2014/12/28

Christmas events part 3 (clothing and gem synthesis)

These crazy events continue, and the designers can still surprise us with their creativity. A mega-recharge pack is up, you can recharge for up to 1000 USD, and receive bonus items which worth approx. 500 USD. Such recharge promotions were pretty rare in the past (I remember only one or two besides the server merge promotions) so if you plan on continuing to play for a long time and send balens this is a good opportunity. But be careful - the balen you have is much easier to spend :) Especially since there are many "balen traps" where you can spend balens unintentionally.

Tomorrow big spender event gives back bound balens, and in a large amount: if you spend 10k balens, you get back 6k bound balens. Combined with the above recharge event, this can generate some nice income for Wartune. Tomorrow is sepu/mahra day, with the usual sylph enchant/upgrade, and some monster sale packs, like 1000 sepu+mahra for 22000 balens! Insane, isn't it? Since you can get a large amount of sepu and mahra for free and everyone will have orange sylph in 1-2 months, this is the last attempt to sell these resources for money.

Currently a clothing and gem synthesis is running parallel. The gem synthesis is the usual generous unlimited event. Too bad we didn't get ton of free gems lately - but still, it's cool. However, do not buy gems in the sale. There is a 3k balen gem pack for sale which looks appealing: still, with all the combines and bonuses, it will net you only a lvl 8 gem. When you have like 100 lvl 10 gems, spending even 3k balen on a lvl 8 is not a good deal.

The clothing synthesis was repeated a bit too early as well - at least, for me. I did not have the time to hoard a large amount of good luck charms. I already wrote about the maths of cloth synthesis here. The point is, you have to be careful with not spending more than what you win. For example, previous cloth event I had lvl 6 cloth ready, both in inventory, and on me. So I just combine them to level 7, and get all the previous rewards as well. If I make them eariler, I get only half reward. So be patient, don't rush to buy trucks of luck charms (they cost more than what you win!)

To top it off, we have a gamble chest collection event running. You can get a large amount of free chests in clothing synthesis. Please note, that the chest's contents are mostly crap, so you shouldn't pay balens for them. But if you collected enough clothes, cores and charms, you can get plenty of free chests as clothing synthesis rewards. 

What's the best deal in the free fruit exchange? See the 3 items to the right. If you can somehow collect 200 Reindeer's gift, and did not win a Reindeer from a chest, do this exchange. Otherwise, if you do not have plenty of intermediate dimensions, grab the intermediate dimension shards. If you have several int. dimensions already, choose the weapon.

In the reindeer's gift exchange, prolly everyone will choose the clothes first to be able to identify for the tailoring event. My 2nd favorites are the good luck charms, they are never enough. I wouldn't choose the int. dimension shards (get them for fruits) and hoofs (you get for free more than you can spend, eventually). The blessings of god is an interesting choice. Really, you should upgrade only your artifact to purple, because attack is the only important sylph stat (which worth the 200M gold the purple upgrade will cost you). So if you have a purple artifact already, go for the luck charms, otherwise this is an ok choice too.

Finally, I would like to thank R2 staff their efforts on sorting out the problems with Hall of Fame rewards, it seems they sent out rewards to those who might have missed them due to the warrior's call problem. So they really try to help, which is great, thanks!



2014/12/25

Christmas events part 2

The Christmas events continue, every day new sales and hot events, so if you don't want to miss anything, put down family and Xmas on priority list, and focus on Wartune :)

In the past days we have seen a sepulcrum/mahra day - the sale was even worse than the previous one. I could have bought 1000 mahra for 150 USD, and with all the bonuses, make my sylph orange finally - but don't spend money on something you can reach for free, and especially not this much. Especially since they drop the one-time goodie bag which was a good combo with the sales.

Yesterday, on 24th, they put up sylph gear / divinity soul day. The gears you get for free, but the divinity souls are available for money only, unfortunately. It is funny that the 2-year old glitch is still in the game, you could claim the one-day gem-synthesis events once between 1 and 5am, and once after 5am :)
The sylph gear enchant is a funny event, you never run out of the enchant pieces, but you run out of gold. I saved up 38M gold from the previous day, and besides my normal earnings (2xWB, DI, AB etc) I completed 2 campaign maps for 25M gold SSS reward. Also sold like 3000 luck stones, removed all gold from my mail, opened all gold chests, including atoll boss chests. Still, it was a fart in the wind. Spent well over 100M gold and still had 200+ enchant pieces remaining. So from now on, saving up gold in every possible way. Not opening gold chests, AB chests, etc. because next sylph enchant will be expensive too :)

Today's events are pretty defective. Offering mega-rewards if you happen to make your legendary gear today - not yesterday, not tomorrow - is kinda mission impossbile. Unless 
1.) you have nothing and decide to cash bigtime now (I hope very few did it)
2.) you saved up a crapload of crystalloids, and lvl 70 and 80 legendary stones.
It is quite sad when an event requires you to hoard items which you don't need anymore. I do have lvl 80 legend stones - just in case - but get rid of lvl 70 ones and the crystalloids. Well, now starting to save up those as well :(

Tomorrow is mount whip /  hoof event agan, same like a week ago, nothing special.


Btw, with latest patch, we got a "surprise" for Christmas: jewel hunt chests were changed again, this time, to worse. You can't find Vulcan's packs anymore in first 2 chests. Well, at least don't have to waste my bound balens there. 


I find particular fun now in dimensions. I do the sick strategy of just running in a big S shape through each level, ignoring everything but +energy. This way I can conquer dimensions super fast. Since I'm not VIP, I used 1-hour VIP card to be able to start more dimension. now each step cost me only 10 energy, which is pretty crazy :) Explored all 5 levels of a basic dimension using only 1000 energy, I like game features where you can gain huge advantage with thinking and without spending money. I will write more details on dimension advanced strategy if anyone is interested.

2014/12/21

Christmas events

Hey guys, I think Wartune offers a really cool series of events, people can be happy. This is the third day of their 7-day (?) series, each day with a different sale, different mini-"bug"-spender, and different hot event.

The first day was about mount hoofs and whips. The sale was still too expensive, and these items have limited use, so it was unwise to buy anything. Still, you could use your hoarded hoofs to get some bonus. 

On second day, they added a dream-event, unlimited gem synthesis up to level 10. I collected 58 lvl 10 gems and 1100 soul seals, so I was very happy with that. 

Today is the third day, again a great event, a clothing synthesis which again rewards from level 3, so it's good for newer characters, and it gives free chests! So I finally got my frost leopard. I had a level 6 hat and armor saved up from previous cloth event, so I combined them with the ones I was wearing, and could claim immediately rewards for lvl 3-6, a nice hoard of treasure. With good luck charms anf fashion cores free from wild shop, I did not have to spend anything here either.


Tomorrow is a resist crystal day. Will and resist crystals for sale, and resist synthesise event. Actually, this one is pretty interesting. Because, as you should be aware, resist crystals are pretty useless now. Even if you have 5 lvl 5 resist crystals, and you have the proper sylph equipped, you will take maximum damage from the same sylph, not to mention others. This is because will crystals are easier now to upgrade than resist crystal, and even dimensions give a heavy bonus on them. So the only use of resist crystals is in pve situations (god's descent, sky trial etc) and in dimensions, where they reduce movement cost.

For this reason, you probably don't really need 3 separate resist sets, so you are free to combine your complete collection into a lvl 7 resist crystal, a lvl 6 and some lvl 5. 

There are 3 reasons against this:
1.) The reward is not THAT great. 
2.) There might be future resist events (even unlimited ones!!) where you will regret not having plenty of material towork with.
3.) The resist decrease in movement at higher resist is neglectable. The more is your resist, the less is the effect of extra resist. That is, if you make an extra lvl 7 resist crystal to replace a lvl 5, you gain 1 additional movement in dimensions.

I have a lot of will crystals (3 x lvl 5, and 53 lvl 1), for me maybe it's better not ruin my resist crystals, and just combine will crystals. If you don't have much will crystal, you can make resist crystals, just keep in mind the above. (Please note that the final reward is impossible, you can't make lvl 8 resist crystals).

Please note that in Holy Set Fragments exchange - if you have a lot like me - after the cloth, the best exchange now is prolly the resist crystals, can be useful in this event.

So again, after 4 days, still nothing I can spend balen on, but I'm not particularly worried :) And I'm very grateful for these evens, now Wartune really have some good events. I miss only a useful SC exchange (100 SC and 10 whip for 3 SS was not a good one).

In the last days, I expect a mahra/sepulcrum event, maybe something with runestones, and let's hope some mount sale too :)

2014/12/19

Super spender analysis

We see some big promotion in Wartune today: super spender, big spender, one-time bag at the same time... You would think this is the perfect time to buy, right?? Well. They are smarter than that. So do the math BEFORE you spend a cent. It's pretty complex, so I made a table for you.

You see the amount of balens spent, the bonus items you get, and their value. Please note that I did not list items like gold, daru, dragon soul and gems since these are items you get for free in such an amount that they do not represent any value. Mount hoof is a questionnable commodity as well, for me, I will max it out for free in 1.5 months. 

Next to each amount spent, you see the total value of bonus (including wheel of prosperity, where I found the average value of a roll was 70 balens), and how much percentage bonus is this compared to what you spend.

Please note that you can copy-paste this table into your own excel or google docs, and modify item values where you think it is different for you. (For example, you have whips maxed or hoofs close to max, so you set them to zero.)

As you see, the bonus is a bit better than previous big spenders, but not so great that you should buy items you otherwise don't need (like whips and hoofs for sale today). The average bonus is 50-70%, which means if you buy something which R2 sales for "just" double of realistic value, you got no bonus at all. And, usually, they sell for 3-20x of realistic value, so you have to be very careful. 

My advice for the first day: the only thing you might consider buying is some divinity souls. It is sold for double of realistic price (99 instead of 50), but you can't get it for free (yet). And let's hope they add better deals later. Mounts and cloth you still miss can be still a good deal, but don't jump on anything what you can get for free in large amounts.

Please note my table goes only until 500 USD pack, although there is even 1800 USD pack. This is because I think whoever spends that much is a real whale, who don't care about optimize spendings, just buys everything Wartune sells - so they don't need my table anyway.

2014/12/17

Divinity soul combo

Tomorrow in Wartune you can buy divinity souls, the gems you can use to enchant sylph gear. A level 1 gem cost 99 balens, and you need 4 to make a lvl 2, four of those to make a lvl 3 etc. They also immediately start a synthesise event, where you get a lvl 1 divinity soul for making a lv 2, a lvl 2 for making a level 3, and a lvl 3 for making a level 4 (once per day each).


Looks like this event last only for 2 days, so there is not much room for a combo. You have the following options:

1.) Don't buy (always the easiest and wisests).

2.) Spend 400 balens on the first day to make a lvl 2 gem, and spend another 300 on day2 to make another level 2.
So you spent 700 balens, got 2 x lvl 2 gems, one lvl 1 gem, and can claim he smallest one-time goodie bag.

3.) Spend 400 balens on the first day to make a lvl 2 gem, and spend 1100 balens on the second day to make a lvl 3 gem. 
So you spent 1500 balens (actually 1300, if you have your 200 balen discount), got a level 3 and a level 2 gem, and can collect the second one-time bag.

4.) Spend 1500 balens on the first day to make a lvl 3 gem, On the second day, you spend 3900 balens, and make a lvl 4 gem.
This way you spent 5400 balens and got a level 4 and a level 3 gem and can collect the 4000+ and the 1000+ one-time goodie bag.

There is even option 5 where you make 2 level 4 gems, but I think even option 4 is too expensive. We gonna get plenty of these gems for free very soon. You wouldnt pay 5000 balens for a normal lvl 3 gem either, right?

Personally, I will choose option 3 so I can use the coupon.

2014/12/15

Sylph equipment guide

Wartune added sylph equipment to the game. The design is pretty complicated, and includes a lot of random factors, so players might have a difficulty to see it through. The focus is, as always in my articles, to spend balen or not? I try to help now.

To make one sylph equipment, you need 400 sylph equipment shards. Each sylph can use 6 items, and you have 3 in your sylph team, so in the long term, you need to collect 7200 shards.


How to get sylph equipment shards?
  • You get 20-40 shards each day from sylph arena, depending in which team you are in. Also, you get a weekly reward from the arena as well, depending on your ranking, this is an additional 150-250. So you can collect for free approx. 400 shards weekly, 1600 monthly.
  • Obviously, some hot events give sylph equipment shards. This is pretty unbalanced currently. A character who forgot to spend whips last event, got 2400 shards and have all 6 items now. People who have either maxed whips, or used whips last event, got almost nothing. Event chests also drop now equipment shards. So from these gambles / events, you can get another 0-2000 shards for free monthly.
  • Of course you can buy equipment shards for balens, and they are expensive like hell. When you can get like 2500 per month for free, you probably don't want to pay 1000 balens for 20 more. It would make one item cost 20.000 balens!!!

So, you will need 3-4 months to collect enough equipment, after that these items will become worthless and will just gather the dust like soul crystals, fate stones, dragon souls etc. So think 3 times before you spend balen on these.

What's the real bonus of these items?
4 items give +650 HP, 1 gives +650 MDEF/PDEF, 1 gives +650 ATK. You probably immediately notice the flaw here. ATK is 5 times more valuable than HP (both in BR, and in game terms) so I don't really get why these items give 650 HP instead of 3250. My sylph has 100k HP, and in the sylph arena damages of 20-40K are not uncommon. So 650 HP is a big nothing.
How much these items worth? The 650 ATK is good, but certainly not worth 20k balens - 5k at most. And the 4 HP items worth like 1200 balens maximum each. So I would say, one equpment shard worth an average of 3 balens (1200 / 400).

How fast I need these?
Please note that you need only one set of items for your main sylph, to add to your BR/stats. Your second and third sylph will use these in the sylph arena only. Due to the nature of the sylph arena point ranking, equipping a 2nd and 3rd sylph with these items will make little difference in your reward. So you SHOULDN'T rush to make items for them - just to make items 1% faster which you don't need anyway :)

Equipment enchanting
After enchanting my ATK equipment to level 10, it gives my sylph +753 ATK. Fortunately, the items needed for the enchant - Glint of Magic and Magical Moonlight - were completely free from hot events, I hope it remains so. I don't understand why they are 2 separate items, since I always find them together :) Took my about 140 of each to enchant the item to level 10. So if we want to assign some theoretical value to these, it's 10 balens per pair (giving an average bonus of 1500 balens for 140 of them). I suspect that further levels will cost more, so this value will decrease.
The trick is here that they added an enchant event. So if you want to use it, you need an equipment - and you need it right now. That can make people spend - even when it's unwise. Good sales strategy, I have to say.

Equipment upgrading
Of course you can upgrade your level 10 enchanted items to purple and then later to orange. Purple upgrade requires blessing of god x 100. 10x of them is a rare (1%?) drop from current chests, you can also buy 3x at some dimension merchants for 80 balens, and you can get 1x for free sometimes on „you feel something strange” dimension squares for 50 energy. Some is included on the biggest big spender packs, and no doubt, eventually it will be sold directly at roughly the same price as 100g gold bars on kithco.
About orange upgrade I don't know anything, but seems to need „gift of god” (reward for current sylph rank event).

Sylph arena
As you noticed, sylph arena has been changed significantly. Now it's not server-only, but cross server.
I don't like this change for several reasons.
1.) being in top 3 on my server sylph arena gave me a goal. Took me 6 months to get there when we got merged and I week after I was 3rd, I was down at the bottom of the ladder again. Then, 6 more months, I climbed up to 2nd - and next week, it's replaced by cross-server sylph arena! That IS frustrating.
2.) I'm sure a lot of people spent a lot of balens and efforts on building strong sylphs (not only primary, but 2nd and 3rd) to be good in sylph, and get the TOP3 reward buff besides the +50 sepulcrum. Now it doesn't matter anymore how strong you are, even 60k BR teams will make it to the gold group by clicking mindlessly 10 attacks each day. And the reward is just sepulcrum and equipment shard, the later one will become obsolete just in a few months.
3.) The point system is pretty messed up, you rank is not determined mainly by your team's strength, but when during the day you make your attacks.


Don't spend gold on refresh, it makes no difference, it's just a money sink :)

2014/12/12

Dimension war guide


updated: 2015-02-09
Dimension war is a very nice new feature of Wartune. It's a refined version of the underground palace. If we shall ever see underground palace again is a mystery, but I would regret not being able to collect the mount from there.

How to start
To start this event, you must speak to NPC Lycus in Cloud city (between sylph arena and market). He will give you a basic coordinate chest. Opening it, you will get a "basic XX dmiension coordinate", which you need to use. After that, you can enter your dimension through the mystic gate in your city.


Movement
These Wartune dimension can have 6 elemental forms, like your sylphs. Each day, you start with 1500 energy in the dimension. Each movement to a new square costs some energy. The higher your given resistance, the less. For this reason, you are recommended to have all 6 types of sylphs, and equip the proper type while moving inside. A weak, white sylph will suffice, monsters are very weak (except the bosses in advanced / expert). It is also good to convert your resistance crystals to the type of the dimension. When I entered a dimension with the wrong sylph, one move cost 50 energy. When I equipped the proper sylph, one move cost only 30 energy. After I converted 5 lvl 5 resist crystals to the dimension's, movement cost was reduced to 21 energy (further decreased to 20 after I entered the 2nd level). You can reduce your movement cost to as low as 10 energy, if you have multiple dimensions of the same type conquered!
Please note if you move to a square which you already visited, it cost you no energy.

The map
This mini game is pretty simple, you will discover how it works very fast. It has 5 levels, each level consist of 12 x 8 squares for basic and intermediate (the advanced and expert levels are rougly 4 times bigger). When you move to a new square, you also see the neighboring squares around you, so you don't have to step on each to discover a level.
Also, there is a trick when moving around: after you discovered some of a level, you can move around clicking on any far square, and your toon will run there automatically.
My suggestion is that you run through each level in a S shape, so you discover every square using the minimum amount of energy. After you conquered the dimension, and get all the bonuses, you can come back to loot everything.

The goal
There are 2 things you must find on each map: the entrance to the next level, and the special objects (for example, Tree of Life in wind) which you must occupy to own the level. Some dimension levels need more than one object to occupy. To enter the next level, you must occupy all objects.

Loot
Unlike in underground palace, the loot here does not improve much further levels, unfortunately. You can find the same items like in underground palace (mahra, sepulcrum, skeleton key, beredin's wine etc). They also added the new items needed for making, refining and enchanting sylph equipment. There is also plenty of bound balens, but I did not see a spirit covenant or VIP like in underground palace, and no big treasure chest either. Instead of that, you get X chests in mail each day, where X equals the special objects you occupied. The 2 chests I got after 1 day contained one runstone, and one skeleton key, quite neglectable. After occupying last level, I got a chest, with the items inside you see on the first screenshot above.*
You can find merchants who sell items for balen, the prices are ridiculous as usual, the only good deal people report is mire rune (probably nerfed with today's patch).
Also there are kill/revive objects like in U.P., and some which increase your energy.
* Please note that the rewards have been severely reduced in February. See changes here.

Dimension types
There are 4 different dimensions: basic, intermediate, advanced and expert. Basic last for 10, intermediate for 14, advanced for 35, expert for 70 days. The loot you find inside is exactly the same, but intermediate has 10 levels. Advanced has 10 levels too, but each level is 4 times bigger. I haven't visited expert, but someone said it's 30 (!!) levels. With 10 energy per move, you can complete a basic in 1 day, an intermediate in 2 days, an advanced in a week, an expert, maybe a month? Do not try advanced or expert unless you have very high resist and can move for 10 energy!
You can get dimensions the following ways:

  • collect dimension shards inside the dimension by killing guardians, and forging under blacksmith into a chest. 
  • get lucky and open one from the dimension chest you get as a reward each day for completed dimensions.
  • buy them for balen inside the dimension at a merchant.
  • buy them in a balen sale.

Final loot from basic dimension:



Final loot from intermediate dimension:





Please note that these loots have changed in February, see more details here.

Tactics
Move in an S line, to explore the full level by spending a minimum amount of energy. With each level completed, the bonus you get increase, and movement cost is reduced. You should loot up everything outside of your path only after you conquered the dimension, and have no room for more dimensions in your Mysic gate.
You can buy an additional 100 energy for 45 balens (5 times a day). I don't think it's a good idea to spend balen on this, cost more balens than the reward worth, but sometimes when you need a few more steps to complete a dimension you can spend the bound balens you earned here.

Strategy
Dimensions give a good resist bonus, which is useful in combat. For this reason, I recommend doing dimensions which give protection vs the most popular sylphs: electro or dark. You have to try do to dimensions of the same type, so their bonus stack together, and you can move cheaper and cheaper. Ideally, if you collected a bunch of electro or dark dimensions, start doing whichever is more numerous. If you you have a small collection, then start doing something of which have the most (my first dimensions were fire).
You should start off doing a basic dimension. Convert your 5 best resist crystals to that type so you move for the minimal energy. After that, do one more basic, the one more: until your movement cost is reduced to 10. At this moment, you can do an intermediate. Keep doing basic and intermediate until your dimension list is full. Please note that with VIP9, you can have 5 dimensions.
When your dimension list is full, you can start looting them. In basic, open only the chests, in intermediate you can do the fights as well so you get more intermediate dimension shards.
The dimension has a lifetime, after that, it expires, and you need to summon a new dimension. You will always have enough pieces from killing the guardians to create a basic dimension chest. You can extend the dimension by using dimension essences, which are rare drop from the final chest. 
About advanced dimensions: eventually you will be "lucky" to find one in an intermediate reward chest. Do it ONLY if your movement cost is 10, and your other dimensions still have 5+ days lifetime. Advanced dimension levels are 4 times bigger than basic, but it has the same number of loot. So in other words, you get 4 times less loot for your energy. Still, the final resist boost is nice, so it's okay to do it (but only if the above conditions are met). Since the nerf, I don't think doing expert dimension is a good idea. You miss out an incredible amount of loot.

So this was a very nice event, good for non-cashers as well. Too bad they nerfed it, reduced the final resist bonus significantly, and severely reduced the treasure in the final chests.

2014/12/08

Astral refining guide

Upon reaching lvl 80 in Wartune and completing class advancement quests, players are able to refine astral slots. Okay, everybody knew that, I guess, but how to do it is not trivial.

Here you do the same trick I use all over in my blog. You have to calculate how much BR you gain at the expense of a given amount of resource (in this case, gold).

Let me show you a few examples.
You have a lvl 9 red MATK astral, giving 2592 ATK. It costs 737K astral points to level up to 10. You need approx. 368M gold for that. So 368M gold for +288 MATK: 1,27M gold per MATK.
OR you can refine your 3% astral slot to 4% at the cost of 128M gold (actually a bit less,like 100M  due to lucky refines). So you win 1% more MATK from your astral: 2592 x 0,01 = 25 ATK. So here you gain +1 MATK per 4M gold spent.
Obviously, improving your MATK astral to lvl 10 is a better deal.

In general, refining astrals slots where you instert red astrals help you a little. 10-40M gold for +25 stat is ok,but at 128M gold it gets just too expensive.

However, the green astrals (goddess blessing, determination, guardian angel) are cool to refine. Because here, the refine slots work differently. For every refine, your determination gets +1%, so it's +0,8% ATK. If you have 80K ATK, then its an equivalent of +640 ATK. It's even a good deal to refine to level 7 for 686M gold, since you get +1 ATK per 1 million gold!

So here is the strategy I suggest:
1.) When you begin refining, hopefully you have at least lvl 7-8 astrals.
2.) Improve all slots to 2% first (it cost nothing anyway).
3.) Build up your astrals - ATK astrals, Determination, goddess blessing to lvl 10, the rest to lvl 8 at least, if you didn't do it earlier.
4.) Improve all slots to 3%, but stop here, and improve only 2 slots further, to 7%, determination and goddess blessing. (guardian angel to 5% ok too). 
5.) You can now play around with improving snipers edge, enshieldment to lvl 9 or 10.

2014/12/04

December big spender analysis

We have a big spender + sylph upgrade + mahra base pack sale combo coming tomorrow in Wartune, so here is a quick analysis.

If you look closely at the picture, you will notice immediately the problem: you get the same weapon cloth with all 3 packs. Hopefully they correct it by tomorrow.
Other than that, these packs are pretty focused, just useful items. If you buy for 100 USD, the approx. value is 4000 balens, if you buy up to 200 USD, the approx. value is 8200 balens. So the bonus for 100 and 200 USD is about the same, if you spend less, the discount is much worse, however.



What you should buy is obviously either the mahra or the sepulcrum pack. This packs looks very, very similar to the crystal shard pack, so we can assume the drop rates are the same. Cosmos blog has a nice statistics on this, so based on that, we get an average of 80 sepu / mahra per pack.






The above combo with the now-permanent feature, prosperity wheel, and the sylph enchant / upgrade feature.

So, if you spend 10.000 balens (buying 10 packs):
 you get 800 mahra, which, when used, gives an additional 200 mahra (worth a total of 5000 balens) you get items worth 4000 balens value from big spender, and you get an average of 900 balens value from 10 prosperity wheel rolls. The same math works for 20.000 balens.
If your main sylph is far from maxing sepulcrum, then you should buy sepulcrum instead, it's even better BR gain for the same amount of balens.

So this is an okay deal, green light if you wanna spend :) Just wait until they correct the clothes.

Just two precaution notes:

  • 10 (or 20) pack is very little for the average value work. It can happen easily that you got 10 packs with 30 mahra :(
  • This is big spender I. So maybe something even heavier is coming for Christmas :) Also don't forget, sylph equipment is coming too, so if you have limited financial resources, you might save balens for those.

2014/12/02

Love thy mount

Today we get a love thy mount event in Wartune with a decreased reward - and additional lvl 1-3 gem pack (worth about 0.3 balens) instead of the usual 5 soul crystal (worth about 2 balens). Well, that is, if we suppose there will be useful a soul crystal event ever - if not, the gem pack is of course better :) 

But this poor man's love thy mount is still great - since everyone can claim again the stable rewards. I'm still not sure this is just some laziness from the programmers or an intentional feature, but honestly, I don't care - we got 10k free whips, yeee :) that's all what counts. And not only whips, but about 100 turkeys. I opened all, got 3 skeletal dragon cards, exchanged 2 back for drumsticks, and now I evolved my Apollo - for completely free! So yes, I'm happy today :)

Some people said Wartune is actually just a casino, and this seems true. For a very long time, I had no luck with the free chests, but some time ago I pop 5 blazing taurens from one series, and now this. If you play this game long enough, eventually you will be lucky, you will find some free mounts and other rare treasures from the free boxes, and it always feels good. 

At least my regret over my blunder during HoF is gone... I followed all my own instructions to increase BR (converted block/crit gems to mdef/pdef, switched sylph points to endurance, used all hoofs, soul seals, converted non-BR astrals to BR astrals, made all temp mounts). I reached some 372K BR this way. I entered Necropolis and used a Warrior's call, and I saw it could bring up my BR to 394K. (without potions/scrolls of which I knew for sure will not work). 6K more BR is pretty tough, if I use all my sepu and whips could have made like 3-4K more. Since the mods on forum said clearly WC will not work, I did not bother spending balens to get the final 3k (would have been expensive anyway). I did know there will be at least 50% chance that WC still does work, but would have hated to waste money if not. A few days later, during the tailoring event, I realized I never refined my weapons (since they give almost nothing to a mage) so that could have been the 3k BR is was looking for, so I missed the +100 mount. 
And to be honest, this is why I like this game so much still: because it is difficult enough that you can make mistakes and bad decisions. And you can best others by making less mistakes than they do. 

2014/11/30

SC and gem event

We were all waiting for the next Wartune Soul Crystal event (both use and exchange). But there is nothing since 2 months. People are tossing around 2-3 complete vault size soul crystals in their mailbox. So everybody is asking the same questions, why there is no SC event? Will there be any ever? Well, it is here finally, but you wont thank it. You can exchange 100 SC for 50k gold, and that's it. 

Why such a sucky event?
There are many possible explanations, but I think the most likely is:
They finally realized that they gave out too much SC. Not only everyone maxed it out, but people can max out even whatever they can exchange for them (whips, runestones). So they just want the players to lose all these SC while gaining nothing in exchange.

Exchange or not?
I wouldn't do it if I were you. Gold is a free resource, we get a virtually unlimited amount. WB, DI and sylph boss gives many millions each day. If you are a relatively new player, with far from max stables, SC is your only chance to catch up with the older servers with whips. So you can do nothing just wait and hope. Older players, prolly you don't need gold anyway. So wait is a good strat too. When your mail is about to expire, just loot it, get kicked and that's it. 

Is it wise what Wartune does?
No, not at all. It's never wise to piss off your customers because you can lose them. In my other favorite game, Doomlord, they don't nerf, don't reduce rewards, and you have an event calendar for the entire year. Players feel safe and are happy.
And this is why because there WILL be a better SC event eventually. Because the player community CAN create a pressure on them, it will just take some time. But until then, don't worry to much about it. A better SC event will come eventually.

The gem event
There is also a gem event coming tomorrow. It's the same as before - it's limited (can be done only once per day), gives runestones. The change is they removed lvl 5 gem reward, and added lvl 9 and lvl 10.
This event is good! Actually - since most of us made lvl 9-10 gems for HoF and other advantages, an unlimited gem event with lvl 9-10 gems would be really shocking when we realize how much we lost by not being patient enough :)
Finally some math: 
1. If you have a few lvl 9 and lvl 8 gems, you need a total of 112 lvl 4 gems each day to claim all rewards and end up with 2 lvl 10 gems.
2. In the old unlimited event (where you get double reward for every gem, incl. lvl 5, but no rew for lvl 8 and 9), if you started with 112 lvl 4 gems (and also had 1 lvl 8 and lvl 9 gem), you ended up with 1.3 lvl 10 gems. 
So actually, the current event is better than the previous one :) You should claim each reward each day if you have the gems.


2014/11/28

Black friday "sale"



Really amazing! We cant event get a real discount on "black friday" sales in Wartune.

mahra normally sells for 25, sepu for 15. so 1 mahra+1 sepu is 40: exactly the same they sell it here. Btw mahra's realistic value is 5, sepu is 10-12, so this "sale" is double of realistic price.
mount whip worth 2 balens, SC is 0.4 balen (well, it actually worth nothing, since no SC event since 2 months) but anyway, the value here is 600 balen, they again sell for double price.
mount hoof and soul seals value is approx 10 balens each. So the third pack is 2k balen. Why buy it for 5k balens?
Vulcan's hammer worth approx 20 balens at the stage where I am, but price drops quickly as chance decreases. Stoves hold no value to me, have a lot from sylph boss. So 6k balens for a 2k pack, pretty ridiculous.
Will crystals approx 3 balens, crystal shard 0.4 balens (these are normal ingame prices!!) so this is 700 balens. Again no discount at all.

I see there is an extra 1M gold in each pack, but it worth nothing, really. So my question is, with all the SC and HoF fumble, wouldn't it be wise to do a REAL SALE at once? Because there will be only a very low number of fools who fall to these scams (even with the big spender combined) and Wartune lose a LOT of money.

2014/11/25

Turkey exchange

Here is Wartune's new gamble-chest exchange. The only new about it is that it's combined with a "group buy" - if enough people buy this chest, you get a discount. First, let's see what we can get for the turkey drumsticks:

Gold, kyanite and mount whips are obviously not why we should collect these.
Divinity shards can be useful to some people, 1 shard is still as expensive as 20 balens, so there you get 20 balens for each drumstick.
Will crystal is another option, unless you have lvl 5+ will crystals, each will crystal shard worth at least 3 balens, so in this case you get 45 balen per drumstick. But now, I strongly advise against this. There are just too many ways to get free will crystals. 
Mount hoofs worth only 10 balens, so exchanging Drumstick for those is a no-go.
A Skeletal Dragon can be cool, but for Drumsticks, it's just too expensive. Either hope to be lucky and get it from a chest, or wait until they sell it for balens.

So it's either divinity shards (if you want to evolve Hades/Apollo) or will crystals.

Now let's see how much balen a plump turkey worth:
  • Turkey Drumstick x1 - converts to either 1 div.shard or 15 will crystal shard
  • 100,000 Gold - we don't need more gold (at least not for balens)
  • Fate Stone x3 - most of us don't need fate stones either
  • Mount Training Whip x3 - a lot of people don't need whips either
  • Runestone x2 - we wait on the SC exchange event to get tens of thousands
  • Soul Crystal x800 - no SC event since 2 months, so not excited about this either
  • Divinity Shard x10 - this is a super-rare drop, so expected value is neglectable
  • Skeletal Dragon Card x1 - 0.1% chance to get a 8K balens mount
So 50% chance for a drumstick, and 0.1% chance for a Dragon:
0.5 x 20 + 0.001 x 8000 = 18 balen value (if you need a divinity shard)
0.5 x 45 + 0.001 x 8000 = 30 balen value (if you stil need will shards)

The gamble factor is here again, maybe you buy 100, 200 etc boxes and win a dragon, maybe you won't. If you buy plump turkeys for 12000 balens, you get divinity shards worth 3000 balens, and will have 30% chance to get a dragon. It is definitely a bad deal, better buy the dragon for 8000 later.

If 6000 plump turkeys are sold on your server (not gonna happen on ours), then you get the chest for 29 balens instead of 39. Even then, you can spend 12000 balens to get divinty shards worth 4000 balens, and you will have 40% chance to get a dragon. Still much worse than just buying the dragon for 8000 later.

Fortunately, a nice amount of free chests are given out. So if you need divinity shards, grab the free ones, and wait for the future events, there will be much better ones.

2014/11/24

sylph pack + big spender combo

Here is some triple combo running currently which worth an analysis:
big spender + wheel of prosperity + mahra/sepulcrum packs.
Of course a lot of gamble is included! 

First, lets check the value of the packs. Value is hard to determine, since we don't know the exact chances - the packs are very expensive so we don't have too much statistics. So I used the statistics for Violet boxes which were very similar.

30 x 0.68 = 20.4
40 x 0.25 = 10
100 x 0.06 = 6
300 x 0.01 = 3
600 x 0.001 = 0.6
1000 x 0.001 = 1

So thats an average amount of 41 sepulcrum / mahra per pack. So you pay 24,3 balens apiece: pretty expensive, considering that I value sepulcrum to 12 balens and mahra to 5 balens.

Now let's see if big spender and the wheel can improve this value. The Wheel gives an average value of 90 balens for every 1000 balens spent (this is based on a small statistics). Additionally, each pack has some balen value. I do not go into details here, just: flame chest 30, soul seal 10, sepu 12, mahra 5 balens. Gold, daru and gem pack represent no value.



pack value: 80 balens, wheel: 90. Total: 17% bonus

previous (170) + 180+90 = 440. Total: 22% bonus

previous (440) + 1260+270 = 1970. Total: 39% bonus

previous (1970) + 2500+450 = 4920. Total: 49% bonus

previous (4920) + 5000+900 = 10820. Total: 54% bonus


Looks like an almost okay deal. There are only 2 problems:
1.) You need to spend at least 100 USD to make it worth.
2.) There is a LOT of gamble and luck factor included.




2014/11/18

Sky trial 3-10 beaten

Hey guys, I'm happy to boast that yesterday I have finally beaten sky trial 3-10 (and as a side effect, has beaten Necro 30 too). I have used generally the same strategy as before:
1.) Do one attack round on sky trial while I filled up my rage and awaken points.
2.) Do a 2nd round, where I awaken at the beginning, and try to do a 2nd awaken as well with using only minimum heals and maximum damage.
I kept trying this since a while, hoping for a lucky streak, but the boss always had half-one bar HP left when he went berserk and finished me off.



What changed today:
1.) I spent the 700 sepu I saved up lately, and maxed out the PATK of my 3-star purple Aegis to 25K.
2.) Raised my Soul Seal level to 6.
3.) Used a lvl 6 intelligence potion (found in Golden Palace earlier).
4.) Used Ruthlessness astral.

It seems these small things were enough extra to push me through, especially Ruthlessness. See my stats to the above and left. Although Ruthlessness does not increase my average damage, with enough tries, there was a lucky streak where it performed better than average.

Being a mage didn't make much difference, Aegis, and his heal ability was the key here as well. I'm happy to see Aegis is at least useful somewhere, Hercules is so superior everywhere else.

My skill order was something like this:


2014/11/14

Flame chest & big spender

Here is my analysis of the events of this week.

Flame Emblem Exchange
Whats the best deal to exchange your flame emblems for?
1.) If you could get enough emblems for free to get a Smoldering pincer mount, that would be the best deal. However, I do not recommending buying chests for balens (see later), so you should just hope for a free pincer from free chests.
2.) The second best deal is either clothes (not the wing!) or sepulcrum. In BR-for-emblem calculation, sepulcrum is a little better, but for many players the visual counts too, so they will go for the cloth, I guess.

Flame chest value
The average value of items you can get from the Flame chest (purchased for 39 balens) is approx. 27.64 balens. This is a very bad value chest, you shouldn't buy it.


Gem synthesis event
We have a gem synthesis event where you can claim each reward only once. Wartune designers should learn that since they did multiple unlimited events in the past, making a limited one can reach only one goal: piss off customers and get rid off them. I don't care about the rewards - be it mount whips, runestones, or chicken heads - but I want a reward for each gem made. Especially since the number of times a player can do SC -> WHIP -> GEM -> SC cycle is very limited. Once your SC and WHIP is maxed, it is over, you can't get more gems. So if anyone makes gems during a limited event, he can't replace them later, so literally loses 20-30k BR permanently by missing the rewards. And Wartune wants to lure people into that???

New item: Soul Seal
Finally, here is the item which let's people continue engraving soul. You can get soul seal 3 way now: 


  • winning sylph atoll boss event
  • participating in flame temple (higher level battlegrounds)
  • spending balens

There are 2 questions about soul seal:
1.) how much it worth? Determining it's value is not easy, since we know little of the development costs yet. So here is my speculation: early on, cost goes up fast, until it reach like 400 seals per level, then it will slow down. So we can say on the long term, expect like 400 seal to give one level. I gain +400 BR per level (most of my gems are lvl 10), so I set seal value to 10 balens apiece now.
2.) Should I hoard it? There is a chance that there will be a spender event for soul seals, of course. Still, I recommend that as long a level costs only a few seals, you should use them. The BR gain is really huge for very little invested. When you need a lot of seals for one level, you can start hoarding.

Big spender
Seriously: You don't want to thank Wartune this Gem synthesis event by spending balens, right? Not even a cent. Unless its such a great promotion that is compensates for it - but it doesn't.

Still, I make the analysis: but I recommend that you do not spend. Especially since there is nothing really good to buy at the moment. The seals look appealing, but you need to throw out too much money on the window to get a significant amount. And don't forget: gem event...!!!


value: 57 balens (5.7% bonus)

value: 200+57 balens (12.8% bonus)


value: 739+257 balens (20% bonus)

value: 1300+996 balens (23% bonus)



value: 2760+2296 balens (25% bonus)

value: 5056+4500 (32% bonus)


value: 9556+7600 (34% bonus)

1K USD pack? seriously? c'mon...