A quick overview
This is an epic-monster tournament in the same family as Doomsday. A swarm of epic creatures stands on the kingdom map, everyone attacks the same thing, and you're paid for the monsters you kill rather than for bringing the swarm down. Nobody actually brings it down. At least, not in our kingdom...yet.
What makes this one different is who you get to bring. Every other monster event rations your commanders: Doomsday allows one captain, Armageddon allows only your hero. But Arachne's Swarm hands you your hero and all three captains at once. Four commanders out together, every one of them earning.
How it scores
You're paid per monster killed, not per point of damage. A tough creature and a soft one are worth the same once they fall over, and a march that kills nothing scores nothing, regardless of much damage it dealt you on the way. That one rule should decide what you bring to the party.
A kill pays three things together: tournament points toward the leaderboard, Valor, and experience, all at the raised rate that epic events run on. Difficulty and rewards scale with your army level, and your division is set by your hero level, so the ladder in front of you is steep, whatever size you are.
You're not expected to top the board. For most players this honor sits out of reach, and that's fine, because the reasons to turn up sit underneath it: the Valor, the captain experience, and the clan chests that the swarm drops as the kingdom chips it down.
The TL;DR
- Bring your hero and all three captains. This is the event's whole edge, so use all of it. Two of the captain slots go to your best monster fighters, and the third is free money: give it to a captain you want to level, because a slot earns the same experience whether it holds your strongest or your greenest.
- Lead with archers. They beat the swarm's flying Wasps, they handle the melee Mantis on the side, and the one creature that punishes them, the mounted Caterpillar, is one the swarm fields few of. They're the safe backbone of the march.
- Add riders for the Arachnes. Archers don't counter the ranged Merciless Arachne, the other half of the swarm, and riders do. The only thing that punishes a rider here is the melee Mantis, so archers and riders together beat both halves the swarm shows up in numbers.
- Leave your spearmen and your own fliers at home. These are the two classes the swarm punishes hardest, and the two that answer only its scarcest creatures. They spend march space to hand the swarm free damage. The full ring is the next section.
- Bring Guardsmen, not Specialists. Guardsmen are the troops built for fighting monsters. Specialists are for fighting other players and do nothing extra out here.
- Stack your tiers, then read the report. Carry only your top troop levels, heaviest in front to take the blows with your damage behind them, and check the battle report after each hit. When your lowest tier is the first to fall, the stack is right. When your best tier dies first, every attack after it is wasted.
- Empty the barn. Every Superior Epic Monster Hunter you own, then every mercenary. A Hunter carries no troop type, so nothing in the swarm gets a bonus against it, and mercenaries expire in about a week whatever you do, so holding them back only wastes them.
Marching your fliers because the swarm looks airborne. The one creature the event is named for, the Merciless Arachne, is built to shoot down anything that flies, at +50%, and the swarm is full of them. More of it is aimed at your fliers than at any other troop you own.
A losing march still pays captain experience, so even a hit that comes home in pieces has done the job. Doomsday levels a captain faster in a single march, but only the one. Arachne levels three at a time.
Whatever you send, something in the swarm is built to punish it
The swarm is four epic creatures, one of each class, and their bonuses close into a ring. Each creature carries a +50% edge against one of your troop types, and between the four of them there is an answer waiting for everything you own.
| The creature | Its class | It punishes your | By | Beat it with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Malicious Mantis | Melee | Mounted | +50% | Archers |
| Caterpillar Cavalry | Mounted | Ranged | +50% | Spearmen |
| Merciless Arachne | Ranged | Flying | +50% | Riders |
| Elusive Wasp | Flying | Melee | +50% | Archers |
The swarm is weighted toward the Arachne and the Wasp, its ranged and flying halves, so those two rows are most of the fight. Archers beat the Wasp, riders beat the Arachne, and that's the whole reason the answer is archers and riders, in that order.
Now look at the two classes you leave home. Spearmen beat only the Caterpillar, one of the two creatures the swarm fields fewest of, and the Wasp hits them at +50%. Your fliers beat nothing in the ring at all, and the Arachne, which the swarm leans on, hits them at +50%. Each answers something scarce and gets punished by something the swarm brings in numbers. That's the whole case for leaving them home: the two creatures you meet most punish exactly the two classes of yours with the least to give back.
Deeper in
The captain bench
A hero and three captains is four commanders earning at once, which is the fast lane this event is known for. Fill two of the captain slots with your best monster fighters. Hercules goes first where you have him: his bonus against epic monsters runs at double the usual rate, and every creature in the swarm is an epic monster. Cleopatra and Aydae are the next best. The third slot is where the levelling happens. Put a captain you're trying to grow into it, because a losing march pays it the same experience it pays your veterans, and this event throws a lot of losing marches.
What to wear, and what fights free
The swarm are epic monsters, so the epic-monster kit is what earns here. The Ghostflame Lantern lifts your whole army's strength against epic monsters, with the Ifrit Lord's Belt and the Source Flask behind it. If you have set your stack in a deliberate order, the Medallion of Unity is the safe artifact, because it raises everything by the same amount instead of shoving one troop type out of the order you built.
A creature's info tab lists what it is strong against before you commit. The ring above is the shape of a normal swarm, but the game's own card is the final word, so trust it over any table, this one included.