Peasant
HP: 40
Speed: Normal
Peasants are the grunts of the enemy. They show up in early waves on the first ten levels, and serve primarily as a free source of gold and experience for your towers.
Rogue
HP: 70
Speed: Fast
Rogues are slightly tougher, much faster peasants. They are not very impressive or significant.
Warrior
HP: 120
Speed: Slow
Warriors are on roughly the same threat level as rogues, only where rogues are fast, the warrior is slow but sturdy. It is still insignificant.
Knight
HP: 150
Speed: Slow
Special Ability: Shield 5
Knights are essentially a more powerful version of the warrior. Their shield protects them from five damage of each hit. Despite this, they are still generally not a threat.
Bard
HP: 120
Speed: Normal
Special Ability: Lute of Haste 50%
Bards tend to come in the same groups as knights. Their special ability is a spell that gives them or their allies a temporary boost of 50% to their speed. The Bard’s haste spell means they can usually evade your towers if they only cover a thin strip of the road, but a defence in depth will destroy them completely.
Ninja
HP: 100
Speed: Fast
Special Ability: Smokebomb 1
It is a well documented fact that ninjas are totally sweet. The designers of Cursed Treasure apparently were not aware of this fact, because here ninjas are, in fact, pure, concentrated, evil.
While not particularly sturdy, the key to the ninja’s greatness lies in its smoke bomb ability. When the ninja is attacked by a tower, it will immediately trigger this ability, which renders it invisible for the next five seconds. During these five seconds, the ninja cannot be targeted by your towers, and will steal all your gems, kill your dog, and burn down your house.
So powerful is the ninja, in fact, that you can essentially divide all enemies in Cursed Treasure into categories: ninja and non-ninja. Non-ninja enemies can be ignored when building your defences. Ninjas cannot.
There are two ways to kill a ninja:
- Destroy him before he has a chance to use his smoke bomb. This requires that you attack the ninja with overwhelming force, something that will require Chilling Crypts, which will then be unable to fire when the next ninja enters the map.
- Trigger the smoke bomb as early as possible, so that when it wears off he is in tower range and hopefully hasn’t reached the gems yet.
The best way to ninja-proof your defences is to build a Temple near every entrance to the map. The Temple’s low firerate allows it to shoot each ninja as it enters the map, which should leave you time to kill them between their smoke bomb wearing off and their reaching the gems. If a Temple is unavailable due to terrain, a Den will do in a pinch. Crypts are completely ineffective ninja-triggers and should never be used.
Mage
HP: 100
Speed: Normal
Special Ability: Barrier 100
Mages are no ninjas, but they’re not completely harmless, either. The Mage’s barrier is a second level of health that regenerates over time – dealing as much damage as possible to the mage as quickly as possible is vital.
Assassin
HP: 120
Speed: Fast
Special Ability: Dancing Blade 50%
Assassins are also no ninjas (that ninjas are, in fact, assassins seems to be irrelevant to this) but they still manage to be almost as annoying. The assassin’s dancing blade allows them to dodge half your towers’ shots.
Yeah.
The assassin should be countered by improving your firerate – a wave of assassins is a good time to queue up a Frenzy. Apart from this, just think of assassins as a random chance of you losing the game regardless of your defences.
Priest
HP: 120
Speed: Normal
Special Ability: Healing Wand 30
…that’s clearly a monk, not a priest, but whatever. The priest has a spell that heals one ally by 30 hit points. This is normally more annoying than anything else, but on a champion priest it can make him very durable.
Paladin
HP: 400
Speed: Slow
Special Ability: Sacred Tome
Paladins are the highest-end of the brute force enemies, with a special ability that makes them immune to all negative status effects. Despite this, they are still only brute force enemies, and should pose no threat even if your defense depends heavily on negative status effects.
Enemy Levels
As a game goes on, you will get waves of enemies of higher levels. These enemies have increased stats, but since brute force generally counts for precisely nothing, this shouldn’t be too much of a threat.
Champions
The one time high level enemies will be a problem is when they’re champions. A champion is a single enemy of very high level relative to his place in the wave, who comes alone and poses a credible threat even so.
Champions come helpfully marked on the map. Your best weapon against a champion is your friend the Chilling Crypt, which can stall and immobilize the champion long enough for your towers to take him down. The exception is ninja champions, who are unfortunately far too common – taking down a ninja champion requires careful defenses and a lot of Meteor and Frenzy abuse – and you’re probably going to lose a gem either way.