Conspiracy theory: Trials seem to have been designed by a bot that found all the least used troops and chucked them willy-nilly into random teams to then force us to use them to remind us why we never used them in the first place. Exceptions are programmed in to make it less obvious, taking somewhat useful troops and putting them into teams that cancel out their usefulness entirely.
Except I can’t come up with a reason why this would be considered a good idea. Maybe the dev team has been infiltrated by a plant from the competition? LOL
They’ve made it a struggle so that later, when the need to complete the task is greater (because something is gated by it) you will be grateful for the crutch they give you, which is likely a pet orb gem-sink priced higher than the cost of mythic’ing via ‘normal’* play. At that point, more people will be inclined to beat the first Epic Trial and take the hit to their gems rather than face the alternative.
*I don’t consider spending over 15 minutes** in a match in a casual game as ‘normal’.
** As a test, I let the AI play both sides in Pan’s Vale Epic Trial I. It resulted in ‘my’ defeat after 50 minutes.
This is EXACTLY it. These monetization schemes have been getting more aggressive as of late. Reminds me of when MMOs start dying and the company starts squeezing as much money as they can from whatever players are left. Notice how you can now buy all the stock of flash offers to get a bonus item? It’s all so transparent.
The time spent doing these is a net loss for a return in time invested. I’ve completed 4 of the epics, out of sheer curiosity to see how long it would take, and it is ridiculous. The 4th one , i swear, took nearly 2 hours. That said, my time was broken up as my wife and i ran errands around town, but clock wise i was well over the 2 hour mark and the breaks while not playing were not significant (total of ~15 minutes?).
It can be beaten, but youre in for a long haul. My advice, do the 1st one and quit. It will take forever to get the pet to level 20, but the time investment isn’t worth the return the devs provide.
Passing this on about how i did it. Order: Seleni Guard, The Burrow Warden, Satyr, Caprinicus. Ignore The Silent One , at least mostly. He is nothing more than an annoyance be ause he can only damage you with skulls after killing the rest of the team. Zero out Sylasi’s attack asap, and keep it zeroed or nearly so. Now he can only hurt you with skulls minimally. Keep him alive! Faunessa and Elwyn can only hurt you magically since youre not killing Sylvasi. Elwyn gets a boost to his damage by yellow gems so he is the higher priority target. Yes Faunessa is annoying keeping everyone at or near 1000 health. Deal with it and mostly leave her alome to kill Elwyn. How? 2 things, first, keep Seleni Guard charged up as much as possible firing him off to keep Sylasi’s attack at 0, AND shielding the entire team. Now chrge up and fire off Caprinicus as much as possible attacking Elwyn. As Elwyn’s attack goes down Caprinicus’ magic damage goes up. Once Elwyn is dealt with, go after Faunessa, then Sylvasi. Leave the Silent One for last. Why? When he’s such an annoying little ___________?!? Because he CAN spawn an ancient horror upon death. So you have to be prepared for another character to have to kill.
That’s it. Have fun and dont waste your time past the first one really.
Until such time as they amplify out teams against the enemies (similar to using extra sigils in events… how’s that for an idea for leveling the playing field (without having to buy them there devs)?) and provide enough copies to get the pet to mythic along with all the pet food needed (again without buying it…) bringing the time investment down to a far more reasonable level, there is NO good reason to play beyond the first one. Ever.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…
“Amazing” isn’t really what I would call it …
Or maybe I would … Amazingly stupid …
Again a stupid idea from who knows who …
Aka trying to repair what wasn’t broken … It would be better if the devs would finally repair what IS broken …
I’ve used this method to good – if slow! – effect on epic I-III and I think it’s marginally better to kill The Silent One third, keeping their Sylvasi on top with zeroed attack; that way if The Silent One does spawn an Ancient Horror you remain protected from any accidental skullfall and don’t have to immediately scramble to steal the Horror’s attack.
Agreed, with zero attack Sylvani does literally nothing (its passive trait can’t even Faerie Fire you without actual damage), and as long as you can keep it this way, you don’t have to worry about Skull damage from anything else. In much the same way that new players against a Fortress Gate team should be interested in keeping the Gate first while saving it for last.
It’s too bad there’s no way to heal Satyr (only Barrier), because its Stealthy trait protects it from Sylvasi (and Faunessa).
Glad it helped. I can see killing off The silent one this way. I tried switching The Burrow Warden ans Seleni Guard on the final epic. Lost the warden, but that’s of minimal concern after sylvasi is zeroed out, and took the silent one third like you. It was getting close to the end and it was looking sketchy. Finished it but was concerned.
Like i said glad it helped.
Kill order -
Elwyn
Faunessa
Silent One
Sylvasi (he creates purple so makes it easier, and if an ancient horror spawns he’s stuck behind a 0 attack troop)
Last trial was the shortest, fortunately, “only” taking me 23 minutes.
I was lucky not dying to deathmark.
I’d suggest equipping 3x Orpheus. It’s a little slower than 2 to 3 Nysha but a little safer, too.
Still, the whole ordeal is terrible.
ETA: cast Satyr every time he’s full. He gets an extra turn and can chip away silent one’s armor while working on the other two.
You’d have an easier time finding a unicorn, big foot, the lock ness monster, the missing link, or ancient aliens. Good luck! Playing the lottery gives better odds than the devs doing something USEFUL.
I breezed through (cough COUGH, it was a very slow breeze!) by killing Silent One first. I think if you kill everything bottom up it goes faster due to satyr only hitting bottom troop. But honestly, what is faster? 1 minute out of a 20 minute battle? I’m only commenting to say as long as you keep Sylvasi gimped, the rest of the order pretty much depends on how long you feel like torturing yourself.
Basically I put Burrow Warden in slot one, cast it one time early to help with Sylvasi. Used Seleni Guard the rest of the battle only on Sylvasi, while hammering last enemy.
I did that before, too, but wasn’t lucky and had battles last around 45 minutes. Don’t think that it necessarily makes the "breezing’ through any faster.
Killing Elwyn first was to try and prevent the death mark gems from being triggered.
But killing them from the bottom up works as well.
It’s all just so very slow. And I did it on two accounts.
I think they should rename epic trials to mythic trials or something so people realize iys supposed to be the hardest thing in the game that you shouldnt just breeze thru. Or maybe pure trials? Pure faction is hard but i dont remember as much belly aching about that one? I have all of them done btw not max stats and totally free to play. Next week gonna be easy if they keep it the same with the rework coming.
People quiting the game over a mode they arent forced to do is hilarious to me
As stated before, people can have completed the previous challenges relatively early on and be failing at these and/or find them incredibly boring 1k levels later. E.g. Explore 12 is not that much harder than Explore 11, which is normal. IDK why it’s hard to understand that making something ridiculously harder between tiers is idiotic, and if it’s supposed to be only for people who have nothing left to do, it should be gated so only said people can access it, for instance by level and/ or stat gating them. By providing them to anyone who completed the previous challenges, it clearly suggests it’s for anyone who completed the previous challenges. Posting in the forums suggesting anyone who thinks the trials are terrible and/or cannot do them are too noob and should move on (i.e. blaming the player) isn’t helpful.
People are not quitting because of a game mode they are not forced to play, they are quitting because they don’t want to play a game that treats its players like idiots who need occupational therapy.
As for pure faction delves, people hate them too, however, people genuinely have to be really high level to have finished all delves - we only get 3 a day and many players don’t do them daily or take forever to realise they should be doing them, and even if they start grinding them early on, it takes a lot longer to be able to get to level 500 in Delves than it did to be able to do the final Challenge tier. I’m level 1139 and I’ve finished 3 factions normally, so it will be ages before I start thinking about doing pure faction delves - just getting the troops you want to use to mythic will take forever - but even then, there’s the option to up the hoard, and you can still compose your own albeit limited team.
Also, idk why you keep pointing out you are free to play, as I don’t recall anyone saying you can only do these trials if you pay for something. These trials are, however, the closest the game has come to adding proper pay to win content, as a lot of people are just going to buy the pets after finishing one, or would pay to skip them altogether, as evidenced by some comments, or people sacrificing gnome-a paloozas, which is the worst type of game design, i.e., making something so tedious and boring people will pay to not have to do it. For those of us who would not pay to not do something boring in a game, it’s still extremely off-putting. Games are supposed to be designed to be fun and people should be paying because they enjoy playing, not to avoid playing. Personally, I still enjoy most other aspects of the game, but if the trials are left as is, I do see them as a very bad sign and will also end up leaving if they continue adding contrived BS with a fun factor of minus 1 million. If I want to do something really tedious, I can do explore 12 or a 500 delve with a terrible and nonsensical team of my own accord - I don’t need help from the devs for that.
