[Archived 02/2020] News from Beta

[Alistaire]

I would like someone to explain how "previous three chapters" production being required isn't the same garbage as current or previous when we don't want the build to be leveled at all, or permanent in our cities? Now i must keep an even LESS efficient city design by doing this. Is there no math in your studio art chairs? Not enough time to level them?! Not relevant when the building is unwanted and useless between events. At least level 1 buildings could be torn down and replaced when it was necessary and choose the amount of space dedicated to such tasks. Can the Teleport spell please include these useless extra production buildings ingeniously added to our events? Barf

That's at least some progress...but I still agree, it's garbage. Maybe this event I'll just concentrate on my low low level alt cities and spam for wishing wells. Haven't done that in a while.

edit: also this same sh...nonsense again? "In addition, the "Scout 1 province" quest without an alternative now got the alternative "OR Research 1 Technology".

Doesn't affect me as bad as some players yet but I hope they learn that's not an acceptable alternative by the time I finish research.

2nd edit: thinking about it, this is even more unbalanced for certain levels, so instead of being only able to use level 1 factories in chapter 2 you could now be in chapter 4? What's the sweet spot now? lol...

 

[Ashrem]

I am finding that if I check every few hours, I am still getting about 3 petfood a week. Enough for the Tournaments - and a little to spare. It is not as bad as I feared when they announced the re-structuring of the crafting recipes!

Sadly, I don't get access to the game every few hours. I am still only seeing three batches (or fewer) of recipes per day. it is particularly galling, having spent diamonds in six different cities to ensure I wouldn't miss the previous windows very often. I had synchronized them all to 2:00am, 10:00am, and 6:00pm, allowing me to catch them when I wake up, when I get home from work, and before bed. Now (in my primary city) I get one when I wake up (started around 3:00am, miss the one that started at 9:00am, get the one that started at 3:00pm when I get home, and miss the one that starts around 9:00pm because I'm in bed or getting ready for bed. So 2 sets of 5 per day instead of 3, and 33% as many recipes, means I miss about 83% of the pet food I had access to previously and 50% of the boost buildings (assuming their frequency hasn't changed. I haven't even bothered to check the timing in the other cities, because I don't play them every day and I'm not going to make an effort to not-get recipes I can use.

So I could pay 450 diamonds to get them all set so that I'd have a bried window in the morning to check two of them (on weekdays) And a window to check both of them in the evening, but still miss one every weekend (unless I get on Elvenar between midnight and six am), or I could stop caring about crafting any more than occasional random checks.

My original message about it was merely one of sad in difference, not indignation or expectation. I confess, being called weird did not predispose me to a better frame of mind.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

Weird. I'd forgotten that what you want to craft is what everyone should want to craft.

After a couple of days of my standard careful checks, having encountered no martial boost buildings and only one pet food (the only two things that ever interested me), I just stopped making an effort. I still look some times, but I no longer make a habit of checking at the three times a day I did before.

I suppose I'm just not as perfect a player as some people, but somehow I just don't enjoy someone referring to my experience as "weird" because I'm not the same as them. Feel free to not respond to weird people in the future if we bother you.

I said weird not because I thought you wanted to craft the same stuff as I do. I listed what I craft so people get an idea what it was I look for, and the main point was that I'm seeing more of what I need, AND I also pointed out that I did see less pet food.

I said weird because you make it sound like crafting has gone down the drain but in fact shorter rotation time means more chances to get the recipes you want. As I said, even keeping to your original 3 times a day schedule, you should still see new recipes 3 times a day even with a 6 hour rotation. If my math is wrong then please correct me. Unless you're unhappy about missing the exact time the recipes rotate, I don't see why the reduction in rotation time should be a downer. For those who can check more often, they will see more options. Those who can't, will not have anything taken away from them anyway.

 

[Pheryll]

The scout or research is being changed to have OR 15 vision vapor, and the change will go to live.

Hi guys,

Just a head's up: We wont be able to change this before the weekend anymore, but due to your feedback, the Scouting quest will get an extra alternative with OR Gain 15 Vision Vapor next week

 

[Ashrem]

I said weird not because I thought you wanted to craft the same stuff as I do. I listed what I craft so people get an idea what it was I look for, and the main point was that I'm seeing more of what I need, AND I also pointed out that I did see less pet food.

I said weird because you make it sound like crafting has gone down the drain but in fact shorter rotation time means more chances to get the recipes you want. As I said, even keeping to your original 3 times a day schedule, you should still see new recipes 3 times a day even with a 6 hour rotation. If my math is wrong then please correct me. Unless you're unhappy about missing the exact time the recipes rotate, I don't see why the reduction in rotation time should be a downer. For those who can check more often, they will see more options. Those who can't, will not have anything taken away from them anyway.

I already said it above, in my response to Mykan. Having spent 450 diamonds weeks ago, I now have access to two sets of five recipes per day during the week, and three only on weekends and holidays.

I suggest taking a couple of minutes to imagine something different. Pretend the person on the other end of the conversation isn't a complete stranger, but a long time friend and both of you enjoy hunting. You both like hunting deer, he likes hunting moose, you like hunting bear. For years, you've gone hunting together for deer in deer season, and separately for Moose (a little later) and Bear (a little earlier). Now they've shortened the hunting seasons but added one later in the winter. The later one coincides with your good friend's heavy work time and he can't take advantage of it. he says one day at a dinner among friends that he's mostly giving up on hunting because he didn't bag anything during your deer hunt this year, never saw any moose while he was out on his own, and can't get a vacation during the new season. So you tell him "that's weird" because you got both dear and bear, and are looking forward to getting another of each later in the winter.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

I already said it above, in my response to Mykan. Having spent 450 diamonds weeks ago, I now have access to two sets of five recipes per day during the week, and three only on weekends and holidays.

I suggest taking a couple of minutes to imagine something different. Pretend the person on the other end of the conversation isn't a complete stranger, but a long time friend and both of you enjoy hunting. You both like hunting deer, he likes hunting moose, you like hunting bear. For years, you've gone hunting together for deer in deer season, and separately for Moose (a little later) and Bear (a little earlier). Now they've shortened the hunting seasons but added one later in the winter. The later one coincides with your good friend's heavy work time and he can't take advantage of it. he says one day at a dinner among friends that he's mostly giving up on hunting because he didn't bag anything during your deer hunt this year, never saw any moose while he was out on his own, and can't get a vacation during the new season. So you tell him "that's weird" because you got both dear and bear, and are looking forward to getting another of each later in the winter.

Haha, that is a great story and I really like it, even chuckled a little. Thanks for writing it

Okay I read your post on your timings. Let me see if I got it right:
- 2 am, 10 am and 6 pm are comfortable times for you to check the MA
- your recipes reset at 3 am (Set A), 9 am (Set B), 3 pm (Set C) and 9 pm (Set D)
- so at 2 am you check and you see Set D from the day before. The next time you check it's 10 am and it's now on Set B of the current day. And then you check again at 6 pm and it should be Set C of the current day. Then you go to bed and the next time you check is 2 am again, bringing you full circle

I might be missing something here but how is it that you only see 2 sets in 24 hours?

 

[Alistaire]

Ya know, thinking about this more this whole "3 chapters behind" thing is just the wrong kind of answer to this problem. Not just for me but any player near the end of a chapter is basically being told to hold off unlocking a new chapter for this event, and that's just all kinds of wrong.

Was something really broke about how things were before? If they want players to be able to do more than 1 building, can they not set a limit? This "need" to do "unlimited quests" while simultaneously breaking the system in order to stop players from going truly infinite with it just isn't working.

Whatever number of chapters behind they make it you're still telling players to stop playing the game in order to play the game.

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

After a couple of days of my standard careful checks, having encountered no martial boost buildings and only one pet food (the only two things that ever interested me), I just stopped making an effort. I still look some times, but I no longer make a habit of checking at the three times a day I did before.

If that's any consolation, I haven't missed a single MA refresh in a long time, and still haven't got much in the way of military boosters. Well, I've got one MMM since switching to 4 refreshes/day, but I have a ton of those. UUU became very rare since April/Phoenix event (for me), and it didn't change since switching to the new set up. So you may not have missed much by not checking often.

Pet food, on the other hand, still seems to be plentiful (again, for my needs - which is just 3/week ATM). I used to skip a ton of pet foods before as I would run out of catalysts, and now I skip them a bit less (but still skip them).

My 0.02.

 

[Ashrem]

Haha, that is a great story and I really like it, even chuckled a little. Thanks for writing it

Okay I read your post on your timings. Let me see if I got it right:
- 2 am, 10 am and 6 pm are comfortable times for you to check the MA
- your recipes reset at 3 am (Set A), 9 am (Set B), 3 pm (Set C) and 9 pm (Set D)
- so at 2 am you check and you see Set D from the day before. The next time you check it's 10 am and it's now on Set B of the current day. And then you check again at 6 pm and it should be Set C of the current day. Then you go to bed and the next time you check is 2 am again, bringing you full circle

I might be missing something here but how is it that you only see 2 sets in 24 hours?

You did not get it right. 2/6/10 are the rollover times, not the times I check. I check at 6:30 am, 5:30pm and 8:00pm

 

[Arayla]

*Edited on 9/14/19 to correct the Human Workshops chapters 6-8.

 

[Arayla]

 

[Arayla]

 

[Arayla]

 

[Deleted User - 3932582]

For the foreseeable future, it appears that 6 workshops and 5 boosted T1s will be sufficient.

Good post, but before someone in the end game has a heart attack seeing 5 maxed boosted T1s, we can put it in some context as the answer is a bit more nuanced

So the first 89 quests consist of several segments of fixed length, and I'd say that for these quests you may want 4-5 leveled WS, and 2-3 leveled boosted T1s.

Max WS requirements:
- 5 min x 9 (doing 2 or 3 rounds with 4-5 WS only adds 5 or 10 min - not worth extra leveled WS to shave that off)
- 15min x 6 (ditto, extra round needed with 4-5 WS only adds 15 min - not worth extra leveled WS to shave that off)
- 1h x 5 (depends, you can do it in 2 rounds with 4 WS with 1 extra hour, or go 1WS+1hr timeboost or full 5 WS)
- 3h x 4 (4 WS does it in 1 round)
- 9h x 4 (4 WS does it in 1 round)
- 1d x 3 (4 WS does it in 1 round)

Max T1 requirements:
- 3h x 3-4
- 9h x 3-4
I wouldn't worry too much about T1 in this phase, as you can run 2 rounds or burn some time boosters here. T1 quests are pretty infrequent - WS quests dominate by a wide margin. So you can do it with 2 T1s IMO.

Completing the first 89 quests should net you around 5K in even currency (including some city collections), which should be sufficient for about L6 evolution. For more than that, you need to complete quests 90+ which are a single endless randomized segment with higher requirements. So this is what I've seen so far:

Max WS requirements:
- 5 min x 15 (easy to do as long as you have even 1 leveled WS)
- 15min x 12 (you probably want more than 1 , but this is not a deal breaker)
- 1h x 9 (you're still good with 4-5 WS, but 4 WS will need an extra 1hr or 1 hr time booster)
- 3h x 8 (4-5 WS does it in 2 rounds)
- 9h x 6 (that's where you may want to go 6 WS if you can, but 4-5 WS can still do it in 2 rounds, or 5 WS can burn 9h of time boosts)
- 1d x 5 (that's where you want to go 5 WS vs 4 WS; these quests seem to pop up often)

Max T1 requirements:
- 3h x 7
- 9h x 5
This is where 3 T1s would be quite a bit better as you can do these in 3 and 2 rounds vs 4 and 3 (or burn less time boosts). Still, these seem a lot less frequent to justify more than 3 T1s just for the event. Of course, if you have them / have no better use for pop/culture/space, than even 7 T1s would be helpful here.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

You did not get it right. 2/6/10 are the rollover times, not the times I check. I check at 6:30 am, 5:30pm and 8:00pm

I see. In my case before the change my reset times were 7 am, 3 pm and 11 pm. After the change it is now 5 am, 11 am, 5 pm and 11 pm. I'm not sure how the new reset time was chosen, but I assume it was based on one of the 3 reset times (11 pm) that I had previously. It seems like in your case you were unlucky that the 10 am time was "chosen"?

 

[Arayla]

@MinMax Gamer Have you checked the latest list on elvengems? Starting at quest 60 it is possible to get 5 Baskets or 4 T1 9 hr.

I have no desire to panic the late chapter players, but if they want to get a bear leveled up this time, they might want to prepare 6 workshops and 5 T1s. They will already be slowed by the scout/research/15VV quests. Since the workshops take more time to build than we actually have before the event starts, it seems better to get started than to realize too late that more workshops/T1s are helpful. The players who have finished Constructs will have extra room since there is no guest race right now.

 

[Alistaire]

I see. In my case before the change my reset times were 7 am, 3 pm and 11 pm. After the change it is now 5 am, 11 am, 5 pm and 11 pm. I'm not sure how the new reset time was chosen, but I assume it was based on one of the 3 reset times (11 pm) that I had previously. It seems like in your case you were unlucky that the 10 am time was "chosen"?

For anyone who has it really bad, resetting with diamonds will give the new batch the full 6 hours giving you new reset times. Kinda shouldn't have to spend diamonds to do that, but at least it's an option.

 

[The Unbeliever]

Ya know, thinking about this more this whole "3 chapters behind" thing is just the wrong kind of answer to this problem. Not just for me but any player near the end of a chapter is basically being told to hold off unlocking a new chapter for this event, and that's just all kinds of wrong.

Was something really broke about how things were before? If they want players to be able to do more than 1 building, can they not set a limit? This "need" to do "unlimited quests" while simultaneously breaking the system in order to stop players from going truly infinite with it just isn't working.

Whatever number of chapters behind they make it you're still telling players to stop playing the game in order to play the game.

What's hilarious and truly sad about this is that the players needed maybe 10sec to figure out the solution to the "problem" Inno created;

Problem: 'players won way too many main prizes during the summer mermaids event' (and Inno's revenues likely tanked HARD to boot!)

Players' suggested solution; "Is it not possible to just code a hard limit so that once a player wins X 'main building' prizes, then those upgrades/buildings simply no longer appear in the grand prize rotation?"

Inno's solution; "Let's make the event completely unplayable so no one can win anything and then players are just forced to buy a grand prize for whatever ludicrously expensive price we want to set!"

And of course, the predictable player reaction; "Go stuff yourselves Inno!"

 

[Alistaire]

Problem: 'players won way too many main prizes during the summer mermaids event' (and Inno's revenues likely tanked HARD to boot!)

I seriously doubt that last bit. Most players here were complaining about how things in that event were too hard, and in some cases impossible. Players like me were a rarity, I even knew right off the bat the reasons that let me get so much in that event were non-repeatable; a 2nd event just like mermaids I wouldn't have been able to do nearly as much again.

And even in my case I spent a lot more diamonds than normal for an event like that; I just had those diamonds from in-game things to spend. Other players would've been more motivated than normal in that event to spend $$. Someone in my FS put down money to finish his 6th paradise when scouting started requiring orcs which he can't produce yet.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

@MinMax Gamer Have you checked the latest list on elvengems? Starting at quest 60 it is possible to get 5 Baskets or 4 T1 9 hr.

I have no desire to panic the late chapter players, but if they want to get a bear leveled up this time, they might want to prepare 6 workshops and 5 T1s. They will already be slowed by the scout/research/15VV quests. Since the workshops take more time to build than we actually have before the event starts, it seems better to get started than to realize too late that more workshops/T1s are helpful. The players who have finished Constructs will have extra room since there is no guest race right now.

I think I will be fine with three leveled up marble factories and the stash of time instants that I have. I am also fine with the VV being added, as I can usually get that in a day versus 3+ days for a scout versus never for the research, since I am done with all the current chapters. And no, some player who have finished Constructs do not have a lot of room because there are now a lot of Wishing Well farms out there.