Dark Forest

Dark Forest will unlock after Chaos Dungeon. It requires 500,000 trophies and 9,000 gear score. There is another big jump in difficulty going from Chaos Dungeon to Dark Forest. The good news is that you can reuse your same set and Power Stones from Chaos to get started. The bad news is that it won't get you very far unless you have someone helping you out. There are 10 levels to clear that get increasingly difficult as well as crystals to be broken that will affect the difficulty. Completing runs in this mode will give you Dark Forest Gems, scraps, and schematics which can all be used to craft Titan Gear which is very powerful and comes with many different modifiers. There is a lot to unpack here but continue reading below as I discuss all of these components!

Gameplay

In Dark Forest you will spawn on the East side of the map and the boss which is a Treant is on the West side of the map. In the South Western part there are 3 crystals and to the North East is a Mini Boss. The strategy in this Dungeon will change depending on what point in the game you are at and will change depending on who your team mate is and how strong you both are. Typically the weaker/support player should group up all of monsters they can all around the map to be killed right away. During this time the stronger/high damage player would either kill some monsters themselves or go right to the mini boss. Once the first wave of monsters are killed you can both work on the mini boss if necessary. Once the mini boss is dead you will move onto the crystals. There are three different crystals that affect the amount of health the Treant has; purple, yellow, and blue. Each of these has a minimum damage required to be able to destroy the destroy the crystal; purple - 0, yellow - 1,500, and blue - 3,000s. Purple is the easiest and referred to as c1, yellow is the medium difficult and is referred to as c2, and blue is the hardest and is referred to as c3. If you are destroying the hardest crystal on every level you are doing what is referred to as a c27 run. This is because you break the blue (c3) crystal 9 times throughout the run for a total of c27. There are no crystals on the last level.

Boss Abilities

The Treant has a few different attack patterns and abilities that will evolve throughout the game. By default the Treant has two attack patterns besides the standard attack. The first is a semi circle in front of it that if you are hit will pull you into melee with the boss and stun you briefly. The second is a full circle around the boss that has three openings split within it. You will have to stand within these openings to avoid the attack which is a wave of roots that starts at the Treant and goes to the edge of the circle pushing you along the way. This attack happens three times in a row with the places you are able to stand to remain safe rotating around the boss. The fourth and final wave of this attack will be a full circle that will push you back and cannot be dodged.

Starting on dungeon level 4 the boss gains an ability where it summons golems. This will be tough for you when you are first starting out in Dark Forest and your damage is low because the Treant will cover itself in a blue bubble and you can no longer damage it. This will also cause any stacks you've had on it to expire. There will be trails leading out from the boss to golems that spawn around the map. You must follow these trails to the golems and defeat them so the Treant will lower the bubble and can be damaged again. It can be helpful to lure the Treant into corners on the edge of the map and it can cause the golems to not spawn so far away sometimes. If you leave the boss at its spawn location the golems can spawn over halfway across the map sometimes. If a golem does reach the Treant it will heal it for a portion of its health. From dungeon level 4 onward this will happen twice each level. When you take away about 1/3rd of the Treant's health and again once about 2/3rds of its health is gone. One thing to note is that though you cannot damage the Treant when one of these bubbles is up you still can continue to gain stacks on a Hunter like Anubis to increase your damage.

The last ability the Treant has is that it surrounds itself in a green bubble and again you cannot damage the boss. A totem will spawn (two spawn on level 10) within the bubble. Once you destroy this totem the bubble will drop and you can continue to kill the boss. These totems are quite quick to kill so you should be able to keep your stacks on this boss during this phase. If the totem is not destroyed in time it will heal the boss. The heal totem spawns when the boss is quite close to being defeated.

Strategy

It is hard to give an exact strategy because there are several different Power Stone setups depending on where you are in the game, if you have Titan Pieces, and which enhancements you do get on your pieces. Things to note are dungeon levels 3 and 8 the Treant is immune to poison unless one of you has the "Ignore Resist" enhancement and levels 6 and 10 are no heal so typically one player will be running Mender on each of these floors. As for other floors typically one player is the support while another player is a damage dealer. It is good to combine weakness Hunters like The Ripper, Eternal, and Void Knight with high damage Hunters like Hoplite, Apex Predator, and Anubis. The other options is to combine other Hunters with abilities like Terror, Hypnosis, etc together that can give you multiple debuffs. Some combos you see a lot in Dark Forest are Succubus/Abyssorb, Anubis/Time Traveler, and Torment/Mender. I will discuss actual Hunter pick orders and combinations in the next section.

Beginner

You will just be running your Chaos poison set and you'll want to have a setup as well so you can stack fire. If you are playing with a player of similar skill you'll want to be clearing c1s at first. As you learn the strategy and depending on the Hunters you have unlocked and how well you play together you may be able to do a couple c2s. If the other player has a few titan pieces you may be able to do c3s depending on which enhancements they have. Chances are you will only make it to Dungeon level 5 or 6 at most. You can focus on use stronger hunters early as you won't be making it deep into runs. Both players could use Succubus/Abyssorb and swap them on levels 1 and 2. Floor 3 you will have to use Fire. One player can use Lavamander while the other uses Mummy for an easy clear on this level. Then using the Time Traveler/Anubis combo can be great as long as you can keep Anubis alive and not lose your stacks. On Time Traveler you will want to keep all of the monsters off of Anubis so they don't die and make sure you take Death Strike as this will work on the golems so you can kill them quickly while the Anubis continues to stack on the Treant.

If you are being caried by someone just make sure you communicate and pick who they want. You will typically be supporting the whole way through. You will want to make sure you have a lot of these support Hunters awakened like The Ripper, Void Knight, etc. Depending on how strong the person is that is carrying you will need to clarify what your role is on the dungeon levels 3 and 8 which are the fire levels. If they aren't overpowered it will be common for you to go a fire set with Mummy on 3 and Mutant Turtle on 8. If they are overpowered they may just kill the boss outright with fire so you will not want to use your fire set to interfere with their stacks. Or, they may not even be using fire which means you still can if you want to use it to.

Intermediate

At this point you will hopefully have a better idea of the typical pick orders and have all of the regular Hunters for this mode awakened. You may also begin to have your first few Titan pieces crafted. Depending on where you are in this stage you could still be waiting to craft some pieces and require carries to get good runs or you may even be able to be the person carrying c3s consistently up to around level 6 or so. You'll just want to keep getting as many runs under your belt to begin crafting the few schematics you have as well as upgrading the pieces you were able to craft. The strategy for being carried is the same except you will most likely be able to make all of the necessary picks to support without being told. It still can be helpful to communicate with the other player or wait for them to clarify who they want you to pick for the later stages especially. Some people have different strategies so you want to make sure you are complimenting theirs.

Expert

If you've reached this stage you've got most if not all of the schematics you are looking for in your build and you are able to be the person carrying c27s. The most popular enchantments at the time of writing this you would be collecting are HP to Damage (hp2d), Multishot, and Disease. Depending on how far along you are there are different combinations or you still may be using some other enchantments as you are waiting to find your final Titan pieces. There are two separate builds that are used at this point; either Fire or Earth. Either way you'll have a Titan piece for both the weapon and ring slots with four Power Stones each. In either build you will want 1 purple for Life Leech. If you are going the fire build you will need 5 red stones to get over 1000% burn effect and then 2 blue as your last stones for the tentacles. This build will most likely be your first. I was able to run this build once I got both my ring and weapon to level 10. I used weakness, Hp2D, multishot, and 2 Death Fest. Once you get two to three Hp2D pieces it can be better to transition to an Earth build. You can experiment to find what works best for you but you will want 4 to 6 blues for tentacles than 1 to 3 earth.

Crystals

Your strategy may also change depending on how many crystals you break. At a minimum you can do a c9 run which you break the easiest crystal on each floor or a c27 run where you break the hardest crystal on each floor. On each floor there are there are 3 modifiers that can be added if you break a crystal. Breaking c1 will apply one randomly, c2 will apply two randomly. while breaking the c3 will apply all of the effects. The modifiers for each floor are:

Also, Floor 10 is influenced by how many crystals you broke previously. If you were to do a c27 run the boss will have the following modifiers:

The formulas to calculate the percentage increase on Floor 10 are as follows:

For example, if you did a c23 run it would be ((10/18) * (23 - 9)) * 100 = 777. This means the Boss would have 777% incresed HP and Damage on this floor. If you do the calculation for enemey spawns it will be 155% increased enemy spawns.

Mini bosses

Leprechaun

Defeating Leprechaun will grant you the "Lucky Xp" buff which will give you 1000% experience gain throughout the match.

Ripper

Defeating Ripper will give you the "Weakness" debuff which will let you apply 50% weakness to enemies.

Protector

Defeating Protector gives the "Yeti" debuff which will let you apply frozen to enemies and give you bonus damage against frozen target.

Wolf Shaman

Defeating Leprechaun will grant you the "Power of Elements" buff which gives you a healing aura and 500% earth damage.

Hunters

Here are some sample Hunter pics you may find helpful. Typically the weaker player would be making the left picks while the stronger player makes the right side. There is no way these are set in stone as things change with new Hunters being released, new Power Stones, as well as nerfs and buffs. These are just some patterns I see a lot. Usually Succubus/Abyssorb are paired up unless the stronger player is saving Abyssorb for Level 10. Mender/Torment are often paired together on levels 6 and 10. Also, Time Traveler and Anubis are almost always paired up when used on the lower levels. Though some people do run Anubis on level 10 as well. If you are new to Dark Forest I would focus on having Eternal, The Ripper, Void Knight, Mender, Succubus, Abyssorb, and Torment awakened. There are others that will obviously be beneficial as well but these are the support Hunters you will most likely be using every game.

Rewards, Scrap, and Schematics

The rewards in this mode are Dark Forest gems, scrap, and schematics. Dark Forest gems are used to open Dark Forest chests, craft mythics from schematics, craft Titan Gear from schematics, and upgrade Titan Gear. Scrap comes the form for each equipment slot; Helmet, Armor, Boots, Ring, and Weapon. If you collect 1,000 scrap of one type you can turn it into a schematic of the same type. Finally, the schematics. These will be the hardest to get and what you will be after. Schematics can be used to craft a piece of mythic gear from either Maze, Undeadgrounds, or Champion's Quest. Or, a schematic can be used to craft a piece of Titan gear which requires a mythic of the same type from Maze, Undeadgrounds, and Champion's Quest as well as 1,000 Dark Forest gems. For example, to create a Titan Helmet you have to sacrifice a Mythic Maze Helmet, Mythic Undeadgrounds Helmet, Mythic Champion's Quest Helmet, and 1,000 Dark Forest Gems. Typically, you will use your schematics that you don't need to craft the mythics that you do need to sacrifice to create your better schematics into Titan gear. Undeadgrounds equipment is the hardest to farm so often they can be used to create these. If you do manage to get multiple schematics of the same type for the same equipment slot you can enhance it. For example, if you have Hp2D on your ring and get it to level 10; you can then sacrifice two more Hp2D ring schematics to increase your level 10 ring to have a Rank 2 enhancement. This would increase the Hp2D effect on the pieces from Rank 1 (5%) to Rank 2 (10%).

There is also another use for the schematics you don't need. Selecting the "Reroll" button on the schematics page will let you sacrifice three schematic to create a new schematic. You can either choose to do a "Random" reroll where you sacrifice three of any schematic to get a new schematic of a random type and random enhancement or you can choose to do a "Specific" reroll where you choose three schematics of the same type and the result will be a schematic of the same type with a random enhancement. In either case you will have two options to choose from in the results and you can choose whichever you prefer. You can read more about Titan Gear here where I will discuss all of the enchantments.

The rewards scale based on how many crystals you break. You can view the below image from the Hunt Royale creators showing all rewards based on the amount of crystals broken.

Titan Gear