Troop unlock progress: when to get Shadow Hunter or KoS?

So I’m Level 82 now with my Hero on PC/iOS, and I’m beginning to wonder why certain key troops take so long to tumble out of chests.

Shadow Hunter, for example. I think I’ve had six separate people recommend I pair her with Valkyrie to speed up the game against buffed teams having 250+ combined health/armor. Apparently Shadow’s not that hard to get… except I don’t have her.

Same thing with Keeper of Souls. You folks here have suggested repeatedly that KoS combo’d with Valk and a purple generator is the ideal fast soul farming team. Okay, I get how Legendaries don’t just fall with a drop of the hat. It’s just that I’ve seen folks here who typically introduce themselves as “level 75 and new to the game,” and who already have Shadow Hunter, KoS, GloomLeaf, Green Slime. IMHO this can’t just be from random chance! A certain milestone progression seems to be going on here.

I’m playing through the quest line currently. I noticed that doing a total change-up of my challenge team tended to briefly alter the type of traitstone drop I got (it will change from a minor/major to a runic drop on that city). Has anyone found that, to get troop card drops that are blatantly missing, we also need to do occasional changeups on our playstyle meta?

For example, doing switchouts from gem exploders to colour transformers to skull crushers. I know it’s fun to experiment, but souls are at a premium at lower levels. It’s a vicious circle: I could use certain card drops to make the very soul-generating team needed to create these experimental teams. Help me, Obi-Brian the Lucky! Use the force on those Chests of mine…

Legends, old event troops, and basically any troop of epic or higher rarity that aren’t available from a kingdom tend to be quite hard to get. The devs have been trying to scale how hard it is to obtain and upgrade higher rarities since 1.0.5. In 1.0.5 it was a higher soul cost for higher rarity, then by 1.0.8 the chest system and traits were scaled to be a lot more difficult for higher rarity.

The best way to get either of those would be event keys. You can get Shadow Hunter during a Prideland event (there should be one in a couple weeks or so) and KoS from a Khetar event.

Ouch, rarity scaling. Is that what happened?
Several players in the Things that Make You Irrationally Angry thread mentioned spending 20+ keys and getting ONE copy of the desired troop. So this info isn’t exactly reassuring.

Kind of regret spending glory on that Runesmith then…

As an example, I was over level 900 before I pulled KoS. Shadow Hunter showed up around level 300. RNG is not always your friend.

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@RiverSong, how long had you been playing at that point? Did you do most of your levelling prior to 1.07?

I realize that players level at vastly different speeds in this game. @TaliaParks appeared to gain her first 50 levels in one week (I think). @DonBoba gained 50 levels since early December, and I believe he is now over 325. Both of them have all the old legendaries, as well as sufficient copies of all the blue ultra-rares to have ascended the blues. So I’m not sure that it’s so much about “levelling” that provides new troop unlocks, as it seems to be making use of the various mechanisms that provide in-game currency resources (guild keys and gems, city gold, maps).

Kyle told me once that unlocking new cities in itself seemed to increase getting new troops, but in v1.09, I have not found this to be the case. My main concern in day to day gaming is just getting enough gold to level up all those gosh-dang cities from 5 to 7. Geez, wanna do the Puzzle Quest Gallia gold run again, anyone? I get 150 gold per PvP match in Gems but it’s still slow going.

I bought 30 event keys yesterday, used all of my gems. No Gorgotha.

There’s no way to predict when you’ll get which cards. I just hit 160 & i’m still missing a handful of epics (terraxis, swamplash, both chompers).

I don’t think i pulled a single legendary until i was around your level. Finally I got Behemoth & soon after Crimson Bat and Keeper of Souls.

But i think i got lucky. And, as the gorgotha example shows, the luck comes and it goes.

I started playing in May or June 2015, which I think was 1.06 (somebody please correct me if I’m wrong). I think I hit 1000 about two months ago, give or take. I got Crimson Bat really early, which is another low percentage drop, but it took forever to get KoS and Celestia. I don’t think it has much to do with your level; more about keys. There are still a couple of legendaries that I haven’t got to mythic yet. As far as I can tell, everyone’s experience is different.

You are correct, I leveled fast early on, I have every Troop the Consoles have (and one that was released early by mistake), and have most of my Ultra Rares are ascended to Mythic, it’s like you can see my profile! :scream:

As for the topic at hand, the only Troops you get from any progression are what I call the “Guides”, the Epics you get for completing questlines. Everything else is up to the chest drawing and the RNG gods.

Wow, Level 1000. Congrats!
I think it must be a challenge for the devs to keep the game fresh and interesting for you guys (mythic and all-traited) while simultaneously keeping things workable for the newbies. The traitstone and Ascension system has really truly thrown a spanner into the works in terms of balancing. I never even got enough Dust Devils to attempt a full PvP match with them, and already they have been nerfed, heh.

I also strongly suspect that each time I purchase a Legendary in the Store, either with glory or real money, I somewhat reduce the chance that I’ll pull ANY legendary using Keys, within the near immediate future.

This category of player is probably 0.01% of the total community, so their need for “freshness” is a low priority for the developers. Besides, that’s what the constant new content is for.

Speaking of luck: i just now got Celestasia from a glory chest. One of the legendaries i’ve really been coveting.

All the legendaries i have came from glory chests. Haven’t gotten one from gem or event chests… But i open a lot fewer of those.

[quote=“TaliaParks, post:10, topic:5716, full:true”]

This category of player is probably 0.01% of the total community[/quote]

That low… less than 0.2499%? lol Are we able to find out player progress according to level from the League lists? How about guesstimating total player numbers for each platform?

I’m sure the developers can answer that with much better accuracy.

@Nimhain
@Nex

I found out how just a single level 15 Celestasia, as a front-line troop with no traits, can wipe out the front half of my team all by herself. You got her just in time to see her nerfed :scream_cat:

I don’t have her or Gorgotha, either, so I’m not sure why I’ve never gotten results similar to those legendaries while using Herdmaster or Ragnagord.

Although we have access to that data, it’s not something we share. Sorry.

I will say that console players tend to progress faster than PC/mobile players, because of the additional income from the tasks system. But then again, the PC/mobile version of the game has been out a year longer, so you have many more “well-established” players on that side.

Actually @Theicla i started playing somewhat 25th October, so from that date i rose to level 326. (My current level). I don’t know is it fast or slow, but level doesn’t concern me much really :slight_smile:

Fun fact, I just got my last missing troop a few minutes ago. I play from the first day on steam.

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Just out of curiosity, which one was your last troop?

Infernal king. It just slipped in, before the patch with the 2 new kingdoms I only missed the silent one, bought a shipload of event keys when he was on, no luck. Then the 100ish event keys in the recent infernal king event didn’t help either.

But if you just keep opening all those glory keys from guild tasks, eventually everything drops.

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Adding the ability to level up cities with gold, across all platforms, seems to be a great way to aid in immediate player levelling. As a relative newbie I’m still finding it daunting when I read the team strategies listed by the more “seasoned” players mentioned here.

I don’t know if anyone’s ever discussed this, but every 10 levels or so, I feel I get into a progress slump. I still haven’t gotten Shadow-Hunter or the Keeper (and judging from previous responses, I won’t be anytime soon). Even worse, my Glory chests for the past week churn out green rares like Night Terrors and Steam Turrets, which makes me wonder if I should change my team build to something else completely. Like perhaps an AOE damage build. Out of the last 60 chests I’ve gotten five Flame Cannons repeatedly.

Flame Cannon isn’t a troop I’d use preferentially because its colours conflict with Valk’s. But I’d level it up and use it assuming that it would help? Or is that a waste of souls, because I suspect the A.I. will keep targeting that troop and drive me crazy. Help!