Let’s talk about how the enemy minions work. Each minion basically consists of three stats – a Movement, an Attack, and a Vulnerability. Some minions also have a Special of some sort. All minions fall into one of two categories – they are either a Lesser minion or a Greater minion. When a Lesser minion reaches the Rift, he vanishes and damages the Rift by 1 Health. When a Greater minion reaches it, he vanishes and damages it by 2 Health. Also, Lesser minions drop 1 skull for you to harvest when they are killed, while Greater minions drop 2 skulls. (I like to think that they are arranged like Russian stacking dolls, one skull inside the other.)
Orcs are pretty much the most baseline minion. They have a Move of 1 (true for most minions), and an Attack and Vulnerability that scale up over time. Here is the card I’m using right now for the Orc stats:
Orcs Must Die Stats2
The three stars on the card are for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Onslaughts. So you can see in the 1st Onslaught, the Orc has an attack of 1, and a vulnerability of one sword. In the 2nd Onslaught, his vulnerability is the same, but he now has an attack of 2. In the 3rd Onslaught, his vulnerability jumps up to 2 swords, which makes him twice as hard to kill.
The way this works in play is that the orcs in the 1st onslaught don’t do much damage. They would be fairly easy to kill, but since players don’t have good weapons and gear yet, sometimes players still struggle for a bit. By the end of the 1st Onslaught players can kill orcs with confidence.
Now, in the 2nd Onslaught, players have good weapons, and their trap network is starting to bear fruit. The orcs are just as easy to kill, but you have to rely on the traps more, because an orc group can really hurt a player. Usually they won’t kill you in the 2nd Onslaught unless you are really reckless but you certainly have to pay attention to the incoming waves. Since Orc vulnerability is the same, your 1st Onslaught traps can still kill them, though of course they are not quite as nice as the new traps. Usually players don’t replace old traps in the 2nd Onslaught – but simply place newer ones in tiles that are lacking defenses.
Generally speaking, the 2nd Onslaught is a good time to cash in on your weapons and traps and earn a lot of skulls.
The 3rd Onslaught everything changes. Now the Orcs not only can kill you BUT they are much much harder to kill. Your relict 1st Onslaught traps are nearly worthless, and you’ll have to consider replacing them. If you’ve earned enough money in the 2nd Onslaught, you can quickly increase your gear & weapons, and possibly even upgrade your War Camp, rebooting your Supers! This can come in very handy during the horrors of the last Onslaught!