Wartune has nerfed dimension now the third time. Usually one major nerf is enough to get rid of a lot of players in any game, but 3 nerfs to the same feature is a clear show of incompetence. So you can do only 2 things: quit like many others, or try to adapt to the changes. Right now, I'm in the second category, so I try to summarize my current strategy for dimensions, which is entirely different from previous ones.
The first question is, what dimensions to do. First, let's examine the difference between dimensions.
1.) Trials. The new dimensions has a very simplified system, 90% of the events are trials. This is a battle which costs approx. 40 energy, and you get mahra, sepulcrum, crystal shard or will crystal. Do not do basic or beginner trials, it's just a waste of energy. I do only master / expert trials, but if you are short on time, and have to spend energy asap, you can do advanced ones as well. Advanced / expert dimension have more advanced and expert trials.
2.) Chest loot. These are very rare, and contain only a limited number of items. Some are useless (bounty scrolls, dragon souls, rose hazels), some are okay (like 50 mahra), some are very good (like eternal heart or random offering). Even basic dimensions seem to have offerings, so there is not much difference here.
3.) Hidden balen mines. Mines don't seem to be more common in advanced or extra dimensions. On the contrary, basic and int. dimensions have more event / square, and this seems to be true for mines as well.
4.) Decay rate. A fully explored basic or int. dimension decays in 3 days, an advanced in 6 days, so you get better payoff with advanced / ext dimensions.
5.) Reward. The reward is only crystals shards and will crystals, but you get a lot. Adv / Ext dimensions cost a lot more energy to explore than basic / int, but they don't give that much more crystals.
Considering the above, it would be better strategy to do only basic and intermediate dimensions - if we would have an unlimited number of dimensions open. But we get so much energy (4800 per day, plus bonus) it can be easily achieved that you have 5 fully explored advanced dimensions all the time. And it's just a matter of gold now to get enough advanced dimensions. If you got an exended, you can toy around with that and use some basic / int meanwhile.
So based on these, my strategy is this:
1. Open an advanced dimension every day.
2. Explore it fully as fast as possible, do only master / expert trials.
3. If I can't spend all energy, I don't worry to much: my free time is more valuable than a few extra crystals.
About balen mines: some people like to explore all squares in hope to find balen mines. This is a bad strategy. Mathematically, it doesn't matter if you explore 500 squares by fully exploring 2 level, or fast-exploring 10 levels. You will see the same number of unexplored squares, you have equal chance to find a mine. But the final reward will be drastically different.
PS: I updated the mytery shop table for you.
When Wartune introduced resists, I thought finally there is the answer to the sylph delphics which one-shot people regardless of their HP. Well, it wasn't, but the problem solved itself - because the smart developers corrected the lord divine medallion bug with patch 3.1 (which counted LD damage bonus twice), and people get a lot of HP and defense from other sources. Resist itself didn't help much because the initially so-rare will crystals became super-common later. So it was pretty difficult to have a higher resist than the opponent's resist reduce. For thsi reason, resist didn't do much in pvp, it helped only in pve like sky trials or god's descent.
Probably the developers have sensed this flaw, so they added a huge resist boost with dimensions. They did add will crystal bonus too, but to a less extent. Right now, my resists looks like this (see to the left) with Hades equipped. I have 5 electro dimensions (1 advanced, 3 intermediate and one basic). If we suppose the strong players have a similar reduce resist like me, then their Hercules deals 62% less damage on me. (see here how resist damage reduction is calculated.) Also you can see that I don't bother having a significant secondary and tertiary resistance. Couldn't make them as high as 870 anyway, so in pvp they wouldn't help. In pvp (sky trial, god's descent), I just convert my best crystals to the proper element when necessary.
So with dimensions, resistance finally became a useful stat. And it is an important tactical element which dimensions you do. With this super-high resistance, I was able to kill God's descent boss 29 - with one attempt - AFK!!
And resist is now important in PVP - in battleground, I could kill R4GE, while he had more than 100k advantage in BR:
(And this is not a boasting - I have maximum respect for the live player behind the ToK NM shadow - it's just an example what resist can do now.)
So, be careful what dimensions you do. I seem to find a lot more dimensions than I use, so I can select. I was lucky to get a lot of electro and keep getting more, so I will stick around with that for a while. Although Hercules is the most common sylph, people will change tactic eventually. Going heavy-dark is another option, for a mage, it is a must if you want to be good in Class Wars. I really like when in a game, tactics becomes important, and its no longer just a who-have-the-higher BR competiton.
