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!

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.