Here is the new Wartune patch, and as usual, I would like to go through the changes, to see what's good and what's bad.
The good changes
Dimensions
After not one, but three nerfs, finally something good happened to dimensions! You can spend 10 energy to find the next post or the exit on the given level. This change is really great, I think the developers never came so happy to guess what would make players happy. Lately I hated dimensions with true passions, taking so much time, and so monotonic. But now, with this change, you can do dimensions really quick. Saves a ton of playing time, thanks, devs!
Sylph expedition
Now you can blitz sylph expedition to the last level you reached. Also, skill CDs reset for every ecounter, and some cooldowns have been shortened. In addition to that, rewards have been improved, you now get about twice as much divine souls as before.
All in all, this is a fabolous change, if I had the opportunity to ask changes in sylph expedition, I would have asked for less. There is only one small issue with rewards: although the divine soul amount has been doubled, the new divine soul event gives reward only for lvl 5+ divine souls. This is a big nerf, it means with even double expedition rewards, players will get a loss less per month. But all in all, I'm satisfied, because this change saves me a lot of playing time as well each day.
Guild boss changes
I'm not sure what was the original goal with these changes. I think the boss was supposed to be unkillable until you do the mini-quests, but we just went there and killed it. The reward was a lot more fangs than before, so I consider this a positive change :)
Golden road changes
Golden road didn't worth using for cloth shards even before, and the loot is worse now. There are only 1s and 2s on the board now, while previously there were two 5s. Why I put it on the positive list then? Because the current form is much more honest. Now you can see clearly that you can't win anything, and as such, you will not do it. Much, much more honest than before. If they would reduce dice roll cost to 20 balens, and add some squares with 3s and 5s, this would be an okay casher feature.
Bug corrections and other small changes
Unfortunately, it's a rare joy when one of the numerous bugs get corrected. And it seems this patch was no exception, the few bugs the developers corrected were mostly beneficial to the players (see below, Exploit removal). However, it seems eudaemon finally counts in WB, which is a positive change (can't confirm it 100% yet, but looks like so).
There are also many small changes, like new items for weekly pack (couldn't check this yet), new items on VIP wheel, some extra comfort functions, these are of course good.
The bad changes
Tower of kings "optimization"
In Wartune's language, optimization means "brutally nerfed" so I was afraid when I saw ToK have been optimized. Fortunately, I had a pleasant surprise - at first. in Tok NM, they replaced the eudaemon junk with mount training whips - of which, we never have enough. And the quantity is really nice, I got 368 from the first run. Also, our HP has increased by 400K during run, which certainly helped. There was one suspicious happening, though: all opponents were in one row. With an empty row behind them. I'm afraid that 2nd row will be filled with eudaemons the next day... and my fear came true. ToK with eudaemons is worse than I thought. MUCH worse. Its not only insane lag (the run took us 35 minutes) but the kids are tougher than their masters - prolly some bug, they have medallions too it seems. So while I first thought ToK is a good change, actually, it is a bad one. Very bad one. Bad enough to counter sylph expedition :(
Atoll boss
The Defend sylph atoll event has been completely revampled. Now you have to kill 30 little sylph (each drops 1-2 glint of magic, magical moonlight and sylph crystalloid), also sometimes a boss spawns, which dropped for me 10 adv sepu, 10 mystery rune.
Well, the first thing you will notice about this change, you can no longer get gold. Previously, one could get 15-25M gold daily from Atoll Boss. This is a huge loss, especially since the game requires a lot of gold lately.
Second, killing the little ones is a really senseless grind, evokes the age of farming them for sepulcrum. It's equally boring - although killing the AB for 15-20 mins was boring as well.
Thirdly, when the boss spawns, you have to race for it, whoever gets there first can kill it.
All in all, this event no longer worth the time spent on it. If you low on glint/moonlight, do it, otherwise feel free to skip it.
Game box
The mini-games were already nerfed in the past: you could do them only for 7 days every month, and the rewards were reduced. Now the minigames got a huge, mindblasting multi-nerf.
First, you can do them even less times than before. 4 fishing, jewel hunt and cloud adventure per month.
Second, all the advancement players have achieved so far is deleted, gone forever. You were proud reaching lvl 37 in fishing or jewel hunt, and getting more loot than a lvl 1? No longer the case. Cloud adventure is no longer fun, there are no bosses, and sometimes you will even move backwards. Also, you have to fight yourself which is particularly stupid.
Also, loot has been nerfed beyong recognition. Fishing is especially painful, no more fashion cores or vip cards. But the shadow crystal and bounty scroll is still there :( No more bound balens and golden tree branches from cloud adventure. You can get nickles, but my exchange panel shows 4 completely useless items. Fortunately, this refresh every day, so something useful might come up eventually.
This change has one positive effect, though. It reduces the time you have to spend playing, which is a positive thing.
Holy forge nerf?
This is unconfirmed yet, but previously, chances for holy forge were public. 50%, 40% etc. Now these numbers have disappeared, chance is not displayed. And this never means anything good... Maybe nothing changed, but you never know :)
..
Exploit removal
Every game has some "legal" exploits which everyone uses and the devs don't care about it. When they finally get corrected, we always understand, but it's also a sad thing. The most severe is the way the event resets has changed. Previously, events reset at 5am, but new events were added at midnight. So if you were awake at midnight, you could do once-per-day events once more. This is no longer possible. The good side is, we can finally have enough sleep :)
Another glitch we are sad to see go, is the arena relog trick. If you were losing in arena, you could relog, and retain attempt. This is no longer possible, you get rewards in mail.
Spire NM
A harder version of something, with better loot, this can't go wrong, right? nah. It can go wrong every possible way.
1. The mobs have just too much hp. so it is insanely boring.
2. Eudaemons create a nice lag. So timing delphics to finish off debuffing bosses is very difficult.
3. The event is bugged, like you can't see boss buff, sometimes you can't use skills, sometimes you get 2 boss at once, etc.
4. The loot is not significantly better. Shadow crystals? c'mon.
So I will stick with choose-normal, start it, log off then finish it offline.
New eudaemon: Blood warrior
We really don't need more eudaemons, we have enough, thanks. It means only it takes ever more skill chests to max out the current ones.
New bugs
Sadly, we have a lot of new bugs. The most annoying is the reset problem: events don't reset, campfire don't reset, ToA don't reset, guildboss don't reset... Not to mention the bugs with the new "hide other object" feature. A patch is legal only if it wont make the game unplayable!
Summary
Although there are some really "bad changes", my overall experssion of this patch first was positive. Lately, my biggest problem with the game was that it is taking too much time. The dimension and sylph expedition changes save me a tremendous amount of time. Even some bad changes - I can play mini-games less often, and Atoll boss is so bad I wont do it anymore - save me more time. I also admit I had sleep problems: usually I like to go to sleep at 11:30-12pm, but because of the event reset, I often had to stay awake until 1am. Now I can sleep more :)
But, as I said, only my first expression was the patch is positive. But when I realized how disgusting ToK became, and I saw no events are working due to reset problems (all because the developers wanted to take away things from us, to reduce reward, to nerf, and in their haste they again ruin many things), then it became clear this patch is BAD. The game would have stayed better if they don't add it. Or even better, if they add ONLY the good things.
You know, my other favorite, Doomlord does not nerf. They just add things. Don't take away. Don't reduce rewards. Why these Chinese do it? I will never understand.
The good changes
Dimensions
After not one, but three nerfs, finally something good happened to dimensions! You can spend 10 energy to find the next post or the exit on the given level. This change is really great, I think the developers never came so happy to guess what would make players happy. Lately I hated dimensions with true passions, taking so much time, and so monotonic. But now, with this change, you can do dimensions really quick. Saves a ton of playing time, thanks, devs!
Sylph expedition
All in all, this is a fabolous change, if I had the opportunity to ask changes in sylph expedition, I would have asked for less. There is only one small issue with rewards: although the divine soul amount has been doubled, the new divine soul event gives reward only for lvl 5+ divine souls. This is a big nerf, it means with even double expedition rewards, players will get a loss less per month. But all in all, I'm satisfied, because this change saves me a lot of playing time as well each day.
Guild boss changes
I'm not sure what was the original goal with these changes. I think the boss was supposed to be unkillable until you do the mini-quests, but we just went there and killed it. The reward was a lot more fangs than before, so I consider this a positive change :)
Golden road changes
Bug corrections and other small changes
Unfortunately, it's a rare joy when one of the numerous bugs get corrected. And it seems this patch was no exception, the few bugs the developers corrected were mostly beneficial to the players (see below, Exploit removal). However, it seems eudaemon finally counts in WB, which is a positive change (can't confirm it 100% yet, but looks like so).
There are also many small changes, like new items for weekly pack (couldn't check this yet), new items on VIP wheel, some extra comfort functions, these are of course good.
The bad changes
Tower of kings "optimization"
In Wartune's language, optimization means "brutally nerfed" so I was afraid when I saw ToK have been optimized. Fortunately, I had a pleasant surprise - at first. in Tok NM, they replaced the eudaemon junk with mount training whips - of which, we never have enough. And the quantity is really nice, I got 368 from the first run. Also, our HP has increased by 400K during run, which certainly helped. There was one suspicious happening, though: all opponents were in one row. With an empty row behind them. I'm afraid that 2nd row will be filled with eudaemons the next day... and my fear came true. ToK with eudaemons is worse than I thought. MUCH worse. Its not only insane lag (the run took us 35 minutes) but the kids are tougher than their masters - prolly some bug, they have medallions too it seems. So while I first thought ToK is a good change, actually, it is a bad one. Very bad one. Bad enough to counter sylph expedition :(
Atoll boss
The Defend sylph atoll event has been completely revampled. Now you have to kill 30 little sylph (each drops 1-2 glint of magic, magical moonlight and sylph crystalloid), also sometimes a boss spawns, which dropped for me 10 adv sepu, 10 mystery rune.
Well, the first thing you will notice about this change, you can no longer get gold. Previously, one could get 15-25M gold daily from Atoll Boss. This is a huge loss, especially since the game requires a lot of gold lately.
Second, killing the little ones is a really senseless grind, evokes the age of farming them for sepulcrum. It's equally boring - although killing the AB for 15-20 mins was boring as well.
Thirdly, when the boss spawns, you have to race for it, whoever gets there first can kill it.
All in all, this event no longer worth the time spent on it. If you low on glint/moonlight, do it, otherwise feel free to skip it.
Game box
First, you can do them even less times than before. 4 fishing, jewel hunt and cloud adventure per month.
Second, all the advancement players have achieved so far is deleted, gone forever. You were proud reaching lvl 37 in fishing or jewel hunt, and getting more loot than a lvl 1? No longer the case. Cloud adventure is no longer fun, there are no bosses, and sometimes you will even move backwards. Also, you have to fight yourself which is particularly stupid.
Also, loot has been nerfed beyong recognition. Fishing is especially painful, no more fashion cores or vip cards. But the shadow crystal and bounty scroll is still there :( No more bound balens and golden tree branches from cloud adventure. You can get nickles, but my exchange panel shows 4 completely useless items. Fortunately, this refresh every day, so something useful might come up eventually.
This change has one positive effect, though. It reduces the time you have to spend playing, which is a positive thing.
Holy forge nerf?
..
Exploit removal
Every game has some "legal" exploits which everyone uses and the devs don't care about it. When they finally get corrected, we always understand, but it's also a sad thing. The most severe is the way the event resets has changed. Previously, events reset at 5am, but new events were added at midnight. So if you were awake at midnight, you could do once-per-day events once more. This is no longer possible. The good side is, we can finally have enough sleep :)
Another glitch we are sad to see go, is the arena relog trick. If you were losing in arena, you could relog, and retain attempt. This is no longer possible, you get rewards in mail.
Spire NM
1. The mobs have just too much hp. so it is insanely boring.
2. Eudaemons create a nice lag. So timing delphics to finish off debuffing bosses is very difficult.
3. The event is bugged, like you can't see boss buff, sometimes you can't use skills, sometimes you get 2 boss at once, etc.
4. The loot is not significantly better. Shadow crystals? c'mon.
So I will stick with choose-normal, start it, log off then finish it offline.
New eudaemon: Blood warrior
We really don't need more eudaemons, we have enough, thanks. It means only it takes ever more skill chests to max out the current ones.
New bugs
Sadly, we have a lot of new bugs. The most annoying is the reset problem: events don't reset, campfire don't reset, ToA don't reset, guildboss don't reset... Not to mention the bugs with the new "hide other object" feature. A patch is legal only if it wont make the game unplayable!
Summary
Although there are some really "bad changes", my overall experssion of this patch first was positive. Lately, my biggest problem with the game was that it is taking too much time. The dimension and sylph expedition changes save me a tremendous amount of time. Even some bad changes - I can play mini-games less often, and Atoll boss is so bad I wont do it anymore - save me more time. I also admit I had sleep problems: usually I like to go to sleep at 11:30-12pm, but because of the event reset, I often had to stay awake until 1am. Now I can sleep more :)
But, as I said, only my first expression was the patch is positive. But when I realized how disgusting ToK became, and I saw no events are working due to reset problems (all because the developers wanted to take away things from us, to reduce reward, to nerf, and in their haste they again ruin many things), then it became clear this patch is BAD. The game would have stayed better if they don't add it. Or even better, if they add ONLY the good things.
You know, my other favorite, Doomlord does not nerf. They just add things. Don't take away. Don't reduce rewards. Why these Chinese do it? I will never understand.
