Wartune patch 5.2 analysis

First of all, I would like to thank again those who donated to my Odin kickstarter project. Although we are still far from the goal, the kind words of support felt really good, I see the work I did in these past 2 years were not completely vain.

I wrote a long article about the patch changes, which I think positive, and which I think negative. Please comment if you think I missed something or you have a different opinion!

Positive changes

Treasure inventory

This is the best thing in the new patch. 5 extra pages for gems, inventory problems solved forever, hopefully. Yes, it costs 2500 bound balens, but it's a one-time price, and you can earn at least 4-5000 bound balen per month without recharge (method described in the hint sheet of this article for donators), so this is affordable to anyone. They also added a dimension essence inventory too, but unfortunately, it is bugged, the dimension essences are in your inventory still, so this addition is just a useless visual show right now, hopefully they will correct it.

Devotion rewards

A fix fashion core is a nice reward, and you don't have to fumble with the wheel rolling, thats a small positive change.

Tatoo and henna

A new feature which requires little time and gives extra BR is always welcome. However, in this case, the BR gain seems so neglectable, and maxed so fast, it will be probably a feature which wont keep us excited for long. When you have gathered 100 henna (you can earn 150 per every 10 hour from the henna lab, and if you like, you can plunder 20-25 more daily from other players), you can create a random henna. Like everything in this game, this is completely random lottery, both the stats you get, and their amount. So it mostly resembles to refine, with the difference that with every stat increase, you get a decrease as well. Actually, you can lose more than you gain, so the only useful tatoo is the one where the negative stat is charisma. So all you have to do, click a slot, make a henna, if the negative stat is charisma, and better than the previous stat, insert it. If you max out everything, your BR might increase even by 500, whoa! Of course there will be an expert tatoo but that's for the future (and for balens for sure).

New spirit convenant functions

Spirit covenant was useless since a long time. The only feature I used lately was power of healing, but I purchased it separately. With the fishing nerf, even lord of time lost most of its charm. The current additions, detecting wild boss, and one-click farm can save you a lot of time, however. The world boss function I consider useless, since our WB dies in 1-2 rounds, and if I do it manually, I earn twice as much gold as in afk. Anyway, I think spirit convenant is useful now, just make sure you buy it from hot sales, with the 200 balen discount coupon for 1099.

New VIP functions

Besides increasing the weekly VIP reward, the only new VIP function I found is that they decrease gem conversion cost for VIPs. This means when you use your 1-hour VIP card (precious now, since you can't fish more!) you not only do guild blessing, VIP reward claim, sylph arena and adding dimensions, but you have to time your gem conversions. Still, this small addition is not something which could make anyone subscribe for VIP.

Eudaemon skill system simplified

In itself, this is a good change, you can choose which skills to improve, and neglect the useless ones. You need 640 skill books to improve one skill from lvl 4 to 5. With 72 different skills, it meant you needed 46,080 skill books to get a level 5 skill after level 4. Thats 921 days, and 23 billion gold. I bet not even the devs made that math :D So, this would be all good - if they didn't remove the skill books from the guild shop.

Check info of players from different server

This one was always possible in the past (battlegrounds and other places), so making this available again is not a new addition, just a bugfix which took them a loooong time :)

Negative changes

Sylph arena and normal arena hot icons removed

Game time increased, now you have to run in the city to these NPCs, an unnecessary, bad change.

Eudaemon skill books removed from guild shop

This is a massive nerf, you can no longer buy eudaemon skills for gold. I will never understand their love for nerfing, taking away from players.

Bounty targets reward nerf

Rewards have been decreased in the eudaemon arena. Since they removed rewards for making lvl 3 and lvl 4 gems, the amount you earned in eudaemon arena was no longer enough to claim all rewards during gem synthesis event. The situation will even get worse. A completely unnecessary and senseless nerf to those who can't beat the top opponents.

Resist crystal replacement

Previously, you could replace resist crystals with one click, now you have to remove first then add a new one. Extends game time, this is probably just a bug, not intentional nerf.

Sylph expedition reward adjustment

I see no extra reward here, if there was a change here, something got removed or amount decreased.

Guild blessing

Apart from the new graphics, I see new change whatsoever, the items are the same crap, xp books, seeds, the only useful item is still the bound balen.

New eudaemon: Panther lord

I'm not sure if the game developers noticed, but a player needs, and can use only ONE eudaemon. The only places where you have a minor use for 3 more is eudaemon arena and bounty targets. So adding a SEVENTH eudaemon to the game is no use to any, unless it has some unbalanced powers (to be nerfed later) like wind ranger. More eudaemon would mean just more skill books needed to max out skills, fortunately they changed the system and this is no more problem.

Texas Hold'em

Although we haven't seen this mini-game added, the forum patch message gives a good description, so we have a clear vision what this is going to be. First of all, I put this into the negative category, because:

1.) poker has NOTHING to do with this game. Period.

2.) if it gives any reasonable reward, then this is yet another thing which can increase game time.

3.) this is just another „buy stuff for balens” mini-shop, camouflaged so no one can really see how much they are paying for specific good (which, as such, will be certainly overpriced).

4.) making a complete poker game takes a lot of time. This amount of time could have been enough to resolve ALL problems we have right now.

5.) this is truly an online poker, where you pay money, win money, lose money. The only real difference to real poker is that you are not allowed to withdraw your winnings, you must spend it on virtual goods. I don't have to be a lawyer to know that this kind of activity would require a strict government licence, special taxes, and strict control to ensure no cheating happens from the side of the owner. And as such, by adding such an event without a licence, they risk shutting down the entire game, which would hurt all of us the worst way.

About the game system itself, you play poker, and from each pot, they take 20% rake (insanely high, compared to any poker site!) For all rakes you paid, you get points, which you can exchange for items in a point shop. We yet have to see the prices of items, but all I can say in advance, unless you have good experience in online poker, don't even try this.

Summary: my overall feeling of this patch is positive. I'm very happy about the treasure inventory. Of course, like with every patch, it would be even better if they don't do any unnecessary nerf, but we are used to those, sadly.