Good morning distinguished moderators and developers of the game, this is the third week since Sentinels were added and we may have some interesting data.
To complete all the paths in underspire, it takes around 2000 gems per week, and there are on average 15 treasure rooms.
Thanks to the extraordinary work of some users, we can say that the average of having a sentry as a reward is LESS than 2%.
Knowing this, it is easy to understand that completing the 6 sentinels could take years, as duplicates could also emerge, in addition to spending 2000 gems per week.
So I’d like to know if all this is intentional,
and therefore this was done to make people spend as many gems as possible or if some prankster developer went too far with his hilarity.
I would like to have an official answer, without excuses like the usual “I have to ask”
I believe the drop rate is 100% intentional. Yet another carrot to get people to play certain modes rather than the modes they want. I am biased because I believe not enough is done to show in game that not ALL troops are available in chests.
That being said every carrot they add to the game devalues previous carrots. For the first time in 5+ years of playing I could care less about owning every troop in the game because these new troops are time, play, and gem gated. The Dragons from Dungeons almost broke me and this was the last straw.
That coupled with the fact that kingdoms are no longer troop blocked from progression. But instead weapon blocked (Like Karakoth) of book of deeds blocked like too many to count.
Might as well wait 6 months after release for campaign troops to be released rather than get them earlier for a paid amount. Considering all the elements in place to block progression even for pay to win players.
TLDR - Paying to advance is supposed to allow players the ability to save time and effort for the same rewards as those that grind it out. Not for a “chance” to save time and energy.
This used to be a RPG puzzle game. Every update makes it more a over complicated slots game.
This has opened my eyes, thanks.
The FOMO evaporates when you realise that you aren’t in control anymore.
Each new troop or weapon that is delivered via some random mechanic either pushes completionists further into gem spend or further away from the game entirely. It’s not healthy either way.
Thanks for the reports, guys! I will just ignore Underspire. It is best for my mental health.
A) We have too many sentinels. It being GWs week I was confused for a moment.
B) I’ll still do underspire as I enjoy it. But trying to go for the troops will be way more painful than hoard mimic.
Well, you might not get any answer at all unless you move this from gameplay chat to feedback. And the CX Team probably won’t be able to answer without asking. And even if they manage to get an answer to forward, it’s likely going to be “working as intended”, without any further details.
The issue is really that the overall design doesn’t work well for players. The lower the drop rate is, the more years it takes to collect all the sentinels, which is frustrating. The higher the drop rate is, the more this devolves into a Cedric situation, where players eventually receive the umpteenth excess copy instead of something useful, which is also frustrating.
Player friendly design would have been to not put any sentinels at all into drop tables. Instead, make chests only contain standard loot plus some “sentinel tokens” on top, based on the rarity of the chest. Add recipes to the forge to craft sentinels by spending “sentinel tokens”, possibly along with some other resources. Make sure it’s targeted crafting, not some sentinel pinata that repeats the dragon egg frustration.
Or sentinels could just stop dropping once you have 4 at mythic rarity.
That would also make it less frustrating to try and find one’s you don’t have yet.
I wish Cedric would stop dropping after 4 copies, too. It’s getting out of hand with that guy.
Doesn’t work well the way it is currently configured. Chance for a sentinel is very low, attempts each week are very limited, so this will have an utterly frustrating variance. Unlucky players can easily not find any sentinel at all for a whole year, even when they always clear out the whole Underspire. A token mechanism at least gives you a steady progress.
This is so well said and summarizes my conclusions perfectly. With book and deed availability even with quite a large gem spend most players will only ever be able to level one kingdom of each color up to Level 20 (and please don’t refer me to the few unusual players who play for many hours a day just hunting down a merchant in explore and spend crazy amounts of gems on the merchant)…and as someone who still misses dragon no 6 and gave up entirely on purchasing any dragonite I can say players do have their limits in tolerance. I am watching where the next update is going and what the PVP update will entail before deciding to quit or not. I can tolerate missing some things in the game but if all modes are just time, gem spend and a tiny chance to actually accomplish anything at all, well, there is no more fun in it. Not forgetting to mention the overempowered looping troops that just killed Guild Wars too.
Yeah, that’s true. I was thinking of a better drop rate as well. 
Tokens would have to be a fair amount, too, or otherwise it would be equally as frustrating.
A simple question if I may: If the developers simply created these new game modes but didn’t include a “carrot”, how many of them would actually see any play at all? What sort of “return on investment” would (should?) those developers see for the time and resources they invest into creating that game mode?
I do agree with the notion that they lean too far into the RNG process with the extremely-difficult-to-acquire troops exclusive to one mode that’s meant to encourage immense amounts of time and spending to achieve 100%. But if they leaned every bit as hard in the other direction, I have my doubts that certain game modes would see any play at all. For example: the current iterations of Arena and Treasure Hunt.
I think the carrots have just become way too unachievable…compare this to earlier carrots like Zuul Goth, The Leonis Tower, Duskbringer, or Kingdom Level 15 or Power Level 20…they were hard but at least eventually achievable. (I am still busy with mine but at least I know I will eventually get all to Level 20…) not so with the sentinels, Diamantina, Power Level 30, Kingdom Level 20…the newer content.
Assuming the new game mode isn’t “fun” which should be the only reason to make additions to a game. Have the carrots be event or season based. I would have no issue with these troops if they had a specific chest they could be found in. (Shiny chests for example)
And keys for it being based on game modes they are trying to push? Say November you get x4 the amount of shiny keys as Explore which has a base mode of x1.
Finding troops in a troop collection game should be simple. It’s overly complicated as it stands and players numbers continue to deplete despite all these new additions. Which should show the devs that these carrots aren’t working towards the longevity of the game. Though I can’t help but feel upon review that this game has become a fire sale and longevity isn’t the plan anymore.
This! If we gained a little progress towards a Hoard Mimic every time we completed an Explore run, it would be a lot less frustrating. It’s not like they’re trying to push players to spend money for Hoard Mimic, either, since you can’t buy it.
Thank you to @NerdieBirdie and everyone else for gathering so much data on the new under spire. I made an early assessment about a week ago, that hunting down these new sentinels would be worse than the hoard mimic.
However, I was wrong. Getting these new troops is worse. Much, much worse. (1.5% drop rate with maybe a max of 15 chances and 2000 gems each week, really?)
Everyone should just carry on with under spire how they normally would and take optimal patching based on information this community has gathered. To hell with this sentinel rng garbage.
2000 gems/week is a WAY too high estimate, mid 1k at MOST in my experience should get you a full-clear. I would suggest against ever buying a 150 gem torch pack though, you can typically do everything you would want to do with the 50/100 gem packs each day.
Other than that, yea something needs to change with these sentinels, drop rate is way too low for ~15 per week. The best way to play is going to be just play underspire normally and use any bonus torches (or spend an extra 100 gems) to clean up a couple guardians at the end. Specifically chasing these is definitely even more of a nightmare than chasing horde mimic.
7x150=1050. And this gives 119 torches (7x7 for free, 7x10 for gems). Over the last 2 weeks, I needed around 130-140 torches to clear the entire underspire (map the entire map, but play only guardian battles in dead ends). So… even if not 2k, 1350-1500 gems looks to be the minimum to find all available rooms in the given week. 1650, if someone is scared they will be really, really unlucky in how their map is generated that week or experience losses on the way.
yea that tracks with me, 2k is way more than 1500ish, and honestly, missing 1 or 2 sentinels to save 300 more gems is worth it. If youre spending more than low 1k gems per week, it ends up really not being worth it. Also gotta factor in that a decent number of the sentinels will drop torches, so add prolly 1-5 extra torches per week if youre trying to full clear.
133 rooms, are 1850 gems.
Up until recently I wouldn’t mind the low Sentinel drop rate because I was still missing other troops, namely Diamantina, that would take me a while to get, so the Sentinels weren’t the only thing preventing me from 100% collection. Now, though, all I have left to collect are the Sentinels and the Hoard Mimic, both only obtainable by throwing myself against a brick wall enough times for it to crack. 