(!) Spoiler Alert (!) -- [Any Details Provided are Subject to Change] (Part 1)

@Taransworld got some new troops (without dates), but the february myth seems to come from darkstone.

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Lyra got a troop before Tacet :crazy_face:

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Yeah my dumb speculation RE: these raised bars:

If GoW were a pay to play game, 5.0 is what we’d consider “GoW 2”. It’s hard to see it because we’ve seen every update, but absent any judgement I can definitely say GoW today is NOT the same game I started playing in 2017. The devs have hinted 5.0 is some milestone update representing the end of a big feature push that started somewhere around 4.6.

New game could mean new economy. If this were pay to play, we’d be sitting on maybe version 4.5 and eagerly awaiting the “sequel” update that had everything from 4.6 through 5.0 in it. Instead, we get one update per quarter. The right order is to give you the sinks, then the economy boost. If they do it the other way around, we can spend the next half a year farming so we can burn through the 5.0 content in a week or two.

I hope that’s right, at least? It seems like they’re probably frustrated they can’t adjust rewards without breaking the GoW economy. The best way to do that is to give us a lot of extra resource sinks, that way if they err on the side of “oops too much” we don’t farm our way beyond the content in the weekend it takes them to fix it.

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With the 6 new guardians still classified as “hall of guardians” troops, I’m excited to see if they (mistakenly) inflate Whitehelm’s level on release. I wish I had enough major orbs saved to get them all to level 20.

Edit: As a bonus, one of them has a 25% devour spell, and presumably you could use it to clear the faction team delve.

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That would be awesome. I just spent way too many gems getting Peace Pigeon to level 20 (it’ll make my faction run on HoG 500 easier), only to discover that I was one troop short of getting Whitehelm one star higher.

It won’t happen (these new troops being Hall of Guardians is a clear oversight), but it’d be awesome.

I don’t understand why there are so many resources that dead end. The soul forge is the perfect place to let players convert resources into something else. Pick whatever terrible ratio you want, it would be nice to place some non-zero value on things.

Lets review the insane number of resources:

With Sinks

  • :+1: Gold - Has a sink with weekly guild tasks
  • :+1: Gems - Weekly/Daily event sinks. Can be converted to Keys
  • :+1: Glory - Weekly troop sink, can convert to glory keys
  • :+1: Guild Seals - Convert to keys
  • :+1: Vault Keys - Can’t earn these fast enough
  • :+1: All other keys - Source for Mythics, also makes troops
  • :+1: Ascension Orbs - After ZG grind, Can still be used to level classes, ascend new troops
  • :+1: Shards - Convert to Jewels
  • :+1: Diamonds - Converts to Mythics, but new Mythics enter game at faster rate than diamond acquisition
  • :+1: Forge Scrolls - Currently new Doomed weapons are entering game faster than you can earn forge scrolls to level them

Without Sinks

  • :-1: Maps - Who wants to do treasure hunt? Please let me convert this to something else.
  • :-1: Traitstones - There is a small chain, Minor → Major → Runic, but unfortunately
    you have to spend Celestial to make Arcanes out of Runics (ಠಿ_ಠ whut??). Runics, Arcanes, and Celestial are all dead ends. You can convert Celestial into crafting Mythics, but that rate is slower than the Celestial acquisition rate (for me at least).
  • :-1: Ingots - There is upgrade chain from Common to Mythic ingots, but there is nothing to do with Ingots once all the weapons are maxed. Ingot acquisition rate dwarfs new weapon rate.
  • :-1: Deeds - These are scarce and highly desirable now, but once all the kingdoms are maxed they will instantly be worth nothing.
  • :-1: Wisdom/Nature Orbs - Not useful after ZG grind if troops are traited.

Debatable

  • :no_mouth: Pet Foods - Feels scarce because it takes so much to level a pet to 20, but once pets are maxed there is nothing to do with it. I don’t know if food acquisition rates lag or exceed new pet introductions.
  • :no_mouth: Tokens/Badges - Farming these is slow, so I think they might not be a dead end since new troops enter game faster than they can be badged up… I’m not sure.
  • :no_mouth: Souls - Used to dead end, but Badges/Tokens are now a possible sink. Longtime players have millions of Souls and the token acquisition rate is so slow its unclear if Soul reserves will shrink, grow, or remain steady long term.
  • :no_mouth: Chaos Shards - At first I thought this was dead end as there are only a few factions left. You only need enough to Mythic faction troops and get Horde to a decent level. After that, however you can spend them to get extra troops, which can then be converted to souls. Which is a terrible conversion rate, but it still is convertible. Dependent on if Souls are actually a sink.
  • :no_mouth: Gold Keys - Ironically there are not that many Commons. Gold keys are basically worthless to me, however they are actually a sink, because troops convert to Souls. Dependent on if Souls are actually a sink.
  • :no_mouth: Jewels - Convert to Celestial, Pet Food, Summoning Stones (and thus troops). Balance of rates is unclear.
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you can farm up common, rare, and ultra rare badges faster than new troop entry.

epics come out almost every week (at least 2 every 4 weeks, plus 1 faction epic, plus any more that they release), so that has a high chance of epics outpacing player gain.

legendary and mythic token gain is way too slow to ever catch new troops that enter the game

For veteran or very active players these resources may be overflowing, but when you start out or only play say ~1 hour/day it feels like grinding down a mountain using water drops.
Which is not to deny your point that a sink for endgamers would be good, just a caution not to argue for a reduction in these to fiercely :wink:

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Frostfire Wraith

got a pretty big change just before the weekend’s faction event.

Spell Description: Steal [Magic + 2] Life from an Enemy, boosted by Frozen and Burning Enemies. [2x

to

Spell Description: Steal [Magic + 2] Life from the first Enemy, boosted by Frozen and Burning Enemies. [2x]

Makes the Pure Faction much less obnoxious, but makes you watch your butt if you aren’t playing first slot Titan/Rock Solid during the regular run.

Makes the troop pretty useless outside of delves, but hey, I am okay with that.

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Wait, before you could target any troop, now it auto-targets the first troop? How does that make the pure faction run less obnoxious? Player is no longer able to snipe dangerous troops, AI is no longer able to waste damage by distributing it among several targets.

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Because chances are you’ll be running the same troop up top, so you can stall out the inevitable by stealing life with it as well. It also keeps the enemy away from random chance hitting your “The Frostfire King” which is the best damage source by a good bit. Your 4th slot troop will have way more time to actually win your match if isn’t dead and leaving a front line that can’t actually win the match.

The difference is I know the enemy will hit me up top vs it may decide to gang up on one of my other troops twice in a row and give me a bad day.

The opponent can’t snipe your dangerous troops with it either.

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To further Idles point.
The player can stack this effect by using multiple copies of Frostfire. The AI cannot.
Yes the AI will hit a lot harder when casting, but hopefully a barrier is still up when it does.

Another faction that requires multiple power potions or millions of gold (which players won’t have thanks to Epic Tasks) to get to 2500.

Now that you’re stripping players from having the option of using large hoard Bonuses @Saltypatra. I think it’s time to publicly say how the devs feel it’s okay that players can only get to 2500 during Faction Assaults. It may not have been originally designed that way, but over time it’s clear to at least a few that y’all are definitely okay with it.

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Is this true? Sure, the King does up to magic*4 damage (thanks to two doses of splash damage), but stealing life and adding to your own seems really potent.

You’d have to buy a lot of potions to make the Wraith worthwhile and/or your main win condition.

Red Cap at Wild Court was underwhelming and that was True Damage WITH Faerie Fire back when it was programmed incorrectly.

Probably should have mentioned first, it is single target

At the end of the day, without the delve in front of me, its pure speculation, but Im just not seeing it. It’ll be great at staying alive at the top slot though.

Edit: Unless you cast something enough times that it’ll kill with purely TD, True Damage doesn’t add much value. Scary dangerous with the AI though.

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I guess I’d rather gamble on the AI picking inefficient targets than ganging up on the first troop, feels like it would allow a pure faction team to last slightly longer. A 65% skull reduction tank able to heal up by targeting the highest threat would also have been awesome. Valid point though.

Lyrasza
Troop Type: Urska, Mystic
Troop Role: Mage
Pandamonium
Deal [Magic + 3] damage to all Enemies, OR Jumble the Board and gain a extra turn, OR Explode 5 Gems.

Mana Color: Blue, Purple
Mana Cost: 16

Trait #1: Deep Magic
Gain 5 Magic when attacking Delves.

Trait #2: Magic Link
Gain bonus Purple Mana from Purple Gem matches.

Trait #3: Unstable Mind
Conjure a Madness Storm when my turn begins.

  1. Madness Storm? New mechanic? its not a Random Storm?
  2. The entire faction is another random chance faction. Sigh. I don’t hate the concept, I just dont like it immediately after Werewoods
  3. Lyra’s spell is either aoe damage, a charmless version of Wisp, or… explode 5 gems? … I really would rather have Wisp.

Not bad, although 4 rooms.

Just have to see what kingdom this is a part of

Considering the Panda, my guess is on Shentang. Only kingdom in the game with pandas.

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Although I’m not quite at the point that I’ll buy a ton of potions, this does bug me, especially because tuesday is the one day in the week I can barely free up enough time for the regular daily stuff.

Finally, the answer to the question, “How does a troop resemble an update release?”

I’ll show myself out.

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