PvE - Crimson Kata Mine

Here's a tutorial for this tough dungeon. I didn't complete it yet, but I'm starting that tutorial while the strategy for the two first fights is still fresh.

Fight 1 :

So... you only have about 20-30 charms for that fight, depending on how much spirit you have, as Hard Labor hits you for 40 spirit damage at the beginning of the fight. Yeah, working in the mine is exhausting Needless to say you need to put as many charms as you can in your deck as this is all you'll have to kick that nasty thief's ass. The trick of this fight is based on a good balance between armor and spirit charms as he will use lots of EAs and "spirit on yourself" if you have armor (plus it protects you from damage), and you also need lots of spirit charms to beat him. About 25 armor charms which need to grant a big amount of armor quickly should do the trick. Pyric charge and such are useless for that fight as he will destroy your armor with one blow without using an EA (and you want him to use them). So... Nerman's defender, Shield of the whale, Echo shield, etc are good for that fight. And on the spirit side... well, just use your best ones A few Stunning charms can help too. A few tries and you should get the trick.


Fight 2 :

Ow... it hurts... you have 500hp less for that fight as you fell from quite a high height, and now those ants.. centipedes... whatever they are want to eat you alive, even though you are crippled... Those idiots use some aoe/dot... meaning Area of effect / Damage over time They use banes on all players, to keep thing simple. So just extend their banes, cleanse yours and, as they don't give powerful blows, use some debuff charms which will nullify their melee attacks after a few rounds. And some heals are useful too as you have 500hp less.

Fight 3 :

Working on it

Thanks I was trying to figure out the 3rd fight but couldn't find out what triggers the dragon's combo. Now I know it's triggered by kata runes

PS : Hum, I played quite a lot of kata runes but the combo doesn't trigger. Don't know why. Have a look :

Grigou being owned by a dragon

PS 2 : After checking it once again, I feel like the combo is linked to the charms [Gather Physical Essence] and [Gather Magical Essence] as the drawing of these charms is followed by the sentence : "As the dragon draws power from the mist, you feel it attracted to you as well". Moreover, when the combo starts, there is that sentence : "The essence of the charms are fusing together to form a new effect!".

My understanding is that both Gather Physical Essence and Gather Magical Essence have a hidden effect that's something like "If target played a kata rune in the last 3 turns, activate" and then Murky Defense triggers the combo only if *both* hidden effects were activated. Also when one of the gather essence charms is activated, you get that text you noticed about the dragon drawing power. (I'm not sure about the 3 turns thing, may be 2 or 4.)

So in your replay, on turn 5 the combo didn't trigger because neither effect was activated yet - it's impossible to trigger the combo on turn 5. On turn 17 it didn't trigger because Gather Physical Essence on turn 7 didn't activate. The next combo did trigger, because both of the next two gatherings were activated.

So basically, you need more kata runes or better luck. A good strategy is to use lots of kata runes that have banes on them - other than persistent disease, every bane you use should have a kata rune on it, even a really weak charm like Burn is good in this fight.

Thanks guys, that is really helpful! Practice time now

Edit : It works, but now I have to survive long enough... it activates twice but I never make it to the third time. I'll try to throw in some armor/ward charms or heal.

I think debuffs are more useful than armor/ward, personally. Since I'm in triland anyway, here's a replay:
http://wl.attrib.org/estiah/replay/f9a76c49
The deck is about half debuffs and half banes/summons with kata runes on them.