Ideas for Arcane Traitstones

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

I’m very frustrated with traitstones. I just (finally) got Plague, and was excited, until I realized that I had 2-3 Swamp and Venom stones. I tried “Explore” mode to get some… and the drop rate is so excruciating that I realized with despair it would take something like 100+ hours of grinding to collect the 40+ specific stones I need… and yet, since I’m in a great guild, by mid-week our gold contributions are capped, our seals are capped, and there’s little else I can do but sit on millions of gold… and dozens of traitstones I don’t need. Very disheartening, there’s just a “flow” problem with resources. An overabundance of many, extreme scarcity of others.

Others have given ideas like Event Chests focusing stone drops on their kingdoms, and having the ability to “craft” higher-level traitstones using a bunch of lower-level ones, or trading in a bunch of arcanes you don’t need, for a few that you do need. These would be a great help.

I’d add a desire to spend gold specifically on Traitstones, which would be handy for players that have far more gold than they know what to do with. If it’s too much to be able to buy specific stones, then perhaps a “Stone Chest” that drops Arcane and higher, or perhaps Runic and Higher, to complement Gold Chests, that drop minor and major only.

I’ve also heard (but can’t confirm) that changing your Home Kingdom allows your defenders to collect stones from that kingdom, much like Explore - that might help as well, not only to “passively” collect some relevant stones, but also to keep from having to invade Whitehelm all day long, which is the current favorite Home Kingdom, it seems.

Anyway, please do something to make it less bleak when trying to acquire arcane stones… it’s just not very fun at all right now.

2

I have never had Explore mode so I cannot speak of how efficient it is or is not. What I can say is I have been unable to trait the few troops I use. I understand they are purposefully restricted to create a need for people to purchase them but I do think their availability should be improved somewhat. Maybe they will be whenever more mini-games are added…

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3

I’m basically stuck using teams I put together weeks ago, because I can’t trait up some of the new cards I have (like Plague) in order to get effective new teams together. “Grinding” has a balance between being so quick that it’s unchallenging, and so excruciatingly long that you just give up on it, and that’s where “Explore” mode is for me… it’s just such a ridiculously low drop rate for Arcanes you need, that it’s really just not worth doing, compared to other things or just not playing at all until next week, when the Guild tasks reset.

That’s a shame, because in the old Guild system, I had motivation to play the whole week. Now, by Wednesday, I’m basically “done” with the game until Monday. If I could at least do something worthwhile to get the traitstones I’m looking for, it would provide incentive to continue play once the guild reqs are all completed.

4

Traitstones must be 5-6 months old on console and I still haven’t traited Jarl; whenever the Nobends get released I will go back to using him… sounds quite ridiculous doesn’t it?

One option would be for Arcanes to drop with 3 colours instead of 2. That doesn’t help with the gold issue you also have though.

5

I’m sorry but I disagree with your opinion that explores drop arcanes in too few numbers. You are expected to get one roughly every 16 matches, which can easily be done in at most half an hour.

Your problem seems more on the end of requiring 40 odd arcanes, but seriously, you ARE talking about fully traiting a Mythic. That should be expected to take a while.

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6

I don’t seen them providing a way to exchange the easiest resource to acquire (gold) for the hardest resource to acquire (arcane traitstones). And if you think grinding Explore is a bleak prospect… I imagine you never tried grinding Challenges for arcanes.

Your best bet is probably grinding glory to purchase troop packs with your desired arcanes, though it can certainly take a while for the ones you want to come around. And there’s always dropping money on the game, which is presumably why arcanes are difficult to acquire. I am curious how much arcanes actually drive purchases though. People purchasing Treasure Maps for real money are apparently a substantial source of income for the game, so all bets are off.

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7

I would disagree with your opinion. If it does take a half hour for one then it will be 20 hours just for the arcane requirements for traiting 1 mythic troop. Let’s be generous and say the average player plays for an hour 5 days a week. If he quits his guild he will have enough arcanes for 1 troop after a month. Then he needs the remaining traitstones, and there are 250+ troops, and mythics actually look to be no better than legendaries, and nobody is quitting their guild. I will have zero time for explore mode and in my experience the drop rate has been way too low

8

Yeah… I mean, obviously there is no “objectively correct” answer here, it’s all just subjective. Apparently, Khary thinks one arcane every half hour is just fine, whereas I find it excruciatingly slow. I guess to each their own. As you point out, requiring 20 hours of gameplay to trait out one mythic, to me, is horrible. I enjoy other aspects of the game more, such as PvP and such, so I’d have to spread that 20 hours over probably 40 or more of the stuff I like better to make it palatable at all… because doing literally nothing else but Exploring/Griding arcanes isn’t really going to keep me going.

It’s the main reason I was hoping there would be other ways I could acquire the stones in a reasonable way (beyond global RNGs). The whole idea is that, to the best of their ability, the developers should consider allowing us to get what we need to succeed in reasonable time doing whatever mode of play we like. If I’m mostly a PvP player (as is the case) and don’t like maps (which I find boring), and explore mode doesn’t do it for me, then allow the resources I gather from PvP (like Gold, and Seals) to be convertible into what I need, like Arcanes.

It’s perfectly fine to have the easiest thing to get (gold) be convertible into the hardest thing (arcanes) by simply altering exchange rates. If it costs 100,000 gold per arcane for instance, that might be just fine. Still takes a while, you can’t just buy up dozens of them in a day, but you CAN build up gold doing something you like (PvP) and then get what you need, that you’d otherwise have to do by doing stuff you don’t like (such as Explore).

Just makes everyone happy.

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9

The easiest way to obtain Arcane Traitstones is to wait for them to appear in the shop, and buy them for real money. If you value your time over your money, do that. Otherwise, don’t expect the developers to make changes that further devalue their money-makers; it’s nice when they do it, but don’t hold your breath.

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10

I just save my glory and get as many as I can in the reward shop every week.I’ve maxed 5 troops this week.

11

The third option is to just not trait them; which is what I have had to do.

12

Yeah, I’ve bought them in the shop before… but then you’re waiting for what seems to be weeks or months before the style you want comes up again in the rotation.

Their whole “Shop” concept is bizarre… just offering a few options on a long rotation. if they had a proper shop with a catalogue of items, including arcane stone bundles, I’d just buy them up in a heartbeat and be done. My entire frustration is more around the fact that I can’t just buy them outright, which is strange given they are a profit-making company. You’d think they’d want my money more… but, I guess if they want it dribbling in over months and years as they decide to offer what I want, then I guess that’s their thing.

Were I them, I’d want to capitalize on “impulse-buy” dynamics, where as soon as I get a new mythic, I’m immediately ready to drop cash to trait it up RIGHT NOW. if you wait a few months before finally offering up the stones I’m after, I could easily have moved on to other decks/cards and no longer feel the urge to do so. I would eagerly purchase what I need to trait up this Plague I’ve been waiting for, but I can’t say where I’ll be at in two or three months when I’m finally in a position to buy the stones to do so.

13

Judging by consoles arcane bundles, where they give you 6 of each type of a specific colour for €40, it will cost you €320 to trait him.

14

All things considered, Arcane traitstones from Explore really aren’t that bad. I’ve been tracking my drops from the mode since it was implemented, and over 88 stone drops, the rate still seems to be about 1/17. It sucks going 50 or 60 sometimes without getting a drop, but if you need a ton and want to get them on a week where they aren’t offered in Glory packs, Explore is at the very least a viable option to gain them, which is not something I can say about other aspects of the game, like needing one more troop or ascension for a kingdom star where you have no choice but to wait.

This is not the case, unfortunately. You’ll only get stones from kingdoms you invade, and with their being little practical reason to switch off Whitehelm from a selfish perspective, most of them will be yellow. Part of the traitstone drop imbalance is because this aspect of the game has been thoroughly broken for months, making it nearly impossible to gain desired (or even a variety of) traitstones from PvP. Unless this is a misinformation campaign to get people to switch off whitehelm so you can get other stones. In which case, uh, yes, this totally works and everyone should do it. (Seriously, though, this is a long standing problem that needs to be fixed.)

If you maintain a level of quick clears on explore, you should be averaging 3 arcanes per hour, 2 if you are a bit slower on your clears. Which means you’ll only need 14-22 hours worth of all-out grinding to obtain them using this method. It still sounds kinda bad, but if you have forknowledge of the event-to-come and know it isn’t a color you need, you can just use an hour here or there over a long period of time to build up to what you need. Over time, they are supplemented with 1 or 2 here or there from Keys (but don’t count on PvP). Still, this is a far cry from the 42 to 66 hours (with the occasional agony of going hours on end with no drop) required for challenge farming, or, lets say, 500+ hours if you tried to get them from a random source (treasure hunt, or if they ever “fix” PvP stones by making them straight random drops).

Honestly, the base Mythics seemed more like traitstone sinks for people that have played for a longer period of time and had too many. Plague is fun sometimes, and I farmed up all the swamp and a couple Venom to trait him, but really, I’d probably just wait until at least one type you need are offered in Glory packs if you are that low.

15

The issue with waiting is you dont know how long it will be. Waiting 5 months to trait Jarl.

16

Yeah, but legendaries aren’t quite as bad, as mythics, either. Even if you start with none of the arcanes that you need, a casual player (but high enough level to still clear at a good speed) playing an hour a day can get this done inside a week. (If you start being out of Minor reds AND Lava Arcanes and use just explore you’ll likely have enough Lava Arcanes before you have enough minor reds, even.) For a hardcore enough player, the full amounts of stones required to trait a mythic can be farmed inside a day. Also, one would hope with them doing two packs a week on PC, that they have a good enough spread on the colors so it wouldn’t be too much longer than 10 weeks between a color showing up in packs.

If doing such farming causes you burnout, waiting is pretty much the only option. I guess that was the point of this thread, however, the assertion in the original post is that explore is not a “viable” farming option. I highly doubt that any future way to obtain arcanes will be even faster than explore (or buying them in packs when the week rolls around), so if explore is not fast enough for farming, nothing will be.

However, I am 100% behind having different ways to still spend x amount of time in the game in different game modes and still be able to reasonably reach your goal.

I do still agree, again, PvP stone drops need to be fixed to alleviate part of the problem. Home kingdom having an approximately 30% influence (as was the case when home kingdom stones on revenges were a thing). Possibly just reinstate home kingdom revenges.

Allowing straight gold for a chance at (higher rarity available, but still random) traitstone drops might also help alleviate the “too much gold” problem, but I can’t imagine the exchange rage being very favorable - it’d almost certainly be south of explore time-wise (1 arcane per person per 50k, meaning about over 1 mil gold per your target arcane). Having this option and having it favor your home kingdom by 25% or so (~200k per target arcane) would still make it take significantly longer to obtain your target arcane than explore time wise, but give an outlet for gold.

Crafting is not something that I see happening.

Having arcane drops be from the event kingdom and runics also favor this kingdom would barely make an impact (you have even longer waits between stones becoming available, and the cost is much higher), but having Treasure Hunt stone drops favoring your home kingdom could potentially help some people and give another way to target stones.

Again, all of these would be much slower than nose-to-the-grindstone farming explore, but at least you’d have some influence on your drops over time. Then you can kind of forget about it for a while, and pick up with farming when you are close. The way it stands now, you have no choice or influence unless you straight farm, which can be very offputting. I’m just thankful Explore is an actual game mode I like, and not another mini-game, which would have been a deal-breaker for me.

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17

I think my overall hope is that we can choose how we want to advance, playing the modes we like, and still come out ok. If I’m really into Maps, there ought to be a way that they get me where I need to be eventually, or provide resources (like gold, minor traitstones, etc.) that can be converted into what I want. It just makes for a more flexible game and keeps more people happy.

Don’t forget in your math that the observed average of 1/16 or 1/17 in terms of explore drops seems to be of arcane stones of any kind… if you’re only after one of the two stones dropped in a particular kingdom that drops two, then you can double that, and your 14-22 hours of play to get sufficient stones becomes 28-44 hours, the rest being blown on acquiring the arcane you’re not after… ugh.

18

There’s no kingdom that can drop two different types of arcanes though.
Only multiple kingdoms allowing for the same arcane to drop (Ghulvania & Blighted Lands for Arcane Dark eg)

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