Have the devs stealth changed underspire?

It took me 40 battles to clear 2 floors. I followed the normal rules and they arent working. “Follow the highest level room” doesnt work when your two choices have identical levels.

Does anyone have some updated rules for this ridiculous gem sink? It feels more random than it used to be.

Ok the devs have changed it to throw off what we know about it. This is three floors in a row. Where ive had something like this. A fork, and two identical levels to make sure the “highest level leads to the door” rule doesnt work. Ive not touched underspire in a while because i think its a cash grab to drain our gems but ive definitely never had a run lile this that broke from what we generally know about underspire

Pretty low move by the devs.

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“Follow the highest level” is only for the main path between gates, not for finding the Boss with the keystone after discovering that gate.

As for your broader question? I’ve had two different occurrences of that “path splits in two / levels identical” on that main path twice in the last month, both of them in Area 1 when the levels are so low that this is more probable. I guessed right once and I guessed wrong once, but you generally don’t have to follow a wrong guess all the way to the end if you follow the gist of the “rules” the community has data-mined for us.

Either you’re supremely unlucky, or you’re doing something “wrong”. I don’t believe there have been any meaningful changes to Underspire, stealth or otherwise, because that isn’t borne out by my experiences. And I complete the Underspire (and a majority of the dead ends after the 7th boss) every week.

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Yeah i know its for the main path. For 3 floors in a row this week its broken that rule, giving me a fork with two identical level rooms forcing me to guess. So there is at least 1 fork early each floor through the first 3 floors this week that dont have a highest level.

Can someone post the “rules” for underspire again?

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Those are the normal rules, however, there can be some deviations. It’s hard for me to explain how everything works because sometimes, it just seems like the map layout messed with my brain too much.

• The 1st section has too low of enemies to go by highest level and has the most random layout.
• The final 2 sections can get close to the borders or close up in ways that don’t allow for more paths, so there can be less of a chance to find more sentinel rooms.
• There can be up to 4 sentinel rooms in 1 section, but it’s very rare. Normally, there are 1-3 sentinel rooms per section.

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Can confirm we definitely haven’t touched Underspire recently, although would love to give it some more love, but not to ruin the “rules” purposefully.

Side note: saving that graphic for my own underspire runs ty @Darkborne

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@Kafka Glad to help our lovely lion.:lion:

As an end gamer, Underspire was a great addition because it helps everyone make progress once they have upgraded thier kingdoms enough to support the investment.

I know that sentinels were supposed to be the “sprinkles on top” with all of the rewards we get, but it does drive completionists like myself crazy. There just needs to be a higher chance of obtaining them because about 1.5% is just too low…especially when the sentinel treasure rooms are so limited…

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I have a minimum of rooms with chests. Total 3 for 52 rooms (4 torches and 20 rubies)

Honestly you have no idea how nice it is to see someone say that they understand we were trying to give like a nice little bonus reward if you hit a dead end.

Definitely understand the feedback about the low drop rate and it being maddening for completionists though.

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As someone who doesn’t consider those treasures as sprinkles currently…

It’s not too late to revisit the Underspire treasure rewards and adjust them. My only ask is the expected thing (Sentinel rate), but here’s the question to reflect on: Is the sprinkles better than a torch refund? Ideally, more than 50% of the rewards are better.

I should want them without feeling obligated to get them. so… not the Sentinels. The Lantern is nice when it happens.

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I just wanted to point out that Underspire provides gradual (yes, I know quite expensive) progress in several areas:

Writs and imperial deeds help with kingdom progress.
Glory orbs help with gold medaling mythics and other useful troops.
The minion orb helps with upgrading cosmetic pets and other pets for kingdom progress.

Yes, these rewards eventually lose value when all mythics and pets are upgraded, but it gives you a sense of progress if you’re willing to spend the gems for it. The problem with sentinels is that people just want that reward and don’t care about anything else as much. I still think we should at least get sentinel “tokens” in treasure rooms which we could trade in for sentinels in the soulforge for some souls and corresponding gems, but that feature is probably years away…:rofl:

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yeah, the main Underspire experience is great. I think every prize is valuable in their own right (except Wisdom at Boss 3, but that makes it easier to buy lanterns each time I run).

If it was just the Underspire, I’m perfectly content. I had fun finding my way through without going down every single path.

Everything I don’t like about the Underspire is the dead-end treasure rooms, which ends up leading me down almost every single path with how it’s set up…

There’s a lot of little things they could do to adjust the experience. Even giving all the main dragons a chance to drop the Sentinels randomly would help a lot.

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I’m not a completionism, I play underspire for the imperial deeds, orbs and dragonite but it is still extremely demoralizing to have 1 single lonely sentinel after a year.

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I love the concept of Underspire. Just not the rewards. It took 90.000 gems to get my 1st Sentinel. And even though the other rewards are partially nice, I could get all of them elsewhere for less. :thinking:

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PSA: this graphic is not meant to be foolproof. Underspire can be a little weird at times and all of these rules can be broken (except gates being 7 spaces apart, if I’m remembering correctly). The graphic serves as general guidelines based on community observations.

Also worth noting that Underspire is very frequently accused of having been changed “under the hood” without documentation by players experiencing bad luck and/or broken Underspire “rules.” If you don’t trust Kafka’s word about this, I will also back her statement by saying all the “rules” we initially identified have not appeared to change since the inception of Underspire. I don’t consider myself an Underspire expert by any means, but I’ve kept tabs on community observations, contributed to data sets since around the time Underspire launched, and played/completed Underspire nearly every week since launch.

Despite its flaws (namely obscenely low Guardian drop rate with no progress over time - similar to Hoard Mimic), Underspire continues to be one of the best (or worthwhile) gamemodes for mid-end game players. These “rules” should help in the majority (but not all) cases in gathering some of the game’s rarest resources. I follow the “rules” every week and they’ve certainly saved me a lot of torches over the years!

Hope this helps!

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You can add another vote for “nothing has been secretly changed about the Underspire” - it plays the same way it always has and I have noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

Underspire overall - I play it for glory orbs and glory orbs I get are worth every gem I spent of obtaining them. (So far nobody has named a better or cheaper way…yeah, I know there was somebody claiming single Vault weekend gives more glory orbs than a month of Underspire…sorry, dude, I’m not running paloozas for 72 hours straight. No person playing normally can exceed Underspire orbs during one Vault event.) Other dragon boss rewards may be counted as sprinkles on top of the main prize.

About this, though, Kafka…

You know, when my little kid tries to secretly make a treat for her parents, I can praise her for trying despite the kitchen being a complete mess that I will have to clean up and the treat itself being…well…hardly edible. She’s just a child who basically doesn’t know anything about cooking yet, she will learn and get better as she grows older.
You, one the other hand, are not small children. You do not get free pass for “we were trying”; I must look at how you execute things and that constitute the bulk of my judgement. Unfortunately for you (or rather - customarily), the execution is…for the lack of better word…lacking.

Repeat disclaimer. I already said that I played Underspire for glory orbs, I could live perfectly fine with just empty rooms for dead ends. But then you added chests on some dead ends, so might just as well interact with them.

First, I have enough gem stash to full-clear Underspire every single week, but I don’t do that. I always spend set amount of gems, clear all dragons and then use the remainder of torches to look at some dead ends. Do you know why? - Because almost all of your

is simply not worth the effort.

Let’s get sentinels out of the way immediately - as @TheIdleOne alluded, sentinels do not count as “sprinkles”. Sentinels are just another elusive random-behind-random-behind-random goal you want us to chase (and we have told you numerous times how little we like these random-behind-random-behind-random things Your answer is playing deaf, dumb & blind and rewarding us with another random-behind-random-behind random doohickey while simultaneously praising how much fun community is having with those). I do like to have as complete collection as possible but I’m not completionist enough to go out of my way that much. How you implement them discourages me from chasing them.

What about the other nice little bonus rewards?
You can have a look at what I’ve found so far.


Let’s go over them, shall we?

  • 2 minor traitstones - completely worthless. I cannot, for the life of me, imagine anybody who would find them of any value, not even players who still need to upgrade troops. You’re much better off just playing normally.
  • 3 minor traitstones - see above.
  • 3 runic traitstones - essentially worthless. On the face of it, might look more valuable than minor traitstones, but are too rare to be of practical use.
  • 3 arcane traitstones - see above.
  • shards/jewels/diamonds - little to no practical value. Maybe some newer players might find some satisfaction in encountering them, bit for everybody else - just another disappointing piece of junk.
  • trinkets - depends. If you’re one of those who uses them - fine. For me personally - worse than worthless. I have never activated a single trinket in my life and don’t plan to. Dead content with capital D.
  • tokens - depends. Nysha, Anu or (oh, well) Aranaea can be called "sprinkles on top’. Orpehus, Yasmine, Gaard - pretty much junk, never excited to see them.
  • vault key - looks nice, but too rare to be of any practical impact;
  • cursed runes/dragonite - see above;
  • lantern - always good to see one. Best value sprinkle without a doubt;
  • 1 torch - pretty much worthless. Honestly, why is this even a thing? Scenarios where this single torch might bring some value are far too scarce to be of serious consideration;
  • 2 torches - not excellent, but I’ll take it. This should be the minimum number of torches dead-end chests can give;
  • 3 torches - little better, I’ll take it.

So, why should I shiver in excitement of exploring the entire Underspire map and looking for all dead ends if I get hit not only with frustration because of your atrociously low sentinel drop rates but also with second frustration when most of non-sentinel “rewards” are just garbage junk? Makes perfect sense to spend only X gems and effort (which I can easily brush off as - ehh, whatever) and not a single tiny step beyond that.

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Imo it would be greatly helped by the buffs we get through gems in other modes

What exactly is a “junction”

A little harsh but not wrong. I do appreciate the attempt they put in, but have to agree the end result has been lacking. The dragon rewards are good, but the rest of the underspire isn’t great.

Yeah, have to agree here. If I stumble across a sentinel room, I’ll do it, but I’d never go looking for them. The rewards are way too low for the cost.
Sure, it’d be nice to get a sentinel (still haven’t got any) but the odds are pathetically low and it’s not worth the cost to try. As for the other rewards, I agree traitstones are worthless, shards/jewels/diamonds are fine (usable for buying stuff, but nothing to shout about), trinkets are worthless (never use them either), tokens are worthless (easier to get via explore), vault keys are good but depends what rewards they give, cursed runes and dragonite would be good, never seen lanterns but they’d be great, and definitely agree two torches should be the minimum. You usually spend 2-3 torches just to get to the room, so anything less than a similar amount just feels like you wasted torches overall.

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Is that a junction