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.