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.