Overview
A guide on basic techniques and principles that can be extremely helpful and apply to almost every level in quest mode regardless of difficulty. 5 topics are discussed and questions and feedback are encouraged as I will updating this guide if I become aware of errors of relevent information that I feel warrents an addition.
Intro
Rather then offer tricks to beat a particular level I will discuss some general rules of thumb I have developed over soloing almost all levels on hardcore:
1. SAFE DASHING
It may be obvious already but dashing will save you in a stupid number of situations (especially when utilizing the next tip). Don’t burn dash to enter an unsafe situation. With dash on cool down you are exponentially more vulnerably, not just cause you can’;t catch arrows but because you cant avoid a enemies that are faster and about to touch you for a kill.
2. SUPER JUMP
Learning to super jump is very helpful. For those who do not know what this is it is when you crouch, dash straight, and jump during the dash. Usually not useful as a means to approach an enemy as it leaves with little ability to control your movement but it is insanely good for traversing the map both to grab arrows and escape enemies. You will be crouching throughout the dash you you can even slip under some enemies and then super jump away. It can take a little time to start doing this automatically and fluidly incorporate it in to play but it is well worth it. To drive home how amazing this is I went to a time trial map and covered a gap with a super jump. I then covered the gap with only normal jumps, dashes, and fast falls. The second method took just over twice as long which is crazy and there situations where the difference is even more significant. Another great feature of super jumps is that they bring your dash off of cool down significantly faster. If one dashes to super jump and dashes as soon as possible after they will complete there 2nd dash in about .8 seconds where as completing two dashes any other way will take about 1.2 seconds. Another crazy time difference that can significantly effect play.
3. SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
Never forget that the edges of the screen lead to the opposite edge. Having complete situational awareness of the map is huge not just in enemy positions, but in knowing the enemy movement paths will let you asses situations better and recognize areas that are more safe or more dangerous. Part of this awareness is realizing that the edges are connected. Since the immediate area surrounding your archer is the most important to focus on it can become easy to forget that when near an edge things on the opposite side of the map are just as important as what is right next to you.
4. LOOPING
Situational awareness may have been kind of an obvious one but I thought it was important to mention before talking about looping. When faced with a large number of enemies and arrows are not an option or you wish to conserve them (some examples are that there are crows that you will need to shoot while looping, you are fighting many reapers, or you are out of arrows and cannot retrieve them first) one of the most effective methods of dispatching them is to loop them, that is to reach the bottom of the map as fast as possible, come out the top, and stomp as many as you can safely (rinse of their blood and repeat). When I realized this I started laughing at many situations that would have been incredibly more difficult any other way.
5. ARROW ECONOMY
Consider how you will deal with an enemy archer carefully (if you aren’t under to much pressure that is). The reason for this is any arrows they have on death are lost and arrow management can be huge. First, if they have a shield shoot it cause they cant catch while shielded. Do be careful about this though, as you want to do it in such a way that the arrow doesn’t fall in his movement path as he will then pick it up. The optimal way to kill them is to stomp them. The way to do this is to fall at them but not from so far that they have time to shoot more then one arrow. To make sure you don’t die save your dash till the last second and then dash at their head so you catch any last second arrows. If you are low on arrows to start and he is last enemy you can farm arrows by letting him shoot at you and then dodging to a location he cant shoot you at (so that he doesn’t shoot you with a second arrow while dodge is on cool down). The obvious alternative to head stomps is shooting them but you will usually need to arrows save special circumstances or bating a dodge in other ways. I see most people do the two arrow trick as it is the most obvious way to kill them (I know this was how i dealt with the first one I saw) but this can be a severe gimp. I don’t remember how many archers or extra arrows there are on that level but there are levels where you fight 4 or more archers at once and losing four arrows in a round can be devastating if you haven’t been farming arrows and there are few chests handing them out. The only other time I would argue that arrow economy should not be forgotten is when dealing with bolt arrows. These are the best arrows in many situations and can be used over and over. A big problem is if a Reaper or Knife Wielder slashes it it disappears and you lose a valuable resource. Stomp them or shoot them from a vulnerable side when possible. They will also dissappear if they hit a tornado so be warey of this as well.
Note: I forget what happens when bolt arrows hit shields. I will edit the post when I check and see the result.
Contributers: Saturn2888 (for bolt arrow/tornado interaction confirmation)
Conclusion
Wow that got really long. Props to anyone who actually read it all. These are the most basic, generally applicable, and effective techniques/principles to keep in mind. If you have any more questions or would like to discuss one of the above topics in more detail just PM me.