First impression of Wartune patch 4.0

When a patch bring a lot of new things, I am always excited and afraid at the same time. Excited since I like to explore, afraid since patch is most of the time more lag, bugs, and lately, massive nerfs. So here is my first impression after 1 day:

Good features

• Elemental forest mpd. This is a real challenge, with good rewards, I like it. Nirvana was a disappointment when it came out, we beat nm easily on the first day. We beat this as well, but it was hard (Please note that the buff from electro boss CAN be dispelled!)
• Farm. Farm looks like fun! More things to do, but does not require significantly more time. I only regret that energizing other players tree is more clumbersome.
• World boss. You can hide other players, a little help with the lag. Another, probably unintended feature... the 2^nd WB couldn't kill anyone. Was fun to survive again :) Same with guild boss.
• Improved login and guild wheel rewards, free mount in arena shop. It's cool :)
• Reduced tank time. Winner team needs only +5k points, so it ends easier (but it's easier to miss a kill and lose the chest).
• Item stacking. I have seen mount hoof can be stacked now to 9999, maybe there are other items too. Still don't understand why they couldn't do this to ALL items. An 5^thpage is also handy, but it gets harder to oversee all my items.
• Necro and Purgatory maze now free.Great! Just be careful to unclick the crypt key box each time, because otherwise you lose 3 keys. Too bad these are not in the devotion list, that list is a good checklist to see what did I do and what not.
• Increased gold capacity. Another great change, now I can save up more gold for events like holy forge (if they ever add vulcan's hammer), and can still gain gold via town/gold mines.
• ToK chests give Eudaemon items as well. Loot upgrade for old events is always good, too bad they didn't do this for other events like sylph arena, gods descent, duel arena etc.

Bad features

• Dimension nerf. Dimensions now give much less resist bonus. I understand this was necessary so people spend balen on upgrading resist crystals further. Still, after the first nerf the bonus getting nerfed again is a proof of the designer's inability to do his job. I wouldn't be surprised that after people spend a truckload of balens getting lvl 10-12 resist crystals, resist itself will be nerfed. And a set of lvl 12 resist crystals giving the SAME bonus as a set of lvl 7 now.
• Dimension plunder. Now you can attack and steal other players dimensions. I did not try this feature yet, but it can generate a lot of hatred.
• Sacrifice. Something went very wrong here. I opened 50 dimension chests I saved up, and I did not get a single offering. I also wandered around in 3 entire dimensions, and did not find a single „Dragon Den” which is supposed to drop these offerings. So these are either super-rare (then why the daily offering limit?) or it's not in the game, and they will sell them for balens later.
• Sylph arena nerf. Now you get 20-50 points per win, instead of 200-250. But the point limits to reach the next category did not change. So reaching diamond is impossible now. Either points will not reset at the end of the week, or something went very wrong here.
• God's descent reward nerf. They should have upgraded the reward for God's descent since a long. Instead, they reduce it! What a twisted thinking...
• Eudaemons. Eudaemons brought even more lag to the game, and this is something we do not desire. A million new way to spend balens, while not making the game more enjoyable or fun, I dislike this addition.
• Goodies link. While I could enjoy this mini-game, the lack of reward makes it completely worthless. If you pay attention, you don't need the bombs (they just find a pair for you), and you don't really need the shuffle either (the table shuffles automatically if there are no matches left), still, time is a limiting factor. If you want to go anywhere, you have to keep buying stamina for balens. I got the 3^rd chest by spending 200 bound balens (the first chest which contain something what looks remotely useful), but it was really just a waste of time, I won't play this minigame again unless I have a lot of free time.
• Minigames (jewel hunt, fishing, goodies link, underground palace) alternating every week. One of the most fun things I still enjoy in Wartune is jewel hunt. I do not find fishing such a fun, but still, it can provide fashion cores, so I would hate to lose that. I see they are trying to reduce playtime for us, but this wasn't a good idea.
• Blood Inferno. I heard it became harder, boss stunning people for rounds etc... I couldn't check it, we are not doing BI because the reward sucks. So if it got harder, with the same loot, it's just a reason to continue avoiding it.

Also I am missing some things which I expected from a large patch like this. Namely, a way to finally get vulcan hammers, empire truncheons, advanced mahra and sepulcrum. Also, some way to exchange the useless items for something useful. Looks like we have to wait longer...

All in all, I do not have positive impression about this patch. The good things are shadowed by the nerfs, unnecessary changes, and poorly designed new features. I wish the developers would sometimes communicate with their players via votes and questionnaires. This way they could make a much better game.

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Wartune Patch 4.0 information

There are already some forums with information about the coming patch, now R2Games posted an official summary as well:

http://forum.r2games.com/showthread.php?169766-Guide-Patch-4.0-Part-One

I try not to make a similar listing of features here. Rather, just a simple to-do and how-to-do list for the optimizer players like me so we don't miss anything. Unfortunately, I do not have a high level character on S1, so I have only what I collected from forums and heard from others. Please feel free to correct if I'm wrong about something.

New multi-player dungeon, Elemental Forest

It seems the nightmare version is a real challenge. The first boss is a pair, one is immune to magic, the other is immune to physical damage. You have to kill them within 1 turn otherwise they revive. The strategy here is that you keep dealing about the same damage to them, and when they are low on health, you finish them off together.

You can achieve this best by using 2 magic and 2 physical damage based sylph, with AoEs. The best setup is 2 Hades and 2 Apollo. Hercules is not so great, since it have only single target damages, and you can't control which boss you hit. Continue AoEing the bosses - if one is dieing faster, those 2 players must hold back - and when they are on like half bar, release the Delphic AoEs.

The second boss is one of 3 random bosses. It seems there is no special trick here, they are just though, you need a decent BR, deal a lot of damage spiced with heals, and pay attention to chaos/amnesia/bleed.

The main reward here is getting the 2 new equipments, crest and halidom.

Farm

Looks like to be fun, will need to toy around with it a bit too see what's the optimal play there. You can make items from what you grow on the farm, like Vulcan Packs, mahra, whip, eudaemon stuff and tea which gives temporal boost. I will definitely try to make the vulcan packs here.

Dimensions

One of the few features in Wartune which I like as it is and wouldn't change is Dimensions. Exploration, loot, main rewards, some tactic and strategy all included. It was nerfed once, which was a really bad move, now it seems the whole thing will be messed up even more. There is really little information about the new features, one thing which catched my eye is now that you can attack other players dimensions and as a result, they can lose it. I know Wartune was always a partially PVP game, but the best PVP is where the loser does not lose anything he worked hard for. I remember the early days when just a simple plunder created so much hate. Then came amethyst mine, and in a few weeks the whole server set into a silent non-attack agreement. Prolly the same is gonna happen with dimension war pvp, but this depends on the reward as well. People will either farm their alts, or leave this altogether. And maybe farm some old enemies :)

Eudaemons

The kid system, kind of 2^ndsylph, brings us more lag and more BR. There is an excellent guide about the Chinese version on Cosmos blog, I think what we get is about the same, just without the period of growing the baby. You can develop, equip, refine etc. this new „sylph” like your previous ones. Initially, you have to make a decision if you want a make, knight or archer eudaemon. It seems they have the same skills as the main Wartune classes. So for me, an archer is an obvious choice - I always envied their incendiary shot, and deep freeze can be helpful in Purgatory Maze still. Besides that, this game is always about damage, and archers are supposed to be top damage dealers :) Knight kids can rage steal which is not so good since the combat is decided in the awaken phase. They have apollo's shield which can be good if your regular daily party does not have a knight. Achers and knights will prolly take the mage eudaemon for its healing skills.

Other features and changes

Goodies link: I like jewel hunt, so I guess I will like this mini-game as well.

New mount in arena shop: Save up 3000 league insignia to buy a green leopard.

Free purgatory and necropolis: Now I have to pay attention to do these each day as well for the free loot. Especially since the Purgatory is now dropping 2^ndsylph evolve materials.

New items in mystery shop. Just check all shops imho, crypt shop, arena shop, guild shop etc. to see what's new.

Last resist slot: I read that now the last resist slot is available, for 1000 balens. Will be a nice boost.

Resist and will crystals can go up to lvl 12: This poses many questions. Prolly this will mean an inflation of resist crystals on the long term (I was a fool to buy 2 x lvl5 for 6-6 coins of ancestry). I doubt that will crystals can keep up with resist crystals, so with dimensions, people will be able to build a high resist vs a specific element. You remember when I defeated R4GE in BG (and many others complained too that people with 200k less BR beating them). Now this is gonna happen again.

Clothes can go up to lvl 12: Good luck charms need a serious inflation to keep up with this, but I guess that will happen :)

Divinity souls go up to lvl12: I still not recommend doing these unless there is a hot event reward for it.

5^thinventory page for balens. (If you opened the previous ones.) Let's hope it's not more expensive than the 4th page.

Tank mount. Tank now awards mount shards which you can exchange for a 30-day temporal mount. A lot of people don't do tank lately, but now maybe it worth it again.

Astral.Now there is button do to a lot of astral once for 

VIP6+. (But still possible that it is bugged like the previous version, will need testing).

Daily devotion. Some items are changed, like mahra instead of luck stone. Also you get more dimension chests for daily log ins (4 basic per month + 1 intermediate), so stop doing battles for basic dimension shards in basic dimensions (if you didn't do so yet).

Guild wheel. Can give now mahra, sepulcrum and runestone. So if you don't bother doing this, now it's time to do again.

ToK chest. Should have saved up these, but I didn't. Now they will give eudaemon stuff.

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