Senin, 29 September 2014

Gem event & big spender

First of all, I would like to say Wartune a big thank you for the current gem event! Last gem event, I said this can be only a mistake, they can't be that generous. But they can, the event is repeated, this time they even add war packs. Often we complain about the lag, the bugs, and the greediness of the sales, but this time, I have to say, as long as they have such events I will keep playing. Because getting a truckload of treasure is real fun, we all enjoy it :) I not only made a big heap of lvl 8 gems, but also got 500 war packs, which gave me 5 blazing taurens, so I ended up with all clothes and a huge amount of will shards.

Please note that right now, everyone have lvl 8 gems, even free players on S400+. So having level 8 gems means really no advantage. The only question is if you should make level 9 (or even level 10) gems, or wait for a future gem event where we get rewards for making those.

First of all, let's examine what's the probability of such an event happening. We have seen already this in the past: the first cloth synthesiser event gave rewards for level 3-5 clothes, and now they give for level 6 too. Also, first gem synthesiser events gave reward for making level 4 gems, but not for level 8. So yes, this is quite possible. Still, it can happen maybe in one month, maybe in 4 month, maybe never.

Second, let's see what's the advantage of making level 9 gems. Personally, I made lvl 9 HP gems. This made possible for me to defeat sky trial 3-5, and earn +2 horns per day. Also, now I can survive second world boss 3-4 times in a row, so that's like +1.5M gold daily. 60 horns and 45M gold monthly, not to mention the advantage in combat. If they add reward for level 9 gems in a month, it wasn't a good deal, if in four, I say it worth it. To be honest, I even consider making the lvl 9 MATK gems, thats a huge advantage everywhere.

What I recommend here is a strategy used by financial experts: diversificate your portfolio. You can make some lvl 9 gems, which make a real difference for you. But still, save a good deal of lvl 8 gems, so in case they add a reward for that, you still can grab nice loot. 


BIG SPENDER


Please also note that a big spender event is running currently. I do not make a detailed calculation here, just rough numbers: if you go until 5k it's 25% bonus, if you go further, you get approx. 30% bonus. The previous big spenders were much much better. Please note that this is not only because the prices of gems and mount hoof has dropped, but also because the war packs included we already got for free by hundreds, also who needs lvl 80 legend stones? And the dragon souls, I get like 50 for free daily, and need 2000 for next level, so I wouldn't pay for them. Seemingly this big spender is targeted towards beginner players, it's better value for them than for veteral players. I bought my monthly spirit covenant pack and claimed the 1k bonus, but that's it. 


Sabtu, 27 September 2014

sky trial 3-5 beaten!

I was very happy today, I could finally beat sky trial 3-5 boss, without slow, without even an evolved sylph. I used the strategy I described here.

Basically, I tried to have as high HP as I can (with spending all mount whips on endurance, making lvl 9 HP gems etc) - I had nearly 300k HP. And used everything to survive without significantly reducing my damage: a lvl 8 heal, a lvl 9 guardian rune, illusion and enhanced regeneration astrals. I used a 2-star purple Hades, with 5x lvl 5 dark resist crystals, I had 370 dark resist. Originally I thought 250k HP and 500 dark resist is necessary to survive, but 300k HP and 370 resist was enough. My gems are MATK / Crit / PDEF / HP, but for this occassion, I converted all PDEF gems to MDEF since this boss is MATK. Of course I used all available potions and scrolls.

I couldn't make a video, but it went basically this way:
First I did a "pre-run", used just lightning both to have max rage and sylph ready to awaken.
Then, a second run, where I opened with suntoria, awakened, guard rune, used sylph skills (scoring a few double hits here is important!), Hades heal attacks and heal rune could keep me healthy, then I reverted back. Thunderer / Suntoria / critical restoration (don't use guardian angel!) and guardian rune take me to the second awaken. With enough crits, Hades could finish off the boss just when he went berserk. I took my like 10 tries until I got it.

So the key tricks were:

  • Have high HP so suntoria, heal rune and crit heals have max efficiency.
  • Use Hades so I have high dark resist and I can heal while dealing damage.
  • Maximize survival (mdef, block, enhanced regen, illusion, guardian and heal rune).



I guess your question is now, what is my advice for a knight or archer. Percentage damage reduction is the key here, and it's done via Hades. Knights and archers really don't need Hades, and you shouldn't build one just for sky trial. There are many ways, though, where you can surpass me: you can make lvl 6 dark resist crystals, refine your goddess blessing astral to epic heights, have 350 or even 400k HP, and have lv l0+ heal and guardian runes. Also your Hercules / Triton etc can be definitely stronger than my 36k BR unevolved Hades. Knights also have extra damage reduction and archers can kill faster, so I think there is hope for everyone. Good luck!

Kamis, 25 September 2014

group buy real funny

Hey guys, new Wartune feature, group buy is real funny. They post items for 10-100 times at their realistic value, and if a lot of players buy these items, you can get a discount on it. Check this out:
Do you think 10000 balens is realistic price for 10 legend stones? and 5999?  and 2999? There is one article there which did not make me laugh: 100 war pack for 3900. If 20 people buy it, all of them get 50% discount. Problem is, I don't think many servers have 20 people who will cough up 3900 balen for 100 of those pack. And even where they would, those people already bought the number of packs they wanted.

Anyway, I'm realy sorry that they assigned programming resource to making this, instead of correcting the many bugs and lags. The feature itself would have been even ok, if they give useful items and correct prices. But this...


Rabu, 24 September 2014

Wild shop strategy

Wild shop is an awesome addition to Wartune. Free players / low cashers can now get items which were out of their reach previously. With 1500 million useless daru stocked up, I run to the shop, refreshed a lot and bought everything with joy on the first day. However, like everything, this can be done smart, or stupid. I will show you how to do this smart.

You can buy in the wild shop for the following resources:
  • Mystery stone. This is the most commonly used resource - and the most scare as well. Use it to buy highly useful items (see later), because you don't get much daily.
  • Insignia. Insignia is a limited resource (see this article). You have to be wise what to buy.
  • Kyanite. Kyanite is a limited resource too, but you need it only for rolling the wheel daily. So it's okay to spend it: as long as you have some.
  • Gold. Gold is a virtually unlimited resource. Visit the wild shop only when you have plenty of gold (after WB / Dragon Invasion), so you don't have to skip a good offer.
  • Daru. I have 1500M daru, and earn 10M+ daily. Even when I have to save up for some future troops, this commodity I considered unlimited, so I buy even stamina potions for it.


Wild shop has the following commodities:

Total trash:

seeds, luck stones, bounty scrolls, divine light, energy cores. These items you can get for free and much cheaper other ways, and/or don't give any BR.
Don't buy these, regardless of the cost. Ever.

Almost trash:

roses, crystalloids, legend stones, star tear. I wouldn't buy these, but I know there are some rose-fans out there... And some low-levels might go for the crystalloids/legend stones too.
Don't pay anything but daru or gold for these, though, the other resources you need more in the long term.
Star tear is supposedly a rare, and sold only for mystery stones. Some people need it desperately, it's their luck if it shows up.

Marginally useful:

level 3 gems. These worth only 2 balens, and you get millions in events for free.
stamina potions. I don't consider XP a value, so to me, a stamina potion worth only a few balens (and only because there is has like 10% chance it can give you a crypt key for a skeleton key).
I buy the above only for daru.

Useful:

Soul crystals, runestones, mount whips. fate stones, single fashion core, good luck charm.
It's okay to buy these for gold, daru, insignia and kyanite, but NOT for mystery stone. If you have maxed out SC and/or fate stones, you might consider spending only gold and daru on those.
Fashion cores and good luck charms are a specialty, because they are very expensive. You should start refreshing shop with a lot of gold so you can buy these if they come up for gold.
Please note that the developers made a mistake: good luck charm should be 1500 insignia, but it is only 150 currently. So it's the best value buy :)

Highly useful:

Mahra, resist crystal, will crystal, sepulcrum, lvl 6-7 gems, clothing, and rare packs of the „Useful” items.
These are the must-buy packs, save up mystery stones to buy only these.


Here is a table to summarize the above. I ordered items by balen / mystery stone value, and marked which are must-buy, buy only if you didn't max it yet, and buy only if you have plenty of the resource you are buying for. Balen value is based on this article.


You strategy should be visit the Wild shop after each automatic refresh, but refresh for daru only when you have plenty of gold. And do multiple refresh-until-I-get-a-rare cycles only if you have enough mystery stones.

Minggu, 21 September 2014

The truth about crit rate

There were many speculations lately about how critical works in Wartune. Since we were able to reverse-engineer most other aspects of the game's combat system, this mystery needed to be resolved as well. In Doomlord, critical formulae is pretty simple, so I suspected it's not as complicated either here.

First of all, testing crit rate needs much more testing than figuring out a formulae. And even after a lot of test, the numbers won't be accurate. I did a LOT of testing with only 3 crit values: 6848, 7948 and 11383 vs many different opponents. And I still can't give an exact formulae, but now I know how it works.

We always knew that chance to crit has another component besides the value of crit. People said the higher their lvl / BR, the more crit they needed. We also knew that vs WB, you will crit a lot even with a low critical. I suspected that this mysterious second component is the opponent's level. After my experiments, it looks like this is true.



Look at the table. With the lower crit, I had still a crit rate of approx. 80% vs world boss. What is more important, I had similar crit rate vs. Iris in sylph atoll, who are lvl 50 like the World boss. Also it is obvious, that I crited less often vs higher level opponents. The third thing I noticed that although my crit increased, the crit rate did not go beyond 80% vs the lower-level monsters (I tested only with mage, so the cap for archers can be higher). 

So based on this data, I can say:

1.) Crit rate is capped at 80% for mages. As soon as you begin critting at 80% vs lvl 80 opponents (at crit 9k? or 10k?) there is no point in increasing your critical further, unless your opponent has a crit reduce effect (like guardian angel).

2.) Crit rate depends most likely on target's level. The higher their level, the lower the crit rate.

3.) Some additional modifiers can lower the crit rate. Like a knight's -5% crit bonus, which can apply to "knight class" monsters too (you see in the table, crit vs the first lych boss, which is lvl 72 like the rest, but knight class, is obviously lower), or the modifier in moonevil.

4.) If you have determination 10 and 7k+ crit, you should use crit instead of enchanted will destroyer, the extra damage compensates even the extra damage you take.

5.) Accept that random has a huge role in crits. (Notice I had lower average crit rate in Iris atoll with higher crit?) Sometimes you always crit, sometimes you crit much less. There is no bug. It's just luck :)

So I suspect that the formulae is somehing like this:
MIN (critical * X - target's level * Y - modifiers (knight -5%, guardian angel, etc) ) , 80)%

Please let me know if you collected any data which can cofirm or contradict what I have now :) Thanks!

Kamis, 18 September 2014

Insignia value skyrockets!

For a long time, insignia was the second most worthless resource after daru. I never had enough inventory space, so I just exchanged it for XP books which I sold for gold. With latest additions, this has changed.


  • You can „train” your marriage tree with insignia, so this cost 750 insignia per day - which turns into runestones, gem packs and fashion shards.
  • New honor ranks mean new medals, which are much more expensive than Lord Divine medal.
  • Since yesterday, you can exchange a nearly unlimited amount of insignia for valuable resources in the Wild Shop.

Let's see how much insignia I earn weekly:
About 3k from guild battles, alike 5-700 from battlegrounds, and about 7-8000 from Tower of King nightmare chests - if we can do all 5 rooms every day (which is not granted lately). So I earn about 10-12k insigna.

And how much I need?
1.) Marriage tree is 5250 per week.
2.) The new max honor medal is 4800 per week.
3.) So I have only 1k left to spend weekly in wild shop?

Right now I still have like 50k saved up in the bank, but its time to begin thinking on this.

Marriage chest.
Let's calculate the average value of these.
(using chances from cosmos chestcollection)


gem pack (value: 3 balens): 0.32 x 3 = 0.96 balen
runestonex10 (value: 20 balens): 0.27 x 20 = 5.4 balens
fashion shardx2 (value: 34 balens): 0.12 x 34 = 4 balens
eternal heartx3 (value: 12 balens): 0.02 x 12 = 0.24 balen
crypt key (value: 75 balens): 0.01 x 75 = 0.75 balen
shadow crystals, xp scroll, roses: value 0 balens.

total value: 11.35 balens

Since you get 10 such chests for 750 insignia,
1 insignia value here: 11.35 x 10 / 750 = 0.15 balen

Wild shop.
In the wild shop, you can buy valuable items for your insignia. I will make a separate article about insignia/balen exchange. Now to make it short, you can make deals in the wild shop where you exchange your insignia for 0.04-0.2 balen. So the marriage chest deal is not so bad.

New medals.
LD medal is 2400 insignia, Great Dragon medal is 4800. There are 2 significant differences: the later gives +100 endurance (+400 BR) and 4% less damage in pvp. That 4% is pretty hard to calculate into BR, it can be anything between 4k and 10k BR. Let's suppose you play for 1 more year, and you pay the weekly +2400 insignia for this +100 endurance and +4% damage reduce. So that's 125k insignia in total. If spent on marriage chests, it worth „only” 18750 balens, sounds like an „okay deal”.

So all 3 uses look decent, what to do now? How to save insignia?

I have 3 suggestions:
  • If the marriage tree is crypt token double-day, and you have 10k+ crypt token like me, use crypt token instead. There you can save 1-2k insignia weekly.
  • For the wild shop, be careful what you buy. Lvl3 gem and stamina potions are bad deal even for insignia, the other BR items (fashion core, luck charm, whip, soul crystal, fate stone, rune stone and of course the super-rares) are okay to buy.
  • After you maxed out your honor, buy the best medal only when it's really necessary - class wars, BR event, important (cross-server?) guild battle. Otherwise a lesser medal is okay too, there is not such a huge difference, and nothing which helps you in pve (god's descent, sky trial etc).



Minggu, 14 September 2014

Time is essential

I would like to dedicate today's article to my best friend in Wartune, Nono. He have a really great heart, he helps everyone, and he is more concerned with the happiness of others than of his own. I wish every people would be like him. Yesterday we talked him with about the problems of the game. Everything being bugged, laggy, crashing, and the increased time and stress the game requires. Also, the game requires more and more money just to keep up.

So today, I try to help the problem which not only Nono, but thousands of players in Wartune have. The bugs and the lags – we can't do much about it, just pray that a game which earns 24 million USD per month (yes, you heard right) is able to finally turn back caching in their game after a month, and correct memory leaks. You would think such a huge amount a money is enough motivation? But seems it isn't.

The other issue is time. They keep adding things which need more and more time. Extra content is always good – but not at this cost. Very few people want to play a game 16 hour a day. I admit that before patch 3.1, and complained about running out of goals. XP becoming meaningless, daru, gold, honor and a lot of other resources and activities became useless. Now XP is good again, gold is useful again, you can collect honor again and arena has great rewards. But this comes at a price. Your time.

I like this game, so I don't want to quit. But now is the time to make a priority list, and skip everything possible so we can continue playing without giving up the other parts of our life. I had an article already here about Optimizing game time. Based on that, and changes since, I try to make a time/priority list, depending on how much time you are willing to spend on the game each day.

You can play max. 2 hours per day (this is the bare minimum):


The first thing you need to reduce game time is VIP, and sadly, Spirit Covenant.
First, do everything which takes just a click and gives some reward: wheel of fate, guild wheel, devotion rewards, guild levy, academy blessing, claim sylph arena reward, complete quests, stamina in altar, recovery rewards, reward in Sky Trial, harvest your tree, blitz your stamina, spend gold on astral refinement, check hot events, open your boxes, enter Tree of Ancients when its summoned and energize. These took only 10 minutes in total.

Second, do the essentials which need time, but give awesome reward:
1.) Dragon Invasion. Takes 20 minutes max, this is great BR reward. You must do it even if you have minimum time.
2.) Tower of Kings (nm preferred). Takes about 10-15 minutes, this must be done too.
3.) Arena. This is tough, since it is totally bugged and laggy. Might take as much as 40-50 minutes! I still advise doing this too, if it won't fit into the time, do less, like 5-10 attempts.
4.) Kill final boss in forgotten catacombs and start a blitz – 2 minutes.
5.) Participate in one world boss at least. You can do it even afk, if you have friends, you can take turns, one day a friend does it for you and himself, the other day vica versa. This is 15 minutes.
6.) Click through bounty quests with bounty helper and your bounty scrolls (2 minutes).
7.) Jewel hunt: 5-10 minutes max.
8.) Participate in guild battle (if you dont have time, just enter and stay afk).

This is 2 hours in total, and you got 90%+ of all the BR and significant reward you can collect each day. The hard part is the first 3 activities, which require teamplay. You need a good team, a good timing, because if you have to wait long for each other then you slip out of this timeframe.

You can play max. 3 hours per day.

In addition to the above (and an explanation why these aren't essentials):
1.) Do a second world boss (afk can save you time here, as is alternating with a friend). WB is not a primary gold source anymore, DI gives a lot more gold.
2.) Do a battleground. BG is still fun, although the medals give very minimal extra, but cost a lot more. So probably for all the extra insignia you spend on them, you can buy XP books, sell them for gold, and use the gold to refine the astral slot of your goddess blessing – same, but permanent result :)
3.) Complete MPD. This is 10-15 minutes. I don't name this essential, because once you have level 80 set, what you get here is XP and dragon souls. The 4 dragon soul from nirvana is neglectable, compared to the 50 you get in Dragon Invasion and the 800-1500 needed for +1 level. And the XP, the class-advancement level advancement is really just an illusion. You don't get anything. New skills are useless (except for Mars will, which might be corrected in the future), new astral refine slot – c'mon, you don't want to grind much for that :) And in worst case, you can use retrieval to get some of the XP anyway.
4.) Run the amethyst mine. Reward is just 6 mount whip, but it takes like 4-5 minutes max.
5.) Run a tank. Enter, leave, you still get something :)
6.) Card hunt. A few minutes only.

So this is approx. an additional hour.

You can play max. 4 hours per day.

In addition to the above:
1.) Socialize with people. I'm not joking: if you can play only 3 hours a day, you have hardly time for this :( But having friends is the most important aspect of the game.
2.) Help people: one extra DI, help with one MPD.

…And you used up your 4th hour.

You can play max. 5 hours per day.
In addition to the above:
1.) Fishing. I really hate it and I'm really bad at it, and the reward is sucky :) But if you play 5 hours a day, you can do it :) Takes 5-10 minutes (for me, longer).
2.) Burn through the 10 sky trials, takes a few minutes.
3.) Do spire. Its only XP and kyanite, so low priority.
4.) Play tank a bit more seriously (enter last minutes with friends and score kills) 5 minutes.
5.) Plunder.
6.) Socialize more :)

You can play max. 6 hours per day.

In addition to the above:
1.) Do maps. Of course this apply only when you have high level resist, and use only green maps anyway. This is a low-reward, time intense event which requires multiple players. If you are really super good and super quick, it takes like 15-20 minutes!
2.) Participate in Divine Altar. It's just XP, which you don't need anyway. But if you have a lot of time to kill, do it :) 15 minutes.
3.) Hunt monsters in wilderness. If you still don't have the mount, I suppose this activity gets a higher priority, but later, not really, it's just for titles – and a nice opprtunity to help others and socialize. And if you on that, take 2 gold mines as well.
4.) Do marriage quests. (A good opportunity to socialize! While this no-brainer activity runs).

Your 6th hour used up!

You can play even more hours daily.

Well, during God's descent, you will play more than 6 hours :)
Other than that, it's pretty easy to kill the time on other days too.
1.) Attacks in duel arena. (go completely naked, it goes fast then, but still needs like 10 minutes).
2.) Energize the tree of others and take care of your farm multiple times a day. (few minutes).
3.) Help people to finish MPD. You can spend an unlimited time with this.
4.) Circuit quests. Don't even do them, even if you play 16 hours a day!
5.) Start second, third, etc. characters.

Summary:
Do not stress yourself with the game. When it begins a job, it's no good. Do it only as much as you have fun. While you do the more zombie-activities, like world boss etc. watch a film, chat with friends, chat with your family.


The most important thing is, you DON'T HAVE TO DO ALL of these. You can still have fun and be top. I played league of angels, a stupid „tube-game” for a long time. By playing only 20 minutes a day, clicking rewards etc, never spending a penny. And I had a decent BR and were in top10 in my server :)  

Jumat, 12 September 2014

September big spender analysis

Previously, we had a 3-4 week cycle in Wartune. Each cycle, we had a chest to be collected, free tasks to get these chests, and a big spender event. Now things accelerated, there is a new event each 7-8 days. You can collect only a free chest for free, the rest you have to buy. 

In game industry, it's a well-known fact that 90% of your income is from 10% of your paying customers. Now they try to milk more the few "big spenders" with some great promotions. However, I advise you against spending this time, for 2 reason.

One reason is, if you take part in every spender event, the cost of the game will become irrealistic before you realize.

The second is, this promotion is not so great. It gives similar packs like the previous big spenders, but values have dropped a lot lately. Look at what changed:

Mount hoof. We are getting these now since more than a month. Top players now need 200 for one more star, so a hoof worth now only 10 balens.

Gems. The lvl 6-8 gems in packs seemed awesome previously. But now, with everyone having lvl 8 gems, they are not as valuable as before. A lvl 6 gem worth only 122, a lvl 7 488, a lvl 8 1464 balens.

Mahra. Mahra's main purpose is to increase max stat level for you sylph, so you can spend more sepulcrum to make it stronger. With evolution, this limit have been pushed off by  a lot. So mahra is a very expensive and ineffective way to improve your sylph. For me, a mahra worth only 5 balens max now.

Vulcan's Stove and Hammer. This item is not available in the game yet, but it will be available soon, for free. You remember the will crystal? From horns, it took an average of 800 balens to get 60. Later on, you could buy one for 3-4 balens. And now you can get tons for free each day in arena shop. The first 1-2 levels of will crystal made a lot of difference, later on it get less important, and took a lot to develop. The same happened to virtually every resource in the game. So now you buy a few stoves and hammers, get some nice BR for your balen - and in one month, everyone gets the same for free. And later on, it will cost so much to develop, that the 100 you get now means nothing, like 100 will crystal. So I would say, as long as we dont see absolutely clearly the long-term BR gain of these, DO NOT PAY balen for them. Value: 0.

The chests worth 30 balens, as I calculated here.



Value of packs:




30+20 = 50 balens  (5% bonus)



30+25+50+50+50 (prev. pack) = 205 balens (10% bonus)



60+10+200+200+205 (prev. pack) = 675 balens (13% bonus)





120+200+400+400+675 = 1795 balens (18% bonus)



244+350+700+180+700+1795 = 3969 (20% bonus)



300+976+1000+500+1000+3969 = 7745 (26% bonus)





600+1464+1500+750+1500+7745 = 13559 (27% bonus)


It is also important to examine if there is anything in the game worth buying. Some nice mounts, a good pack etc. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the game currently what you should buy.

Conclusion: do not spend. We spent enough lately. Now it's their turn to fix the lag and correct the bugs the added to the game lately. Wait for the next promotions, each will be better and better.