7.0 Update: Underspire

Actually, I think it’s just the case of someone looking at the shameless money grab that is Diablo Immortal and thinking “hmm, this is giving me some ideas…”

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I’ve not played Diablo Immortal. Is there something specific they’re taking from the game in Underspire? It seems to be following the standard dungeon crawler type game. Is Diablo Immortal just very heavy on microtransactions and an energy system?

This is what I do with shiny pets each week - get them to legendary and then use a minor orb

@TimeKnight Hey congrats, great run! I had one zone that was 32!

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Thanks so so so much! 6th miniboss was indeed beyond final boss room, so I got thru without paying for that last keystone.
1000000728

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Well…
First thing, is it just me or are others also seeing this:


Before the update there was only Loading Assets progress bar, after update that Logging In thing appeared right in front of usual Loading Assets - 2 different accounts on 3 different devices, so it’s not my imagination.
Of course, I can’t say with a hundred percent certainty because I haven’t measured with a stopwatch but it feels like game takes longer time so start now than it did before the update.

Secondly, missing images seem to be sorted for now on my mobile, but it didn’t happen without a long winded story to tell. Sit down around the campfire, kids, and listen up…

Summary

I went to Google Playstore and proceeded to update (since it never updates automatically on my phone) - the usual images (newest bounty troops and such) were still missing.
Somebody filed a bug report about a visual issue, this one, I think
[Fixed] 7.0 Broken Graphics
The fix was rolled out, game downloaded a small snippet of data when I fired it up to collect tribute and - lo and behold! - almost all images were gone without me even lifting a finger.
Almost 900MB of downloaded assets later there are no more missing images, but it will probably only be so until next Bounty on August 11 when normal service resumes.

Others have already said good and reasonable things about unreasonable changes to certain game modes, so I won’t repeat it again; suffice to say that I side with them.

People have already talked in length about the disaster that is visual upgrade and new look of cards, but a few breadcrumbs from me…
Functionality must come first and aesthetically pleasing (which is a highly subjective matter in itself, so what devs think is aesthetically pleasing is not necessarily what players thing is aesthetically pleasing) should always take back seat. I’ll take ugly card with with the information I need readily available over Mona Lisa that gives me no necessary information.

Fortunately, new look does not cause me health issues and I can even see stuff (on mobile and laptop and desktop) but it is much harder to follow and discern necessary information than before the update.
Things that, at the very least, must go as soon as possible:

  • That blue flashy abomination when troop is ready to cast - everybody already knows that troop is spell-ready when the image changes from portrait to spell picture. There is absolutely no need to shove constant annoying blue animation down our throats. Maybe the devs enjoy living in a stroboscope, but I sure don’t;
  • Mana rainbow background for spell descriptions;
  • Mana rainbow sidebar on the cards;

By the way, this Reflect effect on enemy team is really something:


Perhaps your professional internal testing team (we’ve been told repeatedly that you have one) might spend less time on Australian holidays and more time on their pay-job?

P.S. Dang, almost forgot the most pathetic thing now - trait diamonds.
Unless you know all trait of respective troop by heart (and, by extension, all traits in their correct order for all troops), those diamonds provide no useful information whatsoever.
If before update we only had to memorize some essential pictures (for example, Stealthy, Impervious, Eagle Eye, Godslayer) to assess situation with a single glance at the enemy team, after update we might spend whole day staring at the enemy team still would be none the wiser - there is not a single drop of useful information revealed in those pesky diamonds.

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*If you use your free lantern on miniboss room 2, you’ll get 2 imperial deeds. If you spend 50 gems per day to make sure you reach that dragon, whatever your spend is (up to 350 gems) it is cheaper than 2 for 500 from the wandering merchant in Explore. Who rarely offers me imperial deeds, and I’ve done a lot of exploring … I do very rarely get one from The Angel - although it is usually purple ingots orvwhite pet food :rofl:

And I’m blocked by both books and medals right now, but yeah, books are the big issue

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you and everyone else is blocked by books :slight_smile:
That’s why i said a few times - rewards, for long time players, are not worth it.

I have hundreds of orbs of all colors. I have 26 power orbs (totally useless as of today). To pay sooo many gems to get 100 dragonite at the end and a few orbs and 1 imperial deed… i just can’t justify that.

Now, if they would have put BOOOKS there… i could see me trying harder every week. Until then, free sigils it is :slight_smile:

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Instead of sleeping, I decided to color and annotate my Underspire map, as others have also done. And fix it multiple times because I kept uploading it with mistakes :sleeping:.

Shortest path = 78 torches (if I didn’t miscount again)

Actual path taken = :woman_shrugging:, too sleepy now, didn’t count. I definitely wasted a lot of torches in the 5th zone (yellow/Legendary gate) because I didn’t think the correct path would hug the right wall. The 1st zone was me spending extra torches exploring.

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With each new update, I become more and more convinced that the devs are intentional trying to ruin the game and drive away the player base.

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Should the headstarter offer start today?

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The headstart offer isn’t for WE. Sounds like just Raid, Invasion, ToD, Journey. At this stage at least.

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Nice rewards my friend.

Finished my run. I prioritized getting the dragon and the gate, and did not buy any keystones or lanterns (except the free one).
The shortest path (Dragon, not shop) was also 78 for me. In fact, for each but the first section (12) and last section (1) it was 13 battles exact. In this table, I do not count lost battles, though I lost 4 or so.

Area Shortest Path Dragon Dragon + Shop Max Actual
1 6* 12 12 14 13
2 13 13 18 18+ 18
3 13 13 19 26 26
4 13?8* 13 16+ 16+ 15
5 11* 13 15 18 18
6 12* 13 19 23 23
Final 1 1 1
Total 68***/?63**** 78 99+ 115+ 114
Additional 18***/?13**** 28 49+ 31+ 64
Buys 4/?3 6 10 7 13
  • = keystone buy
    I did not see the shop in the 4th area. Unfortunately, I blew my lantern on the Diamantina battle, and had some bad drops, losing the battle!

Default, no buys: With 35 battles default, you should almost always be able to get to the 2nd boss even with the worst pathing luck. You might be able to get to the 3rd boss if you’re lucky.

Notice how often I hit the max possible rooms, even when not trying for that. Maybe I had bad luck? Only one zone did I bypass the shop, and quite often I hit dead ends.

13 buys means 2 a day: ~ 950 gems a week to complete. If I’m going for completion each week, I’d probably buy all 3 the first day to be a little safe. I might consider buying one lantern bundle to use on the bosses. I think the map generation makes it so that even if you have the worst possible luck, you can complete it only buying torches.

I wonder if other people’s results are similar?
–edit, looking at Voq’s post above, it matches with the dragon path being exactly 13 for each section. If you’re extremely lucky, you could finish the underspire with only 6 torch buys each run.

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that fact was not fun.

this fact is fun: wombat’s poop is square.

need? no. sadistic desire to see us all suffer? yes.

and who doesn’t? jack rabbit is dreammmyyy…

do not let them win!

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Let’s just say that Diablo Immortal is the most transactions heavy game I have ever seen. There are number of predatory ways to extract money from the player. You can easily spend over one hundred thousand dollars (and that’s a lower estimation) to fully deck one character. And you have 7 classes - for now. Everything you buy, you buy not for the whole account, but for ONE character.

The way that they developed psychological nudges and use fear of missing out to entice players to spend money is truly fascinating. The Youtube viideos explaining Diablo Immortal’s transaction model are very interesting to watch, but it’s also terrifying to know that this is the present and future of gaming.
One video you might want to see is this one: The immoral design of Diablo Immortal

As for Gems of War, I see it starting to go down this road with torches and lamps. Insane number of rooms where you are always short on torches and lamps. You burn your diamonds to buy them, but eventually you have to spend money if you want to finish to get “great rewards”.

Also, each new update brings more currencies that all feed into each other. Diablo Immortal has some 22 currencies and crafting materials for now. They are all connected and you’re always short on at least some of them. I think that this is the way the devs are going with, and it’s not going to end well. Because, even though Diablo Immortal is the most predatory game I have ever seen, it still rakes in insane amount of money. I really hope I am wrong, but we’ll see.

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imagem_2023-07-23_065234659
1200 gems on torches
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200 gems on torches, only got 3 bosses out of it.
Let’s call it a one-time mistake. No more spending on this mode.

Also with the increased price of weekly guild events, I’ll need to take a bit more care of my gems anyhow.

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