As usual, here is my summary of what's good and what's bad in the Wartune 5.5 patch. I had some days to try out everything so I hope I will not miss anything.
Good features
Selling eudaemons
You can sell your eudaemons. Finally! And that's the end of good features :(
Bad features
Knighthood
I already wrote in detail about Knighthood and Tatoo requirements in my previous post. The concept itself - giving better, improved skills, new talents and extra stats if the player reaches a specific tattoo total - could be good. But the requirements are impossible to fulfill without spending thousands of dollars, and the knighthood skills, although stronger, include some heavy nerfs, like taking away healing from mages. Not to mention new talents costing hundreds of thousands of balens. All in all, this is a bad feature.
Archeology
Aside that this feature is stolen 1:1 from World of Warcraft, this could be a good feature, but it is messed up like everything. First of all, 30 attempt per day, its 15-20 minutes, mindless, boring grind, increasing game time unnecessarily. Second, the rewards have some good things, but the majority you get for your time is still daru, soul crystals, epic armor shards etc. Without the total junk rewards, and attempts you can collect up (like with great card hunt), this could be an okay feature, but as it is, it's one I don't like.
General wilderness changes
Along with the addition of archeology, the graphics and size of the wilderness maps has changed. They put a lot of effort into redrawing the graphics - but still they did not put any effort to ensure that flying mounts can fly over it, making movement incredibly clumsy over there. Also with decreasing the map size, weaker players can no longer hide from plunderers in far corners of forgotten zones. So players constantly have to buy goat for their gold, then change back when they need the money. This is such a dumb, brainless change. But at least you don't have to buy the spirit covenant anymore. You can find the bosses with one light, so no need for boss radar, and auto farm is now bugged beyond recognition, so spirit cove is a no-go.
Farm changes
I think there were some good intentions with the farm changes, but it didn't go well in the end. Energizing friends farm goes faster now - too bad no one will bother doing it anymore. Now the farm is taken into 3 separate parts. If you invite someone for bonfire, he will no longer be able to energize your tree, revive your farm and do your animals meanwhile. You can't do this either while waiting at your own farm. Also now it's much harder to find things and notice when you need to do something, you will miss revitalizing your marriage tree even more often.
Cloud city and item changes
Many things went to new places. The Henna lab icon disappeared, and went to a building - now it is much more likely that you will forgot about it. And now you can't do it while blitzing, or while waiting the others in spire or tok lobby. The same goes for great card hunt, previously I could do it while in a farm, no more.
World Boss nerf
There is no longer gold reward for high damage in World Boss. It utterly amaze me how they can spend time to nerf something, make it worse for the players, and unable to correct a sngle number, maximum HP of World Boss which is a problem since many months. Servers killing WB in 1-2 rounds, all other source of gold removed from the game... If you don't have a few alts to plunder each day, you can't even pay for your blitzes anymore :)
Other features removed
Several other features have been removed, like maps, thieves etc. If this would have made the game loading ANY faster, I would welcome these changes. But as always, with each patch, the game is more laggier, takes more time to load. Since 5-6 months, they still did not turn on caching, every time you start the game, it download every data from their server. This is such a big problem by now, everything else fades by it, the game is unplayable now.
Sadly, each patch is making the game worse than the previous one. And while the patches just add more bugs and never fix any problems, he devs are always busy to add more nerfs. For example, check out the eudaemon diamond synthesis coming up tomorrow - it get the same insane nerf like normal gems. There is no longer unlimited component for the event, you can make each gem only once per day. Which means, this event is not doable anymore, like divine soul synthesis, it is effectively "out of order". Same for the eudaemon material events, you no longer get back 25% of what you used :(
Return Player extravaganza is running now, they try to lure back players who quit - but they can't lure them back by offering some items. Whoever has quit is not interested in those. The only way to bring back some would be by fixing the problems, and undoing nerfs - but thats not gonna happen. Right now, my advice is, do not recharge anything, regardless how good offer you see. The game has reached a point where is is unplayable. In the past year, the devs made it apparent they don't care about your opinion - then show them they wont get their salary until they change their way of thinking.
Originally I wanted to write a full analyis of the new Wartune patch, but the Henna-Tatoo-Knighthood topic itself will fill a full entry, so I will continue with the rest only in my next post.
When they added the Tatoo system with the last patch, at first glance it seemed a small stat bonus, nothing special. But these stats are adding up, and as we learned from a Russian test server, can go up to +5000 stat per slot! That's pretty powerful, making Tatoo the next Holy Forge, being able to increase your attack and defense by as much as 20-30 percent. But hold on for a minute, and let's make the math.
On average, 100 henna gives you +5 stat increase. You earn 300 henna per day, so you can get +450 stat per month. To reach the maximum 40.000, you need almost 8 years. "Fortunately" we have advanced henna as well, which can give you something like +30 stat increase per 100 adv. henna used. Too bad that advanced henna is a purely cash item currently. And it's sold super expensive as usual - based on the stats given and BR for balen value, 100 adv. henna worth aprox. 100 balens. But the shop sold it for 500 balens, at 5x price. So far, I just said, who cares, ignore this new way to waste money in the game - it's so expensive, only the heavy whales will buy it, and they are already too strong compared to the rest of the players, it won't make any difference.
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| Tatoo of Quorax |
However, the current patch added a new feature, "Knighthood", the next step after Class Advancement. And it's prerequisite is +12000 total tatoo stats! Something you can reach in 2 years - or immediately, if you are willing to cough up 2000 USD for the advanced henna. Which only one player, Quorax did so far on the European servers. I say, do not worry much about this. You don't have to wait 2 years. Henna will be inflated like everything else in the past 3 years. First, they sell it at gold price to cashers. Then they will start to give more and more in gift packs. Then they reduce prize, and finally, we shall start getting tons of it as a free reward for some new event. Until then, just keep collecting the free henna, and don't even think about advanced as long as it's prize is not reduced to 1 balen apiece.
It is a pretty unfortunate thing to add a complex system to a game, which is available either after 2 years, or if you play 2000 USD. The devs obviously didn't do their math. But let's put aside this prerequisite, and check what Knighthood does actually.
The main feature is that both your skills and talents are replaced completely. Hold on... I lose all my skills? All my talents? No more Thunderblast? No more Restoration? I hope they give something really good instead.... Well, they do. For a mage, you can choose between 2 path, Arcane and Restoration. You can even have free switch between the two, but for that, you need 16000 total tatoo, not 12000. There are 2 basic skills which apply to both paths: one is an improved version of lightning bolt (more damage, more rage) the other is an improved version of Rain of Fire (more damage). But the bigger deal is that these skills give you a permanent passive bonus of +20% MATK, +20% HP and +30% MDEF. Thats a real kickass bonus, more than you get from all your tatoos (even when those are impressive too). So when you reach Knighthood, you will play in a different league, you will become a god.
About the rest of the skills: the additional arcane skills are great too, nice delphic, nice big aoe, cool passives like one which reduces the opponent's resists, the other reduces their awakening points. However, the restoration skills suck at first glance. Instead of restoration - which usually heals the caster to max hp - you get a skill which heals only 10% of your max HP at level 1. Same for the "big" group heal, restores only a percentage. Complete useless as long as Tritons and Blessing of Light exists. Even the new suntoria is a pale version of its previous version. Sure there are some passive mini-heals, but the fact is, mage loses it's ability to heal when reaching Knighthood. So this is also a nerf, disguised as a boost.
And what about the talents? I remember we were grinding XP for months to max out holy seal level 99 and the rest of the talents. Some (ok, most) talents are pretty useless, but there are some which are real good. Direct 14% damage decrease, 30% reduction in rage cost, extra heal for Restoration (wait, heal is no more), and Thunderblast slowing 100% chance (wait, Thunderblast is no more). These talents will be all GONE. And what you get instead? Some cool new talents: increased resist, resist reduce, tenacity, intensity, influence (although I wonder how can I use influence when I don't have frost bolt anymore, or any other skill which could stun, lol). But each level cost (bound) balens, the more talent points you have the more it cost. The total can be several hundred thousands :)
You can see a full video on youtube about the new mage skills and talens, thanks to chillin and wartunenewsfeed for making it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTrgb4Yb_ic
There is one more thing, you can upgrade your equipment further in the new mpds after you do Knighthood. It's a cool thing, too bad not available to 99,99% of the players either.
So what I think, this knighthood thing is messed up. It's something like, "Hey guys, business is not going as we used to. So please, please, give us 2000 USD, in exchange, we will give you 50% increase in your BR. You will be stroooong. (ok, we will nerf a few things, like healing and stun, but you didn't need those anyway)."
So I think Knighthood requirements are too steep. They should be lower, and they should add extra talent for pumping up your henna total (and not selling it for ridiculous balen prices). Also I don't see the point of replacing the skill system, they should have just boosted the old skills to additional levels. Fight is decided in sylph phase anyway, I don't see much point in totally revamping the skills, people will be angry losing the old skills they used to. Don't fix something that is not broken!
I usually enjoy Class Wars in Wartune, for several reasons. 1 vs 1 is still fun and challenging, and lag is not a problem there, like in 4 vs 4. This is the epic championship, the final test which makes sense to all your character development. Strategy and fast decision-making is equally important. It's the same event as the championships in Doomlord, you are doing it more for the glory than for the reward.
I already wrote about Class Wars strategy here and here. But strategy always changes with the game, you have to adapt. I was afraid of not doing well enough, because I decided not to pump up my new Odin yet, and I did not even add defensive passive skills for him because I still try to get as far in sylph expedition as far it's possible, and for that I use the suboptimal offensive passive skills. But I can't complain about the end results. In Prelims, I finished 11th, lost only to JBird, Stormy and George7, I could even win vs Darkdays who had several red merged sylphs. But my BR wasn't enough for Warlords Hall, so I fought in Warriors hall during the finals. There, I managed to rank 1st with 13 victories.
Lately, there are many debates how the winner is decided in case of time-out. Some people in this forum topic claim that healing matters, lowest BR wins etc. I'm pretty sure this is not true. Most of my opponents had lower BR, they healed like hell, and I still won. The official rule is that total damage dealt counts, and I believe it, however I don't have complete trust that the calculation is absolutely correct :) Also don't forget, damage dealt count can do weird things, if your eudaemon dies early on (or you don't even bring it), and you keep damaging your opponent's you might end up winning due to this, even if your opponent is stronger. The same is true for sylphs. If your support sylphs survive much longer than your opponent's, that can be a trouble :)
This time I used an unusual rune setup. I went with chaos+amnesia, instead of my favorite, guardian+healing rune. Chaos is a good choice since long in CW, you can disrupt your opponent for the first 3 round, and against whales, who have strong eudaemons, you can neutralize even a few of his sylph rounds. But I always thought I need either heal or guard rune to survive, or at least to reduce damage. But amnesia is as much fun, if not more. The only problem is chaos/amnesia resist from eudaemons, makes the match even more of a gamble.
Stun is also an important factor still, although most people have maxed out beads of influence. This is because you always have a chance to stun your opponent. And stun is bugged, you usually lose 2 rounds, not one. So if you can stun your opponent just before he sylphs, you have a huge advantage.
During fights, my general strategy was this: open with chaos rune, rain of fire, delphic hell thunder, lightning, frost bolt, awaken, amnesia, aoe sylph skills to kill the opponent's support sylphs, then rage decrease for opponent. Along with my wind sylphs' rage decrease, this was pretty good. I almost never healed, the group heal from my triton was usually enough. My prediction about resist was also correct (who donated and received the hint sheet know what I'm talking about).
All in all, Class Wars is the event where I'm grateful that the majority of players don't read my blog. When people try to keep alive their wind sylph by healing it, I know there is a good chance he will be shooting his own eudaemon even during the sylph phase. Same thing when people try to chaos me when I'm in sylph mode, and my eudaemon is nowhere.
Next coming up: analysis of new patch. Stay tuned!
Wartune always loved to overcomplicate events, mainly to ensure no one can exactly see what's the optimal way to do it, and spend more than necessary. Too bad I'm here to make the math and help you :)
Wartune must inflate things, they must give better and better gift packs for spending money or people will stop spending. Looks like we reached another milestone. But instead of simply increasing the spender gift packs, they added more reward events under "recharge debate". I don't say you should recharge. I just say if you want to, here is how you should do it:
You can get far the best bonus for recharge ratio if you recharge only 40 USD. Simply recharge 30 USD on the first day, then 5-5 on the following 2 days. This way you can get the 20 and 40 packs from Gift pack, the 3000 balens single day bonus from recharge debate, the 3 x 500 bonus from recharge debate chests, the 6000 bound balen from recharge gift, and 3 bonus for consecutive recharge bonus. (If you did an 5 USD recharge yesterday for consecutive, you can also do +5 on the 5th day too to grab the 300 extra beast souls).
If the stuff you get for 4000 balen recharge does not seem enough, you might consider the 100 USD recharge. This is a significantly worse deal in bonus:balen ratio, but still decent. In this case you should recharge 80 USD on the first day, and 20 USD on the next. This way you can grab the first 3 pack from recharge gift pack, the 8000 balens single day bonus from recharge debate, the 2x2000 bonus and the 1x5000 bonus from recharge debate chests, the 15000 bound balens from recharge gifts, and 2 bonus from consecutive recharge. (If you did an 5 US recharge yesterday you might consider doing an extra 5-5 on 4-5th day too).
Going as far as 30000 balens is a much worse deal, even further, not even the dumbest whale should go. Below is my calculation in excel. It contains the major bonuses (recharge gift pack and recharge debate). The recharge debate chests themselves give only a smaller bonus, of which especially the 2nd day is useful, with the divinity soul - the gem and and diamond are not so great. Recharging for more than 3 days counts for consecutive recharge, but not for recharge gift packs, recharge debate or one-time recharge gift.
Column "total bonus" is total balen value divided by recharge. This is the indicator, which is the best ratio recharge.
I was thinking about writing yet another analysis about opening or exchanging the current chests. But in the past months, the exact same events repeat, the chests are exactly the same, only the name of the cloth set and the mount changes, nothing else. So the analysis I wrote here applies as long as the chests contents don't change. My advice is the same, open only if there is NOTHING useful at all in the exchange options. You can go even further - try to calculate how many chests you will need, and do only enough events to get that amount. Some events you can do only a limited time - for example, you can't make a limited number of mount refines, or sylph equipment enchants. So when you don't need all the chests, save your resources for the next event. For example, last week I got exactly 810 free chests. Far from enough for the mount, but it was enough for the cloth set, and 3 x 100 compliment of god. I could have gotten some more by doing more sylph equipment enchant, but I didn't need the extra chests, and I rather saved my attempts.
But as I said, this is not what I want to write about, but the Sacred Gold Tree hack. I could say "exploit", but this wasn't an exploit, like the treasure inventory. To take advantage of this, people had to use a simple hack program to modify game data.
Back in the early times of Wartune, the thing which impressed me most was the low number of bugs, and the security of the game: there were no cheats, hacks, the game was checking everything thoroughly server-side. In other words, my account was safe, I knew whatever I achieve by spending time and money, will not be outdone by people who can use simple hacks which add them millions of balens or other goodies. The game is now bugged beyond belief, so I'm afraid there are now more vulnerablities as well. Hackers either discovered these or will discover. Of course, no program can be bug-free, and this is especially true for a game which is developed in so big steps. In the Gold Tree, the game was checking if you have the balens or not for the draw - but it did not do the same check when counting attempts used and giving awards for them. This way, people who used the hack could get 700+ golden want each time the Gold Tree popped.
Things like this can happen in every game, the question is, how the problem gets handled. You remember the treasure inventory exploit, I gave a pretty simple and efficient way which would have affected only who consciously and massively exploited, and would have undone all the harm +whould have given even a decree of punishment. Instead of that, the devs did some kind of totally nobrainer system full of mistakes. These 2 crisises, plus the shadow soul exploit show they have no clue how to handle these situations. They removed gold tree only 2 weeks after the hack became public, and their solution is to remove some merged sylph from anyone who win it from Sacred Gold Tree.
Some people get punished unjust, and some can get away with what they got. This gives a very insecure feeling to players. The solution would be to have logs of everything, I'm still astonished that they log only a few things. Also they shouldn't do all this manually (which they do now), they should run scripts, which check logs, list results, they verify if they correct, and also a program would make corrections.
If an exploit / hack is too widespread, you can't ban people - because if you ban 1/3 of your customers, you can close down your business. You have to remove all exploited items, and punish the exploiters. In the Doomlord online game's 5 year history, there were a few smaller exploits as well, but in those cases, the problem was fixed in 24 hours, and because they keep log of everything, all harm was undone. Actually, handling these problems should be part of the package, like customer support or forum mods....
The Sacred Gold Tree was one of the darkest pits of Wartune anyway: a money-sucking hoax, where you could win nothing useful, despite a long list of drooling items, you always win sepulcrum only. Yes there was 1:1000 chance for something valuable, but it was only an illusion to lure away the balen of the small spender, and now it seems, a lure for the hacker.
Dear Players, I would like to thank all who was kind enough and donated for the Wartune Odin Kickstart Project. I got many encouraging messages, it felt very good that the blog I make since years helped people. Although there wasn't enough to cover the cost of a sylph merge, I still consider the project a successful one, because it helped me to find the spirit to continue playing.
I had 10k balens from recharges. Got a total donation of 350 USD, so I had to recharge 150 more so I can buy the Odin, which I did. I had all the materials to merge 2 orange sylphs into a Loki, then advance it further to an Odin. The adv. sepulcrum event came just at the right time, so I could immediately pump up the new sylph. I had enough adv. mahra so I could make it 3 moon, but I decided not to do it, just spent 9000 adv. sepu to make it a 2-star Odin. I wait for the next adv. sepu event so I can collect the chests there as well, and complete pumping it then.
Also, about the skills, I got 7 useless ones out of 8. So I started this cycle: forget a skill for 300 bound balens, and learn one for free, and hope for luck. Repeat every 8 hours. I was a bit afraid that the better skills are more rare, but fortunately, this is not the case. After 3 days of trying, I'm here now:
Active skills:
Delphic Endless Engulf is a must have, everyting else is optional :)
Devour Soul: this life-drain skill was one of the reasons why Hecate was the best sylph, so I was happy to have it with Odin.
Awe: The fight is decided in sylph form, so staying longer in sylph form than your opponent is cruical.
Divine Prayer: Unfortunately, Odin has only one aoe which affects all opponent, the rest is only 2-4 targets. Still good enough in most cases and decent damage.
Delphic: Apocalypse Judgment. A devastating single-target spell. This is the one I got last, but I hoped more for Delphic: Light of Inspiration, the aoe version of Devour Soul. In pvp, you don't need 3 Delphic, since you won't have enough time/awaken point to cast all. But 3 delphic is useful in Sylph expedition and in arena. So later on, I will try to get Light of Inspiration, I have yet to decide which skill I want to drop. The wise choice would be probably Apocalypse Judgment, or maybe Awe.
Passive skills:
right now, I got lotteried the 3 damage-increasing skills:
Mass Assault: +20% damage vs all but Dark targets. (this one I got via replaces)
Master of Light: +5% damage.
Redeeming Light: +10% damage after each attack.
Logic says i should replace the later 2. Either with Power of Darkness (all damage received reduced by 10%, light by 20%) and agoran shield (damage received reduced by 20%), OR go for awaken point management: Divine Howl (chance to get 300 awaken points), Divine Wrath (Chance for opponent to lose 150). Problem with these too is that the chances are unkown. I might give these skills to my old Hecate and experiement with, my guess is the chance is either 5 or 10%. Still have to do the math which is better - being in sylph mode longer than your opponent, or taking less damage. But right now, I will stick with these skills, I want to get as far in sylph exp as possible. Too bad lag kills that event like everything, sometimes I start it and by the time I can do something some of my sylph is already dead...
Also I want to do some more experiment. I'm curious how exactly the light&dark resist works, also how is ATK calculated from MATK and PATK. I will get back to you when I have this information.
Henna event
Finally, I would like to call your attention to yet another hoax from Wartune devs, the seemingly worst resource-user event in Wartune's history (although no doubt even worse will follow), the "Adv. Tatoo" event:
This event works only with advanced tatoo, not with normal. Really the only way to get these is do a big recharge right now. But, you make better use of your money if you put it to fire, then it will at least give something useful, a bit warmth. Adv. henna is nothing just a couple of normal henna used in a row. Whenever you use henna, the actual stats increase a little. If you use, advanced, it increases more. So it's the same thing, you just pay something for what is free. If you ever grab some adv. henna, save it. Save it until you can't improve your stats anymore with normal henna. And use adv. only then, not now!
When you fight in Wartune, winning is not the only important factor: you also have to win fast. Championships, like CW, Titan War has a time limit; and in battlegrounds, you have a limited time while your double honor scroll last, you want to collect the 6k honor in one session. And, as always, time is valuable anyway: you want to get the most rewards in the shortest time.
In the early ages of Wartune, fights were fast and furious. If you didn't kill the knight before it launched it's delphic, he killed you. Then time passed, people had more HP and defense, and you remember, when Class Wars was actually called "Heal Wars", at least for the mages. The arrival of sylphs put an end to these boring, stalled fights: whoever could cast the first delphic usually won. But then came the age of heal runes, guard runes, and by now we have so much HP and defense, fight between nearly equal BR can last for 4-5 minutes. At that speed, it is impossible to get enough win in BG, and by the time your first fight would end in guild battle, the battle is usually over.
Here are some advices to make fights go faster.
1.) Something I recommended earlier already: if you are strong enough, don't bring eudaemon in 1 vs 1 battle. Eudaemon makes you suspectible to chaos rune, pinning you down for the first 3 round. A weak player you could have killed in that 3 rounds. Against a strong player, your eudaemon will not be useful anyway, since he will be dead in the first minute.
2.) Use an offensive sylph (like fire and electro), for god's sake, forget Poseidon, even if you are a knight and people say its a "great combo"! No, it's not. Poseidon's only advantage would be that less people use water resist, but this is not true. Since it's the 2nd-3rd most popular sylph, and people stack all 6 different resist anyway, it is no advantage at all. Poseidon is your key for boring, 5 minute fights where you lose horribly at the end. Even if you win - then you could have win much faster with a elenctro sylph which people underestimate lately. People who use Poseidon (or Frigga, especially in ToK!) are as much of the player community as much the developers themselves. They waste their own time too.
3.) If you see your opponent is much stronger than you, don't stall with heals, heals and heals. Make it a fast fight, and come back for a revenge with multiple dryads.
4.) In Battlegrounds, pay attention to whom do you attack. Due to the recent fumbles in Wartune, the player community has significantly decreased. You can recognize easily the players you better avoid.
5.) When you develop your character, always focus on ATK first. Whether in Holy forge or with whips in stables, prioritize attack. It is the most important stat anyway, even in pve.
Since some months, the Wartune event chests drop either a beast soul or a clothing shard in addition to the normal content when yo open it. On average, it seems you get 1 such item from every 3 chest, increasing the chest's value. This would be nice, if the chests other contents wouldn't be complete junk, and the chance to get the mount haven't changed to 1:10000 from 1:1000. But due to these facts, I still used to suggest you do exchange instead of opening. But lets make a closer analysis of this.
When this blog has started, I said 1 BR worth 10 balens at most. In the past 2 years, BR has inflated and became cheaper, so lately I say, the current price is rather 1 BR for 2 balens, because there are many opportunities when you can buy BR at this price (or even lower), see the example below.
Let's check a mount:
Also it comes with a title:
So the useful stats you get are +4200 MATK, +1500 PDEF, +1500 MDEF, +16000 HP, giving a grand total of 10400 base BR value. You can also refine it for 5 star, which is free, so you can add that +900 BR to this sum. And don't forget the +20 max attribute level. However, to turn that into BR, you need mount whips, so I would rather count it into the whips's value, not here.
So this mount is 11300 BR, which is 22600 balens. You needed 800 event chests to get it. One chest is 27 balen value (this is the normal price, purchased 129 at once with a 2k coupon), costing 21600 balens - a fair trade.
But this was an expectional price. Right now, they sell the +200 mount for 1000 chest. An obviously worse trade (although you could get snowmans chests at discounted price with new years sales).
Now let's see a normal +50 mount:
Fully refined, it gives 400 ATK, 500 PDEF, 500 MDEF, 2000 HP, for a total of 1800 BR, worth 3600 balens. Such a mount is sold for 600 beast souls, so 1 beast soul worth 6 balens.
Now let's examine clothing. A set of A clothing, refined to 3 star each piece, gives only 432 useful BR, quite neglectable. A set of S is better, but still only 864. You can get 1-2 pieces to 4, or even 5 stars, but in the end, it will be just approx. 500 / 1000 BR. So a cloth A set worth 2000 balens, a cloth S 4000 (if you consider the fashion cores free). 210 box for a full set is 5670 balens, so buying chests for balens just to get a S cloth doesn't worth it. However, free chests are still the best exchange for such cloth sets. Sets with a title are different story:
This is pure +8000 BR, an awesome boost. So you should collect all cloth sets with title, much better value than mounts. And now to the value of cloth shards. You need 100 to get a set. In an exchange they cost you 210 chests. So in the worst case, if you have to buy the chests, it will cost you 5670 balens (but most of the time, you get some free chest, 100 or more). So obviously, cloth shards are much more valuable than beast souls, even 50 balen is not unreasonable. There is just one limiting factor: you can get most titled cloth sets for free chests, you don't need that much cloth shards. For this reason, I don't recommend doing golden road to get more.
Now let's say the contents of the average chests lately:
1.) Junk (eudaemon stuff, sepulcrum, gold, halidom stuff etc)
2.) Ultra-rare mount (might worth 20k balens, but chance 1:10000, increasing chest expected value only by 2 balens)
3.) Cloth. Technically, it's near useless, sine the cloth's BR comes from the title, you can't get title without wing, and wing is not in the chest. Also, drop rate varies greatly.
4.) Beast soul or cloth shard, 1/3 chance. If it is a beast soul, then you get a chest of 4 balen value! Don't even think about opening chests with beast souls for this reson. On the other hand, if it's a cloth shard chest, it can be like 18 balens value. Almost worth opening.
Here is another model: to get a full cloth set, you need 210 chests. If you want to get 100 cloth shard to get the same set, you need to open like 300 chests, and wait 3-4 month until you can exchange for that set. You will also have a micro-chance to open a mount, and get some junk, but still, direct exchange is better deal. Of course this can change if they add useful content to a chest (like adv sepu and mahra).
Here is a quick entry about the Wartune new year sale packs lasting only for today. You would think they are of good value, but as always, there is a trick about them.
First, there are 6 such packs in total. Each includes 200 snowman's chest, and some other items. The other items are mostly junk: soul seal, mount hoof, sepulcrum etc. There is one containing 200 advanced Henna. In short, this is junk as well. Please note that when you use henna, the stats seem to improve each time a bit. So by using normal henna, I already have +64/-32 tatoo. On the other hand, after using 100 adv. henna, I got a +47/-28 tatoo. So WHEN you reach the maximum with normal henna, MAYBE adv. henna can make it upgrade a bit further, but right now its a JUNK, which is nothing just the same as normal henna. The only chest which contains items an active player would need is "new year sale IV", which includes 200 adv.mahra and 200 adv. sepulcrum.
Every sale, the total value of sale you get is adding up the value of the items you buy, and the value of items in the 3 sale events (big sale, epic sale, consumption). Suprisingly, the devs outdone themselves, and were able to build all 3 sale to contain no useless items at all:
As you see, the supposedly best sale event contains only junk, except for the event chests.
The epic sale is not epic at all, its full of junk, even the event chest, because this one has expired a month ago, so you can't change it for anything. The only useful thing here is the miserable 10 cloth shards.
The big spender is not the usual junk, its even worse. Because instead of the snowmen chest, you get matrjoska chest, which is 50% useless: so this miserable 16 chest is actually only 8. (And yeah, they changed how the exchange works AGAIN, now you exchange the snowmans for the cloth, not the bauble chest).
So if you are intent on giving money to R2Games, here is the only option which you can vaguely consider:
1.) Grab a 2000 balen coupon.
2.) Buy the pack for 5000 balens.
3.) Claim the miserable 38 event chest and 10 cloth shard for the spender events.
4.) Exchange the event chests for the cloth set.
All this for a grand total of 5000 balens (50 USD).
Since this cloth set does give a title, it worth about 3000 balens. When you buy adv. mahra and adv. sepu in other sales, with useful spender packs, their average value used to be 5 balen apiece. So actually, you get the usual items for the usual price: a full cloth set (with title) for 3000 balens, 200 adv. mahra and 200 adv. sepu for 1000-1000 balen each. I see no real discount here, its the same price as it always been. Just in the past months, you could get the cloth set for FREE, and the mount was the cash item, now you have to pay for even the cloth set because the current events don't seem to award enough event chest for that. A miserable new year sale indeed :(
