Overview
Useful tricks and advices for flat players and advanced players.
General disclaimer
Revised until 25-02-2021.
Whatever you find on this guide is applicable in Worms 4 Mayhem and in Worms Ultimate Mayhem.
Tips and tricks on game – medium players
Venom
Venemous weapons are stronger at the beginning, because there are less health boxes, and to the long term you would have taken more life than if you used venom late on the game.
In matches with 2 or more other people, the player that comes just before you will take more damage before he is able to cure his worms.
For a similar reason, venom is worse for the rival worm that moved the last turn, because the enemy player will need to either wait for the moment in which the poisoned worm has a turn, or waste a Worm Select to be able to heal him.
Venom is useful against armored worms, because its effect is not supressed, contrary to the damage from explosions on armor.
Armor
A worm can become armored after he gets a purple box. Purple boxes are called utility boxes.
Armored worms reduce the damage that they take from explosions to 25% rounded down, but they do not reduce venom damage.
Armored worms are thrown closer if they are pushed, on most cases.
Armored worms take complete damage from weapons of close range and the odd rubber man.
Worm names
Invent and sneak a code in the names of your worms to know which worms go first to last without making it obvious to opponents.
Worm movement
Consider to use worm selections to back off your worms from water, before you launch any weapon.
On matches of 2 or more rivals, convince your rivals that it is more convenient to kill worms from each other than to kill any of your worms.
How to use the icarus potion
Push the bar at equal intervals. Do not do it fast. Do it having the same time between each press.
How to use the homing missile
The common homing missile inflicts around 46 to 49 points of damage if you hit a worm on his body, but it inflicts 50 points when you destroy the terrain that is right below or in front of him.
How to fall without damaging yourself using surfaces
Surfaces that are inclined around 130 to 100 or 80 to 50 degrees slide and absorb the fall damage of the worms that fall on them.
Saving a fall using a worm selection
If your worm is about to smash his head on the ground, use a worm selection to use a different worm. This new worm will continue the turn.
Sentry thinking
It can be a good option to leave the sentry of an opponent alive if he holds the possibility to deploy a sentry on a better position, because players can have only 0 or 1 sentries at the same time.
Sentries can be avoided, but this takes time, so they can be useful on game styles with short turn times.
Sentry tricks
You can cover the vision of a sentry with a girder.
During your turn, you can try to have an opponent worm to stand between your active worm and a sentry that is a rival of you. The opponent worm may eat bullets that your rival sentry tries to fire to you.
Sentries have 75 points of life.
Sentries can shoot bullets to a worm if he is moving inside a rubber man.
Sentry avoidance with Worm Selection
This bug makes me clench; team17.
If your current worm is seen by a rival sentry, you can continue the turn using 1 worm selection to select a different worm. You can also use that first worm again.
Death machine
If one of your worms dies in front of a rival worm, the rival worm takes ~30 points of damage, but when your worm dies on the head of the rival worm, the enemy worm takes ~65 points of damage.
This may be due to 2 things; one is that the blast force of the explosion of a death is insane, and the other is that worms take added damage when they hit a surface at great speed.
Weapon factory – Cool phenomenons
I explain what a bar is in the other section.
Worm damage
When you hit yourself with a custom grenade that has 0 bars of worm damage, your retreat time remains.
Blast damage
3 of blast damage bars are enough to cause sentries to attack a worm that you hit directly.
Land damage
Barrels do not explode if you hit them with a custom weapon that has 0 bars of main terrain damage.
If you hit a hammered worm using a custom weapon that has 0 bars of main land damage, the worm will remain hammered and absorb the damage.
1 bar of land damage is enough to make a barrel explode if you hit it directly, and to make the weapon able to be used to free any worm that is hammered.
Teleguide
Your time to retreat is removed when you use a gun with common teleguide, but not if the gun has advanced version.
Weapon factory – Statistics
On the image above, I explain what a bar is.
Worm damage
Power / Health damage done
0 bars / 1 for guns, 0 or 1 for grenades.
1 bars / 7 for guns, 8 for grenades.
2 bars / 15 for guns, 16 for grenades.
3 bars / 23 for guns, 25 for grenades.
4 bars / 30 for guns, 33 for grenades.
5 bars / 38 for guns, 42 for grenades.
6 bars / 46 for guns, 50 for grenades.
7 bars / 53 for guns, 59 for grenades.
8 bars / 61 for guns, 67 for grenades.
9 bars / 69 for guns, 75 for grenades.
10 bars / 75 for guns, 75 for grenades.
The fall damage neither the 9 or 10 instant points of damage added by venom are included.
Blast strength
0 to 7 bars will cause the worm to move nothing or a only a little.
8 bars almost resemble the blast force of a bazooka.
9 to 10 bars resemble the blast force of a dynamite.
Custom air attacks have an exponentially stronger blast force compared to custom guns or grenades.
Land damage
0 bars cause no effect on the terrain.
1 to 3 bars cause minuscule damage.
4 or 5 bars cause small holes.
6 to 7 bars cause regular holes.
6 to 7 bars are generally enough to destroy girders easily.
8 to 10 bars cause big holes.
Cluster spread
The minimum possible distance at which the clusters can erupt from the main explosion will be always around 0.4 of a worm. I have never seen a cluster fall exactly below the epicenter of the main explosion.
You may not see 2 or more clusters fall at the same time.
Setting the cluster spread to a higher value will make the clusters fly higher, apart of further.
0 to 2 bars on cluster spread cause the clusters to spread subtly.
3 bars cause a short spread.
4 to 6 bars cause a regular spread.
7 to 10 bars cause clusters to fly too far.
Cluster land damage
A weapon with 10 bars on cluster land damage erupts a cluster that destroys even less terrain than a bazooka. The amount of terrain that the clusters destroy is much more reduced when the custom weapon has more clusters.
Cluster worm damage
1 bar on cluster worm damage equals around 80% to 90% as much damage as 1 bar on main worm damage; the maximum I recorded were 67 damage points from a weapon that had 1 cluster.
However, it is hard to hit a worm with a cluster because the widest range in which the clusters apply their damage is around 1.6 worms lied down of diameter.
At 0 bars of cluster worm damage, each cluster inflicts 1 point of damage, with the exception of custom grenades that have 0 bars on main worm damage.
Cluster blast force
A direct hit to a worm, by one cluster that erupted from a custom weapon that has 10 bars on cluster blast force, can push this worm around 50% further and around 50% lower than a direct hit from a custom grenade or the bullet of a custom gun that has 10 bars on main blast force.
Curve of the shot
Guns without Improved shot have a heavier bullet.
Weapon factory – Ideas
Ideas
Pool digger:
Some random maps (prehistoric, construction maps) have a very low ground; so low that the explosions cause small pools, with water from the sea, due to its its almost equal altitude. If you play on one of these maps and you see a worm standing on the ground, shoot this weapon at him and he will fall below the terrain and drown on a pool.
To create a pool digger, spend 10 bars on land damage but 0 bars on blast strenght, and opcionally give it 1 cluster with 0 or 1 bars on propagation/spread and 10 bars on cluster terrain damage; this cluster would make the hole below deeper in case that the big one is not enough.
Suicidal weapon:
Choose one of your worms with low health and shoot this weapon on your feet while your worm is on the head of the enemy worm. The enemy worm will take the damage of the weapon and the damage from your worm’s explosive death. This can sum a max of 140 damage points.
To create a suicidal weapon, spend 10 bars on worm damage, but 0 bars on blast strenght, so your worm dies above the enemy. If the weapon is a grenade, set the explosion type to Impact.
Weapon factory – Help for new players
The weapon factory or weapon editor lets you design a customized weapon, called Team weapon, which you can use in matches.
Blast strength
This is the force that worms are pushed back with when they are hit by the explosion of the projectile of your weapon.
Land damage
This is how big is the hole that is created in the terrain by the grenade or the bullet of the gun.
Improved shot
Guns without Improved shot have a heavier bullet, and cannot be launched at less than 100% power.
Explosion type: impact, bounce, timer, user
This appears if you choose to make a grenade.
Impact: the grenade explodes when it touches something, alike a bazooka.
Bounce: explodes when it stops moving, like a holy grenade.
Timer: the grenade explodes when its timer reaches 0. The time of the fuse can in game be set with B, or with the numbers 1 to 5.
User: you decide when the grenade explodes, with left click by default.
Cluster spread
This is how far away or how high the clusters fly away from the projectile, after the projectile explodes.
Cluster worm damage, land damage and blast strenght
If you add clusters to a weapon, these options appear.
More clusters mean that every cluster will have less power.
Other info – For addict players
Turn end
The active worm is the worm that is having the current turn.
Your turn ends when your active worm takes damage of 1 point or more.
This is why you can keep doing your turn after you reselect other worm before your active worm takes damage, which is a common trick to get around sentries.
Unshown content of boxes
When you write a game style, the extra content (Not the utilities) in the purple boxes and in the mystery boxes depend on the game style that you base your game style from.
This can be seen in the file Local.xml or .xom.
In short, if you want to receive double damage more often, base your styles from Holy grail. If you want to receive crate spy and armour more often, from Dark side or Strategy.
Help for new players
How to use other worm on your current turn
Open the weapon list. Clic on the tool Worm Selection; which looks as 2 red arrows on the bottom of the weapon list. After you clic this tool, press Tab. Tab is the key on your keyboard that has 2 arrows on it.
Key functions that are not often used by beginners
1 2 3 4 5 – Set how many seconds the grenades that you throw will last. This is often called fuse.
E – View the map from above. This is called blimp view.
Space, space (fast) – Jump higher.
There may be a way to change the ‘bounce power’ of grenades, which was possible on earlier games, but i am not sure.