Wartune: Loki and Odin

Long-term goals are always important in any game, and that was a strong aspect of Wartune. I always had long-term goals. Building up two red sylph and then merging them into a kickass Odin sylph seemed a truly grand, epic long-term goal, and I liked it when I read about the first time.

Sadly, when we got the details, the whole thing became pretty disappointing.

First of all, the price. 60.000 balens, which is 600 USD. An insane price for a few digital pixels, and as someone pointed out, 20 times more as in the Chinese version. But we are used to getting things at ridiculous prices, paid mindlessly by the whales. And, after a while, it became cheaper, then it is given as a recharge gift, and even later you could get it completely free. But in this case, this will be pretty difficult. Because it's not an item you buy, its a fixed balen cost. Hard to change without loss of face, and without angering those (very few) who paid it. Still, I hope that one day this price reduction will happen. Either they change the price, or allow bound balens (although it's still too much), or give back 50.000 balen as bonus upon purchase, or simply give out free or cheaper Loki seals. So I did not give up on this long-term goal yet. But the 60.000 balen I willl never pay.

Sadly, Loki / Odin has other flaws too. When you make the merge, the new sylph will inherit random skills from the previous ones. You might lose all important skills and retain only useless ones! And after that, you have only one choice: start buying skills, and hope they overwrite the right skill. In other words, gamble - with 150 USD skills! This is as unacceptable as the 600 USD price. So reducing the price is not enough to make this sylph appealing: they must reduce skill costs too, and, for god's sake, finally allow players to delete sylph skills.

And sadly, the drawbacks do not end here. The main question is, if the new sylph will be stronger, and how. Sylph statistics are calculated by multiplying together their base stats (strength, armor etc) with the "aptitudes" (the green bars you improve by spending sepulcrum) x 0.0018. After transformation, the maximum of the aptitudes do not change. Since you already needed a maxed out Loki / Odin, you will not be able to spend any more advanced sepu after the transformation (unless you tranform Loki to Odin). However, the base stats for Odin increase. So your Odin will be still stronger (but Loki not). But there is a catch. Loki / Odin is a MATK / PATK sylph. So you have to increase BOTH stats. And this is true not only for the base stats: you have to divide between MATK and PATK on equipment, both in refine and divinity souls. So what you win on higher base stats, you will lose on using both MATK and PATK. Still, the new sylph will be stronger: but not as much as you hoped for.

There are 2 ways to make Odin. One is to make 2 red sylph with max aptitude. The cost to make a second sylph red is like 20.000 advanced mahra (this is just a guess, can be more), and at least 10.000 advanced sepulcrum.
Or, you can make 2 orange sylphs into a Loki, then advance it into an Odin, at the cost of 5000 moon rock, 5000 moon dust and 1000 emblem of dark & light, and then raise it to red. (So effectively, you have to build only one red sylph).
With all discounts and gift packs, you can get adv. sepu / mahra as low as 10 balen / piece. So this would be an additional 300.000 balen cost if you make Odin from 2 red. This compares to the 5000 moon rock and dust (cost a total of 1000 event chest in last promotion, 30.000 balens) and 1000 emblems (cost another 1000 event chests, 30.000 balens), which is "only" 60.000.
So obviously, upgrading to Loki and then to Odin is a much better way than building 2 red sylph first then making them Odin. Still just making Loki and not upgrading to Odin will get you only a useless sylph.

Of course, these prices are still ridiculous. But you can start gathering moon rock, moon dust, emblem of light & dark from free events, so when they reduce the price finally, then you have the components.... If that ever happens. But, as I said, I like long term goals.