Interview with Greg, the PR manager from Wartune

I had a chat with Greg, a Wartune PR manager from Proficient City who is responsible for communication between Wartune publisher and the players.

Me: Hey Greg! I'm happy I can finally talk to someone who knows the game and not just says "sorry, I can't help". Can we talk about the recent patch? People find it's terrible, full of bugs, increased the game time and take away a lot of rewards. What do you think?

Greg: As always, we want to make the game just better. What piece in particular do you have a problem with?

Me: The biggest problem is dimensions. No more bound balens, much less offerings, no more reapers, rare treasures, loot is much worse. To top it off, now it takes 2 more times daily than before :(

Greg: Hmm, can we calculate this into balens, please? How much loot did you get before the patch?

Me: I got like 300-400 bound balens, bunch of eudaemon enchant item, rare loots like blessing of good, at least one offering per day.. Total value of like 1000 balens daily, I guess.

Greg: And what do you get now?

Me: Like 5-6000 crystal shard, 1500-2000 will shards, got only 2 offerings so far found 3 mines, and there is a bunch of mahra and sepulcrum and I don't need those.

Greg: I see. So you got 1500 balen from mines in a week, that's only 100 bb per day But 5000 crystals, x 0.4 balen = 2000 balens, 1500 x 1 = 1500 balens. So now you get goodies worth 3600 balens each day instead of the previous 1000.

Me: Um, never calculated like that, but you are right. But no lvl 9 resist event anyway, and I needed the eudaemon enchant items very much too.

Greg: We will add a level 9 resist event eventually. And even if not, you will have so much resist gems, you can make them. About the eudaemon enchant I see the logs, last XGB you bought enough blue crystals to max most of your eudaemons items to lvl 9 blue, right?

Me: Um, yes, okay reapers are not so important anymore. But dimensions still take 2 more times than before!

Greg: Well, we just calculated you earn loot worth 3600 balens daily. What if I say, spend only the same time as before, and earn only 1800 balens per day in dimensions. And to compensate you, I give you a dungeon where you earn goodies worth 32000 balens weekly at the cost of only 1 hour?

Me: Ah, well, that would be a perfect compensation!

Greg: Ok, we already did that. It's called Narrenda's remains. Reward is 600 vulcan hammer, and like 200 or more vulcan's stithy. With the biggest discount, and coupons used, you could buy these for 40 balens each. Now you get it for free. 32K value weekly. So before the patch, you could make 7k balen value from dim weekly. Now, in the same time, you can make 12k balen value, and you get an additional 32k value (only if you are strong enough - but even if you can do only 1st boss, the loot is still decent). Doesn't sound to me a big nerf

Me: Now it looks much better Greg, thanks. But you took away wild shop! And I don't earn bound balens to buy the stuff in Mystery shop!

Greg: What do you miss from Wild shop?

Me: The fashion cores and the good luck charms, of course!

Greg: You still doing cloth events?

Me: No, since you took away rewards from there as well :(

Greg: As I see, you have lvl 9 clothes already. So why do you care? You don't need more rage, so higher level clothes would be worthless to you anyway.

Me: Ok, you right. Still, the stuff in mystery shop, I would need bound balens for those!

Greg: As I see, you have over 20k bound balens saved up. Also, I see in the log you bought divinity souls, eud diamonds, will crystals, some vulcan hammer and other goodies already, which you couldn't have gotten eariler. So whats the problem? Even if you run out of bb eventually, in 1-2 months, you got a truckload of useful treasure.

Me: Well, you are right in that too. Still, I hope there will be some ways to get more bound balens in the future. But here are other issues: removal of grim reaper title, reseting cards (and causing people the loss of 6-8 months of efforts), and the nerf of Lord of Time!

Greg: The grim reaper yes, we removed, but we added a bunch of new titles instead. I know it wont comfort you to lose the gathering of 1 year, but in the end, you will get more HP than you would have with grim reaper. The card reset, we never realized how much we took away. I know in games like Doomlord, (who love players too much to my taste) they would just take the database before the patch, check who had how many cards, and send everyone proper compensation. But you know our policy: we never compensate individually, too much trouble.

Me: That's sad, Greg :( But at least you were honest, which I don't see often from Wartune publishers.

Greg: About Lord of Time. We didn't make it worse. It just the same as before. Yes, there is no altar of enoblement anymore - so this skill is just obsolete. You save 375 balens monthly. 

Me: It would have saved me a lot of time!

Greg: Start the blitz, and check back a half hour later, as before. And about game time reduction, hope you are not doing maps anymore, you get enough crystals from dimensions. And honestly - but please, don't put this into the interview - if I were you, I would just make a script which completes the dimension for you. It's damn simple and primitive now, I'm sure there is someone in the community who could do that.

Me: I don't use any scripts, but if you say so, maybe you should just add a blitz dimension option instead :) Anyway, I think you are right in some things. We got more than what was taken away. But players would be much more happy, if balen mines and offerings would be more common in dimensions, and the Lord of Time would work with this acceleration things. Thanks for the honest explanation, I hope it will happen more often from now on!

Greg: You welcome, anytime!


Although this interview have shed light on some things, the sad fact is, that Greg DOESN'T EXIST. This is only an imaginary interview I made up to comfort my friend, Nono, who was so pissed off with the recent nerfs that he said he will quit. Sadly, proficient city or R2Games has not a single employee who can (or want) to do ANYTHING to make Wartune better. Still, just a conversion like the above (where I get no promise of anything!) could make the players feel a bit better. By explaining things. Do not think I want to defend Wartune developers in the above article. I hate what they do as much as you do. I just wanted to show that maybe the glass is half-full, and not half-empty. 

Nono, the reason why I wrote this is not because I can't do Narrenda without you, or because I spent  an hour yesterday to get this magnificent loot:

Not even because I will prolly quit as well without you. But because I would hate to lose a good friend :(

Chests and reward exchanges

First of all, I'm on holiday now, in a hotel with my family, enjoying the water slides of the nearby water park, so I'm less active in Wartune, but my mind is still set on the game.

Yesterday evening I started writing an analysis of the current double element sylph chest exchange. I wanted to say that content is junk, and of the exchanges, there is only one useful item to exchange for: divine energy. Then I realized the game designers proved another way how stupid they are and how much they lack the skill to design events. One of the 3 exchanges - the one where you could exchange this into divine energy - has already expired. I bet they have some kind of competition who is making more faulty events, who can piss of players more. Or it's just one person, and no one is supervising what kind of mistakes he does. 
Either way, it's irrelevant. This chest gives no cloth, no mount, the eudaemon warpath items are crap, the merged sylph components you wont need for a year... So I think I will just open my chests, and hope to grab a few beast souls, and that's it.

And tomorrow is already coming the next chest, the 3 year anniversary chest. I expected something that is finally useful, but its the same thing as weeks ago, a month ago. Chests seem to be identical now. 3 new cloth, a new mount, 30 bead of influence are the useful exchanges. Check the aerial fleet analysis for more info:
http://wartune-balens.blogspot.com/2015/07/aerial-fleet-chest-analysis.html

One more thing I wanted to mention now is the sheer number of reward exchange shops. Class War shop, Titan war shop, Cross-server guild battle shop, Arena shop... And the value of different items changed greatly.

Class War shop: For a long time, I kept buying mount whips there since it was the only useful item. After a while, they added a lot more items. Then advanced sepulcrum became my favorite. One month ago, when I maxed out holy forge, I bought mythic equipment components instead. But now you can get those fast from Narrenda remains: so again, advanced sepulcrum and mahra are my favorites, cheap from CW shop. I expect adv. sepulcrum to be inflated eventually. You can already find it in sylph arena, and maybe they will upgrade sylph expedition rewards finally. At that time, I will prolly buy the advanced holy forge "stoves".

Cross-server guild battle shop. For a long time, we bought vulcan's hammer (after possible new mount) without a thought. But now, we get 600 hammers weekly from Narrenda. So I went for blue crystalloids - I can't get them anymore from dimensions. When those will be maxed, prolly I just stick with fashion cores.

Titan war shop. I wrote already about this, there were 2 items there which you couldn't get from other sources, and the price was realistic: beads of influence and empire truncheon. Now you can get bead from chest events and mystery shop, so I buyempire truncheon there.

Arena shop: For a long while, will crystal was the favorite. But now we get so many in dimensions... Started buying runestones to max out my amnesia rune too. Maybe I will buy 1-1 potion too, so I can squeeze myself into top16 in CW, who knows...

Mystery shop analyis

I collected some data about Wartune's new Mystery Shop, and I was thinking what is the best buy strategy. I will share what I found, feel free to comment! 

The first thing is, you shouldn't spend real balen in this shop, use only bound balens. Let's hope you stacked up a few tens of thousands from dimensions, because it seems you are not getting more. The bound balen producing dimension mines are seemingly non-existent.



Here is the list of useful items so far:

You can buy the same item for different prices: pure balen (or bound balen), bb + kyanite or daru, and bb + mystery stones.
The item is always the cheapest in bb terms when you use mystery stones, and its always the most expensive when you dont spend an additional resource.

As you see, all gems (divinity souls, eudaemon diamonds, normal gems, and resist crystals) can be purchased. Will crystals seem to be more rare than the others, but the rest is pretty common. 

What catched my eye that whoever made these prices, was not aware that Wartune has regular gem events, where you can create higher level gems and get extra gems. As you see, a lvl 2 eudaemon diamond costs 20 bb and 1 mystery stone, while a lvl 3 cost 90 bb and 4 mystery stone. However, when you combine 4 lvl 2 eudaemon diamonds (during an unlimited event), you get an extra lvl 3. So effectively, if they sell a lvl 2 for 20 bb, a lvl 3 should cost max 40 bb. (but 2 lvl 2 is still better because if you combine them during an event, you will get chests).
The same is true for everything: the higher level a gem, the more expensive. So in general, you should buy only the lowest level gems (I marked them with dark green). Since there is no reward for making lvl 2 divinity soul or lvl 2 resist crystal, in those categories the lvl 3 is a good buy as well.

Please note that I recommend buying even the lvl 5 will crystal. Although in general will crystals are much more expensive than resist crystal, here you can buy them cheaper. Additionally, will crystals are more rare. So I think it's okay to buy even higher level will crystals if you can afford.

About the miscellaneous items: so far I found 2 which I find exceptionally great deal, marked them bright green. These are beads of influence and vulcan hammer. These are "must buy" items.
Eternal heart is good too, especially since its less common now in dimensions (although you can find it still). The gift of god I find overpriced. Mahra, mount whip and mystery stones are useful items, but you can find them in large quantities for free, I wouldn't waste bound balen on them.

Please note also something very important: you are limited to 3 buys per day! For this reason, I recommend buying dark green items only if you have at least 1 purchase attempts remaining afterwards, or if this is the last shop refresh before you log out - to make sure you can also buy the top items if they come up.

I'm pretty sure that even if you buy only dark green items, you will buy the 3 items most days (if you check the shop every 4 hours), So you will spend about 200-300 bound balens, and about 10 mystery stones each day. If you have 20k bound balens like me, this will be enough for 2-3 months for sure. If you have a LOT more, like 50-100k, you might consider buying lvl 4 gems too, but don't forget, those will be suboptimal purchases.

Lastly, I would like to mention that there are other items in the shop, but they are really, completely utter junk. Here is the list of them. The sylphs could be useful to some beginner players - if they weren't so expensive.

There are really a lot of items, so I'm sure my list is not complete. I didn't see empire truncheon for example, but I hope it exists :)

Mystery shop would be an okay change after wild shop - if they didn't remove bound balens from dimensions.

*** UPDATE 03/08 ***

I updated the above tables. Advanced mahra and sepulcrum is highly recommended items too. I moved vulcan stove from junk to recommended for the following reason:
Now you can get vulcan's hammers 200-600 per week from Narrenda. And you get only 200-600 stoves, where you would need 600-1800. Yes you have some saved up from AB, but that will run out quick... You will need the stoves :)

Discussion of the new Wartune patch

Unfortunately, I do not have a high level character on tests servers, so I have only 2nd hand information of the Wartune patch changes coming to every server next week. Fortunately, there are a lot of information on the forums, so now we have a vague idea of what's coming. I write a short summary here of the big changes (there are many small ones too I don't list now, like sylph attached to eudameon, new emo icons etc), and try to analyze the consequences.

The good changes

Mounts

Several great additions here. We get 4 new free mounts, and they even move faster than the previous ones. They can be trained with whips. 
Also the developers implemented something I suggested earlier: you can recycle duplicate mount cards, and buy mounts you missed for the "beast souls" you receive. Let's hope we can exchange the old beast shards for beast souls (I wonder why they created a new item in the first place).


New mpd, Narrandera remains

A new mpd is always a cool challenge. As I heard, originally this was for 8 people on the Chinese servers, and the 2 teams had to kill 2 bosses parallel, at the same time. Our version got adapted to the more abandoned servers, here you take only the normal 4-people team, and those 4 players are split to attack the 2 bosses. It's similar to Eternal Forest's first bosses, one is physical, the other is magical immune.
This mpd is once a week. I think this a is a good change. Yes, it  means less loot, longer time to collect the mythic armor pieces which are dropped here. But I like that the time required to play the game is not increased, we can do this on the weekend when we have time.

Bounty targets
A challenge ladder for eudaemons, similar to sylph expedition. Now we have to start developing a 2nd and 3rd eudaemon, that's bad, you would say - fortunately, 90% of the eudaemon's strength comes for free, from it's level, so all you need here is just blood of zeus and buying skills chests from guild shop which you do anyway. So this is a new way to get loot, hopefully useful items, and it doesn't take too much extra time.

Sylph arena rewards upgraded
Now you can choose to get advanced sepulcrum and sylph enchant pack instead of normal sepulcrum and sylph equip shard as reward for sylph arena ranking, that's a good chance.

Circus rewards upgraded

Finally :) But prolly still not enough to waste time on this. But, when you got enough imperial seals from goodies link so you can run a complete circuit without spending too much time, then at least you will get some useful reward.





The bad changes

Wild shop changes

Wild shop changed drastically. It has a lot of new items, mostly useful ones: beads of influence, eudaemon stuff, divinity souls, advanced mahra etc. This is a good thing. But instead of paying for them only with free commodities (insignia, daru etc) now there is always a balen cost associated. And most of the prices are irrealistically high. Also, the refresh cost is now balen instead of daru. This is a very, very bad thing. And fashion cores and good luck charms are gone. This is bad too. But you can pay with bound balens too, at least. So adding new and useful items would be cool, but in overall, this is nerf, sadly. If I were them, I would have added some balen cost (but not so high as now), and would have kept the daru refresh.

Dimensions

Dimensions were already "optimized" twice in Wartune's history, and both time we got a heavy nerf. Looks like this third time is no exception :( At first glance, there are some nice things. A mini-map, you can see how many objects you need to finish, you can even locate a hidden object for 10 energy. But there are much more negative changes.
Looks like the chest contents are downgraded once more, there are less (or not at all?) bound balen as treasure. The reapers seem to be replaced by "trials" which give random treasure (much worse than the eudaemon crystals we got earlier). Some even reported lack of dragon den, and dimensions expiring faster, but that seems unbelieveable to me so still need to confirm. 
The energy regenerates gradually instead of resetting at server reset (bad thing, imho), and various moves has now various costs. Moving to an empty is only 4 energy, but moving to an object costs much more. Can't judge that part, will see if it is good or not.

Sylph merge

For me, one of the most important thing in a game is to have long-term goals. When I read about sylph merge, it sounded an exciting thing, something which will take a lot of time and effort to achieve. But the result is hugely disappointing. Merging together you Aegis and Athena costs 60000 unbound balens. Yes, thats 600 USD! (was 20k on Chinese) And the skills also cost 6000 and 15000 unbound balens EACH! I think Wartune's publisher has made a huge mistake here. As long as developments costs 300, 500 or 1000 shards, crystals etc. which cost a LOT of balens, there was always a hope that it will get cheaper one day, maybe you can get even some for free. But not here. With sylph merge, it is made clear from the start that this feature is open only to about 20-30 players in total who are willing to spend 1500 USD on this. So Loki/Odin wants to be the Lamborghini of Wartune. The big problem is with this, as soon as it becames obvious for a light or medium casher that he can NEVER reach this goal, he loses interest, and quits. There must be ALWAYS a hope. Even a slight one.
I don't even understand who is the target for this sale. People who could pay 600 USD for this has evolved their Aegis long ago...

Conclusion
We have to adapt, as always. About dimensions, I suggest that you do not open new dimension until the new patch; instead, try to clear and loot up what you already have. I will also use my spare Eternal lights to cover as much as possible.
About wild shop, I will do much more resets each day than I used to, I try to spend most of my mystery stones on free items until it's possible.
Also looks like I have to grow blood of zeus again in my farm (was growing mount whips only since a while).
If you are a super-heavy casher, you prolly don't bother much about my blog. But if you do, I recommend that you do not rush making a Loki (or even Odin). If no one buys them, maybe the developers realize that this time they went too far.
What I learned from Doomlord, never change what is working well, never nerf things, and never piss of players by setting outrageous prices. Because right now it seems their goal is not profit, but some kind of weird sociological experiment :)

Improvement suggestions to Wartune

I wanted to make this post about Wartune since a long time. Again I see a patch message with many new things (some of them we wont see for a long time, though), but it seems the developers don't focus on things the players really need. Reducing the lag, reducing the required game time, and fixing the reward system. Please let me know if I missed something important!

Simple but vital additions:

- Allow players to delete sylph skills.

- Allow players to delete eudaemons.

Reduce lag:

- Decrease the size of sylph sprites to that of the players. Big looks nice but causes a lot of lag.

- Remember a player's preference of not showing players in cloud city, atoll boss, world boss. Also add this option to guild boss.

- Add a settings where players can turn off / reduce animations during battles.

- Add a settings where players can turn off mount graphics in guild battles and battleground.

- Allow players to turn off display of eudaemon damage.

- Remove eudaemons from 4 vs 4 battles.

Reward / inventory issues:

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 10 fate stone to 1 bead of influence.

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 10 soul crystal to 1 mount training whip.

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 50 soul crystal to 1 soul seal.

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 10 mount hoofs to 1 vulcan hammer.

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 10 dragon souls to 1 vulcan hammer.

- Add blacksmith synthesis: item: 10 soul seal to 1 empire truncheon.

- Allow mount cards which the player already possess to be synthed for beast shards.

- Allow level 1 cloth to be stacked.

- When using heaven horn: if the player already have 3 evolved sylph, replace star sand and star tear with moon rock and moon dust, and the rare star sand with divine stone. If the player already have 3 orange sylph, replace sepulcrum and mahra with advanced sepulcrum and mahra.

- Allow sylph to use more xp via sylph xp scrolls. Use it as „talents” which increase sylph damage / healing by a small amount.

- Improve reward in sylph expedition: replace sylph xp scroll and sylph equipment shards with advanced sepulcrum, advanced mahra, belssing of god and gift fo god at later bosses.

- Improve reward in goodies link, at least at stages which can be accessed only with balens.

- Improve reward in sylph arena, advanced sepulcrum, advanced mahra, blessing of god, gift of god for top players.

- Improve reward in Bloody Inferno and add this event to the recovery exp tab.

- Guild boss reward system modification: give players fears of fang for the daru they donate. (1 fang for 50.000 daru donated).

Make VIP (and exp) useful again:

- Revise current talents, make them more useful, and increase max level to 100 for each.

Game time reduction:

- Allow sylph expedition to be blitzed to max level – 5, not max level – 10.

- Allow players with a level 50+ tank to claim a victory chest and silver rune box under recovery exp if they didn't do tank the previous day. Give gold to level 65+, diamond to level 80+ tanks.

- Allow players with a purple artifact and halidom claim 5 divine energy and 10 pure refinement crystals claim under recover exp if they didn't do mpd the previous day.

- Allow players to purchase basic dimension essence for 300, intermediate for 600, advanced for 900, and extended for 1200 energy.

- Allow dimension battles (normal monster and reaper) skipped and completed for VIP players.

- Reduce the daily arena matches to 10.

- Allow players to energize all trees of one page.

Aerial Fleet chest analysis

Here is the usual analysis of the current Wartune chest exchange. This time we got plenty of free
chests, and there are some good exchanges around too for "Aerial Fleet chest".

First of all, let's check the chest contents:
Blood of Zeus - I maxed my eudaemon, and never spent balen on it, so this is still junk.
Eudaemon Skill Chest - you can buy it for gold in guild shop, so it's junk.
Ice core, soul core - junk, divine energy is the problem , not this.
Green flame - limited use, but you certainly don't want to open an item sold for 20 balen from a chest which is sold for 39.
And the rest - cloth, mount - are rares, usual rarity is 0,1% for each. So you will get one useful item for every 200 chest. I recommend do not open chests, but exchange them in hot events.


There are the worthwhile exchanges:
1. Cloth. Since it's S quality, it can give a decent BR boost. After some thinking, I bought all 3 pieces. The weapon is not so great to a mage, but the game is rather BR contest in many areas than an actual player power contest. The wing also worth mentioning. At 120 chest, it's just too expensive, even when S quality. However, you should be aware there is a title associated with owning all 4 pieces, giving additional boost. So it's almost a good buy. Still, I didn't buy this, I hope to get it cheaper in the future.

2. Franken rabbit. You know I'm a mount-fan, and I always went for mounts in any chest exchange. But with the introduction of beast shards, there is a high probability I can get this mount later, significantly cheaper.

3. Beads of influence. The new stun in the game is very annoying. I know that whales can beat me, still, I hate not having a chance. Previously, if I had the right resist, I could beat big spenders, but not anymore. So for me, pumping up influence is a high priority. And now I found this an okay deal, I even spent balens to buy additional chests: I bought 129 chests, which would cost 5k balens, and used a 2k coupon to reduce it to 3k balens. I got back the coupon, which I used to buy another bunch, then another bunch. So for 9k balens, I got 1300 beads of influence (+300 influence). 


4. Titan stones and shards. As always, the leftover chests I spend on getting these to put the free shards ("Fleet medals") to use. Along with what I got from last CW, I got my first mythic equipment, thx to this. I did not want to make mythic stuff until I had one equipment with max holy forge - which took some time since I refuse to pay balens on vulcan packs. But now I read on forum that even if your holy forge is not maxed, you can make it, since you can continue to do the old type holy forge first. So maybe I will go for more - but don't forget, most of the BR gain from this item comes from holy forge getting upgraded too. I got +12k BR but with minimal holy forge, it would have been much less.

Unlimited eudaemon synthesis event
This can be interesting too. Maybe you are wondering, if it is better to buy a bunch of diamonds instead of fleet chests, make the diamonds, and get a lot of chests in the process. Here is a calculation:
Let's say you buy 600 edaemon diamond chests (200 at a time, for 3400 balen instead of 5400 with a 2k coupon, and you repeat this 2 more times). 
You will get approx. 300 lvl 1 diamonds, 150 lvl 2 diamonds, 100 lvl 3 diamonds, 45 lvl 4 diamonds and 5 lvl 5 diamonds (actual numbers may vary!)

So instead of getting 387 chests (see above), you can get 253 chest AND 20 lvl 7 eudaemon diamonds. So effectively, you exchange a bit less than 7 aerial fleet chest for one lvl 7 eudaemon diamond. Pretty good deal - unless you are already full of lvl 7 diamonds, like me (and for me it cost only 3k balens). Of course, lvl 8 diamonds will come eventually, also there might be team events for multiple eudaemons in the future - but by then, maybe the diamonds will get even cheaper. It's all gamble, like everything in Wartune :) 

PS: If you found this article useful, feel free to share, like, google+ and even follow my blog :)

Beware of flash sales

Wartune is running so-called "flash sales" lately, which are supposed to be a great deal. But don't fall to them! Initially, flash sales counted for spender events, but not anymore. Since there are usually multiple spender events running, you can get 20-30% or more bonus to your spendings in form of items. When you don't get this in flash sale, it will be worse than a usual sale. Here is this particular "pearl":

10 balen / bead, great sale? Then see the plain regular shop item:

You can buy 30 Aerial Fleet Chest for 1170 balens, and exchange it for 100 beads of influence, and claim all the bonus packs. But if you saved up some discount coupons, you can get a much better deal. Which won't work for the flash sale - since the coupon applies to a 2k balen purchase, and they sell it for 1999 :)

I'm not saying you should buy beads of influence, but it is an important item. It's a cash-only since it came into the game, and without it, your are stunned for rounds in pvp. But it gets cheaper every month. And one day it will start flowing into the game for free, and it will rot in your inventory after you maxed it out :)

If you were super-smart, then you waited with activating your Ancient Treasure until the 2nd day, and claimed both big and epic spender 10k rewards for completely free. So thats like 90 free chests, 300 free beads of influence... I messed this up, used ancient treasure before the patch. But I think this is the reason why I still keep playing: because I have to pay attention, I can make mistakes. I can be better than others, because they make even more mistakes :)

Advanced dimension strategy

When dimensions were introduced to Wartune, I wrote a few articles about dimension strategy, but I did not write a new post since the last changes - although there were many. So let's see how good are dimensions nowadays and how I do them.

The way the explore dimensions is still the same - run in rows, each 2 rows far from each other, so you can see all squares by using the minimum energy. You can explore the entire dimension this way as fast as possible, and enjoy the final resist and chest bonus.

However, something has changed with the last dimension nerf. Previously, dimension lifespan was measured in days - the more complex dimensions lasted for more days. So it didn't matter how many levels you explored, the dimension expired at the same rate. So the best strategy was get to the end asap, and then start looting up.

Now the situation has changed. Dimensions lifespan is measured in a percentage. And the more levels you explored, the more percentage it loses each day. After complete explore, the life loss accelerates. So dimension now require a bit different strategy. In a bigger dimension (advanced, extended) its okay to go slow, and loot up everything before you go to the next level. And not only percentage loss is slower - the final chests and resist bonuses are pretty poor, so you much better off with these dimension being around longer than finishing it quick.

Here is how I do dimensions:

I always make sure I have 5 active dimensions. If one one my dimensions expire, I start a new one, regardless of how the others are explored. If I know I will have a dimension expire the next day as well, I will do a basic dimension. If I have more time, I start an intermediate dimension instead. Basic dimensions are now not so good - mainly because the reapers there drop useless eudaemon enchant items, while you still need them from other dimensions. Because the other loot is pretty weak too, I just explore the basic dimension, but don't bother looting it up later.

If I have 5 dimensions, and I have an intermediate which will expire soon, I loot it up. I claim all treasures etc, but don't do regular monsters because they mostly drop useless shards.

Also I have one extended or advanced dimension open. Only one is enough, the rest is intermediate / basic. I do not rush to explore these fully: rather, I go slow, and loot up them as well. If you do it slow, it expires very, very slowly, and you can do basic/intermediates meanwhile to replace the ones which expired.

I try to have dark / electro / fire dimensions open: these are the most common sylphs used in pvp, so the resist bonus is helpful also.

Extended dimension

My favorite is now the extended dimension. Too bad I found only one so far. This is the only one where you should do even basic monsters: because they always drop intermediate or advanced dimension shards, no basic ones. The loot is great, and the dimension expires very, very slowly. So you have time to loot up all the 30 levels. Dragon den gives really awesome treasure, but it's really tough.

The real pain with dimensions is the time they take do to each day. The common energy nodes are nice, but this means that actually you have 200 moves each day, which include a lot of combats. It's easily 1 hour or more (have a second monitor ready where you can watch a film meanwhile). I would love too see a feature which allows me to purchase dimensional essences (which extend lifespan of dimension) for several hundred energy. This would save a lot of time!

Dimension pvp

I have to mention the really bad thing about dimensions: the pvp aspect, which allows other players to steal it. So here is what you can do to reduce this risk:

1. Be the strongest player on the server. (joking, this option is not available to 99% of the players :) )

2. Be in the strongest guild. Maybe you did not know, but people from your own guild will not plunder you. So in optimal case, the server has only one big guild - and then no one have to worry about dimension plunder.

3. Do dimensions which less people do. Advanced dimensions, or wind/air intermediate dimensions are started less often. People can steal your dimension only if they open the same type as you have!

4. If you do a basic or intermediate, explore it fast (basic takes 1, intermediate 2 days) so their lifespan drops below 80% asap, and then it cannot be plundered.
5. A friend of mine said they have an agreement on their server: if you enter someone else's dimenson, you delete it and start a new one. Well, need a very good community with no hatred to do that, but it seems it's possible...