 more, loading up your weapon, Ubastet and Yasmine's Chosen. Try to combine red and purple before you touch any brown gems, except you have to refresh your barrier or you can match 4 or more brown gems before your enemy does that for you. Keeping up your barrier is important, especially without Yasmine in your troop.
Yasmine's Chosen have a trait that Entangle a random enemys when machting green stones and this can be pretty handy. The deadly effect from your Megavore card could be triggered by your stone troll... but i know not all of us have these troop cards and you don't need them to beat level 500, because the first 3 cards are strong enough! I just can't hurt to support them somehow.
Queen Mab as example could freeze your enemys, avoiding extra turns from your enemys. Queen Titiana put faery fire on your enemys and let deal you 50% more magic damage, helping Ubastet to kill a troop. I also tested cards like Xathenos. He is able to steal 50% magic and this can make some strong magic troops harmless, but his move end the loop and skull damage was my number reason for a messed up run anyway. If you haven't any of the cards, simply use one that creates brown stones as example.
This team is highly recommended to beat level 500 without losing a troop. Your faction team will far away from beeing that awesome. That leads us to step 4.
4. Raise your hoard level as high as possibleThis is basicly the only thing you can do to make fights easier. The max level is 1000, but it would take way too long to max out your hoard level completly. I know the one thing we all want to know is: what's the minimum level we need with a faction to be able to beat level 500?
+++UPDATE+++
MemoriesOfFinal said:I did it at treasure hoard 193 which was a tad bit too early, but the stars aligned in the 2nd and 3rd room. At that number, 1st room usually wasn't a problem.
In my opinion your stats are more important than a specific level. Your Morana need at least 130 life points to be able to survive a true damage attack in room number 3 and 131 life points to be able to survive 2 hits from the knight in battle in battle 1. If you don't have this amount, the true damage attack will kill your troop in battle 3 with a single magic attack and this will lower your chance for a victory. I reached this goal with hoard level 222, but as you know there are many other factors like kingdoms that boost your stats. So you maybe need a higher or lower hoard level.
At some point you probably only use epic, legendary and mythic treasures to save some gold. I'm not sure about this, but be careful with the disenchant option at the troop section. Your mythic treasure also count as troop and if you have more than 4 you'll probably lose them with this option.
Needless to say you only should concentrate on one faction for the high end upgrading. As i said starting your fight with at least 131 lifepoints with Morana will make fights easier and i recommend to reach this goal, but even then you still need a huge amount of luck. I decided to continue to raise my hoard level even more to raise the chance to not lose a troop in the first battle.
With 131 lifepoints the knight in battle 1 would need to hit a troop 3 times with true damage to destroy, which should rarely happen. So if he attacks position 2, 3 and 4 and dies, your cards still have the armor amount to be protected. In worst case he attacks your troop in position 1 and raise the chance to lose it and you really want to start battle 2 with a full team.
5. The Road to Level 500The fastest way to make progress is during a faction event, but with more and more factions that will be added to the underworld, it will take longer for a full rotation... and this raise up the time until the crypt keeper event shown up again.
The other method is simply using your daily delves, which isn't a bad idea if you clear all rooms with a x2 treasure multiplier. If you start losing troops switch over to the minimum amount of fights to clear the room. That doesn't give you much chaos shards, but at least some progress in case of winning.
I have to say with the team i posted above i was not that hard to accomplish. Luck have always a role in gems of war. You can be lucky if the first enemy is transformed to a baby dragon, reducing the potential skull damage... or if you transform a specific troop a couple of times in row, giving you a chance to kill a way stronger troop with Ubastet. In some rounds i had trouble to match up brown, giving the enemy a chance to destroy my hero without barrier. Or the enemys had a cascade with skulls and killing my hero even with a barrier. Stuff like this can happen, even with a great team. Just don't give up! You can do it! =D
In the video below i show you my level 500 run with hoard level 170.
Now it's time to move to the final step...
6. Beat Level 500 with your faction teamHere we go. The ultimate goal and the biggest and most frustrating challenge. I'm still working towards this achievement and at some point i'll manage to unlock it... hopefully. The possibilty to destroy a card depending on your luck is a great thing, because it ignores the crazy amount of life/shield from the enemy team. It only means you have to try it over and over... until you get really lucky... aaand i know. Luck based achievements are not cool, but at least there is a chance to be lucky!
After some test runs my recommended faction team is:
3 x Morana
1 x Graveseer
I also tested 4 x Morana teams and having a spare Morana is maybe a nice thing, but a Graveseer helps you during battle 2 to change the useless green gems to purple to make your Morana more deadly. Spectral Knight in battle 1 uses purple mana for his attacks and can be annoying. Make sure you transform green to purple before the enemy Graveseer used his spell and insa charged the knight.
I probably made thing harder than necessary for me, because i maxed out all troops and now grave seer cast the enchant effect on himself, because he will pick the strongest troop and he have better values than my morana. This means he need to be attacked to be able to cast the effect on the other cards.
My next advice is not tested, but worth a try: don't max out the level of your grave seer if you still have this option. If you keep him weaker than your morana, he should be able to enchant your moranas right away, giving you more chances to trigger a deadly attack.
Lady Morana have a nice 65% skull damage reduction skill, which gives you more time to execute your deadly attack. You also steal attack with your morana with 4 or 5 gem combination, this can also help to survive a little bit longer. Let cards without direct magic damage in front of the enemy team and destroy all troops below that card. With a bit drop luck you can steal enough attack to take the danger away.
The second room gives players the most trouble. Some of them are nearly impossible to beat, for other rooms you need luck. Awoo just posted an extrem helpful comment about the second room that can't be ignored.
Awoo said:Impossible tier:
Lair of Shadows - Don't even try. You'll see why.
Graveyard team - Very hard because of the Spectral Knight and Keeper of Souls.
Dragon Hatchery - Everything does lots of damage and the egg can respawn babies.
Unlikely tier:
Worms - Possible with luck, but the Cockatrice is a major shithead.
Wild Pack - Very hard, but possible if you can take out their second troop quickly.
Scaled Court - The Lamias can stack charm damage really quickly, but possible to win if you take them out early.
Good tier:
Viper Pit - Venoxia is mostly harmless, focus on troop 1 and 3 and then clean up.
Dwarven Gate - Try to keep them from getting brown and yellow, their blue should be hogged mostly by their first troop. Take out whichever of the attacking dwarves that get closest to filling their mana, then clean up the rest.
Coral Cave - The best team by far. Take out troop 3, then 4, then it should be easy to outlast the remaining two.
Gate Guardians - Dangerous but doable. Take out troops 4 and 1 quickly, then let the anubis dude spawn a harmless baby gate while you take care of the actual gate and Clean up the rest.
In the last room spectral knight deal a lot of true damage to your cards. So take him down first. Afterwards take care of Lady Morana and with both cards down, only 2 supportes are left... with skull damage as your biggest risk. 3 moranas could be able to absorb long enough this kind of damage + you could try to lower the amount with your stealing effect. This is just a theory, because starting with a full team rarely happens.
Last but not least i want to show you a clip from Hohe69 of his successful run with his delve team.
I don't want lie to you. This achievement is going to be frustrating and unfair. I currently have hoard level 240 and sometimes i even lose a troop in the very first room, or losing all cards in the second room. If you sick of losing keep collecting shards and raise your hoard level. This will lower your required luck, but can be expensive and boring. If you don't give up, you will unlock this achievement sooner or later.
+++ ENDING +++That's all for now. We will see if they include more ways to collect chaos shards in the future. I want to thank anyone who contributed to this solution. Special thanks@MemoriesofFinal for all the early informations and clarifications in the comment section, Awoo for the part with the rooms and his advice in the forum section and last but not least Hohe69 for allowing me to use his game clip of his successful faction team run.