When to spend balens in Wartune?

You can spend any amount of balen - ie. money - in Wartune. You can do it efficiently, and less efficiently. I remember a guy who stopped looong ago. At the end, he was just buying totally senseless things just to reach VIP9 and avoid losing honor in battlegrounds. He spent 5k USD in a record time, then he quit. 

What can make people spend? Major reasons are to reach a goal (like getting a wing, being immune to honor loss, getting a bi-sylph etc) or just keep up the competition with others. The later one is a real motivation. I remember R2 servers once had a character named "Zebq". In like 3 months, he became the top BR, he maxed out everything. If you do it in such a short time, you skip all events, you just buy everything for the basic price, which is horribly high. So we could calculate, the guy was supposed to spend rougly 1 million dollars. Of course I'm pretty sure he didn't spend. He either was a good hacker (but this is quite unlikely, I'm sure if someone gets so much attention, the devs check him), or he was an insider, who just had access to unlimited balens. But nonetheless, his streak inspired the top players to race with him, and spend more. So either this was an intentional goal to milk the top cows, or just an unintentional result of an employee "trying the game", it generated extra income for them.

It usually starts little: you buy a wing or something else you cant get for free, and after you opened your wallet once, it gets easier and easier to open it again. After you spent 10 USD ten times, making a recharge of 100 USD doesn't seem so horrible - after all, you already spend this amount, and for lesser reward. After a longer (or shorter) time, if you did several 100 USD recharges, you will even consider the 500 or 1000 recharge, which is truly ridiculous for a game. And soon you won't even admit how much you spent and look for excuses like "I can afford it" "I spend 1000s of hour on it, it's still a cheap hobby".

As you know, I believe that spending on a game is okay, if it's not such an amount which you will regret after you stop playing  / spending. However, now I believe the game has reached a point after which spending money on it is totally pointless. Lag, freeze, load times, complete and utter nerf of everything, hacks going uncontrolled, and this is going on since a very long time. We see no sign that anything will change. I admit that in the 3+ years since I play this game, I became quite and addict. The time and money I spent made me addict. And I'm sure I will continue to play for a while. Not because I have hope that something will change - just because the addiction, and because after a long day I can still find some fun in it. And secretly I hope that one day, they will explain all the fumbles, bad decisions they made. But I'm not recharging again, I'm pretty positive of that - unless these issues got solved by some miracle.

Ocassionally, when players get really pissed off, someone always says on the forum "boycott them, dont recharge." I don't think it works that way. Players will not sto precharging just because someon says so, or to "punish" the company. They stop recharging because they lose interest. I'm sure some of you still have goals, which, if you can buy it cheap enough, you will pay for it. Like "reaching knighthood" "getting a red sylph" etc.

But here is some advice: if you want to spend money to reach a goal - stuff will get free eventually, or at least much cheaper. Everything does. Just from the near past - first adv. henna sale, you could buy knighthood for 2000 USD. 1 month later, last hot events, you could get it for 400. So just to reach your goals, no hurry.
If you want to spend to compete with others, to keep up: I see a lot of players have quit in the past half year, which is no wonder. But note that the whales, who spent the most, stayed. So do not hope to gain rank by the top players quitting. They won't. They spent too much. Go to battleground, the only opponents you meet will have red sylphs. Go to titan wars, each team is a heavy casher team. So spending to catch up is also pointless, because you will never catch up.

So my answer to the opening question, "When to spend balens in Wartune?" is actually, never, anymore. 

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Wartune new spender events

Wartune always loved to overcomplicate events, mainly to ensure no one can exactly see what's the optimal way to do it, and spend more than necessary. Too bad I'm here to make the math and help you :)

Wartune must inflate things, they must give better and better gift packs for spending money or people will stop spending. Looks like we reached another milestone. But instead of simply increasing the spender gift packs, they added more reward events under "recharge debate". I don't say you should recharge. I just say if you want to, here is how you should do it:

You can get far the best bonus for recharge ratio if you recharge only 40 USD. Simply recharge 30 USD on the first day, then 5-5 on the following 2 days. This way you can get the 20 and 40 packs from Gift pack, the 3000 balens single day bonus from recharge debate, the 3 x 500 bonus from recharge debate chests, the 6000 bound balen from recharge gift, and 3 bonus for consecutive recharge bonus. (If you did an 5 USD recharge yesterday for consecutive, you can also do +5 on the 5th day too to grab the 300 extra beast souls).

If the stuff you get for 4000 balen recharge does not seem enough, you might consider the 100 USD recharge. This is a significantly worse deal in bonus:balen ratio, but still decent. In this case you should recharge 80 USD on the first day, and 20 USD on the next. This way you can grab the first 3 pack from recharge gift pack, the 8000 balens single day bonus from recharge debate, the 2x2000 bonus and the 1x5000 bonus from recharge debate chests, the 15000 bound balens from recharge gifts, and 2 bonus from consecutive recharge. (If you did an 5 US recharge yesterday you might consider doing an extra 5-5 on 4-5th day too).

Going as far as 30000 balens is a much worse deal, even further, not even the dumbest whale should go. Below is my calculation in excel. It contains the major bonuses (recharge gift pack and recharge debate). The recharge debate chests themselves give only a smaller bonus, of which especially the 2nd day is useful, with the divinity soul - the gem and and diamond are not so great. Recharging for more than 3 days counts for consecutive recharge, but not for recharge gift packs, recharge debate or one-time recharge gift. 

Column "total bonus" is total balen value divided by recharge. This is the indicator, which is the best ratio recharge.

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Balen magic

The strongest magic in Balenor is the balen magic. Today I would like to share some thoughts about recharging and spending.

Right from the start, I summoned the aid of mathematics to optimize my gameplay. Both in helping to make gaming decisions, and to choose how to spend my very limited balens. When I saw many people around me literally waste balens, I decided to make this blog, hoping to help.

The 2 basics were always the same:
1.) Whenever you spend balens, make sure you get the maximum possible BR for it. 
2.) Be patient. The more you wait, the better rewards you get for the same balens.

Get the most BR for your balens
When I started this blog, I made an article about the general value of items. My suggestion was that do not pay more than 10 balens for +1 BR. This has inflated a lot, now +1 BR worth 2 balens at most. (And yeah, I should update this article). This is not because items got cheaper - actually, new stuff is more and more expensive. But now, whenever you spend, you get 3 spender packs. And also now you got a lot of multiplier to the BR you gain: like wing, eudaemon etc. So whether you should buy or not, is not really dependent on what you buy, but what are the actual bonuses. Some spender rewards really suck:

As you see, all items in this list are completely and utterly useless, except for the chest. But spending 2000 balen to get 270 balen value is very bad. Or look at this one:

Completely useless as well. Whoever spends balens, have eudaemon and mount refining maxed out a thousand years ago, and we get too many of these items for free anyway. Usually only the third "consumer" pack has useful items only, but the one active right not doesn't worth a cent:

I told you that earlier I was spending an average of 150 USD per month, but lately, my financials are not so great, and also, I have little motivation to spend anyway. There are so many nerfs lately, and so many people quitting, you never know if the game will be around in 6 months. Right now, I recommend spending only in a very special case:
1.) Spender pack includes adv. mahra and sepulcrum - these items are still rare and badly needed.
2.) "Gift pack" is active, where you get coupons for your purchase.
3.) You are in a very bad need of event chests, ie. to get the mount or finish cloth set.
In this case, you can grab a 2k coupon from your mail, buy 129 chests for 3k balens, get back the coupon, and claim the 2k balen rewards. If needed, you can repeat this for a second pack (and claim rewards for up to 5k), or even 3 times (and buy lord of time/power of healing to round it up to 10k rewards).
In the past 6 months, I did not see any other reason to spend balens. Some people are still buying adv. sepu and mahra, but I bet these items will be inflated eventually like mahra, vulcans etc.

Be patient
Recharge packs are bigger and bigger every time. Just look at this:

Tenacity mark, cloth shard, divinity soul - this pack contains tons of useful items, unlike the spender packs. There is a good reason for this: They must motivate people to recharge at all cost. Once you have the balen, you will spend it anyway, so no need to give good bonus there. 
Sometimes you get this recharge pack, the big recharge packs, and the 1:1 bound balen for your balens recharge as well. 
When you think, wee, these offers are awesome, consider 2 things:
1.) Do you really need those balens? If you recharged earlier and still got balens, spend those first (and better spend slow, only in optimal cases). The longer you wait, the better packs will come.
2.) Christmas is soon. Every Christmas, they have really awesome deals. My guess is a recharge event including even a Loki seal. So wait for that, and then test your willpower if you can resist even those.

I remember I was fool enough to do the big recharge back in February. They gave a ton of resist crystals, moon rock/dust/divinity stones, and also as a secondary bonus truckload of mahra and glint/moonlight and some other stuff. Since that, ALL of these items are completely obsolete, they don't worth a cent. And although I did only an occassional 5 x 5 consecutive since that, I still have 30% of the balens I recharged. If I recharged only small amounts, more often, I could have gotten much better deals.

Some people suggest on the forum that people should stop recharging, to force Wartune to fix problems. I suggest something better. Recharge only when you are happy with the game, and when you got a deal which is really awesome, much better than the ones you get daily.

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Boiling the frog

Probably many of you have heard of a classic experiment. They say if you throw a live frog into boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately and survive. However, if you put the frog into cold water, and warm it up slowly, the frog will not jump out and gets boiled eventually. I'm not sure if this experiment would work in practice, but it is a classic example to model human behaviour.

Why do I bring this up? Because Wartune is a master of boiling us like a frog. I remember when I started playing Wartune. I was excited that I don't have to spend money, I can get everything, just a bit slower - except for the pretty wings. Then, after some weeks, when I knew I like the game, I made my first recharge to buy a pair of wings. In a game like this, making the customer to do the first recharge is always the most difficult task. It must be always a small sum - 5 USD is just perfect as the weekly tempting recharge bonuses suggest.

After you recharged 5 USD a few times, you will be confident to make a bigger one - 10, 20 or 40 USD, if there are some tempting sales. You spend 10-50 USD monthly, and you still playing. And, after like a half year, you say, gee, I already spent over 100 USD! So making a 100 USD recharge now looks more reasonable. Time passes, and there comes the big mega-ultra recharge promotion, for 500 or 1000 USD, offering treasures beyond your dreams - and you don't even have to spend it, you get this huge bonus pack for recharging! And since you recharged 50-100 USD several times, you say: I will play for a year more, I would recharge this amount eventually anyway. Of course, after you have the balens, they disappear much faster; not like when you have to touch your credit card each time when there is a sale. And, you get boiled, like a frog.

The first year (10 months) when I played Wartune, I spent an average of 70 USD monthly (10-20 only first months, more later). When our server merged in 2013, they put up a recharge bonus of 500 USD. I said it's too much money, so I passed. In the next 7-8 months, I spent that amount, and told myself, it was a mistake not to do the recharge, I lost all the bonuses. So when the next merge came around in 2014, I was ready to be boiled: I made the 500 USD recharge. Saying myself, this will be enough for another half year at least. Of course I was wrong, a gadzillion of big spender events started to follow, and the 50.000 balens disappeared in 2 months, making my monthly spending increase from 70 to 250: so the game became more expensive - due to a „good offer”. What a paradox situation...

My blog is about how to build a strong character using a minimal amount of balens: but this „minimal” is quite relative thing :) As things get cheaper and cheaper, as you got bigger and bigger bonuses and more sales, it is harder and harder to resist. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you could see that I say „don't buy” to 9 sales/promotions out of 10. But sales became so common, there is always one which is just too good to refuse. And then we begin finding excuses: „I can afford it”, „Others spent more”, „I am a god on my server for this price” etc.

When I started playing Wartune, my friend told me: „Wartune is a game where you can spend an unlimited amount of money. But still, whenever you buy balens, always think of the possibility that you can quit tomorrow. Will you regret the total amount you spent?” He played for a year, spent 200 USD, and quit without a second thought. Some months later, he restarted on a new server. He never bought a balen but he still have fun.

This game creates a very strong addiction. And when you have the balen, it is much harder to resist. Btw, the current event („balen lode”) looks interesting. Looks like I spend 5k balens, then I get it back, +2k bound balens. But the trap is here, to use this, you must recharge. And then you have the balens, you spend them much faster... Very smart, I have to admit.

So always keep in mind how much you spent in total, and what is your monthly spending. Is that increasing? If yes, be careful: you are just getting boiled!

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Wartune: Million USD profit

I read somewhere that Wartune generates 24 million USD income per month. This includes the Chinese and other versions as well, and might be out-of-date. So this game is really profitable, but there is even more potential - which can benefit us players as well. I want to give some advices to the Wartune owners here on this subject (even when I know none of them will ever read this blog).

1. Recharge. I bet you noticed that it doesn't matter how much you recharge in Wartune, a balen always cost the same. You don't get bigger discount with bigger recharge like in Doomlord. When someone pays 5 USD via paypal, the seller gets about 2.5 USD. When someone pays 100 USD, the seller gets about 92 USD. So if I pay 20 x 5 USD, or 1 x 100 USD, I get the same amount of balens - but R2Games gets 50 USD instead of 92. 

Well, they do give some bonus packs, which are supposed to be bigger and bigger  with each recharge. Maybe these packs were good when the game launched, but not now. Bounty scrolls, lvl 1-3 gem packs, some gold, daru - these worth nothing at all. So right now, I always recharge the absolute minimum needed to buy something, if necessary, in multiple small amounts, where they lose money. If I don't have unspent balens, I can't spend them accidentally on sylph upgrade, mount training or all the trillion other hidden balen-traps.

Solutions:

• give more balens for bigger recharges
• give better packs which include sepulcrum, mahra, mount whips and other useful items
• have recharge promotions where you get a huge bonus pack upon recharging a significant amount (like with merges - but some servers don't merge for a year)

2. Useless sales. 98% of the sales are hugely overpriced (like 5-20 times realistic value), or are a gamble (which are not only overpriced, but leave many unlucky players frustrated). 

Solution:

• The players are no fool. Make good value sales. It's even okay to reduce prices slowly.

3. Bad timing of events. Right now, they first have a spender event (with useless items in the shop). When it's over, they add some useful item to the shop. When it's over, comes the recharge event. They think this way they can milk more money, but it's quite the opposite.

Solution: 

• Synchronize recharge and spender events with good sales, have them at the same time.

4. Customer service. Let's face it, R2Games does not have a working customer service currently. You can send in tickets, you get an automated response in a few days, but after that, when you request further help, usually no answer for a long time. I know that they have no access to game data or logs, checking anything and compensating is very difficult because it have to go through several parties, so it's easier to reject everyone. But when they lose this way tons of customers who spent 1000+ USD and would spend even more in the future, it's a big loss.

Solution:

• Have a professional CS team who have access to game data and logs, knows the game and can actually help players like in Doomlord.
• I'm sure they get 1000s of tickets daily, they have to filter them. Let the pro team handle tickets from paying customers with high priority, free players will understand better that they have to wait.

5. Lack of trust. Having a great product is sure one way to make profit (that's what's happening now), but having faithful and trusted customers is the way to multiply it. Right now, players have very low trust towards R2Games. This is because the game problems are not corrected, player's don't get advanced info, and CS can't help people. People often don't make payments because they are afraid they can lose everything easily.

Solution:

• Have at least ONE member of your staff who is up-to-date with information, and have direct contact to the developers. Let this staff member post regularly on the forum, give precise, first-hand information, address the player's needs and feedback, and show us that our opinion matters.
• CS must make high priority that paying customer's who can't login due to bugs have their access restored asap, and paying customers who suffer massive losses due to a bug, hack or poor implementation are compensated accordingly and quick.

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