They shouldn’t have to meddle with the rewards on delves at all if they were to double the amount of daily attempts. There’s a time cost linked to this already … this being why I don’t even really like the ‘double the attempts’ idea, I wouldn’t benefit at all. I’d much prefer the hoard-associated stats go way up, but they’ll never do it.
This thread starts with a presumption of the problem (i.e. delves). While I agree that some of the delves are probably impossible without potions or absurd hoard levels; I, for one, enjoy the challenge of the trying. I’ve complete 4 without potions and am probably a good set of cascades away from finishing a 5th.
As I’ve mentioned to others on our discord; there is nothing in this game, quite like the feeling of completing a level 500 faction run without potions…after weeks of trying. Potion faction runs aren’t the same, and have a sense of inevitability.
That said, if I were to improve the experience…here are my thoughts:
- Give us a delve shop. Let us buy more daily runs with gems. And with those, sell potions a la the weekly event. That are usable in any delve until the next reset.
- Let us use the faction weapon in the full faction run, with the class tied to the kingdom.
- Lower the AI “luck factor” - or lower its “skill level” so that it makes more mistakes. We have basically no room for error; it should therefore, make errors.
- Kingdom levels should increase the hoard by more than 25% or 50%. Maybe 50% and 100%.
- Let us use faction OR kingdom troops, where using more faction troops gives some sort of bonus (e.g. shield, enchant, etc.)
- In the weekly event, allow us to start on our current delve level, rather than 20. Make completing them accessible. I would probably purchase several tiers just to try and complete some factions with that level 500 run…
- Let us “earn” potions with hoard level … hoard 100 enchant, hoard 200 explosion, etc.
Mistakes in “improving delves” would be:
- Lowering the 500 level faction run to something other level
- Allowing pets to be upgraded with ascension orbs or other method
3 Likes
On the one hand, delves are extremely grindy and random, which is bad. On the other hand, it gives something to do, which is good. For me, as a pretty casual end game player, time and gold investment into hoard upgrade is prohibitive. So, a solution, without changing the structure, might involve simple decrease in hoard upgrade cost to make it reasonable. For now, at my rate of play generating about 1.5 million gold per week, it will take many years to get to some reasonable hoard level for pure faction runs. I don’t even want to calculate, I won’t survive that long, I’m sure. It would be nice if upgrade costs plateau at some reasonable level (100 sound feasible). So upgrade equation, which now looks like 600 + (200 x current Hoard level) per Treasure should instead look like 600 + (200 x 100) per Treasure for all levels over 100. Otherwise, it is a pure nonsense imho as it is now.
I know the big fix is to use the hero or the delve weapon which has been mentioned many times. The problem with this is that the kingdom isn’t tied to the weapon, the class is. Now that we only have 2 classes left in the upper kingdoms now it’s time to add them to the underworld.
More than just 4 troops to choose from would be a help too.
I know a delve shop has been mentioned, but I was thinking more of a delve section in the current shop. I’d like to spend my shards on treasure troops without getting more copies of the kingdom troops.
1 Like
This is basically where I’m at as well. I make a reasonable amount of gold, it goes into guild tasks and stockpiles for kingdom levels and so on. I do not have tens of millions of gold to burn on hoards for slightly higher stats to play a mode that is very irritating and time-consuming …
3 Likes
A 25% or 50% boost to player stats at Hoard 100 is almost negligible. At Hoard 200, not much better. Which is why I was proposing a reduction to ALL enemy stats in Delves based upon Renown Level.
True, even at 40k renown, that would amount to only minus 100 Life and Armor, minus 50 attack, (and minus 25 magic?), it would increase to deductions of 200 Life and Armor at 80k renown. That ain’t nothing. I don’t know, maybe my math is off. As stated in other threads, I am currently enraged, and not thinking clearly.
Absolutely correct. This could be remedied by amending the level 12 and 14 kingdom boosts to a combination of horde level pc boost plus static non scaling boost. I think however that doubling the existing percentage boosts would be adequate. The problem is that the solution needs to be simple because otherwise the whole faction mode will have to be almost recoded from scratch. I would like the length of events to be halved but this is problematic because it means changing how awards are given and when because the increment per level will need to increase as @Fleg says to 20 or the faction is deemed complete at 250. Both of these will require scaling of tier cost etc. I think the easiest way is to give us the time to do these events by increasing their duration significantly. That way the coding is unaffected except for the boosts offered by kingdoms being increased to 40/80% or 50/100%. This is not ideal I know but we are past half way faction wise and we need a swift remedy, not a long drawn out technical solution that will take another 6 months to implement.
1 Like
I’m half-way through drafting my own post on this. Will link here, once it’s up.
However, when you boil it right down, I think the biggest problem with Pure Faction is that you realistically only get one chance at it.
So if you’re not there at launch, regardless how much you progress in the game, you will find it much more difficult (in – at the very least – the time sense) than those who were. That really hurts new players, and has got to affect retention.
Yes, it’s important to also buff Pure Faction teams in some exclusive way. But…
…it’s even more important to provide additional, regular opportunities of equivalent difficulty and time investment to launch weekend!
2 Likes
Delves are not fun and so there is no motivation to do them or participate in events.
A change to motivate players that is simple is:
When a player attempts a pure faction run the hoard automatically increases by 1.
For example - you are at hoard level 200, you try pure faction 3 times for 3 days, after the third day it is now 209.
Will you spend more or less gold on hoards? Me more.
Will you be more likely to participate in a Tues event? Me more.
Will it make Tues events easier and/or quicker. Yes and slightly quicker.
Will you be more interested for pure faction delves. Me absolutely.
Delves are voluntary and participation is low because there is simply zero motivation. Having this change motivates players who would otherwise spend zero resources. I have delves at 100 without pure faction done - am I currently going to spend gold or gems for the pure faction? - NO. So I believe players would spend more gold and more gems on delves overall with this change.
1 Like
I have 2 ideas, neither of which I’ve seen mentioned. Not sure how “game breaking” they would be and I don’t know if it would fit their business model, but I’ll toss them out there and let the devs make that decision.
-
Every week the devs add new troops to the game. Why not allow new faction troops? Why limit the factions to only 4 troops? Gradually introduce new troops to the faction kingdoms and possibly new Mythics.
-
Introduce a new “traveler” mechanic. (Might be too difficult depending on the code base). With this concept, each week a random Mythic troop is chosen and that Mythic “travels” to a randomly chosen faction kingdom (compatible with his colors) and stays there for the week. While this mythic troop is travelling he is considered to be from his home kingdom and from the faction kingdom for stat purposes and is a valid troop to use on a pure faction team that week. Obviously some weeks would be better than others but this would make a pure faction team much easier to use with certain mythics.
1 Like
I’ve already said it long ago on one or another delve thread:
Global hoard - levels up to hoard 100 counts only towards the respective delve while hoard levels above 100 give full stats to the respective delve and percentage of stats in all the other delves.
4 Likes
So if you raise the horde for ONE faction to for example 300, a corresponding percentage boost is globally applied to all Kingdom faction troops? What percentage do you have in mind?
Similar to weekly events, allow us to use multiple sigils to boost stats… e.g. up to 100% stat increase
1 Like
Perhaps levels up to hoard 100 also dictate the % of the stat boosts from the global hoard able to be accessed by that Faction? 
2 Likes
Hmm…maybe.
Anyway, after more thought - there probably should be a cap of how much bonus hoard a player can earn ‘the global way’ since each subsequent delve would have increasing number of previous delves to benefit from.
1 Like
I’ve had this idea for some time, similar to that of allowing hero to be used for the pure faction team, but not quite as straightforward…
The idea is to have Faction Class, not as some completely new standalone classes, but think of it as an advancement / expansion from the existing classes. Here’s the rough idea, I will use the Assassin class as example… Upon completing pure faction run level 150 in Fang Moor, one will unlock an “altered” version of the Assassin class, let’s name it the Setauri Assassin. The players then would be able to swap between the original & the faction class. Swapping to the faction version of the class change the kingdom / faction, 1 or 2 traits, one of the talent tree, possibly the bonus magic color too.
Example:
Setauri Assassin (Fang Moor)
Talent Tree from Death - Shadow - Cunning to War - Shadow - Cunning (Or a completely new Talent Tree with new stuffs, since the existing trees have no access to newer mechanics like Bleed / Curse / Reflect, etc)
Last trait from Assassinate to a different one, example: Deals 5 true damage to all enemies when I match skulls, deal 5 more to bleeding & poisoned enemies.
This can potentially solve more than just the faction delve problem, plus a good way for the dev to add new content & ways to sell us new stuffs.
-
This can save / bring some of the less useful classes back on par / better in endgame, i.e. a Beast class that do something better than giving mere 5 armors to all allies, a Knight class that could finally have a better armor trait, and so on… Faction class can be more endgame-ish in power level, since they are gated by the pure faction run requirements.
-
More new content for hero classes, so that it doesn’t end after all Kingdom classes are released.
-
Could introduce more ways to grind and enhance the hero classes. i.e. add a new type of “treasure” room in Delve that drop a new “currency”. This currency could be used to increase your class level to 25, or to enhance the class weapon / craft a new faction class weapon. Could also introduce a new set of Lv120 talents upon unlocking the faction class. More things to grind for = more chances for the dev to sell us stuffs, so it might be good for them too.
Anyhow I am also still very fond of the ideas from some other posts here, any ways that help cutting down the time needed to do Delve / Faction run would be great. It is insanely unfeasible & extremely costly to attempt it as of now, it is the opposite of fun, a torture to any completionist. Lowering the max delve level required for pure faction, or cutting down everything by half (double points, half sigils gained from Raven / Shop) are some of the best ideas. Oh and I totally do not understand why Tuesday FA cannot last until Friday, why must it be a 1 day thing?
5 Likes
There are currently 5 Apocalypse troops and 6 Primal Troops. If Krystara had an eleven month Zodiac, every 33 days could have a different Apocalypse or Imp troop that if used as a delve troop would count as a faction troop and earn 20% bonus stats for that team.
It would give folks a better appreciation for Xathenos, or a reason other than an achievement to craft him at least. And 33 days to summon enough Undead to clear the Warrens. Make him be next March. I’m in no rush.
I counted 15 Xbox players at max renown 1 hr prior to reset, and another 30 at or above 44k (including me). I’m just trying to put some perspective on things. I’m not asking for free stuff, just saying that I know how challenging certain delves can be.
I failed again vs Stonesong Eyrie in the 1st room when enemy Bladewing sniped Queen Xochi with its 1st attempt today. My Bladewing took 2 tries to return the favor, and then 10 more before getting a 2nd kill. 2 out of 12 isn’t that far from 20%, but that ai always hits Xochi 1st. Last faction event it hit 5 out of 6 tries at level 300. Having Famine, or Xathenos, might give the ai another priory target, and give my Xochi a chance to play a turn or two.
Xathenos might not be the answer to all our (my) problems, but at least his colors match Dark Pits, Stonesong, and the Warrens…
I have every delve at level 500 non-faction with no casualties. What I don’t have is every faction at 500 pure-faction, and what I have left are ones that are incredibly difficult.
-
Silver Necropolis: There are only two ways to do damage with this team: Skulls and Vanya. Bone Golem can gain Armor and Attack, but the enemy gains much more Armor and Attack, and the entire enemy team is immune to death mark, just like you are, so Bone Golem’s death mark is useless. The only benefit of Vanya’s Bless is that it makes you immune to mana drain (and of course in the fights along the way, helps you avoid things like Entangle, Silence, Stun, Etc.) Unfortunately, this match up is simply a race against time. You’re trying to kill the enemy team before they skull match you to death (their Bone Golem hurts a lot) and get a couple Vanya hits in. Necrocorn is pretty useless here, so right off the bat you won’t be running with a 4x bonus. Creating 10 gems of one of two colors is pretty low and random and can backfire. Draugr is nice but the drain doesn’t work if the enemy is also blessed. You can use Vanya to summon more troops, but extra troops don’t help you if the enemy Vanya is killing yours. This is obviously a delve that you can simply beat by increasing the hoard level to ridiculous amounts. More Life/Attack/Armor and of course Magic will win you the fight. It’s simply a matter of sinking gold into it. No strategy involved, you just need to do more damage then them and survive longer. Without better stats, your Bone Golem can’t gain attack/armor faster than the enemy and they will slowly chip away at yours. And of course the troop you summon from Vanya is random so it might be useless and all that attack you built up is gone.
-
Mirrored Halls: This one is all about which troops you can pick up along the way, because the troops you start with aren’t really sufficient to beat the enemy team at the end. You need to pick up some godly troops before you reach the end, which means your troops need to die and you need to use Mirror Queen and Doppelganger to get enemy troops. Naturally, any “stat” bonuses from having troops of the same kingdom, type, etc. are incredibly useless here because you’ll start the delve with a couple bonuses and lose them as you acquire new troops.
-
Hall of Guardians: This is a really tough match up because the enemy Gargoyle is incredibly vicious. Ideally you’ll Stun them all with Arcane Golem which shuts down their Spell Armor and lets you use your own Gargoyle to kill them first. In practice though, they’ll get the first hit and one shot your troops. Sucks. Unlike the two delves above, there’s no troops to summon or swap here, so any bonuses you have going in are safe as long as you don’t lose your troops. In fact, you could even run one of every troop here for all the pet bonuses since every troop is pretty viable.
-
Lyrasza’s Lair: The gist of this fight is that you run 3x Dementicore and then Lyrasza in the back. Then you just use your Dementicores to steal attack and kill the enemy. Naturally with only two unique troops, your bonus stats will be lower, but the other troops are more of a liability anyway and don’t help you at all to win, and in the case of Chaos Hound, help the enemy win.
-
Crypt Keepers: This is another game of 3x and 1 with luck, where you run 3x Lady Morana and a Grave Seer then slowly try to kill the enemy with lethal hits from Lady Morana. You can use medals on Lady Morana so that Grave Seer enchants her instead of himself, but this only works for the first room because after that, medals are bugged and fall off of troops in every room after.
-
The Warrens: Woohoo, another 3x, this time with 3x Luna and 1 Bunnicorn. The other two troops simply don’t bring anything except the stats from # of unique troops. Lapina Knight does have 25% skull damage reduction on top of the dodge, but because the opening room of course has a Trickster, you aren’t guaranteed to keep her there anyway. Having your own Trickster is useless as well. Why explode Green Gems when Luna explodes gems on yellow matches anyway? Bunnicorn is nice because it creates yellow gems. Unfortunately, this is a very hard delve because there is no skull damage reduction except for the dodge and no stat gains or spell armor. The only thing you have going for you is random positive/negative effects from Luna. Even at 199 Hoard level, I haven’t managed to beat this one yet. I always end up losing a Luna in the 2nd or 3rd room, and once you lose one, you’ll lose another. If every time you cast Luna it entangled and webbed the enemy team, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen.
-
City of Thieves: The gist of this one is that you put King of Thieves in front, then you hope to god your delve layout has Cedric room for a massive gold buff, then you kill the enemy team with your overpowered King of Thieves. If you don’t get the gold buff, just restart the delve, it’s not possible otherwise. Tomb Robber can be good if you can actually create the full 14 skulls, but even then, because the only skull resistance you have is 20% dodge, it’s too risky. You might get a 4 match, then a 3 match, but you’ll leave a 3 match for the enemy and lose a troop, unless you have King of Thieves pulling in massive stats. Cat Burglar is also useless. It does a pitiful amount of damage to the last two enemies, with the conditional gold and extra turn only if you kill one of them. Street Thief is your second best troop behind King because it refills King. Once again a delve is hindered by bad troops and luck.
-
Fang Moor: This one is hard in the same way Silver Necro is hard. The enemy Chief Dargon is going to gain a massive amount of attack compared to you and then Setauri is going to create skulls and run over you. Horned Asp does a pretty good amount of splash damage as well. The bleeding will also not help. In the end, it’s just a numbers game. They’ll gain more attack and do more damage than you will unless you have a ridiculous hoard level. There’s no strategy here.
Overview: The majority of the delves that I’ve talked about here face two problems. The first is that random skull matches heavily benefit the enemy more than you, simply because their stats are so much higher and the tools to deal with that (entangle, stealing attack, skull damage reduction, etc.) are either worse than theirs or non-existent. The second is that team composition bonuses don’t matter at all for a lot of these teams because the “4 unique troops” is the worst team you can make. You don’t want one of each troop. You’ll gain more stats, but you’ll be less effective.
And the cost to simply out-stat the enemy? Sky high.
202,000 gold to get… +2 Attack, +4 Life, +3 Armor. Those kind of stat gains simply aren’t enough to carry me at 500. The amount of gold required for Delves is simply too high compared to the cost of leveling Kingdoms, because the cost gets higher and higher as you go.
Why are delves so much easier to do at 500 on opening weekends? Well, because of purchases, you start off with explosions, so your starting mana is higher. All your troops have Enchant as well, so they’ll be full on mana in a turn or two because of the explosions. All your troops start with Barrier, and you can pump +7 to all stats for a small 200 gems.
You don’t get any potions outside of the event, and the only stat boost you have costs valuable gold instead of gems. Then once you’ve completed the delve at 500 pure faction, that hoard boost is pretty useless and it cost you millions of gold – all so you can gain a few more gold and ingots per day. To be honest, the Total Renown rewards are really, really bad.
1350 gold per day? That’s it? My gold per hour from Kingdoms is 1215 and that gets boosted by tributes.
And I think I’m okay on ingots…
Total Renown should have more rewards, like bonuses to Hoard Stats or starting bonuses/potions to delves.
- 10k Renown: Hoard Stats increased by 10%
- 20k Renown: Hoard Stats increased by 20% and Delve troops start with Enchant.
- 30k Renown: Hoard stats increased by 30% and Delve troops start with Enchant and Barrier.
- 40k Renown: Hoard stats increased by 40% and Delve troops start with Enchant, Barrier, and 25% Skull Damage Reduction.
8 Likes
Strategy required here is quite high actually, since you have to play the last room really smartly to avoid 4/5 matches and avoid giving yellow gems to the AI. You also have to know when to cast Vanyas and watch out for letting the enemy Bone Golem grabbing skull matches faster than you can safely fix your team.
I’ve done it at 100 no potions with no faction stat bonuses. Being able to survive 2 enemy Vanya casts raises the chances of success by a high amount.
3 Likes
The devs understand the difficulty. The point of this thread is to offer solutions.
Do we not have enough threads about delve strategy already?
1 Like