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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Pumpkin Pie pack analysis

I just realized it was 9 days since I last wrote a blog entry. One main reason was, I traveled with my wife to a salsa weekend to a hotel. More than 150 people, dancing all day, for several days. I can't explain how much positive energy it gives. And then, when I came home, I heard about the terrorist attacks. and I was completely shocked. To me, this sounded like the casus belli for the 3rd World War. I know if all people on Earth would dance, things like this would never happen. 

But I guess thats no the introduction you wanted to read. Also you don't want to read about my ranting how many good friends have left Wartune lately. If I could have a Wartune-related WISH one day, it would be a chat with the game manager, to ask him, WHY? Why increase the required time to play the game with each patch (removal of DI recovery)? Why increase the lag with each patch (eudaemons added to ToK teams)? Why nerf, remove rewards with each patch? Why things which worked previously are not working anymore? I just made a TON of resist crystals - and can't claim any rewards under hot events. How they defect even things which always worked?

When we are unhappy with the negative things, always try to be happy with the positive ones. Late events award a lot of free chests. I collected 579 free pumpkin pie chests, and the question is the same as always, what to do with them?

This mount comes with title again, so it's a nice BR boost. You need 800 pumpkin chests for that. The only way to get so much is spending balens: Buy 2 x 129 chests for 3k balens (using 2x 2k coupon), claim the rewards for the 3 spender events. Thats a very good BR for your balens - that is, if you still want to spend balens and already have your main sylph's equipment enchanted to max.

If your main sylph still lacks orange equipment, I recommend going for the gift of gods instead (even blessings, if you don't even have purples). Again: only if your MAIN sylph lacks them. Getting better equipment for a secondary sylph, which you use only in CW and sylph arena (both with irrelevant rewards) does not worth expending chests.

If your main sylph has orange equipment already, and you don't want to spend balens on getting the mount, then I recommend getting the cloth set. Hope you have at least 210 pies. Exchange 120 for a wing, and then open those which are in excess to 90. If you lucky, you get some cloth from there. If not, exchange them.

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Tower of Kings shadow soul exploit

A player posted a complaint on R2Games Wartune forum yesterday, explaining the following:

There is an exploit which can get players an unlimited amount of shadow souls from Tower of Kings. These soul seals can be used to synth an unlimited amount of Netherwing dragons, which, since the last patch, can be sacrificed for an unlimited amount of beast souls. And as such, players who are aware of this exploit, can get ALL mounts for FREE. 

This is (was) the biggest exploit in Wartune's history so far. Most mounts you can get only for real money, and they are very expensive. I know, most of the time I spent balens, I did it to get a new mount. And now, some players could get these for free. How many knew this exploit? 10? 100? 1000s? Only the Wartune devs know.

When they added the ability to turn mounts into beast souls, I told myself, o-o, this is a dangerous thing, I smell potential exploit here. And I also congratulated to the genious solution they found to prevent exploit: you can't buy a permanent mount you already have. When I read in the last patch message that this limitation is no longer, I knew this can go wrong.

The Wartune devs acted quite fast. Servers went down today afternoon to cure this patch. So it seems, when it is IMPORTANT, R2Games CAN contact the developers, who can act fast. But then there is another question: when there is a very serious problem, which could be corrected similarly fast, but it is negative to the playing experience, why does it take months to correct it? Lord of Time ring a bell? Ancient Beast shards sold for balens and non-exchangeable since 6 months? The list goes on.

I'm really curious how the exploit worked. I'm also very, very curious what they will gonna do now. My guess would be they won't do anything, but you never know. Every game has bugs, and as such, some exploits, but this one is really large scale. And yeah, I can bang my head into the wall again, because when my mail expired, there was some 5k shadow soul in it...

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Wartune patch 5.1 good vs bad

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. 

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Wartune Broom exchange

Lately, box events have improved a lot in Wartune. First, we can get a lot of boxes for free. Second, the box itself often has valuable contents. And third, there are multiple exchanges under hot events, so you can always find something highly useful to trade your boxes for.

So, what to do with the current Broom boxes?

First, let's check the contents:

• 150k gold - I always say gold is useless, but lately we need a lot of gold. 
• Eudaemon stuff - these are kinda useless, don't make much difference in combat (I don't even use in eudaemon in pvp, to reduce lag, and to be immune to chaos rune), and you can get a lot in ToK and in Eud arena anyway. 
• Hoof is useless.
• But Pure refinement crystal, now that it no longer drops in mpd, thats a good item. 
• Cloth are not so super-rare from chests lately, so if you open a few hundred you will prolly get a set. 
• The mount, forget that, obviously the usual 0,1% chance have been reduced a lot lately. Beast souls are always cool, but you will get only 1 per 3-4 chests.

All in all, opening chests seems looks a good last-resort plan because of the beast souls, purify crystals, cloth and small chance for mount.

Now let's see the exchanges. We have 3 options. 

1.) you can exchange 200 chest for 300 specific skill chests. -5% chance of chaos or amnesia is a cool thing, but 200 chest seems too high price for me. I don't recomment this.
2.) Eudaemon advancement exchange. You can get here artifact / halidom components, and eudaemon stuff. I don't recommend these, because you need only a limited amount, and you can get enough for free. I have already orange artifact / halidom, which I can upgrade to red when I have the gold, and I never spent balen on it. About the ud resist stuffs, as I said, you get a lot for free, it wont do much in combat, and eventually it will be capped too.
3.) Exchange for cloth or mount. Cloth and mount is usually unique, even if you can get them later, they are still costly. Also, these cloth and mount comes with a title, which gives massive boost. So if you have 800 free chests (I got those from holy forge, resist gem event etc), grab the mount. If you have less, exchange 120 for the wing, and if you still have more than 90, start opening them. You will get some useful stuff (see above), and in worst case, exchange for the missing ones in the hot events exchange.

As usual, I do not recommend spending balens on the chests. If you did all events to max, you can have a free mount. If you have less, you surely have at least 210, so you can have a free set of cloth.

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Halloween exchange

Wartune has some decent exchanges lately, and also they give out a lot of free chests. So it seems we are again in some kind of a golden age :) It's hard to decide how to use the chests. Lately, they always have a normal exchange, and some premium exchange, with extra items, like now:

Previously, they gave 120 beads for 30 chests, which was already a great deal (4 bead for 1 chest), now this is even better, 7 bead for 1 chest. If you low on influence, grab this deal, it's far the best. However, if your influence is already decent (lvl 15+) then don't do this. Wild shop and guild battle prize giving a lot of free beads, so it's just a matter of months before you maximize your influence anyway, and then beads will be a dead weight.
If you are a relatively new player with low runes, the 2000 runestones is a good deal too. For some veterans, 2000 whip is useful too, because whip is never enough - but please note that this deal is far from exceptional, they often sell the whips for 2 balen apiece.
If none of the above is an option for you, and you have a few hundred chests, I say just open them. The contents are fair (cloth shards, lvl 3 gems) and there is a good chance you can grab a full set of the new cloth. I was wondering for a while to either get whips or open chests, but I will rather open.

*** UPDATE ***
A third exchange is coming tomorrow for cemetery chests:

Very good one, if you didn't use your chests yet, I recommend saving them for this :)


There was one more thing I wanted to tell you, refering to my previous post about combat strategy. If you do everything right, you can win even vs a superior opponent. In class wars, my 1-star Medusa beat a 5-star Frigga:

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R2Games SWAG surprise

If you play Wartune on the R2Games platform, I would like to call your attention to a nice promotion, called "R2Games SWAG surprise":

http://www.r2games.com/activity/task/

There are simple tasks which you can do for 5 days, and you can win different rewards for doing so. Of course it looks a bit rigged, my first 3 rolls were win ("50 USD pack, 80 USD pack, t-shirt") then the remaining 9 rolls were you "Thank you". But, this is a completely free gift, so I'm happy with whatever I get :) The T-shirt I didn't claim, first, because it was ugly, and 2nd, it needed all my personal data (address, phone number etc) I do have enough T-shirt so I don't have to share that for one more with R2Games. (And I wanted to be nice to save them the mailing cost :))

The packs are:

"50 USD pack"
800k gold, 80 mahra, 10 tenacity mark, 1-day vip card, 5x lvl 4-10 gem pack, 80 sepulcrum, 2x200 balen discount ticket.

"80 USD pack"
1M gold, 60 adv.mahra, 20 tenacity mark, 1-day vip, 10x lvl 4-10 gem pack, 60 adv. sepu, 1 x 2000 balen discount ticket.

Of course the discount tickets you have to save in mail or they become useless in 24 hours.

Update: It seems this event sucks as much as every one... I just hoped they could do something rightm but they couldn't. You get Wartune codes only on first day. On other days, you get codes for different games. So if  you don't play those (and who have the time to play 5 games at once?) then the rest of the promotion is worthless for you.

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