Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Introduction (please read)

Hello, and welcome to my guide for Orcs Must Die! Unchained for the Playstation 4.

Orcs Must Die! Unchained is a castle defense/survival hybrid game, where the player is defending his/her base (which is a "Rift"), against multiple waves of enemies.

The game itself is presented in third-person shooter style, but does have a variety of characters that attack at either melee or ranged. The player also has access to various "traps" that do a variety of things, which mostly includes extra damage to enemies, but also includes slows and physics traps that will launch certain enemies in multiple directions.

This game is also free-to-play and can be downloaded from the Playstation Store at no charge.

Patch Information

Since this game is free-to-play, this usually means that patches will come out for various reasons. These reasons include bug fixing, as well as balance changes.

I downloaded the game in July of 2017, and of this writing in November of 2017, there have been a number of patches already (I would say around 6 or so), which have almost always balanced numerous aspects of the game.

Due to this, it is always important to be up to date with the patch notes. If you're wondering, the "Update History" on the PS4 app menu (found by pressing the Options button while having the app highlighted), usually does not give you all the information. To find the most recent patch notes, please visit the official Orcs Must Die! Unchained website, which is located here:

https://forums.orcsmustdie.com/

This guide is written for Patch 2.6, which coincides with the PC patch releases. This means that the version you see in the "Version History" on your PS4 will say something different. If you're unsure which patch you are working with, just check the forums linked above.

So remember - Patches may change how well this guide works!

It's impossible for me to constantly update the guide with each new patch, but happily Robot does tend to make more positive changes rather than negative ones. Not only that, but my guide for each map is fairly minimalist, which means I go in with fairly low damage, which in turn means you should be able to do better than I do because you'll probably go in with stronger traps and characters.

This in turn will hopefully compensate for any new adjustments, provided there are not major overhauls of Heroes or traps.

About this Guide

The walkthrough of this guide is constructed on an entirely new playthrough. I make an attempt to 5 Star each map with minimal gear, because it's difficult to determine what each reader has access to. By completing the maps with common traps, and at lower levels, I have an increased chance that someone will be able to successfully complete the map with my guide.

I have decided to convert this guide from originally being a trophy guide to a full FAQ and Walkthrough. The table of contents is as follows:

• 5 Star Walkthrough - For those wishing to fully complete each stage (of at least the base game), I will cover this in video and text. I will cover the Wu Xing maps introduced in patch 2.5, but I may not be able to cover any new maps in future patches. This is due to the nature of progression; in order to finish the guide currently with minimal equipment, I need to level and go through all over again. I may be able to add in guides to maps added in the future, but unfortunately to do it in the same "minimalist" style, I would have to start all over again for a 3rd time (which, sorry, is not going to happen).
  • This guide will not fully cover Endless - Mostly because there's no real point in completing all of it; you don't need to earn 5 Stars on Endless for any trophies, nor for any reason at all but completion's sake and a single in-game achievement (well, it's a meta-achievement I suppose). In addition, some of the maps are incredibly freaking difficult. As of patch 2.6, Endless on the PS4 has a time limit, so even though a select few (according to the Leaderboards) have completed 5 Stars on them, I cannot fathom how they've managed on a couple of the maps.
• Weekly Challenges - This will be an odd section to update, as the Challenges change from week to week. I have seen them post the same Challenge more than once, so hopefully I can get a decently large list of them for readers to refer to.
• Trophy Guide - This will detail what it's like to earn the platinum trophy for this game, as well as a description on how to earn each trophy.
• Heroes - There shall be a section for each Hero, detailing their abilities, their upgrades, and how I personally feel they perform.

What isn't covered in this guide?

Traps:

This is a section I was considering adding, but after I thought about it more, it would be kind of sloppy if I completed it.

The reason is mostly twofold:

1. I have not actually used all of the traps - This is obviously a problem in an attempt to write a section trying to explain the best usage of them. There does seem to be an overabundance of traps, most of which are not required to complete the game. Although I could go into detail about the traps I have used (which is a little less than 50% of the total traps), the other 50% would have barely any information in them, which isn't helpful.
2. Out of the traps I have used, some are incredibly simple to understand - Floor Spikes for example, is incredibly easy to understand and utilize. There may be some nuances of some traps (such as understanding how you can place Ceiling Ballistas in places you may not realize) but it still may not be a lot of information to write. My concern is that even if I do have knowledge of the trap, the information I detail about it may only consist of a small paragraph or two, which is still not too helpful.

Instead, I did put together some information about some of the traps that I regularly use (such as how to utilize Tar and whatnot) in the General Advice and Strategies section.

Parts:

Similar to the reasons I gave about not having a Traps section, I have not used all of the Parts to really give good advice about them. Most of the Parts are even easier to understand than the Traps, and simply by reading their descriptions, you can get a decent idea of how they work. There are a few instances of utilizing Parts more strategically, such as:

• Revenge Rune vs Reflective Armor:
  • Revenge Rune - When the Trap is destroyed, the minion that destroyed it will take 75% of their max HP in damage.
  • Reflective Armor - Reflects 200% of damage dealt to the Trap in a radius.
• If one is to think about this in more depth, obviously putting a Revenge Rune on say, a Barricade, is going to do absolutely nothing if the map exclusively features Kamikaze Kobolds (because they die instantly when they try to blow something up). So this means that Revenge Rune is suited more for decoy Barricades, which get targeted by things that don't instantly die (and ideally, minions with higher HP), such as the boss minion Orfum.

For this reason, I may just not know the nuances of how to utilize some of the Parts properly. Thus, a section dedicated to Parts would not be that helpful.

Traits:

Again, the Traits have the exact same problem as the Parts - they are either very easy to understand, or have nuances that I may not fully understand myself. I do feel like I understand the nuances of the Traits better than I do the Parts, but most of them don't really require much of an understanding; if I were to write a description for each of them, most of the descriptions would be fairly short.

One example is with Bear Hugs, because the description doesn't tell you what "near the hero" really means. As it turns out, it's not exclusively in "melee range" and you can actually be somewhat at ranged (sort of "mid-range") to get it to activate. So this means that mid-ranged Heroes, like Max and Brass, can see benefit from this Trait.

The only other thing that you may wonder about is the usage of "crowd control" on some of the descriptions. Crowd control is anything that affects control or movement (either yours or the minion's); these are things like Freeze, Stun, movement Slows, and attack speed Slows.

Gear:

I can potentially add a section for Gear, because it would probably be the most helpful.

The reason why is because it might be useful to know how each Gear actually functions before you end up using them on a map. However, because the Gear list only consists of 12 items, again, it would be a short section with not much in it.

Furthermore, I run into the same problem - about 1/4 of the Gear is easy enough to understand with its given description. The Gear that might be helpful to understand further are:

• All of the Gear that deals damage (Arcane Bubble Blower, Fire Wall Bracers, etc.) - Detailing these might be helpful because it's not so easy to see how the Gear actually performs in practice. One example is Ice Amulet, as it changes your reticle momentarily as you use it, allowing you to aim with it.
• There are some nuances to the recovery Gear - For example, Mending Root will stop its healing if you get attacked. Similarly, if you use Mage's Clover, and then use Mana as it is active, it will stop it's regeneration. I could also point out that Mage's Picnic is more intended for co-op, as it gives less Mana for a single individual, but it provides Mana in a radius (thus it allows you to restore your ally's Mana, as well as your own).

So for now, I'm not going to have a section for Gear, but I may add it later.

Guardians:

I will not cover Guardians because I do not feel it's necessary. Although the majority of the Guardians do something different with their attacks (i.e. add poison to minions, slow, stun, etc.), it'll mostly boil down to which Guardians you have, and what Guardians have a "home" on each map. It's generally ideal to get the "home" bonus for Guardians, as the bonus damage/HP they get from will usually do you more good than whatever unique attribute they have.

Once you do get multiples of the same type of Guardian, then it just comes down to personal preference. The buffs that Guardians give almost always have the condition of "the Guardian being in combat", and you have to be near the Guardian. This becomes decently difficult to manage most of the time, as chances are you won't be near your Guardians for the majority of the maps. In turn, the buffs you receive are mostly a moot point.