By Attabrain Zee, from server 4. Updated for 2.7
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DragonSoul is a fun and addictive game for iOS and Android, published by PerBlue. In DragonSoul, you collect heroes, and team them up to fight in a variety of scenarios. It is possible to enjoy this game without paying any money, and a minimum payment of $3 (USD) gets rid of some of the little annoyances to enhance the experience.
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DragonSoul is a fun and addictive game for iOS and Android, published by PerBlue. In DragonSoul, you collect heroes, and team them up to fight in a variety of scenarios. It is possible to enjoy this game without paying any money, and a minimum payment of $3 (USD) gets rid of some of the little annoyances to enhance the experience. players could use help with some basic strategic elements of the game, so here are my opinions. Feel free to disagree in the comments!
You don't have to play for long to get a large collection of heroes. Every hero has its uses, and some are best at low levels or high levels, or good for war but not fight pit, or whatever. I don't have time right now to go through every hero, but here are a few you should know about:
As soon as Bard gets her purple power, she's one of the best heroes in the game. She speeds up the whole team, does a ton of damage, and once she gets lifesteal equipment, is very difficult to kill. Max her out, and use her every chance you get. But watch out for heroes specifically designed to beat her. Epic Catapult Knight does extra damage to fast heroes, and Epic Frost Giant and Kraken slow her down. Spider just gobbles her up.
His skeledeer doesn't do much damage, but it can distract Bard, Megataur and others, as well as clumping heroes up in the back. At mid levels (30-70), he's very useful, and an excellent healer. Later on, his usefulness dwindles a little, but he's still good to have around. And Skeleton is powerful even at 1*, making him a good hero at any level.
That initial speed up is great. The stun and agility boost are also. Witch is useful from the moment she gets her green skill, and she's Bardbarian's best friend.
Cyclops gives you team energy, which is would make him worth having if that was the only thing he did. But in addition, he does more damage than most damage heroes, especially paired with legendary Hydra. Cyclops is definitely a top-tier hero.
She does a lot of damage if you're willing to wait. More importantly, she gives you team energy, and her legendary skill doubles up on that. She's useful against Bone Dragon, and is a good all-purpose hero as well. She doesn't like Ninja though. Ninja will tear through her very quickly.
I keep wanting to like her. Her white is powerful enough that she can often take out a hero in one shot, and she has a good healing ability that affects your whole team. However, she's one of the fastest heroes, hanging out in the front with your tanks, and she can't handle the damage she takes up there. She might be okay with a lot of health or armor runes.
Indispensable at low levels (1-50). Later on, he can be useful in War, Expedition and most of all Temple, but I don't bother with him, since doing damage faster is usually more important than healing, and he does very little damage.
Never tried this one.
Not very useful at low levels, Medusa comes into her own with Runes and her legendary skill. From then on, she's one of the most important heroes to have on your team. She's great in Fight Pit, can win a War battle pretty much on her own no matter who's on the other team, and she's one of the only ways to complete Ludicrous mode Expedition. When you have control over it. Medusa's legendary skill lets your team members save up more than 1000 energy. When I first saw that skill, I didn't get it, so I didn't bother with Medusa. Then I realized how powerful it is. First, it lets you fire your whites twice at the beginning of a War or Expedition level. Second, it means you never waste energy. If your Ninja has 999 energy and uses his green, he'll only get 1 energy without Medusa. If your Hydra has 999 and gets hit, his huge Fury bonus won't do anything without Medusa. You get the idea.
I haven't used him myself, but he has much the same use as Medusa as far as disabling the other team goes. And like Medusa, he's not great until higher levels. He's a less powerful War winner.
She has two great tricks. First, she can block the other team's whites, causing them to waste energy. Second, she can force enemies to attack your highest-health hero. Both are very useful. Careful, though. If your highest health hero is Bard or Ninja, you might regret taking her along. Like Medusa and Cosmic Elf, she can win a War battle for you.
Spider is the only hero with a disable that's 100% effective. If she cocoons an enemy, that enemy is out of the fight. The down-side to Spider is that she only eats Tasty heroes. Fortunately, this includes Bard, Thief and other powerful heroes. Spider is not great on defense, but nice to have around when you run into a very tasty team in Fight Pit. She's often paired with Bone Dragon in Colosseum and War.
On paper, he seems amazing, since he is basically a more powerful version of the strongest enemy hero. In practice, he's disappointing. He's pretty squishy, and when he does fire his white in Fight Pit, he picks an enemy randomly. Use him offensively in Expedition, War and Crypt with “auto” turned off, so you can choose who to copy.
I haven't used him much, but he's pretty popular. His purple skill handicaps heroes who depend on Life Steal, like Bard and Ninja, and his green skill lets you get your heroes into position before the other team, which can win you the fight.
Pretty much universally considered the worst hero in the game.
Pretty mediocre. I haven't bothered with him, but if you focus on his basic attack and pair him with Legendary Hydra, he can probably do okay for himself.
Never used her, and I don't have any trouble beating other players who do use her. No strong opinions.
My very favorite hero at the moment. Reading over her skills, her white seems like her strong point, but it pales in comparison to her Purple. If you're lucky, her Purple can deal hundreds of thousands of damage to each enemy hero, and wipe out the whole team in one shot. She's especially good against a superior enemy, since she throws back more damage the more she takes.
One of my personal favorites, ninja is good against teams with a lot of squishy damage and support heroes, and at mid-high levels (50-80) can handle Expedition almost on his own. Careful around Dragon Lady, since her high intelligence can distract ninja, and around Spirit Wolf, since she can force ninja to attack tanks or bard, who can kill him quickly. Whenever you see a team with three or more heroes in the back line, you've found a target for Ninja.
Ninja is useful from 3* on, even without his purple power.
She's the next nerf target, but right now, he's an essential hero. His legendary skill drains 300 energy, which cripples heroes who depend on starting energy (Spider, Kaiju, Genie, Banshee etc). Worse, he does damage to all enemies every second for 6 seconds. Since his Purple skill drains energy every time he deals damage, he can end up disabling the other team's whites for the first 6 seconds of combat, giving you a huge advantage.
This guy's not very popular, but I like him a lot. He's useless until he gets his purple skill, and from then on, his basic attack just gets faster and faster, especially paired with Witch and Bard. He's good against teams with a strong mid-line, or a 2-3 tanks. Once he has his orange skill, he can counter the bard/witch combination.
Useful at any level. You won't regret keeping her promotions and star rating as high as possible. At higher levels, she doesn't see much use in Fight Pit.
Not very useful until he gets his purple skill. After that, he's a solidly mid-range damage hero, and his orange power is a nice boost. Understudy is better on her own, but Epic Hydra combined with damage over time heroes can do a ton of damage.
He's pretty popular these days due to his huge amount of health, but I find him to be pretty mediocre. If I see him on an enemy team in Fight Pit, I generally assume I can beat that team. He's a useful secondary damage hero to have around throughout the game.
Without runes, Genie is pretty worthless. Once you get a couple hundred life steal on him, he becomes very powerful in War, Expedition and Temple.
Very useful at lower levels (up to maybe 50). Less useful from then on, but still nice to have around from time to time in War and Crypt, since he does a lot of damage pretty quickly.
His Tenacity boost makes him good against teams with a lot of stuns and disables (Medusa, Dragon Lady, Cutie etc). Once he has his orange skill, he slows down the enemy team, making him a good counter against Bard and Witch. But really, I find myself using him less and less as my level goes up.
With some Improved Healing runes, she's a good tank, and she can wait out the clock against teams that don't deal damage fast enough. Personally, I don't bother with her.
One of the most disappointing newer heroes.
Get him up to 2*. From that point on, he's better than other tanks one star higher than him. Starting at P+2 when he gets lifesteal and conservation, he's incredibly powerful. He'll occasionally chain his white, which does splash damage by the way, crushing the entire enemy team. Try to get the enemy clustered in one spot, which he also happens to be good at, due to his charge.
Solid tank at any level, but get those stars up. The armor-breaking ability is useful against Snap Dragon and other armor-heavy heroes (which includes most tanks), while the group stun can turn a fight around. Once you have runes, try to make him use his white as often as possible.
Another solid tank, useful as soon as he gets his shield. That shield can protect heroes like Bard and Ninja until their whites are ready, or absorb Understudy's storm.
Orc defends your whole team, making him pretty useful. However, he's easy to kill, so he's best used with another tank. A lot of people like the Horse/Orc combination, because by the time Horse's shield runs out, Orc's can take over. Keep him promoted as high as you can without sacrificing his “improved heal” stat more than you have to. Once you have runes, it's easy to max out his heal, and you can focus on shields and keeping him alive.
The current most popular tank, Plant Soul deals an okay amount of damage, makes one of your heroes invincible for a short time, and heals the team even after she dies. Very nice to have.
Up to around level 40, she's a pretty good tank. Then, despite her very nice stuns, she becomes weaker and weaker until she gets her orange power, when she moves up to mediocre. Pair Epic Dragon Lady with Cutie or other stun-heavy hero. She'd be amazing with Dust Devil, if there was some way to keep that guy alive. The reason I mention her at all is because of her secret special power. As the highest-intellect tank, she can attract Ninja to the front line, where he doesn't stand a chance. Just make sure she's the smartest hero on your team.
Great tank early on if you're lucky enough to get him in a gold chest, but by the time he's available in Campaign, he's outmatched by most other tanks. His epic looks pretty good, but I haven't tried it yet myself. For the most part, you can keep him at a reasonable level with unleveled skills, and use him to knock Venusia off the cliff.
Once you've chosen your favorite heroes (which don't have to be the same as my favorites), you have to make sure to keep up with them, or they'll rapidly become weaker compared to the competition. Here's how!
These are the easiest things to manage. If you use a hero a lot, always make that hero's level the same as your team level, and always max out all of that hero's skills. If you're short on money, figure out which skills are the most useful and focus on those, but you'll eventually want them all. Skills that affect the whole team are the most important, followed by skills which increase attack speed. The white skill is usually the most powerful, so keep that one as high as possible too. Skills that only improve one stat of one hero can wait, but don't neglect them completely since they do make a difference.
Stars are one of the most important things a hero can have. A 5* hero is vastly more powerful than a 1* hero. It does more damage, stays alive longer, and has stronger skills. Your Fight Pit heroes have to have as many stars as you can manage. If a hero is available daily in one of the shops, you might even want to prefer that hero over a better one, since you can rapidly increase the number of stars.
If you use a hero a lot, get that hero up to Purple as quickly as you can. It's very important to have access to all of a hero's skills. After that, you can slow down a little. Tap the “i” at the top of the hero's “gear” tab, to see what equipment is available in the coming levels. If it has good stats, make promoting a priority. If an orange skill is available or will be soon, promote as fast as you can.
Alexei's guide to promoting to C+3plugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigPromoting to Cyan+3
AlexeiD2003 did an analysis of all C+3 equipment. It's pretty bad for the most part, but a few heroes are worth promoting:
YES! Happy to upgrade
* Bulwark Angel. Gains a lot of fire power from Strength and Magic Penetration. Plus he gains a lot of accuracy.
Fully equip your heroes. If a piece of equipment seems useless, you can put off equipping it, but equipment makes a huge difference in a hero's power.
Enchanting is more difficult. It's expensive, and costs a valuable resource – other unused equipment. Personally, I only enchant equipment that has a major impact. Health bonus, lifesteal, conservation and strength (which adds health) are all examples of skills you want as much of as possible. On my very favorite heroes, I enchant up to 4* or even 5*, but you can't afford to do that for everyone.
When's the best time to enchant? When you don't plan to increase a hero's promotion level for a while. Maybe you've hit the level cap, or maybe you've decided that P+2 equipment is so good that you're going to skip P+3 and P+4.
Other people disagree with me, and enchant as often and as fully as possible. Those people do better in the short term, but risk running out of throw-away equipment and money.
Don't neglect runesplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigDragon Soul Rune Guide
By Attabrain Zee, server 4. Updated 2018-07-05
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In this guide, I analyze each rune set and the various powers of runes, so you can make intelligent decisions on your own. There are some other excellent guides out there, if you'd prefer just to be told which runes are the best for each hero.! Your hero will be so much more powerful with the right runes. If runes are too complicated to understand, at least try to complete sets. The game puts an indicator over rune types that your hero wants. 2 or 4 runes of the same type (depending on the rune) gives you a big set bonus. So if you don't want to think about it, just complete the recommended sets.
You can't go wrong on any hero by getting the tree, mist and rock sets, for maximum defense. It's not always the best choice, but it never hurts. When choosing defense runes, get the sets will have the highest numeric bonus. For example, if your hero has 100 magic resist and 400 armor, an extra 40% magic resist will only bring you to 140, while 40% armor will get you to 560. That's a 4x difference in usefulness!
And don't forget to upgrade your runes. It never hurts to upgrade a rune to level 3 and empower it to 3*, because if you decide to absorb it into another rune, you get your resources back. So if you think a rune is good, upgrade it and empower it. 3* runes are far more powerful than 1* runes.
Want to be more sophisticated in your rune choice? Check out the other guides on this siteplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigDragon Soul Rune Guide
By Attabrain Zee, server 4. Updated 2018-07-05
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In this guide, I analyze each rune set and the various powers of runes, so you can make intelligent decisions on your own. There are some other excellent guides out there, if you'd prefer just to be told which runes are the best for each hero..
Some groups of heroes like to work together. By combining them, your team will be much stronger. Here are some examples:
Spirit Wolf will force enemies to attack the tank and ignore Ninja, letting Ninja go crazy. Just make sure your ninja doesn't have more health than the tank, or it will backfire.
These two are best friends. Always send them together if you can, for ridiculous attack speed.
Skeleton King creates a tank who can't be permanently killed. Spirit Wolf makes enemies fight tanks. You get the idea.
Some heroes have epic skills which increase a damage type. These make for powerful good combinations. Some examples are:
One of the toughest parts of DragonSoul is creating a line-up that can beat another team. Part of the strategy is figuring out which of your own team members work best together. The other part is knowing how to beat other players' strategies.
It's hard to give a general strategy here, so I'm going to give a few examples instead.
Megataur, Bardbarian, Crimson Witch, Moon Drake, Spirit Wolf. This team is horrible against teams with a ninja, and risky against back-line attackers like Spike Dragon, Goblins and Dwarf, but good against many other teams. Your entire back line is focused on making the already overpowered Bard even more powerful.
Avoid using a team like this in Guild War, since you're throwing all your support heroes at a single target, and they won't be available in later fights.
Some people like to include three tanks in a single team, usually protecting some key player like Ninja, Bard or Understudy. These teams have a lot of health, but don't do much damage. To beat them, use one good tank like Megataur or Horse, plus Catapult Knight or Understudy. Finish it off with Bard and another support hero. You don't want Ninja on your team. He's not so good against tanks.
Ninja causing you trouble? Send in the tanks, along with massive single-target damagers like Understudy, Megataur, Satyr and Bard. Don't put too many low-health heroes in your back line.
Alternatively, avoid all intellect-based heroes except for Dragon Lady. Ninja will be forced to attack your front line, where he'll be killed quickly by Understudy and other damage heroes.
If the enemy Ninja has a Spirit Wolf friend, you either have to kill Ninja really quickly, or kill Spirit Wolf. Your own Ninja will do the trick, or another powerful back-line killer like Spike Dragon, Centuar or Dwarf.
The best way to kill a Bard is with a better Bard. This means max out your bard, and send in support heroes to make her more powerful. You can also use Epic Catapult Knight who does tons of damage to fast heroes, or Epic Frost Giant who can slow the enemy down. Massive single-target damagers like Understudy, Satyr and Megataur can work too.
You don't absolutely need a Bard to kill a Bard, but you'd better be able to do a lot of damage very quickly, to make up for Bard's life steal.
In Guild Warplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigDragon Soul War Guide
by Attabrain Zee, on server 4. Updated for 2.7
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I've noticed a lot of DragonSoul players losing battles when they have perfectly good heroes, so here are some tips to help. No one should have to lose any battles against equal-powered teams, and most people should be able to attack teams stronger than them. and Expedition, you have the advantage of being able to charge your heroes' white powers and save them for the next wave. It's crucial in these modes to use as few white powers as possible early on, so you have them when you need them. This means turning “auto” off.
Certain heroes become extremely valuable, due to their powerful whites. Among others, these include:
War is more complicated than other modes, because you first have to beat the minions. Take a look at my War Guideplugin-autotooltip__default plugin-autotooltip_bigDragon Soul War Guide
by Attabrain Zee, on server 4. Updated for 2.7
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I've noticed a lot of DragonSoul players losing battles when they have perfectly good heroes, so here are some tips to help. No one should have to lose any battles against equal-powered teams, and most people should be able to attack teams stronger than them. for more tips.