Third big-spender in a month

Hi all! It seems Wartune has a financial problems, since they run the third big spender in a month... I'm happy to spend some money on the game, especially if I get a good deal. But I can't cough up 500+ USD each month just to keep up with the others. Anyway, here is the susual analysis.

You will see at first glance that the prizes are decent, maybe even better than last time. But remember what I said in this article: each month, there will be better and better offers. If you skip one, it just means you get an even better offer next month for your money. Getting good BR for your balen is one thing. Staying in the monthly limit you set for yourself is another.

So we have a big spender now, there is also a sylph enchant event. It seems we have to hoard mahra and sepulcrum as well from now on besides soul crystals, mount whips, resistance crystals and who knows what else. Great news :) As a coincidence, there is sepulcrum for sale in the shop, for a neat 20 balen per piece cost. A sepulcrum worth only 10 balens max, so this price is pretty steep. But combined with the slyph enchant reward and the big spender bonus, it can be worthwhile if you still have some money left from your monthly lottery win.

Let's suppose you spend your money on sepulcrum (nothing else worth it), see what bonus you can get compared to the +1 BR / 10 balens value which can get any day.

Please see this guide for item pricing. I definitely value mount hoof to 20 balens now, since we are getting so many in promotions and in dragon invasion so it's only a matter of weeks until I need 100 for +10 stats. Also, I consider old-fashioned pack worthless - anyone who needed these already and had the option to recharge, bought enough for tailoring/cloth identify, so all you can do with them is now get duplicate clothes. Also I no longer count balen value for gold. Earning like 20M a day for completely free, and in need to spend 200M+ to get any improvement in astral, I would simply not pay any balen for a few 100K gold, not even one.

Spend 1,000 Balens to receive: 100,000 Gold, 50,000 Daru, Insignia x40, Mount Training Whip x10, Old-fashioned Pack x1

You buy 50 sepulcrum, use it, and get 10 more. This worth a total of 600 balens. Also the above pack worth 20 balens (the whips), nothing else has value. So you get 620 balen worth of goodies for 1000 balens. -38% negative bonus, BAAD deal.

Spend 2,000 Balens to receive: 200,000 Gold, 200,000 Daru, Fashion Core x5, Mahra x5, Sylph Sepulcrum x5, Mount Hoof x5, Old-fashioned Pack x1

You buy 100 sepulcrum, use it, get 25 more, use them, get 5 more. Total value 1300 balens. Also the above stuff worth 5x200 (cores) + 5x10 (mahra) + 5x10 (sepu) + 5x20 (hoof) = 1200. So you get a total value of 2520 (I included 20 from prev. pack) for 2000 balens. 26% bonus. You get this in any sale or better, so it's nothing special.

Spend 5,000 Balens to receive: 400,000 Gold, 200,000 Daru, Good Luck Charm x5, Mahra x20, Sylph Sepulcrum x20, Mount Hoof x20, Old-fashioned Pack x2

So you buy and enchant to get sepu worth 3250 balens. The previous 2 packs worth 1220, this one worth 1800. You get a total value of 3250+1220+1800 = 6270 balens. 25% bonus, same as the previous one, not too good.

Spend 10,000 Balens to receive: 800,000 Gold, 400,000 Daru, Fashion Core x10, Mahra x40, Sylph Sepulcrum x40, Mount Hoof x40, Old-fashioned Pack x4

You buy sepu worth 6600, previous packs 3020, and this one is 3600. 32% bonus, it's getting better.

Spend 20,000 Balens to receive: 1,600,000 Gold, 800,000 Daru, Good Luck Charm x10, Mahra x70, Sylph Sepulcrum x70, Mount Hoof x70, Lvl. 6 HP Gem x2, Old-fashioned Pack x6

You buy sepu worth 13250 balens, prev. packs total value is 6620, this one is 5824. That's a total of 28% bonus.

Spend 30,000 Balens to receive: 3,200,000 Gold, 1,600,000 Daru, Fashion Core x25, Mahra x100, Sylph Sepulcrum x100, Mount Hoof x100, Lvl. 7 HP Gem x2, Old-fashioned Pack x10

You buy sepu worth 19900 balens, prev. packs total value is 12444, this one is 13096. That's a total of 51% bonus! Same as with last big spender, the first worthwhile pack is at 300 USD. Sad news for low cashers.

Spend 50,000 Balens to receive: 4,000,000 Gold, 2,000,000 Daru, Fashion Core x40, Mahra x150, Sylph Sepulcrum x150, Mount Hoof x150, Lvl. 8 HP Gem x1, Chimera Card x1

You buy sepu worth 33200 balens, prev. packs total value is 25540, this one is 26144. That's 69% bonus, the first time in Wartune's history that the 500 USD pack is a better deal than the 300 USD pack.

But there are a few things to notice: if you are considering to buy an 500 USD pack, prolly you already spent thousands on this game. Then your sylph is in the several star purple (or even orange category). In this case, mahra worth far less than 10 balens, since you need a LOT for a tiny upgrade. Also, you prolly refined all clothes. When refining a 2 or 3 star cloth again, you win much less BR for the same balen, so a core worth much less for you. So the above bonus refers to a "wartune virgin's" purchase bonus. For veterans, who actually buy this, the real total value of the above packs (1 BR / balen-wise) is more like 36604, so your bonus here is only 39% (and it is less for previous packs as well).

Anyway, the bonus is nice, there are 2 things I don't like:

1.) I get in the pack a lot of things I don't need. Some gold is okay, but sylph xp scroll, daru, insignia, old-fashioned packs? C'mon...

2.) This is just too much in one month. 5-600 USD, I would like to spend it in 6-12 monhts, not in one.

Clothing synthesis

I wanted to write an article about these clothing synthesis events since a long, now it is a perfect time. The math is a little complicated, I will try to make it as simple as possible.

The current clothing-combo event has 3 components:

1. Buying old-fashioned packs and examining their value.
2. Identifying clothes and seeing how much you win there.
3. Combining clothes and claiming tailor rewards.

First of all, value of items:

Cloth packs as such are sold for 900 balens usually, so for simplicity, we can say one cloth worth 300 balens (although BR-wise, a S cloth can worth as much as 1000).

Fashion cores were sold for 170, 200 and 270 balens, so we can say price is approx. 200 balens.

Good luck charms, you could get them only once for 170, let's hope we see more sales in the future. Right now, you can't really get them cheaper than like 340 (in market). Unfortunately, this doesn't mean they worth more than a fashion core, especially since the needed amount for synthesis was increased, and unlike cores, you can't use them to exchange for BR. So I would not give more for them than for cores, 200 balens.

Old leather. You can exchange 20 old leather for 3 clothes, so one leather worth approx. 45 balens. Please note if you don't need any of the clothes, old leather worth 0. If you need only 1-2 cloth from any given pack, old leather worth only 15-30 balens.



Old-fashoned pack
So let's see how much a pack worth:
I use the chances listed on wartune.tv (they seem to be accurate).

old leather, 30% chance:  0.3 x 0-45 = 0-13.5  balens
100k gold, 30% chance: 0.3 x 2 = 0.6 balen
fashion shard, 20% chance: 0.2 x 20 = 4 balens
fashion core, 7% chance: 0.07 x 200 = 14 balens
luck charm, 7% chance: 0.07 x 200 = 14 balens
1M gold, 2% chance: 0.02 x 20 = 0.04 balen
Clothes, 1% chance each. This is tricky. You can find a total of 11 different clothes in the packs. You have to count how many you need still. For example, I need 7, so the expected value of clothes in the packs for me is 0.01 x 300 x 7 = 21 balens. If you have 0, obviously it's 0. If you need all 11, it's 0.01 x 300 x 11 = 33 balens.

So the total value:
0-13.5  + 0.6 + 4 + 14 + 14 + 0.04 + 0-33 = 32.6-79.1 balens.

As you see, if you have all the clothes, this is not a great deal. But if you miss some or all, its a must buy deal. Please note that while you are buying, the value decreases! As soon as you have all clothes from drops + you can buy the remaining for old leather, you should stop. A recharge of max. 30 USD would be enough here to get everything.

Cloth identify

This is the third part where you can win a lot. Hopefully you saved already a bunch of clothes (your wedding cloth, and the stuff you bought for wedding shards). Also you can get 0-11 clothes from opening the above packs. Depending on your luck, you can harvest a bunch of additional old-fashioned packs and fashion cores. Count these packs in when deciding how much you gonna buy! Don't forget that for this event, not only identify counts, but cloth refine as well. You will have a lot of extra cores, use them, that's where you gain the BR anyway besides identify!



Tailoring event
First of all, I do not recommend using fashion cores to make lvl 3 items or higher. The last time I tried, failure rate was extremely high even at lvl 3 combines. You make a better deal by combining 2 clothes and using luck charm.

Please note, that when you make a lvl 5 item, you can claim the rewards for making lvl 3 and lvl 4 as well. So the slower you go here, the more reward you claim - but it takes months, not everyone has that patience :)

Lvl 3 cloth: this requires 2 lvl 1 cloth, 2 fashion cores and 1 luck charm. The reward is 1 fashion core, a pack, and 10 mount whips, and 150k gold. If we suppose you did not buy cloth just for this, and you have them already anyway "for free", your total gain here is -337 balens.

lvl 4 cloth: requires 2 lvl 3 cloth, and 2 luck charm. The reward is 400K Gold, fashion core x2, luck charm x1, pack x2. If we count only the luck charms, your total gain here is +286 balens.

lvl 5 cloth: requires 2 lvl 4 cloth, 4 x luck charm. Reward is 800K gold, fashion core x4, good luck charm x2, pack x5. If we don't count the cloth, your gain is +611 balens.

As you see, you make a better and better deal. But ONLY if you had free cloth, and did not combine multiple of the lower levels to be ableto make it. Please note that when combining clothes, there is a chance you get something you don't get, which gives extra BR (and worth) via identify.

Examples:
Example 1. you have a bunch of level 1 helmet, fashion cores, and 2 luck charm. You should make 2 lvl 2 helm, then a lvl 3 helm. You should not go for lvl 4, since you do not get the bonus for the lvl 3 again, so your loss would be -674 vs +286.

Example 2. You have a lvl 3 helm which you made during previous tailoring, and all he above. You should make a lvl 3 and a lvl 4 helm.

Example 3. You have a lvl 4 helm you made during the previous synthesis, you also wear a lvl 4 helm, and you have a bunch of lvl 1. You should make only one lvl 5. You will get the reward for lvl 3 and lvl 4 as well. Save the lvl 1 for the next event.

Please note that you should NOT make cloth combines just to upgrade your cloth. +2 rage worth nothing.

Wings 

Wing are an expensive deal. Lvl 3 cost 5, lvl 4 cost 10, lvl 5 cost 20, lvl 6 40 good luck charms. As long as good luck charms don't selll especially cheap, and you can't get free wings, wing tailoring doesn't worth the deal at higher level. Make a level 3 wing first tailoring. Then make a lvl 3 next tailoring. Then make a lvl 4 one month later, etc. but ONLY IF you have the good luck charms from some event (don't buy them for 400 balens piece).

Undocumented changes in Patch 3.1.

Patch 3.1. brought us many changes, many of them not documented and listed. I tried to collect them. Please let me know if I am missing anything, will add it to the list.

• Deep freeze and other slow effects no longer work in God's descent, Sky trial and versus Nightmare dungeon bosses.

• Changed some bosses buffs to non-dispelable which were previously dispelable.
• Corrected a bug where Lord Divine medallion counted twice, both for attack and defense. So now it's correctly 1.4 x instead of 1.4 x 1.4 and 0.8 instead of 0.8 x 0.8.
• Replaced the old devotion reward system with a luck wheel. You get less rewards, but it takes more time now, and you can't get the most important items, XP scroll and Signet training anymore.
• After marketplace, now we placed Altar of enoblement to Cloud city as well. So instead of just one click in your city, now you have to walk to access this daily feature.
• Knight heal for block is capped at 3000 now.
• Level 80 bosses in the wild have been made even stronger.
• World bosses HP can now increase beyond 58M in case it was killed under 15 minutes previously.
• The damage you deal to troops in battleground is capped at 95% of the troops' max. HP. So regardless of the troops's HP and your ATK, they will always have some HP remaining after your first AoE.
• The new active skills we added (available after class advancement) do less for more rage than the previous skills. Use and develop them at your own discretion.
• Added advanced rune system to the game. Now you can develop some level 10 runes further, using advanced runes available in the arena shop. Please note that the rune description you get is the FINAL rune you can get after spending tens of thousands of runestones. What you actually get after upgrading your rune is much weaker.
• We increased the game's memory usage by 50%, and added several memory leaks, like in team arena and other places. To avoid heavy lag, you should refresh the game once every 15-20 minutes.
• We changed settings not to use the flash cache, but to reload graphics every time again and again, like pictures in your inventory, character animations in battle etc.

l tried to be objective, but I know sometimes I was a bit sarcastic. Because I never undersand why negative changes must be kept in "secret". But for the full truth, 3.1. brought many good changes too. XP, arena, BG being useful again, class advancement is fun, marriage is cool too. The biggest problem is the lag and the memory leaks, if those can be corrected, the game will be playable and fun again imho. 

Surviving sky trial 3-5 and God's descent

Today I would like to give a few advices how to fight particularly strong pve opponents. I already gave general advices about god's trial strategy here. The article below is mostly about survival.

First of all, here is the sky trial 3-5 boss. Some top players could beat it already, but for most of us, mere mortals, this boss is still too difficult. Now that sky trial bosses are unslowable, it looks quite impossible. I can't tell you how to kill it now - but I can say a few things how to improve your chances.

Earlier I mentioned that with the help of Tihh, we could reverse-engineer how combat works in Wartune. This knowledge has many uses - for example, I could understand what combat stats the sky trial 3-5 boss have.

She have an attack of 335.568! Yeah, you would like to have an attack like that, I bet :) He have 2 skills he is using. one is an AE, which hits for 120%, and another is a single-attack, which hits for 250%. He uses AE, then 2 single, then AE, then 2 single. The first AE clears your troops, so after that, you are on your own.

So how do you survive this?

HP or Armor?
The first thing you can see that your defense is pretty neglectable. If you increase your defense by 5000, then it will reduce the damage by about 1000 only. This is because in the combat formulae

(ATK - DEF) /2 * multipliers (skill, god's blessing, resist etc)

So 5000 Defense is something like:

5000/2 * 1.2 * 0.7 * 0.6 * 0.86 = 1080 damage reduction (2250 vs the stronger attack).

The same is true for other strong PVE bossess too, like dragon invasion, god's descent etc.

You remember when I said don't spend mount whips on armor? The devs make monsters stronger by giving them astronomical attack values. But this means, +100 defense means less and less.  When you increase the Armor stat in your stables by 1, you get +20 defense. So to get +5000 defense, you need to increase it 250 times. If you spend the same amount on endurance, you would get 25.000 HP. So the HP is more useful vs big bosses. Not to mention that to survive World Boss final attack, you need HP too.

Note: I don't say armor is not good. It DOES reduce the damage. Just when you can choose between armor and HP, take HP. 

Damage reducers

Damage reducers are your friend in fight such as this. Effects which reduce damage by a percentage, not by a constant, like armor. God's blessing is a must. And now you can enhance it by refining it's astral slot. Just 5% reduce can be 5000 damage less per attack.

The other key damage reducer is your resistance. PVE resist checks were bugged, the monster did not take the corresponding resist, but your highest. So a Hercules was better vs a dark opponent than Hades! Now it seems this bug is corrected finally with the last patch, so Hades is your best friend here. Try to work up your resist as high as possible - so better have 5 lvl 5 electro resist and 5 lvl 3 fire, than having all of them level 4. I don't know yet if there is a cap to resist's damage reduction- let's hope there is not and it can go even higher than 50%.

If block is triggered, you take 25% less damage. If you convert all your defense gems into block gems, you will take like 6-7% less damage in average. On the other hand, you lose about 5k def, which reduces the damage by about 2%.

Active damage reducers are not so great as passive ones, but you can use them too. The archer's IS is great, since it deals damage. The new mage skill, mana shield is not so good.

Astrals

Bosses are either MATK or PATK. So if you have both MDEF and PDEF astral equipped, one of them is useless. You can easily test which is needed, run a few test battles and see which is which (write down damages). For example, sky trial 3-5 is MATK.

Enchanted regeneration is a must. At 10%, you heal 50.000 - so that's an average of 5.000 heal per round!
Even if you are a will destroyer user, I recommend Determination + Sniper's edge vs. these bosses, where you need one lucky run from several. But at Determination 9+ and critical 7k+ you are better of with critical in average as well.

Use every astral which can reduce damage somehow, enshieldment, even the nerfed Illusion. If necessary, you can even remove the second of MDEF/PDEF (at least you don't have to test around which is not needed).





Healing
Use heal rune. Using a rune takes little time. Don't forget that now you can upgrade your level 10 heal rune further with advanced runestones (available in the arena shop).

Even if you can reduce the boss damage to something like 60-70k (with a 500+ resist, god's blessing 35%, frequent blocks etc) and have 250k+ HP, you need to heal yourself fully once every 4-5 turns. For archer and knight, this seems doable only with Iris...

Conclusion. Please don't forrget that the above advices are only for big attack PVE monsters. In PVP situation, where the damage comes from skill and other multipliers, armor is still an important stat. It's justthat  in PVP, the biggest reward you get for your efforts is like 200 mount whip (in class wars). In PVE, you get much better rewards - more hoof, dragon soul in dragon invasion, more horn for sky trial, not to mention God's descent rewards.

The marriage system

Marriage could be a really nice role-playing addition to the game. The implementation is really cool, the ceremony, the guests, the ability to send gifts, the ring etc. But, of course, this is something which gives +BR to players, and profit to Wartune.

I usually analyze things from the viewpoint of how much BR you get for your balens invested. This article is supposed to be no different. You know, if I have to choose between two pets: a small green cube which gives +100 to all stats, and a magnificent, sparkling badass dragon-unicorn with huge wings which give only +80, I would take the cube without hesitation. But marrying another guy just because we do mpd together and this way I benefit more, was even too much for me. So I married a girl instead, and I wish this would be an excepcional game feature with only role-playing aspects, so I don't miss the extra xp :) Maybe I'm too old-fashioned, but to me, a wife must be a women.

Anyway, see here complete description of marriage system, including benefits and BR/balen optimization.

And by the way, eternal heart is currently on sale for 89 balens apiece... What kind of promotion is when something is sold for 4 times it's normal price (where even the normal price is outrageously expensive)...

class advancement info

I made a description of class advancement, prerequisites, quests, and all the advantages of you got. I put them on a main page (see above) so it's easy to find. Will update the info as soon as I get more. Class advancement is really cool, and I recommend everyone to do it as soon as possible. I really like it, Too bad that the game is unplayable at the moment: team arena not working, bgs not work, lag is terrible, wild is totally bugged... I hope they correct these soon :)
Also don't forget, whip event tomorrow! Hope you saved up enough :) I have 25k. Ah, and don't spend it on armor! Either ATK or END. Will write about this later.

See class advancement info here.

August big spender

I wanted to write a full article about class advancement and how does that work, but there is something more urgent, a big spender - it's analysis follows. As usual, Wartune adds big spender 2 days after you had a lot of things to spend on (marriage, etc) so a lot of people spent balen already... I know it was coming, so I delayed marrage etc... :)

39+20+0+0+2 =61 balens (6% bonus)



50+200+39+0+50+4+61 (previous)=404 balens (20% bonus)


200+300+78+800+200+8+404=1990 balens (39% bonus)

400+150+156+1600+400+16+1990=4712 (47% bonus)



700+3000+1024+234+2800+700+32+4712=10682 (53% bonus)


2048+600+390+4000+1000+1000+64+10682= 19784 (66% bonus)

320+6000+1536+1500+780+1500+128+19784= 31548 (63% bonus)




The current bonus is pretty decent. Please note that the high value comes from hoofs counted for 40 balens each. 50 hoof upgrades a mount by +10 - and a +10 mount costs 2000 balens, so this is correct so far. But you should know, that once you complete class advancement, you can earn like 40-45 hoof per day in Dragon invasion. So, one aspect is: you earn a +10 mount worth 2000 balens each day... the other is, why pay 40 balen for something that I find every day by dozens :)

Also, only the first star upgrade is 50 hoof. The second is 100. So as long as you have unrefined mounts, hoof worth 40 balen (and I have  lot). But as soon as you refined all to star 1, hoof will worth only 20 balens. All in all, this is a decent bonus. If you didn't do marriage yet, you miss the mounts they sell now, you need sylph skills etc. I recommend to SPEND.

But buy only stuff you would buy otherwise too, and only if you get at least +1 BR per 10 balen spent.

Wedding events

Originally I thought about writing my usual analysis on how much a wedding chest worth and what's the best exchange for wedding shards. However, I encountered the following problem:

The game is completely unplayable right now. It has such a sheer amount of bugs, I just can't play, effectively nothing works.

And in such a situation, I'm in no mood for spending money, and you shouldn't be either. But if any of you is still curious, there is a quick summary:

Wedding Shard x1 for 50,000 Gold:  
Wedding Shard x5 for 50,000 Kyanite
Wedding Shard x10 for Will Crystal Shard x100:  40 balen per shard
Wedding Shard x10 for Eternal Heart x20
Wedding Shard x10 for Rose Hazel x20
Wedding Shard x20 for Mount Hoof x20:  40 balen per shard*
Wedding Shard x30 for Ember cloth x1:  10 balen per shard
Wedding Shard x200 for Molten Dragon Card x1:  30 balen per shard

*What's the value of mount hoof? You need 50 of them to increase mount stats by +10, so 1 hoof worth 2000 / 50 = 40 balens at most. 

About Eternal Heart and Rose Hazel, we have no clue, and I wouldn't buy anything where I don't know the value... So the best deal is either Mount Hoof or Will Crystal. I would say go for the Mount Hoof, since you can use a virtually unlimited amount, while Will Crystal worth less and less as it cost more to level it.

Now the value of the pack - and here in trouble again.

Wedding Shard x1	50% chance: 0.5 x 40 = 20
80,000 Gold	12% chance: 0.12 x 1.6 = 0.192
Mount Training Whip x2	12% chance: 0.12 x 4 = 0.24
Runestone x 2	12% chance: 0.12 x 4 = 0.24
Soul Crystal x20	12% chance: 0.12 x 10 = 1.2
Soul Crystal x500	1% chance: 0.01 x 250 = 2.5
99 Roses x1	worth nothing
999 Roses x1	worth nothing
Molten Dragon Card x1	0.1% chance: 0.001 x 6000 = 6

Total value: 20 + 0.192 + 0.24 + 0.24 + 1.2 + 2.5 + 6 = 30.372

Honestly, I expected something better after getting the 40 balen value for the wedding shard... Anyway, do not buy. 

Anniversary packs value

There are 2 new packs in the shop, available for only 1 day, so here is a quick evaluation:

100 SC: 50 balens, 100 whip: 200 balens, 100 fate: 1000 balens (if you didn't max it yet) 100 runestone 200 balens, 10 gem pack: 15 balens.
Total value: 1465 balens.

I would recommend buying this only if a spending event would run parallel. Do not buy.

100 mahra 1000 balens, 100 sepu 1000 balens, 500 crystal 200 balens, 200 will crystal 800 balens, 10 gem packs 100 balens.
Total value: 3100 balens.

This is a good deal, athough pretty expensive, 150 USD for the 5 packs, but all of the content is highly useful for everyone.

So now we are happy since we finally get a good deal, but unhappy since have to spend a lot of money again to keep up with those who buy it as well (and as such, we gain advantage only vs those whom we could one-round kill already without it).


Here is a quote from Wartune forum, from Kread999:

"There was once a game online many years ago , where your character was a frog, it ate stuff it grew , it jumped.. some people paid hundreds of dollars to make their frog jump the highest, it did nothing else just gave them the highest jumping frog... people will pay a fortune to be the best , even at something totally irrelevant and trivial seeming.

All R2 and most other online games do is tap into this.. in wartunes case with a complex set of systems to make you stronger, but really....your just a jumping frog....."

When the resist system came out, I said that this is not going to change anything, first they add resist crystals to reduce the sylph damage, but then they add will crystals to negate resist crystals - so we are back from where we came from, at the cost of a lot of money... You can see now how true it is, we are just jumping frogs :)

All secrets revealed

For a long time, scientists believed that the Earth is flat, and Columbus had a hard time to convince them about the opposite. About a month ago, I stated that sylph's attack stat does nothing during awakened form. It seems something went wrong during the tests, but I found my Columbus, Tihh, who is a real testing-expert. With his help, we were able to learn exactly how the combat works in Wartune, to the point where you can your and your opponent's attack and other stats, and I can tell you exactly how much damage you will deal. (Or, say your stats and how much damage you dealt, and I can tell the stats of your opponent).

Having the exact formulaes can help us to tell what's the best strategy, which astral is better, how does crit, dodge work, which sylph is best versus which. Also there are some interesting details we learned:

- Brutal edge (the one you improve from fate stones) is not working as written. It says "20% chance to ignore 5000 defense" (in case of brutal edge level 20). What it does actually is "20% chance to deal 2500 more damage". The programmer was either too lazy, or did not know well enough the original code, so he did not modify the defense value in the formulae when the 20% is rolled, he just adds 2500 to the damage. Which is a pity, because in the round 50% when your delphic crits, it could be +20.000 damage instead :)

- Your equipment's "ignore opponent's 1000 mdef" abiliy is not working when you awaken your patk sylph (like Hades). Not a bug, but I bet you didn't think of it :)

- Crit increases the damage exactly by 50%, regardless of your crit rating. Each level of your determination astral increases this by a further 5% to a maximum of 100% crit bonus.

- Block decreases the damage exactly by 25%. In case of both crit and block, the damage is x 1.5 x 0.75.

- The mage Thunderer skill's QTE adds only +10% to the damage instead of the 25% written. Other QTE bonuses seem to work well.

- The damage has a multiplier of 1 - (opponent's resistance - your resist reduce) * 0,0012. (Probably you have known this). But I bet you didn't know that this multiplier has a maximum. It can't be more than 1.2x. This means if your opponent has already -100 resistance versus your attack, your will crystals past 67 wont help you at all :) An example: For a while, I thought about making a powerful Apollo and beating all Hades in CW because no one will have light resistance. But this plan is failed, since in this case my resist crystals will be useless, so I would lose the edge I hope to gain. So Hades is still the best in mage CW :)


With this knowledge, I updated the articles "Sylph secrets" and "How combat works" (see the exact formulae there) , many thanks to Tihh!
Now only 2 tasks remain:
1.) Have to figure out how crit rate works.
2.) Have to make a program where you can input your combat stats and the program tells you how much damage you gonna deal :)

Anniversary chest - worth it?

Here is a short analysis of the current "2nd anniversary" chest and shard exchange.

First, let's see what's the best deal from shards:

x1 for 50,000 Gold: 1 balen / shard

x5 for Crystal Shard x200: 16 balens / shard

x20 for Mahra x40: 20 balens / shard

x20 for Sylph Sepulcrum x40: 20 balens / shard

x20 for Star Sand x100: 0 balen / shard

x20 for Star Tear Shard x10: 1 balen / shard

x20 for Divinity Shard x20: 10 balens / shard

x200 for Chubby Guinea Pig Card x1: 30 balens / shard

x450 for Apollo/Hades (Blue) x1: 17 balens / shard


Obivously, your best deal is the mount - if manage to gather 200 shards. For that, you need to spend 15.600 balens. Not recommended, since this mount will be for sale later for 6000 balens. You might hope that you will be lucky... but you won't. If you have less shards, you should exchange for mahra (if you still need a purple sylph) or sepulcrum (otherwise).

Now let's see how much a chest worth - maybe the other goodies round up it's value?
(calculation method is the usual, we multiply chances by the individual values and summarize them)

2nd Anniversary Shard x1:  30 balens x 0.5 = 15
80,000 Gold: 1.6 balen x 0.12 = 0.192
Star Sand x10: 0 balen
Star Tear Shard x1: 2 balens x 0.12 = 0.24
Crystal Shard x50: 20 balens x 0.12 = 2.4
1,000,000 Gold: 20 balens x 0.007 = 0.14
Sylph Sepulcrum x100: 1000 balens x 0.007 = 7
Mahra x100: 1000 balens x 0.007 = 7
Chubby Guinea Pig Card x1: 6000 balens x 0.001 = 6

Also, if you get a mount, in that case a shard worth only 20 balens, so we can calculate only with either 15+..+0 or 10+...+6.

expected total value: 10+0.192+0.24+2.4+0.14+7+7+6 = 32.97

DO NOT BUY.

A very bad deal, the chest itself worth less than it's cost, and that assumes average luck, getting a mount etc. If you are unlucky, you will be literally ripped off.



If I were running Wartune, I would celebrate an anniversary with much more generosity. And I would make more money in the process :) A nice recharge promotion, combined with a big spender, and a real sale with some true discounts, cupped with a mount whip event which rewards anniversary shards would sound much better than this. Making players happy should be a priority over making scams like the above, on the long term it brings more profit.

100.000 dollar whales

Once I have seen a video interview with R2Games president. The video's title was '100.000 dollar whales'. The video was later removed - maybe there was too much insider information, maybe the president brutal honesty about how they milk players shed bad light on them, I don't know. But it was an interesting video.




Several years ago, the browser game market was dominated by German companies like Gameforge. Now these companies are of the past, the Chinese rule the market. What are the keys to their success?

1. Ignoring copyrights have an advantage, and it helps developing new things faster. If a Chinese company makes  a good game, others copy it and improve it. The original company willl not lawsuit them, but copies back the improvements. Wartune has many, many great features. Blitz, items you can't pick up sent after you in mail, devotion, item enchanting etc. These are all results of a super-fast game design evolution.

2. "If I wanted to spend 100.000 USD on your game, could I do it?" asked R2 president in the video. And this is one of the key successes of today's Chinese game companies. They realized that in free-to-play games, only a small percentage of gamers will ever pay. So those few have to pay a lot. They introduced the "whale" concept, where a rich guy can spend any amount of money. A free player can get 100k BR, if you spend 100 USD, you get 110k, if you spend 1000, 120k, if you spend 10.000, 130k etc. The pscychology which leads people to spend such ridiculous amount of money is the same what affect game addicts in casinos.

3. "Gamble is good." he said. I totally disagree, I hate these gambles where one player gets 2 Apollo for free, the other spend 300 USD and gets nothing. But still, this concept seems to work for them. People who would not spend 400 USD on a hades, spend 40 on a few boxes, "hoping". The designers converted a strategy game into a casino, where the chances are unknown and manipulated at will. But the crowd is buying it.




4. Instead of spending a truckload of money on less-and-less effective advertisements like google or facebook, the developers license their games to portals with huge playerbase who in turn might licence it further. It's like you are not selling the apple you grow yourself, but you sell it to supermarkets instead. This is working well, except that customer service and feedback is quite impossible, as we can see with R2Games.

I think this business model has some drawbacks too.

1. Once you are burnt out, and walk away with 10.000+ USD spent, you will most likely vow never again to play a similar Chinese game. Europeans have a different strat, it rely upon on building customer loyalty. Like Doomlord's development team is making games since 20 years, whenever they make a new game, they have a big starting player base from their previous games.

2. They lose a lot of money on low and medium cashers. Prices are insane - a beginner player have to spend like 200 USD just to open up inventory spaces? If you want just the basic minimum comfort functions, nothing else, you spend 50 USD a month. Getting the main prize in a monthly event usually cost 2-400 USD! So a lot of people say: I rather don't spend anything.

3. If a company never listens to their players, and it's customer service is not able to handle even the most basic problems, it is running towards their doom. Lucky for R2Games, Wartune has a very low bug rate (you might try to argue, but compare it with other games!) Item and data loss is very, very rare. Still, if they would be as helpful with customers and listen to suggestion as in Doomlord, for example, they could triple their income, and would keep much more players.



Conclusion. Wartune will live on for a long time, years. 7Roads is constantly adding new content, that can keep loyal players in the game. Also the amount of money spent is a strong anchor for many :) But getting new players, and especially making them spend will be harder and harder. So they have to milk more and more the thinning casher core. Prices will drop, bigger and bigger sales will come, so as always, watch out how much you spend and how much BR you get in exchange :)