15 (was: 14) Chapters in 472 (was: 412) days - zero tech lock is possible!

[Deleted User - 3932582]

Alright, so I just wrapped up Constructs (courtesy of an unexpected "Buy 20 KP" quest). With that, I technically have beaten the game, at least for a short time before Chapter 15 will go live. I have started from zero in August 2018, and it did take me 412 days to complete all 14 chapters. Which is slightly less than 30 days per chapter, with 1-5 taking a bit less than that, and guest race chapters usually taking 33-34 days each (Constructs is a little longer).

More importantly, I have managed to achieve my original objective of having zero tech lock over the whole duration - not a single actual KP was spent on AWs, and no generated KP was wasted due to capped KP bar (perhaps a few times when Inspiring Meditation expired at night time). All this was done in entirely free-to-play mode, so no actual cash was spent on the city.

It was not an easy feat, but now we know that it is possible. I know not everyone cares about such a goal, or is interested in speedrunning through the game, but for those who do I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. I have collected a lot of stats from my gameplay over that time

Cheers!

 

[DeletedUser]

Good job nice to see that the endgame content is doably for patient new players on old servers too. i am abit of a speed runner myself if you ask in my FS, but i havent really kept track on time, but elven stats tells me its about 220 days and im now in woodelves. so maybe ill try to beat your record

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

With or without portal profits and with or without completing all story quests?

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

With or without portal profits and with or without completing all story quests?

With some PPs - without PPs no tech lock is not possible, at the very least for S&D chapter (unless you do extremely low KP intake, so basically no tournaments, no KP buildings, no buying etc - but what would be the point in that?)

I have completed most of the story quests, even if it was not very efficient. E.g. in Elementals it is detrimental to upgrade Manifestations past L1 if you have any decent number of them, but quests asked for some upgrades and I did them. But when quests started to jeopardize the rest of the progress I stopped at those. I believe the first such quest was in Amuni, where you need to deliver 60K worth of T5. I also knew that I was not going to build Temple of Sustainability (there was no need) so I knew I won't be able to complete those subsequent quests as well. Amuni quests I could have completed if I really wanted that as a goal (could have gained more T5 with timeboosts + MMs as I had plenty of seeds), but building another temple would have required a lot of extra PPs and upgrading Goldsmiths and Trapmakers to the max needed more T5, for no gain whatsoever, so that's where I stopped.

For Constructs the real blocking quest is "Have six Manufactories at level 25 or higher". I have exactly zero manus at L25+, and have no intention of adding any as that will directly jeopardize my progress. I was actually contemplating building 6x temporary L25 manus just for this quest after Constructs are completed, but it doesn't seem that I will have time to do that.

 

[chgobob33]

Welcome to another free finished for now group!, I finished several months ago but started several months before you. Also a totally free player so yes can be done . I did have some minor tech lock. I wonder how many completely free players have made to the current end?

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

Welcome to another free finished for now group!, I finished several months ago but started several months before you. Also a totally free player so yes can be done . I wonder how many completely free players have made to the current end?

I don't think it is too difficult to get to the end for free as long as you take your time - doing it quickly is another story. Basically, the way I see it, there is easy, fast and free - and you can pick any 2 of them

 

[Socrates28]

I began in July 15, 2018 and finished last week. However I did spend money (mostly on events) and still enjoyed the game. I congradulate you on doing it for free. Well done.
I did finish all the quest lines except for Amuni and I did stop for almost 6 weeks preparing for that chapter and for Constructs.

 

[mucksterme]

I don't think it is too difficult to get to the end for free as long as you take your time - doing it quickly is another story. Basically, the way I see it, there is easy, fast and free - and you can pick any 2 of them

this is the thing when people talk about "having to spend money"
i do buy some diamonds, but i spend them all on speeding things up because of my impatience
if you aren't worried about going fast you do not have to spend a penny

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

this is the thing when people talk about "having to spend money"
i do buy some diamonds, but i spend them all on speeding things up because of my impatience
if you aren't worried about going fast you do not have to spend a penny

I have bought diamonds and used them for things that indirectly speed up the game, such as leveling the builder's hut, leveling the magic academy, and buying premium expansions, though I never spent diamonds, that I can remember, directly on speeding up productions or upgrades, etc.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

this is the thing when people talk about "having to spend money"
i do buy some diamonds, but i spend them all on speeding things up because of my impatience
if you aren't worried about going fast you do not have to spend a penny

One thing I have to give a credit for to the designers is that the game is indeed entirely playable from start to finish without spending actual cash, if one is so inclined. Pretty much all freemium games claim that, and even though it might technically be true, in most cases you can feel early on that your progress is severely impeded if you don't spend real cash. Something like if diamonds in Elvenar would not be available unless you pay. You would still technically be able to complete the game, but good luck with that with L2 Magic Academy, 2 Builders and no extra expansions. That would be painful.

Elvenar managed to provide quite a challenging gameplay for my self-selected goals, walking the fine line between too easy and impossible. There was always a solution to every chapter, even though in many instances it was pretty close. Well, Chapter 15 may change that

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

There was always a solution to every chapter, even though in many instances it was pretty close. Well, Chapter 15 may change that

Chapter 15 hasn't changed that - it is (was?) possible to do zero techlock run of the Elvenar chapter:

Again, in entirely free-to-play mode. All 15 chapters were done back to back, so no stockpiling in between chapters. The only gap was 8 days between me finishing Constructs and Elvenar chapter going live.

This was definitely the hardest chapter to prepare for. The biggest thing was that requirements were unknown until 2-3 weeks before playing it (i.e. when it hit Beta), so not much advanced preparation was possible. And the requirements ramped up dramatically comparing to previous chapters. Also, with doing chapters back to back I arrived to chapter 15 with some resources definitely on the low end: in particular space at 112 expansions and AW levels at 113.

There was some mad scramble for seed production during the last Autumn Zodiac event, but otherwise my hoarding habits over the course of the game helped a lot (PPs, timeboosts, MMs)

I still need to clean up optional expansion research, so this may take another 1-2 days.

Here are some stats:

# of days: 52
Portal Profits: 1180% (plus ~165% for optional expansion tech)
Timeboosts spent: 1136 hours
Sentient manus: 2xL24 T4 + 2xL24 T5 + 5xL24 T6
# of MM: probably about 250-300 (started with 239 and finished with 50 while gaining some over time from tournaments and NH)
Lowest population: -55K

 

[Risen Malchiah]

Impressive. I was delaying entry into ch 15 because of the massive demand for sentients on the trader, but seeing this make me more optimistic.

But am I seeing this right? You used 5 T3 sentient factories?? Now I see why you were at -55k.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

Impressive. I was delaying entry into ch 15 because of the massive demand for sentients on the trader, but seeing this make me more optimistic.

But am I seeing this right? You used 5 T3 sentient factories?? Now I see why you were at -55k.

Yep. Even with MM juicing it was barely enough. 4x may have worked, but probably wouldn't. I had the most abundant T6 on the server, so had to trade at 1.2-1.25:1 for soap. In the last few days prices skyrocketed to 1.4-1.5:1 at one point in time (luckily, I was done with soap by then). This was actually the sketchiest part - if you're planning on 1:1 same tier trades, it may not work out that way. So it is good that I had somewhat higher capacity than planned - I needed it to trade at premium. If I had rare T6 though I'd be cruising, with better than 1:1 trades instantly available.

There are ways to have less T6 manus. Production-wise, my 5xL24 is practically the same as 4xL27. But 4xL27 setup needs A LOT more pop. So if you run high pop density (mostly upgraded magic residences, VR3 etc) you can save some space and MMs there. It was much easier for me, even with limited space, to find extra 5x5 than all that pop. Plus, I didn't want to waste sentients for L25+ upgrades.

There are other ways to handle it, but for special circumstances. One person completed this chapter ahead of me, with 10K+ tournament points averages (so much higher KP inflow), and with only 4x T6. Well, he also has 650+ total AW levels (so seeds are not an issue) and L30 for both Simia and Timewarp Basically, if you have very low decay (high level Simia) and tons of seeds you can stockpile T6 the first half of the chapter where you don't need T6, then you don't need that much production output in the second part. I, unfortunately, was very tight on seeds, so even though I had all these manufactories, they were not active all at the same time. My T6 were mostly idle in the first part of the chapter, until I cleared T4 and T5 gates. If you can afford pop/space, you don't need 2/2/5 setup at the same time. You can probably start with 2/2/1 or so (may even go higher for T4/T5), and then switch to almost 0/0/5 (may keep some T4 if you want to do some residence upgrades in the meantime). I couldn't really do the switch halfway as I couldn't build/teleport anything with negative pop, had to build everything in advance

 

[DeletedUser21110]

Alright, so I just wrapped up Constructs (courtesy of an unexpected "Buy 20 KP" quest). With that, I technically have beaten the game, at least for a short time before Chapter 15 will go live. I have started from zero in August 2018, and it did take me 412 days to complete all 14 chapters. Which is slightly less than 30 days per chapter, with 1-5 taking a bit less than that, and guest race chapters usually taking 33-34 days each (Constructs is a little longer).

More importantly, I have managed to achieve my original objective of having zero tech lock over the whole duration - not a single actual KP was spent on AWs, and no generated KP was wasted due to capped KP bar (perhaps a few times when Inspiring Meditation expired at night time). All this was done in entirely free-to-play mode, so no actual cash was spent on the city.

It was not an easy feat, but now we know that it is possible. I know not everyone cares about such a goal, or is interested in speedrunning through the game, but for those who do I would be happy to answer any questions you may have. I have collected a lot of stats from my gameplay over that time

Cheers!

I can't exactly breakdown numbers as well as you @MinMax Gamer but I can say that I also started from zero on March 3rd, 2019 and I am currently 4 nodes shy of unlocking Halflings. I take it with Halflings and sentient goods is about where the real struggle starts? I am just over 9 months old and hope to be done with chapter 15 by the time chapter 16 comes out. I am on a mission to speedrun the game as you mentioned.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

I take it with Halflings and sentient goods is about where the real struggle starts?

I can't say there was a real struggle until the last chapter. Some of the chapters were easier to plan for (e.g. Elementals), some are more difficult (e.g. Halflings, as you couldn't stockpile on seed production buildings ahead of time + dynamic settlement production can be tricky). The biggest problem I can see on the going forward basis would be availability of stuff in the events. If they clamp down on rewards as it is in the current Winter Magic event, things may become really rough. E.g. when I saw seeds requirements for chapter 15, I went all in and snatched 15x Ponds of Autumn in the Autumn Zodiac event. Without that, my run would not be possible, and getting 15 of the same dailies in the current event format would be a much more difficult affair.

On the other hand, Portal Profits might be easier to come by due to infinite Trading Outposts (e.g. Fire Phoenix) and Spire runs. This may allow skating on until chapter 15.