Hero Development: DD and Medusa

I've been working up my Dread Drake, exploiting his Enlightenment 1 talent.  I got him to evo1 199, with most of the experience for 200.  I have one dupe, and although I could afford the 40000 shards (barely), I figure he's high enough for now.  I'd rather spend the shards on getting his talent to 9, or elsewhere.  I'll wait for another dupe or two before evo2.  As I was almost to 200, I happened to get a pretty nice talent in a quest reroll:

Not bulwark, but not bad

That's a sign.  I zeroed out my dungeons and HBM for the last burst of experience, then I replaced the talent.  DD now is quite nasty in toe-to-toe combat, using Bulwark 4 crests.  Very hard to kill.

DPS queen to be

Now I've started working up Medusa.  She's got Enlightenment 3, so she's going to evo0 200 now, and then to evo1 200.  I have no dupes for her, so I'll have to pay shards unless I get lucky pretty soon.  20000 shards for evo1 is pretty much always worth doing for a top shelf hero, and that goes double for a hero getting Enlightenment boosts.  It's a lovely talent, but you don't really want it there unless you're actively developing the hero.

I am still above 400000 HB.  That is with selling 600 of the green books but no others.  I think there may be sources of HB that I did not count, since I am nearly keeping up even with Enlightened heroes.

Should One Sell Experience Books II

Earlier I posted some opinions and figures on selling experience books.  My conclusion was: you should not.  That, assuming you play a lot: you are in a guild, finish all the subgames each time they are offered, and do 2.5 quests per day.

However an anonymous poster corrected me.  I assumed you'd go to level 200 at each level of evolution, even though you need only go to 180 (uncapped) or 185 for evo 1 and 2 respectively.  Duh!  Embarrassing mistake.  Let's correct that and recompute.  (Obviously anonymous already did this computation, but I'm showing the work here.)

So, experience.  Here's data.  To fully max out a hero at 200ee, you need level 180 then 185 then 200.  Level 180 requires 77508850 EXP; level 185 takes 100486350 EXP; level 200 takes 208918850 EXP.  200ee thus takes 386914050 EXP.  Similarly, 200ee takes 3 full sets of honor badges to 200, minus a handful of the little ones.  (When you evolve, you don't have to do the small levels.)  The total required is 814,000 + 800,000 + 780,000 = 2394000 HB.

Thus, in terms of outlays needed to max heroes, the ratio of EXP:HB is ~162.  If we earn more than 162 EXP per HB earned consistently, then books will pile up unused (and heroes will be blocked) and we should sell some books to equalize.

As I posted in the original assessment, the total experience I am earning per day (at Insane 4-10 and HBM S) is roughly 14.2m/day. 

Similarly, I am getting about 50000 HB/day from all sources. 

9.4m/50000 is ~188.  This is slightly above the breakeven point above.  So I was wrong: at least with these numbers, I will want to sell some books.  I doubt all of them, because it is close.  But I'll have to pay attention.

Also, as anonymous points out, you can increase experience by the Enlightenment talent.  I do this as much as possible.  For example right now I have Enlightenment 1 on my DD, who I am taking to 200e (I have no dupes for him).  Then I'll work on Medusa, with Enlightenment 3, again to 200e unless I get wildly lucky on some gem rolling.

20% extra experience is nice.

One more good point anonymous made.  Some people stop heroes at 180ee (uncapped), which saves 131410000 EXP; the ratio of earnings in that case is 255504050/2394000=~107.  I don't think this is necessary, but if you are super tight on honor badges, consider it.

So, why do have so many honor badges?  My guess is because I have only recently gotten to ID4-10; I was stuck sweeping expert dungeons until last September.  The different in experience is rather large.  But now that I am sweeping ID4-10, I should expect to run dry pretty soon.

Progress for DD and PD

Ever since I got my Dread Drake, which was two weeks back, I've been pouring all my experience into him from dungeon and HBM sweeps.  Very early I luckily rolled an Enlightenment 1 talent which I gave him.  Also during the past two weeks, pets appeared (+10/+14% exp from dungeons), and I got to ID4-10.  But still, it's been a long drag to level 200.  (Why not 180 + 1000 EXP?  Because of the Enlightenment.)

But I made it today.  And...

Drake evolution

Now I am heading straight for level 200.  I won't do the second evo anytime soon; will wait on dupes.
Hopefully a nice Bulwark 5 talent will eventually show up.

In other hero news, I have had over 18000 fame for a while now.  I finally decided to pull the trigger on this...

This guy's famous

It was for the new Summoner Archdemon, which in spite of the shiny PD, I did miserably on.  Try again tomorrow.  But the talent will continue to pay off going forward.

Creating Contention at Battle Altars

Almost daily, players list their heroes on reddit.  I am often surprised by how low their crest sets are relative to their might.  (Here's a recent example.  90000 might; a handful of level 3 crest sets, mostly level 2s, and even some 1s.)  I guess people don't take the Lost Realm very seriously.

I've always pounded the Realm as hard as I could subject to FtP limits.  So by now I have all six battle altars (and indeed I have had them for months).  And for all six, I contended for them either once or at most only a few times when they were new.

It would be nice to have contention for my altars, since the more they change hands, the more blue crystal they create.

For a while I had two teams: one scatter team for facing demons, and the other stun-heavy team for fighting the normal monster groups.  But then I got Aries, and gave him my Revite 4 crest set.  Now I just have one team.  It could certainly be better, but it's pretty strong for my 97000 might.

About two weeks ago, I realized that my problem with getting fights in my battle altars might be that I am just too strong.  Perhaps the code works like this: when you first expand the size of the Realm to include a battle altar, the program assigns you a similar-might player to be the other contestant for that altar.  And perhaps that assignment never changes.  (If you have some notion of how the Lost Realm works, please drop a line.)

If my conjectured functionality is so, then it would explain why I don't get fights at altars.  Because I have not puffed up my might artificially, and because I have excellent crests (which don't count as might), my opponents may not be able to beat my team even trying multiple times.  Also, I am pretty hardcore about always doing all the subgames every day; this means I am increasing in my "true" might about as fast as can be done absent spending money.  As a result of that, any other average player is never going to get stronger than me, and in fact will be slowly left behind unless he is similarly hardcore.  (Or spends.  Or gets lucky rolling heroes that I don't have.)

Anyway, I decided to try an experiment.  I set up a team with just a level 60 angel in it.  For the past weeks I have been leaving this team as my team whenever I exit the realm.  My hope was that my opponents, whoever they are, would eventually think to re-try their battle altar and be pleasantly surprised.  Then, assuming I can take the altar back (almost certain), if I keep doing it, perhaps they'll keep beating my angel and I can get my altars leveling up.  More blue crystal!

So I have now been weak for weeks.  Nothing changed.  Not until yesterday, that is.  I entered the realm to see this:

First battle altar contention in months!

Excellent!  Of course I retook it.  Hasn't changed since... but I am hopeful.  Meanwhile, a second altar got taken by someone else!  Go, go, whoever you guys are.  Maybe I can get all six into contention!

Incidentally, if you are inspired to try something like this, please first consider its effect on your guild.  If you are one of the 10 or so highest might guys in your guild, then you probably have guildmembers who are used to using your team as the other half of their Lost Realm demon killing.  And in that case, it's probably a bad idea to do this.

Should One Sell Experience Books?

[UPDATE: this post is wrong.  See the first comment.  The general method is right, so I have updated it in a newer post.]

Clashers are always asking that question.  Since a new one just popped up at reddit, and I have this blog now, I thought I'd take a stab at it, since my answer is different from the traditional one.

The traditional answer is yes, sell some books.

My answer is no.  The reason I say that is because I have been tight on experience and not HB for months now.  Take a look at my top heroes in their altar:

Five shinies, one capped.

These are my top heroes by level.  None is at his cap except Immo, and I only use him in the Lost Battlefield.  Santa and Warlock are both evo 1, waiting for dupes (or spare shards) to evo twice.  Harpy Queen I also rarely use, although I probably will in the future, unlike Immo.  But experience is tight.  I do use Dread Drake, but he is my current experience project, since his talent is Enlightenment 1.  Hey, 20% is better than nothing.  I will evolve him soon, when he hits level 200.

Meanwhile, I have uncapped Griz and others not shown above.  I have 1.3m HB waiting for use.  800000 will go into DD when he evolves.  But after that... well, we'll see.

Perhaps I am weird?  Well, let's consider some data and do some math.

First, experience.  To fully max out a hero at 200ee, you need 3 full sets of level 200 experience.  Level 200 takes 208918850 EXP; 200ee thus takes 626756550 EXP.  Similarly, 200ee takes 3 full sets of honor badges to 200, minus a handful of the little ones.  (When you evolve, you don't have to do the small levels.)  The total required is 814,000 + 800,000 + 780,000 = 2394000 HB.

Thus, in terms of outlays needed to max heroes, the ratio of EXP:HB is ~262.  If we earn more than 262 EXP per HB earned consistently, then books will pile up unused (and heroes will be blocked) and we should sell some books to equalize.  If things go the other way -- we get less than 262 EXP per HB over time -- then we have no easy way to address the problem.  HB will pile up; there is no way to turn HB into experience.

So what rates do you earn?

We can guestimate rates by looking at the major sources of experience and HB.

Most non-book experience is coming from two sources: dungeons and HBM.  With dungeons, one gets 3 per hour; thus in theory you can get 72 per day but in practice you probably sleep.  I do, anyway.  I usually use up my dungeons before bed, so, the next 6 hours and 40 minutes I am not maxxed out.  But if I sleep for 8 hours a day, I lose 3 dungeons per day there.  Also I occasionally have my dungeons max out when I am not paying attention for some reason.  I probably lose another 3 dungeons per day there.  So call it 66/day.  Since I three-starred ID4-10, I get 124971 experience (+14% for pets); that comes out to 9.4m EXP/day.

Now, HBM.  I am sweeping HB-S, and I almost never miss any.  You get 8 HBMs per day.  HBM-S is said to average about 600k EXP by a guy with data.  So, that's another 4.8m EXP/day.

The total experience per day is thus roughly 14.2m/day.  (You can see here why getting to ID4-10 is such a big deal.)

OK, now HB.  Non-book HB sources are more varied, but they largely come from these sources: nobility title bonus, boss 3, torch battle, guild wars, arena, expeditions, and quests.  My nobility title bonus is 8800, and I get another 14300 from boss 3.  My guild runs two torch battles per week and always gets the maximum reward, which is 10000 HB; this averages to 2857HB/day.  There are also two Guild Wars, in which I usually get 11-20th in my guild, for 3400HB each; this averages 971HB/day.  I am holding pretty steady at the 90/day level in arena, with perhaps 15-20 battles per day, maybe a third wins.  Call it 2400 HB/day.  Expeditions, I am currently getting about 28000 HB/day.  And finally, quests; this one is hard to estimate but I run 2-3 quests per day, and get perhaps 8000 HB/quest (not counting books).  Here's a reference on that.  With 2.5 per day, that's 20000HB/day.

So the total HB per day I am getting is about 50000 from all sources.

Now let's put the numbers in perspective.  9.4m/50000 is ~188.  This is far below the breakeven point computed above, namely, 262.  The books I am getting don't make up the difference.  And that explains why I never ever sell any books any more, and all of my heroes that matter are uncapped.  I need all the experience I can get!

PSA: Aviar attacks with his hero

After I posted my pets guide, I linked it on reddit and got an interesting reply: "Aviar only need to be in proximity of one of your heroes being attacked to activate. Whoever is attacking that hero will be silenced."

I also saw this in another context: while working on my Lava3 article, I asked the guy who posted the strategy I am using why he was using Aviar since (if it only is defensive) it would seem to be very hard to get to have any effect.  He replied, "Aviar, the owl, has been described wrong. It does activate when your hero is in battle. As such it gives us additional silence same as garuda."

Where there's smoke, there's fire.  Or may be.  I decided to test it myself.

After kicking myself for not testing this yesterday (when Guild Wars was on), I finally decided that the best way to test was to try it out in a easy dungeon (basic dungeon 8/14).  So I rigged up my Treantar with lifedrain crests, then I assigned Aviar to a level 20 cupid I have.  I carefully put in the Tre first and let him kill troops.  Then, when a nearby enemy Paladin stepped up to fight, I put in the Cupid.

Sure enough.  Aviar fires green bolts at the Paladin.

Now, this is not sufficient to distinguish the two theories on offer.  But seeing as there are other pets which attack the hero that their owner is attacking, and none which are activated proximately, I am going with theory two.  Aviar procs based on its hero attacking, not being attacked.

Towards Lava Isle 3

My guild is easily doing Mesa4s each night in between bosses.  We've talked about trying to move up to Lava Isles, and a few of the guys have tried it.  They've gotten crushed hard.  (Having looked at it a little, I told them that would happen...)

(BTW my guild is Acadian Clashers -- drop a line if you're looking for a solid guild and you're on iOS; most of us in Eastern timezone; we do bosses at 20:00 and 20:30 server time.)

Before I started writing this, it was not clear to me which Lava Isle to aim for.  So I asked about that on reddit, and got a pretty helpful answer: "Lava 1 rewards are worse than mesa 4, for lava 2 you need minos so harder to find partner for it. Lava 3 can be done with f2p setup as well, and of course means best rewards. We farm it with 95%+ and only use one spirit mage, no other p2p heroes, and no event heroes."  I know my guild has some Minos, but on the other hand rewards for Lava 3 are better, and since everyone can do it... I think that's what we should aim for.

I have looked around, and found a lot of different ways of dealing with Lava3.  However, I like this one best, since it is detailed, and built around using FtP heroes.  That allows everyone to join, at least eventually (high levels and skills are necessary).  It also promotes the development of heroes that everyone should be developing anyway.  Also, using FtP heroes also means that we would have a lot more flexibility in assembling teams, depending on who is around.   Guys cannot always attend every night, and it would be preferable to be able to do Lavas in spite of missing that one guy with Arctica.

Generally, the meta for lava isle 3 appears to be as follows.  First, you have to survive the really immense initial damage incoming.  Generally, revite Ghoulems with very high skills are needed for this, as well as high level, evolved or d'evo'ed heroes.  Also you need a very fast amp-up from PDs: three are used for this, and also Cupids. Second, you've got to avoid or stop the procs of the bosses.  This is generally done by killing them remotely; the teams use Phantom King, Santa, and Grizzly Reaper to inflict massive remote damage.  For the bosses you fight hand-to-hand, it is done by constantly silencing them, using one Aries, and 4x Garutas and Aviars (the pet).  Finally, you need to output a large amount of damage in general, subject to a cap of 60000 damage.  The 60000 cap obviously requires at least one Pumpkin Duke, but we already have three for the ramp-up.  We will use for DPS the heroes that do lots of hits and which proc remotely: PK in particular, as well as SB and GR.

Anyway, here's an adapted version of the teams in the link.

Team 1:
SK (skill 8/10+), Cupid, Ghoulem (skill 9/10+)
2x remote damage heroes (in order, PK, GR, SB)

Team 2
Ghoulem, PD
2x remote damage heroes
1x utility - 1 Aries (skill 8/10+)

Team 4 is the same as team 2, except instead of Aries, it has:
1x utility - 1 Cupid

Team 3:
PD
3x remote damage heroes

1x utility: Treantar (skill 8/10+)

Levels:
All heroes should be evo 160+
Ghoulems should be evo 180+

Minimum Skill Levels:
Ghoulem: 8/10
GR: 7/10
PK: 1/10
PD: 9/10
Cupid: 9/10

Talents/Crests:
PDs should have Revite 3+
Ghoulems should have Revite 4+
Cupids need Revite 4+; 5 preferred
All remote damage heroes should have Revive, level doesn't matter.

Artifacts:
all artifacts should be level 5.
PDs should have Blitz scroll for fastest ramp-up.
One hero in each team should have Garuda, and this should not be a remote damage hero (i.e. not PK, SB, GR, or Aries).
Others should have Victors Emblem, for defense.

Pets:
All can be used except: no Celestis in teams 2, 3, and 4.

Substitutions:
Spirit Mage can be subbed for any remote damage hero.

Three Flamed Insane Dungeon 4-10

I have been pressing through the insane dungeons for a while now.  Brief hangups on a few of them, but eventually I'd get lucky and get through.  I am free to play, so, that means I do not have Mino or Spirit Mage to work with.  Instead my team is PD, Cupid, Druid, TG, Santa, and either Griz or Dread Drake.  Generally you want Griz if the problem is enemy heroes, or DD if the problem is buildings.

I got to insane dungeon 4-10 yesterday.  My goal is to three-star it.  Doing that increases pretty impressively the shards and experience I get for farming dungeons.  I looked for some help on youtube, and found it with this video.  It's better than most videos for ID 4-10 in that he explains how it will work, and thus what you're trying to do with the drop.  In this case, to get all the heroes to go left together.  It took me a few tries, but finally I dropped my heroes and copters on the opposite sides of my spells, and that got it done.  The heroes all went left, and very soon...

Winning...

 Oh yeah!

Three flames!  Sweeps from now on!

There's often a snowball effect when winning in CC.  I did not lose a single hero, and only 10 copters.

I have been farming ID 2-10 since I completed it recently, which gets 0 or 75 shards (+2 for pets) and 53,330 experience (+10% for pets).  But now I farm as follows:

Cha-ching

0 or 88 shards (+2 for pets) and 124971 experience (+10% for pets).  More than double the experience!  Wow!  Now, the chance to get nonzero shards from a blue dungeon is said to be about 30%.  So, my expected shards have gone from 24.5 to 28.4 -- a 16% increase.  Also nice.

The question now is... what do I do next?  I can return to dungeon 2-1, trying for a 3-star to get the artifact Goblet of Life.  Or I can start trying to push HBM, where I have completed S but not T.