Chicken leg and ham chest

I post this to make sure others dont fall into the same trap as me. Check out these graphics:

One is "chicken leg" (an item you get after tending to others campfires" the other is "ham chest", the current "chest" from hot events.

You see the similarilities? One is kind of mirror of the other. When a chest looks like the food you get somewhere else, accidents happen. Like, when I use all food after campfires, I open the event chests too. I post this so this accident doesn't happen to you. Chests should look like chests.

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The Spire nerf

Hi, I would like to share you a warning about a recent "silent nerf". I'm not sure when it went live, but probably the last patch. It's about spire.

Previously, you could start a spire run, turn off the computer, and then get the reward chests in your mail. Since spire is pretty long and boring, this was an ideal way to "blitz it". Lately, I check my mail only once every few days, so I didn't notice immediately - but I had no spire chests there from the previous day. So this thing is no longer working. I don't know if it is some conscious nerf from their part in their senseless nerfing frenzy, or simply a cron died out on their server and no one noticed.

But the point is, now if you want to get the full reward for spire, you have to leave your computer on, and you must be online when you finish. (You can still do it afk, just don't log out). I know that with a team of 4 medusa now you can even blast through spire nightmare non-afk and complete it, and it does not even take a horribly long time. But for me, it is better to get 16 spire nm chest by spending 1 minute on it, than getting 24 in 12-15 minutes :)

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Advanced henna and knighthood

Lately I see a lot of people in Wartune who have reached knighthood. It means still a lot of players have a trust in this game's future to spend money. It's good, I wish the devs would share that optimism :)

So let's see how the math works out:

Normal henna

You can get 300 normal henna per day if you check your henna lab in the morning and in the evening. if you do it a bit more intense (do a third run of 1-4 hours, and also raid) you can get a bit more but imho it doesn't worth the effort.

When you check the tatoo tab, it will say normal henna gives 1-9 stat, adv. gives 21-39. This is not completely true. After a stat on one slot exceeds 200, you will get only 1-8. This decreases further, at 300 it will be only 1-7 etc. For this reason, you should use adv. henna only when you already have enough to reach knighthood immediately. Until then, use only normal henna for optimal gain. Sadly, this also means there is no such as "free" knighthood yet. You can't attain the required stat just with normal henna in a reasonable time. 

If you were doing henna lab twice a day, and didn't use adv. henna yet, your stat must be somewhere +200-250 per slot. In one month, you will earn 9000, which gives about +40 per slot. Next month you get a bit less, next month a bit less again. For knighthood, your goal is about 1500 per slot. 

How much henna is needed for knighthood
Let's suppose you are willing to cough up some balens, and want to reach knighthood in the near future (ie. 2-3 months). In that time, you can attain like 2800-3000 total stats from normal henna, so you need 9000 more from advanced henna.
Since every 100 adv. henna used will give you approx. +30 stats, you need 30000 adv. henna in total.

Advanced henna

So far, the cheapest way to get advanced henna was wait for an event where you could exchange 120 chest for 1000 adv. henna. This way you could get 1000 adv. henna for free per event. You could also spend balens on the chests: with 2k coupons, you can buy 129 chest for 3000 balens. So if you spent 100 USD, you could get about 10k adv. henna (including prizes from the 3 spender events as well). So the price is approx. 1 balen per adv. henna. Do not buy adv. henna in shop, where it's much more expensive.

With the proper event, expert tatoo I-II, you could boost the amount of adv. henna you got. If you spend 2 x 100 USD in two henna events, and also get some more for free chests, you can get the minimum necessary 22700 adv. henna, then use it this way:

expert tatoo 1. day: use 10.000 adv henna, get as bonus 1900+1200.
expert tatoo 2. day: use 10.000 adv. henna, get as bonus 1900+1500
expert tatoo 3. day: use 5.000 adv henna to get 800, then spend the rest.
With this you will reach the 30k used, where you get 4000 more as reward - so prolly you don't even need to wait 2-3 months if you do it this way.

As an alternate, you might decide to spend only 100 USD, but then you need like 5-6 months to reach knighthood. 

Of course they might alter anything, might remove expert tatoo event, might remove chest exchange, and might add unlimited adv. henna reward in events in 3 months, you never know :) 

But all in all, this is a much cheaper BR boost than previous ones.

*** And what to do with chests ***
Personally, I will grab each day the 10 beast soul chest, and exchange 200 event chest for 100 hand of god. Too bad there is no more sophisticated exchange, like 1 hand for 2 chest...

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What to do with Ham Chests

Among all the late Wartune nerfs, we get another evil twist: the long-awaited sepulcrum and mahra event is back, and the amount of chest rewarded is still the same - however, you can't exchange these chests for anything useful - no adv. henna, no cloth set, no mount.

So what to do with them? First of all, check the contents: eudaemon junk (completely, utterly useless unless you are a new player), mount hoof, pure refine crystals (even more useless) and as rare drops, cloth pieces  - useless, since you can't get the title without the wings. As additional rare drops, you can also get cloth shards. But the problem is, the cloth shard exchange list is not updated since a while, and instead, they offer the newer cloth sets for a lot of chests (ie. balens).

So let's check the available exchanges:

Maybe you can consider exchanging 600 for an orange seal, then sacrifice it for adv. sepulcrum. Also getting a purple seal for 100 chest can be okay if you still need it for some reason. Here is the second exchange:

If you need components for a bi-sylph, and either willing to spend 600 USD on it, or hope that getting the first version will be free somewhere in the future, you can grab these components as well.
Also, there is the third, basic exchange, where you can get beads of influence, and the 3 cloth (without wing).
And ofc there is the above mentioned sacrifice trick, so if you need adv sepulcrum still, and got 600 chest, you can  exchange it for adv sepulcrum (but not a great ratio, 160-200 adv sepulcrum for 600 chests).

Whatever you choose, it's a kind of gamble, hoping for a future change in the game - either the first version of bi-sylph becoming free, or cloth shard exchange list expanded eventually. I think the later one has a higher probability of happening, but it is good to prepare for the first version as well, so this is what I will do:

Buy some emblem of wind and water, and open the rest (except for 90), for the cloth shards. Depending how many of the 3 different cloth pieces I got, I will exchange the remaining chests to complete the set, and open the rest. Update: I did this (exchanged 200 for wind&water emblem, opened 400 chests - got 100 cloth shards, and 5 cloth, excluding helmet).

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Chicken leg and ham chest

I post this to make sure others dont fall into the same trap as me. Check out these graphics:

One is "chicken leg" (an item you get after tending to others campfires" the other is "ham chest", the current "chest" from hot events.

You see the similarilities? One is kind of mirror of the other. When a chest looks like the food you get somewhere else, accidents happen. Like, when I use all food after campfires, I open the event chests too. I post this so this accident doesn't happen to you. Chests should look like chests, imho...

Read More

The Spire nerf

Hi, I would like to share you a warning about a recent "silent nerf". I'm not sure when it went live, but probably the last patch. It's about spire.

Previously, you could start a spire run, turn off the computer, and then get the reward chests in your mail. Since spire is pretty long and boring, this was an ideal way to "blitz it". Lately, I check my mail only once every few days, so I didn't notice immediately - but I had no spire chests there from the previous day. So this thing is no longer working. I don't know if it is some conscious nerf from their part in their senseless nerfing frenzy, or simply a cron died out on their server and no one noticed.

But the point is, now if you want to get the full reward for spire, you have to leave your computer on, and you must be online when you finish. (You can still do it afk, just don't log out). I know that with a team of 4 medusa now you can even blast through spire nightmare non-afk and complete it, and it does not even take a horribly long time. But for me, it is better to get 16 spire nm chest by spending 1 minute on it, than getting 24 in 12-15 minutes :)

Read More

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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