Inconsistencies in mechanics

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
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Over the course of playing I have noticed a lot of inconsistencies. And they are prevalent across all platforms. They don’t make any logical sense and only cause frustration when trying to figure out rules/mechanics.

For example:

1. Black beast.
The ability CLEARLY says “Devour an Ally, heal back to full”. Which according to the wording states that it requires the beast devouring an ally to get the health. After all, that’s how any other devour skill works in the game. My troop devours something, he heals and gets a boost to attack etc. He doesn’t get it if he doesn’t devour anything. Yet Black beast can be the only troop in a team and just instantly heal to full whenever it gets the mana. There’s no trade-off. It isn’t sacrificing a troop for it’s own health boost. It just decides it wants full health again and poof, it has it. It’s like fighting a resto druid in pvp in WoW. No other troop I’ve discovered so far (and certainly none of my devour ability troops) have such a luxury. Which shows the Black beast is an exception to mechanics and therefore inconsistent.

  1. Big/Immense traits.

So, this one is a little different. It says “Gain X life on X gem matches”. But that’s also a whammy against the player and their team. Whenever I am getting gem matches the enemy troops with these talents are getting healed. What kind of logic does that make? I need to get 4-5 gem matches so I get extra turns, and mana for my own troops so that I can use their skills, but every time I do well with gem matching I get punished by handing out free HP to my enemies?. Really?

I was fighting a team with Behemoth. It had 30 HP. I did pretty well with gem matching and got a few 4+ matches. Next thing I know Mr. Behemoth had over 100hp and was wrecking my team and almost impossible to kill. Even with troops doing purely “True Damage” to bypass his armor, he had so much health it was insane. Then when he gets his ability off and blows up half the board, BAM!! another 100 health. Point is, the player shouldn’t be getting punished for being good at matching gems or getting lucky with it.
And having enemy troops getting freebies (especially 10hp+) every time I do well feels like I should just stick to 3 gem matches and play sub optimally. Oh wait… then that leaves the 4+ matches for them and they get the boosted Hp still.
It’s a lose-lose situation for the player. Especially in the case of behemoth where his ability is to wipe dozens of gems and potentially get oodles more 4+ gem matches on his own.

  1. Troop Traits. Also wildly inconsistent.

For example, if my character (Hero) has traits like say… elementalist or slayer. Where when I match 4+ I throw out status effects, or when I kill something I throw out status effects, that makes sense. and when my hero dies, those effects don’t happen anymore… that makes sense. The hero isn’t in the team currently to give that effect. Okay… cool.

HOWEVER, that doesn’t apply to enemy troops. When I fight a team with “Accursed” talent ppl, and I kill them. I don’t suddenly get my armor or attack points back. They’re just gone for good because the traits on that troop removed them. So their traits are persistent after they die, but mine aren’t?

ALSO! I’ve seen on dozens of occasions where a troop has a trait like “Death Mark an enemy when doing skull damage”. Okay… pretty straight forward. Except it’s not. These troops are in the last slot on a team. They’re not doing skull damage to anything. Only the top troop is. Yet when that top troop hits me with skull damage, suddenly I’m death marked. And the top troop that ACTUALLY hit me, doesn’t have that trait. But it’s still being applied.

Funny enough, when I have troops that have a skull damage modifier, it never gets applied if they aren’t actually the troop doing skull damage. (Just like the elementalist/slayer example, it makes sense. They aren’t in the team/doing the damage, their traits don’t get applied) But whenever the enemy troops have a trait It sure seems to apply all the time simply because they’re on the team.

I’ve been constantly death marked, stunned, poisoned, burnt, feared/terror right out of a match because of a skull modifier trait on a troop that isn’t actually doing any skull damage. Yet none of my own modifiers ever apply any effects against a troop unless A) That specific troop is the one doing skull damage , and B) it only applies to the troop specifically hit.

It’s never apply x status to whatever troop I want, regardless of what troop of mine is doing skull damage. Ever. That’s an enemy team special ability only it seems like.

And even that’s inconsistent. Yes it’s in 90% of occasions, but there’s sometimes where it doesn’t happen, because some part of the programming acknowledges “Hey! this troop didn’t hit you, so their traits aren’t in effect right now”. And that’s how it’s suppose to be.

There’s times where the game is a lot of fun, and even a great time sink. But the others, I don’t even know what is going on or why a rule is applying or how or if it should or not. And apparently the game itself feels the same way. And if the game doesn’t even understand or even follow it’s own rules. That makes it really hard for the player to.

And just for fun, the suggested matches it gives you (if you have that on) don’t make sense either. When you’re playing, it’s usually going to tell you where the gems to match are. Which is fine, and if there’s a 4+ gem match it tells you to go for that first because it gets you the mana, and an extra turn to do something else… like match skulls AFTER the 4+ match. Since you have the extra turn free and have already matched mana gems.

However, if you have auto play on during explore or trials. The game takes all those suggestions and they go right out the window. I’ve watched it showing me what gems to match, turned on auto play and then my troops immediately match or do anything other than what the computer was just suggesting me to do. (So the computer doesn’t even like the computer suggestions)
To the point that it’s ignored 4+ gem matches in favor of 3 skulls. You know… the skulls it could have gotten for free after matching the 4+ gems.
It’s also ignored matches for gem colors I could use, in favor of matching gem colors none of my troops have. Heck, none of the enemy team even uses it either. So it’s not a case of “well… I can’t use it so I’ll take it just to keep you from using it”.

And last but not least, mana surges. Some times/usually when an enemy troop gets a mana surge, they get an extra turn like they just matched 4+ gems (is this intentional?) But whenever I get mana surges, I immediately get smacked with the skulls that lined up for the enemy after I cleared the gems… because I’m NOT getting extra turns like they did.

Funny how often that keeps popping up in matches. If it’s something that will benefit the enemy team, it’s almost 100% sure to happen (Mana surges for extra turns even if the enemy team is frozen.) If it’s something that will benefit you, it’s like 20% or less of the time.
And that little to nothing the enemy does benefits you. But everything you do seems to benefit the enemy team. (Big/ Immense traits /Behemoth example above)

Please for the love of Gems, make the rulesets consistent. Make them apply to everything, not just certain troops on certain days between the hours of 3am and 3:05 am when there’s a full moon and the wind is exactly 25mph from the north on a thursday in august.
And re-think traits where we as the players are punished for doing well and because we match gems, we suddenly give an enemy troop more health than our entire team put together. And if a troop needs to be present for it’s traits to take effect, negate the traits when the troop isn’t present. Not just from the hero, but all troops. And if they aren’t the ones doing skull damage, (Specifically their) their skull damage modifiers don’t get applied.
This is mind numbing to never know for sure what’s going to happen because the game is just pulling stuff out of a hat to see how crazy it can get.

~Gets off soap box~

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Surely, you have recorded evidence of this or - at the very least - precise step by step instructions of how to replicate it? It sounds like a nasty bug you’re encountering, unfortunately, neither I, nor anybody else I know, has ever seen it taking place. I even deliberately went into prolonged battles with Behemoth on enemy team prior to writing this - nothing happens. Enemy never gets extra life when I’m matching gems, I never get extra life when enemies matching gems.

Do not confuse “on match” traits with “start of the battle” traits - those are two different things.
“On match” traits are repeatable infinitely and require a troop with them to be alive in order to activate; “start of the battle” traits are permanent one time only thing. It’s only logical and makes sense.

Besides, I don’t see you complaining that your troops with Accursed decrease enemy stats at the start of the battle and those stats aren’t given back when your troops die. I also don’t see you complaining, for example, about Revered trait giving stat points to your troops at the start of the battle and those stat points not being taken away when the respective troops dies.
So, it’s not like the enemy has some unfair advantage. Those traits work exactly the same way for you and the enemy.

Again, if you come with such claims, you better provide evidence. It might be a bug only you experience; nobody else - to my knowledge - has ever encountered this (and, once more, I wasted quite a bit of time before posting this just to see that everything’s working just like it always has worked - nothing funny or suspicious).
That shouldn’t be too hard since you claim that it happens to you all the time.

Again, video recording is an absolute must in this instance to slowly follow through on everything that happened - initial gem match and subsequent cascades. Without it, it’s rather pointless to even continue.

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Sorry, but that is factually incorrect – all effects listed on a spell page occur independently unless stated otherwise. Examples:

  • Amarok: Deals damage + chance of Devour. Spelltext clearly says that if the targeted enemy dies (from either effect) then create some Gems.
  • Bone-biter (also Dragon Cruncher, Gob-Chomper, Monster Muncher): All of these share a 50% chance to Devour their preferred Troop Type, but they also gain 5 Life whether or not a Devour occurs.
  • Centuragon: Chance to Devour. Converts Skulls to Wildcards independently.
  • Nagatrap: Chance to Devour, but will deal damage if the Devour fails.
  • Sea Scavenger: Submerges self regardless of Devour.
  • The Great Maw: Guaranteed Devour, single-use cast. Creates Gems regardless.
  • Vash’Dagon: Spelltext clearly says that Vash will summon a Daemon only if the Ally got Devoured. (random Daemon summons are categorically “unreliable”, having low success rates and/or strict conditions compared to summoning other Troop Types)
  • Vidarr the Vast: Chance to Devour, but will deal damage if the Devour fails.
  • Vrawk Daemon: Deals damage with chance to Devour. Like Amarok, the spelltext clearly says that if the enemy dies (from either effect) it will create Gems.

However, I agree it makes logical sense that Black Beast’s heal should only occur if the Devour succeeded.

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Sorry, that doesn’t make sense.
If successful devour occurs, there is - generally - no more lost heath that might be healed (because devoured hit points are added to the total), therefore rendering “heal back to full” part of the spell pointless.

Right now the two-stage (well, three-stage, if we count skulls created in the end, but that doesn’t matter for our case) spell resolves as follows:

  1. heal back to full;
  2. devour an ally (successfully, if the ally can be devoured; unsuccessfully, if the ally is immune to devour). This part gets skipped if there are no suitable ally to devour - makes sense, as otherwise casting the spell should freeze the game.

It might help to clear up some confusion if spell description was changed to reflect the order in which the spell gets resolved but, other than that, nothing seems to be wrong.

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Actually that is also mistaken. When buffing a Troop that has been damaged (either Armor and/or Life), this increases their current and maximum values for the stat, meaning that if traits such as Regeneration or Reinforced were activating prior to the buff they generally continue to activate afterward, even though the stat may be colored green (which indicates only that it is above the troop’s “base” value).

I needed a fun, quick experiment to try anyway. Here's the proof
  • Ran a simple Delve with The Great Maw in lead position, and a Hoard Level high enough for an automatic Potion of Rejuvenation.
  • Stalled for time until The Great Maw took enough Skull damage to lose all Armor and take damage to Life. Potion of Rejuvenation kicked in.
  • Devoured one enemy.
  • Result: Potion of Rejuvenation still activates at the start of each turn.

It is also similarly provable with Paladin and/or Rowanne -based teams.

So not only does Black Beast get the obvious, significant stat buff from its Devour, it additionally heals back any Life that may have been lost (and in some cases, e.g. Devouring a severely weakened ally, this Life heal may be readily apparent). It is comparable to how Emperina heals the Troop’s Life stat to maximum and also buffs their Life stat.

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Actually, it says the opposite. It says “do X, then do Y”. If it was conditional, it would HAVE TO say “do X, and if successful, do Y”.

Not to be rude, but you don’t understand “heal” or “devour”. When a troop “heals”, they regain life that they have previously lost in the same battle, meaning they can’t gain more than they already had. So, if they started with 100 life, and lost 50, they can only heal 50, not 51 or more. And it only affects life. It’s actually a rare effect for troops, with only Abhorath, Black Beast, Dryad, Emperina, Jaguar Warrior and The World having spells with such an effect. As such, it’s important to do “heal” effects before any effect that would increase life in another manner, since other increases to life would reduce the healing. For example, a troop has 100 life, and loses 50, then they get +25 life and then are healed, meaning they are only missing 25 points, so get healed to 100, whereas if they were healed then got +25 life they’d have 125 life.
Devour is different in that it kills a troop and adds their life, attack and armour stats to the troop performing the devour, except where a troop has a status effect reducing that stat to zero (I.E. entangled reduces the troop’s attack to zero, and when it ends restores it to whatever it was before, even if they would have gained or lost attack in-between). This can raise the stats of that troop above their normal values, unlike healing, and increases the stats by exactly the stat values of the devoured troop. But, if they devour a weak enemy, they can gain hardly any boost to their stats. In theory, they could gain just 1 life and nothing else.

EDIT: As stated above, some stuff triggers every turn, and behaves differently to single use “heal” effects.

Yep, that is how the spell works. As mentioned above, it tries to devour something, fails, and move on to the rest of the spell which heals itself. Also, it can fail to heal itself, whether or not it devours another troop. If it had full life when casting the spell, it will not heal anything, regardless of if it performs a devour. If you make a bad decision in when to cast Black Beast’s spell, it can fail to devour an ally and also fail to heal itself, meaning you use the mana to achieve nothing.

Despite the behaviour you’re describing actually matching the trait description, in that it claims to trigger on any large gem match rather than your own gem matches, I have NEVER seen such behaviour occur in the game, as far as I remember. I’d love to see a video of it, but it sounds like a bug.

Again, not trying to be rude, but you are really misunderstanding how these things work.
When you have a trait that inflicts a status effect when doing something (such as matching 4+ gems), the trait instantly causes a status effect, and that status effect does not get removed if that troop dies. It has an instant trigger and effect. And when you have a trait which alters stats when doing something, the trait instantly affects those stats, and those stats are not affected again. It has an instant trigger and effect. That is 100% consistent.
If we were making the game work the way you suggest, and the troop was “suppressing” those stats somehow, like how status effects like entangled do, then when that troop dies, the stats would be returned. But for that to be consistent, then troops which inflict status effects via a trait would have to remove those status effects when they die. Which would suck. And what about troops with traits that kill an enemy, like Megavore - would that enemy be returned to battle fully healed? Having traits get reversed when the troop dies would cause so many problems, it doesn’t make sense to even think about.
The best comparison I can make is comparing accursed to Taloca’s trait which deals damage when matching 4+ gems. The trait triggers and the target loses some of a particular stat. The only difference is that accursed can affect any stat, not just armour or life.

I haven’t seen this either, but that definitely would be a bug.

The game AI is pretty bad at this actually. It often suggest moves which are NOT the best, especially when “hero gems” are involved. For example, if there is a possible 4 match with skulls, but one is a doomskull, the AI won’t suggest it, even though it would give an extra turn. It will instead suggest another move, even if it’s just a 3-match.

Yes. As far as I can tell (and based on what others have explained on here), the computer works out a list of the best moves it can make in any situation, and assigns them a value, then generates a random number to choose which move to make. So, it might have a choice of a 4-match and a 3-match, and KNOW that the 4-match is better, but it randomly picks the 3-match instead.
Now, the choices are weighted, so that certain moves gets picked more often, but the weighting changes based on the battle. So, if you play against a higher level enemy team, they’ll make better moves more often. If you play against a low level team, you’ll notice they often make terrible moves, often setting you up to make great moves against them. And the weighting seems to vary based on what game mode you’re playing, but it’s hard to be sure.
BUT, the system is used whenever the computer is picking moves. So, it uses this for all your enemy teams, but when you autoplay, it does the same thing for YOUR moves. It might suck but that’s just how the AI system works, and it is (kinda) consistent.

Mana surge shouldn’t give an extra turn. That got removed a long time ago. The enemy might be getting an extra turn some other way, but if not, that’s a bug.

I will 100% agree with you here. The rules need to be consistent, and if they aren’t then that needs fixing. I just don’t agree that you’ve pointed out examples of them failing to do so.

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