Jungle of Dread

Into The Shadows...

Congratulations on reaching the title of Hero! You are now able to hunt in the Jungle of Dread! The Jungle of Dread is home to the Dread Horde mice, a group of mice that's not only tough to catch but also require the use of specific cheeses to attract. To begin, we'll need to make some preparations, first off, let's head to Cape Clawed!

First stop: Trapsmith

The Dreaded Horde can only be caught using a shadow trap. Let's see what's available to us:

Bottomless Grave

1,500 power, 0% power bonus, 0% attraction bonus, 5 luck, no cheese effect

Cost: 673,630 gold / Point Requirement: 728,000 points

As mentioned previously in the Town of Digby, this trap has pretty much lost its relevance due to the presence of better alternatives below. Under no circumstance should you purchase this trap over anything else here. Using the bottomless grave in the Jungle of Dread is a sure ticket to having a hard time there.

Gorgon Trap

2,000 power, 5% power bonus, 5% attraction bonus, 7 luck, very stale cheese effect-

Cost: 989,000 gold / Point Requirement: 7,500,000 points

With just 315,370 gold more, you can purchase this trap over the bottomless grave. However, you get 500 extra power, a 5% increase in both power and attraction bonus and an additional 2 luck. That's a bargain! This trap will, no doubt, be a cheaper alternative to the one below it. While it isn't strong to speak of (none of the shadow traps offered here will be considered 'strong' in the Jungle of Dread. Yes, that's how bad it is), it can and will get the job done. My recommendation: if you are strapped for cash, go for this trap.

Clockapult of Time

2,275 power, 10% power bonus, 5% attraction bonus, 10 luck, extremely fresh cheese effect

Cost: 2,700,000 gold / Point Requirement: 12,500,000 points

"2.7 million gold?!?!" Yes, before the release of the gorgon, the clock was pretty much the only viable choice for hunting in the Jungle of Dread. Well, technically, veteran hunters could choose to hunt using their portals or the bottomless grave (which resulted in painful jungle runs) but most of the crowd simply had no choice but to rack up the gold for this trap. While it is better than the gorgon in almost every way, the improvements don't quite justify the price tag. However, it has to be said that the main reason for buying the clock over the gorgon is so that you'll be able to upgrade it into the clockwork portal trap much later in the game. Two lines of thought here: 1) If you're going to have to buy the clock anyway so that you can upgrade it later in the game, why not just purchase it now? 2) It may be better to save the gold right now (considering 2.7 million gold is a huge price tag for Hero hunters) and purchase this trap later in the game (when farming 2.7 million gold isn't too momentous of a task). Either way seems logical. My recommendation: If you have the gold/funding, go for it. Otherwise, come back for it later on for the clockwork portal upgrade. The gorgon should suffice.

Second Stop: General Store

The Cape Clawed General Store provides two main ingredients that we will be using quite often from here on. The plant pot (900 gold each) is required for crafting pepper plants while coconut milk (800 gold each) is needed for crafting most tribal isles cheese, in particular, havarti cheese. It's not really possible to say how much you should purchase but generally, purchase sufficiently or when you need to.

Outline for hunting in the jungle

Remember those pepper seeds that you've collected? I hope you have a good amount of each coloured seed. We are going to plant seeds to grow pepper plants!

There are 7 kinds of pepper plants, of which, we will be planting 6 of them first. Here's the recipes:

2 Red Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 1 Red Spicy Pepper Plant

2 Blue Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 1 Blue Magical Pepper Plant

2 Yellow Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 1 Yellow Sweet Pepper Plant

1 Yellow Pepper Seed + 1 Blue Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 

1 Green Crunchy Pepper Plant

1 Yellow Pepper Seed + 1 Red Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 

1 Orange Creamy Pepper Plant

1 Red Pepper Seed + 1 Blue Pepper Seed + 1 Plant Pot = 

1 Purple Pungent Pepper Plant

You can access your pepper plants in the 'Special' tab of your inventory. 'Picking' each pepper plant randomly produces 1-5 peppers. You need 6 of a specific pepper to craft 6 pieces of a specific havarti. The recipes are as follows:

6 Sweet Yellow Pepper + 6 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Sweet Havarti

6 Spicy Red Pepper + 12 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Spicy Havarti 

6 Magical Blue Pepper + 2 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Magical Havarti

6 Crunchy Green Pepper + 4 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Crunchy Havarti

6 Creamy Orange Pepper + 10 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Creamy Havarti

6 Magical Blue Pepper + 8 Coconut Milk + 18 Curds and Whey + 6 Salt = 6 Pungent Havarti

For a start, I'd recommend crafting at least 12 of each cheese. You should have enough seeds for this, and it should give you at least 1 catch of each mouse. When you are ready, head to the Jungle!

The Dreaded Horde

There are 2 main groups of mice here: the common mice and the 6 big mice. The common mice includes the swarm of pygmy, pygmy wrangler and sylvan. Generally, these mice are attracted by standard cheese, namely gouda and SB+. The swarm of pygmy and pygmy wrangler drop vanilla beans, which is used to craft vanilla stilton cheese. (More on this covered below later)

The 6 big mice, however, are only attracted by the 6 types of havarti that you have crafted, each to a specific type of havarti:

Magma Carrier

Attracted to: Spicy Havarti

Drops: Encrusted Metal of Time, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Primal

Attracted to: Sweet Havarti

Drops: Ethereal Rope, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Stonework Warrior

Attracted to: Magical Havarti

Drops: Engraved Solid Stone Slab, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Fetid Swamp

Attracted to: Crunchy Havarti

Drops: Hinge of Eternity, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Chitinous

Attracted to: Pungent Havarti

Drops: Timeless Mystic Gem, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Jurassic

Attracted to: Creamy Havarti

Drops: Ancient Relic Staff, Runic Potion, Fire Salt

Arm your gorgon/clockapult of time, your luckiest base (aqua, most likely), and your havarti cheese. Pay attention to your hunts. We are looking to catch 1 of each mouse. Once you have caught one, change your bait and move on to the next. If you fail to catch any one of them, craft more pepper plants for that specific havarti needed and try again. The goal is to obtain the special crafting items from each of them. Once you have done so, you will complete "Defeat The Dreaded Horde" in the adventure book. 

Congratulations, it's been a tough run in the jungle, but you managed it! Great work! Now, you may be wondering what the 6 special crafting items are for? Well, we are going to craft our first forgotten type trap using these materials!

Crafting the Ancient Box Trap

Head to the Cape Clawed General Store. Purchase the Ancient Torn Blueprint Piece for 158,175 gold. Remember those blueprints from the chieftains? You'll need them now:

1 Ancient Ripped Blueprint Piece + 1 Ancient Mangled Blueprint Piece + 1 Ancient Frayed Blueprint Piece + 1 Ancient Torn Blueprint Piece = 1 Ancient Box Trap Blueprints

Great! Now, it's time to craft our trap:

1 Ancient Box Trap Blueprints + 1 Ancient Relic Staff + 1 Timeless Mystic Gem + 1 Hinge of Eternity + 1 Ethereal Rope + 1 Encrusted Metal of Time + 1 Engraved Solid Stone Slab = 1 Ancient Box Trap

Phew, that was a long crafting recipe! But hooray, you now have your first forgotten type trap that's stronger than the Forgotten Pressure Plate Trap, which will allow you to hunt for the acolyte mouse with greater ease!

Ancient Box Trap

4,300 power, 10% power bonus, 0% attraction bonus, 4 luck, no cheese effect

Point Requirement: 13,500,000 points

Statistically, this trap doesn't seem to stand out a lot. But why would it? After all, it's the better of the 2 forgotten type traps available to you currently. It will get the job done. This trap will provide greater ease compared to the forgotten pressure plate when it comes to catching the acolyte. Be warned though, this trap, while better than the pressure plate, by no means make catching the acolyte easy. The catch rate is still roughly about 20%. Let's hope variance works on our side!

You're pretty much done with the Jungle of Dread for now. You may head over to the Forbidden Grove to prepare for the acolyte or you may continue farming fire salt and runic potions here. The runic potions are costly to use but can be useful as runes are not a particularly common drop in the Forbidden Grove.

Return to the Dreadful Jungle...

Farming Fire Salt

This is the time to put your pepper seeds to good use. However, the choice of havarti used makes a difference. Generally, mice attracted to havarti that require red pepper seeds for crafting are tougher to catch. (i.e. Magma Carrier, Chitinous, Jurassic). Statistically, the mice that offer the best catch rates are Primal and Fetid Swamp. 

My recommendation would be to craft green pepper plants for crunchy havarti, reason being it is more efficient to produce pepper plants using 2 seeds of different colours than 2 seeds of the same colour. For red seeds, you could just craft them directly into spicy havarti for the magma carrier (you don't craft them with blue or yellow seeds so as to maximise the amount of crunchy havarti you'll get).  

That's all there is to it: craft your havarti and farm up as much fire salt as you can. If you need a rough gauge, aim for about 18 to 24 fire salt. We'll need them to craft inferno havarti very soon. 

Farming Vanilla Beans

As mentioned previously, the swarm of pygmy mice and pygmy wrangler both drop vanilla beans as loot. You can attract them with gouda. However, SB+ will greatly increase the rate of attraction for the pygmy wrangler, which may drop multiple vanilla beans! Use SB+ if you are rushing this process, otherwise, I'd advise just using gouda and camping it out.