Common marks are better spent on follower crystals and food, imo. I’d spend the other mark rarities on spell pages, with the possible exception of legendary marks.
One more before the weekend,
The Salvage All message could use some tweaking, as there are more than one collectable being salvaged for this message to be appear.
Something along the lines of “Are you sure you want to salvage all looted Collectables?” to also signify that this is a verification prompt for the Salvage All process.
2 Likes
Agreeing with the concerns voiced by @Lyrian, @HigureTheStillWind, and others.
I am very concerned for how the spell update is going to treat new players. I don’t even think the above proposed solution of making spell pages just elemental goes far enough.
The primary problem is that the game was tuned for ‘getting the spell’ to be a very small part of the process of leveling and evolving your spell. Now, ‘getting’ the spell needs to be done 10s, 100s, or thousands of times to upgrade rarity to previously attainable levels. Last week, 1 spell in every 20 chests was more than enough. This week, it is too few by a long margin.
When the new season comes out next week, we will see that it is extremely difficult for even the whale players to level spells to Epic and Legendary. This was previously done routinely on day one of the new season because the resources from previous years of effort were available to do so.
Example:
Just last week leading up to the update I gathered about 20 class spells that were missing from my secondary account. They were usually common or uncommon, but I had leveling resources to get them all to Epic level 35. Had I waited until this week it would take me about 120+ days to farm enough dust to convert to pages for those spells. Or alternatively, I could try running those same dungeons endlessly hoping to get Rare, Epic, or better versions of those spells.
The above example is what every new player will encounter. Spells will progress at a rate I suspect to be less than 10% of what was possible last week in 2.4
Let’s let some data do the storytelling.
This chart assumes you are perfect at collecting dust at least every 8 hours, have a level 50 Xione, and an endless supply of Xione crystals to convert your dust into a chosen spell.
Some key points to look at:
- A single upgrade from Mythic to Ancient Mythic will take over 155 days of dust collecting
- Finding an Epic spell will shave about 5 days off this total
- Epic spells are very rare with the current drop rates.
- Finding a Legendary version of your target spell will shave about 25 days off this.
- Legendary spells from chests are exceedingly rare with the current drop rates.
- New players will have to rely primarily on spell drops of the rarity they want as their only option for dust without a level 50 Xione is random spell pages.
- Previously a new player could reliably get a desired spell to epic through targeted effort.
5 Likes
Just quickly…
- this is incredibly curated stats @00h00m that I am very here for - this is great!
- just so everyone knows, this is feedback I have already shared with the team and let them know, I will continue to share this feedback about trying to attain spell pages for upgrading vs upgrading in 2.4 and the challenges you all face in targetted spell upgrading.
And I’ll keep bringing it up.
The points/sentiments shared are almost the same as the notes I have in my 2.5 reports already - added the additional points to Spell dust as well!
So I’m glad I have managed to capture the sentiment accurately, also, I play regularly myself (just not pvp) so I understand the struggle.
Currently trying to upgrade my ‘Unseal the Tomb’ and ‘Cloudkill’.
6 Likes
We have been thoroughly discussing the new update betweeen our kingdom members and some other players. The general feeling about the update as a whole is mixed: some like it, some don’t. However, regarding the spell page issue each and every one of us agrees that evolving spell rarity after the update is disheartenedly difficult. This feeling is even harder for newer players with very few upgraded spells. I believe this sentiment is perfectly explained by the words of one of our members:
I mostly feel a little bit like I was making progress, but it’s turned Sisyphean. I wasn’t at the top of the hill by any means, but I was getting somewhere! Except that now not only did the boulder I was pushing roll back down onto me, getting any further up is going to be MILES harder than it was…
The spell rework blog says there were 4 problems that wanted to be addressed with the update:
Points 3 and 4 have been clearly well addressed, as well as the “Upgrade” part of point 1. However, in my opinion the “Evolve” part of point 1 and therefore point 2 have been made even worse.
I see 3 issues regarding this:
First one is the low drop rate of spells. As @00h00m has said, the spell drops were tuned to be low since duplicates weren’t really valuable. Current drop rates of spells are clearly too low for the amount of pages needed to evolve spells. Or, put in a different way, current amount of spell pages needed to evolve spells are too high for the drop rates of spells.
Second is spell pages being specific for each spell. Before 2.5 we got all the resources needed for upgrading spells from general gameplay, so even if we couldn’t evolve every spell it was relatively easy to evolve those that we wanted. Now, general gameplay will give you mostly random spell pages, so to be able to evolve 1 spell you will need to farm only the corresponding dungeon all the time. This can be seen as kind of going back to the “bad” early days of the game where all the relics where dungeon specific, making upgrading anything much more difficult. Thematically, finding spell pages of your spell to evolve it may make sense and even feel nice, but mechanically it is making the whole process worse. Not only do we need to play a lot to get some spell pages, but we also need to play only one specific dungeon so that the spell pages are the ones we want. Having to do that for all spells you want to use makes the process of growing stronger much less enjoyable.
The third one has been perfectly explained by @00h00m. The additional help for getting spell pages, Xione, only gives a minor boost to the process. Additionally, once you reach ancient mythic the rate of pages to dust conversion (1 page → 5 spell dust) is nearly 5 times lower than compared to the maximum rate of dust to spell conversion (4000 dust → 100-200 which is around 25 spell dust → 1 page). I understand not using the same conversion factor, but I would have expected to have something at least more similar (like 1 page → 20 spell dust).
I am glad that you also share this sentiment with us, Jeto, since I believe this is a serious issue with a high risk of making new players quickly lose their interest and stop playing the game, which would be a disaster. So the faster it is addressed and improved the better for all.
As always, thank you for hearing us out and working hard on improving the game so that we can enjoy it to the fullest!
7 Likes
I was going to say a few things but when I read Higure’s post I saw that he talked about everything that I think is important and , in a well-founded way.
In this case, I will talk about feelings: Veteran players feel that the effort they made to evolve was devalued, new players feel that their evolution is seriously jeopardized.
If you allow me some advice, there are people in this game who obviously like the game and who waste time thinking about how to improve it in a logical way. How about taking advantage of this resource, even if just for some consultancy ?
It can be seen that Higure and others are well into the game and that if they are given enough information they can help.
3 Likes
Adding a couple of more observations / musings to the pile, and keeping it brief:
- I agree that Xione should have her mythic L50 ability, given the multiple days of dust generation needed for a single craft plus one her crystals per use. IMO, she should output at least 250 pages (the cost of a Epic upgrade scroll is the same as her crystal (300 Gems). Range 250-500 pages. If 500 is deemed excessive, apply a cooldown on her L50 crafting skill (The intense focus Xione needs to concentrate magical energies so precisely to craft a specific spell requires time for her to mentally recover, realign magical conduits needed to perform the crafting process, etc.)
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I also agree that spell pages in general need their drop rates increased across the board. One of the dangers here is that higher drop rates may push newer accounts into the Epic scroll bottleneck wall a bit too quickly and scare them away. 50 spell pages for a “Rare” spell drop is a lot at the lower rarities, but a drop in the bucket at the higher rarities. Also, there is no incentive for veteran accounts to farm higher level dungeons for spell pages over lower rarities, as spell page drops are fixed by the 2.4 rarity level of the spell drop converted into 2.5 pages. Suggestion: In addition to improving the drop rates of spells/pages in general, add a difficulty multiplier to the amount of spell pages awarded per drop to encourage playing higher level dungeons (risk v. reward) over speed farming lower level ones. (Note: the rate of increase needs to be somewhat exponential. Linear increases in drop amounts will result in calculations for speed vs. difficulty, which will almost always result in the player speed farming lower level dungeons for efficiency.)
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In general, most spells do not benefit from Ancient Mythic rarity and logically should not be chased. This is because in 2.5, rarity and level were separated into distinct attributes. Level can be maxed out via the Spellbook, which leaves rarity as the only attribute that is relevant when chasing spell pages. “+” Rarities have value because they raise mana mastery, which adds a bonus onto the player’s spell damage. Base rarities for a tier (such as Ancient Mythic), only raise the value of an effect of a spell. For almost all damage spells, this means nothing. By Mythic/Ancient Mythic, raising the value of a sub-effect of a spell from 7 turns to 8 is irrelevant, because battles are designed to be cleared in far fewer than that many turns. That leaves the only spells to benefit from Ancient Mythic rarity being gem creator or conversion spells. Suggestion: Add a Ancient Mythic+ rarity (or add the '+" benefit of the rarity to obtaining Ancient Mythic rarity, so that all spells can gain benefits from Ancient Mythic rarity.
Extra thought: Players need to be able to obtain Ancient Mythic rarity on spells somewhat easily, with 140+ spells available, with new spells being added every Season. As the new spell system benefits from ascending all spells, players need to feel that they can level up their spells to keep up on the leveling treadmill at a reasonable pace to keep them engaged and avoid mass frustration.
7 Likes
How are we supposed to do the spell goals for this new season? Own 2 unique spells from this season at mythic (impossible now), Own 3 unique spells at legendary or higher (impossible now), Own 4 unique spells from this season at rare now (highly unlikely). These goals need to be reworked so they’re actually doable under the new spell system or people should just automatically be given the credit as if they did them.
6 Likes
In previous seasons this was easily achievable within the first few days for most veteran players who planned ahead and had resources available. Get the drops and buy the spells, use your shards, relics, and glyphs to upgrade to Legendary. This is why we grind outside of seasons, so we can harvest the fruit of our labor.
2 Likes
In previous seasons sure, but can you do that in this season? Having to farm spell pages and having to buy coin spells multiple times for 5 pages for 200 coins a pop?
1 Like
That’s a really good point. With the solution not planned until 3.0, I don’t believe that these goals are obtainable this season.
1 Like
Why math matters … A practical guide how to not tick of your fanbase
(Credits for this post go to Revis.iTed)
edit:
Next time in this series:
Why QA matters … Another practical guide how to not tick of your fanbase
1 Like
One of the things I was really happy about when knowing the Spell Rework changes was that without needing glyphs and relics to upgrade rarity I hoped that I could go for the legendary and even mythic spell goals. But now it seems that even getting the 4 spells at rare will be out of reach.
5 Likes
A small thing I must say I am missing after the update. (Otherwise the new reward screen is far superior)
When receiving some sort of rewards from chests or when buying stuff in the shop it only shows you what you have received and you therefore don’t know how much of resource you have. In my case when I am farming I keep an eye on how much ore I have and spend it using my followers so I don’t have too little and nor do I hit the cap. At the moment I keep suddenly realizing that my ore is capped and I have just wasted some.
EDIT: I can’t make up my mind if I want to see how much I have of all types of items when I’m receiving or buying stuff or just how much I have of Gold, Food and Ore. It’s kind of nice to see how many glyphs I have when I buy another one from a shop or other items I don’t have many of but I personally have no interest of seeing how many shards i have.
4 Likes
You also cant see the description of items anymore in the rewards screen.
You cant see what the gear you just got does … so how should you know if you want to salvage it or not? Especially as a newer player, with low inventory space and low knowledge of all items.
3 Likes
I agree, I do like a lot the new reward screen, much faster and confortable in my opinion, but I do miss not being able to see how much food or ore I have in total.
2 Likes
Hey! can I have my actual damage against the dragon shown not just 1.3m. I’ve had some terrific whacks against it, so you know just let me know my true score too.
1 Like
I agree with the folks above, it is super useful to know how much of resource you have when you receive a new item. Would be great if it comes back.
4 Likes
Well, the devs added the spell pages for the Season Store spells to the Season Caches for a way to get them.
However, all four spells are now competing within in the 10% chance for a Cache to award a spell.
So across, all four spells, that means across all possible rarity drops, there is only a 2.5% chance to pull one of these spells, which is just barely more likely than pulling a Mythic relic from an Ultimate Cache.
Glad to see the band-aid there, but those odds are rather poor, and you need to land on both shop spells in the Cache to achieve the Season Goal. Someone will pull this off, likely chasing the Season Legendary weapon. But most of us likely not pull these spells from this Season’s Caches before the Season ends.
6 Likes
The spell rework has kind of ruined this season for me. It punishes you for trying to play with alot of spells and character classes and makes it impossible now to use the new season spells (at any decent rarity), something I really look forward to each season.
This season has some really fun looking spells too, but the new spell book mechanic completely sucks the life out of it unfortunately. I have my spell book at level 50 by the way, and I still hate it.
Its fun getting spell pages in chests instead of a million copies of a spell you already have, but it takes way too long to level up a spell and is next to impossible with the new season having a limit on dungeon runs (even with the Platinum pass) and having to buy coin spells multiple times now. Having them in the cache, helps a little, but its nowhere near enough.
6 Likes