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    Your Elvenar Team

Woodelves alternative strategy

Mouseking

New Member
I'm about to head into Woodelves, and a few fellowship members told me about a way to do the chapter, which would save me time, resources and kp, at the cost of 345% portal profits.
I couldn't find anything about this (maybe I'm just bad at researching), so I decided to run the numbers myself. Here's what I came up with, and it seems like a really good way to do it in my opinion. Any feedback is appreciated, and I'll look forward to updating it with my experiences once I've completed the chapter, which will probably be in ~5 weeks.

Here's the guide from the blind who's trying to lead both the blind and the seeing:

Woodelves: The easy way
There’s a way to do the Woodelves chapter that can save you a lot of resources, time and space for this chapter's settlement buildings, if you have portal profits to spend.

For this to work, you’ll need at minimum 340% profits.
And if you’re willing to spend that, you can reap yourself a neat reward of saving these precious resources:
192 Knowledge points, 680.000 supplies, 217.500 mana, 31.000 tier 2 goods, 27.000 tier 3 goods.
The savings come from not researching the 3 grafting sites
Not to mention all the time and resources you’d spend on building the settlement up. Nice huh?

This is possible because the settlement is introduced around halfway through the chapter, and so the amount of research that requires their goods are fewer than usual, and they have 3 capped goods. As an example, in orcs it would cost you around 600-700% profits if you were mad enough to do something like this.


Showtime! How does it work?
After building your Forest Glade and building 1-5 Forest Fabrications, you’ll use profits to get the upgrade materials you’ll need to get your portal to level 4.
From level 1 to 2, use a 15% profit.
From level 2 to 3, use a 20% profit.
From level 3 to 4 you have 2 options: Either 30% profit or 25% profit + 26 diamonds on crafting one craft of wood ghosts in your Forest Fabrication.

Once your portal is level 4, you use profits whenever you need the upgrade materials to progress through the chapter.

Whether you build 1 or 5 Forest Fabrications depends entirely on how fast you want to get to level 4 as well as your coin and supply situation.
Each craft costs 1090 mana.
With 1, you’d spend at least 11,6 days crafting them (if you were able to craft non-stop)
With 5, you’d spend 2,3 days, which is less than it takes to upgrade the portal. (so you’d probably be using boosters when upgrading with 5)

How many profits are enough?
The researches can be done with no waste, so 340 or 345% is enough.

Thoughts after doing it
I couldn't imagine not doing it like this! It's super easy, and I can't imagine how long the chapter would be if I had to spend all the mana and resources it would take to build and upgrade the guest race buildings.
The main thing slowing you down will be mana, like people mentioned in the comments as well. I had ~65k mana per day, and only experienced a few moments of being paused from doing research.

Keep your eye out for festival merchants and mana sawmills, they're a lot better than weeping willows.

For those interested in the numbers math behind it, here’s a (hopefully not too messy) spreadsheet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18VLF0WinCSyMwDiv32MyH89X3Kdhzzp-8M_NyXjkoNo/edit?usp=sharing
 
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Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
I think that some guest race productions are required for leveling the portal. Woodelves is really not that hard, by the way, you just have to be cautious about scouting as the provinces are yellow most of the way through.
 

Mouseking

New Member
I think that some guest race productions are required for leveling the portal.

From what I was able to see from the data on wiki, then it's only mana tears that you have to produce, the other 3 can be profited.

Now I just checked the grafting sites as well. It seems all they do is provide materials for the Forest Fabrication to produce the research materials, which can also be created by using portal profits.

And yeah Woodelves seems easy enough even without this - but going from easy to very easy sounds even better to me :D
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
Because of portal profits, the guest race goods were not the hardest part of Woodelves to me. Making enough mana was. Weeping Willows are just not very good mana producers. It does get easier once you can craft some Festival Merchants and replace some of the Weeping Willows. Festival Merchants are way more efficient as mana producers. Unfortunately you can't always make Festival Merchants, you are at the random mercy of the Magic Academy crafting rotation for them to show up.
 

Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
You need the grafting sites to level the Forest Fabrications so that they produce efficiently. You could try starting the tech, it's a good chapter aside from all the trees.
 

Vasrana

Member
Because of portal profits, the guest race goods were not the hardest part of Woodelves to me. Making enough mana was. Weeping Willows are just not very good mana producers. It does get easier once you can craft some Festival Merchants and replace some of the Weeping Willows. Festival Merchants are way more efficient as mana producers. Unfortunately you can't always make Festival Merchants, you are at the random mercy of the Magic Academy crafting rotation for them to show up.
Agree, Weeping Willows take up a lot of space. I am crafting my first Festival Merchant and will keep my eye out for more!!!
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
Agree, Weeping Willows take up a lot of space. I am crafting my first Festival Merchant and will keep my eye out for more!!!
If you have access to a good supply of Royal Restorations, you can really help mana production by upgrading some of the evolving buildings. If they are Woodelves level and evolved high enough, the Festive May Tree, Wise Golem, Watchful Winter Owl, and Everblossom Sleigh will all make mana. At the time I was doing Woodelves, my fellowship was not yet a 10 chest a week fellowship. I spent diamonds in the Magic Academy to craft extra Royal Restorations and do these upgrades.
 

Mouseking

New Member
Another good way to get mana production buildings would be through events I imagine? But on the other hand, buildings with population and culture are nice as well.

Would one be better off with more residences and less population+culture buildings, and have all their culture be mana producing? Or is it a balance from here on out?
 

Henroo

Oh Wise One
Would one be better off with more residences and less population+culture buildings, and have all their culture be mana producing? Or is it a balance from here on out?
You are going to need a lot of mana. The best mana producer is going to be Festival Merchant, which you craft in the Magic Academy. Unfortunately it is random when you can craft them. I think I crafted them literally every time I saw them when doing Woodelves. However although FMs are very good at making mana, they are not great for culture. If you have 10 or more of them (this is not an excessive number) then the culture adds up. But you will still need other sources of culture.
 

samidodamage

Buddy Fan Club member
Would one be better off with more residences and less population+culture buildings, and have all their culture be mana producing? Or is it a balance from here on out?
At the end of the next chapter (Sorcerer's and Dragons) you get access to the AW Dragon Abbey that produces mana every time you cast a spell. If you're active in tourneys and in an FS active in tourneys, that essentially means 'mana on demand'. A couple years ago someone on here was keeping track of the number of days of active culture spells they had left in their city and it was up to years from the stacked culture spells, lol! Of course, the following chapter (Halflings) introduces divine seeds and then you need culture/seeds buildings (in addition to mana), so it's always something.
If you go for the high pop/square hybrid bldgs, you can get away with fewer residences and you get back the culture they're using when you sell them off. Get a couple of the really good pop/culture hybrids that have good culture as well in the events and you're set. I haven't needed pure culture bldgs since placing the Dragon Abbey (begin Ch15 in one city/begin Ch16 in the other).
Note: I'm a primarily fighting city in tourneys and Spire. To keep up with troop production, I frequently need to cast spells on workshops, and a mana bonus is nice then, too. If you rely heavily on catering/diplomacy your needs may be different. The coins from houses could become a factor in that situation as well as the need for more culture to keep a bonus to boost coin/supplies.
Can the FM be polished?
It can, but the culture is meh, so it doesn't usually rise to the top culture bldg available. I rarely see it doing visits. In my cities, the moonstone libraries are the highest culture value, so those get the culture polishes most often.
 

Vasrana

Member
Another good way to get mana production buildings would be through events I imagine? But on the other hand, buildings with population and culture are nice as well.

Would one be better off with more residences and less population+culture buildings, and have all their culture be mana producing? Or is it a balance from here on out?
Thank you all for the great advice! During this present event, I saved my candies and won 6, yes 6 of the Yellow Willow Trees which are supposed to give mana. I am waiting to see if it was worth my time. Fingers crossed.

~ Vas ~
 

Vasrana

Member
In my opinion, I believe their is a need of balance. I am in Woodelves and choose to keep my present number of Residences and keep doing my upgrades while adding Mana producing / Culture with PoP. I just entered Chapter 11 so my buildings will be changing sizes, etc. Looks as if I do need to take the above advice and change out my Willows for other mana producing smaller buildings such as the Festival Merchant. Just learning.

~ Vas ~
 

Mouseking

New Member
I'll be leaving the woodelves in 3 days! So just above 4 weeks spent with the lovely tree buildings. Really enjoyed this way of doing it. I added and corrected some numbers in the guide.

From the carnival I ended up with 2 aureate willows, 10x prince charmings, 4 dragon floats, 2 chariots of the dwarven brewery and 1 lifeblood cone. Seems to me like a good mix of high quality mana producers and population/culture items are a great way to go. Which most of you all also said.
 

Iyapo1

Well-Known Member
Using this alternative to go through woodelves. Thx for posting it @Mouseking

Some of the posts are old but most of the info is valid, no need to drop KP into the grafting site tech at all if you have the PPs to burn. Mana production is the only thing that has slowed me down at all. Sadly I have seen 1 FM in my MA since starting the chapter so my mana production is lower than I'd like but I picked up some decent mana producers in the last event so all is not lost.


Edit: Time using this method was 25 days. Started Nov 1 and finished on the 25th. I will be camping out at the end of this chapter for a long stretch gathering RRs and blueprints for my next run.
 
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Because of portal profits, the guest race goods were not the hardest part of Woodelves to me. Making enough mana was. Weeping Willows are just not very good mana producers. It does get easier once you can craft some Festival Merchants and replace some of the Weeping Willows. Festival Merchants are way more efficient as mana producers. Unfortunately you can't always make Festival Merchants, you are at the random mercy of the Magic Academy crafting rotation for them to show up.
I was fortunate enough to get a Mana Sawmill before starting City Expansion 36 when I first need Mana, though it's been a week and I think it's going to take at least a month and a half to get 20,000 Mana, and this Chapter has a whole lot of Quests that require big time Mana...
 
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