Game Over

Sadly, beyond a certain level, Battle Camp is essentially 100% pay-to-win, and it looks like that isn't about to change anytime soon. It's a shame, because I think there's a really fun game underneath the greasy layer of gambling micro-transactions. Like all of the games following this unsustainable model, the developers will get their payday, and the player base will eventually get jaded and dwindle.

I barely play the game any more, and I doubt I will have any more insights to offer. So consider the blog shut down. I may leave it up for historical purposes, but I won't be updating any more, or moderating comments.

Easter Event

The Easter Event has started in River Crossing and will run for the next 10 days. It follows the standard holiday event formula.

There are a few things worth mentioning for this event. Firstly, the reward tiers have been changed up a bit. The troop rewards are significantly worse than usual - specials and U grabs. On the other hand, the individual rewards are better than usual. If you can get under 2500, you'll get at least a super and legendary grabs, and tiers under 800 can net you supers and ultras.

I would bet more people than usual will be spending during this event, thanks to these rewards and the holiday specials that PennyPop is running this first day of the event. You may find it a little harder to get into the tier you expect from previous events.

The other interesting thing about this event are the boss mechanics. The changes to the lieutenant fight that we first saw in "I, Joebot" continue to be in effect. The Architect is also present, offering "prestige" raids to troops that can complete 5 extreme boss fights.

The boss himself, Farmer Brownhare, doesn't do any direct attacks. Instead, he inflicts a very strong poison - dealing 20k damage per turn on hard difficulty, and 30k per turn on extreme. You'll need to carefully manage your hearts and heals to get through the full timer.

Head over to River Crossing and start beating on bunnies and marshmallows. Good luck!

Update: Raid Halls, New Quests and Pet Skills

PennyPop seems to be making big changes on a monthly basis these days. In addition to preparing for the Easter event, today's update gave us several new features.

Raid Halls

Raid halls are new dungeons that can be found in Teepee Hollow, Turtle Falls, Spring Clearing, Rocky Ridge, and Mt. Magma. They're marked by these little wooden signs.

When you first enter the hall, you'll see a little animation showing off a big, angry monster. This is the final boss of the area. Each raid hall has several mini-bosses and a final boss. These boss fights are for your whole troop and can only be started by an admin.

Each mini-boss is a separate fight. Defeat each of them in succession, before their timers run out, to beat the hall. You'll get a reward for each boss you beat along the way. When you beat a hall on easy mode, you'll unlock the extreme mode - with harder fights, and better rewards.

Be aware that once you start a raid hall, you're locked out of all the others. Additionally, once you've beaten a hall, you have to wait 24 hours before activating it again.


One big change comes along with this. Players are required to beat the raid halls in Spring Clearing, Rocky Ridge, and Mt. Magma in order to earn the badge for those zones and unlock access to the next zone. This basically means players will have to be in a troop with people willing to run that hall, or they can't advance in the game. For old players who have already unlocked the zones, this isn't a big deal. For newer players, it might be annoying.

New Quests

The new daily quests seem to mostly involve running between multiple rangers on different maps and carrying out some simple instructions like "donate x of this monster". Overall, they seem to be less repetitive than the old ones, but also less lucrative.

Troop quests have also been introduced. These require the entire troop to do something within a 24 hour period, such as "pet the troop pet 15 times". They seem to be tuned so that moderately active troops can easily complete them.

Troop Pet Skills

Troop pets have finally woken up and are able to defend themselves. They now gain abilities at level 10, 20, 35, and 50. This might give troops a little more incentive to burn specials leveling the pet. This will be a very long-term goal for most troops. It's hard to even contemplate the number of specials required to get a troop pet to level 50.

UI Improvements

These are relatively minor compared to the last update. The raid log is the biggest improvement, as it's now split into four categories:

• Event (for donating specials and dealing damage to event bosses)
• Raid (including the new raid halls, old-school troop raids, and Lost Temple raids)
• Ranger (which shows troop membership changes and member level-ups)
• Pet (which just shows who has been petting or feeding the troop pet)

They've also added the monster animations to their detail cards in the Management section.

Monthly Updates?

The Lost Temple update was in late January, and the Troop Dungeon update was in mid-March. With this update falling squarely in the middle of April, I'm hoping that PennyPop is settling into a cycle where they add new features on a monthly basis.

What do you think of the new features? What would you like to see in the next month or two?

PvP Event, With a Twist

The PvP Event has started again. See the event summary post if you don't know the basics. There are two things that are a little different this time around.

Firstly, the daily event quests that we first saw in I, Joebot are back, tuned for this event. There's also a meta-quest that requires you to complete all the daily event quests. Should you succeed, you'll get the chance to try an Elite Spin - the new gamble that can (theoretically) net you a legendary monster. Once again, the first day's events were pretty easy. We'll see how they ramp up in difficulty, since this is only a 5 day event.

Secondly, the Architect has crashed the PvP party and is hanging around in the PvP fort. When your troop defeats the boss a certain number of times, you'll get the opportunity to battle the Architect's monster as a special boss. This guy hits very hard, but if you defeat him you have a chance to get elemental and rarity crystals to use in second evolution.

This is a really nice addition, allowing people the chance to get some crystals without the (fairly hardcore) requirement of running Lost Temple over and over. I doubt the Architect will show his face in every event, but hopefully he'll show up to dole out crystals every now and then.

Event Quest Disappointment

I was pretty excited when I found out about the new daily event quests for the I, Joebot event. They gave the event more variety, and more rewards. It was even cooler that completing these dailies allowed you to collect puzzle pieces for an event-themed super. And hey, it was my zodiac! Score!

I dutifully did my quests on day one, and day two. And then it became pretty obvious what was going on. The numbers required to finish those quests were increasing rapidly, and this was a 10-day event. I got three puzzle pieces out of the necessary six, and that was pretty much the end of that. I didn't come anywhere close to completing the 50 quests required to get the epic candy.

Since my troop ended the event comfortably in tier 3, it seems unlikely that there were even 100 troops whose players could complete the event super. And I doubt more than a handful of top-tier players completed all 50 quests for the epic candy.

Sad.

Now, if you're going to play Battle Camp, you need to accept the fact that it's a game supported by micro-transactions. Shelling out cash gets you an advantage, plain and simple. However, even in that light, I think these quests were poorly implemented.

At the start of the event, these quests seemed like something everyone could participate in. It would take enough dedication to log in and complete them every day, but they seemed reasonably doable for any active troop.

However, as the numbers ramped up, it quickly became apparent that completing all the quests would require more than dedication - it would require spending plenty of gold. Even a lot of spenders couldn't hope to finish them, because they required a troop full of spenders to complete.

The really silly thing about all this is that the rewards weren't even all that great. Most of the people who could actually get all six pieces of the event super were already running teams that out-class that monster. The epic candy would be nice, but most players don't have a pair of matched epics sitting around, so I don't think too many players cared about not getting that.

I'm sure the whole system was designed to try and get more people spending. I don't know if it actually achieved that goal or not. For myself and my troop, it mostly turned an exciting feature into a disappointing one.

I hope that PennyPop evaluates how the Joebot event went, and adjusts the quests accordingly for future events. I'd suggest they tweak the quests to allow average active players to acquire the 6 event super pieces. It could easily be designed so that average players can only finish on the final day of the event (preventing too many players from using the monster for extra event damage, while still letting people collect it). Completing all 50 quests could remain extremely difficult, so there's a prestigious goal for the top-tier players to shoot for.


Like many players, I really like the idea of event quests. With a few adjustments, I think they could be a fun addition for the majority of players. What do you think? Do you like them? Or do you think they need adjustments?

Troop Dungeon Changes

The troop dungeon feature has been out less than two weeks, and we've already gotten an update for it. There are two small changes, both of which should improve your rewards if your troop runs the dungeon frequently.

Seals

Next time you enter your troop hall, you'll find Sargent Lovejoy waiting for you. He's collecting "seal" items, which now drop every time you successfully complete the troop dungeon. When your troop donates 100 seals, everyone gets mailed a mystery egg.

Dungeon Ranks

The other change is the addition of troop dungeon ranks. Every time a person in your troop completes the dungeon, your troop earns a small amount of "dungeon experience". Higher difficulties earn more than lower difficulties. Earn enough dungeon experience, and your troop's "dungeon rank" will increase.

According to PennyPop, a higher dungeon rank is supposed to increase your likelihood of better drops from the dungeon. Unfortunately, nothing actually says what sort of improvement you'll get. The change has only been out for a day, but my troop hasn't noticed much of a difference so far.

Be aware that your troop rank will reset every day, at the same time the dungeon element changes. Check the countdown on the troop dungeon popup to see how long you have until the next reset.

Mo' Rewards, Mo'...Fun?

I don't think these changes are going to cause everyone to start doing troop dungeon runs if they weren't already. But they do add some additional rewards if you are participating. They also add a little more feel of community, since your whole troop can work on filling the bar toward a mystery egg. All in all, I think it's a good update to an already pretty solid feature.

I, Joebot

It's not a holiday (unless you count Pi Day), but brand new holiday-style event called "I, Joebot" has started in Winter Peak. The zone has been redecorated as a robot laboratory, and it's swarming with rock and fire monsters.

Just like any other holiday event, you're collecting event specials to donate to the boss so you can raid. The specials for this event are rock monsters called "Spybots".

Spybot

There's also the standard trader NPC - Mayaspace this time - who will sell you trophies, energy, specials, event rares, and event costumes for your event tokens.

Cool New Event Mechanics!

Twitterbell

The lieutenant this time around is a robot named Twitterbell, but she works a little differently from the lieutenant fights in previous events. Firstly, when you engage her, you have to pick a difficulty level. Then, you're faced with a cave battle, including multiple waves of robots. For the final wave you'll face Twitterbell herself. She always rewards a single Spybot and five event tokens. Additionally, she awards some amount of trophies, which varies based on the difficulty you chose.

Joebot

The other big change with this event is the introduction of event quests. These are quests that you complete by participating in the event. These quests reset daily, and it looks like there may be different variations each day. The ones for today are:

• Twitterbell Takedown - Defeat Twitterbell 1 time. (Missed the reward text).
• Raid Boss Takedown - Defeat the raid boss 1 time. Rewards 50 trophies.
• Mortimer Takedown - Defeat Mortimer 1 time. Rewards one super candy special.
• Raid Boss Donation - Donate 1 Spybot to Joebot. Rewards 5 event tokens.
• Daily Event Completion (4 parts) - Complete all of today's event quests. Rewards 1 Freezoid piece.
• Event All-Star (50 parts) - Complete all of the event quests. Rewards 1 epic candy special.

This is a pretty cool addition, adding some extra spice to the standard "grind monsters, fight lieutenant, fight boss" routine.

This is a 10 day event, so you have until March 23 or 24th (depending on your time zone) to kick some robot butt.

Battle Camp Update: Troop Dungeons, and More!

The last big update to Battle Camp had a pretty mixed reaction. Lost Temple and second evolution added some much-needed new content for very strong players, and the new raid rewards offered some variety for everyone. But the changes to the ability system and the new happiness system were much less popular. In fact, PennyPop quickly decided to disable the happiness system.

Another large update rolled out today, and I think it will prove much more popular. There's a really nice mix of new features and quality-of-life improvements. And no "features" that immediately irritated me.

Shiny New Interface

The first thing you'll notice is a lot of improved graphics and polish. The most obvious of these is the menu that now runs across the bottom of the screen, consolidating lots of buttons and freeing up some screen real-estate.

While the developers were working on this, they've really sped up the interface as well. I used to have to tap and wait...tap and wait...every time I wanted to do something. Now, it seems like the menus and troop tabs are much more responsive. Troop chat is also much less laggy.

Team Management

The map has been changed a bit as well. The leveling areas all follow a single path now, making it clear what the progression is. The Troop Hall, PvP Fort, and Troop Wars are clustered together on a little island, and the special event areas have their own section of the map as well.

The changes to the Team Management window are probably my favorites. It's much easier to sort through your monsters and swap them in or out.

The quest interface has been updated yet again, and I really like this version. It's clean and concise and shows you exactly where you've got things to do. The little help popups should make it easy for new players to figure out how to complete each quest.

Bigger, Better Daily Quests

While you're checking out the new quests interface, you'll also notice two new daily quests.

The first is the Daily Raid, which will presumably reward you for completing a different raid each day. PennyPop has been looking for ways to encourage high-level players to run all the different raids, instead of just farming the same one over and over. This is a nice way to do it, while rewarding the players.

The second is the new Daily Hall Dungeon quest. This one encourages players to try out the brand new Troop Hall dungeons.

Both of these new dailies reward 500 stones, which is a pretty awesome bump for people who are working on second evolutions. If you're in a good raiding troop, you should be able to get 1100-1500 stones per day just from finishing daily quests.


Troop Hall Dungeon

The Troop Hall dungeon is the big new piece of content in this patch. As you might expect, you can access it from your troop hall. Just go left from your troop pet to the cave.

Despite being located in your troop headquarters, this dungeon is a solo affair. It's similar to the cave quests, or the Celestial Towers, where you battle waves of enemies before finishing off a final boss. Much like troop raids, there a bunch of possible prizes, and you'll randomly receive one when you complete the dungeon successfully. However, the dungeon lets you pick your difficulty, and higher difficulty increases your odds of better loot. Then, if you really want to improve your odds, you can spend additional energy to improve your drops even more. Of course, you still have to win, or it all goes to waste.

Active Ability Tweaks

New Active Ability Graphics

The way active abilities work has been tweaked slightly in this update. Previously, active abilities would fire as soon as you tapped them, in-between rounds of gem matching. Now, each monster in your party shows a counter that tells you how many turns are left before you can activate their ability. When you do activate, a check mark appears. You then finish your turn, matching gems like normal. After your damage is dealt, then your chosen abilities will fire. There are also some nice new graphics that make it very clear which abilities you and your opponents are using.

This definitely gives battle a slightly different feel, but I think it will be a good change once we all get used to it.

Oh, and for some reason the developers decided to turn on the auto-cast option for everyone by default. You can disable it in the Options menu.

Monster Stat Adjustments

When you first log in, you may want to go to the troop roster and check your power rating. Monster stats have changed somewhat. (People in my troop noticed a large increase in HP.) Overall, power ratings seem to have gone up across the board, which should make people feel good for a while, and also give us a slightly more precise measurement of how we compare to others.

It doesn't feel like my team is significantly more powerful, so I'm guessing that enemy monsters have had their stats increased in a similar way to compensate. It will probably take a while to figure out what effect these changes have had. Overall, it feels like a neutral, or possibly slightly beneficial change.

Evolution Ingredients

This will probably be the most controversial change in today's update. There are new ingredients required for evolution (first evo, that is). Instead of just requiring four specials of the same type as the evolving monster, you will now need a special monster called "candy".

These candies come in three flavors - Super, Ultra, and Epic. To evolve a monster, you now need one candy of the appropriate rarity, along with three regular specials of the appropriate element and the two evolving monsters.

At first glance, this seems like it will make evolution more difficult. However, the troop dungeon and troop raids both have a chance to reward candy. So you have two ways to farm the candy you need - individually or with your troop. I believe that active players won't have too much trouble finding the ingredients they need. However, we'll have to wait and see what the drop rates are like.

Go Check it Out!

I assume you've got your phone in front of you as you read this, but if not, go play! This update added a lot of fun and little improvements to the game. This post is already long, and there are even more features I haven't mentioned. (New abilities, new monsters,

I'm actually impressed at how much was added, since the big Lost Temple update wasn't all that long ago. And this time around, the developers seem to have done a better job listening to the players and adding features that we'll enjoy.

So go check it out and leave me a comment to let me know what you think about the new stuff.

PvP Event Starts Today!

The PvP event is back.

You can read the overview of this event here. It looks like they've kept some of the new mechanics, including the "double down" system. However, rifts have gone away, and the boss monster is back - so save up your Valor Tokens and raid against the Warrior King of Desolation. Also, like any event boss, you can expect him to have a chance to enrage halfway through the event for double trophies.

Time for Troop Wars!

Troop wars starts today. If you don't know what you're doing, see the event summary here.

Maximizing Grabs

Ah, the ultimate grab. Perhaps you got some from an event reward? Perhaps you spent your hard-earned gold. The ultimate grab holds so much promise.

Will you get an epic monster? An ultra? Maybe a super? Well, at least a special, right? Right?

And then the slot machine spins, slows, and comes to rest on a pathetic little rare. The same rare you assembled from puzzle pieces in Teepee Hollow when you were level 10...

Ultimate grabs are a rare resource for the non-spender, and one of the very few ways to get ultra and epic monsters. It's easy to get excited and use them immediately. However, like many things in Battle Camp, you can get an advantage if you're patient.

Ultimate grabs are special because they're the only grab with the "spin bonus". The spin bonus gives you extra stuff for spending several grabs one after another. PennyPop hopes this will entice you to spend real money on gold, to get a few more spins, but you can just as easily save up your ultimate grabs in order to get spin bonuses.

The spin bonuses do the following:

• 3 spins - you get 5 free energy and one monster grab.
• 6 spins - you get 10 free energy and one avatar grab.
• 9 spins - you get one random booster and one ultimate grab.

So, if you're willing to save your grabs, you can get some pretty good advantages. Here's how:

1. Wait until an event is happening, and your troop is fighting a raid boss. Have a full 5 energy.
2. Spend 10 or 15 spins.
3. You now have 20 energy. If you're lucky, you also got an elemental booster that you can use.

20 energy is enough for two full-blast 11x damage hits. That's about 3 hours worth of energy, plus the 10% damage boost for using 10 energy at a time. An element booster that matches your team will give you another big boost. That's a nice chunk of extra trophies, no gold required. (If you do have some gold, this might be a good time to spend it though, before the booster runs out.)

It can be hard to save those grabs through a couple events, but the reward is pretty nice. And, of course, you still get whatever monsters came out of your ultimate grabs, plus a monster grab and a piece of avatar clothing to boot.

So next time you win an ultimate grab, don't spend it right away. Think about how disappointed you're going to be when you get that useless rare, and wait. Because you'll feel a lot better about getting useless rares when they come with boosters and free energy.

Holiday Events - River Crossing and Winter Peak

River Crossing and Winter Peak are zones that are only open for events. Most of the holiday events happen here (Halloween, Valentine's Day), as well as some others (Plumb Rotten, for example).

For each event, the zone is redecorated, and the event characters are different, but the event itself works the same way every time.

Each event has a raid boss, who waits near the top of the zone. This boss is the primary source of trophies, and as usual, you want as many trophies as possible to get your trophy quantity, individual rank, and troop rank rewards.

To engage the raid boss, your troop must donate special monsters. The type of special differs for each event, but they can always be found only by fighting in the River Crossing zone. Once you've donated enough specials, you can engage the boss in battle. Win to get trophies, and choose higher difficulties to get more trophies.

After every battle with the raid boss, the number of specials required to engage increases. The amount of trophies given by the boss also increases every time you beat him.

As with other events, when the event is halfway over, the boss gains a chance to become enraged. An enraged boss has more HP and hits harder than the same difficulty non-enraged, but the enraged boss will give double trophies to those who beat him.

In addition to the raid boss, there is also a lieutenant. The lieutenant requires you to battle monsters around River Crossing before you can battle him. First he requires 2 battles, then 4, 6, 8 and finally 10. Once you've battled enough monsters, you can fight him. (He has a 30 minute timer, but if you don't beat him, it just resets.)

Beating the lieutenant gives you a guaranteed event special to donate to the boss. It also grants 5 event tokens. These are the generic tokens that are used in many events, so you may already have some.

Mortimer also appears in these events. After every five battles you have in the zone (not including the boss or lieutenant), Mortimer will challenge you to a duel. If you win, you get 25 trophies. Mortimer is a wimp, and super or better teams can generally beat him easily with 1 energy. For some, though, the 25 trophies aren't worth it, so many players simply ignore him.

Mortimer has a 15 minute timer - if you wait longer than that to battle him, he'll go away again until you beat another 5 monsters.

Finally, there is a trader. The trader takes event tokens and gives you something in return. You can trade directly for trophies or energy. For a lot of tokens, you can get a rare monster unique to the event, or an event costume. Remember, you can use your event tokens from previous events, or you can save them for upcoming events if you're an obsessive monster or clothing collector.

Now go get those trophies, and I'll see you in River Crossing or Winter Peak the next time a holiday rolls around!

Valentine's Event

Valentines Day has come and gone, and I've been a bit remiss in my duties!

The Valentine's event started about a week ago, and thanks real world responsibilities, I wasn't able to get a detailed post up in time. However, all of the events that happen in River Crossing follow the same system, just with slightly different characters. So, my next post will cover River Crossing events in general. This will hopefully serve as a guide for all the holiday events going forward (at least until Battle Camp gets some new zones!)

Having covered the recurring events (Towers, PvP, Troop Wars) and the holiday events, I'll have time to post more about strategy, evolution, and lots of other fun topics. Stay tuned!

The Lost Temple

Lost Temple is a new zone unlike any other, released in the massive Jan. 21st patch. The entire map is essentially the final showdown with The Architect, the main villain and ultimate boss in Battle Camp's storyline.

This showdown comes in the form of a series of raids. Unlike the quests in other zones, these fights require your entire troop to participate. The Architect will pick an element, and your troop will have to complete a series of raids against monsters of that element. Each attack costs a player 3 energy. After attacking, the player then has to wait a few minutes before attacking again (the wait time varies between raids).

(This wait timer slightly decreases the power of gold on these raids, but gold can still make a difference - the timers are shorter than the 30 minutes it would take to naturally recover 3 energy).

Much like the raids on the Troop panel, there is a time limit for defeating each element's raids. Succeed in less time, and you can move on to the next element. If time runs out, you'll have to try the same element raids again from the start. Additionally, the entire area has a 7-day timer. When that timer runs out, your troop's progress is completely reset, regardless of how far along you were.

Once you've defeated all of the elemental raids, you fight the final boss. Beat him within the time limit to complete the Lost Temple.

Of course, you can always fight these battles again, and you'll need to if you're interested in 2nd evolution. 2nd evolution requires new ingredients that can only be acquired in the Lost Temple - Fire, Water, Leaf, Rock and Wind Crystals, and Super, Ultra and Epic Crystals. To perform a 2nd evolution, you'll need crystals of the element and rarity that match your monsters.

There are already a couple top-tier troops that have defeated the Lost Temple (and even a couple players who have done a 2nd evolve). I think for the rest of us, this will be a much more long-term goal. And considering the cost of 2nd evolution, I think for many, getting more monsters simply perfect evolved and maxed will be a more reasonable proposition.

PvP Event

The PvP Event is a regularly recurring event in Battle Camp. As of the Jan. 2014 update, the format of this event changed slightly, so if you've played it before, you'll notice some differences.

First, you'll need to understand the differences between player vs. player (PvP) combat and player vs. environment (PvE) combat.

1. In PvP, each of your monsters have an individual hit-point bar (instead of the single team HP bar in PvE). Combos of 3 and 4 hearts only heal one monster. Combos of 5 or more hearts still heal all your monsters.
2. PvP is nearly real-time. Like raiding, it pays to be quick. Getting your attack in before your opponent is often the difference between life and death.

To participate in PvP, you need to head to the PvP Fort. You'll find a platform in the center of the area, where the Battlemaster stands. Talk to the Battlemaster to queue up for a PvP battle with another player.

The Battlemaster determines how "strong" you are by looking at all your monsters (even those in storage) and picking the 5 best. So even if your team consists of low-level monsters, if you have an inventory full of epics, you'll be facing tougher opponents. Your PvP rating (determined by your PvP win-loss ratio), is also taken into account.

In the past, PvP matches cost a flat 2 energy, but this has changed. You can still start a match for 2 energy, but you can also pay more - up to 11 energy. If you do, your trophy rewards, and the experience gained for victory, will be ramped up accordingly.

You may have to wait for a while to be matched up. The wait can be very short during peak hours, and can be several minutes during quiet periods. Then you'll be thrown into battle. If you lose, you get no experience for your match. You also get a considerably decreased amount of trophies and a single Valor Token. If you win, you get more trophies, five Valor Tokens, and experience.

Another new feature is "double down". When you win a PvP match, you get the chance to "double down". You pay the same amount of energy for another battle. Winning that one gets you the usual trophies, plus extra bonus trophies. Continuing to win matches earns you more and more bonus trophies. The downside is that losing any of these "double down" matches will cause you to lose ALL the trophies you've gotten from that string of wins. 

However, if you do lose, you can buy yourself a second chance to save your trophies by paying a fee in gold. The cost depends on the amount of energy you've spent.

The final part of the event is the part that requires troop participation. If you've played previously, you'll remember that the event used to have troops donate their Valor Tokens to unlock a raid monster. It was always kind of odd for the PvP event to culminate in a PvE battle. Now, however, the raid monsters are gone, replaced with a new mechanic.

Now, donating Valor Tokens unlocks a "rift" for one hour. While the rift is active, everyone in your troop earns double trophies from PvP matches. Winning your matches while the rift is open earns Rift Tokens. Getting enough of these tokens before the hour ends activates a "deep rift", which grants even more bonus trophies. So, it pays to coordinate with your troop-mates.

The PvP event uses the same trophy rewards systems as the other recurring events. You can win immediate rewards from hitting certain quantities of trophies. You can also win individual and troop rewards at the end of the event, based on where you rank compared to other players and troops.

Strategy

• Talk with your troop and try to get everyone participating when rifts are active. The rift automatically opens when enough Valor Tokens have been donated, so only donate the final tokens when everyone is ready.
• If you're going to spend gold, try to do it during rifts to get even more out of it.
• Boosters do work during the event. It feels a little cheap, but it can make a big difference.
• If you have Event Tokens in your inventory, remember that you can trade them for energy, specials, event monsters, and trophies. Talk to the trader in the PvP Fort.
• Teams that include multiple monsters of the same element can be very powerful in PvP. As long as you have 5 or more gems of the appropriate element on your starting board, you can start the match with a very powerful attack against all of the enemy monsters. The downside is that a bad starting board can spell disaster, as you burn useless gems while your opponent kills you.

Player vs. Player Event Starts Today

The PvP event started today, and will run until Tuesday. As noted in the big patch notes earlier this week, the format of this event has changed a bit. I'll post a guide tonight or tomorrow.

Huge New Update!

Winter is over in Battle Camp, and the snow, lights and candy canes have been replaced with hearts and arrows in preparation for the Valentines Day event. But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Today's update introduced a host of new features and improvements that PennyPop has been hinting at for quite a while on their Facebook page.

• The Lost Temple area is finally open, after months of taunting us on the map. Lost temple isn't an ordinary area: there are no common monsters to fight and capture, and the standard quest chain is missing. Instead, the Lost Temple gives us the ultimate showdown with The Architect, the villain that all the previous quests have been leading to. Troops can tackle a series of raid battles to earn boosts, new supers, and ingredients for...
• 2nd Evolution! Many monsters can now be evolved a second time by fusing 2 of their evolved versions along with new special ingredients from Lost Temple raids. Right now, only some monsters have 2nd evolution forms, but supposedly there will be more added in future updates.
• Passive Leveling has been added, changing the way that passive abilities work. Stars no longer denote the "quality tier" of a passive ability. Instead, all of these abilities have had their power tweaked, and all of them can be leveled to increase the number of stars, and the percentage of benefits the ability offers. To level a passive ability, simply feed a monster with the same passive.
• Additional changes. Mystery eggs let you spam your Facebook friends even more, giving them a random monster once per day. Monster happiness is a new stat that makes your monsters more powerful for a few hours after they've been fed. It also temporarily increases the amount of experience they gain from feeding.

The update notes also offered a little info on upcoming events. 

• The PvP event, which will start Jan. 23, is going to work differently. Players will now win more trophies for stringing together victories in the arena, and valor medals can now be used to boost the amount of trophies players win for their matches. It's not clear yet if there will still be a boss raid mechanic.
• A Chinese New Year event will be happening (presumably around Friday, Jan. 31). It's described as a "special Tower Event". Does that mean a variation on the standard Celestial Towers event, or something entirely new? I guess we'll have to wait and see.
• A Valentines Day event is also in our future. It involves breaking Cdr. Cupid's arrows, if that means anything to you.

As you can see, that's a whole lot of stuff. Expect to see posts on each of the major improvements over the next week or so, as I dig into them. And, of course, I'll have detailed explanations and strategies for the events as they roll out.

Acquiring and Spending Gold

If you look it up in the App Store, you'll see that Battle Camp is free to download, and ostensibly free to play. But there's no such thing as a free lunch, and PennyPop isn't really giving the game away. They make their money through gold, the in-game currency of Battle Camp.

You can choose to play without ever touching gold, but you will miss out on some things. And ultimately, at very high levels, Battle Camp is pay-to-win. If you want to be in the top tiers of events, you're going to need gold, and lots of it.

On the other hand, for those of us who aren't worried about beating thousands of other players for that first place medal, a little bit of gold can go a long way. And you don't even have to spend any real money.

Spending Gold

There are currently three uses for gold: storage space, extra energy, and grabs.

Buying storage is straightforward. If your monster inventory is less than the maximum size, you can buy more slots. Additionally, you can buy storage lockers, each of which holds 10 monsters. Your default storage is pretty small, so many players will want to save some gold for these upgrades.

Buying energy can be done at any time, but most people will save it for events. More energy during an event lets you get more trophies, and thus get into higher tiers for better rewards. It can be especially beneficial if you've already used elemental damage boosters to increase the power of your team.

Grabs are essentially just a pull on a slot machine. Getting something good from a grab is a matter of luck (although you are guaranteed to get something). Be aware that you can also acquire free grabs from event and quest rewards. There are many types of grabs, some of which are easy to find, and others that are slightly hidden.

Grabs Available in Store Tab:

• Monster Grab - 5 gold - Common, Rare, Special and Super monsters, and Super puzzle pieces.
• Ultimate Grab - 50 gold - Rare, Special, Super, Ultra and Epic monsters.
• Avatar Grab - 25 gold- Avatar clothing (this grab is only available as a quest/event reward)
• Event Grab - 50 gold - Rare, Special, Super, Ultra and Epic, including "event monsters" that do bonus damage during the event (this grab is only available during an event).
• Avatar Store - This is the one place you can actually buy something, rather than taking a gamble. You can purchase outfits and clothing pieces.

Hidden Grabs:

• Lucky Grab - 50 gold - These offers pop up on your screen occasionally, and are basically an Ultimate grab, but with a 300% better chance of getting a particular monster (usually an Ultra or Epic).
• Special Grab - 25 gold - Offers only Specials. You can get to this grab by visiting your pet in the troop hall, tapping on it, and then tapping on the little "store" icon on the specials donation tab.

Getting Gold

There are three different ways to acquire gold:

• In-app purchase
• Watching video advertisements
• Completing TapJoy offers

All of these options are available in a window that opens when you tap on the coin symbol on the status bar at the top of the app.

In-app purchase is the most straightforward. You give PennyPop real-world money, and they give you gold. Options range from $3 (US) to $100. The more you spend in one transaction, the better deal you will get.

To earn gold watching ads, tap the "watch video offers" button. For each video you watch, you'll receive 2 gold nuggets. Nuggets are stored in the "items" section of your inventory. The Nuggeteer, in the bottom right corner of the "Camp" zone, will trade one gold for 20 nuggets. So you have to watch 10 videos to earn 1 gold. In my experience, there are usually 10-30 videos available per day.

To earn gold through TapJoy offers, tap the "complete offers" button. These offers can be a variety of things, including buying something, signing up for a website, downloading and running an app, taking surveys, or watching a video. Offers earn anywhere from one to hundreds of gold.

TapJoy also has an app and a mobile website. In my experience, the best offers are only available on the website. For example, On the website I sometimes see offers of 5-10 gold just to download and run an app, but these same offers never show up in the TapJoy app or in BattleCamp. If you want to get gold without spending money, these offers are your best bet.

Ultimately, if you want gold, you're going to have to spend either time or money. 

Troop Wars Again

Only two days after the Towers event ended, we're doing a weekend of Troop Wars. I don't think I'm the only one who would like a few more days between events so we can level and evolve our pets.

If you haven't done Troop Wars before, see my summary to learn how it works.

Celestial Towers

Celestial Towers is a regularly reoccurring event in Battle Camp. Players battle their way up two towers full of monsters, to earn tokens that let their troop battle the raid boss in the center of the map.

There are two towers - the Sun Tower and the Moon Tower, each with 10 floors. Players must start at floor one in each tower. By defeating monsters on a floor, the next floor of that tower is unlocked. (Progress is reset for all players each time the event happens, so any progress you made last time is lost.)

Each floor is similar to the cave quests that show up on the regular maps. It costs 3-5 energy to start battling on a floor. Each floor consists of several "waves" of monsters you have to defeat in succession. All waves have to be defeated in order to clear the floor, unlock the next floor, and earn rewards.

As in caves, tower monsters are never captured when defeated, so there's no opportunity to level your monsters while participating in the event. Floors get harder as you go up, with significant difficulty increases at level 4, 7, and 10. Also, higher floors have more waves, so expect them to take longer.

All tower monsters have a chance to drop Event Tokens (these are the general-purpose tokens with an "E" on them that can be used across different events). Additionally, clearing a floor gets you an Event Token, trophies, and some amount of either Sun or Moon Emblems, depending on the level you're on.

The boss monster, the Warden, sits in the middle of the main Celestial Towers map, between the two towers. This monster requires a donation of either Sun or Moon Emblems in order for your troop to raid against him. What type of emblem he demands for a given raid is random, but each successive raid will require more donations. The boss gives the troop a large number of trophies when defeated, spread between players based on who did the most damage.

Rewards

Like most events, there are three ways to earn rewards in Celestial Towers:

1. Trophy rewards - These are set rewards for earning certain quantities of trophies. These are the only rewards that are payed out immediately, as soon as the player has accumulated the necessary amount of trophies.
2. Leaderboard rewards - These are rewards for the player's individual performance in the event, as compared to all the other players. All players are ranked on the individual leaderboard, which is separated into tiers. For example, the ten players with the most trophies are in tier one, and the 11-40th place players are in tier two. Leaderboard positions are finalized at the end of the event, and shortly afterward each player earns a reward based on their individual tier.
3. Troop Leaderboard rewards - These work the same as the individual leaderboard rewards, but ranks are based on an entire troop's performance, as compared to other troops.

All rewards can be viewed from the Events tab of the Quests menu. Current individual and troop trophies, ranks and tiers can be viewed in the Leaders menu (which only shows up during the event). Your individual trophies and rank are also viewable from the blue ribbon on the left side of the screen. However, be aware that ranks can take several hours to update. 

Strategy

• All of the monsters on a given tower floor will always be of the same element. If you fail to beat a floor, you may have an easier time by swapping in monsters of the opposing element.
• If you run into a wall, where you simple can't beat a level, don't keep wasting energy on it. The tower difficulties ramp up quickly, and your team may simply not be strong enough to move beyond that point. Better to get some tokens and emblems by beating a lower floor, than to waste energy failing a higher floor repeatedly.
• Don't save up your emblems. The boss will randomly demand either Sun or Moon Emblems, and you will sometimes have a long streak where he only demands one type. If your troop donates enough to start the raid and you're stuck with a pile of the ones he doesn't want, that's essentially wasted energy, sitting in your inventory.
• Celestial Towers is an event that can earn you a lot of Event Tokens. Remember that these tokens have uses in each event, so you can always save them up for later use.
• On the other hand, if you have a lot of Event Tokens you're willing to spend, this is a great event to use them. The event vendor sells leaf, water and fire specials, as well as trophies and bonus energy, for relatively low quantities of event tokens.

Celestial Towers Event has Started!

The Celestial Towers event started this evening and will go through Monday. I'll post an overview shortly.

Interesting to note, this time around Freezaur gets 150% bonus damage against the boss, and it's evolved form, Freezerex, gets 200% bonus damage. This is the reward super for the first raid, so many relatively new players will be able to get lots of damage in.

EDIT: According to the Battle Camp Facebook page, "Inkwell, Lochnessy, Freezaur, and Wotter all do 150% bonus damage against the Warden unevolved, and 200% evolved!"

Also interesting is that almost all of the instant trophy rewards are either free energy or event grabs. Unfortunately, even if you get enough trophies to get an event grab, it's probably not worth leveling an event monster in the middle of the event, when you could be spending that energy on the event itself (unless you're already sitting on some leveled specials you can feed it).

Troop Wars

Troop Wars is a regularly recurring event in Battle Camp. It is a raiding event, but with a little bit of PvP flavor.

First, troop admins must select times to battle. Slots are available every four hours, and a troop may sign up for as many as they wish. Each battle lasts an hour. Slots are selected in the Events tab of the Quests menu.

At the start of the battle, each troop puts their pet in the arena, to defend their flag. Then each troop attacks the other's pet. Players can also donate specials to their pet to heal it. Players earn trophies by dealing damage to the enemy pet.

If your troop defeats the enemy pet, you are able to attack the enemy flag. The enemy's flag can absorb infinite damage, and all damage done to it earns twice as many trophies as damaging the pet.

At the end of the battle, the troops are rated by the number of trophies they've earned. (Player totals are added up to get the troop total.) EDIT: The troop total is also multiplied based on wins and losses. If you win, the number of trophies for that battle is doubled in your troop total. If you lose, only 70% of that battle's trophies are added to your troop total. Whichever troop has earned more trophies during the battle is declared the winner. Winning earns bragging rights, but not much else. Ultimately, it will be the total number of trophies at the end of the event that determines event rewards.

Rewards

Like most events, there are three ways to earn rewards in Troop Wars.

1. Trophy rewards - These are set rewards for earning certain quantities of trophies. For example, for the current Troop Wars event, a player who earns 100 trophies gets a 250 stone reward. These are the only rewards that are payed out immediately, as soon as the player has accumulated the necessary amount of trophies.
2. Leaderboard rewards - These are rewards for the player's individual performance in the event, as compared to all the other players. All players are ranked on the individual leaderboard, which is separated into tiers. For example, the ten players with the most trophies are in tier one, and the 11-40th place players are in tier two. Leaderboard positions are finalized at the end of the event, and shortly afterward each player earns a reward based on their individual tier.
3. Troop Leaderboard rewards - These work the same as the individual leaderboard rewards, but ranks are based on an entire troop's performance, as compared to other troops.

All rewards can be viewed from the Events tab of the Quests menu. Current individual and troop trophies, ranks and tiers can be viewed in the Leaders menu (which only shows up during the event). Your individual trophies and rank are also viewable from the blue ribbon on the left side of the screen. However, be aware that ranks can take several hours to update. 

Strategy

• Leveling your pet (by feeding it specials outside Troop Wars) will increase its HP. This will force enemy troops to spend more damage defeating it, and they will have less opportunity to damage your flag and earn double trophies.
• All pets are Leaf, Water, or Fire element. When attacking the enemy pet, it pays to use monsters of the opposing element (i.e. use fire against leaf, water against fire, and leaf against water).
• Event monsters (from the event grab) are extremely useful in Troop Wars. Each time the Troop Wars event comes around again, you are able to reuse them, and you'll always be facing the same fire, water or leaf pets.
• If your troop does have players with event monsters, they should lead the charge against the enemy pet. If other players can save their energy until the enemy pet is dead, they can earn double trophies against the enemy flag.

Troop Wars has Started!

Welcome to the first Battle Camp event of 2014. It started late in the day and people couldn't get into the first battle until it was half-over. Hopefully everything will go smoothly from here on out.

Tomorrow I'll post an overview of this event.

Gather 'Round!

Welcome to The Campfire, an informational blog for the mobile game Battle Camp.

Battle Camp is an easy game to start playing, but there are some aspects of it that aren't well-covered in the tutorials. I've had to figure out many things by myself, or from more experienced troop mates. I will attempt to address those topics here. I will also be covering current events, and any improvements, bug fixes, and other changes as they happen.

So pull up a log and sit by the fire. Let's make some s'mores and talk Battle Camp.