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| And that guy in the middle. |
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| Not a Jedi yet. |
Showing posts with label gem spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gem spending. Show all posts
Thursday, March 2, 2017
Ghoulem!
I got two blue slimes in one gem roll! Mwahaha!
Here he is now:
Obviously not ready for primetime. He was born with a 5/8 talent! ... deadly strike. Actually negative for some uses... Oh well, replaced it with Berserk 1 (how often is that an improvement?), and will be hoping for that Bulwark 5...
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.
Monday, September 26, 2016
Gem Strategy for FtP
Everyone who plays CC, FtP or otherwise, gets a gem income. This post is about how to get gems, and how to spend them.
Getting Gems
The primary source of in-game gems is your daily might bonus. I am a "King", which gives 100 gems per day.
You should always be considering going for that next level of might. Generally, I would say don't push real hard to get there. Once you get within about 10% of the next level, then you might consider going for it. Raising your might means you face harder enemy bases for raids and expeditions, etc. But if you are getting enough bases you can beat, then you can probably afford to raise your might.
To raise might, raise hero levels, raise hero skills, instantiate new heroes, give your heroes higher level talents, etc. Obviously most of these things are expensive, and anyway you're already doing them. The exception is filling up your hero altar with new heroes. This is the main thing you can do to jack up might. Instantiate a bunch of heroes -- blue heroes are fine -- and level them up to 60. Give them otherwise useless level talents you roll in talent refreshes. Once you've achieved the might level you're going for and are moving beyond it, you can gradually re-absorb extra heroes. Or just leave them if you're content with the raids and expeditions you're getting.
The second best source of gems is the "Earn Gems" board. You get 30 gems a day assuming you log in, fight 10 times in the arena, and steal sufficient gold and mana in raids; these are all easy to get and you should be getting them every day.
The third best source of gems is quests. You get a free quest every 7 hours, so you can do three per day if you can arrange the time in real life. In addition you can get Quest Refresh cards from the Warehouse, and certain subgames; these are always worth getting.
Only certain quest items give gems, so you may get none with any particular quest. But an average quest might give perhaps 50 free gems. Always be on the lookout -- meaning, check daily -- for Talent Refresh Cards in the Warehouse: every one of them can be turned into 300 gems with the now common Talent Refresh quest.
One final way that a FtP can get gems is via Achievements. This is a finite source, and most achievements tend to go fairly early. Even so, I still have achievements to complete. It's just not that many gems compared to daily sources.
Spending and Saving Gems
Generally, you'll want to spend almost all gems on hero rolls. (I have spent a handful on other things, but really the limiting factor for anybody FtP is going to be getting good heroes, and evolving them.)
Since you can do gem rolls at any time, and sometimes IGG offers bonuses for gem spending, you should only do hero rolls when it gets you some sort of bonus. More on this below. Obviously, there's one exception: always do the quest item hero roll since it costs nothing on net.
The most obvious need for saved gems is that you always need a reserve of 300 gems in order to do the Talent Reroll quest item. Since you get these gems back, it's not really spending them. Beyond the 300 you also need a handful of gems to spend on quest items you cannot accomplish, typically only "Challenge a Boss". But this amount will be less than your gem income, so you shouldn't worry about it.
One other reason to keep gems reserved for is crest buying from a merchant in the Lost Realm.
There is always a chance that a nice level 2 crest is offered, so you want to keep a further reserve for that. I'd suggest keeping your reserve at no lower than 1000 gems just in case you get a really lucky series of merchants.
Only buy crests you will use, and only to help fill gaps in crest sets you're working on. For example, if you have 16 each of level 1 Life Drain I, II, and IV, but only 8 Life Drain III, you should buy a level 2 Life Drain III if you find one. You don't need to buy the other Life Drain crests.
You should never buy an ordinary crest of any kind, even Slow Down (which are useful), since you'll get far more from Crest Bags than you can use. (Red crystal is the limiting factor.) Most Rare crests are also not that useful due to the lack of red crystal; I find myself only wanting Scatter (which is a good all around crest, and necessary for Scatter teams), and War God.
Gem Roll Strategy
As I mentioned above, you should never do gem rolls except when there are bonuses on offer. For a long time now, IGG has been doing "Uncover the Treasure" specials as part of the "Events Carnival". For every 2000 gems you spend (on anything), you can collect a small bonus.
I suggest not doing "Uncover the Treasure" spending any more, unless you have a lot of gems and you're trying to spend them now (i.e., not FtP). Instead, you should hoard your gems aiming for a newer bonus IGG has started offering as part of its "Bazaar" (you know, the place where they sell the Phantom King pack). It's called "Spend Gems and Win".
I don't have any screenies for "Spend Gems and Win", but here's a video I found that shows the rewards. Note that this guy obviously bought gems to spend on it, so you can also see the higher-spending rewards than I suggest for FtP:
If you spend 300 gems, there's a bonus that offers some moderately valuable stuff. At the 2500 gem level, there's another bonus which includes 3 Talent Refresh card -- worth 300 gems each, so, about a 36% bonus in effect. But if you go all the way to 8000 gems when one of these specials is running, you can get a Legendary Hero Card. You also get some other moderately valuable stuff. That's well worth saving for! (There are also higher bonus levels, but these do not appear to be worthwhile, compared to waiting for the special to run again.)
So, normally you should never do gem rolls except for single rolls for quests -- just save your gems. When there's a "Spend Gems and Win"special, on that day, when you've completed your last quest, then you spend just enough gems to just exceed 8000. You can see how many you've spent on the special itself.
UPDATE: as should be obvious, if you can't benefit much from LHCs, then they are not worth much. In that case don't save for the 8000 level; just go with the 2500 level.
UPDATE Feb 2017: here's some thoughts regarding gem spending on pets.
Getting Gems
 |
| It's good to be the king. |
You should always be considering going for that next level of might. Generally, I would say don't push real hard to get there. Once you get within about 10% of the next level, then you might consider going for it. Raising your might means you face harder enemy bases for raids and expeditions, etc. But if you are getting enough bases you can beat, then you can probably afford to raise your might.
To raise might, raise hero levels, raise hero skills, instantiate new heroes, give your heroes higher level talents, etc. Obviously most of these things are expensive, and anyway you're already doing them. The exception is filling up your hero altar with new heroes. This is the main thing you can do to jack up might. Instantiate a bunch of heroes -- blue heroes are fine -- and level them up to 60. Give them otherwise useless level talents you roll in talent refreshes. Once you've achieved the might level you're going for and are moving beyond it, you can gradually re-absorb extra heroes. Or just leave them if you're content with the raids and expeditions you're getting.
 |
| Earn Gems |
The third best source of gems is quests. You get a free quest every 7 hours, so you can do three per day if you can arrange the time in real life. In addition you can get Quest Refresh cards from the Warehouse, and certain subgames; these are always worth getting.
Only certain quest items give gems, so you may get none with any particular quest. But an average quest might give perhaps 50 free gems. Always be on the lookout -- meaning, check daily -- for Talent Refresh Cards in the Warehouse: every one of them can be turned into 300 gems with the now common Talent Refresh quest.
 |
| Achievement not unlocked! |
One final way that a FtP can get gems is via Achievements. This is a finite source, and most achievements tend to go fairly early. Even so, I still have achievements to complete. It's just not that many gems compared to daily sources.
Spending and Saving Gems
Generally, you'll want to spend almost all gems on hero rolls. (I have spent a handful on other things, but really the limiting factor for anybody FtP is going to be getting good heroes, and evolving them.)
Since you can do gem rolls at any time, and sometimes IGG offers bonuses for gem spending, you should only do hero rolls when it gets you some sort of bonus. More on this below. Obviously, there's one exception: always do the quest item hero roll since it costs nothing on net.
The most obvious need for saved gems is that you always need a reserve of 300 gems in order to do the Talent Reroll quest item. Since you get these gems back, it's not really spending them. Beyond the 300 you also need a handful of gems to spend on quest items you cannot accomplish, typically only "Challenge a Boss". But this amount will be less than your gem income, so you shouldn't worry about it.
One other reason to keep gems reserved for is crest buying from a merchant in the Lost Realm.
There is always a chance that a nice level 2 crest is offered, so you want to keep a further reserve for that. I'd suggest keeping your reserve at no lower than 1000 gems just in case you get a really lucky series of merchants.
Only buy crests you will use, and only to help fill gaps in crest sets you're working on. For example, if you have 16 each of level 1 Life Drain I, II, and IV, but only 8 Life Drain III, you should buy a level 2 Life Drain III if you find one. You don't need to buy the other Life Drain crests.
Gem Roll Strategy
 |
| Uncover Treasure |
I suggest not doing "Uncover the Treasure" spending any more, unless you have a lot of gems and you're trying to spend them now (i.e., not FtP). Instead, you should hoard your gems aiming for a newer bonus IGG has started offering as part of its "Bazaar" (you know, the place where they sell the Phantom King pack). It's called "Spend Gems and Win".
I don't have any screenies for "Spend Gems and Win", but here's a video I found that shows the rewards. Note that this guy obviously bought gems to spend on it, so you can also see the higher-spending rewards than I suggest for FtP:
If you spend 300 gems, there's a bonus that offers some moderately valuable stuff. At the 2500 gem level, there's another bonus which includes 3 Talent Refresh card -- worth 300 gems each, so, about a 36% bonus in effect. But if you go all the way to 8000 gems when one of these specials is running, you can get a Legendary Hero Card. You also get some other moderately valuable stuff. That's well worth saving for! (There are also higher bonus levels, but these do not appear to be worthwhile, compared to waiting for the special to run again.)
So, normally you should never do gem rolls except for single rolls for quests -- just save your gems. When there's a "Spend Gems and Win"special, on that day, when you've completed your last quest, then you spend just enough gems to just exceed 8000. You can see how many you've spent on the special itself.
UPDATE: as should be obvious, if you can't benefit much from LHCs, then they are not worth much. In that case don't save for the 8000 level; just go with the 2500 level.
UPDATE Feb 2017: here's some thoughts regarding gem spending on pets.
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