End the constant skull storm

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

At least 10 days ago the RNG was messed with. It’s not a “bad” luck streak. It’s not just “normal RNG”. It’s a design flaw used to make the game the game more difficult. Which is fine for 90% of the game. But in the Delves it makes it even more difficult when the creator of the game already said they were “too difficult”.

My exact issue:

  • Any sort of explosion or shuffling of the board is causing more skulls to drop or cascade than normal. The “luck” factor is working as intended. The player and the AI is getting an even amount of skull matches. The problem? In the Delves the AI hits 2-3 times harder. Usually easily countered with a barrier. But due to the new RNG design. A skull match using Doom skulls results in a future skull drop cascade as well at least 50% of the time. It’s ridiculous. I notice this behavior most in the Delves but could be true for the other modes as well. I get that the difficulty scales “randomly”. But even when the AI is taking it easy on me by skipping extra turns or not casting. I’m able to still complete a delve run. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to finish without losing a troop. I get as far as the boss with a full team, but “luck” results in me losing a troop.
    If I’m the only one experiencing this then I’m truly envious of the rest of you. It just makes me not want to play the game. Which sucks when we’re pushing for a big LT week.
1 Like
2

Don’t even get me started on this “random status” usually ending in blessed for the AI.

After the devs QA the Delves have only gotten more difficult. Not less difficult.
Win 4 matches at level 440 just to get fd during the boss battle. Thanks. :+1:

5 Likes
3

Just use Sylvanimora instead of The Possessed King. I often specifically set skull match when 1st troop was entangled by Sylvanimora because AI always prioritizes skulls.

Finished yesterday 500lvl without casualties. No lost delves last 150+ lvls. We have luck factor in this game, and sometimes unluck is so harsh that we cannot recover regardless of team and play. But most often team selection and choices on board are more important than luck.

3 Likes
4

Perhaps that will help against the constant skull storm. But wouldn’t help against the boss on my video. Thanks though… If the storm doesn’t end then I’ll try Sylv. I try to speed up an already too long delve. But yeah you’re probably right. Have to sacrifice speed for more consistent success.
When the faction came out. @Bernice got to 500 with my build easily so it should work. But it was before they clearly messed with the RNG. :person_shrugging:

5

Hey,

With that team you usually should have no problem at the later levels.

I would recommend to put irongut on the last spot and TPK on the 3rd one. In case of trickster, then you can use irongut as tank, when he devoured someone.

Also it’s important to fill up apothecary as soon as possible. In your first match already you could have used the 2 blue matches. It happens very often, that you can finish a room in just one turn.

I don’t know how high your hoard is, but if you go above 100, then it’s also worth a try to cast with irongut first (~ 60% chance), instead of fury before.

If you can get fast enough into a loop (mostly with apothecary), then RNG shouldn’t be able to harm us anymore :slight_smile:

2 Likes
6

Most players are in denial that the RNG existing at all is a problem for the concept of strategy. Free turns, explosions, and anything that relies heavily on skyfall create board states where it is impossible to evaluate the potential outcome of two different moves.

A productive argument would be, “Can we get a game mode that de-activates explosions, doesn’t have free turns, and disqualifies any troop with a ‘choose between…’ effect like Mongo or Tinseltail?” This would be a slower, more strategic game mode with the influence of skyfall minimized. Or it wouldn’t. It’d be nice to find out.

Instead, we have threads like this, that boil down to “please make the game easier for me by rigging the RNG so it increases my win rate”. Or, as your threads tend to go, “This is easier for everyone else except specifically me, and the only possible reason is because the devs must be specifically writing code to go against me.”

You are in an unfair situation: the troop levels are literally 25x yours. Many can single-shot your troops. Think about the way probability works there: you expect to lose unless you get lucky. Let’s say that we believe if RNG isn’t a factor you expect to win 10% of the time there.

Now let’s consider the “fair” RNG factor. “Fair” would be 50/50, right? Well, that means we reckon the CPU gets “lucky” half the time. If our expected win rate was 10%, now it’s 5%. Check that out! By adding a fair RNG, our expected win rate went down.

But let’s say we rig the RNG to skyfall in your favor more often than not. Maybe it avoids skulls, which you think would translate to a win. We tweak the RNG so it’s got a 60/40 split. Now you get 10% more luck. If we say “You win if you get lucky”, that means your 10% win ratio just went up! You were only winning 5% of matches before, but now we have to augment everything. We used to think, “You have a 10% chance of winning, adjusted by a 50% chance of luck.” Now it’s “You have a 10% chance of winning, adjusted by a 60% chance of luck.” See, in the 90% case you’re still going to lose, even if you get lucky, so now you’re at 6%. Congratulations!

Point being: even by making the RNG fall completely in your favor, you started with a 10% chance. Eliminating the RNG still leaves you with 10%.

It’s an unfair game mode, and adding RNG didn’t make it more fair. The only way to “fix” the RNG here is to eliminate it as much as possible. But in a match-3, the RNG is always present in skyfall. If they did rig the RNG to end whatever’s bugging you, all of the other problems involved with “the enemies can kill me in one hit” could still occur.

You’ve specifically ridiculed me in the past for this argument so I leave you with your own advice: “if you would build more clever teams then you’d find you could win more”. I hope it satisfies you as much as it did me.

3 Likes
7

I think this comment would be better in a thread about changes to delves maybe, but it’s here so…I was really hoping for proof of a change to delves, especially faction delves, but they have raised in difficulty with more rooms for example.

On TOD I’ve never seen so many skulls - constant barrage of sky skulls and boards where each match had to be 3 skulls. I got to level 70+ so can safely comment that it was ridiculous. It was just a real odd situation each pull down into the board either left skulls in traps or matched them.

Thankfully with barrier on brown and dust storm and healing I sometimes kept top troop alive but the volume of skulls and skull traps does seem too high at the moment. We commented in guild at the time.

On faction delve we can’t mitigate the insane drop of skulls. I’ve been trying faction 500 in Hog and the amount of stuff you have to do just to stand any chance is equivalent to going about 10 turns before enemy casts 1 spell to survive.

I’ve just reached the middle room with a full team after somehow getting beyond room 1 to face double empowered Lamia and a multiple skull board. The only way you can win with Hog faction is to raise attack enough to kill with the Guardian troop… not ideal vs charm.

I do appreciate it is supposed to be hard but it’s a poor system right now with the factions and making it harder seems contrary to info given.

Skulls aren’t a problem normally but it does seem maybe something is a little of with drop volumes.

3 Likes
8

much easier with entangle

1 Like
9

Still wouldn’t of helped me during the match I posted.
But yes I agree, a better way to counter the constant skull storm.

10

Besides the luck factor and fairness, it’s strategy and planning ahead.
In the video shared by op, I think they made a mistake. They knew an enchant spell was coming yet still they decided to increase all ally attack by an amount more than enough to have them one shotted from that spell, no matter which of their troops got enchanted.
In my opinion, focused attack stat increase is safer than team attack stat increase. That way and enchant would be lethal only on a 25% chance.
Also, I recommend increasing aly attack in this delve’s boss battle ONLY before the enchant can be casted (if you have board control and can eliminate the threat within the next turn so it doesn’t backfire), or after the enchant, which isn’t lethal before the boost on attack.
If luck eludes you, try finding it with different approaches

11

How would I know that an enchant spell was coming??

Focused on Irongut? Would’ve played out the same way then.

I used the exact same team and won 45 times against the boss on that delve. I posted the 1/3 times that I actually lost to the boss.
I admitted I had bad luck, and only showed the video because the AI tends to “randomly” get blessed or barrier more often than not.
Not to have my match 3 strategy be Monday morning quater backed. :person_facepalming:

12

Think the topic got a bit derailed with the “you gotta do this or that”.

Main point is the number of skulls on boards lately, found myself with up 16 skulls/doomskulls on board without any storm, that’s basically 1/4 of the board made of skulls, so often i find myself waste my turn taking a totally useless skull (like ai with 800 hp/armor care about a 50 damage hit) just to not let them for the ai.

Yes i could do this or that BUT, didnt had those probs at all before and that’s the point imo, not finding a solution, if i NEED a solution NOW after didnt had any skull invasion problem before mean something has changed.

1 Like
13

Well, for starters, Bunny has 75% starting mana. You knew that going in.
So, it was your decision to buff ALL of your troops’s attack before he casts.
Basically as I see it, you put yourself at a disadvantageous situation in which it’s do or die. After the decision you took, whoever casted first won, and it was bunny. If it was me seeing him one 3-gem match away from being able to cast, I personally would have decided to wait on the attack buff.

Focused on HKI, of course, it’s only its attack that matters for the devour chance. The other three not only don’t increase your chances in that devour matter, but instead they turn into 3 self-pointed guns.
And no, it would not have played out the same way for the reason already explained.
25% chances of insta losing troops, is not the same as 100% chances of that happening.
Bunny does not target the troop it enchants, it’s random. So if you give him 100% chance of dealing lethal damage to the troops adjacent to the one it enchanted, it’s easy to realize it’s not the same as giving him only 25% chances.

The fact that it ended up enchanting exactly HKI, is merely statistical and you did not help your chances in the scenario in question. It all comes down to it being 1 in 4 or 4 in 4.

Sure bad luck happens to all and it will continue to happen! All I was merely doing was pointing out a way I think would improve your strategy, you can take it or leave it, and sooner or later you’ll still end up beating level 500 with or without my advice. I hope you don’t feel insulted by me in any way, I saw some room for improvement and I figured to go for it.

1 Like
14

I’m happy to take advice when it makes sense.
You said I knew the troops were going to be enchanted there was no way to know.
You told me I should only buff Ironguts attack. No one else. What weapon can I do that with instead of Earth fury?
You said I shouldn’t of cast Earth fury because most of the AI is instantly full? So I do nothing until Irongut gets full and then I cast? By then the match could be easily over.

It was never requested. It’s easy to say shoulda woulda could after the fact.
Why waste all those characters when a “git good” would of held the same sentiment.

My intent was to devour him before he casts and I can’t rely on a 50% devour chance (Irongut without the buff) to go in my favor. RFG tends to drop it to a 25% chance most likely.

15

Just driving by to confirm that we have not touched the AI or RNG in the past 10 days. There have been no changes made.

6 Likes
16

Yep… The players like myself haven’t noticed a reportable change at all in the past 2 weeks.
I guess I just have to pray to the RNG God’s that the storm ends soon before I no longer have any wall left to beat my head against. :+1:

2 Likes
17

so 11-12 days ago then?xD

3 Likes
18

Haha could be.

19

Hmm, suspiciously doesn’t include the days leading up to the new year!

Those holiday skulls seem to bring out extra skulls.

2 Likes
20

Odd you would mention the exact number of days compared to the usual broad or loose way of putting things.
Also you forgot to mention…

It’s working as intended :wink:

1 Like