[Reported] Underspire: Endless corridor

Bug Reports
21

Not sure about YouTubers, because I don’t watch streamers.

But after the first 1-2 weeks even with the limited info in-game every player see how many steps it took them to get to the end (best case scenario for me over the past few weeks - a few steps over 90, worst case - about 118-120). 7 free torches daily, 5 from each pack, 1 free lantern from the first merchant. 50 steps for free, meaning we need another 40-ish-70-ish torches, depending on player’s luck. Giving 8-9 packs for the luckiest players, 14 packs for the most unlucky ones. From there, spread the purchases over the week instead of over-investing early. Basic math is available to everyone.

I see another issue here, though, apart from the gem cost itself. This is yet another attempt to force us to play daily, otherwise we risk missing out. These players spending more might be just those who can’t / won’t play daily and then need to catch up with the 150-gem packs. That’s a separate discussion, though… one that we had with Kingdom Passes, for example, but little has changed (the 2.0 pass became less grindy, but 1.0 had more leeway built in, more days could be missed); I don’t think anyone raised this with holiday events (yet), but they suffer from the same issue. Feels like I’m the queen of derailing this morning, sorry! :sweat_smile:

22

After knowing everything you do, you still play this game, do you find that crazy too? We just optimize, I think it’s normal if you care enough, but now you seem to say to people to stop doing that because they didn’t learn the lesson, but that would be valid if you could trust the ones that punish.

1 Like
23

No, that’s not what I’m saying.

I’m saying we should hide what we find out because every time we post it here, we get punished for it “because it’s unfair to players who don’t look at sources outside of the game” - while we’re simultaneously asked to do that for valuable information like world event scoring.

The lesson we need to learn is to not trust the forum to be pro players.

I added something to my post, hopefully clearing that up for everyone reading it.

4 Likes
24

Yep. That’s why we don’t need someone saying it takes 600 gems to complete Underspire, because devs will see that and take it as the normal average of players. Most are going well over 1k gems a week in Underspire. Especially those who have no help on how to navigate it.

4 Likes
25

At the risk of going more off-topic, and I’ll shut up after that :wink:

It’s not just about Vault on its own. It’s about % drop rates of individual gnomes. Like, what are the chances for band gnomes compared to glory gnome or jewel gnome? Or cursed gnome, or pet gnome, or dragonite gnome? How likely it is that we meet a given type of a gnome? Is a 100 battles in PvP without a pet gnome within the normal range? Is 200 still within range? Or 500? Is 1000 explore battles for one cursed/ dragonite gnome still fine, or is it the case of extreme bad luck? How frequent are Angel/Merchant/Genie/Daemon appearance? Is playing 50 explore runs (runs, not battles) without seeing an Angel simply bad luck, or something wrong? All of this matters. We can’t be in the game 24/7, so we budget our time. And we pick and choose - is it PvP? Or Explore? Or delving today? And we would like to know what to expect (roughly) from a given gemming session. The odds, drop rates, all that when clearly visible, make it easier to make such choices. Oh, and as we don’t know the base % drop chances, using “double or triple” tells us nothing, it’s equivalent of “more”. But what this “more” actually means? Who knows?

It’s not just about gnomes on their own, it’s all the places where there’s something a player needs to do to achieve something else, and there’s no info about it in the game about the method or reason why certain things need to be done in a certain way.

You already have Luther in your employment, maybe you should instruct him to do more: like, tell players scoring, or requirements, or anything else, before they are swooped away outside the game after clicking “?” Like… give him 5 sentences: “Welcome to Underspire in Dragon’s Claw! Use the kingdom team to find your way to Diamantina in the maze and win juicy rewards! On your way there, you will encounter keystone gates - to go through, you need to win the keystone from the dragon boss OR purchase it from the merchant. May bosses be quick to find and may dead ends be few and far between! Good luck.” ← is it really not possible to squeeze a few sentences into the game somewhere, give the Underspire an overview screen or anything like this? Just throwing ideas into the air.

That said, the new overview Raid Boss & Invasion (and Journey too, for that matter) screens are a step in the right direction, thank you. Now think of a way to do the same for the places where it’s not there, and both Underspire and WEs are in dire need of improvements in this area. Thank you.

3 Likes
26

There’s no hiding, the information we know will reach them, if we should learn a lesson that should by not playing this game anymore after all they did.

2 Likes
27

The endless corridor was known about in the forums since the 1st week of the Underspire. It wasn’t reported until this topic multiple weeks later.

If anything, information often isn’t reaching them when things need to reach them.

4 Likes
28

I just want to reiterate in case information is still being collected here:

600 gems is NOT the typical completion cost and depends on two things:

  • very good luck with pathing
  • skipping the 150 gem packs early in the week, which creates the risk of not having enough moves to finish later in the week

1000+ gems is the typical cost for players who are employing optimal strategies. It’s important to the health of the game mode that this weekly cost not be raised further.

8 Likes
29

If you care about fairness why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and, for example, (like @Dwuemka already mentioned before I had a chance to) have Luther tell every player that there are underlying patters in map generation and discovering those patterns might improve their odds at succeeding?
Then the players, if they are interested enough, can either figure the patterns out for themselves or ask around.

You did, after all, imply that there are constraints for map generation in patch notes for us to see and engage our brains

so it is only your inaction to blame that 10s of thousands of players you mention don’t know this.
Feel free to correct this mistake but do not do it at the expense of those who worked to follow your vague hints and are now reaping some rewards (your apparent friendliness and care for fairness already sounds suspicious).

7 Likes
30

Separating players into informed/uninformed, the dungeon was changed because it was hurting the uninformed, and there wasn’t a really great indicator for why their success rates were lower than normal. The percentages were just too low to figure out.

With Underspire, you could start to infer patterns within the first time of completing it, but completing had an initial cost. Then that info could be passed to everyone. Even if you never bought any torches and just did battles, the patterns are pretty visible after a few weeks if you do all your free battles and win most of them. But you need to look, and the devs gave us a big hint in their patch notes (which also was not necessary to figure out the pattern).

The thing I liked briefly about Underspire was there was some strategy to figure out. Normally the discovery in this game comes from new troop combinations, but this time it was in the game mode itself. I enjoy being led to knowledge, not being hand held the entire way. Making a mistake should build knowledge. If you keep making the same mistake, at some point it’s on you for ignoring the indicators, and not seeking out advice from guildies or google.

I would like if they added occasional random events to after battles, to indicate directions and possible distance of things. Like:
“You hear the rattling of gold coins being counted, a little to the North of you.”
“The air to the South East feels chilly. Could Sapphirax be nearby?”
“Far off rumbles from the West rumbles the ground faintly after your battle.”

6 Likes
31

Yeah and the informed players were using a cheat for weeks when the new dungeon dropped getting loads of dragonite, while the rest of the player base got a measly 50 dragonite as an apology. meanwhile the cheaterbase got away with their rewards in tow along with another bonus 50 dragonite.

2 Likes
32

First of all it wasnt a cheat, and the REASON it worked is because the dungeons were NOT random, they were seeded. All the program did was do the math on the probabilities of what was in each room, based on what you had revealed, you could that by hand each time if you wanted. It upped perfect run rates to like 20-30% instead of the expected 10%, really not THAT big of bump in the grand scheme of things, if the dungeon had just been random from the start there would have been no issue, but certain patterns had a MUCH lower rate of ever producing perfect runs.

The devs should absolutely fix the corner cases where people are getting completely screwed over, but they shouldnt do it at the EXPENSE of the players who look for / find patterns.

To relate it back to Underspire, yes, fix the 20-room-long-dead-ends, but DONT touch ANYTHING else about the way the map is generated.

8 Likes
33

How about get rid of all dead ends. One path leads to merchant. One path leads to boss. One path leads to keystone. Finding the merchant path can be the slight penalty as most don’t use the merchant. We will still play daily, spend gems on torches, and spend money on lanterns. We just won’t be wasting too many gems and time going down useless paths that lead no where, that no one wants to do.

1 Like
34

Sooo let me guess another reason to not play this gem trap.

1 Like
35

If you mean long empty corridors, they’re not an issue if you know the strategy (in 2nd and 3rd posts).

They should still be corrected in some way, but if you’re here in this thread now, they’re not a reason to avoid Underspire.

36

Perhaps related to this, how about this QoL idea: when we select Underspire mode, we of course can play this week’s map but can we also have an option to see last week’s map in full (rooms available, rooms cleared, etc) ?

2 Likes
37

10 minor traitstones have been deposited to your account.

38

Disagree here.

Game isn’t fair, indeed. Here and there. For example, paying customers got cards that free ones don’t see - now, or ever. But it’s “open” unfairness, that must be taken into consideration - it isn’t affect my gameplay.

But punishing players who doesn’t know “simple” rules that are closed and unknown without extensive testing is the totally different “unfair” issue. I expect game to be winnable with gem investment (and “I” here mean “average players, including me”). It’s a one case when it’s actually expected to lose (but it isn’t, as texts above shown). And it’s totally different if it is the overlooked issue.

  1. You just said “we don’t mention such things in open”. I fear, I am not refine enough to be the part of elite society with secret techniques that known only for chosen ones, sorry. So then it’s not exactly “everyone can get the info”.

  2. If info is so easy to find, what about mentioned “invested players” above? Either we have a valuable info which is hard to get - or anyone can get it simply by googling. You cannot have it both ways.

  3. I am quite reclusive and prefer to figure rules by myself. Nothing in this game implied “you must heavy invested into community to be worthy”. So while I totally accept my own ineffectiveness, idea “let’s game be punishing for everyone, except us, elite players” seems quite alien for me, sorry again.

4 Likes
39

I highly doubt they frequent all the discord servers for example. Of course it’s possible to hide that we found out information.

They still don’t know how their own game works. If they’d watch YouTube and look at the discords, they’d know.

40

If information reach us, it can reach them. They may not know their own game or not care, or both, GAP fix and the reason it reach us in that state made think they just don’t care.

1 Like