Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap: Expert Minecart Strategies You Need

If you want to mow down hordes of orcs like a pro, the Minecart trap in Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is your best friend. This powerhouse - uhh, cart - of destruction is perfect for clearing waves effortlessly when used right.

Place your Minecart Dispenser and tracks smartly and mix them with others to make Minecarts unstoppable, wiping out waves of orcs with ease!

This guide will provide expert strategies to help you master the Minecart trap and dominate your defenses.

Minecart Trap Stats

Before diving into advanced strategies, let's look at the numbers behind the Minecart Trap. Knowing its costs, damage output, and upgrade potential will help you optimize your defenses and get the most out of this powerful tool.

Unlocking the Minecart Trap costs 1 golden skull, as with all other traps. Once unlocked, you will be able to place both the Minecart Dispenser as well as the Track in your trap slots.

In its basic form, here is a breakdown of the Minecart Trap essential details:

• Type: Floor trap

• Price: 2000 for the dispenser, 300 per piece of track

• Damage: 100 per hit

• Reset Time: 10 seconds per activation

• Health: 1000

Minecart Upgrades

As with other traps, the Minecart Dispenser offers 3 available upgrades. 

• Dispenser Price: -40 per upgrade, total of -200, bringing price down to 1800

• Damage: +60 per upgrade, total of 300, bringing damage up to 400

• Minecart Health: +100 per upgrade

We'll go deeper into the available upgrades in the Upgrade Path section. 

Understanding the Minecart Trap

The Minecart trap consists of two key components:

• Minecart Dispenser: Releases a minecart that follows a predetermined path.

• Tracks: Guide the minecart along a set route to damage enemies in its path.

First, you place the Minecart Dispenser in a strategic place. This will most often be the end of a narrow hallway or the center of a room. Rotate the Dispenser so that the cart is launched in the direction you want it to be launch and start its way down.

Then, you start laying down the track. You can rotate the track in 6 directions: 2 types of straight and 4 corners.

Don't forget: both of these components need to be assigned to a trap slot before you start the game to be able to use them! Technically, you could just equip the Minecart Dispenser and let the carts run of stairs, but it's a lot less fun and effective. So even though the track fill their own trap slot, it's worth it.

Minecarts can hit multiple enemies while travelling, making them ideal for crowd control in narrow corridors or choke points. Properly setting up your Minecart path is crucial to maximizing damage output.

Optimal Placement & Setup

Placing your Minecart traps correctly can be the difference between wiping out waves of orcs or watching them stroll past unscathed. Understanding the best locations and setups will ensure you maximize their impact and keep your defenses strong. Here’s how to get the most out of your Minecart placement.

The most important thing to do when placing Minecart Dispensers, is to make sure there is enough room for the tracks. 

Best Locations for Deployment

To make the best use of your Minecarts, try placing them in any of these 3 locations. These are the best locations to place Minecart traps on any map.

• Choke Points: Place Minecart tracks in narrow passages where enemies are forced to walk through them. Wind them back and forth between the walls, leaving room in between the track for other traps that slow or deal damage.

• Long Hallways: Allow Minecarts to travel a long distance, hitting multiple enemies in one run. Especially useful if you can guide Orcs along the track by using barricades.

• Near Ledges or Stairs: Direct Minecarts to drop off ledges, dealing additional fall damage and continuing to hit enemies below. The carts won't travel after they've fallen down, but will still deal damage while tumbling. 

Extending Minecart Effectiveness

If you've placed a Minecart Dispenser and its tracks, try and make it even more effective by applying either of these options. 

• Multiple Dispensers: Stagger multiple Minecart Dispensers along the path to ensure a continuous flow of Minecarts. Not all carts will launch at the same time, which can cause full hallways to be covered with carts at a single time.

• Curved Tracks: Guide Minecarts through enemy-heavy areas to maximize their reach. Using corners, create long and winding paths where the carts will do the most damage.

Advanced Tactics & Trap Combinations

Mastering advanced Minecart strategies means making the most of the game's multiplier system. Dealing different types of damage - such as fire, ice, and physical - builds up a bonus that drastically increases your overall trap effectiveness and your War Mages' ultimate ability bar.

By combining the Minecart trap with other damage-dealing traps, you can rack up combo points and gain insane amounts of Rune coins to spend on more traps before your next wave. 

Synergizing Minecarts with Other Traps

• Tar Traps: Slow enemies down so they stay in the Minecart’s path longer. This means they can be hit by the same cart twice, or by the next cart that will be launched.

• Brimstone: Burn enemies while they're crossing the tracks, ensuring they get hit by multiple traps to rack up the combo multiplier.

• Physics Traps: Knock enemies into Minecart paths with physics traps like the Push Trap, forcing them into unavoidable damage.

A Minecart track supported by 3 different types of other traps for maximum combo power.

Using Minecarts for Crowd Control

Barricades can be used to herd enemies into specific locations, making them easier to eliminate with traps.  Most Orcs are stupid. A well placed barricade at the start of a hallway will push them to the opposite side of the hallway, where they will stay until they round the corner.

Use this stupidity to guide enemies into a single file, then run them down with Minecarts. 

Place Tar Traps between loops in the track so slow down the Orcs, so that another cart can be dispensed and hit them. Line the walls with arrows and the ceiling with Haymakers for ultimate kill boxes. 

Upgrade Paths

The Minecart Trap has 3 available upgrades. Which are the best ones to invest in?

Here are all three upgrades, ranked first to last. 

1. Damage

Damage is hands down the best upgrade to invest your hard earned skulls in. The Base Damage of 100 isn't even that bad. Every upgrade adds 60 damage, bringing it up to a whopping 400 damage per hit.

When you factor in that most upgrades only increase the base value by a total of 50% after 5 upgrades, you know that going up by 300% is totally worth it!

And with critical hits and other buffs being available, the damage can easily go up to 600 or even 700 per hit. Sure, a cart only spawns every 10 seconds, but still.

2. Dispenser Price

The Dispenser costs 2000 to place. Tracks cost 300. For a decent size track, count at least 10 to 15 parts of track, which costs 3000 - 4500. 

Lowering the cost of the dispenser price by 40 per upgrade for a total of 200 is barely worth it. Even with 5 upgrade points on the Dispenser Price, it still won't allow you to build even 1 more piece of track. 

If you have the skulls lying around doing nothing then sure, buy the upgrade. But as long as you're still buying new traps and upgrading those in your inventory, you can ignore the Dispenser price upgrade completely. 

3. Health

If there were to be Orcs trying to target minecarts, than upgrading the health would be worth it. But they don't, so it's not. 

Seeing as minecarts rarely get destroyed on their way to the end of the track, the Health upgrade is even more useless than the Dispenser Price upgrade.

Recommended Threads (Perks)

There are a couple of Threads that can be applied to Minecarts and Tracks. 

Most notably:

• Hazardous Cargo: This thread makes the minecarts explode after they reach the end of the track, which is great value!

• Trap Cost Reduction: any thread that Lowers the placement cost of Minecarts and Tracks will be a great thread to pick.

• Trap Damage Increase: As with the trap cost, you can't go wrong with any thread that increases Floor Trap damage.

If your defense relies on Minecarts doing a lot of damage, you'll want one of the above Threads to help you out.

Multiplayer & Co-Op Strategy

While Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is great fun to play alone (trust me, I know this from experience), it can also be a lot of fun to play it with friends. 

When playing together, multiple War Mages have to protect the same rifts and slaughter the same Orcs. They can all lay down traps and barricades, although you won't have as many barricades per person as when you're playing alone. 

Knowing which traps your fellow War Mages have, should be your number one strategy. It makes no sense if you are stocked up on floor traps, thinking others will take care of the walls and then nobody has wall or ceiling traps. This means you will have to coordinate with your teammates!

Specifically for the Minecart trap, it is good to only have 1 player with the Minecart Dispenser. Seeing as the trap takes 2 slots in your inventory to be functional, multiple teammates really should not equip the Minecart Dispenser and Track. 

The best multiplayer strategy for coop play with the Minecart is to decide who is going to bring the Minecart to the party. 

Aside from that, you can assign roles. Have one player focus on Minecart setups while others handle additional traps or direct combat.

Secondly, make sure you balance your loadout. Don’t over-rely on Minecarts! Mix them with other high-damage and control traps for a well-rounded defense.

When you are the dedicated Minecart player, make sure to leave room for other players to place traps in between your tracks. Keep in mind the curved tracks and choke points discussed earlier! Even if you are not the one carrying Brimstone or Tar, your coop friends will bring those traps to the party. 

Common Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

When using Minecart traps, there isn't a lot that can go wrong. Still, it's a good idea to keep a couple of things in mind.

1. Forgetting to equip the track before you start the mission

Yes, both of these components need to be assigned to a trap slot before you start the game to be able to use them!

No, you won't be the only one who forgets to equip the track in your loadout. Unless you are instantly aware of the mechanics or are very perceptive, you're going to go into a mission thinking "why the hell are these minecarts crashing straight out of the dispenser?"

You'll live! Let them run off stairs for now. Finish the mission, go back to the castle and equip the Track element too. 

2. Poor Track Placement

Minecarts are incredibly powerful, as long as they can run over Orcs. Especially when combined with other traps.

Placing your track out of the way of Orcs is a waste of Track, Carts and money. Don't do it. 

A long and winding Minecart track. The cart will live longer, but enemies will easily evade the cart.

Follow the path of the Orcs. Sure, leave room to weave around other traps like Brimstone. Ensure Minecarts cover the most enemy-heavy routes and aren’t wasted on low-traffic areas.

3. Over-Reliance on Minecarts

Even though you can challenge yourself to play full games with just Minecarts, it doesn't make sense. Orcs Must Die relies on the synergy between different traps and the War Mage ability to deal combo damage, not just a single type of trap. 

Don't get me wrong, you can do it. FoxyRaven proved it in their video:

But it's best to use Minecarts as part of a balanced trap strategy rather than your only source of damage. Again, it's possible, but it's not the most fun. 

Note: To unlock the Old Mining Buddy thread, you need to win a Mission while only placing Minecart Dispensers and Tracks. You are allowed to use your melee weapons, but no barricades or your War Mage traps. If you're looking for a fun challenge, this is it!  

Conclusion

To truly dominate with the Minecart trap, you need killer placement, smart trap combos, and the right upgrades. Get creative, tweak your setup, and watch those orcs get obliterated!

By following these expert strategies, you can turn the Minecart into a devastating force against orc hordes. Experiment with different setups to find the most effective configurations and take your defenses to the next level!