As I wrote in my previous post, I reached knighthood, and now I would like to share with you my thoughts about this Wartune feature.
As you know, the prerequisite for knighthood is at least 12000 points in tatoo. I wrote in more detail how much henna / adv. henna you need for this. As a mage, I can choose between arcane and restoration path. The arcane talent is damage skills, the restoration is heal skills. It's even simpler than the previous skill tree: there, you had to choose 5 skills to put in your skill bar. Here, you have only 5 skills to put there. The skills themselves are very simple too: 1 small 1-target spell (aka lightning), 1 small aoe (aka rain of fire), 1 big 1-target spell (aka delphic) 1 big aoe spell. Also there is an 5th skill wich restores 1200 rage and dispels 1 negative buff, for a mere 100 rage. There are also 4 passive skills with miscellaneous effects.
You can switch to the restoration path if you like, for that you need either 16000 total in tatoo, or have to use normal henna to change what bonus your abilities give. The 3 heal skills do nothing just heal, and they do it quite poorly. So even in group situation, I think the arcane path is better as long as there will be a time limit for fights. If you need heal, bring a poseidon :)
Advantages of the new skill system
1.) The big skills base damage is really big. 480-530% damage, you will deal almost as much damage with these as with your sylph skills. Comparison: criminal trial 530% damage, Odin Apocalypse Judgment 400%+ damage. Surely sylphing boosts my ATK rating by 20%, but still, the knighthood skill can compete. In World Boss, now I deal about the same damage in sylph and non-sylph. In arena, now I can kill opponents with the first aoe, and many I kill before they can sylph.
2.) Acquiring the skills grant you +20% ATK, +20% HP, +30% MDEF. That's sounds an enormous boost. BUT. Do not forget that you lose "Mana Master" (+15% magic attack boost), "Healing empowerment" (+20% MDEF) and "Sturdy" (+10% HP), or the equivalent of skills for other classes. Also there are some talents, like "Iron Wall" (damage received 14% less) which some say you will keep some say you will lose too. So the actual gain is much less than you would think.
3.) Talents. The talents are the real boost here. I had 90k bound balens, of those I spent 50k and got 14 talent points. You can buy offensive talents (+10% res reduce per level, +10% intensity/crit per level) and defensive talents (+10% tenacity/block per level, +10% to 2 resists per level, +10% influence/penetration per level). These gave me more BR boost than the skill bonuses.
Disadvantages
It has some disadvantages too - as you know, Wartune is never without a nerf, and any new feature is a good opportunity to take something away.
1.) No heal skills. No suntoria or restoration. I undertand that the devs wanted to resolve the problem with the forever-lasting fights. Still, a mage who can do nothing just nuke is just an archer. So yeah, we mages are now archers. Although I stopped using suntoria since a while, I miss restoration badly. It makes difference in many situations.
2.) No stun. Yeah, your influence skill does nothing after knighthood, just gives you partial protection vs non-knights stun. There will be a moment when everyone will be knight, and stun will be irrelevant. But until then, its a bit funny when knighted people stand stunned for rounds due to delphics and frost bolts and can't return the favor.
3.) No purify. Really, the 5th skill which dispels ONE negative buff for 100 rage is NOT a purify. So make sure you play with people who do not make knighthood and can still purify you.
4.) Rage. The skill "hear Elemental" (receive +2 rage each time you deal damage) is no more. Although the basic damage spell gives 10 rage instead of 6 now, you can't just cast an aoe and gain rage instead of losing it. So rage is now a problem. Especially with the cloth nerf taking away starting rage, prolly we will need to use rage rune again. Which is a pain since it means no more guardian rune. (Heal you must keep it, it's the only way to heal now).
Summary
So in summary, you lose EVERYTHING (heal, purify, rage, stun) but you will deal more damage. If you do not have a truckload of bound balens saved up for talents, the gain is just slightly better than the loss. Right now, knighthood is for cashers only, so these people have the bound balens for talents. When knighthood becomes free (I'm sure non-payers can reach it in max 4-6 months) then this will be a problem - although it seems a new item will be added, which you can substitute for bb when upgrading talents. If you have only limited access to talents (like most of us), I recommend offensive talents instead of defensive ones. And yes, casher will have a gigantic advantage here with talents, which you can't compete with up, even if you reach knighthood eventually.
Consequences
Still, do not think that knighthood is an optional thing. All must reach it before or later. Knighthood equipment, titan system and I bet a lot other stuff will require it as a prerequisite.
Also do not forget that getting the skill points takes an enourmous amount of XP. It takes month to max out your "knighthood level" and take full advantage of skills. So the eariler you can start it, the better.
Salsa
And here is one final point. I have been to a salsa weekend with my wife. It was an insane fun, we danced like 8-10 hours each day. On the pic you see us, in Sat evening there was a costume party with dress code from years 1920-30. And I didn't miss Wartune at all :) So there is life beyond the game, and if anything, I can suggest you dancing. If you have a partner already, you can get a better bond with her/him. If not, you surely will meet someone there, lot of singles. If everyone on Earth would dance, there would be no wars and no crime :)
The Wartune expert tatoo event is back, without change. Since everyone and their grandmother on my server is running around with knighthood skills, I checked how far I am from it. I made the strict math, and it seems with a recharge of 50 USD I can reach it as well. I didn't recharge since 3 months, and this should be the real last one :)
So here are is the math - so use see how I'm thinking:
I have 5300 balens remaining which I didn't spend since December.
I have 10295 adv. henna collected and saved up from previous events.
I have 181 free chests collected last week.
First let's see how much adv. henna I can get in total.
In the following 3 days, with mount training, holy forge and free chest from shop, I can get 105 more chests. If you have some unrefined mount, or 5k+ mount whips, then you can get even more.
For 5k balens recharge, and 10k balens spent, I can get 214 chests and 3900 adv. henna. For 10k balens, I can buy 3x129+31=418 chests. Also, if I do the expert tatoos the way I described here, I will get 91 more chests. That's a total of 1009 chest, for which I can get 8000 more adv. henna in the hot events exchange. So it will look like this:
I'm just short of knighthood, I realized... I would need 1000 more adv. henna, For which I would need 71 more chests. And then I remembered what my friend Panzer told me earlier, and realized how to get those. In archeology, I got a bunch of crystalloids, epic armor shards, and legendary stones. I hope you didn't sell those. I did sell the crystalloids, but can buy them back for insignia. So, anyway. I will make a lvl 80 armor, and holy forge it with the otherwise totally useless vulcan hammers and stoves, so I can claim the otherwise unavailable chests in the holy forge event. It will cost a lot of gold, but gold is free, so converting it into chests is a good deal: especially if this gets me the last 1000 adv. henna required for knighthood....
I just wrote this article to explain you how to use math to optimize your play (and yeah, minimize balen spendings :) Wartune's spender system is overcomplicated for a reason: so you recharge / spend a lot more than you need. If you start doing this without making the math, you might realize too late you are short of something, and then it becames expansive. So whenever you headjump into an event like this, do the match with an excel like above.
And yes, I know I said I stopped spending - and I did so for last 3 months. But I decided to give this last 50 bucks to Wartune. I still plan to play for a while, and it's like +1 million BR. But this should be really the end of it :) So now just let's hope I didn't miscalculate anything...
As you know, the cloth system in Wartune will undergo a drastical change. There will be no more separate levels for each cloth, there will be only a combined cloth level. A level 1 cloth will worth 300 XP, a level 2 600 XP, a level 3 1200 XP etc. Cored and good luck charms will be 200 XP. Cosmos described the whole system perfectly, I don't want to repeat the detailed info you can find there. There is a cloth synth event currently going on. I just want to help you with the math: does it worth making items for this event, or just wait for the cloth changes?
Cost for making different levels of cloth
A level 2 cloth requires a level 1 cloth and a fashion core. Success chance is 100%. This cost you 500 cloth XP, and will yield you 600 - so you should make all your level 1 cloth into level 2 before patch, if nothing else.
A level 3 cloth can be made from 2 level 2 cloth. That's 1000 XP. if you don't use good luck charm, you have approx. 20% chance to fail. So actually it will cost 1250 XP. Or, you can use a good luck charm, in this case your cost will be 1200 XP. Also, you can use cores to upgrade the level 2 cloth. In this case, you need an average of 3 core for success: so your cost is 1100 XP. Obiously, this is the best method to make a lvl 3 cloth.
A lvl 4 cloth requires 2 x lvl 3 (2200 XP). Without good luck charm, your cost is 2200 x 1.25 = 2750. With 2 good luck charms, it's 2600. Using cores you have a very minimal chance, I don't recommend that at this level.
A lvl 5 will cost you 2 x lvl 4 (5200 XP). If you risk, with 20% fail chance your average cost will be 6500. With 4 good luck charms, it will be 6000 XP. It is surprising it is better to make with good luck charms? Well, before the new system, getting lvl 1 cloth was much easier than getting a luck charms. So in that case, you better risked. But now the situation has changed.
Cost to make lvl 6 is 13,600 XP, cost to make lvl 7 is 30,400, cost to make lvl 8 is 67,200, cost to make lvl 9 is 147,200, and for lvl 10, it's 320,000. (if you have that much good luck charms at all).
The rewards
Now let's check out the rewards. In the new system, you get 4800 XP for your level 5 cloth, but here it cost you 6000 to make. However, you will get as reward 2x luck charm and 5x fashion core, and 1 chest, worth ath least 1700 XP, and you get 2 additional chests. So it worth making it.
A level 6 will require 2x lvl 5, and luck charm worth 1600 in addition. The Xp you get back is 3600 at least, plus 4 chests.
The same applies to every following level. However, please note that this applies only if you don't have to make lvl 5+ clothing without getting prize. So my suggestion is, if you have enough good luck charms, do the event, bu do only one of each level at most each day.
About wings...
Making wings require 5x more materials. However, the reward is only twice as much. So I do not recommend making wings.
Lately I see a lot of people in Wartune who have reached knighthood. It means still a lot of players have a trust in this game's future to spend money. It's good, I wish the devs would share that optimism :)
So let's see how the math works out:
Normal henna
You can get 300 normal henna per day if you check your henna lab in the morning and in the evening. if you do it a bit more intense (do a third run of 1-4 hours, and also raid) you can get a bit more but imho it doesn't worth the effort.
When you check the tatoo tab, it will say normal henna gives 1-9 stat, adv. gives 21-39. This is not completely true. After a stat on one slot exceeds 200, you will get only 1-8. This decreases further, at 300 it will be only 1-7 etc. For this reason, you should use adv. henna only when you already have enough to reach knighthood immediately. Until then, use only normal henna for optimal gain. Sadly, this also means there is no such as "free" knighthood yet. You can't attain the required stat just with normal henna in a reasonable time.
If you were doing henna lab twice a day, and didn't use adv. henna yet, your stat must be somewhere +200-250 per slot. In one month, you will earn 9000, which gives about +40 per slot. Next month you get a bit less, next month a bit less again. For knighthood, your goal is about 1500 per slot.
How much henna is needed for knighthood
Let's suppose you are willing to cough up some balens, and want to reach knighthood in the near future (ie. 2-3 months). In that time, you can attain like 2800-3000 total stats from normal henna, so you need 9000 more from advanced henna.
Since every 100 adv. henna used will give you approx. +30 stats, you need 30000 adv. henna in total.
Advanced henna
So far, the cheapest way to get advanced henna was wait for an event where you could exchange 120 chest for 1000 adv. henna. This way you could get 1000 adv. henna for free per event. You could also spend balens on the chests: with 2k coupons, you can buy 129 chest for 3000 balens. So if you spent 100 USD, you could get about 10k adv. henna (including prizes from the 3 spender events as well). So the price is approx. 1 balen per adv. henna. Do not buy adv. henna in shop, where it's much more expensive.
With the proper event, expert tatoo I-II, you could boost the amount of adv. henna you got. If you spend 2 x 100 USD in two henna events, and also get some more for free chests, you can get the minimum necessary 22700 adv. henna, then use it this way:
expert tatoo 1. day: use 10.000 adv henna, get as bonus 1900+1200.
expert tatoo 2. day: use 10.000 adv. henna, get as bonus 1900+1500
expert tatoo 3. day: use 5.000 adv henna to get 800, then spend the rest.
With this you will reach the 30k used, where you get 4000 more as reward - so prolly you don't even need to wait 2-3 months if you do it this way.
As an alternate, you might decide to spend only 100 USD, but then you need like 5-6 months to reach knighthood.
Of course they might alter anything, might remove expert tatoo event, might remove chest exchange, and might add unlimited adv. henna reward in events in 3 months, you never know :)
But all in all, this is a much cheaper BR boost than previous ones.
*** And what to do with chests ***
Personally, I will grab each day the 10 beast soul chest, and exchange 200 event chest for 100 hand of god. Too bad there is no more sophisticated exchange, like 1 hand for 2 chest...
Among all the late Wartune nerfs, we get another evil twist: the long-awaited sepulcrum and mahra event is back, and the amount of chest rewarded is still the same - however, you can't exchange these chests for anything useful - no adv. henna, no cloth set, no mount.
So what to do with them? First of all, check the contents: eudaemon junk (completely, utterly useless unless you are a new player), mount hoof, pure refine crystals (even more useless) and as rare drops, cloth pieces - useless, since you can't get the title without the wings. As additional rare drops, you can also get cloth shards. But the problem is, the cloth shard exchange list is not updated since a while, and instead, they offer the newer cloth sets for a lot of chests (ie. balens).
So let's check the available exchanges:
Maybe you can consider exchanging 600 for an orange seal, then sacrifice it for adv. sepulcrum. Also getting a purple seal for 100 chest can be okay if you still need it for some reason. Here is the second exchange:
If you need components for a bi-sylph, and either willing to spend 600 USD on it, or hope that getting the first version will be free somewhere in the future, you can grab these components as well.
Also, there is the third, basic exchange, where you can get beads of influence, and the 3 cloth (without wing).
And ofc there is the above mentioned sacrifice trick, so if you need adv sepulcrum still, and got 600 chest, you can exchange it for adv sepulcrum (but not a great ratio, 160-200 adv sepulcrum for 600 chests).
Whatever you choose, it's a kind of gamble, hoping for a future change in the game - either the first version of bi-sylph becoming free, or cloth shard exchange list expanded eventually. I think the later one has a higher probability of happening, but it is good to prepare for the first version as well, so this is what I will do:
Buy some emblem of wind and water, and open the rest (except for 90), for the cloth shards. Depending how many of the 3 different cloth pieces I got, I will exchange the remaining chests to complete the set, and open the rest. Update: I did this (exchanged 200 for wind&water emblem, opened 400 chests - got 100 cloth shards, and 5 cloth, excluding helmet).
I post this to make sure others dont fall into the same trap as me. Check out these graphics:
One is "chicken leg" (an item you get after tending to others campfires" the other is "ham chest", the current "chest" from hot events.
You see the similarilities? One is kind of mirror of the other. When a chest looks like the food you get somewhere else, accidents happen. Like, when I use all food after campfires, I open the event chests too. I post this so this accident doesn't happen to you. Chests should look like chests, imho...
Hi, I would like to share you a warning about a recent "silent nerf". I'm not sure when it went live, but probably the last patch. It's about spire.
Previously, you could start a spire run, turn off the computer, and then get the reward chests in your mail. Since spire is pretty long and boring, this was an ideal way to "blitz it". Lately, I check my mail only once every few days, so I didn't notice immediately - but I had no spire chests there from the previous day. So this thing is no longer working. I don't know if it is some conscious nerf from their part in their senseless nerfing frenzy, or simply a cron died out on their server and no one noticed.
But the point is, now if you want to get the full reward for spire, you have to leave your computer on, and you must be online when you finish. (You can still do it afk, just don't log out). I know that with a team of 4 medusa now you can even blast through spire nightmare non-afk and complete it, and it does not even take a horribly long time. But for me, it is better to get 16 spire nm chest by spending 1 minute on it, than getting 24 in 12-15 minutes :)
Still, do not think that knighthood is an optional thing. All must reach it before or later. Knighthood equipment, titan system and I bet a lot other stuff will require it as a prerequisite. 
