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    Your Elvenar Team

Fellowship Progression Feature

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
I think the NH perk is poorly designed as I think it should also reduce the length of time between being able to do NH.
I told my mages so long as they don't pick the NH one, they didn't pick the wrong one. :)
I think in a low activity/casual FS, the NH would be somewhat helpful in that NH is prob their goto method of acquiring perk XP as their tourney chest and Spire crystal activity would be significantly lower. The NH perk will give them a shot at earning more 20xps instead of 10xps. Other than that, it's a small boost in hammers. However, even in that scenario, idleness might be defined by days instead of hours in a casual fellowship and therefore, a 4hr extension feels moot. This feels like the least useful perk. They always have to throw a Winter Lampion into every batch of goodies they give us to make us grind down our teeth a little more.

I'm in a Gold FS too, but I would prob eventually unlock a Spire perk as a backup plan. RL is kicking a lot of people in the gut in these times. In both of my cities, we've had more people having to prioritize away from elf games due to RL issues. Recruiting is a slow, dreadful process in general. Spire perk would be handy during a personnel rotation cycle to buy more time to fill any empty slots.

Overall, the way I see it is we didn't have any of these benefits before. Therefore, even if it's the not-as-useful NH perk or the Spire Archive we can't use because we're already a Gold FS, it's still giving us more options than we had before. At the end of the day, if my FS fell short on the next tourney chest or Spire crystal, we simply didn't get it done so there's no one to blame but ourselves. If we really want that next chest or Spire crystal, the solution is to simply do more tourney or climb more Spire stairs. If you're the archmage or mage, it's your job to rally the troops or play HR to fire or hire your way to a working solution. If you're a regular player not in a leadership role, you picked the FS you're in now. If the FS is not meeting your expectations or you feel management is prioritizing the wrong perks, simply find a better fitting FS. You're not a hostage. There are more FS looking for players than there are players looking for FS. You're in the driver's seat holding the power. Those are all better routes to take fixing the problem at the root than relying on the perk system to eek out more chest or Spire rewards to a satisfactory level. The perk systems is more like things stored behind glass panels that you take out in case of emergencies, except the free KPs.
 

Deborah M

Oh Wise One
@Yogi Dave Thank you very much for explaining that! I also had the wrong impression about how the Spire one works. Time to rethink this yet again. My Fellowship is not a gold spire fellowship. That is completely on purpose. I really disliked the spire for quite a while so I don’t have much mandatory spire required. I have plenty of members who like it that way so I’m not about to change courses on them. We usually get half way through level 3 with some only doing first gate, some doing to the top and everything in between. The spire sounded like a good perk but if it isn’t at all cumulative then it sure isn’t much to write home about. I thought it would be worthwhile even though no real benefit to those who don’t want to push into level 3. So far I think the AW one is hands down the best for us and the tournament one came in handy for a small amount this week.
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
I don't remember now if I said this here or in the Beta forum, but I have very mixed feelings about the Spire perk. It is the only one that does not benefit the entire fellowship when you level it up and use it. Spending stored points to complete a crystal/chest only benefits the players who are already that far. So if your fellowship has completed 11 of the 12 crystals in the Spire and there are enough points stored to complete the Spire and get gold, it is still only the players who made it to the top who get those extra rewards. That means there will always be members left out of the rewards gotten by spending the stored points. And in the few fellowships where members would not be left out, those are gold already and the perk is mostly useless.
 

crackie

Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
@Deborah M I think the best use of this perk is pushing it to complete the big sections, like getting the purple bar to finish Gateway, finish High Halls, or finish Lab. Those are your big diamond checkpoints and is a difference of 50 diamonds, 125 diamonds, or 275 diamonds if a player crosses those checkpoints. But yeah, this perk isn't really going to save on individual resources. I wouldn't suddenly stop at Gateway because we got the purple bar all the way to the top. I'd still need to get my butt to the top of the Spire if I want those 275 diamonds. I guess it will also add a new sticker to display in your trophy case if you've never reached Silver or Gold before, if that sort of stuff matters.
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
I like the Spire perk. I am in a gold spire FS so it was more insurance for us than anything else and last spire we used 18 points out of the bank to cover a holiday induced play gap! We were all very happy to have it. Even those who got grinched and did not manage the climb were relieved that as a team we still hit gold.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
The thing I don't see talked about so far regarding perks: Using perk lvls to increase weekly XP collected by the FS, thus increasing ability to level up more perks. The FS where I'm AM is casual (requires visiting 3x's/week) with zero tourney or spire requirements. It is also, however, a long-term FS (5 yrs old) and we've been a 10+chest/wk and a Silver Spire FS for close to 2 years running. Many of our members are daily players and most visit 5-6x's wk. Here's what we're doing (or did) and why:
AWKP perk: Will hold off on this perk until we've gotten where we want to go with the other ones and reassess. At lvl 10 this one is impressive in the amount of extra AWKP an FS can earn, but the cost to get there is just not worth it to us in the loss of the other perks that can help in other ways and also increase the amount of XP we earn weekly.
#1: NH perk to lvl 1: With low NH expectations (and unlikely to grow very slowly to much more than 4-5x's/wk), we won't take this one further. It encourages daily visits by all daily players and increases the gold hands so that everyone giving daily visits has more gold hands, thus improving the amount of XP per week. Doubtful any further increase in that 4hrs would have much additional benefit in XP points, so it'll stay there.
#2: Spire to lvl 2: Spire is where we need the most help as a group. Yes, we've gotten Silver 90+wks in a row. We've begun to consistently unlock the 9th bubble and have gotten the 10th bubble several times. Last week we unlocked the 11th bubble for the first time! We want to start storing Spire pts asap to increase the #of bubbles we unlock. Each additional unlocked bubble gives an extra 4000 XP pts for the week. All points above that unlocked chest can be stored up to the max for the perk lvl that week as well.
#3: Tourney to lvl 2: We've consistently gotten 10 chests for over 2 yrs running, and are now consistently unlocking the 12th chest. We've decided to push harder in 2 tourneys/cycle: marble and steel. While not an 'every week' increase, we're hopeful we get an additional chest in these tourneys every cycle. This past week (with tourney perk still at lvl 0), we unlocked the 13th chest. Lvl 1 will let us store 2500pts/wk. If we use that to push into another chest each week, that's an extra 4000 XP pts/wk. Once this perk is at lvl 2 (5000 max tourney pts storage), we'll stop and pour all our XP pts into leveling the Spire perk to max.
This plan requires trusted, well organized leadership in the FS. I absolutely could not do this without the help and support of the three best Mages ever! We ended up not using any XP until after the tourney ended the first week. That meant we could store no points for Spire or Tourney that first week, but we wanted to make sure we didn't make significant mistakes by moving too quickly. The extra time was needed to make sure all us Mages had our heads wrapped around the concept and understood what would be required of us. To make the Spire/Tourney perks earn us extra XP every week, we have to watch progress and use our stored points earlier than you would think: Example: tourney not used at the very last chest. Prefer to use it for chest #10. Since the entire FS is on board with getting those extra weekly XP, and it will be communicated frequently, everyone still needs to do what they do in every tourney regardless of the perk points. Then, we get an extra chest and an extra 4000 XP every week, and still store up to the perk max from the extra points towards the next chest. Since we don't expect a huge increase in tourney performance every week, we'll get this to 5000 tourney pts/wk and use the extra weekly XP to get the Spire leveled up faster.
I'm also tracking our total Spire points each week now. Once I know where we're ending up (in the future I'll also track what we outright 'earned' in spire points minus the perk spire points used) we'll figure out how many points we need, get the perk to that level, then choose a week to do a Spire push for our first Gold Spire.
Once those first 5 perk levels have been taken (NH-1, Spire-2, Tourney-2), the exponential increases in costs of the next perk lvls means it's time to settle into a long-term mindset to increase perk levels. Looks like it will start at increasing one perk lvl/wk and reduce as costs for subsequent perk levels rise. Right now, we expect to lvl up Spire to max, then return to tourney. But, the amount of time this will take means we have loads of time to reassess and change our strategy if it looks like we'd benefit more from something else. In the meantime, we've maximized our ability to earn XP points every week.
This is so new, it's highly likely we'll reassess and tweak our plan as we get more comfortable with how it's actually working in practice. For now, everyone is clear on how their activity contributes to our group goals and we're getting no complaints.
 

Yogi Dave

Well-Known Member
I like the Spire perk. I am in a gold spire FS so it was more insurance for us than anything else and last spire we used 18 points out of the bank to cover a holiday induced play gap! We were all very happy to have it.
... and that is exactly what it seems like to use it. Other FSs that aren't going to the top, they can use it to get that next crystal in the same way, especially for the diamond crystals as @crackie suggested. It seems like it's good to bank some points for emergency use for both the spire and tourney.

This is where strategy of when to reset will come in. Without spending a lot of time thinking about it, perhaps resetting toward the end of a month just before the spire or tourney ends and putting one of them as high as it can go until it finishes, then at the start of the next month, switch to the KP one for almost 2 months and doing it again. Of course, you will be gaining XP during those almost 2 months between resets and it may be best to use them in one of the other perks since it begins to get very expensive to get another level. My FS has gotten 345k XP in the 13 days FS progress has been around. If we keep at that rate, in another 2 weeks we will be at 690 XP which is level 5 for the knowledge sharing (or any other single perk). Well, that's the case if it all works the way I think it does.

Suddenly this brings up a question from me. If you have banked 200 spire points then switch the spire to level 0, do you still keep those 200 points for use? I think you do. Assuming that, what happens when you change the spire to level 1 which has a 50 max? I don't think that drops you to 50. I think you stay at the 200 until you use them to be below 50, then you can only raise it up to 50. I'd like an answer from someone who has experienced this to let me know if my belief is right or wrong.

Edit: Fixed a couple of bugs in the wording to make it clearer, but no content was changed.
 
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Enevhar Aldarion

Oh Wise One
#3: Tourney..... Lvl 1 will let us store 2500pts/wk.

I just want to point out something here, in case you just worded it wrong and do understand how it works.

Level 1 in the tournament perk lets you store 2500 extra points max. Not per week as you worded it. Once you have stored 2500 points, you are full, until you either use them or increase the level. This one sentence will be very confusing to people who do not understand how the perks let you store points.

@Yogi Dave pretty sure it was confirmed earlier in this thread that you keep points you have stored after you do a reset.
 

Yogi Dave

Well-Known Member
@Yogi Dave pretty sure it was confirmed earlier in this thread that you keep points you have stored after you do a reset.
Yes, it was. I think you were the one to point it out and also mentioned the hard cap. It's really the second part about when you change to 0 then up to a lower level than your new point cap is that is the question. It would be really stupid, if you don't keep those points and we all know Inno never does anything really stupid. :rolleyes: I've just become a bit paranoid about how things in this game are actually implemented so always want to know what someone's actual experience has been. I'm sure I'll see what happens sometime in the next month like I saw the hard cap in action.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
Thanks, @Enevhar Aldarion , sorry I wasn't clear. I am clear that the perk levels for Spire and Tourney represent caps on storage level for those points in the Archive regardless of the week when they were earned..
My strategy is to use the existing stored points each week, enabling us to climb further up the bubbles/chests ladder, increasing our weekly XP points by opening extra FS rewards where possible and storing the excess points from that week instead of losing them because our perk storage is full. By limiting Tourney to lvl 2 (5000pts), we're hoping to be able to do that every week. Spire is a little harder, but if we use them up around that 7th to 8th bubble, we should be able to to do the same there as well.
I haven't gotten around to wrapping my head around the strategy @Yogi Dave is presenting. Resetting perks intermittently and being able to use the stored points while gaining more XP points sounds intriguing, but my brain is tired. Wrapping my head around this stuff so far has been a process. Add in the holidays and I'm running on empty, lol! I'm going to let this settle for a bit and will revisit that strategy idea when I have a bit more energy!
 

Deborah M

Oh Wise One
So why dont i ever see anything stored in my perks from the spire or the tournaments? Do I have to do something, it doesnt really say

It won't have anything until you activate the perk. At least that is my understanding. It will honestly take a Fellowship of 1 forever to get these to do anything helpful.
 

Lord of Waste

New Member
Never mind I get it I wasnt reading it right. the perks dont start until you are at level one and like you said a Fellowship of 1 will probably never reach that. Well it is still a great idea for all the other Fellowships. Thanks for the reply Deborah M.
 

Yogi Dave

Well-Known Member
I havent seen anything that tells you how to activate a perk, do you have to be at level one?
On the Fellowship dialog there is a new 'Perks' tab. The perks you don't have enough XP for are grayed out.

Perks.png
 

Yogi Dave

Well-Known Member
I haven't gotten around to wrapping my head around the strategy @Yogi Dave is presenting.
Probably a good thing to not wrap your head around it since it's only half baked. I'm still working on wrapping my head around this whole perky thing.

However, the end of this week does seem like a perfect setup due to the 31st being the day the spire completes. We are thinking about just putting the rest of our XP taking the spire to level 3 ending with 150 spire points. As soon as the spire ends, reset and put it all in the tourney perk which will be level 4. That uses the reset this month and leaves us the option of what and when to do a reset next month. One idea is to leave it all in the tourney one and add another level to it when we can. We will need a total of 625K XP to do that. Then when the next tourney ends (Jan.15 if all goes as planned) we should have12,500 points saved for future tourneys. We could then reset and put the KP perk to level 5 giving everyone 5kp a day to play with. What happens next is up in the air since we haven't yet decided if this is a good plan. Again, just an idea of strategy, but I think it's more than half baked.
 
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