Dungeon Hunter 4, Tactical Tips and IAP Strategies[]
Free Healing Before Boss Fights
Always save a single foe with a ranged attack (preferably an archer) for your last kill in the last wave of a fight. Your character can move around the screen with very little risk of being hit while healing up for free for a boss fight.
Position Your Character at the Bottom of Your Screen for General Combat
The control elements of the Dungeon Hunter 4 GUI are arranged across the top and bottom of the screen, this places them where it is very easy to accidentally activate them during combat. The elements at the top of the screen will only pause combat to open menus, but the elements at the bottom of the screen will activate skills or use potions which can waste your valuable combat resources. By positioning your character with their back to the wall at the bottom of your screen you can more easily avoid wasting your character's resources or recycling a skill that may become temporarily unavailable when it is most urgently needed.
Position Your Character at 4 O'clock for Boss Fights
There is a gap in the GUI control elements at the top of the screen at 10 o'clock. By positioning your character at 4 o'clock relative to the center of the glowing circle you are less likely to activate the controls at the top of the screen when facing a boss at the beginning of a boss fight.
Delay Purchasing Skill Slots
Study the passive skills menu carefully to see at what point you may actually want a new skill slot. It may be the case that you will never need the extra passive slots, so why waste the gems until or unless you absolutely must?
Delay Spending Skill Points on Combat Skills
Prioritize improving your Quick Learner skill to earn more experience early on. Once you have purchased a good ring you can switch from improving your quick learner skill to begin improving more useful combat skills. The combat skills available early in the game will often be much less useful than skills acquired later on, consequently your skill points will be wasted on them, while recycling your skill points will waste your gems. Please note; the cost of recycling your skill points always gets much higher later in the game.
Delay Purchasing a Ring
Purchasing a ring too early in the game wastes gems because only one ring may be equipped. Much better rings become available later on, such as after entering the Clockwork Dungeon. These better rings not only earn more experience by virtue of their additional experience percentile rank, but also because the earned experience acted upon is much greater as well; this will more than make up for not earning the pittance of extra experience available early on. Also, higher level rings have additional abilities that make them much more valuable, such as the Tier 40 Metal Ring (265 gems) which boosts both your critical chance and critical damage by 5% and 50%, respectively, while also providing an extra 29% of experience and gold. Remember, a ring can cost gems both to purchase the ring and a slot; by delaying your purchase of a ring you can conserve your existing slots for a longer time or else delay purchasing an additional slot with which to equip your ring.
Inventory Operation Glitches
When moving your blinking cursor from the first slot (purchases more slots) to the last slot the inventory menu sometimes causes only the cursor to move, while the first slot remains the active slot. It is possible to accidentally purchase unwanted slots this way, thereby wasting valuable gems. This occurs in the charms menu with greater frequency and may cause you to sell a charm you wanted to keep. Watch the titles and properties of the active menu items carefully to be sure you have accurately selected the item you intend to sell or modify.
Boss Chest Control Glitch
The trigger to activate a boss chest is in empty space nearby, at 2 o'clock behind the chest. Clicking the chest itself from this position can cause you to destroy the crystals in the glowing circle which may precipitate the next wave of combat before you expect it.
Delay Purchasing Rings
Purchasing a ring too early in the game wastes your gems. Much better rings become available later on, such as after entering the Clockwork Dungeon. These better rings not only earn more experience by virtue of their additional experience percentile rank, but also because the experience being acted upon is much greater as well; this more than makes up for not earning the extra experience early on. Also, higher level rings have additional abilities that make them much more valuable, such as the Tier 40 Metal Ring (265 gems) which boosts both your critical chance and critical damage by 5% and 50% respectively, while also providing an extra 29% experience and gold. Remember, a ring can cost gems to purchase both the ring and a slot; delaying purchase of a ring helps you conserve your existing slots for a longer time or helps you delay purchasing an additional slot just to equip your ring.
Delay Upgrading Charms
Provided you have enough open slots it is better to equip two equal charms than it is to combine them into a single charm. Create a third charm equal to the two you have equipped and then upgrade one of the equipped charms before repeating this upgrade process with the second charm. You will get the most value from your charms this way because two equal charms provide much more benefit than a single charm of the next higher quality. Delaying charm upgrades this way also minimizes the effects of the downtime required when upgrading your charms.
Focus Your Charm Upgrades
Focus on improving only one or two types of charm at a time, especially at higher levels. Upgrading charms can have a high overhead in the number of slots required. If you fail to focus you may pay time and gold to collect too many charms, some of which you may be forced to sell when you lack enough slots and do not want to purchase more slots. Please note, identical charms always stack in a single slot, but removing a charm from a weapon or armor will always temporarily use up an extra slot for each charm removed, even when a charm in the process of being removed will later stack with an existing charm of the same type and quality.
Inventory Slot Management
Be sure to collect all items after combat before removing any charms from a piece of equipment, otherwise you may not have an open slot with which to pick up the remaining spoils of your combat.
Never Craft Lower-level Equipment
Each type of equipment has two levels per type of material required, such that the higher level items require twice as many of the required type of material to craft. You will save a lot of downtime removing charms from your current equipment, as well getting much better equipment much faster by skipping the lower-level items. It may be a good idea to avoid crafting anything but a weapon with black iron because the black iron armor may be replaced early on with much better equipment dropped in combat before you can find enough material to craft new equipment with Dragolith or something better.
Don't Pay Gems to Speed Up Crafting or Modification Processes
The more you speed up the processes of crafting or modifying your equipment the more you will unbalance your character's progress. When the level of your equipment is too high for your character's experience, strength, and skills it can make you more impatient with the development of your character because the benefits of gaining experience, strength, and new skills become much less noticeable. This leads to trying to speed things up even more in a vicious circle that never gets better, but which can cost you a lot of gems. Also, the cost of equipment upgrades when your character's development is unbalanced may cause a chronic gold shortage.
IAP Strategies
All IAP games want you to spend your precious cold hard cash; consequently they are riddled with traps to help you to waste your resources. Typical IAP traps place controls in awkward positions that help you trash your resources or layer menu controls and pop-ups such that your cursor may be unexpectedly placed above store activation or purchase buttons.
The tactics listed above collectively form a strategy to conserve your expenses while also providing you with valuable training in life lessons that will help you become more efficient and proficient in real-life situations as well as helping you save your real-world money for things with much more lasting value.
Enjoy!