A few good jokes

I really appreciate when Wartune can make me laugh. And the late recharge promotions and sales are really good jokes. Big sales and recharge promotions follow each other more and more often, several times multiple of them at once. Prolly they follow the old wisdom, you can catch more fish with multiple baits. Still, most of these promotions are so silly, so we just laugh:

Earlier, there were no recharge promotions, only once a year, plus during server merge, so these were good opportunities to get some free goodies. But now we get one or more each month, can't (or rather, don't want to) spend so much balen anyway. It seems their income is really getting lower and they try to make up for the loss by milking the few whales even more. I already told several times that Wartune prices will drop, the items will be cheaper and cheaper, so the later and less you buy, the stronger character you can build from a minimum amount of balens. It seems my propechy is becoming a reality. 

For a while, it seemed a good idea for Wartune developers to assign a different resource for every aspect of the game. You can develop many things, but each requires a different item. So heavy cashers will pay a lot for every new resource.
But now this is becoming a problem. Cashers who play since a longer time, have most things maxed, so don't need most of the items which are offered as lures in recharge promotions and big spender events. Look at the above.
1000 soul seals? C'mon, I have 13000 rotting in the vault, waiting for an SS event. 200 honor medal? I have 750k honor, the problem for the next medal is empire truncheon, not these. Lvl 7 crystals? I got already 10 completely free in resist synthesis events. 1200 sepulcrum? My sylph need mahra, not sepulcrum, thx.
Maybe these are all aimed at newer players, but I doubt they rush to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The more desperate these promotions become, the more consistently we have to refuse them, so Wartune developers finally understand that we do not need more recharge promotions and spender events. We need the lag reduced, bugs corrected, the required game time reduced, and no more nerf, and reverse the latest nerfs - like dimension chests.

And here is the biggest joke:

Are they really serious, that there will be any player in Wartune, who is willing to pay 500 USD for a lvl 9 gem? All free players on our server, who never bought a single balen, have lvl 9 and lvl 10 gems in every slot. For free. So who is the target of this sale? 

To calculate it the other way: during a 3-day gem synthesise event, you can use 9 lvl 6 gems to create 6 lvl 7 gems, which can get you 4 lvl 8 gems, where you will get 2x lvl 9 gem and 1x lvl 8 gem at the end. In other words, a lvl 9 gem worth about 4 lvl 6 gems: sold for 8 coins of ancestry currently. One coin worth about 200-300 balens - both in acquire and spending value - so this gem is actually sold at 20x of it's realistic value.

I say it again: they sell an item at

20 x of it's realistic value

And they do it all the time!

Cloud adventure strategy and dice value

Cloud adventure is a simple and fun event, I like it very much. It involves one strategic decision, should you use magic dices, and when?

Earlier on I read on Cosmos blog an article from DZmage which suggests that you should always buy 5 magic dices, and use them roll 6s - even by skipping bosses - so you get the maximum amount of reward. He said he got more bound balens he spent plus extra goodies, so this is a good strategy. After that, I heard complaints from several people who lost the precious bound balens they saved up because they tried this strategy. so I decided I summon statistics and math to verify this.

First of all, I collected a good amount of statistics about Cloud Adventure spins:

Since you get 3 items with each spins, a spin's average value is 3x41=123 balens. 
A normal dice's average roll is 3.5, while a magic dice's is 6. So with one magic dice, you can save 6/3.5=1.7 normal dice. When you spend 180 bound balens on a magic dice, you get an average bonus worth 123 x 1.7 = 209 bound balens.

Please note something in this table: I put a magic hammer's value at 8 balens (while it's sold for 65 balens). I collected a lot of statistics about magic hammers too, and it was very disappointing. The expected value was only 8 balens (and only because I assigned some value even to the junk, ie. gold, kyanite, sylph equip shards). If you say magic hammer worth ZERO balen, that won't be far from the truth either :)

So anyway, yes, buying 5 magic dice is a good deal, since you can convert your bound balens into either bound balens or highly useful items of greater value.

But there is something you have to notice: generally, you will get back LESS bound balens than you spent.
If you spend 900 bound balens to get 5 magic dice (and as such, save 8 normal dice), you will get back an average of 24 x (12.57+7.47+6.79) =  644 bound balens only. So if you are low on bound balens, and saving on a gem recipe or some other specific item, you should be careful here.

Here is also another strategy suggestion from me: if possible, try to kill the bosses, if you can reach them via a magic dice roll of 5 or 6. Alternate normal and magic dices, and try to move on as many bosses and chests as possible.

The best value combo for resist crystals

The new chest exchanges are a bit complicated. I already wrote an analysis of the pumpkin carriage, and another about glass slippers. Today I would like to show you what's the most efficient combination IF you want to spend some balens to get the maximum number of resist crystals from the current resist synthesis event in Wartune.

The current resist synthesis event came a bit too early. Usually I can stock up enough free resist shards from maps, could adventures, dimension chests, etc. so I can make one or two lvl 7 resist crystal, and one of everything else on all 4 days. (Yes, 4 days, since on the first day, you can make one combine between 1am and 5am, and one after 5am). But now I was a bit low so I looked around for possibilities.

7 glass slippers can be exchanged for 1000 crystal shards. After I have the persian cat, I think this is the best trade for glass slippers (but only because I have orange sylph already, so I don't need mahra that much). So far, the best balen buy for resist crystal shard were the gamble crystal chests, which contained 30, 40, ... 1000 crystal shard for 39 balen (not for sale last 2 times, sadly). For 1000 balens, I could get approx. 6500 crystal shards, so on average, one crystal shard cost me 0,15 balens. 

So, 7 glass slipper for 1000 crystal is a 21 balen / crystal slipper exchange.

Currently, they run a one-time bag promotion.You can spend 2000+ balens to get a lvl 5 resist crystal (which needs 8100 crystal shards, worth 1200 balens), some gems, and 15 chinese chests. It's a decend bonus. You can buy 57 chinese chests for 2223 balens, which is 2023 if you use a 200 balen coupon (I hope you still have a bunch in your mailbox from Christmas). The 72 Chinese chests will give you on average 24 pumpkins (worth 21 balens on average after you don't need the cloth), 24 glass slippers (worth also 21 balens if you exchange them for crystal shards) and 24 paper cuttings (worth about 25 balens each, if you exchange them for Vulcan packs, more on this later).

So for 2023 balens, you get 72 chests (worth 1608 balens), a lvl resist crystal (worth 1200 balens) and some gem packs, so it's an okay deal. Still, don't this push too far: you need only so much resist crystals so you can make ONE level 5-6 crystal each day (and a lvl 7 every 2nd day). So you should buy this pack 1-3 times max, no more.

About paper cuttings, I am still thinking whats the best deal with those. Unlike with pumpkins, here the items you get for opening the chests are crap, while some of the exchange items are very good. 

Empire truncheons: new item, and you need a lot. Still, I'm sure they will add an event which gives a constant source of these (titan wars), so I won't go for these unless I can get 400 right away.
Good luck charm, fashion core: these are the best value item balen-wise. If a clothing event will run while this exchange is still available, and I run out of these resources, then I will get them from here.
Vulcan Pack: This is pure +ATK, and very hard to get, so this is the most tempting for me.
Clothes: Clothes are always cool, but the above items are much better. And these are quality B anyway. I will rather get them a few months later when it's sold or given in a bundle.

Glass slippers and Paper cuttings

Obviously, Wartune has changed the way the chest-gamble works. Previously, you got an event shard + a random item from each chest. If you were lucky, you could get the rare treasure. If you weren't, you could still exchange it for the event shards. Not anymore. With the new system, you either open the chest, or exchange it directly. Personally, I like the change, because now people can't complain anymore that "X got lucky by opening 3 chests and me not by opening 200". Now it's your decision if you go gamble-mode or safe-mode. Also it's good because now you have to be smart to make the right decision. But, I also admit, that with this current system, you get less reward in average. So far, this is not a big tragedy, since we get  a lot more free chest than before. 

I already published an analysis about pumpkin carriage. My advice was to open the chests and gamble instead of doing the exchange - at least until you got a full cloth set - because the expected value is much better this way. Now the game gets more complicated with Valentine chests which give a glass slipper or a pumpkin carriage, and with the chinese new year chest which can either give those or a "paper cutting." So what's the optimal strategy now?


Unlike pumpkins, glass slippers can give you mounts. Mounts are usually the highest priority goal in chest events, since they give the most BR, and they are unique items which you can't get from other sources. So here, I recommend a different strategy.


First of all, Wartune was nice enough to give the free Valentine day's packs, including a Royal Steed. And they were even nicer to allow us to exchange the Royal Steed for a bunch of glass slippers. So if you had the Royal Steed, you could grab now the Chimera as well. Getting 235 more crystals for the Persian cat is more difficult, and depends entirely on your resources.


Lately, I used all my coins of ancestry to get mount whips. So I had 7000 whips to use, also had 2 mounts I got free since last hoof event, so I got 170 glass slippers. Now there are 2 options:
Use the glass slippers, and hope for persian cat (0,1% chance) or an apollo seal (which I can exchange for more glass slippers), or try to collect the 235.

I decided to do the following:
1. Try to get as many glass slippers with the current mount events. This included exchanging my amethyst for whips, and exchanging all remaining pumpkins for whips as well.
2. Save up the glass slippers and see how much I can get. The event still runs for 14 days, cloth event or anything else might come.
3. If, at the end, I miss only like 10-20 glass slippers, I buy them, good value for a +40 mount. If I miss more, I open the glass slippers, and hope for my luck.

Update: gem synthesise event tomorrow, so we can get a lot of free chests (hope you saved up the gems you get for valentin event).

Boiling the frog

Probably many of you have heard of a classic experiment. They say if you throw a live frog into boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately and survive. However, if you put the frog into cold water, and warm it up slowly, the frog will not jump out and gets boiled eventually. I'm not sure if this experiment would work in practice, but it is a classic example to model human behaviour.

Why do I bring this up? Because Wartune is a master of boiling us like a frog. I remember when I started playing Wartune. I was excited that I don't have to spend money, I can get everything, just a bit slower - except for the pretty wings. Then, after some weeks, when I knew I like the game, I made my first recharge to buy a pair of wings. In a game like this, making the customer to do the first recharge is always the most difficult task. It must be always a small sum - 5 USD is just perfect as the weekly tempting recharge bonuses suggest.

After you recharged 5 USD a few times, you will be confident to make a bigger one - 10, 20 or 40 USD, if there are some tempting sales. You spend 10-50 USD monthly, and you still playing. And, after like a half year, you say, gee, I already spent over 100 USD! So making a 100 USD recharge now looks more reasonable. Time passes, and there comes the big mega-ultra recharge promotion, for 500 or 1000 USD, offering treasures beyond your dreams - and you don't even have to spend it, you get this huge bonus pack for recharging! And since you recharged 50-100 USD several times, you say: I will play for a year more, I would recharge this amount eventually anyway. Of course, after you have the balens, they disappear much faster; not like when you have to touch your credit card each time when there is a sale. And, you get boiled, like a frog.

The first year (10 months) when I played Wartune, I spent an average of 70 USD monthly (10-20 only first months, more later). When our server merged in 2013, they put up a recharge bonus of 500 USD. I said it's too much money, so I passed. In the next 7-8 months, I spent that amount, and told myself, it was a mistake not to do the recharge, I lost all the bonuses. So when the next merge came around in 2014, I was ready to be boiled: I made the 500 USD recharge. Saying myself, this will be enough for another half year at least. Of course I was wrong, a gadzillion of big spender events started to follow, and the 50.000 balens disappeared in 2 months, making my monthly spending increase from 70 to 250: so the game became more expensive - due to a „good offer”. What a paradox situation...

My blog is about how to build a strong character using a minimal amount of balens: but this „minimal” is quite relative thing :) As things get cheaper and cheaper, as you got bigger and bigger bonuses and more sales, it is harder and harder to resist. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you could see that I say „don't buy” to 9 sales/promotions out of 10. But sales became so common, there is always one which is just too good to refuse. And then we begin finding excuses: „I can afford it”, „Others spent more”, „I am a god on my server for this price” etc.

When I started playing Wartune, my friend told me: „Wartune is a game where you can spend an unlimited amount of money. But still, whenever you buy balens, always think of the possibility that you can quit tomorrow. Will you regret the total amount you spent?” He played for a year, spent 200 USD, and quit without a second thought. Some months later, he restarted on a new server. He never bought a balen but he still have fun.

This game creates a very strong addiction. And when you have the balen, it is much harder to resist. Btw, the current event („balen lode”) looks interesting. Looks like I spend 5k balens, then I get it back, +2k bound balens. But the trap is here, to use this, you must recharge. And then you have the balens, you spend them much faster... Very smart, I have to admit.

So always keep in mind how much you spent in total, and what is your monthly spending. Is that increasing? If yes, be careful: you are just getting boiled!

Pumpkin Carriage analysis

As I promised, I made an analysis of the current Wartune "chest" event, Pumpkin Carriage. Here is what I got from the free chests I got from clothing synthesis:

The chest's average value is calculated the usual way: multiply drop rate of each item by its balen value, and sum it up. I set mount hoof value to zero: if you are a low casher, with fewer mounts, then you maxed your hoofs for that reason. If you are a top player, then you kill 8+ boss in DI each run, and you maxed hoofs for that reason. 

Anyway, the chest's expected value was 28 balens for me, which is still no-buy. Especially after a massive nerf to dimensions and adding VAT to balen prices, I don't think too many players are in the mood of spending.

But the original question was, whether to open these chests, or exchange them for cloth / mount whip. Obviously, opening has a better value, so I strongly recommend going for that. If you want the clothes at all cost, do this: Open all Carriage but 90. If you dont get any cloth, exchange the remaining 90 for them. If you got 1 cloth, then open 30 more, and exchange 60, etc. 

About the new Valentine's chest, will post an analysis as well when I have enough statistics. If you have any, please don't hesitate to post it. Thanks!

Demonic angel or knight?

With the new troops, everyone is asking which is better, so I try to help you with this decision.

There 3 main advantages a troop can grant:

Damage. Angels have 5% higher attack, but knights deal 50% more damage (in average) if you have only one opponent, which is good in damage-race situations (wb, sky trial, god etc). So knight has a slight advantage, but it's very small.

Hit points. If your troops have enough HP to survive the opponent's first AOE attack, then your opponent must spend one or more extra attacks to get rid of them: this can win you additional turns. Knights has 1000 more base HP. Troop HP is calculated: troop count/200 * base HP. So for me, this means +17K HP for knights. Not much, but can make a difference sometimes.

ATK bonus via enlightenment, 20% of your troops attack stat is added to your own attack if you maxed out your enlightenment. Angels have approx. 1000 mor attack, which is 200 bonus to your attack. Actually it's more, since multipliers are applied, so for me, it's approx. +250 ATK.

+250 ATK sounds a cool bonus, so at first glance, angels look better. However, most of us had templar previously. In academy, we maxed out troop PATK - but not troop MATK. Without that, angels have the same bonus at knights. To get the above bonus, we have to max. out troop MATK bonuses in academy. That cost approx. 4-5 million kyanite. And now we got the question: what is more valuable, 4 million kyanite, or +250 ATK?

You all know I try to calculate everything into balens, if for nothing else, it's good to compate what has greater value.

In wild shop, you can spend an unlimited amount of kyanites. Fashion cores, good luck charms and many other goodies. A fashion core cost 240k kyanite. The cheapest you could buy it was 150 balens, so there you get 1 balen value for 1600 kyanite. Good luck charms 120k kyanite, same balen price, so its 1 balen per 800 kyanite. (Even if you have level 9 clothes, cores and charms are useful, since you can get free chests via cloth events.) So you can convert 4 million kyanite into 2500 „balens” at least.

I used to say, never spend balen on a stat, unless you gain at least +1 BR per 10 balen spent. Actually, this value has inflated, with triple big spender discounts and mega-sales, if you were smart, you could easily get +1 per for 5 balen or less. So 250 ATK is worth maxium 2500 balens (bu t rather, much less).

So maxing MATK for troops is at least 4M kyanite, which is at least 2500 balens worth.

+250 ATK is maximum 2500 balens (but rather, less).

And demonic knights have a slight advantage in the other 2 area as well.

Update: I tested this a lot. As I wrote, knights deal 50% more damage in average. In pve, angels deal approx. 7k, knights 7-14k. So the average extra damage I get per round is +7k. Of course this applies only in situations where I have live troops, still, this extra damage is definitely better on the average than +250 ATK.

Obviously, demonic knights are the better choice. You didnt think it, did you? Neither did I. Math is useful sometimes :)

Dimensions nerfed

Looks like Wartune can always outdo itself in making the game worse. This week we get the worst patch in Wartune's history.

First, they added a new fate system which is not using fate stones, but a different resource, "bead of influence". Obviously, we have 2 big problems with this addition. We have been collecting fate stones for many months, waiting for a new system, and now can't use them? Also, the "influence" stat suggests stun is gonna change. So you spent many months collecting XP to max out your holy seal talent? No problem, a casher can still stun you...

Second, they added a honor medal which can be upgraded. There is only one problem with this addition. It requires "Empire Truncheon", an undoubtedly super-expensive balen resource (which is not in the game yet). We already have enough resources which we can't use (dragon souls, mount hoofs, fate stones, soul crystals etc. etc) don't need something new that needs tens of thousands of balens.




The third "addition" is a HUGE nerf. Dimension resist bonuses are reduced severely, and the treasure chests are nerfed beyond recognition. It is a well known for experienced game publishers that nerfs (and big chances) are the best and easiest way is to get rid of your customers. I never see any nerf in Doomlord. There, if something needs to be changed, they balanced it by ADDING things, not by removing.
If resist was too much, they should have just added extra resist reduce, or a cap on resist.
I would say Wartune just lost at least 50% of it's income with this change. Personally, I will keep posting on the forum to reverse the nerf - at least about the chests.

And the worst thing is that this whole nerf was pointless.

• Probably some people complained that players of lesser BR could beat them due to their high resistances. But, the way resist and resist reduce works (people have high resist reduce) you can build high resistance only vs one element. So this added a strategy aspect to the game (finally). Either go with the masses, and keep using Hercules or Hades - which are far the best sylphs - and suffer in pvp, or use another sylph to beat the "resist turtles".
• Advanced dimensions take 4 more time to explore than an intermediate - and they have the same number of treasure inside. That is, you get 4 times less loot for your energy spent. The only reason why it was still okay to do advanced dimensions is the final resist. It's no more. I don't even want to mention expert dimensons which take 3 times more to complete than advanced...
• The nerf did not attain it's goal. Since they not only decrease the resist, they also decrease the resist reduce bonus as well. So people's resist will be still higher than the opponent's reduce (although the difference will be a little less, but not much).

But, you know what? The resist nerf is the lesser bad. But nerfing the chests was pure evil.

The amount of sepulcrum and mahra have been reduced. Glint of Magic and Magical Moonlight is no longer in the chests (this is the worst, imho!), Also no more star sand and shards (this can be bad for some beginner players, but with latest free hot events giving out evolved sylphs, prolly not so big deal). And the added soul crystal, fate stone etc. does not compensate for this.

Class Wars with sylph

This is the second Class Wars in Wartune which is using sylph instead of troops. First I was excited about the change, but now I admit I am disappointed, for the following reasons:

1.) This change introduced a LOT of bugs. Chaos rune not working at all on sylph teams (out of like 30 chaos rune, opponent was never targeted when in sylph form), game freezing and the player not being able to reconnect, targeting problems. I would also swear some of the skills are bugged (triton heal being ridiculously low compared to some aoes), the damage calculations seems to fail (lost to a dude who did nothing but healed, while the system is now supposed to count damage dealt), but I need to make a video of CW next time so I can "debug" what is actually happening.

2.) This change takes away hope from low and medium cashers. Previously, you needed only 1 strong sylph to compete. Now you need 3.

3.) The luck factor has increased too much. We already had enough in fights: illusion, deflection, regeneration astrals, chaos and amnesia runes, criticals... But now, the resistance boosts from dimensions make it an even bigger gamble, and in a 3 vs 3 battle is pretty difficult to see actually what is happening. There is no combat log like in other games, and this is a once per month event, so not much room for experimenting with strategies.

4.) The rewards are not upgraded since CW was added to the game. So every CW is nothing just 300 mount whips, a big disappointment which should be the crescendo of all character achievements. With the 3-sylph team, now you have to upgrade a Medusa to have an optimal team, spending tons of mahra, sepulcrum... just to get 300 mount whips monthly? This is a pretty nonsense.

5.) Duration of duels. Maybe the 2 and half minute was enough initially, but now people have so much HP, and there are so many ways to heal and reduce damage... So the 2 and half minute is just not enough, often it ends seconds before a final delphic. They should either extend the time of one round, or increase how fast we get the damage increase. Or, at least, display the damage dealt so we know how the match is going.

Anyway, this Class Wars needs some changes, the epic championship, the goal of advancing your character should be something more balanced, less luck-dependent, and better rewarded...


At least I could grab an XP bonus for my server, and the ability to summon goblins for my guild :)