Gem event & big spender

First of all, I would like to say Wartune a big thank you for the current gem event! Last gem event, I said this can be only a mistake, they can't be that generous. But they can, the event is repeated, this time they even add war packs. Often we complain about the lag, the bugs, and the greediness of the sales, but this time, I have to say, as long as they have such events I will keep playing. Because getting a truckload of treasure is real fun, we all enjoy it :) I not only made a big heap of lvl 8 gems, but also got 500 war packs, which gave me 5 blazing taurens, so I ended up with all clothes and a huge amount of will shards.

Please note that right now, everyone have lvl 8 gems, even free players on S400+. So having level 8 gems means really no advantage. The only question is if you should make level 9 (or even level 10) gems, or wait for a future gem event where we get rewards for making those.

First of all, let's examine what's the probability of such an event happening. We have seen already this in the past: the first cloth synthesiser event gave rewards for level 3-5 clothes, and now they give for level 6 too. Also, first gem synthesiser events gave reward for making level 4 gems, but not for level 8. So yes, this is quite possible. Still, it can happen maybe in one month, maybe in 4 month, maybe never.

Second, let's see what's the advantage of making level 9 gems. Personally, I made lvl 9 HP gems. This made possible for me to defeat sky trial 3-5, and earn +2 horns per day. Also, now I can survive second world boss 3-4 times in a row, so that's like +1.5M gold daily. 60 horns and 45M gold monthly, not to mention the advantage in combat. If they add reward for level 9 gems in a month, it wasn't a good deal, if in four, I say it worth it. To be honest, I even consider making the lvl 9 MATK gems, thats a huge advantage everywhere.

What I recommend here is a strategy used by financial experts: diversificate your portfolio. You can make some lvl 9 gems, which make a real difference for you. But still, save a good deal of lvl 8 gems, so in case they add a reward for that, you still can grab nice loot. 

BIG SPENDER

Please also note that a big spender event is running currently. I do not make a detailed calculation here, just rough numbers: if you go until 5k it's 25% bonus, if you go further, you get approx. 30% bonus. The previous big spenders were much much better. Please note that this is not only because the prices of gems and mount hoof has dropped, but also because the war packs included we already got for free by hundreds, also who needs lvl 80 legend stones? And the dragon souls, I get like 50 for free daily, and need 2000 for next level, so I wouldn't pay for them. Seemingly this big spender is targeted towards beginner players, it's better value for them than for veteral players. I bought my monthly spirit covenant pack and claimed the 1k bonus, but that's it. 

sky trial 3-5 beaten!

I was very happy today, I could finally beat sky trial 3-5 boss, without slow, without even an evolved sylph. I used the strategy I described here.

Basically, I tried to have as high HP as I can (with spending all mount whips on endurance, making lvl 9 HP gems etc) - I had nearly 300k HP. And used everything to survive without significantly reducing my damage: a lvl 8 heal, a lvl 9 guardian rune, illusion and enhanced regeneration astrals. I used a 2-star purple Hades, with 5x lvl 5 dark resist crystals, I had 370 dark resist. Originally I thought 250k HP and 500 dark resist is necessary to survive, but 300k HP and 370 resist was enough. My gems are MATK / Crit / PDEF / HP, but for this occassion, I converted all PDEF gems to MDEF since this boss is MATK. Of course I used all available potions and scrolls.

I couldn't make a video, but it went basically this way:
First I did a "pre-run", used just lightning both to have max rage and sylph ready to awaken.
Then, a second run, where I opened with suntoria, awakened, guard rune, used sylph skills (scoring a few double hits here is important!), Hades heal attacks and heal rune could keep me healthy, then I reverted back. Thunderer / Suntoria / critical restoration (don't use guardian angel!) and guardian rune take me to the second awaken. With enough crits, Hades could finish off the boss just when he went berserk. I took my like 10 tries until I got it.

So the key tricks were:

• Have high HP so suntoria, heal rune and crit heals have max efficiency.
• Use Hades so I have high dark resist and I can heal while dealing damage.
• Maximize survival (mdef, block, enhanced regen, illusion, guardian and heal rune).

I guess your question is now, what is my advice for a knight or archer. Percentage damage reduction is the key here, and it's done via Hades. Knights and archers really don't need Hades, and you shouldn't build one just for sky trial. There are many ways, though, where you can surpass me: you can make lvl 6 dark resist crystals, refine your goddess blessing astral to epic heights, have 350 or even 400k HP, and have lv l0+ heal and guardian runes. Also your Hercules / Triton etc can be definitely stronger than my 36k BR unevolved Hades. Knights also have extra damage reduction and archers can kill faster, so I think there is hope for everyone. Good luck!

group buy real funny

Hey guys, new Wartune feature, group buy is real funny. They post items for 10-100 times at their realistic value, and if a lot of players buy these items, you can get a discount on it. Check this out:

Do you think 10000 balens is realistic price for 10 legend stones? and 5999?  and 2999? There is one article there which did not make me laugh: 100 war pack for 3900. If 20 people buy it, all of them get 50% discount. Problem is, I don't think many servers have 20 people who will cough up 3900 balen for 100 of those pack. And even where they would, those people already bought the number of packs they wanted.

Anyway, I'm realy sorry that they assigned programming resource to making this, instead of correcting the many bugs and lags. The feature itself would have been even ok, if they give useful items and correct prices. But this...

Wild shop strategy

Wild shop is an awesome addition to Wartune. Free players / low cashers can now get items which were out of their reach previously. With 1500 million useless daru stocked up, I run to the shop, refreshed a lot and bought everything with joy on the first day. However, like everything, this can be done smart, or stupid. I will show you how to do this smart.

You can buy in the wild shop for the following resources:

• Mystery stone. This is the most commonly used resource - and the most scare as well. Use it to buy highly useful items (see later), because you don't get much daily.
• Insignia. Insignia is a limited resource (see this article). You have to be wise what to buy.
• Kyanite. Kyanite is a limited resource too, but you need it only for rolling the wheel daily. So it's okay to spend it: as long as you have some.
• Gold. Gold is a virtually unlimited resource. Visit the wild shop only when you have plenty of gold (after WB / Dragon Invasion), so you don't have to skip a good offer.
• Daru. I have 1500M daru, and earn 10M+ daily. Even when I have to save up for some future troops, this commodity I considered unlimited, so I buy even stamina potions for it.

Wild shop has the following commodities:

Total trash:

seeds, luck stones, bounty scrolls, divine light, energy cores. These items you can get for free and much cheaper other ways, and/or don't give any BR.

Don't buy these, regardless of the cost. Ever.

Almost trash:

roses, crystalloids, legend stones, star tear. I wouldn't buy these, but I know there are some rose-fans out there... And some low-levels might go for the crystalloids/legend stones too.

Don't pay anything but daru or gold for these, though, the other resources you need more in the long term.

Star tear is supposedly a rare, and sold only for mystery stones. Some people need it desperately, it's their luck if it shows up.

Marginally useful:

level 3 gems. These worth only 2 balens, and you get millions in events for free.

stamina potions. I don't consider XP a value, so to me, a stamina potion worth only a few balens (and only because there is has like 10% chance it can give you a crypt key for a skeleton key).

I buy the above only for daru.

Useful:

Soul crystals, runestones, mount whips. fate stones, single fashion core, good luck charm.

It's okay to buy these for gold, daru, insignia and kyanite, but NOT for mystery stone. If you have maxed out SC and/or fate stones, you might consider spending only gold and daru on those.

Fashion cores and good luck charms are a specialty, because they are very expensive. You should start refreshing shop with a lot of gold so you can buy these if they come up for gold.

Please note that the developers made a mistake: good luck charm should be 1500 insignia, but it is only 150 currently. So it's the best value buy :)

Highly useful:

Mahra, resist crystal, will crystal, sepulcrum, lvl 6-7 gems, clothing, and rare packs of the „Useful” items.

These are the must-buy packs, save up mystery stones to buy only these.

Here is a table to summarize the above. I ordered items by balen / mystery stone value, and marked which are must-buy, buy only if you didn't max it yet, and buy only if you have plenty of the resource you are buying for. Balen value is based on this article.

You strategy should be visit the Wild shop after each automatic refresh, but refresh for daru only when you have plenty of gold. And do multiple refresh-until-I-get-a-rare cycles only if you have enough mystery stones.

The truth about crit rate

There were many speculations lately about how critical works in Wartune. Since we were able to reverse-engineer most other aspects of the game's combat system, this mystery needed to be resolved as well. In Doomlord, critical formulae is pretty simple, so I suspected it's not as complicated either here.

First of all, testing crit rate needs much more testing than figuring out a formulae. And even after a lot of test, the numbers won't be accurate. I did a LOT of testing with only 3 crit values: 6848, 7948 and 11383 vs many different opponents. And I still can't give an exact formulae, but now I know how it works.

We always knew that chance to crit has another component besides the value of crit. People said the higher their lvl / BR, the more crit they needed. We also knew that vs WB, you will crit a lot even with a low critical. I suspected that this mysterious second component is the opponent's level. After my experiments, it looks like this is true.

Look at the table. With the lower crit, I had still a crit rate of approx. 80% vs world boss. What is more important, I had similar crit rate vs. Iris in sylph atoll, who are lvl 50 like the World boss. Also it is obvious, that I crited less often vs higher level opponents. The third thing I noticed that although my crit increased, the crit rate did not go beyond 80% vs the lower-level monsters (I tested only with mage, so the cap for archers can be higher). 

So based on this data, I can say:

1.) Crit rate is capped at 80% for mages. As soon as you begin critting at 80% vs lvl 80 opponents (at crit 9k? or 10k?) there is no point in increasing your critical further, unless your opponent has a crit reduce effect (like guardian angel).

2.) Crit rate depends most likely on target's level. The higher their level, the lower the crit rate.

3.) Some additional modifiers can lower the crit rate. Like a knight's -5% crit bonus, which can apply to "knight class" monsters too (you see in the table, crit vs the first lych boss, which is lvl 72 like the rest, but knight class, is obviously lower), or the modifier in moonevil.

4.) If you have determination 10 and 7k+ crit, you should use crit instead of enchanted will destroyer, the extra damage compensates even the extra damage you take.

5.) Accept that random has a huge role in crits. (Notice I had lower average crit rate in Iris atoll with higher crit?) Sometimes you always crit, sometimes you crit much less. There is no bug. It's just luck :)

So I suspect that the formulae is somehing like this:
MIN (critical * X - target's level * Y - modifiers (knight -5%, guardian angel, etc) ) , 80)%

Please let me know if you collected any data which can cofirm or contradict what I have now :) Thanks!

Insignia value skyrockets!

For a long time, insignia was the second most worthless resource after daru. I never had enough inventory space, so I just exchanged it for XP books which I sold for gold. With latest additions, this has changed.

• You can „train” your marriage tree with insignia, so this cost 750 insignia per day - which turns into runestones, gem packs and fashion shards.
• New honor ranks mean new medals, which are much more expensive than Lord Divine medal.
• Since yesterday, you can exchange a nearly unlimited amount of insignia for valuable resources in the Wild Shop.

Let's see how much insignia I earn weekly:

About 3k from guild battles, alike 5-700 from battlegrounds, and about 7-8000 from Tower of King nightmare chests - if we can do all 5 rooms every day (which is not granted lately). So I earn about 10-12k insigna.

And how much I need?

1.) Marriage tree is 5250 per week.

2.) The new max honor medal is 4800 per week.

3.) So I have only 1k left to spend weekly in wild shop?

Right now I still have like 50k saved up in the bank, but its time to begin thinking on this.

Marriage chest.

Let's calculate the average value of these.

(using chances from cosmos chestcollection)

gem pack (value: 3 balens): 0.32 x 3 = 0.96 balen

runestonex10 (value: 20 balens): 0.27 x 20 = 5.4 balens

fashion shardx2 (value: 34 balens): 0.12 x 34 = 4 balens

eternal heartx3 (value: 12 balens): 0.02 x 12 = 0.24 balen

crypt key (value: 75 balens): 0.01 x 75 = 0.75 balen

shadow crystals, xp scroll, roses: value 0 balens.

total value: 11.35 balens

Since you get 10 such chests for 750 insignia,

1 insignia value here: 11.35 x 10 / 750 = 0.15 balen

Wild shop.

In the wild shop, you can buy valuable items for your insignia. I will make a separate article about insignia/balen exchange. Now to make it short, you can make deals in the wild shop where you exchange your insignia for 0.04-0.2 balen. So the marriage chest deal is not so bad.

New medals.

LD medal is 2400 insignia, Great Dragon medal is 4800. There are 2 significant differences: the later gives +100 endurance (+400 BR) and 4% less damage in pvp. That 4% is pretty hard to calculate into BR, it can be anything between 4k and 10k BR. Let's suppose you play for 1 more year, and you pay the weekly +2400 insignia for this +100 endurance and +4% damage reduce. So that's 125k insignia in total. If spent on marriage chests, it worth „only” 18750 balens, sounds like an „okay deal”.

So all 3 uses look decent, what to do now? How to save insignia?

I have 3 suggestions:

• If the marriage tree is crypt token double-day, and you have 10k+ crypt token like me, use crypt token instead. There you can save 1-2k insignia weekly.
• For the wild shop, be careful what you buy. Lvl3 gem and stamina potions are bad deal even for insignia, the other BR items (fashion core, luck charm, whip, soul crystal, fate stone, rune stone and of course the super-rares) are okay to buy.
• After you maxed out your honor, buy the best medal only when it's really necessary - class wars, BR event, important (cross-server?) guild battle. Otherwise a lesser medal is okay too, there is not such a huge difference, and nothing which helps you in pve (god's descent, sky trial etc).

Time is essential

I would like to dedicate today's article to my best friend in Wartune, Nono. He have a really great heart, he helps everyone, and he is more concerned with the happiness of others than of his own. I wish every people would be like him. Yesterday we talked him with about the problems of the game. Everything being bugged, laggy, crashing, and the increased time and stress the game requires. Also, the game requires more and more money just to keep up.

So today, I try to help the problem which not only Nono, but thousands of players in Wartune have. The bugs and the lags – we can't do much about it, just pray that a game which earns 24 million USD per month (yes, you heard right) is able to finally turn back caching in their game after a month, and correct memory leaks. You would think such a huge amount a money is enough motivation? But seems it isn't.

The other issue is time. They keep adding things which need more and more time. Extra content is always good – but not at this cost. Very few people want to play a game 16 hour a day. I admit that before patch 3.1, and complained about running out of goals. XP becoming meaningless, daru, gold, honor and a lot of other resources and activities became useless. Now XP is good again, gold is useful again, you can collect honor again and arena has great rewards. But this comes at a price. Your time.

I like this game, so I don't want to quit. But now is the time to make a priority list, and skip everything possible so we can continue playing without giving up the other parts of our life. I had an article already here about Optimizing game time. Based on that, and changes since, I try to make a time/priority list, depending on how much time you are willing to spend on the game each day.

You can play max. 2 hours per day (this is the bare minimum):

The first thing you need to reduce game time is VIP, and sadly, Spirit Covenant.

First, do everything which takes just a click and gives some reward: wheel of fate, guild wheel, devotion rewards, guild levy, academy blessing, claim sylph arena reward, complete quests, stamina in altar, recovery rewards, reward in Sky Trial, harvest your tree, blitz your stamina, spend gold on astral refinement, check hot events, open your boxes, enter Tree of Ancients when its summoned and energize. These took only 10 minutes in total.

Second, do the essentials which need time, but give awesome reward:

1.) Dragon Invasion. Takes 20 minutes max, this is great BR reward. You must do it even if you have minimum time.

2.) Tower of Kings (nm preferred). Takes about 10-15 minutes, this must be done too.

3.) Arena. This is tough, since it is totally bugged and laggy. Might take as much as 40-50 minutes! I still advise doing this too, if it won't fit into the time, do less, like 5-10 attempts.

4.) Kill final boss in forgotten catacombs and start a blitz – 2 minutes.

5.) Participate in one world boss at least. You can do it even afk, if you have friends, you can take turns, one day a friend does it for you and himself, the other day vica versa. This is 15 minutes.

6.) Click through bounty quests with bounty helper and your bounty scrolls (2 minutes).

7.) Jewel hunt: 5-10 minutes max.

8.) Participate in guild battle (if you dont have time, just enter and stay afk).

This is 2 hours in total, and you got 90%+ of all the BR and significant reward you can collect each day. The hard part is the first 3 activities, which require teamplay. You need a good team, a good timing, because if you have to wait long for each other then you slip out of this timeframe.

You can play max. 3 hours per day.

In addition to the above (and an explanation why these aren't essentials):

1.) Do a second world boss (afk can save you time here, as is alternating with a friend). WB is not a primary gold source anymore, DI gives a lot more gold.

2.) Do a battleground. BG is still fun, although the medals give very minimal extra, but cost a lot more. So probably for all the extra insignia you spend on them, you can buy XP books, sell them for gold, and use the gold to refine the astral slot of your goddess blessing – same, but permanent result :)

3.) Complete MPD. This is 10-15 minutes. I don't name this essential, because once you have level 80 set, what you get here is XP and dragon souls. The 4 dragon soul from nirvana is neglectable, compared to the 50 you get in Dragon Invasion and the 800-1500 needed for +1 level. And the XP, the class-advancement level advancement is really just an illusion. You don't get anything. New skills are useless (except for Mars will, which might be corrected in the future), new astral refine slot – c'mon, you don't want to grind much for that :) And in worst case, you can use retrieval to get some of the XP anyway.

4.) Run the amethyst mine. Reward is just 6 mount whip, but it takes like 4-5 minutes max.

5.) Run a tank. Enter, leave, you still get something :)

6.) Card hunt. A few minutes only.

So this is approx. an additional hour.

You can play max. 4 hours per day.

In addition to the above:

1.) Socialize with people. I'm not joking: if you can play only 3 hours a day, you have hardly time for this :( But having friends is the most important aspect of the game.

2.) Help people: one extra DI, help with one MPD.

…And you used up your 4th hour.

You can play max. 5 hours per day.

In addition to the above:

1.) Fishing. I really hate it and I'm really bad at it, and the reward is sucky :) But if you play 5 hours a day, you can do it :) Takes 5-10 minutes (for me, longer).

2.) Burn through the 10 sky trials, takes a few minutes.

3.) Do spire. Its only XP and kyanite, so low priority.

4.) Play tank a bit more seriously (enter last minutes with friends and score kills) 5 minutes.

5.) Plunder.

6.) Socialize more :)

You can play max. 6 hours per day.

In addition to the above:

1.) Do maps. Of course this apply only when you have high level resist, and use only green maps anyway. This is a low-reward, time intense event which requires multiple players. If you are really super good and super quick, it takes like 15-20 minutes!

2.) Participate in Divine Altar. It's just XP, which you don't need anyway. But if you have a lot of time to kill, do it :) 15 minutes.

3.) Hunt monsters in wilderness. If you still don't have the mount, I suppose this activity gets a higher priority, but later, not really, it's just for titles – and a nice opprtunity to help others and socialize. And if you on that, take 2 gold mines as well.

4.) Do marriage quests. (A good opportunity to socialize! While this no-brainer activity runs).

Your 6th hour used up!

You can play even more hours daily.

Well, during God's descent, you will play more than 6 hours :)

Other than that, it's pretty easy to kill the time on other days too.

1.) Attacks in duel arena. (go completely naked, it goes fast then, but still needs like 10 minutes).

2.) Energize the tree of others and take care of your farm multiple times a day. (few minutes).

3.) Help people to finish MPD. You can spend an unlimited time with this.

4.) Circuit quests. Don't even do them, even if you play 16 hours a day!

5.) Start second, third, etc. characters.

Summary:

Do not stress yourself with the game. When it begins a job, it's no good. Do it only as much as you have fun. While you do the more zombie-activities, like world boss etc. watch a film, chat with friends, chat with your family.

The most important thing is, you DON'T HAVE TO DO ALL of these. You can still have fun and be top. I played league of angels, a stupid „tube-game” for a long time. By playing only 20 minutes a day, clicking rewards etc, never spending a penny. And I had a decent BR and were in top10 in my server :)  

September big spender analysis

Previously, we had a 3-4 week cycle in Wartune. Each cycle, we had a chest to be collected, free tasks to get these chests, and a big spender event. Now things accelerated, there is a new event each 7-8 days. You can collect only a free chest for free, the rest you have to buy. 

In game industry, it's a well-known fact that 90% of your income is from 10% of your paying customers. Now they try to milk more the few "big spenders" with some great promotions. However, I advise you against spending this time, for 2 reason.

One reason is, if you take part in every spender event, the cost of the game will become irrealistic before you realize.

The second is, this promotion is not so great. It gives similar packs like the previous big spenders, but values have dropped a lot lately. Look at what changed:

Mount hoof. We are getting these now since more than a month. Top players now need 200 for one more star, so a hoof worth now only 10 balens.

Gems. The lvl 6-8 gems in packs seemed awesome previously. But now, with everyone having lvl 8 gems, they are not as valuable as before. A lvl 6 gem worth only 122, a lvl 7 488, a lvl 8 1464 balens.

Mahra. Mahra's main purpose is to increase max stat level for you sylph, so you can spend more sepulcrum to make it stronger. With evolution, this limit have been pushed off by  a lot. So mahra is a very expensive and ineffective way to improve your sylph. For me, a mahra worth only 5 balens max now.

Vulcan's Stove and Hammer. This item is not available in the game yet, but it will be available soon, for free. You remember the will crystal? From horns, it took an average of 800 balens to get 60. Later on, you could buy one for 3-4 balens. And now you can get tons for free each day in arena shop. The first 1-2 levels of will crystal made a lot of difference, later on it get less important, and took a lot to develop. The same happened to virtually every resource in the game. So now you buy a few stoves and hammers, get some nice BR for your balen - and in one month, everyone gets the same for free. And later on, it will cost so much to develop, that the 100 you get now means nothing, like 100 will crystal. So I would say, as long as we dont see absolutely clearly the long-term BR gain of these, DO NOT PAY balen for them. Value: 0.

The chests worth 30 balens, as I calculated here.

Value of packs:

30+20 = 50 balens  (5% bonus)

30+25+50+50+50 (prev. pack) = 205 balens (10% bonus)

60+10+200+200+205 (prev. pack) = 675 balens (13% bonus)

120+200+400+400+675 = 1795 balens (18% bonus)

244+350+700+180+700+1795 = 3969 (20% bonus)

300+976+1000+500+1000+3969 = 7745 (26% bonus)

600+1464+1500+750+1500+7745 = 13559 (27% bonus)

It is also important to examine if there is anything in the game worth buying. Some nice mounts, a good pack etc. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the game currently what you should buy.

Conclusion: do not spend. We spent enough lately. Now it's their turn to fix the lag and correct the bugs the added to the game lately. Wait for the next promotions, each will be better and better.

Which is the best sylph?

Imho the best games are where you have to make decisions, and your decision has a weight. In my other favorite game, Doomlord, you have to make many decisions, about skills, ability and AA build. And if you make any bad decision, you still have the option to change, but at a cost.

When I started playing Wartune, my only problem was with the game that it was a "tube-game". You could do nothing just go forward in a "tube". There were only 2 mistakes you could do: start a mage or knight instead of an archer, and spend your resources instead of hoarding them. 

Sylphs brought a real change: they cost a lot to develop, both in time and money, so if you make a mistake there, there is only one way to correct it: by spending a ridiculous amount of money. Instead of going into deep mathematical analysis, this time I just tell you my story of sylphs, and you tell me where I made mistakes, and you try not to do the same ones.

When the first Apollo sale came out, it was obvious that it is much better than Pan and Iris. This was the first time I ever entered Wartune's chest-gamble. I bought 200 chests. Together with all the free ones I could get, I had enough shard to exchange for one Apollo. I had no luck opening one from a chest, though. Some opened 3, and dominated the sylph arena for the next months, earning an extra 1000 sepulcrum for free.

I kept developing my Apollo, and only him, until the new generation of sylphs came out. I remember I spent a horrible amount of time farming Gaia's until I got a blue one - just to save 150 mahra. 

Meanwhile, the Hades chest event started. I know that Hades was the best for mage CW. But the forums were full of people who bought 600 box and didn't get a Hades. So I said, thanks, but I don't need it for 400 USD. I spent the 1k sepu and the mahra I saved up on Gaia to make him 4-star blue and even bought her skills. And yes she was nice damage at world boss.

I was top10 in sylph arena, but wanted to be in top3. I like to play differently than others, so I thought the only way to beat those triple Apollo teams is if I keep healing my sylph. So I started developing an Iris. 

There came the second Hades box-gamble. Every mage had a Hades, so I said, I give it a go. Bought 200 chest, but got nothing, so I gave up. My Apollo was decent,  over the months, I got stronger and stronger, and was ranked 4 in sylph arena with the healer strategy. Then came a merge, we got 3 monster sylph teams, which I can't beat ever. So sylph arena (along with having an Iris) lost it's importance.

In CW, I decided to use Apollo. My logic was that no one has light resist, so Apollo will work good. The next 2 CW, I went 9-6 in the finals with Apollo, and I already spent a total of 4k sepulcrum on him, so I decided I don't need a Hades at all.

And then came sylph evolution. This was the third (and hopefully last) chest-gamble I entered in Wartune's history. I knew that again, getting the 500 divinity shard cost too much, but I hoped to win Apollo/Hades. I bought 400 chests (this was the limit I set to myself). And found one Hades. I had a dilemma there: exchange it for divshards and evolve my Apollo, or get a Hades. What would you have done?

Finally, I choose to keep the Hades. It would have been more logical to make my already strong Apollo even stronger by evolving it. But Hades is a real rarity still, and I told myself, I can always get more divinity shards later, it's just +10% strength to my Apollo.

I started developing Hades, and dumped Gaia from my sylph team. I also wanted to evolve something badly: so I made a Triton from my Iris. I was thinking for long if I made some bad mistakes. My friend has only one big super-strong Hercules, it's great in WB, Sky Trials and everywhere else. But when I make a decision, I like to stick to it.

Since that, I use Hades in CW, he is as good as Apollo was (but no better yet). Hades is my favorite now in PVE, his heal is awesome in passing Necropolis, Sky trial and God's descent levels. Strangely enough, in PVP it did not shine as great as I expected. 

On guild battles, I use Triton since I'm the healer of the team. Last guild battle, in the chaos I meet alone 4 strong characters several times, and I could defeat them, and the key was Triton. We were talking about how this is possible. Triton's healing capacity, it's AE stun and mini-delphic are better than you would think, also no one has water resist so my damage has 20% bonus granted. Since that, I tried Triton in battleground as well, and was as good as Hades...

Summary:

Apollo. Although I spent a lot of effort on developing Apollo, I don't use it anywhere outside sylph arena. In every event, there is a sylph which is better for that task. His heal is weaker than Hades and Triton's, his damage is weaker than Hercules and Hades. If I wouldn't be team healer in guild battle and arena, I would use Apollo there, but now I use Triton.

Hades. I think Hades was overvalued for a long time. It's heal-reduction is not so great, by the time you use it, usually not much healing happens. His damage is pretty weak compared to Hercules or Amazon. It has one big strength, its heal, and that you can use it twice in a quick succession. The real turning point was when they corrected a bug with last patch. Previously, in PVE, your highest resist was counted, so Hercules was superior everywhere. Now they use the correct resist, so Hades is good vs dark opponents. Also the best sylph in mage CW.

Triton. Triton is undervalued. If it would have 3 good attack skills, it would be a great sylph. But it has only 2, with long cooldown. It's good for team situations, but due to its low damage capacity, weak in single PVE. In single PVP, it's better than you would think.

Gaia/Hercules. 98% of the Wartune community thinks this is the best sylph, and I think they are right. Best damage capacity, the mdef debuff, ability to slow. It's a one-man army with everything but heal and good aoe. I still use my lame Gaia for world boss. You would think it's not so good in sylph arena since it does not have aoe, but the +50% dmg buff and the mdef debuff makes up for that. If I could convert all the sepu and mahra in my Apollo into my Gaia, I would do it without hesitation. An archer or knight don't need anything else.

Amazon: I don't have it, it's a good sylph, it replaces both Hades and Gaia for a mage. But it is slightly worse than each. I remember when I gave up on Hades, I tried to farm a blue amazon. Spent weeks, but had no luck so I gave up on this. 

Pan: Don't have it either, some people say it's good after evolve, and yes, no one has wind resist :) Not gonna try it unless some day they add the option I wish for (convert one sylph to another).

Conclusion: Of my current sylph team (Apollo, Hades, Triton) I always have doubt if regret taking Hades or Triton. But now I only regret having Apollo, happy with the other two :)

World Boss: Thanks for the inspiration!

I'm always amused when someone goes berserk during World Boss, begins spending balens, and then people thank him for the inspiration. You are not thanking anyone if he plunders you, right?

I guess many people think if they get a fast big inspiration, that helps them to get more gold. Actually, it's quite the opposite.

The World Boss is nothing just a big bag of gold. Players take turns to get a share from the bag. It doesn't matter how fast they take the gold: the bag will not have more gold from that. At the end, players just distributed the gold from the bag depending on the percentage of damage they dealt.

If a player begins to balen, he will get a bigger share - at the cost of everyone else getting a lesser share. So when someone balens and does a quick lvl 20 insipration and you thank him, you actually thank him for taking away your gold.

Please do not forget, when you spend balen in this game, you always spend it to buy Battle Rating. When you spend balen on World Boss, it's like buying a +10 mount for 10.000 balens. See the calculation here. A lvl 80 player can get 20M+ gold each day, completely FREE. Why would you spend and extra 10-20 USD to get 10% more? I never spend balens on World Boss, I never spend balens on gold, and still, I always have enough gold for evething. Leveling 80 gear, identify, astral events etc. gold is never a problem. The trick is simple, save up gold when you don't need it. Keep the World Boss reward in your mail, save luckstones, XP books you buy for insignia, crypt tokens, gold chests, VIP tokens. These can be converted into a LOT of gold when needed.

The main reason why I created this blog is because I see every day that people spend balens in Wartune on stupid things. They waste their balen, throw it away. There are enough things you can spend on which make you really stronger. Why waste it then? You do not want to put a morgage on your house just to buy an empty bubble, do you?

Crazy wartune events

I really don't know whats going on in Wartune, but it's really weird. Some sales are crazy (look at the old-fashoned packs, was very good value), some you say, what the hell? They sell eternal heart as a "promotion" for 89 balens, when normally, ingame it's 25 balens (which is still 6x of realistic price).

And here is this gem synthesis event. I like to hoard stuff. I had enough gems to make 100 lvl 5 gems - which, if I combine until I can, could make 2 lvl 8. Also if I remove all lvl 6 and 7 gems from my equipment, I could have made another 7 lvl 8 gem from those. And now, with the gem synthesis event, I ended up with 50 (!!!) lvl 8 gems! So I got over 400% bonus to what I had already (not to mention the gem packs and the 32k mount whip I ge as an extra). No wonder even free players are full of lvl 8 gems now. I seriously doubt this was intentional. Maybe they wanted to give only a lvl 4 gem for making an 5 etc, but someone made a mistake.


Although I always love some beef-up, this was a bit too much... First of all, now everyone have lvl 8 gems. So I have no advantage here anymore from being smarter than others. (Okay, I could make 15 lvl 9 gems, but currently saving them up, maybe there will be a future event for those).


Secondly, gems got devalved by 80%. When you upgrade a lvl 8 gem to a lvl 9, you need 24576 lvl 1 gems, and you will gain +300 stat which worth 3000 balens. So it's 0.12 balen per gem - opposed to the previous 0.5 balen per gem while people collected lvl 7 gems.


This has several consequences:

1. You shouldn't spend balens in jewel hunt, even to reach chest 3.
2. You shouldn't use crypt key in catacombs. Better save them up and use in the Necropolis (you will run out of signet trainings anyway, since they no longer drop).
3. No one will ever buy any gem packs, even if prices are reduced by 90%.
4. Now anyone can have a crit of 10k+ very easily. Enchanted will destroyer is no longer an option, not even in class wars. Feel free to convert it into something else.
5. Converting gems (like making all pdef into block for a sky trial boss) is now a really expensive hobby :)

But, people were really pissed of with the bugs which are not corrected since weeks, and the lag which imho will never make away. So it was an awesome compensation for those and serves well to keep players. I look forward to sepulcrum and mahra given out by thousands :) Btw, did you ever think there will be a hoard-event for those? I remember I saved them up for 3 months, but then I gave away, had to keep up in sylph arena. What comes next? Mount hoofs maybe?

Finally, some short comments of the currently running events:
Sylph Taboo - One Time Goodie Bags: the bonus is not even 20%, not so great compared to the previous big spender's 50% bonus.

Sylph Taboo Chest: Although it have useful stuff inside, if you already have Hades / Apollo, this pack worth only about 37 balens, we have seen much better sales lately. If you need Hades or Apollo, and either you missed all the great sales and events this month, or still have a lot of money to spend on these, this is your opportunity to get them.

Personally, I miss the opportunity to exchange the Taboo Illuminations for divinity shards.