Bounties happen once a month and introduce a new bounty troop every time which needs to be ascended to unlock the higher scores, which are doubled since it’s the captain. Normal bounty troops give 2x-6x points, and the captain gives 4x-12x points. That means the maximum points you can gain per fight is having four bounty troops and one of them is the captain. This will give you 30x points (6 + 6 + 6 + (6*2)), assuming the captain is ascended. Your points of course might differ. If you get the captain but don’t ascend him past Rare, your maximum points will be 22x if you use him with three other Mythic bounty troops. Every rarity increase will increase the multiplier by 2, up to 30.
Interestingly, you can buy Tiers 1 through 4 and then use an orb of ascension to skip him from legendary to mythic and save a bunch of gems! This works because you need to buy Tier 5 AND 6 normally to upgrade the bounty troop from Legendary to Mythic, as Tier 5 doesn’t give you enough troops alone to upgrade him to Mythic.
The bounty troops are something I look forward to every month – in fact, next to the Mythic, it’s probably the most interesting troop that comes out given that you need to use him to maximize points. As long as you have a 30x bonus, you’ll have enough sigils to receive all rewards.
Note: if you DO purchase Tier 5, you’ll get 6 sigils from it, and you’ll be able to complete all rewards on Friday. If you only purchase Tier 4, you’ll be able to complete all rewards on Sunday, Saturday at the earliest with good ravens (you’ll get 4 sigils on Saturday, but I think your score will be just shy of the last reward without the 2 extra sigils you’d get from Tier 5, but you’ll get those on Sunday so it doesn’t matter).
Note that you cannot lose a single raven or battle or you will be short in points! This last bounty event I used this team:
- Tigraki Warrior (Red/Brown)
- Soldier of Wrath (Red/Blue)
- Corpse Mare (Yellow/Blue)
- Blightwing (Green/Brown)
The order is important because I needed Blightwing to be the one that Harpy Eagle pulled to the front. Tigraki Warrior is the real powerhouse of all bounty teams (and I recommend 3x Medal of Nysha for it!) because it does colossal true damage to enemy troops. This makes it easy to snipe ravens because you don’t need to burn through any enemy armor.
So what are my gripes with bounties? First is troop diversity.
| Type | # |
|---|---|
| Beast | 13 |
| Elemental | 5 |
| Knight | 3 |
| Daemon | 2 |
| Human | 2 |
| Monster | 2 |
| Raksha | 2 |
| Undead | 2 |
| Divine | 1 |
| Dragon | 1 |
| Dwarf | 1 |
| Mech | 1 |
| Merfolk | 1 |
| Naga | 1 |
| Urska | 1 |
| Wildfolk | 1 |
The devs really love their bounty troops being beasts – half of them are beasts! Of those 13 though, 7 of them are only beasts, while the other 6 have a second type. Furthermore, another half of troops, 13 exactly, have only one troop type (7 Beasts, 1 Daemon, 1 Dwarf, 1 Merfolk, 2 Monsters, 1 Raksha).
This makes it very hard to “4x bonus” your team, since while it’s very easy to get 4 beasts and elementals, it’s impossible to get 4 of anything else.
The same problem plagues troop colors, with some combinations dominating and others absent:
| Color1 | Color2 | # |
|---|---|---|
| Red | Brown | 5 |
| Yellow | Blue | 4 |
| Brown | Yellow | 3 |
| Yellow | Green | 3 |
| Blue | Brown | 2 |
| Green | Brown | 2 |
| Brown | Purple | 1 |
| Green | Blue | 1 |
| Purple | Green | 1 |
| Purple | Yellow | 1 |
| Red | Yellow | 1 |
| Red | Purple | 1 |
| Red | Blue | 1 |
| Blue | Purple | 0 |
| Red | Green | 0 |
Again, this makes troop combinations very hard because of color blocking. When Dire Cub and Droggo came out for instance, they color blocked Tigraki Warrior completely. This is important when you’re forced to use the captain, because all bounty troops have at least two colors. In some situations, you can simply put your captain in the back and forget about him (Mecha Rat). In other situations, you want him in the front (Crysturtle).
However, just like Delves, because bounty troops always use exactly 2 colors, it’s impossible to have a 4x team bonus for same color without color blocking someone (which is why delve teams always release one troop that is “off color” so-to-speak).
And then there are bounty troop roles…
| Role | # |
|---|---|
| Generator | 10 |
| Striker | 10 |
| Support | 3 |
| Warlock | 1 |
| Warmaster | 1 |
| Warrior | 1 |
| Assassin | 0 |
| Defender | 0 |
| Mage | 0 |
Now, to be fair, most bounty troops were created before the role system was implemented. However, the role system merely categorized existing design, so it’s been clearly evident that bounty troops have been designed from the beginning to be generators and strikers.
Generators is a broad category though, so that’s important to keep in mind. For instance, Crysturtle is labeled as a Generator because it converts a color. However, it also barrier and submerges a random ally AND has 50% skull damage reduction, a first for bounty troops! War Wolf and Wood Rhynax as well have skull damage reduction (although if you’re buying tiers, you’re already getting skull damage reduction at this level).
Strikers are anything that does single target damage, like my favorite Tigraki Warrior, though not all troops that deal single target damage are Strikers – Soldier of Wrath is a Warrior and Corpse Mare is a generator (and it can survive in front line as a Defender because of its life steal!).
Warmaster is an interesting description because it is so vague. Warmasters are described as troops that “buff/summon allies for attack or create skulls” – so… a warmaster is a troop that summons, OR buffs, or creates skulls, which means a Warmaster could be a Support as well. And of course there are lots of skull generators that are labeled as Defenders (Glaycion) or Assassins (Zuul’Goth) instead.
Nevertheless, I’d like to see future Bounty troops branch out of these typical troop types/colors/roles. A blue/purple dragon mage or a red/green wildfolk defender would be completely unique!
Now… aside from troop types, colors, and roles, I have one last caveat to Bounties being as “enjoyable” as they are, and that is what happens when you reach stage 20.
Once you reach stage 20, you haven’t even reached the tip of the rewards. Oh no. You need to do stage 20 again and again and again. The same fight, over and over, no variation in the slightest. You have the same troops. The enemy has the same troops.
This is very similar to, well, every other event, except it happens MUCH sooner. Eventually in other events, you reach a point where the enemy “caps” its level and the troops stop changing. This happens in Tower of Doom, in Invasion, in Raid Boss… but in those events, there is at least some variation along the way. Tower of Doom has five different rooms and you don’t have to fight them all every floor (nor should you). In Invasion and Raid Boss, the enemies keep getting harder, and by the time they cap their levels, the guild rewards have probably been filled already.
But in Bounty… my god, the boredom sets in so quickly. There’s no increased difficulty past 20, no more troop changes, and I feel like it’s beating a dead horse at that point. You HAVE to do the fights to get the rewards, but it’s so mindless. It makes me think like, I’ve already proven I can beat this team 100% of the time, why do I need to keep proving it? There’s an unnecessary grind to it just to get all the rewards. And I get that the grind is there for people who are trying to top the leaderboards, but for those of us just trying to get all the regular rewards, I want some more variation. I don’t know how, maybe increase the number of stages so the enemies and levels keep changing and increasing.