Invasion Guide
Invasion guide for new and returning players
Player numbers are low, so many players who have not ever participated in invasions before are now giving them a go. This is a guide designed to increase the fun of participating in invasions by having a good build and a sense of how they are commonly run.
Invasion basics
Invasions involve a raid group of up to 50 players (made up of 10 groups of 5) defending a region’s fort from 8 waves of corrupted enemies. Each wave increases in difficulty by increasing the number and strength of enemy spawns. There are five gates, three out the front and two in the rear. There are lots of ways to organise an invasion. This guide firstly assumes that the company that owns the territory is actively attempting to defend and therefore tries to setup the raid group effectively. Secondly, it is based on the main ways invasions are run on the Australasian Delos server. To the best of my knowledge, invasions are run similar in the US but in Europe they don’t seem to use Discord or organise ‘crowns’ (ie generals or lieutenants in the war they can move people on the board).
One of the more common ways to organise the groups on Delos is to have 2 groups per front gate, 2 or 3 groups on the back, and 1 group of rotating players to help with lots of bosses and the head spawns. Each gate should have at least 1 healer with normally 2 on the back. Two players that are part of the company owning the territory or known by them will normally be nominated to be the gate repairers. With a raid composition of mostly invasion regulars we often successfully defend with 43-45 players. I have defended with only 40 players but it was hard. Below 40 players, unless every single player is super experienced with proper min-max builds, defending an invasion will be very difficult.
Before the invasion
You need to sign up to the invasion before it starts by either signing up via the map or if this is bugged (which it sometimes/often is) going to the war desk in the territory and signing up. The company that owns the territory gets 10 slots with the other 40 being random. If you are in a group when invites go out it is sometimes bugged and you get autokicked, so leave any groups before invites. Before the invasion starts make sure you have paid the taxes for the homes you have and have your Corrupted trophies up (basic trophies minimum) and you have your invasion gear with you.
Setup phase
Once inside the fort during the setup phase the organisers might direct you to a Discord channel (they will post a Discord stub in the raid chat) and they will also ask players to separate into different groups (often the need healers to group up and dexterity-based DPS to group up). Organisers will normally post the gate assignments in raid chat (Groups 1 and 2 left gate, groups 3 and 4 mid, etc.). Press the L key to see the composition of the war board and which group you are in. You might be moved around during the setup so check with a minute or so to go to make sure you are on the correct gate. Many enthusiastic companies will supply consumables such as coatings and honing stones during the setup phase. Go to your gate, prepare (food, coatings, honing stuff, attribute distribution) and get ready to do damage once the invasion starts.
Invasion Build Basics
Unless you are a healer, the most straightforward way to participate in an invasion if you have never participated in one before is to run a dexterity-based DPS build. Bow plus spear or bow plus musket are two common weapon choices. My main character has a min-max thrust-based build.
I did an experiment to write this piece using one of my alt accounts that is levelled to 65 and it is ready to enter endgame. It has basic trophies and minimally developed gear and weapon mastery. I only had a couple of hours to set it up and I wanted to minimise the use of the trading post to find gear (although I did cheat for one item, but hopefully you can forgive me and the overall point of this piece stands). Lastly, I have the Attuned Pants artifact, which you should have if you have followed the main story quest of the Elysian Wilds. Basically, I wanted to get a sense of how hard it would be to build a gear set that seemed pretty decent and which make a viable contribution to an invasion. The exact build I used is found here on New World Buddy.
I did three elite chest runs. One through Brimstone, one through Elysian Wilds, and one through Myrkgard. I was aiming for a viable bow and gear with either dexterity or named gear with magnify. Somewhat surprisingly, all the viable gear that dropped and I used was during the Elysian Wilds chest runs. I used a bow and had my magnify set to dexterity to shape the loot biasing. Other areas dropped kind of useful gear, but I didn’t use any of it in the end.
There are lots of perks for bow, but the basics I was aiming for in this build were Keen and Vicious, with either a bow perk or life stealing. The Azoth Crystal bow is good too (vicious and keenly empowered, plus a perk) because of the buffs to critical hit chance in the bow skill tree. My alt only has 13 Bow mastery so the extra keen was necessary. The bow I ended up using was keen, vicious and lifestealing. In terms of gems because I was going for thrust damage it means a non-elemental gem. I went with Onyx as the Brash perk (plus 18% damage against enemies above 70% health) is fantastic for those early wave Rain of Arrows spawn damage. I had a very good spear as my offhand, and used this to melee bosses during last three waves.
The piece I cheated on was the ring. I was hoping for the Soul Shroud ring to drop in Myrkgard, but it was not to be. I did not have time to run a Genesis to try to get the Soulpollen ring. So I bought the cheapest Thrust Damage and Hearty ring available on the TP. Players entering endgame will likely run lots of Genesis expeditions and you should get Soulpollen as a drop. I have had the Soul Shroud ring drop as 700gs in Myrkgard on my main.
Other useful perks across the build include 4x Refreshing (on any of the gear), Enchanted Ward if you intend to do melee damage, and Empowered on the amulet.
My attribute distribution took advantage of the bonus of the Attuned Leather Pants. But you could do something similar without the intelligence and focus 25 point perks. I ate 40 DEX food, but again you could do something similar with the event food (36 DEX), or even less dexterity as it does not make a huge difference above 450. Attributes: 50 STR, 500 DEX, 25 INT, 25 FOC, 64 CON. The constitution points were whatever I had remaining.
Other buffs include arrows bought during the invasion (same as Orichalcum Arrows), Powerful Honing Stone and Infused Corrupted Coatings.
What was the result? Just over 4mil damage and 8th on the leaderboard. Every invasion is different and this one was full and I was on the back gate. Invasion veterans will know that back gate can mean some big damage numbers as it has double the spawns. This invasion, like most invasions on Delos, played back gate with three groups, which means there are three groups worth of players to get the big damage on the early spawn kills.
I followed this invasion up with a company invasion where I reverted to my main character and that was very different. A later time slot when not many people were on and another invasion running at the same time. We only had 41 on the board, which made things tough. I played right gate and did around 4.1m damage. That character had a min-max thrust damage-based setup and I have played around with it in all different ways. I regularly do 5m damage with that character. It shows that damage is not always about player build but the vagaries of the invasion itself. Lastly, I am working on a much more advanced setup built around arcane harnessing and 450 DEX 150 INT. There is a huge investment of time and gold in that build but theory-crafting through New World Buddy suggests it should do more damage.
