Beginning Chapters

[Myne]

I started a new city just a few days ago. Human this time. I can see why folks quit during the first chapters of the game. I am at the point below and ready to scream. Boring as hell.
I don't recall being this bored with my first city, but I have slept a few times since I started it. Surely there is something the devs can do to keep folks engaged. Suggestions?

 

[Moho]

Suggestions? Fellowships need active people, who make a lot of points during the Tournament and/or in the Spire. Join such fellowship fast and kindly ask them to offer you the goods you need to cater the Tournament. Clear the provinces you need fast. With these resources, you'll get to Chapter 3 in about two weeks and you'll be able to do the Spire as well. I know this from experience, but you may want to follow a different path.

A human city, heh? Humans are the best.

 

[Yogi Dave]

Google
Elvenar Basics - simple game-play tricks to speed up your Chapter 1 game

The YouTube video is from Jan. '17 so things may have changed a bit. It says you can finish ch 1 in 24h. I didn't use it since I was already past ch 1 when I found it, but even out of date, it can probably help you a good bit.
However, your knowing this won't help others who just start the game.

 

[Myne]

yes they need active people. But when you are just starting out it can be a challenge to find a good fellowship. They are working on that over in another thread.
But when you are starting out you face this very quickly....

 

[Myne]

Google
Elvenar Basics - simple game-play tricks to speed up your Chapter 1 game

The YouTube video is from Jan. '17 so things may have changed a bit. It says you can finish ch 1 in 24h. I didn't use it since I was already past ch 1 when I found it, but even out of date, it can probably help you a good bit.
However, your knowing this won't help others who just start the game.

I did finish chapter 1 in 24 hrs. But I am at a pretty substantial sticking point. Cannot progress on the map really until I can upgrade armories and barracks and upgrade manufactories. Armories are locked until research is done. Barracks are unattainable until 500 of each resource is reached unless you spend diamonds. Manufactories are locked due to high resources needed as well.

I will reach them, but my point is will a newcomer sit for days and just grind resources in a new game to progress at such a low level? If it were me, I would get the impression the whole game was this way.

 

[Myne]

I have 11 workshops, six manufactories.
I have resorted to using the horrible wholesaler

 

[MaidenFair]

I must have done something drastically different than other people starting out. If only I could remember what it was, haha! As a total beginner, with no previous cities (not counting the roughly week and a half I played several years ago), I got through chapter 1 in 3 days, and chapter 2 in 10 days, so I was in chapter 3 in about two weeks. I didn't have a good fellowship feeding me stuff, in fact, I didn't have a fellowship at all for the first week or so because I wasn't sure whether I would keep playing and then the first fellowship I joined was almost all inactive players, so almost a month of basically no fellowship.

All that to say...I know from watching my mom start playing recently that it can be very slow, but based on my experience, it doesn't have to be? I think it must depend on doing things the right way (whatever that is) the first couple of days, and I lucked into it when I started. I know I stopped following the quests pretty quickly, and I never had as many manufactories, houses, or workshops as they told you to build. I also did the absolute minimum of scouting to get into the next chapter. Other than that, I'm not sure what would make the difference.

 

[Yogi Dave]

I will reach them, but my point is will a newcomer sit for days and just grind resources in a new game to progress at such a low level? If it were me, I would get the impression the whole game was this way.

I just read the comments on the YouTube page, and someone mentioned it was before the trader penalty was imposed.

So, back to your original question of suggestions for the devs, I have none. It would probably take a complete redesign of those chapters to make them more engaging. I agree that boredom may be the reason many people start and quit after maybe an hour, especially with all the more action-oriented games out there. That probably accounts for why there aren't a lot of young players in the game. I bet most are over 30. I'm 70 and started the game when I was 65 so a slow game was ok.

Plus, it's easy to get in trouble if you start doing things while waiting for things the tutorial suggests which I suspect most people will do. I immediately did a lot of fighting and expanded too fast. However, I also spent a good bit of time reading @Mykan's guides, which many, if not most, new players won't do. Then I sought out FS's in different worlds Mykan was a member of and was able to get in 2.

There are other things one can do, but they aren't going to be thought of by someone who just falls into the game. I think it's also harder to get into an FS where you can learn how to play since so much is about post-10th chest and gold spire for a tiny player to be taken. When I started, the highest score in the FS I joined with Soggy, TomatoeHu and Mykan was 100K.

 

[Myne]

I must have done something drastically different than other people starting out. If only I could remember what it was, haha! As a total beginner, with no previous cities (not counting the roughly week and a half I played several years ago), I got through chapter 1 in 3 days, and chapter 2 in 10 days, so I was in chapter 3 in about two weeks. I didn't have a good fellowship feeding me stuff, in fact, I didn't have a fellowship at all for the first week or so because I wasn't sure whether I would keep playing and then the first fellowship I joined was almost all inactive players, so almost a month of basically no fellowship.

All that to say...I know from watching my mom start playing recently that it can be very slow, but based on my experience, it doesn't have to be? I think it must depend on doing things the right way (whatever that is) the first couple of days, and I lucked into it when I started. I know I stopped following the quests pretty quickly, and I never had as many manufactories, houses, or workshops as they told you to build. I also did the absolute minimum of scouting to get into the next chapter. Other than that, I'm not sure what would make the difference.

I don't remember my first city taking this long or being stuck like this. The fellowship at the moment consists of three players from my fellowship on another world, so we are all going through it. lol It just seems the grinding aspect of this would be a huge turn off to new players.

 

[MaidenFair]

I agree. You want new players to have early success so they feel excited to keep playing even when things start getting harder. It's possible it's worse now than it was even a little while ago...I think helya said something recently (maybe in a Bug Report thread) about them currently reworking chs. 1-5, so if they've tweaked more than the quests, like adjusting the numbers of kp or goods you need to progress, it might be in flux/unbalanced right now.

 

[Myne]

OH, also the MA is available, but you are only given a very small number of fragments, so not much crafting until you can reach the spire in the next chapter. Kind of like a frustrating teaser.
You can begin making CC and boosts though. IF you have the relics, which you can only get the few from the map...until you run into the Very Hard provinces with your paltry troops.

 

[Mykan]

I don't remember my first city taking this long or being stuck like this. The fellowship at the moment consists of three players from my fellowship on another world, so we are all going through it. lol It just seems the grinding aspect of this would be a huge turn off to new players.

It is slowish but the first time you are learning so aspects don't feel as slow. Now you have more experience you will be going "quicker" in some areas as you know what you are doing and now hit new walls. The world map wall hits everyone due to the design of those chapters and the devs don't care (their words "we do not see this as an issue"). ONly tips I can really think of:

• Simplest find a bigger account willing to fund you some resources to push though to chapter 5ish or at least tourny
• have members of different boosts and focus hard on getting that production up, you might find the design needs to be a little different then you might normally do. Then just trade and help each other negotiate through
• be very clear on your goal and spend, focus on the most important aspect to move you forward the best

 

[quin629]

I don't remember my first city taking this long or being stuck like this. The fellowship at the moment consists of three players from my fellowship on another world, so we are all going through it. lol It just seems the grinding aspect of this would be a huge turn off to new players.

You might have identified your problem right there: your FS consists of 4 friends all with brand new cities. A FS needs a mix of city sizes. If you have bigger cities in the group they can help the smaller ones through the early difficulties. A free 10K in goods could be nothing at all to a big city but would mean the world to you right now, yes?

 

[Myne]

You might have identified your problem right there: your FS consists of 4 friends all with brand new cities. A FS needs a mix of city sizes. If you have bigger cities in the group they can help the smaller ones through the early difficulties. A free 10K in goods could be nothing at all to a big city but would mean the world to you right now, yes?

absolutely. @Mykan may be right though. Perhaps I was "game dumb" when I started. Now I know what to do so it feels like grinding

 

[Ihrlaen]

The biggest hurdle for Chapters I-V are that they are very strictly KP limited. With a small number of provinces, terrible military, and few resources, Tournament performance is limited, thereby limiting daily KP gains. This is so very different from the rest of the game and @Mykan has it right, I think. You are for the most part just waiting for KP to generate.

This leads me back to advice I once read, @SoggyShorts I think, extolling the benefits of the Tome of Secrets over the Golden Abyss (first) for a starting city. The bonus KP (and supplies) may be small, but you need them a lot more than a small bump in population/gold. Moreover, it allows for replacing a workshop, preserving precious population and culture, through scouting-supplies.

 

[Alram]

I remember it as a slow climb at the beginning. I was just so excited that no one was torching my city that I didn't mind.

 

[Yogi Dave]

This leads me back to advice I once read, @SoggyShorts I think, extolling the benefits of the Tome of Secrets over the Golden Abyss for a starting city. The bonus KP (and supplies) may be small, but you need them a lot more than a small bump in population/gold.

Yep, the Tome of Secrets is better to begin with. but that wasn't always the case. I got the GA at just the wrong moment. It just so happened the GA was better that day, but not the next. The 1st phoenix event had just ended (I got into ch 2 during it), and the GA was worth 400 pop when 1st placed. That night they changed the way AWs worked and the GA was now tied to working pop. and MH coin cap. I think the pop addition dropped to around 70 which was less than my houses. Coins dropped too. The change in metrics for increasing AW power was by far the right way to go, but oh the screaming that went on for a while. We've all heard it for most changes in the game and probably all done a bit of that screaming one time or another. Later it was either Soggy or Mykan that began expounding the ToS as better and to wait on the GA until you were getting near the amount of pop per sq. as your houses provided. Similar advice from them put the Endless Excavation over the Needles of Tempest. The NoT does become very valuable, but not really needed at the beginning. Hammers were more important.

 

[Huor]

One thing I think they should do is make sure new players can be fully engaged in the events. I just started a new city. I'm at the end of chapter 1 waiting for the event to start, but I already know that I will be shut out before long as there are some quests I won't be able to pass. I knew this going in so no big deal for me. The game is very complex with lots of cool stuff and I think the app world expects to crush candy.

I agree with others is every new player needs a fellowship with people that can help, chat, and have fun. Maybe allow fellowships like the one I'm part of in sinya arda to have a checkbox that says "drop new players here". That way you hit the ground with a fellowship ready to help, chat, and have fun.

 

[DeletedUser30612]

One thing I think they should do is make sure new players can be fully engaged in the events. I just started a new city. I'm at the end of chapter 1 waiting for the event to start, but I already know that I will be shut out before long as there are some quests I won't be able to pass. I knew this going in so no big deal for me. The game is very complex with lots of cool stuff and I think the app world expects to crush candy.

I agree with others is every new player needs a fellowship with people that can help, chat, and have fun. Maybe allow fellowships like the one I'm in, in sinya arda to have a checkbox that says "drop new players here". That way you hit the ground with a fellowship ready to help, chat, and have fun.

your new city will be able to complete the event, I’ve done it with a new city before it just takes longer than a bigger city.

 

[Mykan]

The handouts are a catch-22 though. You can easily end up with mid-late game players who get stuck in bad habits cause they never learnt certain things. For an experienced person getting help on the extra town is great as you know what your doing. But for a new person on a new town, you need to be real careful how that help is done or it can hurt in the long run.