Hell Mode Guide - March 2025

It's never been a better time to start attempting hell mode runs than it is now - the recent nerfs to the mode made it significantly less difficult to get wins with more attainable gear. However, it's still a difficult mode. To beat it you'll need a solid strategy. With the variety of mythics that have been added to the game over the last couple months, you have some good options available to you. This guide will go over all of the mythics that are currently in the hell mode meta, and will explain both the physical and magic builds of the game. Note that magic builds are very popular right now. Generally, magic builds are easier to run at a high level, and physical damage builds have a higher damage threshold due to having the full range of mythics available to them while taking a bit more micromanagement. If you're trying to beat hell at lower artifact levels, the physical build is good. However if you run magic builds you'll likely synergize better with more partners. Note that both builds have a lot of overlap as well.

Safe Box and Money Gun

How to Maximize Your Gold

Safe Box and Money Gun are important in every mode you've played. But in hell mode you'll need to stack more gold than you have ever stacked. You should try to get to 30k gold before you start spending very much of it. Shoot for at LEAST 400k by the end of the match. You'll need to learn to optimize your missions at the start to do this - recruit all commons, kill hunt before wave 8, sell 10 units (sell your commons for this, you get some gold back AND you get the gold from the mission) and whatever other mission there is I can't think of off the top of my head. The gold bonus from these missions compounds very heavily if you can avoid spending much of it until 30k gold. Note that unlike in hard mode, there's no mission for upgrading twice in hell mode, so if you don't need to upgrade damage early you can save a little extra gold. Don't upgrade common or rare damage ever - you need all the gold you can get, and you'd only benefit from that upgrade for maybe 10 waves. Epics can clear wave 20 in some cases - use them! Also, you likely learned to avoid maxxing summon chance in lower difficulties. Most players still avoid this. In hell mode, it's totally viable to level summon chance to merge/sell for stones. In general, it's still reccomended to keep the summon level around 6 to 9, but this is not a hard rule and depends on the situation.

The Rule of 4

Above, I briefly mention that one of the missions that gives gold and luck stones is killing the first hunt before wave 8. In general, the strategy here is if you get 4 epics, you can kill the hunt by wave 8. For each less than 4, you'll need to upgrade epic damage. This isn't a hard rule, but it's a good way to visualize the mission. You don't want to miss that mission after spending that gold to upgrade because then you miss out on 2 luck stones, some gold, and the gold you spent to upgrade.

The Three Types of Mythics

Boss Killers - Lancelot, Vayne, and Watt

Lancelot 12 - The % Boss Killer

Lance is the classic boss killer. His damage is nerfed a bit in hell mode, but he's still very powerful and 100% worth summoning. Although he is a boss focused mythic, 2 Lancelots and 1 Wave Clear can clear the horde waves all the way to wave 80. It's important to note that he is countered by Barrier. If you get a Barrier boss, you can not kill it with Lancelot.

Vayne 15 - The Physical Boss Killer

Vayne level 15 and Watt 12 are the direct counter to Barrier. Aside from that, Vayne does massive damage to all of the other bosses. Surprisingly, she also does high damage to Grunt, who specifically resists physical damage. She scales off gold unlike Lance, so having her maxxed out with her exclusive treasure can make the difference between a win and a loss.

Watt 12 - The Build Up Boss Killer

Watt 12 is technically the strongest unit in the game, but only for brief bursts of damage. Watt is particularly good when you and your partner are at least SB6. The reason for this, is with two SB6 players, there's not much risk of losing before wave 80, allowing you to save Watt for the final boss, which is often where people fail. Not only that, but as mentioned above, Barrier is practically immune to Lancelot's ult damage because Lance does damage based on max health, and Barrier's outer shield has 8 to 9 times the amount of health that his real health bar has. This is why Watt and Vayne are the perfect counters to Barrier, because they do flat damage, not based on how much health the enemy has.

Wave Clear Mythics - Tao, Chu, Bat Man, Verdee and Kun

Top Tier Wave Clears - Tao and Chu level 12

These are the absolute strongest wave clears in the game. These are going to give you the best odds of getting through hordes to get to the boss rounds. There's not much to add here. They're extremely strong

Middle Tier Wave Clears - Verdee, Bat Man, and Kun

If you're playing in an SB6 team, you can get away with using more of these. However, in general you should only use one or two of these, and only if you haven't been able to get an Overclocked Chu or Tao - they just don't do enough damage in comparison. With the very limited board space you have, you'll need to fill it with only the strongest mythics possible if you're expecting to do a majority of the damage. They're totally viable options, but they fall short of Chu and Tao. But with an SB6 teammate you can use these more often.

But for a specific breakdown of these guys:

The strongest of them is Kun. He doesn't cost gold to upgrade, and if you can get him +80 or higher, he's solid all the way to the end. You'll still want to swap him with Lancelot if you get lots of mana though, because Lancelot with mana regen will still outdamage any of these 3 mythics. The second best of these three is Verdee, only because she doesn't cost gold to get working well. Bat Man is the worst because the most important thing in a successful run is gold, and he's going to require you to spend it. That being said, it's worth considering the ramp up times required to make these units work: Verdee only needs to wait until she performs her ult, and then she's performing at her peak as long as you have Defense Reduction. Kun takes the longest time to build up, but is as strong as Bat Man, he doesn't need Defense Reduction, and doesn't use gold to power up. Bat Man's strongest trait is that he can save a run if you're just about to die to a boss. He's got the shortest ramp up time, being at peak power as soon as you level him up. This will take a lot of gold, so it's up to you if it's worth it. Most of the time it's not, but summoning him and upgrading him quickly can get you what you need to survive. Note: if you already have one of these 3, you can consider selling the rest of your tigers - unless you want him for attack speed. All the tiger summons at the moment are outclassed by Rocket Chu, Tao, and Lancelot. If you're running a physical build, you can get away with not doing attack speed buffs at all, and often it's beneficial to do so in hopes to stack more Defense Reduction.

Support - Indy and Kitty Mage

Indy 12

Indy is - deceptively - one of the most powerful characters in the game. He's unneccesary in the lower difficulties, but he's a staple of hell mode. The biggest reason Indy shines so much in hell mode is because you're often left completely filling your board to the point where you have no room. This is why above, I reccomend giving extra thought into whether or not you summon a second Bat Man/Kun/Verdee. In the video on this page, you can see both me and my partners board get completely filled by the end. This is where Indy can help. He has a variety of buffs, and all of his legendary ones would take multiple spaces to get the same effect from any other source. The best one you can get when doing the physical strategy is Defense Reduce - when using Vayne as the boss killer. The best one to use when running magic builds is attack speed. The reason the Defense Reduction buff is so powerful, is that one Indy can give as much Defense Reduction as FOUR Monopoly Men. Not only does this save 3 entire spaces for the same Defense Reduction, but running a Vayne/Lancelot strat means you're going to be using a ton of Hunters to summon them. It's very difficult to maintain stacks of hunters while you're constantly using them to summon those two mythics, while you're also fighting with limited board space. As far as attack speed goes it's very similar. One Indy can give you an attack speed bonus stronger than 3 full stacks of eagles. It's honestly insane.

Kitty 12

The first or second mythic most people get to level 12. You want at least 3 of these Kitties to keep your Vaynes in their ult form for the entire game. To support Lancelot, it would be better to have even more than that. Lancelot becomes very good at clearing waves as long as he has proper Kitty Mage support. Add in a Rocket Chu or a Tao, and as long as you're stunning properly you can fill the remaining spaces you have with Indy, Vayne, and epics for attack speed/defense reduce to give you the Defense Reduction and damage you'll need to beat the boss at wave 80. Lancelot is actually the best wave clearer you can get for this strategy, often outdamaging Chu and Tao if you can get the mana to support him. Kitty Mage is also useful outside of this purpose, (Tao does more boss damage with his Ult) but this specific synergy is the one that makes Kitty Mage one of the highest rated characters in the game.

Mythic Stuns (Optional)

Why Mythic Stuns?

In general, mythic stuns are known for being at worst, weaker than epic and rare stuns. Some think that at best, they're equal. However, there are some benefits to get from running mythic stuns.

Graviton 12

Graviton is the most popular mythic stun. He has the highest stun duration and chance out of all them. As a pure stun, he's solid. He is good for getting reliable stuns, with less population cost. (1 mythic vs 3 common or blue)

Pulse Generator 12 with Exclusive

Pulse Generator has been making a comeup recently in the Korean Lucky Defense community. The idea is that while he does fairly weak stun, he does very powerful slow. In general, any slow you can get makes stunning way more consistent because if there is stun leak, they don't make it very far, allowing you to keep your horde bunched up.

Orc Shaman 10 Exclusive

Orc Shaman shines the most when you have his exclusive treasure. His level 12 is a decent ability, but in most games you'll (ideally) be able to get close to 200 defense reduce anyways. Because of this, the extra 30 defense reduce you get at level 12 (non stacking) is not that impactful. However, having Orc Shaman treasure nearly doubles the frequency his attacks cause stun, and cause enemies hit by him to take 18% more physical damage. This is an incredibly powerful buff to somebody running a physical build. Maybe most importantly, each Orc Shaman gives 20 defense reduce. So you can fill a space you'd fill with a different stun, with a unit that does both stun, and defense reduction.

For a full list of hell mode bosses, click here.