I’ve been playing since it came out on steam so I put some money into it (Like $400). I was a little disheartened to see that didn’t get me to level 10. Not happy to see the gems from tributes take a nose dive either. I was actually thinking of putting more $ into the game, but it almost seems like you have to pay to get anywhere now. I also didn’t like having to click my mouse almost 200 times to ascend a common to legendary. They got rid of one clicking torture to replace it with another worse one, I spent over an hour ascending troops. While I think there were a lot of good things added as far as ways to advance I think there were a lot bad things as far as the economy of the game goes. I had like stacks of keys and a 1000 gems and couldn’t unlock one trait for a legendary (pre-1.08). The tribute nerf also seemed like a slap in the face. I think adding the 15 gems a day for 15 days was a great way for the company to make some money paying $50 for a legendary is not.
Yeah, you’d think they would have learned from the “level up to max” requests that the “Ascend” option should also just have a one-click option…
i like getting a common rock worm in chest and then when i get to troops it is no longer common.
Iam a fairly new player (been playing only like two or three days), and the thing that bugs me the most about this update is that it severely reduces the amount of troop cards I can get.
My roster is pretty small (I have less than 30 troops) and at this stage of my development, the amount of troop cards I have is the main limiting factor.
The fact that each key only gives one item instead of three combined with the fact that chests can now contain traitstones instead of troops means that the amount of troops I can earn is severely dampened. At this point the easiest way for me to get keys and rewards is to play Arena (where I dont need the cards), but the Arena rewards didnt get buffed. I mean for 8 wins in Arena you now get three keys, which is like 1 or 2 troop cards. Before the update you used to get two keys (I think), so you got like 6 troop cards…
So for people who need to build their roster like me, the key / chest changes are just a one giant slap in the face.
as a little advice you should focus on the story line first cause if you dont it will ramp up fast once you reac level 50. also you should be getting more items per 1000 gold spent and you should focus on getting common stuff early on and worry about higher chest after level 50. You might actually have an advantage being new to the game as things are alot worse if you were say level 100 and above and got this update. Just hang on and hopfully you can get your feet where they should be
Ive fully completed story in two kingdoms, but apart from two epic troops (from the last boss in the quest line) and couple of +5 gold per day bumps, those quests didnt give me basically anything.
Playing arena doesnt really cost gold (so far ive done two runs, both 8 wins) and gives me keys and souls…
But I definitely feel that there should be a way to get like a bulk amount of common troops to start new players off. I had a bit head start by purchasing the 5 dollar intro bundle, but it didnt get me a lot of troops… When youre a new player, who earns like 500-600 gold per day, you cant afford to buy gold keys with that… You need gold in order to even play the game, which means throwing away 300 gold for a chance to get one troop card (youll get traitstone if unlucky) seems like a ridiculous proposal.
I would be totally for some kind of chest that would just contain one common troop and nothing else and was cheaper.
playing the story is not for troops of for tiny bumps in income. once all the quests are done you should be making quite a bit of gold and then after you secure easy gold you pour it into each kingdom to level it up securing keys souls and glory. after words you can worry about other things. also rock worm, rock worm, acolyte, Valkyrie is my team and it is rare and below. it wins and gets souls and if you play it correctly then you should get extra gold per fight.
I could complain that:
- I have over 10000 gold keys and 4000 valor keys to open…
- I have 150 troops to ascend and upgrade…
- I could complain that I will need 517500 souls to level all those troops from level 15 to 20…
Instead, I will be thankful:
- That they converted the keys properly and did not cheat me and that they created a system to do it 50x faster!
- That they improved, once again, the troops. In multiple ways!
- For the opportunity to have SO much to do!
Be glad for all the incredible enhancements!
i got a thread for that actually is for people to thank the developers of this game
I agree that this patch was pretty brutal to most other than the top percent. With gold keys not offering high grade troops anymore, and only 1 troop, the net result pre- and poat-patch is very noticeable to anyone not already swimming in troops, and means we no longer have the chance to get legendary troops with gold. Yes, it was a crazy low chance, but it was still a chance. Now we’re forced to use harder to get resources (gems and glory) to get anything high grade. If you haven’t been playing a long time and hoarding resources, the disadvantage you are at is further compounded in the new patch.
It also appears we now have to buy an expensive pack (400 glory) to get the weekly glory item(s) whereas before we could purchase the single item ala carte for a much more reasonable amount. It feels like there are so many things requiring glory, and while they made it possible to get more, the amount of glory needed to be spent as a ratio to how much is gained is massively skewed unless you pay real money, or grind like crazy and win, and winning in pvp has gotten vastly harder as the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” has widened drastically. I’m all for real life money giving a player an advantage, but that advantage should not make it so a non- or low-paying player would need to struggle through content for months to be where high-level, high-paying players are now.
There were a lot of awesome features added in this patch - leveling troops higher, being able to combine the same troop into a higher level one - but the implementation feels rough, as a player not swimming in resources and not paying hundreds to keep up, or even be close. I feel like I’m treading water, always on the brink of drowning (from frustration), and don’t see a way of being saved any time soon. I am unwilling and unable to spend hours grinding every day, and/or spend a lot of cash.
I hope there will be a way to bridge the player power gap some, probably through several tweaks. A few off the top of my head include: adding a monthly sign-in calendar that includes a largeish amount of the various resources for those who login everyday (encouraging daily or near-daily login), increasing the amount of souls from Arena and Challenges by a decent amount (don’t know an exact amount that isn’t game-breaking but possibly twice the 1.07 amount), increasing glory gain overall and add a decent amount to the Arena so glory gain isn’t tied so heavily to pvp wins since that has become harder to win for the low- or non-paying players and is needed to get troops, bring back the ala carte option in glory shop for weekly item(s), and increase story rewards by a good chunk (since I imagine most long-term and powerful players have already completed these, it would allow newer players an “advantage” by doing these quests and helping them play catch-up a tiny bit).
Thanks for reading my wall of text and I’m interested to hear from a variety of players on their thoughts (although I know forum participation is a poor sample of the playerbase, it’s what we’ve got to work with).
^ This. I remember one of the devs (I think it was Sirrian in the chests preview, actually) saying “don’t worry about all those glory costs; you can now earn glory in PvP.” Yeah, 3 at a time… I personally don’t have the spare time to PvP that much, and even with double tribute from 1-gold-star kingdoms, glory is way scarcer than it used to be relative to how much of it you have to pay out.
I have been waiting to make some experience with 1.0.8 before I gave a (possibly rash) feedback. But now I think I get a pretty good picture and can voice my criticism:
Let’s start with the good things (i.e. the ‘likes’):
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Troop upgrades! Almost enough said on this one. Some in-depth troop upgrades were needed for some time and the current design is both interesting and feels well placed.
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VIP system. More so the retroactice calculation of said system. This way it feels like actually rewarding you instead of plainly saying “you spent money? Oh well, now spend some more to get anything!”
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More ways to get free stuff: VIP bonuses in case you already spent some $$$ and additional rewards for investing in troops/kingdoms and some free traitstones
However, there are also some negative aspects 1.0.8 brought us. Nothing new here, I fancy, since the devs read it all over the forums now:
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The tribute nerf. An offset for uncapping gem rewards is possibly in order but seriously? You could have gone down to 5 gems + 1 per tributing kingdom. This way it is way too much of a nerf
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Traitstones. The system is alright. Just the numbers are not. We have to get every trait on every single troop (eventually), remember? Just fully traiting ONE troop is hard enough (way too hard imo). Even paying money does not help much there
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Balancing. It is questionable whether 1.0.8 did good or bad in this regard. There simply are traits that are better than others and troops that are blessed with good traits and troops stuck with bad ones. I understand that this is your way to address some of the balancing issues from the past but imo all troops should get traits of roughly equal strength. Balancing the troops against one another should be (mostly) before any traits come into play
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Acquiring stuff (refering mostly to troops although traitstones could be included into this point). Keys are much worse now, especially for beginners. Gold keys are outright bad, glory keys are somewhere borderline and gem keys also feel much worse than magic keys. First of all, every key now only grants ONE troop OR something else. At first I felt quite content with the additional rewards popping out of chests but now I mostly feel the downside of it. If anything it should be one troop PLUS some additional reward. It is now a nightmare to get by new troops in larger quantities. I also haven’t seen any legendary troop out of chests since 1.0.8, despite opening near 100 gem keys. I might have been very unlucky (again) with those legendaries but from what I read around here it is now even harder to get legendaries.
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The mastery nerf. Totally unnecassary and uncalled for imo
In conclusion I have to say that the positive emotions with 1.0.8 win this fight. However, please have a look at all the feedback you get around here @all devs. I am sure you will come up with something 
Edit: Added some points
I honestly think a lot of the negative things could be offset by making the whole “collecting stuff” affect much easier. Even the tribute nerf starts to not be a problem if people are able to collect the resources needed for things easier.
As it is right now, the people who have had immense resources available to them from being in the top 1%, STILL can’t even trait up 1 epic or rare.
Double tribute rewards hardly means anything if the road to get there is do long as to be mostly unattainable.
I was going to say there are a ton of really questionable traits but there are actually very few, with the exception of the Troop Slayer ones since they’re situational and impossible to build for under normal circumstances. Yes, they annoy me.
Otherwise, its really just the Burn related ones, which can be obviously linked to the fact we only just got the mechanic and there are only two troops who can inflict it without traits. The number of Fireproof/Pyromania troops is kind of annoying, especially on legendaries. The Aflame trait can burn enemies on skull damage, but that trait is, of course, not on any troop with Pyromania (double damage to burned enemies). Dimetraxia and Salamander are the only troops who can both burn enemies and hit them for double damage (which makes a certain amount of sense seeing as they can burn enemies naturally). The only troop with Aflame who can utilize this without being in the front slot is Goblin Rocket via his ability exploding a skull, although this is unconfirmed.
There are a LOT of traits that are obviously on different levels. First you have those of which a weak and a strong version exists (reduced damage from skulls and +mana on start). There should only be one. Seriously, what was the idea behind this design?
Then you have those traits that do not help you at all in battle. +2 gold on 4/5 gem matches? Nice but totally not worth it. Too weak to build a team around it and even if you wanted to, there simply are better ways to farm ressources.
- magic traits are obviosuly on the stronger end of the spectrum since, again, magic is the only stat troops get either nothing or very little of from leveling/ascending. While it was shifting rather hardly from spell to skull damage in 1.0.7, in 1.0.8 any troop that does not primarily rely on skull damage is even weaker than it was before.
I could go on here but I think I made my point. Even though I sounded pretty harsh I can lice with it right now and would not even rank the trait balancing aspect very high on my to-do-list. There are more urgent issues with the update.
Very true. I’m guessing only a few players, like @MrSammy and some others in MatchMasters would have greater resources than I do (I am level 740 and had c. 90000 souls, 2000 gems, 6000 glory, 5000 keys etc before the patch hit, not much gold as I chuck that into the guild) - and I have at this point only two troops with all traits, both commons, and struggling to get many traits at all onto epics and legendaries…
The devs I think need to show us some fast progression into new content, troops, challenges etc to keep people hooked - I may be enough of an obsessive completionist to plug away at this for years to get everything, but 99% of people won’t be… and won’t have as ‘easy’ a ride as I do…
108 seems like an important step in the overall game development, but an interim step that risks terrifying people with how far out of reach things are… the game is infinitely more fun than any other iOS collect-the-crap game - but is that enough to keep us all going another year or two? I’m unsure - hopeful, and still excited, but unsure…
I agree with many of the points that are expressed here and elsewhere in the forum, both positive and negative, but I would like to stress a point that I haven’t read anywhere so far, the fact that with all the monster attack stats from ascending and bonuses, the spells/skills on many troop are very weak in comparison. I think it’s time to have more magic on many troops and skills.
Actually I did mention the magic aspect. Ascending/leveling up to 20 was a good opportunity for the devs to address the neglected magic scaling. However, they decided to go completely into the opposite direction and made the issue even worse. I can only assume that this is intentional and the course they are heading towards in the future.
You’re absolutely right. I’ve been saying at least since 1.0.7 that stats are out of wack, I sort of just forgot with all the other stuff… filed it under ‘older issues’. We’ve got things like Carnex’s armor gain, which is a mere afterthought now. Things that do a small amount of … anything.