Hi Guys,
We just wanted to jump in and explain some of the thought process we had with changing the Summoning Stones.
Core idea behind the Soulforge is to be able to craft targeted goodies for the game (whether it’s Troops, Weapons, Traitstones or Souls). While the original Summoning Stone allowed you to target troops of a specific color, it was still just another form of chest which was color based, and not as targeted as the rest of the Soulforge.
We wanted to guild players towards the better tools to chasing that desirable mythic/ legendary, and we have several improvements coming that will also help with this.
We wanted to include Common and Rare troops as something you could craft from the Soulforge. While also keeping the ability to chase Ultra-Rares or Epics, outside of event chests.
I’ll go into more depth about these points as well as some of the changes we’re hoping to bring in the future below.
Changing Summoning Stones
Suppose I wanted to target Wulfgarok (green/red/purple):
- As a free player I’d have 6 attempts per week at getting him (2 green, 2 red, 2 purple)
- Suppose, like Gem Chests, Summoning stones were about 1/1000 chance to get a Mythic (not the actual drop rate… but ballpark)
- Each one of those attempts has a 1/10 chance of pulling Wulfgarok if a Mythic DOES drop (there’s roughly say 10 Mythics of each color)
- This means on any given week, I’d have 6 chances to win a 1/10,000 jackpot and get Wulfgarok, or at the very least 6 chances to get a random Mythic in a 1/1,000 Jackpot
- So, on average, I’m going to see a random mythic once every 3 years, and Wulfgarok is going to appear about once every 30 years
So, what we’re seeing here is Summoning Stones were a pretty bad way to try and target Mythics. And it’s true we’d like to nudge players away from that - not because we don’t want you to get Mythics…we DO! But instead because we don’t want you digging for Mythics in a really inefficient and ultimately disappointing manner. We provide you with Mythic-exclusive weeks to target new Mythics via regular keys, and a rotating Mythic crafting system to target ones you may have missed. We feel these are the most effective way to target Mythics, and if anything, we’d rather investigate rotating Mythics/Legendaries more frequently in the Soulforge to let you target them there.
Regarding Commons + Rares + Epics:
Previously Summoning Stones were like Gem Chests so they only craft troops of Ultra-rare difficulty or higher. This meant that players had no means to target Common or Rare troops outside of chests. With Epics, current the best means to target a target specific Epic is to wait for Event chests for the correct kingdom, which can take up to around 6 months between events.
The feedback we got from players was that they wanted to be able to use Summoning Stones or Soulforge to target specific troops, focusing on Commons, Rares, and Epics. In the latest version of the Summoning Stones the chance of getting each rarity is equal, so it means players are 3 times as likely to get an Epic troop compared to what they might have previously with the old Summoning Stone.
We are currently listening to all player feedback about the Summoning stones about troops gained vs. resources spent (especially relating to Commons), so while we can’t make any promises, we may look at adjustments in the future.
Also, we have said previously that we’d like to add Common and Rare troops to event chests for their respect kingdoms. We are still looking at this improvement. Currently we are reviewing the troop numbers for these lower rarities, so the value of event chests is not altered.
Just some extra things to note:
We are working on trying to improve the mythic rotation, so it goes through the list of all mythic troops once before mythic rotation resets (the recent change was just the first part of this). We will observe it for a few weeks to make sure it is working as intended (and adjust if necessary). Once we’re happy we’ll most likely then ripple this change to all other crafting that rotates (like Summoning Stones and Legendary troops etc.)
We are also listening to feedback that some players would like quicker troop rotations. We’re still in discussions so we can’t say too much or promise anything now though.
This was unintentional.
We fixed Guild Guardians during the community beta when it was reported to us (Thank you Beta team!). Guild Wars troops was missed when the updated launched but should be fix now.
Lion Prince will be both the Red Summon Stone Pool and the Yellow Summon Stone Pool. However, if it selected to be a Red troop, it can’t be selected to also be a Yellow troop for the same week.