This is a quick guild to understanding underworld. Of course watch online videos for extra info, but it really isn't too complicated. Underworld, starting out Ok your playing the game and now have access to underworld, with a whole new list of "what the heck are they talking about, what do i do here" questions. Basically Underworld was added in after the initial Kingdoms, for more of a higher level player endgame feature. it is used to help boost your stats more, gain more income and tribute, etc. It also had to fill the void of getting legendary and mythic ingots since the only way before really was to pvp. This short guide will hopefully help you understand and take advantage of underworld easier. it really isn't hard, it isn't there to play all day, its realy a 3 times a day daily quest similar to the dungeon, daily quests, and some other things. Factions Underworld is similar to your normal Kingdoms, they just call things different to make it seem something new, but really it's basically like your initial map Kingdoms. Portals are chests, you open a portal with 20 chaos shards, and get cards from it. Just like opening your chests. Factions are your kingdoms "levels" which means getting higher faction scores are like leveling up your Kingdoms. You get benefits, tribute, and other stuff. You'll donate money in your regular Kingdoms to level up your Kingdoms, you'll donate money in your Underworld cities in a different way to level up your "Faction score", or basically your city level. Delves are your 3 per day quests. You go to a city, you start a Delve (quest) and proceed through a number of rooms until you reach the boss room. As you compete rooms, your reward multiplier goes up, and there is a chance that your chest reward goes up, so early on you'll want to clear every battle except the last battle (boss room). We'll get more into that in a minute. Each city and faction has unique monster/troops you can get, plus those troops can get faction bonus's by being used in the Delves in those faction cities. You don't have to use faction troops in Delves, you might have teams you like, but those troops will get a little bonus if they are used. Like all things you'll have to decide if you want to use them or stick with your favorite teams. Chests and rewards Ok here is where people get a little confused. Hopefully this next section will clear up any problems. Your Delve reward chest builds up as you complete rooms. As I said before, as you clear rooms you'll raise your reward multipler up, plus each room has a chance to raise your Delve reward chest level. It is automatically level 1 when you clear your first room, and each room gives a small chance to raise it. It shows you on the room descriptions the chances. You also have your HORDE. This is a seperate bonus you have in that city. Basically its a city bonus. You have the Horde level, and the Horde quality. This bonus is seperate from any faction bonus's. Understand the Horde is the difficult part of Underworld, the rest is pretty simple. When you complete a Delve, which means you go through and FINISH the boss room, the next Delve gets harder. You cannot go back and do an easier level. When you finish a boss room, you get the Delve reward chest and what ever prizes it contains, boosted by your chest level and reward multiplier. This means the more you Delve in that city and finish a Delve, the harder it gets. It also gets harder because each room buffs up the enemy more. You NEVER want to finish a Delve. The Delve level has nothing to do with the quality and rewards you get from your Delve reward chest. The chest level is the only thing that determines your rewards, not the difficulty or level of the Delve. Doing a starting level 20 Delve gets the same rewards as doing a level 200 Delve. A level 4 chests gives the same loot changes no matter what. Loot is variable also, you might get sucky rewards, you might get good ones. A level 4 chest might give much better rewards than your level 7 chest did last time. Its just random. The ONLY thing higher Delves do is increase your faction level, thus getting more bonus's from higher faction levels (more tribute, some stat boosts, etc). Again this is more for endgame players who always want more stats, more income, more this and that. Higher Delves do not give you higher chest rewards. A new player NEVER, NEVER, NEVER wants to fully complete a Delve and finish the boss room. What you want to do is clear every other room for maximum benefits then when you only have the boss room left, you use the RUN AWAY feature. This ends the Delve and you get the reward chest. The Delve doesn't get harder, foes don't get harder, and you still get a reward chest. NEVER finish the boss room in a Delve. Ok, now for the Horde info. As you open portals (chests) and get troops, you'll get regular troops and you'll also get TREASURE troops. Gold rings, Chalices, etc. Using gold, you can use these Treasure troops to increase your Horde level and quality. Increasing the Horde level gives you stat bonus's, making you a little tougher in that city. Increasing the Horde quality gives you better rewards from the Delve chest, plus it has one added benefit that is very important. It increases the Delve boss room chest level. Now wait, you said not to complete the Delve boss room. So why would I care about the chest level. Normally you won't, but there will come a point when you will start to finish Delves. That point is when you are strong enough later, and your Horde quality is maximum of 10. The reason getting your Horde quality level to max (10) is that at level 10, finishing a Delve boosts the reward chest level automatically by +4 (it normally is +1). So you do a Delve, reach the boss room. Your chest level is 4. If you finish the boss room you'll get the reward chest (boosted to level 5). If your Horde quality is max at 10, that same reward chest will be level 8 instead of level 5. So, better chances for better rewards. This isn't very useful early on because you aren't finishing boss rooms so you aren't going to get any boss room chest boost, but at higher levels later in the game, you'll be trying to do as many Delve levels as possible, completing as many Delves as possible, beating as many boss rooms as possible, as fast as possible. This is when your trying to raise your faction level to max. And you ONLY do this after you have maxed out your Horde quality at 10, so that way each boss room boosts your reward chest +4 instead of +1. You raise your Horde level and quality by using Treasure troops, and using gold to merge those troops into the Horde. You can use up to 5 Treasure troops at a time. You'll want to reach a maximum of 100% chance because each time you merge troops the price will go up. It might cost 8000 gold to merge the first time, it might be 16,000 the 2nd time, 30,000 the 3rd, etc. So it will get expensive. If you make sure it's a 100% chance to increase Horde quality, you'll only have to merge troops 10 times to max out your Horde quality. Some are fine doing it at 90-95% chance, but if you fail, next time is more expensive, and it really isn't difficult to wait until you get Treasure troops to make it 100%. Conclusion Ok in conclusion. 1) Never complete a Delve, Never finish the Boss room. 2) Always clear all rooms in a Delve (except the Boss room) for maximum chest level and reward multiplier. 3) Collect Treasure troops so you can donate/merge them into your Horde, you'll need gold to do this. 4) Never ascent Treasure troops because you want to merge them into your Horde. Ascending them will decrease the number you have. Maybe the lower level Treasure troops you can ascend if you have a whole lot of them, but normally try not to ascent them if possible. 5) Increase your Horde quality to maximum (level 10). Once Horde quality is maximum, then and ONLY then should you complete Delves to reach higher Delve difficulty, and ONLY do this if you have strong teams that can handle very high level enemy teams. 6) Pick a city as your daily Delve city. Always keep it at lowest level (level 20) so you can farm it 3x a day. This lets you do your Delves at an easy level, and still get your 3 chest rewards each day without leveling up anything. Like i said, Underworld is really for high end players who want to get more stat boosts, income, rewards and have already did their Kingdoms. As a lower level newer player, Delves are just there for your 3x per day Delving runs to get your 3 chests and a little bit of stuff. You will be building up Underworld and factions for a long time before you reach the point that you are power leveling cities for higher faction bonus's. Until that time, just do your 3 per day Delves and get some stuff. Do not complete them, always run away just before the boss room. Work on your Kingdoms first always. When you can increase Underworld city Horde quality to max (10). This will take quite a while, but if you play long enough, and that is the reason Underworld exists, to give long time players something to do because they already did their Kingdom stuff, you'll have strong teams, max level Horde quality, then you can start bum rushing a Underworld city as high as you can go to get higher faction scores. But that is far, far, far into the future. Kingdoms first, Underworld Horde quality 2nd, and eventually, maybe in a year, you'll start to actually complete Delves and go as high as you can go.