Orcs Must Die! Unchained – FAQ/Walkthrough

Heroes

Stinkeye

Overview

My Personal Rating: 7/10

Stinkeye is an Arcane magic user, but he's unique in the sense that he doesn't do his best damage by shooting directly at his enemies. Instead, he has Totems to place down, which do different things, depending on which one he shoots at.

Abilities:

Arcane Anomaly (L2) - Creates an orb at your location, which will explode after a set amount of time (a few seconds), dealing Arcane damage in a radius.

• Mana cost: 65
• Cooldown: 7 seconds.

Wrath of Oasis Totem (Triangle) - A Totem that works somewhat like a sentry turret, which will automatically shoot a single bolt at a minion, at set intervals. When Stinkeye shoots at his Wrath of Oasis Totem, it will instead shoot 3 bolts at minions.

• Mana cost: 25
• Cooldown: 17 seconds.

Zephyr of Oasis (Square) - A Totem that emits an aura around itself, which slows minions down. It also emits an aura that gives a temporary movement speed buff to any Hero (including yourself). When Stinkeye shoots at his Zephyr of Oasis Totem, it will be destroyed, and it will stun nearby enemies for 3 seconds.

• Mana cost: 25
• Cooldown: 9 seconds.

Passive ability: Shaman's Blessing - Not much of a passive, but it is still nonetheless helpful. Totems that are summoned, once they expire, leave behind a Mana Orb. This in turn means that Stinkeye never really has any Mana issues.

Pros

Stinkeye is fantastic at clearing large groups of enemies. By placing a Wrath of Oasis Totem down and shooting at it, it allows Stinkeye to hit 3 minions at once, each time the Totem is shot at.

Since Stinkeye is an Arcane user, this means that he can also apply the debuff that Arcane magic gives; each time a minion is hit with Arcane, subsequent Arcane damage applied will do even more damage, stacking up to 3 times. Since he is hitting 3 minions at once, each minion is getting hit with the debuff, allowing Stinkeye to do additional damage, which allows him to clear minions even faster.

Zephyr of Oasis acts as a constant slow, and although only one can be placed down, the Totem lasts forever (unless it is shot, or replaced). The slow also stacks with any other slow effect, which can really help in keeping things at bay (which is very beneficial for Stinkeye). Since the Totem does stack with other effects, this also means that it gives a constant addition to the Combo Meter.

Cons

Stinkeye has one major drawback - He doesn't do well under pressure.

Since all of his damage is based off of his Wrath of Oasis Totem, you need to be very mindful about where you place it. It does have a cooldown of about 9 seconds, so a misplaced Totem can be detrimental to clearing waves. The Wrath of Oasis Totem also does not last forever (it lasts about 20 seconds), so you need to pay attention to when it disappears, otherwise you'll see your damage output plummet. This in turn is problematic in stressful scenarios, such as trying to kill Kamikaze Kobolds; frantically trying to place down your Totem while they rush to your Barricades can be quite the ordeal.

There are two additional points about the placement of Wrath of Oasis:

1. You can't shoot your Primary through minions - What you will find is that sometimes minions will block your shots to your Totem, which means you want to either place the Totem outside of their path (like to the side, rather than directly in it) or you want to try to aim for the very top of your Totem (although large minions like Trolls will still give you problems).
2. You don't want to stand in the minion's path - Similar to the point above, if you stand in the minion's path, they will inevitably come into your melee range, and start hitting you. This will force your Primary shots to hit whatever is in front of you, rather than hit your Totem.

Stinkeye also suffers a bit with single targets, most notably boss minions and Mercenaries. There is no way to control the Wrath of Oasis Totem's target, as it automatically targets whatever minion is further down the path. On a positive note, since the Totem deals so much damage, sometimes this isn't an issue, but do realize that you may need to readjust Totems simply to get it to target a problematic boss or Mercenary.

In addition to that, the bolts fired from Wrath of Oasis will only target the same target when there is nothing else in range. I believe only 2 of the 3 bolts will hit the same target, and the 3rd, if there is nothing else around, is lost. Ultimately this doesn't make Stinkeye's damage toward bosses or Mercenaries poor, but it is simply unfortunate that he's not dealing as much damage as he should be.

Stinkeye does struggle with Runners such as Kobolds as well, because Wrath of Oasis has a set range to it. If one manages to get by, it becomes quite the stressful rush to try to readjust a Totem to catch a Runner, as you need to not only place it within a proper range, while keeping in mind you'll need an extra second to shoot at the totem to get it to fire. On a positive note, Stinkeye's damage output does come into play here; Wrath of Oasis should be dealing enough damage to instantly kill most Runners. However, larger groups of Runners may be more of a threat, as the Totem will not be able to target all of them if there are numerous Runners clustered closely together.

There aren't a lot of downsides to Zephyr of Oasis, other than the size of the aura isn't very large. I don't think it's all that useful to destroy the Zephyr for the stun effect, as the Totem has a 17 second cooldown. So this means you get a 3 second stun, for the cost of not having things slowed for 14 seconds, which I don't think is worth it.

One other thing to point out is that Stinkeye has less use for Traits and Consumables that effect his Primary attack. So something like Practices Witchcraft, for example, will get little use, as you will rarely end up using your Primary directly. The Wrath of the Oasis is not his Primary attack, it is simply affected by it, so that bolts that come from it are not considered Stinkeye's Primary.

The only other drawback I found with Stinkeye was...he can be immensely boring to play.

Pretty much all you are doing is spamming your Primary attack at your Wrath of Oasis, then replacing it when it fades. That's it. Stinkeye does a tremendous amount of damage, so there's hardly a reason to use Arcane Anomaly (and it requires you to be roughly in melee range). Since there is such a lack of variety in his attacks, I did find he was the single most boring Hero to play as, despite how well he does damage.

Upgrades

Upgrades I use:

• Psalm of Speed (Level 2)
• Divine Demotivation (Level 4)
• Totem Testament (Level 7)
• Angry Oasis (Level 10)

Upgrades Analysis:

• Level 2:
  • Psalm of Speed: This is the level 2 upgrade I like the most, as giving the Zephyr a larger aura obviously means that more minions will be slowed by it. If you regularly destroy the Zephyr for its stun effect though, you may not want this upgrade.
  • Acolyte Advantage: I've never actually picked this upgrade, as I never found myself to desperate for healing as Stinkeye. Stinkeye does get a fairly decent amount of HP for being a ranged character, and he can be further way to deal damage (he doesn't have to be in mid-range like Gabby or Max), so you generally shouldn't have too many issues with HP. Also keep in mind you should never really be close to your Totems anyway, because it's not really effective.
  • Distant Doctrine: The "increased placement range" allows you to place Totems further away from you. This means that you can stay at a further distance away while you place a Totem. I find it kind of risky to do as is, because trying to precisely place your Totems while holding the corresponding button can be a little tricky (with the PS4, it might be easier on the PC), and it may lead you to misplace it. You can get the effect regardless of this upgrade anyway - just place the Totem down, and walk back to whatever distance you want to shoot it at.
• Level 4:
  • Godly Grief: It's not a bad upgrade overall, I just didn't find much use out of it. The Tears of Oasis act like 3 different drops rolled into 1; you get HP, Mana, and Unchained from it. Again, since I rarely had HP issues with Stinkeye, the HP gain I didn't care for; Totems already drop Mana regardless, so that didn't mean anything to me; the Unchained is the only useful thing here, but it still suffers from diminishing returns. Every time you use Unchained, energy from any source will give you a decreased amount of it. Thus, at a certain point, the Unchained energy given from this upgrade becomes somewhat useless.
  • Anomaly Awe: Although the stun effect is decent for crowd-control, in practice, I don't think it's useful. I don't normally use Arcane Anomaly, because it's an attack that needs to be activated when minions are in melee range. In order to use Anomaly proactively, you would need to break off from shooting your Totem, specifically to use Anomaly, which would ultimately lead to a damage decrease. If you use Anomaly as a defensive ability (when things get close to you) this makes this more practical; but then again, if minions got into melee range, I would prefer to readjust myself and my Totems so I can proceed to deal damage again.
  • Divine Demotivation: I think this is another good upgrade, as I use Zephyr as kind of a "fire-and-forget" ability. The upgrade is easy to understand, and although 10% isn't much, a slower minion is still a slower minion.
• Level 7:
  • Booming Benediction: I don't use Arcane Anomaly normally, so having a reduced cooldown on it has never really been that attractive.
  • Skull Saviors: This one is a little more difficult to understand. When left alone, Wrath of Oasis fires a single shot automatically, so I believe with this upgrade, it should fire 30% faster. This a little useless, as ideally you'll want to be shooting the Wrath of Oasis instead. For the Zephyr, I'm actually not entirely sure if it effects anything. It is possible that the Zephyr may "pulse" the slow effect (in other words, it's not a constant, as I initially assumed), but it's very difficult to tell.
  • Totem Testament: Truthfully, I think there's no contest here, this is probably Stinkeye's best upgrade. Adding one more projectile to Wrath of Oasis (when it's shot at), means more damage, period. Since this is how you should be primarily dealing damage, there should be no real question about taking this upgrade.
• Level 10:
  • Angry Oasis: Although this is the level 10 upgrade I normally choose, there's something important to realize - Wrath of Oasis has a 9 second cooldown between uses, which means that effectively, you get an extra Totem for only about 10 seconds (since the first one will disappear 10 seconds after you place the second). However, this does allow you to place an extra Totem for sentry purposes; you can place one at one gate, leave the gate, then place another at the gate you're covering, and thus you have extra damage, if only for 10 seconds. It can also be somewhat helpful if you need to readjust - if there is a Mercenary in your face, you can safely place a second Totem next to you to start killing it, and the other Totem will still be left to deal damage to the rest of the wave (albeit minimal).
  • Arcane Apocalypse: It's an interesting upgrade, but unfortunately it's based off of what Arcane Anomaly manages to kill, which is a bit too conditional for my tastes. Anomaly doesn't do stellar damage (it's fairly average) which means that you may not really be seeing this activate much in the higher difficulties, unless you soften up minions quite a bit before using it.
  • Sermon of Speed: It's not a bad upgrade if you like to destroy the Zephyrs. Getting the extra slow after the stun wears off is actually pretty decent in terms of crowd-control, but I'm personally not a fan of destroying my Zephyrs.

Synopsis

Stinkeye can deal a tremendous amount of damage, but playing him does take some getting used to.

One important thing to understand is that strategically placing his Totems is paramount to using Stinkeye effectively. Although he can shoot his Totems from a decent distance, the Totems are ideally placed in areas that surround the minion's pathway, rather than placed within it.

Where you stand as Stinkeye is equally as important - to ensure that minions are not getting into melee range, it is also ideal to try to be standing in a spot that is away from where the minions will path. Consider standing behind Barricades (be careful of Archers though) and walls, while ensuring that you have your Totem within line-of-sight to shoot at.

Once practiced with the basic placement, the next step is to be comfortable with readjusting Totems (and Stinkeye) as needed. Runners, boss minions, and Mercenaries may require you to adapt very quickly, so learning how to place your Wrath Totem further down the path (or retreating to the Rift) can help when things go haywire.

I believe Arcane Anomaly was meant as more of a defensive ability rather than an offensive one - using it when minions get close to you (although ideally, this shouldn't happen) can help deal some damage as you make a retreat to a safer spot to readjust.

Once you feel you've mastered Stinkeye , unfortunately, he may become fairly dull to play, but he can outperform many Heroes on a lot of maps.