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[sambojin]

Turns out Canada is also a soft-launch target. Probably some other places too. So try it and see if your country is. Pretty sure France is too. Possibly Portugal or Spain, but they could just be South American latin speakers. There's quite a few, so give it a go.

Perhaps "No Americans" is a game feature for now :p

(again, I thought 5.x meant proper release)

[Aklyon]

Like, this sounds like a decent-enough non-tcg/ccg mobile tablet game, which is pretty damn rare for the land of rubbish timewasters and card games. Its even by a company I can recognize the name of. But by the time this actually comes out I'll have completely forgotten it exists.

In the meantime, I will play things that are on platforms that actually work for more than a couple genres and don't pretend-launch for months on end.

[sambojin]

It's even got quite a nice community so far,  regardless of the language barriers. So if that changes, we know who to blame 

[Aklyon]

It's even got quite a nice community so far,  regardless of the language barriers. So if that changes, we know who to blame 

But you can make a nice community out of anything in closed beta, even heroes of the storm managed it to a degree.

[sambojin]

Game has hit version 6.0.

Level cap is now 60. You'll pretty much have a full build with any class now at max level.

You can do a "fusion" with equipment now. Essentially you now have a reason to forge lower level materials, because you can dump them into a bit of equipment to slowly level it up. My best boots were 8% evasion and some armour+, now they're 10% (and will probably cap at 11%). Doesn't sound like much, but they're damn good boots that just got better. Especially with twin blades.

Sort of makes everyone hit harder, because you can do up weapons too, so EVA becomes even better. But everyone hits harder. Which sort of makes stuff easier, because weapons scale better than armour. And enemies haven't.

You can now also create private rooms with guild members. Yay.

Everyone hits so much harder that mobs probably can't do much. Defensive placement and trap placement is probably more important now (as well as mob secondary effects).


(6.1 update. Decoy now works "properly". Damn. It's still OP as hell. It's how arse-monkeys who can't play properly win).
outdated: Decoy apparently doesn't work properly. It does from what I've seen, it's still good. Too good. Maybe "not working properly" means "OP still". It was horribly broken and OP before, and it still seems pretty damn good now. I just wish they'd remove it entirely. Make something else, refund the skill points for Decoy. Problem solved (yes, I run mage too).


Not global release yet, apparently that's next version, or they'll give us a release date soonish. I'll tell you once I know.

[sambojin]

Yay! Global Release has finally happened.

So you can try it out now on your mobile device.

You get big xp and crafting material boosts early on, so catching up won't be too hard (or take too long). I'm still f2p, close'ish to max level cap, and still have fun playing. It's pretty damn good as action RPG's go.


There's also occasional raid events now. The last one was a giant troll, and for as simple as that sounds, it was fun as hell. It still took a full crew of near max level people to take down the big ones in one go. So many dead trolls.....

[Aklyon]

Took long enough

I'll check it out later then.

[Aklyon]

This is surprisingly good for a mobile game. And with not too bad controls for being cooldown-based wizard. It even looks pretty alright.

[sambojin]

Yeah. The aesthetic is quite nice. No sexualization of female characters either (other than a bit of splash-screen art). I actually play a female, but you honestly couldn't tell under all the armour unless I'm BMing emotes. I only picked female because the male portraits looked pretty mong a few versions ago. Now they've all been updated anway.

Still standard WoW/D2-esque fantasy fare for weapons/armour, but no chainmail bikinis. Which is a refreshing change IMO.


As I mentioned, the controls are tight, even on a crappy phone. I'm pretty sure 90% of any lag I'm experiencing is due to underpowered hardware, rather than network or control problems. I was honestly really surprised at how fluidly it works. I usually hate anything action-based on mobile, but this setup works really well. Only action game I've ever played on my phone where I really feel in control, and it's my fault when it stuffs up. It's a mixture of the auto-lockon and combat pacing I think.

Speaking of which, learn to take your thumb off the joystick when you want to acquire a different, closer target. You'll get pretty good at it, pretty quickly, even with mêlée classes. All classes have auto-lockon, even if it doesn't look like they do.

Disregard a lot of my dungeon creation advice above. The game has gone through several iterations and the economy has changed a lot. Mines and mana collectors are now very important, and I haven't had over 2mil of anything stored for ages. You now get 10 raiding stones max (instead of 20), no tripling loot, etc. It's a lot more balanced now, and I'd do it very differently if I was to start over again.


It does take until about level 30'ish (out of a maximum 60) until you feel like you've got enough character options and damage to mix it up a bit, but that's about a week or two of play. Not even solid playtime, just an hour here or there. Lower level play is still fun, but after lvl30 you start being able to do way more dungeons, and have plenty of class options and equipment so you won't get bored. Each of the four classes play quite differently from each other. Doesn't really matter what you lvl into up until then, because you'll have most of the basic and intermediate skills at about that point anyway, so do whatever you want.

Raiding stones are semi-unlimited. You can grind out about 2hrs of play from your basic 10 stones, with each raid taking 2-5mins and you getting another stone every 15mins. You get a 10 stone refresh each level up, and you will level heaps early on. If you're the grindy sort, you can probably play for 6-8hrs a day (in smaller bursts), which is a lot for a mobile game. But you'll get along just fine doing a few raids here or there too. It's nice like that.

Dungeons take longer to make. Mine *still* isn't finished, but I don't worry about it much. Dungeons are there to stop lower level people getting your loot. Nothing can stop a high level party raiding the hell out of you. I do it to people in the top 20 all the time


Anyway, still one of my favourite games on mobile. I'm in a really active guild (one of the top 5 guilds) which helps. But any guild makes it more fun. I'll save up a bit and start a bay12 one if there's enough interest.

[Aklyon]

We hardly get a group together for long for anything actually on computers, I doubt a bay12 one would stick around. I'll just eventually find one thats active that even more eventually loses all of the good players because they left to join some fancypants top guild like every other mobile game I've tried that has one.

[sambojin]

Lol. I've guild-jumped a few times so far. I'm currently in xSUREALx, which is a great, friendly, active guild. But it's all filled up, and is a lvl50+ guild, with tonnes of top players, so meh. I've already found my fancy pants guild.

What's your player name on there? I'll send you a friend request if I see you. Happy to run support mage for you while you level. Hover+Decoy+Survival Instincts makes stuff a lot easier for newbies, and you can have all the XP aside from the occasional "oh shit!" fireball save. Decoy is horribly OP cancer, but it's fine to help newbs (probably).

But there's tonnes of players anyway. Just jump into a room and try not to die.


Tip: Be a mage and skill into "Hover" early. Press it *before* you go into each room in a dungeon. It carries over for 15secs, despite the skill description. Quite a bit before entry actually (I put traps at exits, entrances, and in the middle of rooms for hilarity). Even level 60's like having a hover monkey, no matter their level. You're actually helping, even if you can't do any damage at all. I made heaps of gold/mana and friends by doing this without getting hated on for "ruining" high level parties as a newb. I still run hover a lot as a lvl58 mage. It's not vital, but it's a nice luxury that even a lvl3 player can provide. Then again, I also still run the starting mage shooty skill, because it's a low cooldown knockdown/back skill with good damage. Some skills never lose their utility or function.

[sambojin]

Another tip: Go to options and turn off perspective camera.

They probably put a lot of work into that option, it only came in recently, and it really is a 3D-top down game, but turn it off. It makes it easier to see stuff in corners and work out *exactly* where you are in a room. Might even up your FPS (maybe. Might lower it too. FPS isn't an issue on even basic phones though.).

Feels more like Diablo 2 as well, which is always a good thing.

Perspective always gives me a weird "yawing" feeling in games like this. Hated D3's forced perspective, even though it was pretty. And since turning it off makes the game easier to see stuff in, turn it off ASAP.

[Aklyon]

@name Same as here, as usual.
@mage stuff I already have the first tier of mage stuff (and fireball, after not being super impressed with dual blades but they're ok), because I wanted to be wizard guy in the first place! (most of the broadswordspeople have been like...20 levels higher than the party and grab all of the aggro. Seen lots and lots of staves or bows or dual swords yesterday tho)

For the camra, sounds interesting. I'll check that out.

[sambojin]

"Learning how to be squishy, but useful" is fairly important to learn. Even if you're not a squishy build. Every build and class has "stuff they should be doing".

After about 2000-2500 runs, and heaps of (honestly, so f'ing much....) crafting, for some reason I still have a rare broadsword. The dice gods sometimes hate me.
Rare<Epic<Legendary. Or something. Rare bloody broadsword still.

Epic every other weapon, and some gear, but no broadsword love

But even with a yellow bsword, and some admittedly other awesome items, I can not only be useful. I can wreck shit.

Not as well as if I would with a real weapon. But learning what works when, how much, and situations, is about as useful as super gear. About as useful, not quite as easy, but one day I'll be OP too. For now, I can punch above my weight. Even as a f2p Boss.

(note: it's random as fuck. I've seen lvl 28 people with epic/legendary gear and weapons. They were f2p too. Some of them still sucked badly. Skill actually does play some part in this game, not WoW-like itemization. Levels don't give you that much of a bonus either. We've happily accepted a lvl44 player into our lvl50+ "elite" guild. Because she's a good player, and cool to run with. Action RPG, not point-click-cooldown-simulator. But better gear is better. Better player is better though.)

[sambojin]

New update, now up to version 7.0.

New stuff to buy in the store, but it's not really p2w stuff. They're really pricey for crafting materials, and you'll get them for free eventually anyway.

Way better prizes on the daily "roulette" prize wheel. Better crafting mats, less booby prizes.

They broke replays. Or they were already broken, now they're fixing them, but they're removed for now. I think it's the de-sync on seeing where a player actually was, compared to where it looks like they were in the replay. It looked weird, but most people were used to it anyway.

They finally nerfed decoy! Hallelujah! Everyone rejoices.

We got a skill point refund for a few skills that no-one uses for long. Which means you get your higher level skills quicker. Or the more "party friendly" ones, instead of the "helpful when solo" ones, anyway. The skills that got refunded were great when you wanted to solo dungeons, but they removed the cost input for it, for those that really want to play that way (it's a multiplayer game at its core, but not having to pay for being solitary is nice).

The BIG one: All-round easier to get decent crafting materials. Secondary stats on items got a big boost too, so itemization is actually pretty good now. I've gotten a couple of proper upgrades to my kit, that were a worse level of item, but better due to the item's secondary stats. So even uncommons and rares aren't necessarily trash if they fit into your build well. Makes for good/cheap defense builds for guild summons too.

Now WAY easier to raid with people in your guild or on your friends list. People's log-in status now gets updated after each run, so if it says 1-5mins, they're probably online. They also get placed at the top of the list for people you can invite, which makes it quicker and easier to make rooms now.

A few little bits of polish and tweaking here and there. Many of the things I complained about in earlier posts have been fixed or remedied. It's nice to see a developer put some real effort into their product for their players, incrementally making it better, and a more fun experience, for both new and more experienced players alike. While there are cash options, there's no pay-wall, very little p2w, and levelling the playing field for new vs veteran players is working really well.


I'm actually going to throw some money at it. I don't need to, but I've played it f2p up to the highest levels, so it's certainly worth a few dollars due to the enjoyment I've gotten out of it. I don't think I've ever put a couple of hundred hours into a mobile game and still found it fun in the basic gameplay loop. I'll probably just use it to help kill a few more trolls, or get a few dungeon things quicker.....


--------
Speaking of which:

There's another big boss raid event in a few days. Looks like it'll be pretty similar to the closed beta one, but that was pretty fun, so I'm happy with it. More giant Dark Trolls to kill is fine by me.

Now that literally everyone has better gear, I'm hoping it's still a good challenge. They might have re-stat'd the higher level ones a bit this time around. We kinda murdered the last lot