https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551436130

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551437133

It actually is possible after all. It's also tedious, painstaking, and frankly not much fun. But I am pumped. Ain't nothing like staring an "impossible" challenge in the face, and making it possible, whether it wants to be or not.

So how did I do it? Well, in my early attempts, I tried combos such as Inferno+Lightning Traps, Bolt+Lightning Traps, and Lightning+Freezing Traps; but I kept running into the same problem: the Knights and Priests of Wave 3 would just power through everything because I couldn't deal enough damage to overcome their sheer bulk. The only obvious solution was to gain a couple hundred levels and just spam loads more traps with the extra money.

But that's super lame! I shouldn't have to do extensive grinding to beat any challenge, other than arbitrary Endless wave goals, especially when I'm nearly level 100 already. So instead, I remembered what I've learned from Endless, and tapped into some degenerate black magic strats.

Spinblade Traps! They're fair and balanced! Though they may be hideously expensive, you get at least as much as you pay for. Their damage output is... passable. But they bring something much more important to the table: They're able to stop enemies dead in their tracks. When a Spinblade Trap is active, only the heaviest and fastest of enemies are able to shove past it, and only at a snail's pace. However, they only activate for 3 seconds, and have a 10-second cooldown.

Here's where things get degenerate. If you upgrade a Spinblade Trap while it's on cooldown, its cooldown instantly ends. You can probably see where this is going. If you place a Spinblade Trap, let it do its thing for 3 seconds, and then upgrade it, you get another 3 seconds of blade spinnage. You can then upgrade it to tier 3, and then to tier 4 (if you have no other tier-4 spinbois), for a total of 12 seconds of walling the enemies out.

Throw Trap Booster on top of this, and things get even more degenerate. For 10 seconds, Trap Booster sets a Spinblade Trap's cooldown to 3, which conveniently is how long the blades spin for. This turns the Spinblade Trap into a proper wall for 10 seconds.

Okay, so we can make a wall for 22 seconds. That doesn't win us the game. So what do we do when our tier-4 Spinblade Trap is on cooldown, along with Trap Booster? Sell the trap and start over, of course. You're out 100 Gold each cycle (because all traps except for Barricades sell for 100 Gold less than you've spent on them), but as long as your funds hold out, and your timing is good, you can keep enemies suspended in place indefinitely.

Speaking of timing: For a slow-motion effect, right-click on any trap and just leave the upgrade/sell menu open. This trick is invaluable when precise timing or quick reactions are necessary, and I took advantage of it for nearly the entirety of the winning attempt.

Here's a bunch of screenshots I took along the way:

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551434699

It's at about this point that I started to realize the potency of this strategy, since I had not yet made it this far with 10 runes active.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551435056

By this point, it had become apparent that choosing Bolt Traps was a mistake, and that Inferno Traps would probably have been the better choice, due to their ability to hit entire crowds of enemies at once.

Also, micromanaging three sets of Spinblade Traps at once is enough to make your head spin. No pun intended.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551435237

Once the enemies from entrances 3 and 4 are dealt with, you can sell off the traps you used to stop them to free up a fistful of cash.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551435489

Your Barricades will be attacked by Dwarves. This is fine. Just upgrade them when they are reduced to 1 HP to repair them, and then sell and replace them when you can't upgrade them anymore.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551435606

Tier 2
+0.3 Damage per hit

(This glitch happens to me constantly.)

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2551435935

It's as simple as that, ladies and gentlemen.

Before Purity Rune nerfs, I had 50 levels in all three traps I used, and in Additional Gold; and I had 32 levels in Trap Booster. These were of course halved by Purity. I was also level 94 before the attempt, but I suspect that it's possible to do it at a much lower level.

In theory, it could be possible to beat Mountain with 10 runes using only two kinds of traps, or perhaps even just one. Spinblade Traps are absurdly good if one babysits them properly.

TL;DR: With some micromanagement, Spinblade Traps are the best traps in the game, and pretty much any challenge trembles before them.