For those of you wondering, Dark Ritual's effect will stay in effect until you ascend. And can be used multiple times and will stack!

Before you want to start using the Dark Ritual effectively, you will want to have all 9 of the powerups that you can activate. These powerups have designated cooldowns and abilities. You can activate them by click 1 though 9 on your keyboard, or by clicking on them.

You can see the powerups here in this screenshot. They are between the creature and the heroes that you purchase and level up.



They are commonly referred to by their corresponding number, 1 though 9. 1 being the one on the top, counting downwards to the bottom until 9. For this guild, I will be using these numbers.

Dark Ritual's base cooldown without ancients is 8 hours. To use it more effectively we need to lower that cooldown.

So next you want to get an ancient, the Ancient Vaagur to be exact, and you want to max it out asap. For this guide, I'll be using the cooldowns you'd have while having a maxed out Vaagur.

Vaagur, shown here in the screenshot, has 15 levels. Like stated, when Vaagur is maxed out, Dark Ritual's cooldown will be lowered to a base of only 2 hours.

For the Combo:
1.) Make sure all powerups are off cooldown
2.) Use the following powerups in the following order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 followed by 8, 6, 9
3.) Wait 15 minutes
4.) Use the following powerups in the following order: 8, 9 followed by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7
5.) Wait 15 minutes
6.) All powerups, including Dark Ritual, should now be off cooldown again, and you can start the combo again starting with step 1

There, you have effectively used Dark Ritual, maximizing it's cooldown, and using it as often as possible to maximize your DPS. Using this combo, you have Dark Ritual off cooldown every 30 minutes, rather than it's base cooldown of 2 hours (with Vaagur). Enjoy!

A more simply put way this can be stated is that the actual combo is in only two steps really. 8, 6, 9 then wait for everything to come off cooldown [except Dark Ritual]. After that, 8, 9 then wait for everything to come off cooldown [including Dark Ritual].

So in reality, the combo for Dark Ritual itself is:
1.) Use the following powerups in the following order: 8, 6, 9; Wait 15 minutes
2.) Use the following powerups in the following order: 8, 9; Wait 15 minutes

Important!: Do NOT use any of the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 abilities between 8, 6, 9; Wait 15 minutes; 8, 9!! This is important! Want to know why? Read the next section.

Here I'll quickly go over what you did and why it works best this way.

First we did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, which is every powerup except the base powerups for the combo. We do this because while doing the combo, you can't really use other powerups because we want to maximize Dark Ritual's use and lower it's cooldown, I'll get to this more.

Following 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, we did 8, 6, 9, which is this:
We first use Energize, which will make the next powerup up used stronger, so then next we used Dark Ritual... to make it stronger. :p
And then we used Reload, which will lower the cooldown of the last powerup used. And we did this to lower the cooldown of Dark Ritual.

Next we wait 15 minutes [for those of us with maxed out Vaagur], or until all powerups are off cooldown [except Dark Ritual of course].

After that, we did 8, 9, which is this:
First is Energize, which, as stated earlier, will make the next powerup stronger. Second we used Reload, and here is where it might be a little confusing. As stated earlier, Reload will lower the cooldown of the last powerup used, but Reload does not work on Energize. So you know what it did? Yup, it Reloaded the powerup used before Energize. Which is technically Reload, but it doesn't work on itself either. So it Reloaded Dark Ritual for a second time.

Now normally you can't Reload the same ability twice, but the first time we used it on Dark Ritual it was a regular Reload, the second time we did it, it was an Energized Reload, so it counts and reloads it again. :3

Then after we did 8, 9, we did 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and we did this again because the combo is over, but we still have to wait for a few cooldowns, so we might as well use these powerups again if we plan to keep using the combo, or they're wasted powerups that never get used. :p

Now this part is very important. We only do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 BEFORE and AFTER the combo, NOT in between. Why? because if you use 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 between the combo, you cant Reload Dark Ritual like we want to, and you might Energize the wrong ability.

For those of you still slightly confused, or just simply want more information on the game, please refer to [DFC]Richard's Guide here:

http://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=442565210