Hozzászólások - Sbart

There are several advantages to the Xeno event over normal Hunts/Duels.

Every AP you use to fight the Xeno give your pets XP, since you actually do a battle.
There is no limit on how many DP you can use to fight the Xeno. So if you normally have not that many duel targets, it is an opportunity to use DP. Also, you can use the Xeno to do the "Deal 12/60 Critical spell/hit in duels you initiate"-quests (when fighting for DP).
The top 10 rewards are: Xeno combat medal (+5 Critical hit), and Medal of Doom (-1 sec hunt, +1 Building (can boost above max)). While they might look like small rewards, remember that they are permanent and small boosts give large results in the long run.
Building the prisons increases your Luck, and the Soul-well of your Clan.

All in all, the Xeno event is pretty well balanced. There are some plus and some minuses, but the major problem is that a lot of accounts are not active (or active enough) to make the contribution they would need for the event.

Stiska, this has been discussed before (see post #226- in this thread).

In essence, the task can be completed by Hunting a lot, but it is hard. You will need maxed skills and AA abilities (Alchemist) and a bit of luck (real one, not the ability).
The easier (and more expensive) way to do it is to do the "pet-shuffle":
1.) hunt, capture pets
2.) train them
3.) send them to kennel (with 2-5 (depending on level and if you use pet equipment to give extra xp) pets you can complete the quest "let your pets advance 12 levels")
4.) when the pets reach level 20, give them a gradulatum, squeeze, complete the quest "squeeze a level 20 pet" and gain 2 essences

This requires 1 Gradulatum/pet (2 AS if you have the Equipment lease Relic), but guarantees 2 essences. If you don't need them for something else, 10 Loyalty shards give you 2 AS.

After 35 each mega-essence gives:
All your pets max. skill points is increased by 2. Improving specialized ability, luck and skills costs 0.1% less. You get 0.2% more AA points. The effect of your common essences giving skill boost is increased by 5%.

(someone please correct me if I am wrong)

I am very sure that I did a battle with a lower level DL (using a sup-plasma) and there was no message at the end of the battle that I dragged him into the Torture chamber.

Difference between doing X Hunts and collecting Y SE lies mainly in:
What Relics do you have?
What mega-essences do you have?
Are you using a special (Spectral manipulation) essence?
Do you have some other bonus to SE gained from Hunts (for example archgems)?
Have you maxed out your skills/AA abilities related to Hunts?

In other words, the higher your Hunt efficiency, the easier the task for you. And if the number of Hunts needed in average is high (>100?), rgn should not be too harsh on people. Although of course this brings some randomness into it, and people sometimes do not like that. Could be one of the "later" tasks also, so everyone can do the lower level, but this one is higher up in the pyramid.

I see the danger of having a hard Entity at the top, but look at the description of the PoD: "The Pyramid of Dread rises above the horizon like a millennial memento of the Enemy. So far, no one was able to make it to the top alive. But now, a race begins: whoever gets to the top of this deadly pyramid first, will be the Ruler of the Planet..."
This indicates that the PoD is somehow related to the Enemy, and there should be some remnants of it still there...
Ways to incorporate that (and avoid the "I had more resources saved and therefore won"-syndrome):
* Kill 50 Xenos pests in the Pyramid (every time you click the Task you get to Battle vs a Dimension gate monster, but gain no SE and Xp)
* Traverse the Xenos maze! (Every time you click the task one of your Skills (Randomly) will be tested against like in an Adventure. Beat 25 such tests to finish the Task)
* Defeat the Xenos Guardian! (Click the task to attack the Guardian Entity. Task finished when you have caused X Damage in total to it)

About the Forum: There used to be a "Rate post" function on the forum, but at the moment it is not possible to rate posts (either up or down). Is this intentional or a bug?

I understand that it is difficult to design new tasks that are interesting. But personally I would prefer:
"Accumulate (x*level) SE from Hunts" instead of "Do y Hunts", since the former actually takes into consideration Quality instead of just Quantity.
"Win x Duels" is probably ok, since the amount of SE gained from duels can vary so much (and setting an amount would just lead to win-trading)

Otherwise I think the way to make the tasks more interesting would be to make tasks specific for the PoD. This could be things like:
* A special written Adventure in which player cannot use Crystal points (or only a specific number of Crystal points for the entire Adventure). Every time a player restarts the Adventure they start at the point where they failed last time.
* Defeating a special Entity, with stats/level depending on the players level (and not dependent on how many entities the player have defeated)
* Submit a Quiz question/Adventure (NOT get them approved, since that can take very long time)

I understand that making special tasks will take programming time, but at the same time it would probably make the event "better".

Can we use Archgems when fighting Xenos for AP?
Can we find Subplasmas when we fight Xenos for AP?
Can we find Archgems when we fight Xenos for DP?

EDIT
Found a Sub-plasma when attacking the Xeno for AP.
Found an Archgem when attacking the Xeno for DP.
But in 100 AP battles I have not spent a single Archgem, even though I have seen seen quite large SE gains (but not as big as a Gigantic creature with Archgem).

EDIT2
Managed to use an Arch-gem when attacking the Xeno for AP (and get the appropriate amount of SE).

Some feedback for the event (now that it is long over and we all have some distance to it).

Royal Decree
I think we all agree that the number of Royal decrees that could be used (and the penalty for using them) was not quite right. I think that a more restrictive amount of RD would have been good, with perhaps the number being increased over time. Also, the penalty for using them (in relation to the competition) should have been bigger. Perhaps the number of RC should have been part of the top 15, so that if someone completed the pyramid with fewer RD they would automatically score higher?

The tasks in general
A lot of the tasks were not that exciting. Part of the reason for this is of course that many of the tasks are shared with the Temple of Doom, but my personal opinion is that the two (Pyramid of Dread and Temple of Doom) are two very different things. The ToD is in the game to reward players for playing the "entire game" (i.e. Hunt, Duel, do quests, Adventures etc etc), while the PoD was supposed to be a competition between Doomlords to see who could beat it first. From that point of view, having so many "Do x Hunts"-type of tasks was a bit disappointing.
Another thing that really strikes me when watching the Pyramid like this after the end of the event is that so many of the tasks are dependent on how much resources the player had stored up before the event started. To complete the Pyramid one would need to have stored up: AP, DP, DG points, rings/necklaces to sell in the AH, essences (to create Ultra/mega essences), BoAS, Epic relics, and probably some more things. Personally I don't think that is good Event-design, since then we are back in the "only play the game when there is an event"-type of design.
A more diversified selection of Tasks would have been nice, and it would also be good if the tasks were not dependent on how much resources the player has stored up, or just "sacrifice x", but rather try to test the Quality of the player.

The pyramid
The Pyramid is a square. I was actually expecting a Pyramid, with quite a lot of small easy tasks in the base, and one mega-hard task at the top. From the description I was (for some reason) expecting that the last task would have been to defeat a mega-hard Xeno-mother type of monster, perhaps with some special restrictions (like max number of attacks per day, or attacks costing AP/DP). But at least I expected the Pyramid to be, well, a Pyramid. And not a square.

The Rewards
Actually, I think the Rewards were nice. Most of them are temporary (only Relic coupons are really permanent), and this is probably good for the game. It will always be difficult to balance the cost of doing an event vs the gain, but this time it was "ok".

According to the Event plan posted above the Xeno-war is supposed to start tomorrow (15th of January). Is it still on, or is there some kind of delay?

Well, then the description of the Disease ability is misleading, since it just states "opponents pets" and not "other players pets" or something similar.

About Troll blood: I haven't tried it, just thought that the value of it would be quite different depending on when (what kind of combats) it worked.

Question about the some AA abilities:

The Disease AA ability does not specify that it is only used in duels, and at higher levels Epic opponents have Pets. Does Disease affect the Absorption of these pets (if they actually increase the Abs of Epic opponents)?

The Troll blood ability specifies Duels. Have anyone tested that it only works in Duels, or does it also work on Epic battles, Dimension gate battles or any other type of combat?

Normal potions: Level 100, 120, 140 etc
AS potions: Level 90, 110, 130 etc

So it depends on your Trade skill.

@BabteTheOx
Check the Highscores under Character - Achievements. The column on the far right is "AA points spent".

@TheLion

If you see a bug, please report it through the Customer support system.

Do you get a warning every 10 DG battles that the next opponent is stronger than normal and that you can use a Berserker potion against it?

The named DG monsters refereed to are the ones that drop focus crystals for rings and necklaces, and I think they only appear after character level 80, so it is possible that your level is too low.

Same on World 2 (Showing the Spring promotion, not the Christmas promotion).

EDIT
Looks like it was fixed.

I have to agree that is actually what the ability says Kalann. My mistake.
And it would make the ability slightly more useful.

Megaessences:
"21.) The efficiency of jealing your pets is increased by 50%"
jealing should be healing.

From the Dimension gate page:
"Actually you have xx Dimension Gate points."
Should this not be "Currently you have xx Dimension gate points"?

"Backstab:
Your execution skill does not give extra SE from now on, but it gets a multiplier depending on your level: 1+level/40.

Prerequisite: you are at least level 100
Max. level: 1
Cost: 20"

The way I read it you normally "execution range" is (Execution skill)*5. With the AA ability, this range is extended with a multiplier of (1+Character level)/40.
So if you have Execution 100, normally you would be able to Execute if your opponent have 500 or less HP left after battle. With Execution 100 and Backstab you would be able to Execute your opponent if they have (500*(1+100)/40) 1262,5 HP or less left after battle (at level 100).

But looking at the text of the AA ability it is not entirely clear, and if the above is correct a better way of writing would be:
"Backstab:
The HP range of your Execution skill gains a multiplier dependent on your level: (1+[Character level]/40), but your Execution skill does not give extra SE from now on.

Prerequisite: you are at least level 100
Max. level: 1
Cost: 20"

EDIT
Changed to formula back to what it probably means.