I've never gotten a hero card as a reward. Never... until yesterday!
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| Pixie card! |
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| More work. Cannot just gimme? |
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Got a Hero from Trials!
I've been playing this game nonstop for two years now. In all that time I have rarely lost any hero trials to a maxxed queue. So I have probably run around 2800 of them by now. The first year or so was spent in Challenge I. The second in Challenge II; I've been doing HT16 for the last six months or so.
I've never gotten a hero card as a reward. Never... until yesterday!
It comes in the mailbox and you must claim it:
My Pixie is already evo1 199. This is my second dupe for her, so it brings me that much closer to evo2ing.
I've never gotten a hero card as a reward. Never... until yesterday!
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Druid Amping at High Speed
Someone had a question about the last bit of my post yesterday: where did you get the numbers for the boost to damage that a Druid gets when hitting at maximum speed? This is fairly easily computed, but it relies on information about the game that not everyone knows. So I thought I'd show the work.
Druid's boosts per proc at various skill levels can be seen in game (look in the Hero Compendium) or at the wiki. That's the easy part. The harder part is understanding how speed boosts work in conjunction with energy and the proc system.
Heroes accumulate 15 energy per hit. Thus, absent any outside energy source, and assuming that they are immobile hitting as often as they can, heroes proc every 7 hits (7*15 = 105, 105>100 and extra energy is discarded). Castle Clash has quantized time steps of 200ms. 7 hits at max speed is thus 1.4 seconds.
The stack of procs that a hero can create is a function of his proc's duration and his skill cooldown. Most heroes have a cooldown that is longer than their proc's duration. So they don't stack at all. Druid, however, has no cooldown. His proc lasts 5 seconds. 1.4 divides 5 into 3 plus a remainder of .8 seconds; that .8 second is 8/14 of the 1.4 seconds between procs. Thus, we find that Druid will stack 3 times about 43% of the time (.43 = 6/14), and he will stack 4 times about 57% of the time (.57 = 8/14).
To compute the average boost we get from Druid, therefore, we need to average the effects of a stack of three of his boosts and a stack of four of his boosts. (To be more precise, we don't literally average them but compute a weighted average with ~.43 weight on 3 stacks, and ~.57 on 4 stacks.)
Here's a table showing the net damage boost Druid gets at maximum speed. The "Weighted Average" column is the multiplier. For example, my Druid has skill 7, so once spooled up he creates a team multiplier of 2.5.
In practice, if you have a Valentina and/or Cupid you will do somewhat better than the attack boost computed above, since your Druid will proc somewhat more often. Druid by himself generates 375 energy over 5 seconds. Cupid (skill 9) adds 0 to 55 to that, every 6 seconds; so Druid should be getting closer to 4 procs continually.
Druid's boosts per proc at various skill levels can be seen in game (look in the Hero Compendium) or at the wiki. That's the easy part. The harder part is understanding how speed boosts work in conjunction with energy and the proc system.
Heroes accumulate 15 energy per hit. Thus, absent any outside energy source, and assuming that they are immobile hitting as often as they can, heroes proc every 7 hits (7*15 = 105, 105>100 and extra energy is discarded). Castle Clash has quantized time steps of 200ms. 7 hits at max speed is thus 1.4 seconds.
The stack of procs that a hero can create is a function of his proc's duration and his skill cooldown. Most heroes have a cooldown that is longer than their proc's duration. So they don't stack at all. Druid, however, has no cooldown. His proc lasts 5 seconds. 1.4 divides 5 into 3 plus a remainder of .8 seconds; that .8 second is 8/14 of the 1.4 seconds between procs. Thus, we find that Druid will stack 3 times about 43% of the time (.43 = 6/14), and he will stack 4 times about 57% of the time (.57 = 8/14).
To compute the average boost we get from Druid, therefore, we need to average the effects of a stack of three of his boosts and a stack of four of his boosts. (To be more precise, we don't literally average them but compute a weighted average with ~.43 weight on 3 stacks, and ~.57 on 4 stacks.)
Here's a table showing the net damage boost Druid gets at maximum speed. The "Weighted Average" column is the multiplier. For example, my Druid has skill 7, so once spooled up he creates a team multiplier of 2.5.
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| Druid Attack Boost, Max Speed |
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
An Archdemon Highscore
Castle Crisis is on, and as usual the iOS server did the first three subgames on the third day (and not long into it, either). Fortunately for me, I am usually up at midnight when the tries-per-day is reset for Castle Crisis. So I always do well on the lucky imp, and I can always get the full set of crest rewards from the Avaricifer.
Now it's archdemon time. I used to get great scores against the one that could be beaten with a custom Atlanticore and Death Knight. Then they stopped sending any archdemon except the latest one. (I spend a lot of shards getting that DK's skill to level 9!)
The current archdemon is very hard to deal with, since it is immune to stunning, scatter, and silence. It is not immune to slowing, but slowing it doesn't help much since it will switch targets from time to time (not sure how this works). This will mean that it will target your PD, who is always close, and then, unless you can tank the damage, you lose.
If you can tank the damage with PD anyway, you might as well forget about slow locking and tank the damage.
The only way I am aware of to deal with it is a combination of massive hitpoints, lots of healing, and protection for your heroes. Unfortunately for me, I have no Ghoulem. So I am lacking both the massive healing and the group protection that he supplies. I can get in the 10 million range just by brute force: lots of revive crests, Tre, and luck. That's about a much as I thought I will ever get unless they change the archdemon, or I roll Ghoulem.
Today another thread about the archdemon came up on reddit, and after reading shlam16's comments I decided to have another shot at it. One interesting thing I learned is that this archdemon has a high crit rate, which accounts for a lot of his instakills. Makes sense. Valentina can protect somewhat against crits; otherwise it's a vulnerability that you cannot fully address. You mitigate it by having revive crests or talent on every hero, and Treantar to revive them a third time.
I don't have Ghoulem or Valentina, so I used the core team suggested by shlam, but putting in Medusa and Cupid. Medusa is great for getting rid of the eye-catchers, which is another thing Ghoulem does if you have him. Cupid amps damage and adds energy, like Valentina.
For those curious, my lineup is: PD/DD/Druid/Cupid/Medusa/Tre. The first four are double evoed; Medusa and Tre are single evo. I crested them all with Revive of various levels (4/4/4/3/1), except Tre who has Revive 5 for his talent. PD has Berserk 8 and the Blitz Scroll 5, so he amps up fast.
My first run didn't work very well. I didn't exceed the 17.3 million I got yesterday. I was close, though -- 17.1m -- so I felt positive about the second run. Obviously there is a lot of luck involved with the archdemon; you have to try a strategy a few times to have a decent sample of what it's capable of. (Indeed part of what is hard about archdemon is that you only get two tries per day, so it's hard to experiment.)
The second run, things just went much better. Here it is after two minutes...
You can see PD, Druid, and Cupid have all been revived by Tre. This means they are on their final life. No permadeaths yet though. Eventually, though, the archdemon killed PD one more time:
And after that it goes downhill rapidly. With PD gone, his stacks unwind over 8 seconds and then the eyecatchers can't be killed fast by Medusa, and they amp up the demon. Meanwhile, Druid stops his heals every 1.4 seconds, and Tre's shield is no longer providing nearly fulltime coverage.
Then a rapid end, with about 26 seconds left.
183m is currently good enough for 382nd place, which would give 1200 fame if archdemon ended today. My old highscore, 17m, was around 4100th place with a reward of 700 fame. 500 fame is worth working for!
To improve my reward, I would need to place above 200th, which currently requires at least 326m damage. That seems quite unlikely. Even if I can get luckier and go the full 3 minutes, it would only increase my score by around 30%, to around 237m.
One easy thing I could do to improve my score is beef up my Druid's skill, currently at level 7. This won't get more than about 5-10% though. Not enough to matter, rewardwise.
Other than that, I can't think of any cheap way to get more.
Now it's archdemon time. I used to get great scores against the one that could be beaten with a custom Atlanticore and Death Knight. Then they stopped sending any archdemon except the latest one. (I spend a lot of shards getting that DK's skill to level 9!)
The current archdemon is very hard to deal with, since it is immune to stunning, scatter, and silence. It is not immune to slowing, but slowing it doesn't help much since it will switch targets from time to time (not sure how this works). This will mean that it will target your PD, who is always close, and then, unless you can tank the damage, you lose.
If you can tank the damage with PD anyway, you might as well forget about slow locking and tank the damage.
The only way I am aware of to deal with it is a combination of massive hitpoints, lots of healing, and protection for your heroes. Unfortunately for me, I have no Ghoulem. So I am lacking both the massive healing and the group protection that he supplies. I can get in the 10 million range just by brute force: lots of revive crests, Tre, and luck. That's about a much as I thought I will ever get unless they change the archdemon, or I roll Ghoulem.
Today another thread about the archdemon came up on reddit, and after reading shlam16's comments I decided to have another shot at it. One interesting thing I learned is that this archdemon has a high crit rate, which accounts for a lot of his instakills. Makes sense. Valentina can protect somewhat against crits; otherwise it's a vulnerability that you cannot fully address. You mitigate it by having revive crests or talent on every hero, and Treantar to revive them a third time.
I don't have Ghoulem or Valentina, so I used the core team suggested by shlam, but putting in Medusa and Cupid. Medusa is great for getting rid of the eye-catchers, which is another thing Ghoulem does if you have him. Cupid amps damage and adds energy, like Valentina.
For those curious, my lineup is: PD/DD/Druid/Cupid/Medusa/Tre. The first four are double evoed; Medusa and Tre are single evo. I crested them all with Revive of various levels (4/4/4/3/1), except Tre who has Revive 5 for his talent. PD has Berserk 8 and the Blitz Scroll 5, so he amps up fast.
My first run didn't work very well. I didn't exceed the 17.3 million I got yesterday. I was close, though -- 17.1m -- so I felt positive about the second run. Obviously there is a lot of luck involved with the archdemon; you have to try a strategy a few times to have a decent sample of what it's capable of. (Indeed part of what is hard about archdemon is that you only get two tries per day, so it's hard to experiment.)
The second run, things just went much better. Here it is after two minutes...
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| Beating on the archdemon. |
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| PD down for the last time. |
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| The end is nigh. |
183m is currently good enough for 382nd place, which would give 1200 fame if archdemon ended today. My old highscore, 17m, was around 4100th place with a reward of 700 fame. 500 fame is worth working for!
To improve my reward, I would need to place above 200th, which currently requires at least 326m damage. That seems quite unlikely. Even if I can get luckier and go the full 3 minutes, it would only increase my score by around 30%, to around 237m.
One easy thing I could do to improve my score is beef up my Druid's skill, currently at level 7. This won't get more than about 5-10% though. Not enough to matter, rewardwise.
Other than that, I can't think of any cheap way to get more.
Sunday, February 5, 2017
Out of Eggs
It finally happened: I ran dry on pet eggs.
This was predictable, and I knew it was coming, but still kind of interesting.
Does it change anything? Well, not really. However, there is one thing that I should have mentioned as soon as the pet-egg-hatch-time boost appeared. We now expect, over the long run, to have lots of spare hatching time. (This will be true for everyone unless they either spend money to buy pet eggs -- and I am not sure you can keep pace even then -- or unless IGG creates new ways to get them.)
Given that there is now excess hatching capacity, this means that obtaining eggs is now important, whereas (pre-Yulephant), it wasn't. Back then, getting extra eggs would help you only if the extra egg was blue or purple. They'd give you slightly better chances at rare pets. So, even then, the benefit of extra eggs was marginal. As such, it was never worthwhile to do anything to obtain that extra egg. It just didn't matter, so there was no reason to change what you did.
But now, any extra egg can be hatched. The benefit from the marginal egg is a full egg's worth of pet dupes. That's a lot more than it used to be. As such, it may be worthwhile now to change how you play to get those extra eggs. Everyone should be getting the 2 daily eggs, and the 2 bonus eggs for doing quests. But now there is the question of should you spend gems to get the 3 bonus eggs you get via gem spending.
For a gemmer, it seems pretty obvious that you should now do a handful of gem rolls every day, just enough to bring your daily spending of gems up to 900.
I don't think FtP players can do that; we don't get enough gems for it. (Here's my earlier article on gem spending strategy.)
Generally, I think that FtP players should not worry about pets much. The marginal value you are getting from a pet egg is quite small. I don't have any characterization for it in terms of gems. But just intuitively, getting a few more pet dupes is not going to make much difference. (By comparison, gems cash out as either chances at new heroes or crests; both can have dramatic impact on your game.)
What about extra gems beyond those needed for SG&W? IGG doesn't run SG&W that often. With my gem income, SG&W does not consume all my gems. What's next in terms of value? Well, the other kind of event for gem spending is "Uncover the Treasure". Usually this runs two days, sometimes one day. My feeling is that you should continue to do these also, to help consume extra gems. Soulstones are not worth that much, but they are still better than pet eggs.
Again, there is a small difference if the event is running over two day. Spend at the end of day 1 to hit 900 and get those extra eggs.
I'll have to see if the two spending events can use up all my gems. If they don't, then that's when I will want to consider doing daily spending to round up my gems-spent to the next 300. Obviously, the most efficient way to do this is one hero roll on a day when you are at 150/450/750.
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| Empty nest. |
Does it change anything? Well, not really. However, there is one thing that I should have mentioned as soon as the pet-egg-hatch-time boost appeared. We now expect, over the long run, to have lots of spare hatching time. (This will be true for everyone unless they either spend money to buy pet eggs -- and I am not sure you can keep pace even then -- or unless IGG creates new ways to get them.)
Given that there is now excess hatching capacity, this means that obtaining eggs is now important, whereas (pre-Yulephant), it wasn't. Back then, getting extra eggs would help you only if the extra egg was blue or purple. They'd give you slightly better chances at rare pets. So, even then, the benefit of extra eggs was marginal. As such, it was never worthwhile to do anything to obtain that extra egg. It just didn't matter, so there was no reason to change what you did.
But now, any extra egg can be hatched. The benefit from the marginal egg is a full egg's worth of pet dupes. That's a lot more than it used to be. As such, it may be worthwhile now to change how you play to get those extra eggs. Everyone should be getting the 2 daily eggs, and the 2 bonus eggs for doing quests. But now there is the question of should you spend gems to get the 3 bonus eggs you get via gem spending.
For a gemmer, it seems pretty obvious that you should now do a handful of gem rolls every day, just enough to bring your daily spending of gems up to 900.
I don't think FtP players can do that; we don't get enough gems for it. (Here's my earlier article on gem spending strategy.)
Generally, I think that FtP players should not worry about pets much. The marginal value you are getting from a pet egg is quite small. I don't have any characterization for it in terms of gems. But just intuitively, getting a few more pet dupes is not going to make much difference. (By comparison, gems cash out as either chances at new heroes or crests; both can have dramatic impact on your game.)
By comparison, the gem bonus you get from doing "Spend Gems and Win" at the 2500 level is, in effect, at least 36%; and usually it is higher than 36% since it is very rare that you have spent zero gem over two days. (My record spending before topping off during two days of SG&W was 1310 gems.) So, you should definitely save for that.
Now we do find a small difference that pets make. When a SG&W is on, you should spend gems on both days, not just the second. On the first day spend gems to get to 900 to get the extra eggs. Second day spend so as to hit 2500 as normal, again (probably) getting extra eggs.
What about extra gems beyond those needed for SG&W? IGG doesn't run SG&W that often. With my gem income, SG&W does not consume all my gems. What's next in terms of value? Well, the other kind of event for gem spending is "Uncover the Treasure". Usually this runs two days, sometimes one day. My feeling is that you should continue to do these also, to help consume extra gems. Soulstones are not worth that much, but they are still better than pet eggs.
Again, there is a small difference if the event is running over two day. Spend at the end of day 1 to hit 900 and get those extra eggs.
I'll have to see if the two spending events can use up all my gems. If they don't, then that's when I will want to consider doing daily spending to round up my gems-spent to the next 300. Obviously, the most efficient way to do this is one hero roll on a day when you are at 150/450/750.
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