Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Ivy

Overview

My Personal Rating: 7/10

Ivy is the only "healer" in the game, as she is the only Hero with access to a direct healing ability. Ivy gets some decent crowd control abilities, which include a knockback, and the most consistent "root" ability in the game. She also deals damage from long ranges, but it's important to note that despite her green glowing arrows, she deals physical damage, not magical.

Abilities:

Penetrating Arrow (L2) - Ivy fires an arrow directly in front of her, which pierces through a total of 8 enemies. Each enemy hit by this ability is also affected by a slight knockback.

• Mana cost: 25
• Cooldown: 4 seconds

Life Current (Triangle) - Ivy casts a healing spell that surrounds Ivy for a few seconds. This ability will heal all Heroes (including Ivy) that are within range; the heal happens over the course a few seconds, not all at once. It may be important to note that this heal also affects friendly NPCs, such as Summoner Traps, and Blackpaw's Gnolls. However, I believe it does not affect Guardians.

• Mana cost: 40
• Cooldown: 19 seconds
• Duration: 5 seconds

Reach of Roots (Square) - Ivy will summon roots out of the ground, which will immobilize all minions nearby for a short duration. The range of the spell is not shown, but it seems to work similar to Life Current (the range is a large radius around Ivy). Rooted enemies will also take increased damage.

• Mana cost: 40
• Cooldown: 13 seconds
• Duration: Roughly 3 seconds

Passive: Elven Swiftboots - Ivy is granted a movement speed boost whenever she spawns (or respawns, when she dies).

Pros

Ivy is incredibly accurate, and she is easily one of the most accurate Heroes in the game. This is great because her accuracy allows her to keep her distance from minions, helping her survivability.

Life Current is a great healing ability. You'll find that as long as you don't get hit by any gigantic amount of damage (such as getting hit by an Order Mage), you can survive a huge barrage of minions hitting you.

Personally though, I think Ivy's real strong suit is her crowd control. Penetrating Arrow not only does more damage than her Primary, but it has a short cooldown and so the extra knockback it does is just an added benefit to interrupt the minion's pathing.

Reach of Roots is really the star of Ivy's repertoire, but at first, it seems kind of meager. Its cooldown coincides very nicely with its duration, meaning you don't have to wait very long before using it again. However, initially, it does no damage, but nonetheless it's extremely useful to keep minions immobilized, because it mostly will act as a group stun with a slightly longer duration than a normal stun. Minions can still hit you of course, but if you keep away from them, they obviously can't reach you, and hence in all practicality it can be considered a stun.

I would highly highly recommend fully upgrading Reach of Roots at every opportunity. If you take all of the Reach of Roots upgrades, Ivy becomes quite the powerhouse, and can deal some of the best group damage in the game. This is not only because the level 10 upgrade of "Warden's Wrath" adds a great damage-over-time effect to it, but Reach of Roots doesn't seem to have a target limit to it, unlike other abilities found on other Heroes. This means she can affect huge groups of minions at once; I've managed to kill 27-30 minions at once with it, which is extremely significant, given its short cooldown.

Cons

Ivy's slightly strange in her design. It should be fairly obvious that initially, the idea was her to be a Hero to be used in co-op, because she is supposed to support the rest of the team, keep them alive, so they can do all the grunt work.

The problem is, due her ability to play the support role so well, she has some extremely glaring flaws.

First off - Her initial damage output SUCKS. Like, it's extremely bad. I actually think she has the lowest initial damage output in the entire game. To give an idea, her damage is mostly pretty equivalent to Max's damage, but unlike Max, Ivy has nothing going for her. Max's Primary shots are extremely fast, whereas Ivy's are at a more steady pace. Max deals Lightning damage, which makes minions explode for slight damage, Ivy does not have that. Max gets a really hard hitting ability (In Your Faces), Ivy gets nothing like that.

Penetrating Arrow unfortunately does not deal that much more damage than her Primary, which makes it difficult to justify its use. Since it pierces, it's important to note that the overall damage can be much more significant if it hits multiple targets, but another problem is that the "line" it follows is fairly thin. This means it's somewhat difficult to get minions lined up correctly to maximize its damage. Regardless though, you may find that you really need the extra damage for larger minions, so there may be times where you're trying to use it every time its up, simply because Ivy gets no other damaging ability. Given how Penetrating Arrow is the only initial damaging ability Ivy gets, you'll find yourself really struggling with bosses and Mercenaries.

Reach of Roots is not really impressive on its own, but initially, it is meant to be strictly meant for crowd control (which is fine). There is one unfortunate thing about Reach of Roots, which is if you use Penetrating Arrow on an immobilized minion, it will knock the minion out of the immobilization, which can be a problem.

It's really odd that Life Current costs as much Mana as it does. During solo play, you almost have to get used to not using it; since Ivy has such low damage, you really have to focus on using the rest of her offensive abilities in order to be successful. This in turn means that you may have Mana issues, depending on what you're doing - If you're constantly using Penetrating Arrow and Reach of Roots, you're going to have some Mana problems, which is really problematic given how marginal Ivy's damage is.

Finally, Ivy more than likely has the biggest joke of a Passive in the entire game. Having a movement speed increase for just a few seconds after you spawn is...basically 99% useless. I can see what the idea was behind it; if Ivy dies, the team loses its support Hero, and thus it's really important for her to rush back into the fray to help protect the rest of the team. In all practical use though, the Passive is useless, because ironically, she's a healer, and she should never die in the first place. Of course, she's clearly not invincible (she has fairly low HP), but I just find it ridiculous that this Passive is attached to the only Hero in the game that can reliably keep herself alive.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Precision (Level 2)
• Nature's Grasp or Nature's Ire (Level 4)
• Arrow Affinity or Natural Knack (Level 7)
• Warden's Wrath (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Precision: There is absolutely no reason to take any other upgrade at this level. Ivy's major drawback is her horrible damage, and this obviously increases it. Take this upgrade, because you'll need it.
  • Celerity: An absolutely ridiculous upgrade, as Ivy does not need it, period. She already has a decent movement speed (I think she's a little faster than Max), so increasing it is not really necessary. Also consider how accurate Ivy is; if she can peg things from such a long range, obviously she doesn't really need the movement speed to close the gap.
  • Forgiveness: I can see a slight amount of use here in co-op, but it really has little use in solo play. Given how Life Current has such a high Mana cost, using it more frequently is obviously just going to sap your Mana even further.
• Level 4:
  • Nature's Grasp: So at this level, you need to make the decision to either specialize into Reach of Roots or Penetrating Arrow. Above, you may have noticed that I do take "Nature's Ire" instead, and this is dependent on whether or not Ivy can reach level 10 on the map that I'm playing on. If she can, Nature's Grasp is the way to go, because she'll have access to Warden's Wrath at level 10. If she can't, you may want to consider taking Nature's Ire instead. The duration of Reach of Roots isn't that long as is, so with this upgrade, it's not going to last much longer. However, if you do get Warden's Wrath, it actually does equate to 1 more tick of that damage-over-time effect, which means more damage.
  • Nature's Ire: If Ivy can't reach level 10 on the map, I generally go with this upgrade instead. There's not much reason to take Nature's Grasp without Warden's Wrath, so this is obviously more appealing to increase the damage of Penetrating Arrow.
  • Nature's Swiftness: What is with all this movement speed nonsense? Again, it's just ridiculous in solo play, although it has...questionable use in co-op. I still don't think it's going to be useful in co-op though, because my guess is that the movement speed buff will only be applied if your allies are within the range of Life Current. Given how most people won't be used to moving faster when they're near someone else, it'll probably be disorienting for them, and you'll end up speeding right by them (since you'll get it guaranteed), and they'll lose the buff. So the only way I see it being useful is if you have some serious cohesion with the group you are with.
• Level 7:
  • Arrow Affinity: Same issue as level 4; I would recommend this upgrade if you feel you're not going to be able to get to level 10 on the map you're on. The cooldown is certainly nice, but it does reduce Penetrating Arrow to a really short cooldown, which means you have to be really cautious of your Mana usage.
  • Natural Knack: Again, if you can get to level 10 on the map, and take Warden's Wrath, take this upgrade over Arrow Affinity. Although the 15% cooldown doesn't really seem like much, but consider that Reach of Roots also has a duration. This means that the time between active uses is shorter, which is actually kind of nice. What's even better, is the fact that it stacks with the cooldown reduction during Unchained. What this means is that with this upgrade (and "Nature's Grasp" at level 4), and during Unchained, the cooldown coincides perfectly with its duration, which means you can chain uses. This is absolutely fantastic when coupled with Warden's Wrath.
  • Mana Mastery: This actually isn't too bad of an upgrade when taken in co-op, assuming that you like to heal your allies. When I would do Sabotage matches, I would use Ivy a lot for healing. As a result, you can imagine I was pretty Mana-starved trying to keep my allies alive with the constant Life Current uses. However, this upgrade does a really good job keeping your Mana up.
• Level 10:
  • Warden's Wrath: Much like Precision at level 2, this is the must-have upgrade. The other upgrades at this level do not even remotely compare to the damage output this upgrade does. Ivy desperately needs the damage, and this pushes her damage output from "significantly below average" to "rivaling the best".
  • Warden's Tutelage: So this upgrade combines really well with "Arrow Affinity" (the shorter cooldown really needs a reduced Mana cost), but again, it still doesn't compete Warden's Wrath. So even if you did take Arrow Affinity at level 7, I would still take Warden's Wrath over this upgrade.
  • Warden's Blessing: Kind of a weird upgrade. It's somewhat tempting to take given a 15% damage upgrade to all of Ivy abilities, but realize it's still more of a co-op ability. Just like as I pointed out with "Nature's Swiftness" at level 4, I believe allies need to be within range of Life Current for the buff to be active, which may not be occurring, depending on what's going on. Although it is a little easier to manipulate your own positioning to ensure your allies are receiving the buff, I still think Warden's Wrath is going to help significantly more, no matter what the situation is.

Synopsis

Chances are, you're really going to hate Ivy when you first play as her.

I think Ivy should be considered a Hero that meant to be used by people that are already really familiar with the game and the maps. I think this is the case because if you know what the map is like, it'll help Ivy's performance. Knowing when and where bosses and Mercenaries appear can help you plan for them better, and so you won't be caught quite as off-guard. If you're unprepared, Ivy is really hard to be successful with because she does not have the initial damage output to handle things when they get chaotic.

Further, it also helps to know what level you will generally get to on each map. If you're new to the game, and you're going through War Mage for the first time, you're going to feel Ivy is absolutely terrible because there aren't a lot of maps that get you to level 10. If you can't get to level 10 and take Warden's Wrath, you're not going to see Ivy shine whatsoever.

Another thing to consider is your Account Level. Since the majority of Ivy's initial damage is so focused on her Primary, and your Account Level increases Primary damage for all Heroes, this means that as you get to a higher Account Level (and move beyond the recommended level of the maps), you're going to see Ivy perform better. Once you get around the recommended level of the final map (which is 75-80), you'll notice that she becomes much more "average" on the lower maps.

Having a higher Account Level also indirectly means that you'll have more access to Traits, which will obviously help with Ivy's damage. One Trait to consider with Ivy is "Overachiever", which gives a single battle level at the beginning of a match. This bonus is not the "slot" bonus, which means you are free to put the Trait into any slot. Ironically the slot bonus of this Trait is...more movement speed, which Ivy does not need, so it's mostly irrelevant. Consider using this Trait in place of "Enjoys Pain", because you may not really need the lifesteal, given how Ivy can heal herself. Enjoys Pain is still a very useful Trait to use with Ivy, but it's not nearly as necessary as it is with other Heroes.

What is nice about the "Overachiever" Trait, is that with that one level that is given to you, it allows extra damage in two different ways. First, you get the extra damage from battle level (every Hero does more damage with all attacks when they level up), but not only that, you immediately get access to the "Precision" upgrade, which gives you the extra 15% more Primary damage. Consider even further, that since you're getting a level immediately, this means that you'll be one level closer to getting to Warden's Wrath, right as the match starts.

The Warden's Wrath upgrade at level 10 is really phenomenal, and I'm extremely confident that if you take just that upgrade (even without the other Reach of Roots upgrades), you'll really start to like Ivy. With all of the Reach of Roots upgrades, it becomes a nearly perfect ability:

• It deals great damage to groups.
• The immobilization grants increased damage, which means to single targets, you get the increased Primary damage while the damage-over-time deals damage, making it useful for single targets such as bosses and Mercenaries.
• It has no target limit (that I can tell), which means you can affect large amounts of minions.
• The cooldown coincides very well with the duration.
• The immobilization almost works like a long stun.
• Since it's such an awesome ability with all of its upgrades, there's very little reason to use any other ability, which means you'll probably stop using Penetrating Arrow (mostly), which will help conserve Mana as well.

In summary, personally I really like Ivy, but I would say she is certainly not a Hero to start out with. Come back with her when you're much more comfortable with the maps, and if you can get access to Warden's Wrath, I think you'll see she actually outperforms a lot of the other Heroes.