A new thread by BB to compile a list of currently undesirable adventures or problems

Yep. And then a place to politely respond (by the community) as to why adventure X is simply not worth doing and what might be changed to make them more interesting. That way they can interact with the community (I would seriously like to see more response from BB tbh ....) while getting ideas to fix things and people can actually read they are heard.
The thread starts with of course a post from BB. Then the next response will be from someone having played adventure X and finds it is terrible to do. He then explains as to why it is terrible and then suggests a fix.

Example:

Island of the Pirates.
Problem: regular part of guild quests: too high cost in guild coins
Suggestion: Lower the cost or remove it from guild quests.

or

Dark Priests
Problem: regular part of guild quests: Can only be found with a very low drop chance.
Suggestion: Add it to the map fragment section, gem section and/or Guild Coins

or

Dark Brotherhood
Problem: Massive cost in units vs a not reasonable return in resources
Suggestion: rebalance the enemies

These are all examples (well some of them are actually true -_-) and they need to be fixed.
We had weapons removed, epic buildings drop chances highly nerfed, some adventures removed from place where we coud get them as needed for guild quests and Fairy tales made a lot harder.

BB it is time to step up and fix this and talk to us I'd say.

Whilst I agree with what many are saying regarding adventures and especially those needed for guild quests I think its always going to be subjective on many others.

Something may be very difficult at Level 32 but too easy at Level 50 so who do you please? Take the example of Dark Brotherhood you mention above, this adventure is easy for a L50 who buys a weapon buff or 2 from the Epic shop in exchange for otherwise useless Star Coins and yet that person could do three adventures (if swapping) and have 3 chances for a Witch Tower that can be sold for 50k coins fairly easily or alternatively can sell the 2 loot spots for around 7k coins and still have a much smaller chance of the Witch Tower. Either route they still get a significant boost on their xp / star coins. As such its not an unreasonable adventure.


To many people are spoilt by thinking every adventure should give decent loot and xp and opportunity for profit, all for low losses - that's never been the case.


One adventure I would love to see BB remove (but they wont as to many will quit) is Roaring Bull. For me this adventure is the key adventure that provides to many, a means to cheaply level up, lose a low amount of troops and make massive profits. Getting rid of this adventure would do more overnight to rebalance people views of reward / experience based adventures.

your star coins are better spent buying SoLT adventures then running crappy DB. if u want a witch tower just do RB anyways. and even with buffs the adv is still terrible. and is horrible to level up. DB loot should really be improved so its actually worth doing.

why have all adventures worth doing, that's crazy talk right. way better to use up twice more resources then what you get, cuz adventuring is so fun and not repetitive at all.

we know you've been playing the game for nearly 3y and have millions of everything so you dont care what adventure drops, well thankfully not every1 is like that.

No you totally didn't get the point of my response.


Adventures are subjective and mean different things to different people. Here is an easy example - I do Secluded Experiments now and again. I do it for fun. I generally give away the loot spots or swap them. I don't care about the troops lost or the rewards. I don't even do it for the Angel Gate as the last one I had got given away to a friend that collected them - he paid a stone for it and I was happy. Yes I am fortunate in having an economy that supports this approach but does that mean that as 90% of people wont ever do SE because it has a bad reputation or because its to hard should it get binned by BB? I hope not.


Adventures become easier the further you advance - Example, I can do Island of The Pirates and lose less that 300 recruits (and get 525 settlers as a reward) and yet a L35 can't say the same. Likewise with BK or RB they become easier and the losses become lower.


In essence adventures are typically categorised as experience adventures (where you get good xp but rubbish rewards), or reward adventures (where the rewards are better but the xp is rubbish). The Epic adventures are supposed to be that - a truly epic experience where you are rewarded for a high amount of effort (and associated losses). RB falls into the Epic category and it truly isn't epic in its requirements and yet does give good loot and good xp so yes I think it is imbalanced and I would rather see it become an experience adventure or a reward adventure as the whole idea of the Epics has been a big fail.






PS - Not sure why I would want to do any more Fairy Tale adventures for a while. I have the rewards I wanted, I have 98k beans for which there is nothing to spend them on, I am not a huge trader of resources so that doesn't help me and most importantly with the lag and ghosting of generals they are far to buggy which means they don't fall into my 'do them for fun' list.

I get where you are coming from fishslice. But for example DB is not meant for lvl 50. It is meant for lvl 42 and up. That it gets easy at 50 sure, nice but then make it a lvl 50 adventure. Epic buildings have been HEAVILY nerfed with their droprates. Blackcastle went from for example 4.8% to a MERE 0.75%. That 20 adventures for a single one vs 133 adventures. Witch Tower? 5% old rate now: 0.45% That is 20 adventures vs over 200. And an adventure which costs 1495 gems (not counting the .5% chance of drops on the nords as that is pretty much once in a lifetime) with the frozen Manor had it reduced from 1 in 3 to 5% aka ONE IN TWENTY. I can understand some nerf, I can understand the removal of weapons. But I cannot understand that the loot has not rebalanced at all. Adding a few settlers and pinewood?
Hate to tell you with your 135 Frozen manors, probably millions of weapons, but this is not the case for all the people right now. Look at your island and imagine if the cost to get all that had been 10-20 higher. Because THAT is essentially what non-level 50 players are facing at the moment. There is people that have frozen manors in their star menu because selling them is pointless. Stuff others could really use. But they will never see circulation. And what has now happened is that now on top of such great items rotting away in star menu's getting these really needed things has become a ridiculously hard task. Yes you may have millions of weapons, tons of DPs, IotPs, granite, Frozens and what not, rotting away in your star menu. Fact is they are NOT on the market. Fact is getting them now is 10 times harder then you ever experienced. We get FAR less for essentially the same or more work then you had to put in. And now even guildquests are heavily affected. I don't have 10million guildcoins like you. I have enough to buy things when they recycle the content of the guild store and maybe a few other things. If I have to add 1400 Guildcoins every week or so (yes two IotP's per 1-2 weeks) then the amout I have will evaporate.
Go ahead make a new account. Lvl 1. On a different server. Now try to reach what you have in the same amount of time with the exact same amount spent on it.
Not happening. In fact you will find a significantly higher cost in the range of 10-20 times compared to before. Build cannons? Good luck getting the titanium for it. Because they don't drop from adventures anymore. So it is VERY VERY easy to speak from your lofty privileged position. But put yourself in the shoes of everyone that started playing around 4-5 months ago. Then talk again. I won't be able to afford cannons at lvl 48 for example. You by then had probably enough cannons stocked to last you years. Notice the difference? Notice how that WILL impact every adventure in costs? So yes, you have it easy, you find it easy. The new people? Well appearantly that they will have 10 times more difficulty is not something you can imagine.

Also: Not everybody can block. These people have a far higher cost. BB should not set the rewards to people that can block. It should be set to "normal" way of killing camps.

Not all adventures need the full adventure doing. Some like SE do and like Fishslice I enjoy running it just for the change of pace. Others like DB can be done in shortened form and if your willing to take time to wait for gens to recover even the loses are minimal.

For every adventure which is said not to be worth running I have known players who do like running them.

However this does not change the fact that they have broken the quest system with the changes of the 25/11. I delete any guild quest which calls for my fellow guild members to do Pirates or Nords purely because of the cost in Trade. Unfortunately we can't say the cost of Nords for gems is unfair since the gem cost of completing the GQ with gems is way cheaper.

Also BB have been very reluctant to enter into any form of dialogue such as this.

If your guild is pressurizing you to complete the GQ's I would ask are you in the right guild. You need to be playing the game your way at you pace.

Look is it fair that they have to delete a guild quest because BB decided to remove the adventures needed to complete them? BB should have foreseen it and changed the GQ's. Is it fair if I don't contribute to GQ's while others do? That means I get Guild coins while not putting in any work. Not fair to the guildmembers that do put in work now is it? Btw the only Nords for Gems is Invasion of the Nords. 1495 IS unfair for an adventure with a now heavily nerfed droprate on the epic building, no more weapons in the loot either. So in no way does it merit that high price anymore compared to what it used to give. They basically now give a Lada for the same price as where before you got a Ferrari.

Again: You like running certain adventures with your HUGE stocks you have build up over the past 2.5 years. So yes quite easy for you. Now imagine you would have to do those adventures WITHOUT those stocks. Lose 200 cannons for you = no big deal. you probably have 100K sitting in your star menu anyway. losing 200 cannons for someone that started 4-5 months ago? HUUUUUUUUGGGGGGEEEEEEEEE deal. No cannons drop from loot. So that means they have to make them. Which means titanium, Salpeter, Exo wood and what else not. Drops they don't have huge stocks of either and which cost a fortune on the market. So these players that like running them? They are the ones with millions in stock. They can easily afford to do them. I am asking you to put yourself into the perspective of the people that do NOT have these stocks. And that will NEVER get them, because the people with the huge stocks don't need anything anymore so they don't sell them and just let them collect dust in their inventories.

The people that have huge stocks of cannons (and I am not one of them hence running my cannon makers) have so because they didn't sell every loot item they received for profit which seems to be the way of many that trade for loot spots - but that wasn't the point I was making. I agreed with your original post about how the adventures are broken - especially in respect to guild quests and BB should do something about that. I also said that its always going to be a very subjective area.


Lets stick with DB for a second. I see a lootspot for DB being sold for around 2.5k coins with a weapon buff to reduce Cavalry casualties down to the 250 ish area and the other lootspot around 3.5k coins on a regular basis. In that instance even a Level 42 player, without blocking, gets to complete the adventure with pretty low loses, gets high xp (in relation to the losses), decent loot opportunities and a chance of a very high value building. That doesn't sound like a very epic size of adventure to me.


On your other point regarding my star menu. Yes I may have a pretty full star menu but that is for 2 reasons;
1) I am a hoarder and over the time I have played I haven't typically sold off resources as I gained them. This has meant that each time I have unlocked new capabilities within the game I have been able to make them. I see many people complain that the resources to make cannons or such like are to high yet that's only because as soon as possible they started doing Epic adventures all the time and selling the lootspots. If you consider what resources you get from 3 BK's or 3 RB's then you should easily be able to build enough stocks to deal with occasional accidents. This approach though is based upon a swapping mentality, something that is missing for many in the game.
2) I have invested (possibly more than most) in gems in the game. That was my choice and my playing style and I have no regrets. But having been a heavy gem based player, I haven't had to go to trade to buy my Nobles, my Watermills or even my Frozen Manors which came from using a vast number of gems to open the 2013 version of the Christmas boxes. This means all those loots that others have traded have accumulated over time. Has this given me an advantage? Of course it has, but if it hadn't then I wouldnt have bought the gems in the first place and neither would many others. If that had been the case then this game would never have made it past the closed beta and peoples wages would not have been paid.


On the first point above, I do feel the need to say that whilst I am a hoarder I am not and have never been a player that just wants to store more and more resources. I tend to get to a level of resources I am comfortable with and then the rest I consider surplus. They go to help other players at various times, but typically I only help other players that I see also trying to create an island that supports their style. After all what is the point in giving someone 5k steel swords when they show no intention of ever making any steel swords themselves. If they create an island that supports their playing style of economy based activity and sell every iron ore they ever loot or mine then I will recommend they get their swords in the same manner - ie trade.


The second point above is an important one. This is a free to play game and for someone that doesn't invest heavily in gems it is still relatively easy to advance to Level 50 in a fairly short time period. That being said if people invest heavily in gems then they should expect to see a benefit from that. They do, but in reality the only benefit is a time based one as they get to do things a little quicker or a little easier. So in that respect there is a reasonable balance on most in-game activities and BB should continue to make some things harder for those that haven't invested heavily in making this a free game to many hundreds of thousands of people.


regards,
fish

I haven't read all the previous entries but I have a suggestion re: DB.

Instead of rebalancing enemies, it'd be a lot better if the time of training cavs would be reduced to be on the same level as for recruits. Horses are now cheap - not to mention they drop from every loot - and also, it is no longer worth to make bread, so people could use the wheat and water for making horses instead. And even if making cavs costs a lot more than making Rs for example (I'm not sure about that. BS prices seem to have taken off lately), the main reason people don't like losing them is that it takes half a day to retrain the amount lost. Which is why at the moment they only get sacrificed if it is absolutely necessary (i.e. on DB but, apart from WoTS with normal generals, I can't even remember another example where they do) and nobody is making horses or buying/selling them apart from very low levels who don't get them in loot yet.

So in short: reduce the training time of cavs and make them another unit type worth being used as cannon fodder and retraining.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

Example:

Island of the Pirates.
Problem: regular part of guild quests: too high cost in guild coins
Suggestion: Lower the cost or remove it from guild quests.

or

dark Brotherhood
Problem: Massive cost in units vs a not reasonable return in resources
Suggestion: rebalance the enemies


BB it is time to step up and fix this and talk to us I'd say.

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Maybe not lower /rebalance difficulty but increase the reward (Guild coins and/or Loot), as you cant expect BB to make difficult "ëpic" adv less hard :P

p.s. +1 fishslice

@ FishSmell ehhh I am lvl 43 and I sell them .. horses that is. It's one of the 4 things I can sell. (to gather enough gold for upgrades and ls'es).

@fishslice, yes ls'es. awesome. Same price as they were but pretty much the value has been dropped to 66% of what they were to removal of the weapons. You also forget that since people now have to use ALL their resources or save up for disasters (trust me you do not want to experience losing 100 cannoneers with a stock of zero cannons). So since they need to use the iron and the titanium and well pretty much everything that leaves only a few things people can sell they will have a surplus off. And let me tell you that isn't stuff worth 1000's of gold. more 40 gold per 10K. Now imagine sending a few explorers our (lets assume you manage say 2 commodities that give you a 10K surplus which both sell at 40 each per 10K and yes that is reality I mostly can sell Pinewood and Coal ... both sell at 40 gold per 10K so a massive 80 gold/day at lvl 43 :P) that means 10 days at the very least for a single LS if I don't send explorers. But lets say I can get enough other stuff like water and horses to cover the explorers. so 80 gold/day. So 10+ days to buy an LS which now gives 66% of the old value in loot. Not very much something you'll be doing often now trust me.

As doing even a single adventure will now drain resources heavily it means all the iron and copper you produce are ALL used. ALL of it. So by the time you have recovered even just the recruits from doing a DB (and I am not including blocking here because many people cannot block and the fact loot is basically set to people that can block ... kinda ridiculous) so that's in the vicinity of 2K recruits + 1K horses used. Recovering the resources for 2K recruits takes a LOT of time now. Now on top of that these people will have far smaller population limits. Why? All the epic buildings have been reduced remember? So they will hit walls soon enough that are called Building licenses. Since those epic buildings no longer drop as much as they used to (read 10-20 less then they used to aka you need to do 10-20 the adventures to get them) people will be stuck doing adventures within their pop limit.
It has created a string of problems that are quite fairly not imaginable for people that have huge stocks.

Now to the gems part. I also happen to buy gems, but you are saying that it is ok that if I want a nice amount of frozen that it is fair that I now have to pay 7 times as much as you did to get them. Because that is now the reality. Do you also know what the result is if they keep cranking up the difficulty for non-paying players? They will quit. I certainly wouldn't enjoy near empty servers tbh. And please do not say that that will not happen. One of my last games died because of exactly that. I wouldn't find a game that is mostly deserted except for the people with lots of money very interesting to play. I like seeing a lively active chat and guilds. I buy so they do not have to. No need to punish them more and more for not being paying players.

about old players having 100k cannons. i played bk to get to lvl 50 and swapped most spots. at 50 i had 8k cannons total. after that ive earned about another lvl 50 in xp playing adv that drop cannons and bought some ls also. im currently at 19k of cannons. i have not sold them and lost little over 100 cannoneers. so pretty much as average and vanilla as active player can get. 100k would mean you are adventuring/buying ls 8h a day..
20k is a nice number and will last me a lifetime but only because im extremely careful.

i had 9k cannons before Halloween too, then i double swapped bk non stop on prem for 3 weeks, ended up with 75k and ~20 DCs. doesn't take very long.

@fishslice
i didn't say they should remove SE because it's hard. its not even hard, the rewards are just complete junk. making them worth doing doesn't necessarily precludes you from having fun doing it either. just because you have no need for anything in the game doesn't mean adventures shouldnt be worth doing, resource wise. who cares you give away 100kgc for 1 stone, that's irrelevant to the discussion here.

In regards to the OP and what needs to be looked at seriously regarding the old adventures, ( once the attention of the Devs is removed from the expedition version of the game ;) ) Is taking the old original format of experience/resource/ epic and tweaking it to make it more up to the current rebalanced structure.
The removal of all weapons from loot was supposed to be the first step in the rebalancing program, it has been implemented in the most basic and simplest form, and the next phase has probably been put back ( forgotten about ) whilst resources have been put into the development of PV? and associated bug fixes.
I would like to see the blanket ban on weapons in loot to be revised and either some resource addys and epics having weapons included in loot or the middle resources ( bars ) included. With a) Certain individual resources tied to certain adventures - still as a chance not a certainty - Iron bars/swords maybe tied to SOTV: Steel bars/swords maybe tied to DB.
and b) Those addy's giving such loot should have the loot firmly tied to the xp earned by each player on adventure*
The requirements for higher level materials has not decreased in game, in fact with the higher weapons buildings and lvl6 buildings it has increased. So there was no need or justification in reducing it from loot. It needs putting back ( and even increasing) especially within the epic adventures, maybe reducing it in the easier resource addy's to reflect their ease and associated targeted player level.
The finding of epic buildings was hard enough at the old levels, but again ls selling makes it appear easier than it was. If this was restored but also tied in to xp, where the slot only became available ( giving the chance not the certainty ) when a player on the addy accrues a 33% of the available xp on a two player addy or 25% on a 3 player addy this would restore the original challenge and value of these buildings. Thinking about it having all the slots of loot tied into a particular value of xp on any one addy makes far more sense, the more you do the more slots become available and the better the loot ( chances ).
* I am well aware that this eliminates/reduces the value of ls selling part of the game. But the reality is, the practice of gaining full loot for the cost of 1r or 1c or one kill buff is a major part of the `imbalance' of the game in the first place. I know you will all hate me for saying it , but since coin became easier with the Gold Towers the imbalance has become a good deal worse!
I would rather we had a good loot ratio to effort rather than what we are currently looking at which is poor loot for everyone ( Which is If BB were working with the ls selling situation in mind when setting the loots )

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narcil

@fishslice
i didn't say they should remove SE because it's hard. its not even hard, the rewards are just complete junk. making them worth doing doesn't necessarily precludes you from having fun doing it either. just because you have no need for anything in the game doesn't mean adventures shouldnt be worth doing, resource wise. who cares you give away 100kgc for 1 stone, that's irrelevant to the discussion here.

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No it isn't irrelevant. I was demonstrating that not everyone does lootspots for profit and I stand by my comment that not all loots should be worth the cost of doing the adventure. That's why some are experience based and some are reward based.

I have to say Secluded Experiments is one of my favourite adventures - because it is different from all the rest - it can be attacked in so many different ways. Of course if you use the same guide over and over again it will feel just like any other adventure - but there are a lot of possible ways to clear the island. I also like the opportunity for double leader kill blocking to clear sectors (especially more so with the additional lag).

This is my choice of adventure whenever I want to just run an adventure for the fun of it and regularly volunteer my services when guildmates need it for a quest or achievement. Also my angel gate looks awesome (only had to run it 27 times to get it).

You could perhaps take your suggestion seriously if it actually contained any adventures that were undesirable, it's just another whine thread about Guild quests.If you want to list undesirable adventures how about listing SoTV, VtV, Gunpowder,Wild Mary, SE (all adventures shunned by the majority).

I don't personally do DB that often but when I do there are ways and means to reduce the losses to acceptable levels, now given that your getting IoTP ans DP as GQ I'm going to take a leap of faith and presume you in a guild with at least 50 active members, so do something radical and work together to get the DB done, sell both ls to guild members for a 400C suicide, maybe go a little further use up some of those star coins you've been hoarding and use an assassin and a RoA too.
There is a short version which skips loads of camps (losses 835R 120M 23S 1000C less if use assassin and RoA)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

@ FishSmell ehhh I am lvl 43 and I sell them .. horses that is. It's one of the 4 things I can sell. (to gather enough gold for upgrades and ls'es).

@fishslice, yes ls'es. awesome. Same price as they were but pretty much the value has been dropped to 66% of what they were to removal of the weapons. You also forget that since people now have to use ALL their resources or save up for disasters (trust me you do not want to experience losing 100 cannoneers with a stock of zero cannons). So since they need to use the iron and the titanium and well pretty much everything that leaves only a few things people can sell they will have a surplus off. And let me tell you that isn't stuff worth 1000's of gold. more 40 gold per 10K. Now imagine sending a few explorers our (lets assume you manage say 2 commodities that give you a 10K surplus which both sell at 40 each per 10K and yes that is reality I mostly can sell Pinewood and Coal ... both sell at 40 gold per 10K so a massive 80 gold/day at lvl 43 :P) that means 10 days at the very least for a single LS if I don't send explorers. But lets say I can get enough other stuff like water and horses to cover the explorers. so 80 gold/day. So 10+ days to buy an LS which now gives 66% of the old value in loot. Not very much something you'll be doing often now trust me.

As doing even a single adventure will now drain resources heavily it means all the iron and copper you produce are ALL used. ALL of it. So by the time you have recovered even just the recruits from doing a DB (and I am not including blocking here because many people cannot block and the fact loot is basically set to people that can block ... kinda ridiculous) so that's in the vicinity of 2K recruits + 1K horses used. Recovering the resources for 2K recruits takes a LOT of time now. Now on top of that these people will have far smaller population limits. Why? All the epic buildings have been reduced remember? So they will hit walls soon enough that are called Building licenses. Since those epic buildings no longer drop as much as they used to (read 10-20 less then they used to aka you need to do 10-20 the adventures to get them) people will be stuck doing adventures within their pop limit.
It has created a string of problems that are quite fairly not imaginable for people that have huge stocks.

Now to the gems part. I also happen to buy gems, but you are saying that it is ok that if I want a nice amount of frozen that it is fair that I now have to pay 7 times as much as you did to get them. Because that is now the reality. Do you also know what the result is if they keep cranking up the difficulty for non-paying players? They will quit. I certainly wouldn't enjoy near empty servers tbh. And please do not say that that will not happen. One of my last games died because of exactly that. I wouldn't find a game that is mostly deserted except for the people with lots of money very interesting to play. I like seeing a lively active chat and guilds. I buy so they do not have to. No need to punish them more and more for not being paying players.

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You want to make gc forget resources at your current level, sell BK ls (buying all the bread,brew and swords).A short BK losses about 1000-1200R if you don't block using an MMA or Vet using Elites and Xbow. Regarding population, on my Northisle character I just sold my Frozen Manor and bought 25 nobles gaining 1250 population for absolutely no input other than logging in daily for an entire event.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Bluesavanah

You could perhaps take your suggestion seriously if it actually contained any adventures that were undesirable, it's just another whine thread about Guild quests.If you want to list undesirable adventures how about listing SoTV, VtV, Gunpowder,Wild Mary, SE (all adventures shunned by the majority).

I don't personally do DB that often but when I do there are ways and means to reduce the losses to acceptable levels, now given that your getting IoTP ans DP as GQ I'm going to take a leap of faith and presume you in a guild with at least 50 active members, so do something radical and work together to get the DB done, sell both ls to guild members for a 400C suicide, maybe go a little further use up some of those star coins you've been hoarding and use an assassin and a RoA too.
There is a short version which skips loads of camps (losses 835R 120M 23S 1000C less if use assassin and RoA)

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@BlueSavanah. Which part of "These are just examples" didn't you get? I do not know the whole list of adventures which are undesirable and why they are. So instead of critizing me how about you learn to read. Did you by any chance miss this "Then the next response will be from someone having played adventure X and finds it is terrible to do. He then explains as to why it is terrible and then suggests a fix." or the "Example" part right below it. Not to mention: which starcoins? the ones I do not have at lvl 43? ohhhh riiiggghhhtttt. Your reply is rather daft ...
On top of that BK costs me 1400-1600 recruits actually not 1000-1200. I have done it MANY times and it's with an MMA.

As far as adventures go your near the bottom for the highest level of adventures, but as you level up you will open up items which will enable you to do them easier.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

@BlueSavanah. Which part of "These are just examples" didn't you get? I do not know the whole list of adventures which are undesirable and why they are. So instead of critizing me how about you learn to read. Did you by any chance miss this "Then the next response will be from someone having played adventure X and finds it is terrible to do. He then explains as to why it is terrible and then suggests a fix." or the "Example" part right below it. Not to mention: which starcoins? the ones I do not have at lvl 43? ohhhh riiiggghhhtttt. Your reply is rather daft ...
On top of that BK costs me 1400-1600 recruits actually not 1000-1200. I have done it MANY times and it's with an MMA.

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You should take your own advice and learn to read. I said a SHORT BK.

http://i.imgur.com/sGDSoNQ.jpg

I used this a lot at your level to generate cash.

ignore typo at bottom should read X3 to DC2

My apologies about star coins but you could get ls to use instead of suiciding cavalry, no idea if that works out better.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fishslice

Something may be very difficult at Level 32 but too easy at Level 50 so who do you please? Take the example of Dark Brotherhood you mention above, this adventure is easy for a L50 who buys a weapon buff or 2 from the Epic shop in exchange for otherwise useless Star Coins and yet that person could do three adventures (if swapping) and have 3 chances for a Witch Tower that can be sold for 50k coins fairly easily or alternatively can sell the 2 loot spots for around 7k coins and still have a much smaller chance of the Witch Tower. Either route they still get a significant boost on their xp / star coins. As such its not an unreasonable adventure.

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Uh, sorry ... nice prices you got on Newfoundland.
DB sells at around 1800-2500 coins on Northisle, the loot is worse than Roaring Bull (which also drops Witch Tower!) and the latter has significantly lower troop losses as well.

The Star Buffs are limited, but highly useful. On Northisle, a gifted Star Buff sells at 2000+ coins, so in fact, you'd be investing around 4000 coins into the adventure by using 2 Star Buffs, which you can only do once per 2 days.

On the other hand, you could just do an RB, you lose about 300R less, you lose about 500C less, you lose about 4k coins less ... and get the same reward.
Yeah, no balance problems here anywhere.

One might reasonably argue that RB should be changed to "clear all the camps" to be in line with DB on losses, though: It's just too cheesy as it currently stands.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

On top of that BK costs me 1400-1600 recruits actually not 1000-1200. I have done it MANY times and it's with an MMA.

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How are you doing it then? Using only recruits?
If you have Elites and are losing 1k+R, you're doing something seriously wrong.

Here's how I did BK with MMA, not even cannons needed:

Left:
Block with 61S 128C
Block with 10R 95E
Attack boss with 111R 109E (max loss: 111R)

Bottom Sector:
Block with 10R 95E
Attack boss with 111R 109E (max loss: 111R)

Left castle:
Block with 140C 20E
Attack boss with 113R 17S 90E (max loss: 113R 17S, often not a single S)

Upper Sector:
Attack boss with 111R 109E (max loss: 111R)

Upper right Sector:
Attack boss with 100R 120X (max loss: 80R or so)

Castle Sector:
Attack camp1 with 90R 50C 80X (max loss: 80R or so)
Suicide 100c camp2 with MMA+1R, wait 2h (unless you have 2x MMA)
Attack camp2 with 10R 140C (max loss: 10C if the MMA didn't take down all C)
Attack camp3 with 90R 50C 80X (max loss: 80R or so)
Attack camp4 with 90R 10C 120X (max loss: 80'ish or so)
Attack castle with 31S 189E (max loss: 31S)

Total loss:
750-ish R, 48S.
You can avoid the sacrifice of 31S by swapping to 90R on the castle, then Recruit losses go into 840.

The run clears the entire adventure map and gives 28200'ish XP.


Anyhow, this is not a discussion of BK but about the fact that some adventures are highly undesirable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narcil

i had 9k cannons before Halloween too, then i double swapped bk non stop on prem for 3 weeks, ended up with 75k and ~20 DCs. doesn't take very long.

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Wow,
BK awarded 150 Cannons in a slot, so if you "doubleswapped" and got 100% Cannon rewards, you'd get 900 Cannons per adventure.
3 weeks have 21 days, so you did a minimum of 3 adventures per day.
Since you got ~20DC, which are closer to 4% drop chance, let's assume it was 5%, you did a statistical equivalence of 400 BK including LS in 3 weeks, which is around 20 adventures/LS per day.

I don't know, I thought I'm somewhere on the top of the food pyramid already, but I typically don't do more than 8 adv/LS per day - and that's on weekends, as during the week, I tend to have RL stuff to do. So, the same achievement would have taken me roughly 2 months. Now I feel like a complete noob, since you claim that it doesn't take very long.

As a side note:
I got 3 DC from lv42-lv50, and I got a total of 7 DC ever. Getting 7 DC *per week* is either extremely lucky or you're simply exaggerating to make a point.
Yeah, I know there's people who did 3 Fairytales a day, earning them roughly 200k coins a day but that's somewhere outside the norm.

I was glad to earn roughly 100k coins per month before the combat update.
Now, I earn roughly 100k per week.
Loot hasn't become worse. The adventures which are valuable have changed.

Witty comment: Bandit Nest costs ~200 Fragments and has a chance to earn a value (based on Northisle prices) of up to 28,000 coins [premium] with an average profit somewhere around 5000. It's the "New Pirates" for highlevels. Oh, and by the way - you don't need even cannons the way I do it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Narcil

i had 9k cannons before Halloween too, then i double swapped bk non stop on prem for 3 weeks, ended up with 75k and ~20 DCs. doesn't take very long.

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thats 65k in 3 weeks. i did the same for a week and only gained 5k cannon. 9 DC. seems ive been just generally unlucky with cannon drops then. :(

@Sharpielein. I can't and therefore don't block. Your list relies on blocks. Btw I also wrote in this thread I don't and can't block

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharpielein

DB sells at around 1800-2500 coins on Northisle, the loot is worse than Roaring Bull (which also drops Witch Tower!) and the latter has significantly lower troop losses as well.

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DB ls sells quite happily at 2500-3000 on Northisle, loot being worse is subjective without a loot table with accurate percentages to analyse... though you do have a point about the troop loss... I'll give you that!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ozzymandeus

DB ls sells quite happily at 2500-3000 on Northisle, loot being worse is subjective without a loot table with accurate percentages to analyse... though you do have a point about the troop loss... I'll give you that!

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Key point being: "Why should you do DB when you can just do RB instead?"
Not like you can do DB in 30 minutes including travel time, either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharpielein

Key point being: "Why should you do DB when you can just do RB instead?"

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Without the aforementioned loot tables it is impossible to give an answer to that in terms of 'efficiency'. For all we know the drop chance for the Witch Tower could be significantly higher enough to warrant the extra troop cost if extra population is what you require most.

Without that information, I can only answer that question by saying that I'd wager that many of the folks I see complaining about the game being "stale", "boring" and/or "needing new content" are the same folks that spam the same adventures over and over again, because they are the only ones "worth doing".

So, my answer to that question could be summed up with one word: variety

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharpielein

Not like you can do DB in 30 minutes including travel time, either.

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RB in 15 mins from landing using only fast gens... hmmm... you got a guide for that?
I'm curious to see how much that pushes the losses up.

@Ozzymandeus :https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...er=false&gid=5
That's where I got my new stats for the epic buildings from as well.

http://forum.thesettlersonline.com/t...Adventure-Loot

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

@Ozzymandeus :https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...er=false&gid=5

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Impossible to judge accuracy of information without some indication of its source. (See Edit)

Plus, I also have to view the accuracy of the percentages with some suspicion when they can't even get Wild Mary's name right. ;)

Given that, if the figures for Witch Tower drops from that list is right then whoever at BB decided that RB should have a higher chance of dropping a WT than DB needs their coffee spiked with something that might actually wake them up to the point they can think sensibly!

EDIT: Apologies.... I didn't explore your second link fully at first. I see now the source of that table is a fan site.

As the thread you link states, "Still, as always with any numbers and new info, grain of salt until gameplay confirms.", and the kind of percentages we are talking about for drops of items like the Witch Tower really do require a massive sample size for any level of accuracy (short of BB actually officially releasing the information, of course).

Yes but do read the sentence before the one you quoted too. The one about them having been rather accurate in the past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rhylian

Yes but do read the sentence before the one you quoted too. The one about them having been rather accurate in the past.

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I did. However, the fan site that compiled that data is written in German, which I don't read, so I have no idea of the sample sizes involved to produce that data. It is therefore impossible for me to make any sort of judgement as to the potential accuracy of small percentages like the drops for buildings such as the Witch Tower. So... I continue to take them with a grain of salt.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ozzymandeus

Impossible to judge accuracy of information without some indication of its source. (See Edit)

Plus, I also have to view the accuracy of the percentages with some suspicion when they can't even get Wild Mary's name right. ;)

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Yes, how can someone who's not a native English Speaker possibly do correct mathematical calculations?
That automatically discredits them, so we're back to Square 1.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharpielein

Yes, how can someone who's not a native English Speaker possibly do correct mathematical calculations?
That automatically discredits them, so we're back to Square 1.

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You pick up on a little joke (note the smiley) and completely ignore the serious point that has nothing to do with the list producers ability to calculate a percentage and everything to do with the basic principle of statistical probability that the smaller the likelihood of an occurrence the greater the sample size that is required to accurately quantify it.

That spreadsheet lists the DB drop rate for the Witch Tower as 0.45%. The number of iterations required to render that degree of statistical analysis numbers well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. So, unless some kind German speaker can translate the portion of the original site that indicates their sample size(s), I have to assume that level of analysis has not been performed, especially in light of how unpopular the adventure seems to be in most circles and the relatively short space of time since the loot was changed.

And just to be clear, I am not trying to discredit the entire spreadsheet. For larger percentages, such as how often Granite/ExoWood/TitOre/Salt drops, smaller sample sizes can render reasonably accurate information with little margin of error.

The soultion to this loot thing is simple:

allow us to skill our generals so we can be selective with what loot we get.

I only adventure for Gold refills as i need nothing else, the drops have become rubbish now so i might as well not adventure.


Also bring back IOTP.

Re: Dark Brotherhood

People are stuck in a mindset of presuming cavalry are expensive - horses, brew and settlers are all dropping in abundance from adventure loots. The only 'cost' that keeps cavalry being cannon fodder now is time - and skunks are free with collectibles and myers with lucky fatties.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ozzymandeus

You pick up on a little joke (note the smiley)

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Well maybe I should have added one as well then :D

Quote:

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That spreadsheet lists the DB drop rate for the Witch Tower as 0.45%. The number of iterations required to render that degree of statistical analysis numbers well into the thousands, if not tens of thousands.

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While in principle I would agree with you, the fact that it's listed as "0.45%", even if it's just #Events/#Samples, implies that it's well over 200 samples and the mere fact that it seems that it's possible to do 200 DB without a single Witch Tower drop renders the drop as "practically nonexistant", as the relative value of a Witch Tower contributes a mere 200 coins (or less) to the value for practical reasons. One might as well evade to other adventures with a higher average ROI and resort to buying other styles of settler residence over doing DB. Yes.
WT's are (slightly) more effective than Magnificient Residences, but that is only a concern for those who are too rich to have island space, richer than being able to afford MR's, but too poor to afford Frozen Manors.
Aside from that, I have calculated if the odds given on that site are accurate, one has to do an average of 4000(!) Nords Adventures for 1 Frozen Manor, effectively discontinuing that item.

Quote:

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And just to be clear, I am not trying to discredit the entire spreadsheet. For larger percentages, such as how often Granite/ExoWood/TitOre/Salt drops, smaller sample sizes can render reasonably accurate information with little margin of error.

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There is another possibility which is highly accurate, and that is disseminating server messages.
I'm not sure it is still possible, but in the past, loot probabilities were extracted rather than calculated.