Shadow’s Descent is quite infamous due to it being all painted with shadow paint, making vision almost impossible, thus people tend to get lost or fall to lava easily. Today I decided to make this guide regarding how you can play on it, as it is quite an easy map really, which also grants you a unique ability (needs Crew) when you beat round 15.
The following image is a screenshot of Shadow’s Descent, but I highlighted all of its blocks so you can have a better look of it.
(Some white blocks not highlighted as they are visible)
Insight
The classes in this map consist of mage and melee. It is preferable to pick mage class, for the reasons being its weapons cover for the whole map, last upgrade of one weapon chest being Razorblade Typhoon and 5 MP costs only 500 points, therefore making it easy to have 400 mana (maximum possible). On the other hand, for melee, Shadowflame Knife and Scourge of the Corruptor can also be handy, but if you are playing in a decently big group, most should go mage.
Strategy
The floor below the class chests is recommended for camping. All lobby players should stay there for nearly their whole time on that map, making some enemies unable to target them directly. While doing that, one person can choose Sentry ability and on the platform above the class chests can put a Tank sentry to attract the enemies and keep players safe while also farming points with banks. The rest of the players have two options;
If in doubt about their survivability in the map, they can choose Coward, Time Warp or Telekinesis to be safer, Time Warp being the most suitable.
If mage, they can buy final upgrade of the weapon chest (Razorblade Typhoon), then buy maximum mana and then learn Dual Wield so they can cover more places on the map and deal more damage, avoiding extra 25% costs for possessing that ability earlier (it is beneficial as Dual Wield doesn’t upgrade)
Summary and conclusions
While this map may not be liked by many people, in reality it is underrated. Not only the camp point mentioned above makes it quite easy to play it, but it also rewards you with the Wish ability after round 15 is beaten (remember you need to be Crew to obtain that). The map is also quite fun with friends.
Learn more about Wish here;
Or y’know, get some shamans, get at least 1 minimun light spirits or people in lobby / 4 with more than 3 people, then everyone else shadow spirit, camp near zombies spawn, then just shaman the heck out of everyone
I remember struggling to obtain the [wish] ability in this map due to the lack of players that wanted to play this map (the “I don’t like this map, let’s die” newbies that jump into the lava even after round 4 starts was a very common and frustrating scene); non-crews are unable to create private lobbies, unfortunately.
If you plan on being a melee and want to use sentry: type /ability sentry and then read up /ahelp sentry and /shelp sentryname
My character’s soul remnants in this map often advise my character and future sentry-melee-mechanics to (this method will cause you to miss out on farming points):
Place a tank sentry on the bottom of the left stairs on the hard surface block – leave space for yourself to upgrade the sentry and not fall off into the lava case you get hit
Place a nader sentry blast the zombies into the lava. Most of the zombies will jump off on their own anyways
I was a roasted lamb the rounds I had sentry lag (sometimes I sentry-lag and can’t upgrade the sentries, but it doesn’t affect other things such as purchasing/upgrading items from boxes or getting hit).
Getting Muramasa as soon as possible was a must since it allowed me to know where I was by releasing blue-light particles (before obtaining it, I had to observe the damage-text in order to know the locations of my character and the zombies).
There is a location beneath the class boxes that allows you to be safe from most enemies (we’ll name this spot The Clawset). The pawn-type zombies – the ones that utilize melee tools in order to beautify you according to their beauty standards, will jump over The Clawset due to the one-step-stair that’s located right outside The Clawset. Sometimes, the zombies like to skinny dip through the roof and “accidentally” step on you – I think most people called it lagging. You’ll want to get out of The Clawset and into the top left round 6 unless you have enough needles to poke the flying eyes and hoplites that come from both sides.
Melees can slice the scalp of zombies as they jump and cause them to fall into the lava if you stand at the edge of the staircase in the middle floor while using any swing-type-melee weapon – use your own judgement for when to retreat into safety – you don’t ever want to be on the bottom floor while there are zombies and other creatures since you will get flanked by enemies on both sides and will most likely fall into the lava pit if you haven’t hit 0 hp from being tossed around like a salad.
If you’re going mage, use dual-wield by doing /ability dw on round 1 – you’ll need a shaman if you want to survive as a mage (sadly solo players won’t reach past 12 through playing a mage unless you’re a really good sentry player tank-snipe-repair-nader).
Obtain water bolt then flying knife then get typhoons. I like to depend on flying knife and numbing my finger by holding it on screen while I sit in The Claswet. Sometimes, if you survive long enough and hold down long enough the flying knife doubles up and you can have a ball of flying knives – very satisfying to see.
I’m always down to play a game or two of Shadow’s Descent so if you see me and want to play the map with someone, hmu.
