Trap Map: Fortress Assault (with video link)

Fortress Assault is a Troy mission for level 80+ which you can solo quite easily as long as you have a witch with you. At least I only have tried to solo it that way, with a level 89 main musician, a level 82 oracle and a level 82 witch.

Name	Fortress Assault
Minimum level	80
Maximum number of participants	4
Size of a party	main + 2 mercenaries
Time limit	60 minutes
Total number of vehicles allowed	1
Entry fee	0.5 M
Total upgrade cost	1 M (after Spelltower patch)
Catapult cost	0.5 M
Reward	12 x Troy Battlefield Chests (“120 Atlantica Silver Coins”)
XP victory bonus	72 M

My way of doing it:

1. Apply the Scheme Of Immediate Doom (SOID) as outlined here. If you don’t want to click on the link I repeat it here a bit abbreviated:

a) Be a coward until your witch is charged.

b) Before she is charged clear the way (get information about what is ahead of you, disarm traps).

c) Move up with your witch and meteor strike all enemies.

d) Rinse and repeat.

2. Take out the summon portal at B7. To do that you must first kill the monstergroup at DE5/6, then move your catapult so that it can barely reach the portal, seth it (the catapult) and destroy it (the portal).

3. You can ignore the summon portal at  B14. The monsters there have a long way until they reach you – chances are they never will or if so, you have ample chances to take care of them.

4. The next big challenge is the Chaotic Minotaur, a mini boss. But before you challenge him in the usual SOID way you have to fight one monster group at B8. In this mission are venom monsters (cannoneers who can poison you and have flapping winglike arms) behind every wall who love nothing more than to molest you after you just exhausted your witch. I noted them as “vm” in the map.

5. Work your way up to E11. You should kill all monsters in this area before you tackle the gate. Be aware that if you kill the monster group before the gate there will probably a rush of additional monsters from the room above. So make that “m” in the map an “mmm” in your mind (like “many, many monsters”). If you have a net trap ready it may be a nice idea to use one shortly before your witch does her meteor strike, to hold the following rush.

6. You will now try to kill Sarpedon, the boss. You do that “over the wall”: You kill all monsters around F12 (the stockade area), while carefully avoiding the group at D13. Then when your witch is charged she will run up to the wall, cast meteor strike on the boss, followed by a ravaging melody from your main (or whatever your main is able to cast), while your healer is far enough away for emergencies. Repeat until the boss is dead. You may be interrupted by monsters which were spawned from the second summon portal and are now finally able to reach you. Don’t haste, you have plenty of time. Destroy them at your leasure. Three meteor strikes will finish the boss eventually.

Here is a small visualization of this strategy (you may click on the maps to enlarge them if you so desire, by the way):

1: Summon Portal.

2: Big bad minotaur.

3. Clean up your parade ground.

4. Kill over the wall.

I tried another strategy on 2011-08-14 which worked like this:

1. Summon Portal.

2. Big bad minotaur (so far as the strategy mentioned above).

3. Sneaking in the “secret” aisle behind the left side wall and destroying the second summon portal.

4. Clearing the boss room from left to right.

5. Killing Sarpedon directly.

Both ways to do it are possible. The second strategy is “cleaner”: you have no summon portals to worry about and you tackle the boss directly. When you are at it there will be no irritating mobs around him. But I still think the first strategy is a bit safer. When I did my runs with the first strategy only twice a pair of monsters from the summon portal trickled through each run. On the other hand you avoid to tackle the boss and the masses of monsters in the boss room. They can pester you quite severely if you even slip once and the boss can do that even if yo don’t do anything wrong. Killing over the wall, while sneaky, cowardly and unfair, spares you the direct confrontation with the boss and leaves a bit margin for mistakes.

Hint: Now, you being able to do 3 TBS missions (Scouting Party, Base Defense, Fortress Assault), you should take Homer’s First Phase quest. If you don’t know what I am talking about read about record keeping here.

Here is a video I made from my fourth solo run with my (then) level 89 musician main, an oracle in level 83 and a witch which I pushed to level 90 already:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: