Overview
Wherein I briefly describe the heroes of Last Hope and give a few levelling and use recommendations.
Introduction
At this point, I’ve obtained and maxed out the equipment of all heroes save for the Sheriff (who is 2 bullet tiers shy of completion) and the Princess and Barbarian (who don’t yet have their level 25 weapons). I have also levelled the Mech, Scientist, and Desert Scout to the level cap of 25.
Having just received 4 Nightmare stars on all campaign levels, I thought it a good time to share my thoughts on the heroes and their utility in clearing the game.
Indian Princess
While very useful initially, the Indian Princess is soon outstripped in all roles by higher tier heroes.
She has decent range, damage, attack speed, and close range defence/damage ability, but since you can only field 1-4 heroes at once (usually 2), as a jack of all trades but master of none, she is best replaced with a specialist as quickly as possible.
It does not help either that her Arrow Rain ability is one of the worst actives in the game. It doesn’t hit that hard and takes forever to complete, and while she’s performing the skill animation she is not attacking. If you use it on a single boss, you will be disappointed by how few arrows actually hit even if you manage to keep the boss in place for the duration of the skill. And if you use it on a swarm, you probably won’t kill off enough zombies to make the loss of DPS worthwhile.
Since you should be replacing her ASAP, don’t bother upgrading her equipment too much.
Indian Barbarian
Though he’s pretty tough and can be made highly resistant to poison, his short range, inability to hit airborne targets until fully levelled, and unspectacular damage output leave him as possibly your least effective hero.
That said, I’ve found him surprisingly useful on one particular map. If you place him in the centre of the summoning circle on Burial Ground, he stanches the zombie outflow pretty effectively. He can’t do it all on his own, however, and you will still need to position your other heroes well and build towers strategically.
The warriors called forth by his Reinforcements ability can be very helpful in a pinch as well. These fairly tanky helpers can either be used to buffer your glass cannons from zombie attack or spawned at an exit to catch a runner that has made it through your gauntlet.
[Thanks for this comment, Larzarneph:] “Upgrading the axe and spear defender buildings also upgrades the defenders the barbarian summons in. Axe upgrades the axe ones and spear one the spearmen.”
It’s probably not worth upgrading his equipment early on though. On the vast majority of maps, he is less effective than even the Indian Princess, so you’ll probably want to get rid of him before you get rid of her.
Desert Scout
I relied really heavily on the Desert Scout for a large part of my game. This was a terrible mistake that slowed my progress considerably.
He was my third hero, and his combination of long range sniping attacks and short range drone fire made him seem like a better version of the Princess. Well, he’s not. In actuality, he has the lowest damage output of all the heroes. His drone gets a few decent upgrades, but its range is so short that you won’t get to enjoy its firepower until the zombies are close enough to drool on his face. Also, he is really fragile even with his force field upgrade, so going toe-to-toe with zombies is definitely not recommended. Since you will be placing him out of harm’s way, his drone ends up not getting very much action.
Cruise Missile Strike sounds like a powerful ability… but the missiles take so long to arrive that the skill is all but useless for catching leaks with. You need to lead the target by a few seconds, so forget firing them at runners near an exit. And despite how dangerous they seem like they should be, they really aren’t that damaging. So using them to take out a tough zombie doesn’t work all that well either.
Drone Detonation is another ability that sounds like it should do awesome damage. After all, it leaves the Scout without any short range damage ability for a time (that is, if you choose to trigger it while the Scout is alive). But in reality the drone goes out with more of a whimper than a bang. Consequently, pushing the Scout into a heroic sacrifice is more of an unfunny comedy routine than an act of tactical genius.
In short, the Scout’s useless. Avoid like the plague.
Mechanic
Though not the strongest fighter, the Mechanic is invaluable on the few maps where rapidity of tower building makes the difference between victory and defeat. Field Mechanic V grants you 300 extra action points when you start a map; this translates into a nearly maxed out Poison Arrow turret.
His mines (especially Sentry Spiders) are great as an oh-crud stop-gap as well. If a leak develops anywhere on the map, quickly plop down a triad of mines and you may just manage to stem that leak. Also, when you get used to the range of his Sentry Spiders, you can stack a bunch of them near a tough boss and have them fire on it continuously while your other units are tanking it. (If they don’t explode, they stick around long enough that you can have 3 sets of 3 mines on-screen at any one time.) Then if/when the boss makes it through the blockade and moves towards the mines, they will rush into the boss and detonate for 500 damage each. That’s 4.5k damage if you have 9 mines active.
He’s really not that strong a combatant though, and has miserable range besides, so he isn’t a top priority for levelling. You should probably level him 4th. Or maybe 3rd because he’s much cheaper than the Soldier.
Sheriff
Ah, the Sheriff. Looks pretty useless, actually is pretty useless.
To be fair, he has the second longest range in the game, which often allows him to kill off an enemy or two before the wave can get in close.
The reasons I say he is not worth buying are firstly because the Mech, Scientist, and Soldier are all clearly superior: if you have these other guys, the Sheriff is only useful in 4-hero missions, and even then he is largely replaceable with the cheaper Mechanic.
(Exception: on 4-hero Cemetery maps, you aren’t able to build towers at all and instead spend build points on Indian reinforcements. In these maps he is likely superior to the Mechanic because you really don’t want zombies to get close to your expensive and squishy summons.)
Secondly, he is single-target only, meaning that his unremarkable DPS doesn’t get a multiplier. Though the Mechanic has miserable range, his spread shot makes a damage output comparison between him and the Sheriff rather tricky.
If you have the Soldier or the Mech but not both, the Sheriff is not a bad choice as a partner for the other hero while completing your first run of the game. But for the players who haven’t yet unlocked him, I’d say save up for Soldier + Mech instead.
Levelling priority: 4th or 5th. (You don’t need him, really.)
Note: though his character stats show his range to be only 15 m, in actuality, his range is much longer: there is a bug causing the range increase from his Longshot skill to not be factored into the range number. His true range with Longshot V is 15+10 = 25 m, giving him the second longest reach in the game.
Soldier
When I first obtained the Soldier, I had thought that his most important role would be healing. Surprisingly, it turns out he is your second hardest hitting hero (behind the Mech Warrior), has decent range, and has two area effect attacks that he uses automatically every few seconds.
His heal is quite underwhelming though. 300 HP/5 sec translates into 1.4% of the Mech Warrior’s health every second. His healing will primarily be useful on the Cemetery maps (on which you can’t build towers and can only buy weak Indian defenders instead) and pretty pointless anywhere else. Still, you won’t go wrong if you consider this icing on the cake and use him mainly as a damage dealer.
Instant Recover can come in useful at times; it allows your Soldier to instantly resurrect on death. Maxed out, it can be activated once every 30 seconds. Then again, if your Soldier is dying, it probably means your defence line is collapsing and you’re about to lose the round. This is not a skill that should activate often, and when it does it usually means the excrement is already making contact with the fan in increasingly frightening quantities.
The Roadblock active skill causes a small barricade to appear at a location of your choice. Enemies nearby have to attack and break it before they can continue on their way (even if their path is not fully blocked by the barricade). Roadblock V has only 2k HP and disappears after 1 minute, however, so it’s not a skill you should expect a lot from.
Summing up, the Soldier’s skills are all pretty weak. However, his superior offensive abilities make him a pretty good choice for spot 3 or 4 on your hero team.
Mech Warrior
This is far and away your strongest offensive unit. It has insane reach, damage, and health (and is immune to poison!), and also has exceptional attack speed once upgraded to Miniguns. Additionally, its Level 3 Missile Launchers will kill many enemies before they even get into range of any of your other heroes. Your Mech can in some instances cover 2-3 exits all on its own.
When it gets buried in an enemy swarm, trigger its Electric Pulse to insta-gib all nearby small ground-based things (700 damage) and stun whatever survives for a lengthy 7 seconds. Even many large bosses are susceptible to this stun effect! Electric Pulse is quite possibly the best active ability in the game.
Siege mode gives the Mech unlimited range and a huge damage boost for 4 (slow) shots; this can occasionally be a lifesaver when you are out of position and need to take down enemies on the other side of the map pronto. But since it is useful only very rarely, I recommend you not bother with it until you have money to spare.
Make the Mech a priority purchase. You don’t need advanced turrets to get through most Normal maps. Once you have maxed out your Poison Arrow, Sentry, Stomp, and Anti Air turrets, you should be able to make it through enough missions to earn the coins for the Mech.
Note: switching your main weapons from Cannons (tier 1) to Miniguns (tier 2) changes the Mech’s damage type from Normal to Small Rounds. These are less effective against many large zombies, but the attendant spikes in attack rate and DPS make the transition an easy one. It’s probably not worth upgrading the Cannons; I suggest that you go straight to Miniguns.
Cannon LVL3: 325.2 damage per shot, fire rate 32 (172.4 DPS)
Minigun LVL3: 282.4 damage per shot, fire rate 159 (748.6 DPS)
Yes, the Minigun delivers 4.3x the DPS of the Cannon! And fire rate is about 2.7x per second rather than one shot per 2 seconds – the Minigun makes it much easier to catch runners and fliers.
Incidentally, it is unclear how much damage the shoulder Missiles and Siege Cannon do. Assuming that damage values are based on the stats on the Mech character screen, we have:
Missile Launcher LVL3: 382.4 small area damage per missile, 9×2 missiles per second with 5 second reload = 1.15k DPS at range 31+12 = 43
Siege Cannon LVL3: 1.78k damage per shot, 4 shots in 15 seconds = 475.3 DPS, unlimited range
Scientist
The Scientist becomes automatically available to you once you complete the campaign on Normal. Unlike the other heroes, the Scientist has only one equipment slot and doesn’t have stats to write home about. However, the truth is that he is your most effective defensive hero; practically all levels in the game becomes a lot easier once you have a levelled up Scientist in the bag.
First off, his Meat Wall ability is nothing short of amazing. When this is maxed out in combination with DNA manipulation, the Scientist is surrounded by 8 friendly zombies with 1.3k HP each. Simply place the Scientist at a choke point or in front of an exit and most of the time nothing will be able to get by even on Nightmare difficulty.
Then we have his Plasma Gun. Though the Scientist’s DPS is on paper similar to the Mechanic and Barbarian’s, the Plasma Gun’s shots chain to additional enemies the same way a Tesla Turret’s shots do. Furthermore, if my eyes haven’t deceived me, just as with Tesla Turret blasts, each bounce adds damage to the Plasma bolt. Swarms of weaker enemies – including fliers! – will not get to live very long while in the Scientist’s area of control. Incidentally, assuming an average of 3 targets per shot, even ignoring the possibility of bounce boosting, the Scientist’s DPS shoots up to 791.7, putting him on par with the Mech Warrior for primary weapon damage output! Even better: very few enemies (if any at all) have resistance to plasma damage.
Finally, Zombie Gorilla is arguably the second best active ability in the game. This allows him to summon an extremely hardy blocker who incidentally also throws large rocks at ground targets for respectable area (?) damage. While it is not quite as game-changing as the Mech’s Electric Pulse, the ability to pop a tough, hard-hitting blocker into existence anywhere on the map means you have a good way to catch a small leak anywhere on the map.
Final Thoughts
Thinking that this was a tower defence game, I spent all my coins on tower purchases and upgrades before working on the higher tier heroes. How wrong I was. The most difficult maps are impossible without strong heroes, and some maps (even on Nightmare) don’t even require towers if you deploy the right heroes in the right places.
Once you have maxed out your Poison Arrow, Sentry, Stomp, and Anti-Air turrets, you should be able to make it through enough missions to earn the coins for the Mech.
This being the case, it is imperative that you (a) buy the Mech Warrior as early as possible and focus on maxing it out and (b) rush for Normal difficulty campaign completion so you can pick up the Scientist. Once you have these two heroes well kitted out and levelled up, you can laugh maniacally while you bulldoze your way through Nightmare.
Well, there are still a few levels that are painful even with maxed out Mech and Scientist (I’m looking at you, Elevator and The Lab challenge). But most of the game becomes pretty easy with these two stanchions in your defensive array.
As for which towers to focus on when your Mech and Scientist are all grown up, the ones I used the most were Poison, Stomp, Anti-Air, Sentry, and Sniper. You’ll probably want to upgrade one of the troop spawners as well at some point. Cannon is useful on some maps too. The rest aren’t really necessary for any map at all.