Hoard or spend?

Wartune - and many other late-generation Chinese games - has an interesting features unseen in previous games. It's the „hoard and spend” concept. In Wartune, you do not simply increase your stats - you get resources, and spend them to increase stats. This have 2 benefits and 1 drawback:

benefit 1: The resources can be awarded freely in different events and can be also sold for real money.

benefit 2: Players can have the joy of collecting pretty colorful objects and hoard them.

drawback: When you max out a stat and keep receiving the resource as a reward, it becomes frustrating after a while.

Please note that the drawback could be easily counter by the Wartune developers, simply allowing maxed out resources to be exchanged for other resources - at a worse rate. Like they did with crystalloids, 10 level 3 crystalloids into one lvl 4, and 10 level 4 into one level 5. This system could be applied to everything else, fate stones to beads, soul crystals to soul seals etc.

This system has summoned another concept to the game: be rewarded for spending resources. From time to time, Wartune has „spender” events, where you can spend a specific resource to increase a stat, and receive bonus resources for doing so. This system has 2 benefit too, and one HUGE drawback:

benefit 1: Some people who are low on the specific resources are willing to spend real money on that resource during the sale which usually comes with the spender event.

benefit 2: Simply increasing your stat becomes and interesting game event, and people are excited to wait what comes next.

drawback: You never know what resource gets a spender event, and if this spender event will be better or worse than the previous one. Often you don't even know if it will get ever. So this makes it a huge gamble. Sometimes we have to sit on the reward we collected for months, instead of using it and enjoying the benefits. Some people lose their patience and spend - and this is a critical mistake.

This drawback could be countered to by giving the players advance schedules of events. The designers of Wartune think the surprise element is cool. But I can show you a different example. In Doomlord, all events are scheduled, players have all the info - and they love it!

So, the question is, when to hoard? When to spend? What's the best strategy?

You can put your resources into the following categories:

1.) Useless resources, where the stat is already maxed. For me, these are soul crystals, dragon souls, mount hoofs, fate stones, sepulcrum, star tear, star sand, sylph xp scroll, sylph equipment shards, crystalloids, legend stones. Strategy for these is easy: I store them (either in guild vault or in mailbox), and hope I can use them for something one day. Those which can be sold for gold (crystalloid, legend stones, sylph equip shards) I sell when I need gold.

2.) Resources where you know there is a regular spender event. For me, these are mount whips, mahra, vulcan hammers, divinity souls, glint of magic and magical moonlight, golden holy water, gems, crystals shards, will crystals, clothes, fashion cores. The strategy for these is the following: always hoard them, NEVER use them outside spender event (not even for a BR ranking event!) When a spender event comes, check carefully the rewards.

Some events are easy, the reward is always the same, like mahra or hammer event, so just use what you have.

Some are one per day (like gems, crystal shards, divinity souls). Here you are often low on resources (like gems, divinity souls, resist crystals). You should plan what combines get you the best reward. For example, if you can make only 4 lvl 6 gems, it is not a good idea to make all on the first day, better do one each day and make the lvl 7 only on the 3^rd day.

Some unlimited events have a varying reward. For example, I remember when the whip event gave sylph equipment shards as rewards. It was pretty obvious that from the sylph arena alone you will max your sylph equipments soon, so it's better to wait for a different event. Or in case of a cloth event where you get chests as rewards, and you already have everything from that chest (cloths, mount) then it's better to save your combine for the next cloth event.

3.) Resources where there was no spender event yet. This is the hardest one. If you spend them, and lose a lot of reward, it's bad. If you sit on them forever and stay weaker, that's bad too. So here is my advice:

Check what is your gain if you spend the resource. If you gain a lot, consider spending at least part of what you have. If it won't make a big difference, keep hoarding. I show you a few examples:

Soul seals. Soul seals are in the game since 4 or 5 months, but there was no real spender event for them. (Ok, if you use them for „soul engrave” event, you get the 30 soul crystal + xp/gold, but that reward is neglectable.) So wait? Or spend? Here I did what investors call „portfolio diversification”. I keep 9-10k soul seal, but spend the rest. This way I steadily increase my BR, but also have enough stocks for a possible spender event.

Gems. I remember for a very long time, there were unlimited gem events for lvl 5-8 gems. After we made all our gems to lvl 8, and still had like 100 spare, the question came up: hoard, or wait for an event which rewards for higher rank gems? I remember we waited for like 3 months, while I finally decided to make the lvl 10 atk gems. It made a big difference, we could kill +1 boss in DI, get a lot of extra loot, and it helped in other places as well. By the time they added lvl 10 rewards, I had most of my gems up to lvl 10. I still had a lot of lvl 8 spare so I could make 10.000 soul seal in rewards. But if Im patient and wait a half year, I could have gotten some more. Still, I dont regret my decision, I had benefit from the higher BR. Now I made all my ATK gems to lvl12 - but only those.

Sepulcrum. Take almost a year for them to add a sepulcrum spender event after this resource was added to the game. I kept hoarding it for 3 months, then started spending. I don't regret it, it made a big difference, and you can't rely on waiting for a year anyway.

Coin of ancestry. Here, you have a trick. Make a character on an oceanic server (like S40). This way, you can see the events for the next day already after 16pm. So when a coin exchange is of the last day, check what's tomorrow, and decide whether to spend or keep. Always try to calculate how much balen you get per coin. There were some great deals (like 2k balen coupon or the 80 vulcan hammer) and some really bad ones. If you see a good deal, and you see you won't get a better one in the next coin exchange, don't hesitate. Don't save up, hoping for something even better. You can always get more coins if a mount or something comes up.

And finally, if anyone didn't know, I call your attention to the event reset feature. Whenever Wartune adds a new event which can be completed once per day through several days, you can do it once between midnight and 5am, and once after 5am on the first day. So, for example, if there is a 3-day gem or resist crystal or divinity soul event, you can actually do it 4 times. Same for the „do 15 bounty quests a day” hot event. Don't do more than 5 bounties until 16pm. At that time, log into S40, check if there is a bounty event. If there is one, do the remaining 15 bounties using scroll only after midnight.