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.

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.