It’s where the path splits in two or three.
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That “nice little bonus reward if you hit a dead end” isn’t free, though. We have to spend one more torch to access that chest. So it’s not exactly a reward, but a deal.
Since each torch costs about 20 gems on average, we can judge whether each type of reward worth the cost:
- minor traitstones - never.
- runic traitstones - mostly not. While it’s cheaper (gem per traitstone) than other source for runic (dungeon offer or class trial shop tier 3) if we consider runic traitstones alone have any value, we can’t really ignore other things come together. When including those, 20 gems for 3 runic is no longer cheap.
- arcane traitstones - somewhat okay. It takes 3 explore runs (18 battles) to earn 6 arcane. So 20 gems to save 9 battles, not too bad.
- shards - total insult. See how many shards dungeon offer gives.
- jewels - better than shards, but still not worth it. It needs to raise to 40 jewels, to be comparable with dungeon offer.
- diamonds / cursed runes / dragonites - actually good. Better rate than dungeon offer.
- trinkets - worse rate than underspire shop, even if we somehow need them. Sadly the fact is, we don’t need trinkets at all.
- tokens - somewhat okay. reason similar to arcane traitstones. 20 gems for 6 battle (since one explore-12 run gives 2 - 3 tokens), so-so.
- vault key - unsure. There isn’t a similar deal to compare with. I guess it’s okay.
- lantern - of course good.
- 1 torch - definite neutral. Which, in my opinion, is actually a good option. Just like fireball scroll in tower of doom.
- 2 or 3 torches - of course good.
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Underspire map generator sure got stealth improvement - early version was quite rightward-upward biased, now it’s become pretty virtuous
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Here’s another way to look at it.
Fireball scroll gives me outright victory in a room of my choice, no questions asked. It always saves me time if would have to spend on beating the room manually and can also save multiple sigils I would have to use for activating epic battle bonuses if my account is weaker.
1 torch from a treasure chest in room A only gives me an opportunity at victory in room B. I still have to spend time playing out the battle manually and there is no guarantee I would actually win said battle in room B.
Let’s make our balance (assuming we win both battles) going for both room A and room B.
Final gains - room B reward;
Final losses - time for room A battle and time for room B battle.
If we, on the other hand, do only room B…
Final gains - room B reward;
Final losses - time for room B battle.
It clearly looks we’re better off simply ignoring room A with 1 torch reward and going straight for room B.
So, yeah, if there was an indicator that chests X, Y & Z have 1 torch as a reward, I would ignore them every time and look at other rooms instead…no matter how hard I squint my eyes, I can’t seem to find a redeeming quality that would make 1 torch chests even neutral.
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Well, if you put play time into consideration, you are right 1 torch is slightly negative. Though still way better than traitstones / shards / jewels or trinkets. I’ll be super delighted if all those were replaced by 1 torch.
In short: (Near) neutral option like 1 torch should be the bottom line, of something that can be considered as “reward”.
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I thought there wasnt junctions on space 4 on a boss path. Theres very clearly a 2 way junction 4 spots off the main path on that boss path. I had to visit nearly every room on floor 1
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It can happen, but rarely. The rule holds true much more often than not.
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Merchant 6 spaces off the path instead of a boss.
I swear “rare” happens a lot to me. Last week i had 3 consecutive floors with identical level rooms so you couldnt pick yhe higher level
2 weeks in a row its take 40 battles to clear 2 floors
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Thanks for giving us your Underspire feedback.
It honestly was good to hear that people like playing the Underspire.
Knowing what’s liked and could do with some tweaks is really helpful and it gives more ideas/goals to chase rather than just a list of things to avoid, which is also helpful, but we get SO much feedback like that already.
We’d like to review Underspire and make some changes at some point although it’s not currently in the schedule, it’s definitely on the list of things we’d like to revisit regarding the gameplay in general to hopefully make it more fun and less frustrating.
About the Sentinels specifically, they along with the Hoard Mimic drop rate are pretty high on my list of things to champion in house at the moment. It’s a little tricky heading in to Christmas but I’ll see if anything there can be tweaked.
So far the feedback I’ve given is basically:
- The drop rates for these things is very very low
- It feels like there’s too many layers of RNG in order to earn these rewards (ie find a dead end with the right treasure room and find a sentinel, and getting the RNG to proc in your favour multiple times in Explore to get the Mimic.) - this is a big point of frustration.
- Reason being is that the layered RNG feels like no matter how much you try you will feel like you’re making 0 progress towards your goal of acquiring these Troops.
Things I want to request outside of an Underspire rework (therefore maybe shortening wait time if approved):
- Increase the drop rates
- Pity timers
- Duplicate protection for Sentinels (and Dragons but that’s not Underspire or multi layered RNG related)
There are other things that can be done in Underspire that don’t directly affect Sentinel drop rates but do indirectly, but I feel that those would definitely need a full Underspire review, and I don’t think we want to wait for that right?
I’m not saying any of these other suggestions/requests will be any faster necessarily and I’m having this conversation with you before really getting into it with the team again, so I don’t have a gauge on how each of these suggestions will be received too much right now - I’ll have to update you all once those discussions have been had and time has been taken to consider them.
If you think I’ve missed anything about Sentinel feedback or other suggestions to improve it please let me know.
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Hi @Kafka - I think the community has established an estimate of 1.5% drop rate for sentinels.
I don’t think anyone would disagree with your suggestions, but ….
If you’re trying to do something quick, then ignore the dragons as there was already a mini-solution with them now being craftable at elevated cost in the soul forge.
I suspect Pity Timers will not be a quick fix (but we’d love to have them in first half of 2025)
My suggestion would be to:
- Lift the drop rate from the 1.5% to 5-10%; and
- Add duplicate protection (ie you cannot get a duplicate sentinel until you have all six unique sentinels)
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Considering how difficult it is to get all the sentinels, all dead end rooms need to be chests.
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This sounds great… in theory. But if all those additional chests are low-rarity stuff, those probably have even less odds of turning into a Sentinel than the crowd-sourced 1.5% figure.
Yes, it would be a (small) assistance in the endeavour that is attempting to accumulate all the Sentinels. But it would also be a largely cosmetic one that would enable the developers to pat themselves on the back and claim they’ve “addressed the issue”. The typical player would have more attempts to draw that Sentinel, but the odds that they actually come up with one would still be pretty miniscule and luck-based.
I’d take your proposed solution over “do nothing / maintain the status quo”. But I’d rather see a “real” solution that makes a legitimate attempt to address this issue in a positive way for the players in a significant fashion. And not something I would write off as useless window dressing and puffery.
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That would also dramatically increase the already high gem cost.
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These would be the easiest changes to underspire to make dead end rooms feel less punishing. When you spend 150 gems a day for 5 days and then up to 300 gems a day over the weekend to complete all the dead ends, it gets quite expensive. The rewards do not justify the cost, especially if your hourly tributes from kingdoms cannot support it.
Having duplicate protection and an increased chance of finding sentinels is justified for the amount of gems that we spend to fully explore the underspire. The rewards for dead end treasure rooms are pretty bad as well. Trait stones are not that useful and the jewels we get feel like they have to be multiplied by 10 to be justified. It feels like we’re spending $100.00 for an ice cream cone and getting ripped off.
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I had WAY too much thinking time on my hands at work today (I drive courier for a living and today was a very long day alone with myself in the car), and this is what the ol’ brain stormed up as “how I would fix the Underspire Sentinel situation” if it were solely up to me:
(This is a bit of a read, so if you just want to skip and/or ignore this, scroll down a bit. I won’t be too offended.)
I’d leave the generation of Sentinel rooms alone, at least in terms of quantity of rooms generated. Not going to try and make the system look better by guaranteeing dead ends having a chest or something like that. But I would re-jigger the chest probabilities as follows:
The game rolls a “d64” when a Sentinel room is generated. The results being:
- 1-32 Common rarity rewards (white)
- 33-48 Rare rarity rewards (green)
- 49-56 Ultra Rare rarity rewards (dark blue)
- 57-60 Epic rarity rewards (purple)
- 61-62 Legendary rarity rewards (orange)
- 63 Mythic rarity rewards (light blue)
- 64 Roll Again
So roughly 50% for Common, 25% for Rare, et cetera. Each tier being half of the one above it.
Then I’d go and completely re-vamp the rewards as follows:
Common: 1 torch plus one of the following: 4 minor traitstones, 2 major traitstones, 1 token, 1 trinket, 5 jewels, 20 shards, Sentinel (1-in-243 odds, ~0.4%)
Rare: 1 torch plus one of the following: 4 major traitstones, 2 runic traitstones, 2 tokens, 2 trinkets, 10 jewels, 1 torch, Sentinel (1-in-81 odds, ~1.2%)
Ultra Rare: 2 torches plus one of the following: 4 runic traitstones, 2 arcane traitstones, 3 tokens, 20 jewels, 2 torches, Sentinel (1-in-27 odds, ~4%)
Epic: 2 torches plus one of the following: 4 arcane traitstones, 2 celestial traitstones, randomly chosen Verse, 2 torches, Vault Key, Epic Vault Key, Sentinel (1-in-9 odds, ~11%)
Legendary: 10 cursed runes, 20 dragonite, Lantern, random Tarot, 50 writs, 1 random deed, Sentinel (1-in-3 odds, ~33%)
Mythic: Sentinel (guaranteed)
So what’s the rationale, you ask? You’re still going to see a ton of Common chests, maybe even more than we do at present – I don’t know what the crowd-sourced information says about the distribution of chest rarities. Assuming ~15 chests per week with full Underspire completion, you ought to see a Legendary chest on average every other week and a Mythic chest on average once per month.
And the low rarity chests still have some pretty dreadful overall drop tables. But one notable change – in my opinion – would be the guaranteed torch for completing the battle and opening the thing. The rest of the prize may suck, but at least you’ll get your “attempt” refunded to you, which ought to serve as encouragement to give the Lottery a try. (And like the Lottery, you’re not likely to “win”.)
But the rewards do scale up as you go. In the middle tier, you’re getting two guaranteed torches in addition to everything else, which repays the effort for the Sentinel battle with interest. (Maybe not the effort to get all the way there, but let’s not be too greedy.) And many of the Epic rewards are probably enticing to a healthy share of the player base.
Get to Legendary chests? I got rid of the guaranteed torch, but the rest of that drop table looks pretty spiffy to me. And Sentinels by then are approaching a very healthy drop rate relative to the usual RNG foibles in this game, roughly in line with the odds of proceeding to the next step towards the Hoard Mimic in that lottery.
And a guaranteed Sentinel for a Mythic chest. If you’re only going to see one per month even with considerable Gem spending – and that probably would be required under my paradigm – you deserve that much.
But no “dupe protection” or the like. I understand how the lack of such is aggravating to a lot of players, but I’m aiming for half-a-loaf here rather than asking for more than the developers are ever likely to give. And if you hit the “averages” on chest rarity distribution, you’ll probably make steady progress towards completing the set even without, because you’ll hit a fair number of Mythics and have some measureable success with the Legendary and Epic tier (and maybe some below that, too).
Nudge some odds in the player’s favor. Reward the players who explore thoroughly, especially if they spend to do so. And if you choose to “ride for free” and not spend any Gems, you’ll still have some opportunities but likely will fall behind the “paying players” in this area.
9 Likes
Excellent ideas thanks!!
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Sentinels are basically the only thing I care about.
However, if you’re looking for any suggestions:
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Trinkets lasting only one battle makes them mostly worthless. Having them last the entire duration of the Underspire for that week would go a long way to improving their useability. Drop rates can be adjusted accordingly and I don’t think too many people would mind seeing them be rarer.
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The merchant doesn’t do anything currently. Yes, Keystones… but players want the bosses anyways, so its not worth the gems. Trinkets: see 1. So there’s room for improving the merchant to do anything, but I don’t want to be yelled at for opening Pandora’s box of options. Maybe the merchant can give you scouting help for the next area or something.
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Orb of Wisdom is really out of place compared to every other reward and doesn’t belong. I get a very small amount of players might want Orb of Wisdoms, but they’ll see way more Wisdoms doing Vault event then anything they’re seeing here. The less things to spend lanterns on, the less money goes to Gems of War.
In my opinion: Orb of Ascension (in place of Wisdom) should be in Boss 3, Orb of Minions should be Boss 5 (in place of Ascension). If you really want to encourage gem spending, replace the Diamantina Orb of Minions (to Boss 5) with 1 Random Book of Deeds.
As for the Orb of Wisdom: If the team cares about the new player experience, you could give them an Orb of Wisdom once a week as a log-in bonus. There’s so many troops, 1 Wisdom won’t push them very far. However, it’d help their short term play session tremendously and it wouldn’t impact long term players in the slightest.
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@Kafka - you gave the community some hope that something may be tweaked before Xmas regarding Sentinels. Any update for us on that front?
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The chances of pulling a useless sentinel card other than collection purposes is way to low to even bother with underspire.
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