Warning! Hunters bumbling about in the dark!

Good grief, what am I doing here?

As Jester told you in the introduction to the Fiery Warpath walkthrough, he has invited me to join him as an author on MouseHuntGuide. What he was gracious enough not to tell you is that I had the temerity to try to invite myself as such nearly a year ago when I knew diddly (a highly technical term) about MH. Luckily, he was sweet enough not to pitch me out of his life on my ear. Now I know at least ten times diddly (for the mathematically inclined, ten times diddly equals squat), but at least I know that I know squat. So I guess Jester decided that meant I was ready to help out.

While we sort out the mechanics of collaborating on Blogger (at present I cannot update my own work-in-progress, ROFL) I'm going to post what I think are crucial updates and integrate them later.

The first of those is a strategy update for wave 2.

While Zugzwang's First Move (ZFM) would be preferable over Rewer's Riposte (RR) if you have Cavalry charms, the first pass through wave 2 all but the wealthiest hunters will not. Once you have defeated the Archers, Scouts and Warriors you will be left with roughly twice as many Cavalry as Mages. If you are lucky and encountered a Crimson Commander at an opportune time, you will not face the full count, but the ratio will remain the same. If Sand Cavalry and Inferno Mages are equally attracted to your bait, the odds favor arming a tactical trap and a luck charm as, on average, two out of three encounters will favor the tactical setup.

Here is the light bulb (ding!) that went off over my head today while whittling away at those dratted Flame Archers (how embarrassing, archers....) In that first pass through wave 2, without charms, choose your RR rather than your ZFM. Why? Because we are always told to arm our luckiest trap when we do not have the right trap type. In this case going with the luck setup is the smart choice as it will improve the outcome for the balance of the encounters, for which the tactical setup is less effective. Not to mention that the usual argument in favor of power (consistency) is not in play without charms.

A second, much smaller update is that I have downgraded Summer Mage (and therefore the anticipated Winter Mage) to unverified, as I have yet to receive a single documented drop.

Aha! Looks like we're making technical progress. Yayyy!

More to come....

Hilary