King's Gauntlet

Climbing the Dreadful Tower

Note: Before accessing the King's Gauntlet, you need to obtain the King's Gauntlet Floor Plans by catching a Master Burglar with a Crown Jewel from the Bazaar. Check here (under Bazaar revisited) if you have not done this yet.

Welcome to the King's Gauntlet! As this location is considered a side quest, it is not entirely necessary for you to complete this area. Clearing this area, however, will certainly cover much of your mice breeds.

King's Gauntlet: Mechanics

The King's Gauntlet is a tower that comprises 8 tiers. The tiers are not separate locations, they are all located within the gauntlet. You can choose the tier that you hunt in by equipping tier-specific cheese. To begin, arm your luckiest set-up and use brie cheese. This will attract mice from tier 1. You may choose to use swiss over brie if you wish to reduce costs as the mice at this tier do not provide much reward (think white mouse... gasp). Occasionally, these mice may drop tier 2 potions which may be used to obtain tier 2 cheese. Arming tier 2 cheese will then attract tier 2 mice which drops tier 3 potions... so on and so forth. Each tier of mice has a specific power type weakness. Below is a list of the tiers, recommended traps to use and potion conversion rates:

Tier 1: Puppet Mice

Weakness: Physical/Tactical

Recommended Traps: Enraged Rhinobot or better

Tier 2 Potion

Marble: 2 (Cost: 10 per piece) 

Swiss: 4 (Cost: 25 per piece) 

SB+: 6 (Cost: 0 per piece) 

Tier 2: Thief Mice

Weakness: Physical/Tactical

Recommended Traps: Enraged Rhinobot or better

Tier 3 Potion

Marble: 4 (Cost: 25 per piece) 

Swiss: 5 (Cost: 50 per piece) 

SB+: 7 (Cost: 0 per piece) 

Tier 3: Melee Mice

Weakness: Tactical

Recommended Traps: Horrific Venus Mouse or better

Tier 4 Potion

Swiss: 3 (Cost: 150 per piece) 

Brie: 4 (Cost: 150 per piece) 

SB+: 6 (Cost: 100 per piece) 

Tier 4: Bard Mice

Weakness: Tactical

Recommended Traps: Horrific Venus Mouse or better

Tier 5 Potion

Swiss: 2 (Cost: 800 per piece) 

Brie: 4 (Cost: 800 per piece) 

SB+: 5 (Cost: 250 per piece) 

Tier 5: Magic Mice

Weakness: Shadow

Recommended Traps: Gorgon/Clockapult of Time or better

Tier 6 Potion

Brie: 3 (Cost: 1,000 per piece) 

SB+: 4 (Cost: 500 per piece) 

Tier 6: Melee Mice

Weakness: Arcane

Recommended Traps: ACRONYM or better

Tier 7 Potion

Brie: 2 (Cost: 1,500 per piece) 

SB+: 3 (Cost: 900 per piece) 

Tier 7: Dust Mice

Weakness: Hydro

Recommended Traps: Ancient Spear Gun or better

Tier 8 Potion

Gouda: 1 (Cost: 15,000 per piece) 

SB+: 1 (Cost: 2,000 per piece) 

Tier 8: The Eclipse

Weakness: Forgotten

Recommended Traps: Ancient Box Trap

Comments: 

Generally, there isn't much to be said for tiers 1 to 4 since you'll get a perfect catch rate if you use the right trap. There is no trick to the gauntlet, just camp out at a tier and collect potions to move on. You'll find that the potion drop rate is quite low, hence, arm your luckiest set-up to improve that loot rate. As to how many potions you'll have to collect, that depends on how you convert each potion of each tier (whether using standard cheese or SB+). For starters, I'd recommend at least 50 tier 2 potions before moving on. The potion drop rates only decrease up the tower so if you didn't manage to reach the top, come back down and start over.

Tier 5 is where you might start to get a few misses here and there. Don't worry, they don't happen often at all, if you are equipping a decent set-up. Keep plugging away at it. Tier 6 is similar to tier 5, but you may encounter a little more misses here. At tier 7, you may be facing a low supply of tier 7 cheese even before you begin. There are only 2 mice here: the fiend and necromancer. 80% of the time, you'll encounter the fiend, which is worth 50,000 gold per catch! If you have any wealth charms from Easter Egg events, here's a good place to use it. You may encounter quite a few misses as well. 

Hopefully you'll have gotten at least 1 or 2 tier 8 potions. This is because each potion can only produce 1 piece of tier 8 cheese. The only mice that resides in tier 8 is the eclipse. Of course, use Gouda for the conversion. Arm your Ancient Box Trap here, along with your tier 8 cheese. It's a near perfect catch rate (roughly 98%). Hopefully you don't get hit by that 2%. If all goes well, you should be able to catch 1 or 2 eclipse mice. They are worth 300,000 gold per catch! (Again, good place to use wealth charms) Congratulations! This completes "Capture The Eclipse Mouse" in the adventure book! You have conquered the gauntlet!

While catching eclipse mice can be highly rewarding, the gauntlet is no place for us to stay and farm gold. This is because in the time that you take to move up the tiers, while bearing with the abysmal potion drop rates, to finally catch that eclipse, you could have spent that time better and earn even more gold elsewhere (and make game progression at the same time). As to what cheese should be used for potion conversion, it is advised that from tiers 1 to 4, the potions be converted using standard cheese (the one that offers the best rate that is not SB+). From tiers 5 onwards, use SB+ for conversion to your own discretion or based on how much you are willing to use.

Special Gauntlet Traps

If you have these traps, you're most likely a veteran who has gotten these traps via the season 1 treasure chests or the GWH 2014. You should use these traps when making the gauntlet run.

Ancient Gauntlet Trap

1,050 power, 4% power bonus, 20% attraction bonus, 4 luck, extremely fresh cheese effect

This trap is incredibly strong in tier 1 of the gauntlet because of its special effect: it causes tier 1 mice to drop 2 tier 2 potions at a time instead of 1! Since most of the mice at this tier are extremely weak, the low power and luck should not be too big of a concern. Use this trap at tier 1 if you have it!

Festive Gauntlet Crusher

1,200 power, 5% power bonus, 25% attraction bonus, 5 luck, extremely fresh cheese effect

This trap is similar to the ancient gauntlet in its effect, except that it applies to tier 2 mice instead: tier 2 mice will drop 2 tier 3 potions at a time instead of 1. Again, the mice at this tier aren't strong so that should not be a thing to worry about.