Ancient Ice

Venturing in the Icy Cold!

For the last couple of weeks in December and the first week of January, adventurers have the opportunity to fight in these specialized caves, where they can complete quests and earn  IGOROK and  Icebloom tokens! These levels can be challenging, but with rewards like wreaths and exclusive hero tokens, an adventurer can easily tackle a couple of levels and walk away with goodies.

Enemies found in these dungeons are purely water based, and they're all scaled to be around your player level. As the difficulty increases, enemies either gain increased stats due to higher star ranking, or they gain additional abilities through higher level ascensions.

This article provides a breakdown of the enemies that you will encounter, as well as several tips and strategies to taking care of the boss. You will also gain insight on the rewards upon completion, so that you can also participate and look forward to your own set of gains.

Check out the Happy Holidays event to see what else is going on. Likewise, check out Crystal Citadel to earn even more  Icebloom tokens!

Dungeon Preparation

The three available levels found in the Ancient Ice caves are structured with different difficulties. All of the enemies that you encounter will be water based. While you have the opportunity to use any hero in your arsenal, it is best to avoid Fire-based heroes because they will take additional damage. The safest team composition is a team with purely Nature based heroes, as they are immune to critical hits dealt by water based enemies in addition to taking 25% less damage from them.

Heroes to Consider

The following heroes have been proven to be useful in these levels, specifically when you enter the hard difficulty of the dungeon.

Tsume and Jabber Clenchjaw: These heroes have the ability to inflict Fear, making enemies take at least 200% more damage from all sources. This effect is especially important when dealing with high defense and high health enemies like bosses and minibosses found in the level. Combined with any other damage multipliers and your team will swiftly take out those enemies.

King Yorick: Whether used as a friend champion or in your team, his Mark for Death ability is exceptionally useful against bosses and minibosses. He not only increases the damage taken from all sources by at least 250%, but he also has the ability to lower their defenses with his Armor Break ability. When dealing with a boss like  IGOROK, his abilities make him a natural predator and support hero for your team.

Chief NubNub and Yasmin Bloom: These will be your bread and butter healers for the upcoming fight. Chief NubNub can provide the defenses for your nature team, which will be sorely needed when dealing with area of effect attacks like IGOROK's Polar Pounding. Yasmin will be able to protect herself as well as any other hero with her Aegis Shield, all the while boosting her health and any other Water ally's health with her Water Heart passive.

Willow Swift: She has the damage potential when teamed up with a couple of support heroes like  King Yorick and  Tsume. In addition, the holiday cheer buff increases her ATK, HP and DEF by a significant amount when equipping her festive skin, making her a necessary power house when going up against hard hitting enemies like IGOROK.

Stone Fist: A tank with the  Impervious passive, making him immune to being Frozen. In addition, he also inflicts a debuff on his enemies with his  Fist of Justice, making them easier to deal with due to a reduced DEF and ATK.

Cruel King Bramble: A Nature based tank that also provides a significant boost to your party's ATK and CRIT with his Goblin Dance special ability. Using this in combination with the other damage multipliers will give you the edge required to crack IGOROK's defenses.

Friend's Champions to Consider

King Yorick: His  Marked for Death will surely be a necessity as you mount up an explosive attack against IGOROK on Hard mode. Befriend people and get them on the same page so that you can have a decent supply of King Yoricks to use.

Yokozuna, Lady Nimriel, Julius or any daze inflicting heroes: Heroes that daze provide an advantage and a chance for the enemy to miss its attacks. When fighting difficult bosses, you'd want to cripple your enemy with as many debuffs as possible.

Squinch: A hero that provides your entire team the  Pyromaniac buff and a small chance to Burn your enemies. Fortunately, Water enemies do not have an increased resistance to Fire based attacks. Use this in conjunction with other damage multipliers to achieve the best damage output.

Rocky the Shiitake: When all your skills are available to use for the final battle, you'd want to deal a double dose of attacks before the damage multiplier effects wear off. Rocky can provide your entire team haste using his  Spore Cloud, each of your heroes with the ability to execute attacks twice within the same turn.

Bovus El Doro or Lord Zomm: Their shared ability saps energy from their enemies, forcing attacks to be delayed by 1 turn (for Bovus) or 3 turns (for Lord Zomm). This will force IGOROK and other enemies to use basic attacks while your allies mount up a defense for it.

Dungeon Breakdown

These are the enemies encountered in the level. As the difficulty increases, so will the quality of the enemies.

Ancient Ice (E)asy

This level can be completed by a team that can deal a lot of damage. The main goal is to take out the Frozen Pixies first as they deal the most damage through basic attacks, followed by the Tidespear Goons (they typically hurt the most through their Rampage attacks). In the room before the boss, you may encounter  Selwyn the Enduring as a mini-boss. He has very little health, making him relatively easy to dispose of. If he ends up getting a chance to attack, he will start off with his  Northern Gale, which is a Cold area of damage attack that deals a small amount of damage and a chance to Freeze your allies.

For the most part, this level can be completed through auto-attacks. Make sure to collect any sparkling objects as they may contain +3 to your stamina recovery.

The final boss to this level is an unascended  IGOROK. Take him down with any of your hard hitting attacks. Check out the recommended heroes section to be sure to get used to fighting him in this level, in preparation for the more difficult levels.

Ancient Ice (M)edium

Enemies found in this level have ascended once, and their star ranking has increased. They can deal more damage, and take more damage from attacks as well. The best way to deal with this is crowd is to begin incorporating a healer suggested from above. You should also use a combination of a Fearing hero or  King Yorick.

The fight with  Therand Fiddlestrom is more of a nuisance than a problem. His  Thermal Detonator attack deals damage to the entire party, but Dazes one hero. He is easily taken care of by several hits.

At the end of the level,a first ascension IGOROK is the boss. He can deal a large amount of damage from his  Polar Pounding, but you can easily survive as long as your heroes are at your player level, and your skills are mostly up to date. A team with 3-star heroes should not have any problem dealing with him.

Ancient Ice (H)ard

This is a level cannot be auto-played. With multiple hazards even in the first room, you will most likely need to deal with them on a play by play basis. Frozen pixies are less of a hazard in these levels; you will most likely have to deal as much damage as you can to Goons if you see at least 3 in a specific room. They will most likely deal a considerable amount of damage with  Rampage. The runner up to target are Pixies, as they relatively little health. Predict which of the Frost Constructs are going to  Taunt next, so that you can focus fire and finish them off one at a time. Typically the positioning from upper left to lower right is the order at which they Taunt next.

Once you reach the 4th room of the dungeon, you may encounter  Yokozuna as a miniboss. He doesn't do a lot of damage, but his  Sumo Stomp will leave your allies in a daze that will cost your heroes extra turns and many missed attacks. When you see him, your attack priority will be Yokozuna first. It is better to use one or two special attacks on him now, and then finish the rest of the enemies with basic attacks while you wait several turns for your skills to come back from cooldown.

Heal up to full and prepare your defenses by using skills like  King Yorick's  Guarding Strike or  Chief NubNub's  Stout Team now, as it will prevent IGOROK from dealing a deadly blow against your team with his  Polar Pounding. Ideally, you'd want to survive one round when he takes his first turn with that special attack.

This boss will be a challenge for both experienced and new adventurers. A 6 star, fully ascended level 60+ boss  IGOROK is a very tough nut to crack. Just basic attacks from Nature heroes will scratch him for a mere 300 damage.

One strategy to defeat him is to lower his defenses or make him take additional damage with Mark for Death and Fear debuff effects. Using a Friend's hero will come in handy here. A combination of  Tsume or  Jabber Clenchjaw's Fear attacks and  King Yorick's mark will quickly bring the damage dealt up to the thousands. You should also use attacks that lowers its DEF. Any status effect like Disease or DEF down will soften him up. Use  Willow Swift and deal as much damage as she can while these debuffs are active. Do not be afraid to use additional energy potions to recharge any of the skills.

If you're playing more defensively, then bring heroes like  Julius, which can daze and possibly prevent IGOROK from killing all of the members of your entire party. For reference, he will be able to kill any non-nature 3 star or under hero with his  Polar Pounding without damage mitigation. Weaken his ATK or strength your DEF so that your team can survive the round.

One possible fully ascended team composition in the following order:  Willow Swift,  King Yorick,  Tsume, and  Chief NubNub. Friend Companion:  King Yorick.
Use  Marked for Death at the beginning of the battle. Have Willow Swift execute any of her attacks. Use the second King Yorick to  Armor Break and lower his Defense, then use  Tsume's  Spreading Panic Ability finish the job. If Chief NubNub can go, then he should haste Willow Swift or Tsume to allow then to execute two more single hard hitting attacks.

Quest Rewards

The following table provides a list of rewards for completing quests found in any of the levels within Ancient Ice. Any completions or kills are cumulative and are added to the next objective of the quest. For example, completing Snow Cones for the first time will show 1 out of 2 times are completed already for the next quest, meaning that you will need to complete it once more to finish that quest.

Quest	Objective	IGOROK	Wreaths
IGOROK Hunting [x/7]	Defeat IGOROK in Ancient Ice (E) [1,2,5,7,10,15,20] times	[1,1,1,1,2,2,NA]	[50,50,50,50,50,75,75]
Snow Cones [x/3]	Complete Ancient Ice (E) [1,2,5] times	[2,1,1]	[100,100,100]
Shaved Ice [x/5]	Complete Ancient Ice (M) [1,2,5,10,20] times	[3,1,1,1,2]	[100,100,100,200,200]
Targeting IGOROK [x/6]	Defeat IGOROK in Ancient Ice(M) [1,2,5,10,15,20][1]	[1,1,2,2,2,NA] [2]	[100,100,100,100,200,100]
IGOROK Smoothies [x/5]	Complete Ancient Ice(H)	[4,2,2,2,3]	[300,300,300,300,300]
Taking Down the Icy Monster [x/6]	Defeat IGOROK in Ancient Ice (H) [1,2,5,10,15,20] times[1]	[2,2,2,x,x,NA] [2], Icebloomx6	[200,200,200,x,x.300]
Wanted: Selwyn the Enduring [x/10]	Defeat Selwyn the Enduring in Ancient Ice (E) [1,2,3,5,7,10,15.20,30,50] times[1]	Icebloom (62 tokens): [1,2,2,3,5,5,7,7,15,15]	NA
Wanted: Therand Fiddlestrom [x/10]	Defeat Therand Fiddlestrom in Ancient Ice (M)  [1,2,3,5,7,10,15.20,30,50] times[1]	Icebloom (62 tokens):  [1,2,2,3,5,5,7,7,15,15]	NA
Wanted: Yokozuna [x/10]	Defeat Yokozuna in Ancient Ice (H) [1,2,3,5,7,10,15.20,30,50] times[1]	Icebloom (62 tokens):  [1,2,2,3,5,5,7,7,15,15]	NA

Silver, Gold and Ancient chests contain at least 12000 gold and anywhere from 1,3, or 5 stamina tokens, respectively.

If you complete all three "Wanted: ... [x/10]" Quests you can gain 192 Icebloom tokens in total.

Notes and Tips

Even though IGOROK runs away from effects like Fear, you can eventually finish the quest since the objectives for defeating Selwyn the Enduring, Therand Fiddlestrom, and Yokozuna is much higher. You will most likely be running the event more times to defeat these three than worrying about IGOROK running away.

Gallery

Subterranean Evos found in Ancient Ice (E)