The Basic Traps: Naphtha + Brimstone

The Technical Details of Naphtha & Brimstone

Wide Lanes are Your Friend

Put Naphtha at the Exit & Entrance

Build from the Guardian Out

You earn more coins for combo-killing enemies while they're in traps, therefore you earn more coins if you stick near your traps.



You gain extra armor and health/mana regeneration if you stick near your Guardian. The Guardian also attacks any nearby enemy champions unless there's minions attacking it.



Enemy champions want to stick close to your traps to grant their minions trap resistance. If you can drive them away from your traps, their minions take extra trap damage.



If you fight near the entrance to your killbox, the enemy champions have a slight advantage due to their minions blocking your shots and attacking you. It also takes you several seconds to get back to your Guardian if you're injured and gives the enemy pillager a giant window to ambush you from behind.



If you fight at your Guardian, you have the advantage thanks to its aura of armor & regen, thus it's easier to drive off the enemy champions. It also makes it extremely difficult for enemy melee champions to attack you without getting slaughtered by your Guardian. You can drive off the enemy champions, keep yourself from being ambushed, and rack up combos from relative safety.

Place Brimstone Side-by-Side on Straightaways, Diagonally on Corners

Naphtha + Fire Wall Bracers

Brimstone/Fire Wall + Incinerate

Naphtha + Brimstone + Fire Wall + Incinerate

The First Wave

Filling Out the Rest

Practice your Killbox Layout in a 1v0 Siege Custom Match

Odds are for your first few dozen matches playing the game, Brimstone will be the only fire trap you'll have. Therefore you should learn to use it, and learn to use it well. Even a simple Naphtha + Brimstone combo can be scarily effective when placed correctly.The Naphtha Sprayer doesn't do any damage itself; instead, it amplifies fire damage to the targets by 25% for ~5 seconds (7 if you get Smolder's upgrade). Once activated, it hits all enemies 3 squares in front of it for 10 seconds, then recharges for 4 seconds. Most minions walk ~5 tiles (I'm defining tile here as the width of a 1x1 floor trap) before the naphtha wears off.Brimstone is a ground trap that applies a Damage-Over-Time burn to any minion that walks over it. The burn does ~135 fire damage over 4.2 seconds; most minions walk ~3.5 tiles before it wears off. It holds 10 charges, and for each charge it burns 1 minion walking over it. Charges regenerate slowly.Unlike nearly every other trap, Brimstones do not benefit from tightly-clustered foes. Due to their burning Damage-Over-Time not stacking with other Brimstones, there's little benefit to setting Brimstones one after the other. However, Brimstones are also a Charge trap: they store enough charges to burn 10 enemies, then have to recharge for a time. The only way to burn more than 10 enemies at a time with Brimstone is to set them side-by-side so the enemies spread out and a few walk over each one.This means the entrance, exit, and wide lanes of the killbox are great places for Brimstones.The naphtha sprayer continuously coats enemies up to 3 tiles away with the highly-flammable substance; it fires for 10 seconds and recharges in just 4 seconds, so I just assume it coats every enemy that crosses its path. This makes it perfect for positions where wall traps can't rely on barricades or tar pits to group up minions, or they would just be shot from the front (and ignored by shield-bearing minions).Most players' instinctive strategy is to build their first traps at the front of the killbox. The most effective strategy, though, is to build your first traps towards the back of the killbox, preferably within sight of the guardian. Why? It all has to do with overextension.Building from the Guardian out is very important for Smolder, since her Naphtha Sprayers amplify her own damage as well. If you place them by the entrance first, the naphtha will wear off before the minions get within sight of the Guardian. Not the best early setup, but at least it's within sight of the Guardian.You want to ensure every enemy only walks over 1 Brimstone at a time; if they walk over 2 Brimstones, that's a wasted charge. On straight lanes, you want to set them side-by-side. If the enemies are turning a corner, through, you want to set them diagonally. Then they won't walk over 2 Brimstones if they turn 90 degrees on one.If you're dedicated to defending as Smolder, you should craft Fire Wall Bracers ASAP. They combo well with your Naphtha Sprayer; simply run up just as the first enemies trigger your naphtha sprayer, plop a Fire Wall right after it, and watch them all burn. It's like a temporary line of Brimstone with infinite charges, making it perfect for fast & swarming enemies like orcs or kobolds.Incinerate deals a percentage of nearby burning enemies' max HP as damage (plus a straight damage bonus based off your level). Brimstone & Fire Wall burn enemies that walk over it. It should be obvious how you can combo them. This works extremely well for large swarms of enemies, and still takes a giant chunk off small groups like bears or ogres.Setting up a Fire Wall just past your Naphtha & Brimstone, toggling on your Heart of Flame fire aura to run near their minions, then activating Incinerate will melt 60-80% of Tier 1/2 minion waves and still dish out heavy damage to Tier 3/4 minion waves. This is the cornerstone of a good Smolder defense.For the 1st wave, you want as much raw trap damage as possible. One Naphtha Sprayer or Barricade takes up a sixth of your entire defense's starting coin; place them wisely. Figure out which traps in your eventual killbox are just as effective withoutBarricades and place those. If you need them immediately, place as few as necessary (preferably 0-1). As for the Naphtha, I usually place it after I have a Brimstone out. (Arguments about whether to place Brimstone or Naphtha first have been hot.)Once you have more coins, spread out Brimstone every 4 Tiles along the enemy's path. Fill the ground spots between with Spikes, Ice Vents, or Cursed Grounds. Ice Vents are particularly useful for slowing minions & letting you set Brimstones closer together. (I like to repeat a Brimstone -> Ice Vent -> Spikes pattern on the minions' path.) Lightning traps on the walls & ceilings also make good finishers; positioned properly, they'll blow up a nearly-dead minion, causing him to explode and kill his fellow minions, who are also nearly-dead because they all got singed by your Brimstone. (This might be a tad overkill.)A 1v0 Siege Custom match lets you practice your trap setup in the closest thing OMDU currently has to a Sandbox mode: there's no enemy heroes, the only minions are a single squad of orcs, and you get a massive chunk of money after each wave. You should have no problem setting up your entire killbox in just a few waves.Why should you practice this? Because in actual Siege games, you have to set it up, sometimes while enemy heroes are trying to harass/kill you. Time spent remembering how you want to set it up is time wasted; you want to practice it enough that setting up your basic killbox is. Once the layout and reasoning behind it is second nature, you can quickly set it up & modify it.