[Jamairoqui]

@nurw I don’t know the answer to your question about whether the “holiday” classes have appeared more than once. The Challenger classes keep appearing, and I think the Halloween classes repeat, but I haven’t paid enough attention to know about the others.

A while back there were the elite classes that you could only get if you had a code from a magazine. But then they made them rewards for events.

It feels like Rovio gave up on the game.

[Jamairoqui]

@nurw  Interesting. If you already have all the Valentine class hats then you get mastery, and if you have all the mastery you get resources.

[Jamairoqui]

Ah. That explains it. If you’re already at 100 mastery you get 70 LC *or* 50 FE *or* 25 SD. Or maybe it’s 35 SD. Anyway, I saw there was no hat upgrade and gave up on the event.

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt  But if you are grinding C26/10, in about fifteen minutes you can earn enough to get 2000 mastery points for all birds. Snoutlings are irrelevant. Once I figured that out, my birds got to M100 darned quickly. (And as an interesting aside, once you are left with one bird only to mastery level up, you can go with the 15 LC buy and it is a bit cheaper, so that the same fifteen minutes of grinding gets you 5,000 master points.)

Back to the teams, especially GftT, I swap out Bard for Samurai, not Bard for Seadog. The logic is that without Bard/Nightmare, the double stun from Samurai is mostly useless anyway (see below). The extra damage done by Nightmare over the course of the level is approximately equal to two full turns (assuming you get stuns over about half the turns, and it takes 20 turns, that means that Nightmare deals about 70,000 extra damage, and the flock on average deals around 35,000 per turn). Samurai/Grand Slam doesn’t stun often enough, and even with the 150% damage, it’s not worth giving up the Nightmare effect.

There were also “phasing” effects with the 150% damage from Samurai Challenger that if he stunned you lost an attack for the extra damage. My initial tests demonstrated to me that the 150% damage while Snor was stunned was not enough to overcome the higher constant damage from the other elite Samurai classes (I think I use the one that heals a little, I forget what he is called). But perhaps I should revisit that since using Lightning Bird changes the fraction of time Snor gets stunned. (Also, Samurai Challenger in combination with Frost Savage might be useful for the initial stages, where Snor will get frozen and Samurai Challenger deals 150% damage.)

Overall, this exchange has been interesting since it’s given me a lot to play with in terms of options. The GftT team, whether you use Bard or some version of Samurai, is fun. Really nice work there coming up with it.

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt  I like the GoForTheThroat team. Although I swapped Bard/Nightmare for Samurai/Titan (I just cannot give up the extra damage done every time Snor gets stunned). Anyway, GFTT w/Bard is at least three full turns faster than the team I came up with using Thunderbird.

Also, it is kind of fun to swap Frost Savage for Seadog, because that makes the opening rounds before Snor starts charging a little easier (Snor freezes himself on attack, giving Bard a chance to recharge everyone, and afterwards the attack from Bomb doesn’t lose hit points because of the damage Snor does). However it’s not clear that using Frost Savage makes the overall level clear faster than using Seadog.

 

[Jamairoqui]

@bchild  Thanks. So it wasn’t just me. There is something odd about rage attacks and the mirror effect. It makes using Illusionist tricky.

The thing about Priestess is that Matilda/Bard gives a stun of her own, which is added to by Nightmare, so I think using Bard over Priestess gives you a better chance of stunning even though Priestess attacks twice. However, the nice thing about Priestess is everyone heals themselves. I’ve pretty much settled on Bard though. Using Illusionist with Bard and Samurai/Titan gives something almost a 75% chance of stunning per turn.

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt  I played around a bit with subbing Illusionist for Tbird and one thing I noticed that might have been a one-time bug is that if I used rage at the beginning of a turn, it disabled the mirror effect from Illusionist for all the birds during that turn. But then I tried it a second time after restarting the game and there didn’t seem to be any effect of using the rage chili on the mirror effect. Have you seen anything like that, where use of a rage chili disables the mirror effect? Otherwise it’s a fun way to go through 26/10.

I tried using Skulkers early on for the increased damage (paired with Tbird) and I didn’t find it useful. Snor called allies most every time, and the increased damage from Skulkers doesn’t work on them so the allies killed one bird after another. But I’ll have to try it with Illusionist/Skulkers to see if that plays faster. Your idea of double attacking with Bard and Samurai is pretty killer in terms of stunning Snor (and the double-attack from TH is very good at resetting his counter).

The thing I like about Tbird is that if Snor does call allies, the Tbird shield effect (when combined with Samurai’s shield) is very effective at getting rid of the other pigs. That strategy doesn’t work with Illusionist. But maybe the mirror effect stuns enough that you don’t need to worry about getting rid of ally pigs.

The other benefit of Samurai/Tbird/Bard/TH is that it is almost brainless. Just cycle through the birds, use the rage chili as soon as it’s ready, and keep going. When I use Illusionist I’m constantly trying to figure out which bird needs a recharge from Illusionist. (And you are right, the fact that Bard resets the double stun from Samurai is annoying.)

Thanks for helping out with this. As an aside, why aren’t you using mastery buys at the dojo to level up your flock?

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt  I can see the benefit of using Illusionist over Thunderbird. I’ll have to run some simulations to see if losing the +25% damage benefit from each attack is compensated by an increase in the number of stuns per turn. It’s not clear to me that is necessarily true. (I ran one trial and it didn’t seem like using Illusionist over Thunderbird made a huge difference (it seemed to take about the same number of turns whether I used TB or Ill., because the damage from the increase in number of stuns was about the same as the damage the +25% boost TB gives), but that might be because I haven’t figured out the optimal sequence of moves with Illusionist.)  Anyway, it’s an interesting switch. Nice tip.

One drawback to using Illusionist over Thunderbird is that if Snor calls his allies it is that much harder to clear them using Illusionist than using Thunderbird.

I am somewhat relieved you find the same effect of Perfect Balance that I do, at least as far as using it against Snor. It seems that it doesn’t increase rage generation from every attack by your birds, just every attack against your birds. (As an aside, that implies that when faced with Perfect Balance in Arena, DOT teams (e.g. venom) are preferred since you don’t have to attack each turn, since each attack generates rage for your opponent.) But understanding how PB works means that Nightmare is clearly the preferred set for Matilda when fighting Snor.

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt  Exactly! It takes ten attacks to refill the rage chili, or three turns with 4 birds (assuming Snor is charging and not attacking). But I notice no difference in that 10-attack refill cycle regardless of whether I have Perfect Balance equipped or not. And I’m not sure strength of birds makes a difference to rage chili recharge times.

Anyway, including the Golden Chili rage attack, in 19 turns of Cave 26/10 I get 7 or 8 rage attacks (depending on how many times Snor attacks before he starts charging). Perfect Balance makes *zer0* difference to those numbers (although it takes me more turns with Perfect Balance to finish Snor since I don’t get the extra damage I get with Nightmare (plus the attacks with Nightmare at +8% each)).

I went through the archives to see if anyone had posted differences between chili filling with and without Perfect Balance and I can’t find anything on this, people just assume the rage chili fills faster with Perfect Balance. What I think is going on is that Perfect Balance does increase the rage chili fill speed if the pigs (or other birds in arena play) are attacking your birds, but not in cases where only your birds are attacking (or maybe the increase in rage generation is seen only when Matilda is attacking). Snor is a special case, at least the way I play against him, because by design he doesn’t get to attack so I see no benefit from the PB set.

I would be frustrated but it seems my Samurai/Thunderbird/Bard/Treasure Hunter team might be the most efficient in terms of speed of play with minimal failures. Although I might fiddle around with using Illusionist in place of Thunderbird. TB is good if Snor calls help because the shock shield from Thunderbird is very effective at getting rid of the helper pigs. But maybe Illusionist’s ability to give double attacks to Samurai and TH would be better.

Finally, if you equipped Illusionist with the Sonic Lance/Orb set, it gives you one more 25% chance to reset Snor’s counter. That can come in handy.

[Jamairoqui]

@maxxmatt

Funny. I’ve tried a lot of those combinations. The final one with Marksman can play quick, but it is also prone to getting 85% of the way through and failing. So I abandoned it very early. But it is fun to fool around with.

One thing I don’t get is how Perfect Balance is supposed to work. When I equip Bard with it, it takes 9 attacks from my birds to recharge the rage chili. When I use Nightmare set, it takes 10 attacks from my birds to recharge the rage chili. So it doesn’t seem to me that Perfect Balance is worth anything, since using it takes away the extra damage that Nightmare gives you if Snor gets stunned. (And that damage over the course of a cycle is worth almost 4 full turns since he gets stunned a little over half of the time.)

It makes me question whether PB is broken for me, or I don’t understand how it’s supposed to work. Since I would think if it takes 10 attacks from my birds to charge the chili without it, it should take 6 when I use it. But as far as I can tell, it makes no difference. So I gave up on it a long time ago as an option.

My strategy is to never let Snor call his allies, since that takes a lot of time to work through, you don’t really get all that many snoutlings from them anyway, and the real “mining” is the wheel at the end. If I want to mine snoutlings, Mouth Pool is still the best option, even though they fixed the bug so now you can only have 6 pigs active (where before you could have like 16 pigs active at the same time so hitting them with the Merchant Pig/Skulkers gave you 3o snoutlings per turn). But then, I don’t want to mine snoutlings anymore.

[Jamairoqui]

I’ve been fiddling around trying to figure out the quickest way to 3-star Cave 26-Level 10. So far I’ve settled on a team of:

Red Samurai with Titan Grip set (E10)
Chuck Thunderbird with Sonic Lance (E10)
Matilda Bard with Nightmare (E10)
Blues Treasure Hunter with Ballista (E10)

All of the birds are L100/M100 with elite headgear, with Samurai and TH being the hats that heal.

With those four and that set of weapons, it takes around 20 turns, 19 if I get a few more stuns, 20-21 if I don’t, and 7-8 rage chili refills. The benefit is that Snor very rarely gets a chance to call helper pigs. So while other combinations may play faster, if Snore calls for help it can take a lot more time to clear the level. If I don’t get distracted it takes about 5-6 minutes for one cycle of the level.

Aside from the obvious swap of Stoneguard for Samurai (which reduces the stun effect proc, so it doesn’t make things better), are there any other combinations that would play as fast and still not allow Snor to call his four helpers? For example, I’ve tried substituting Cannoneer/Finisher for Bard/Nightmare (to reduce the damage done by Snor before he starts charging), but although that can play through pretty well it’s still a little slower than the set above (averaging 8-9 fills of the rage chili).

[Jamairoqui]

The phrase you are looking for is RNG’d, as in you were on the wrong side of a random number generator. The mythic time jump emblem is particularly bad for that happening. The way I deal with it is to use the Cheat set so I move first, and then use a venom lineup so there is damage to the opponents even if my birds are KO’d. IMO it’s also required to use the Squire set banner so your birds have a chance of reviving sooner. If you have the Resurrection emblem, you can use that on your banner too.

I’ve also had some limited success using the Frost banner set and then Wizard (or Rainbird), Bard (with Nightmare), and Spies (with Cheat). There is a good chance you will stun one or more of the opponent with your initial attack.

But I agree, the mythic TJ is annoying because if you lose the coin toss, it can end quickly. But that is where the Cheat set comes in handy.

[Jamairoqui]

@winkwink  It does feel like something changed with the game. Like Rovio has given up.

[Jamairoqui]

@toolow For a while I decided to track who I was getting FE from by only responding to FE requests when I got one from them. The que in my inbox got hundreds of requests long, with multiple request from mostly the same people. So it was clear my requests were not going to the same people who were giving me FE. But I didn’t see an obvious pattern. I toyed with the idea of unfriending everyone in fb who wasn’t sending me FE, but that seemed extreme. Basically, I gave up trying to figure it out, and don’t worry about FE anymore.

You’re welcome. I figure if someone goes to the trouble of elevating their flock to a high level, there ought to be some reward (other than getting to fight teams with a power level in the 5 digits in Arena)

ABE is sort of one debacle after another. What keeps me coming back are debacles for Rovio that happen every so often. Like the time zone quirk a while back. That was sweet.

[Jamairoqui]

I *think* what is going on with daily FE requests is Rovio sends them to only five of your FB friends at random. If you have a lot of FB friends that don’t play ABE, then you miss that FE from the request sent to the non-playing friend (since they don’t keep sending out requests until you get five).

I rarely get FE from people using my flock. I think it must be the tuna-garlic perfume they all use.

[Jamairoqui]

Scott:

ABE used to be finicky about hardware. For example, above a certain version, ABE doesn’t play on Kindle Fire tablets. Maybe you have a tablet that doesn’t run ABE? Only thing to do is check with Rovio and see if there is something particular about your hardware.

-j

[Jamairoqui]

@bchild Interesting. Thanks for the tip.

[Jamairoqui]

You can also three-star this level by going with a DOT approach, sort of anyway, using:

Samurai (Titan set)

Rainbird (Mana shell)

Priestess (Nightmare)

Rogues (Piercing Claw, also used Cosmic Rogues)

When Samurai knocks out Alpha Pig for two turns the birds will heal by attacking, and each cycle Alpha Pig loses a lot of HP from the DOT from Rogues, Rainbird, and the Nightmare effect. The Piercing Claw/Cosmic made it do that when Alpha Pig attacked Blues, there was a good chance the attack did nothing, which was almost as good as a stunning blow since it meant, effectively, a free turn for me. Mostly used the rage chilis to have Blues attack/stun Alpha Pig, sometimes to have Matilda heal everyone.

Anyway, got three stars, and now I am finished with Chronicle Caves, and maybe even Epic. Just not into grinding everything up to Level 100.

[Jamairoqui]

I thought of that, but some of these things are so “weedy” it doesn’t seem worth it to fix. It’s not costing Rovio money in the sense people are getting game assets from it.

But ok, never mind. It’s an amusing bug for Easter Druid, but I boned it for everyone.

Yay me!

[Jamairoqui]

Claire:

You would get better answers to this if you told us what platform you were using and how you are connecting to the internet.

[Jamairoqui]

Doubt this is a bug. Rovio must not have liked the daily reward calendar, or maybe there was a way to hack it that people weren’t talking about (like resetting the calendar on your device or something). Or maybe they think the treasure chest you get from the theater makes up for the lack of reward calendar. Who knows? It’s one of those mysteries nobody will ever explain.

It’s like we’re a bunch of cavemen, sitting around a CD player. We have no idea how it works, but we like the music coming out of it. And we get used to the song that’s playing, maybe even like it, and then the music changes for no apparent reason. It just stopped playing that thing we liked and moved on. The explanation for why the song we liked is no longer playing would be really simple if we knew how CD players worked and what they did, but we don’t. We’re just cavemen. So we listen to the CD player and have to accept that it regularly stops doing things we like.

We never figure out that the guy controlling the CD player, who is not a caveman, is Rick-rolling us all.

[Jamairoqui]

@winkwink  Of course. That makes perfect sense. I just have to log out of facebook.

Not sure why I didn’t think of that. But it makes arena that much more convenient to play.

[Jamairoqui]

It’s almost like ABE is a class project, or the game the new coder at Chimera is assigned to work on during their probationary period, so that it’s always getting someone to do the upgrades and so forth that has never worked on the game before. And every time the new person fixes a bug, they do it in the most ham-handed way possible, or leave behind a couple of unintended bugs as a consequence. Like their solution to people shutting down the network in Arena was to remove the ability to play unranked arena battles.

Coding is hard, and keeping bugs out of a game that has all these different things going on, with constant network communication, must be a pain in the butt. Even allowing for that, there seems to be a lack of professionalism on the part of Chimera, like you would hope they don’t decide to make control systems for mission critical robots or something.

Chimera Tech. Supp.: Hello, this is Chimera technical support.

Caller: Yeah. Hey, we have a situation here. One of your maintenance robots for the Chunnel is malfunctioning and cutting a hole in the casing of the wall. It’s starting to leak. Any way to shut it down before it penetrates and the whole thing floods?

Chimera: (after three week pause) Well, no. But we plan to release version 1.3.1 of the control software next month, and that should take care of the issue.

Caller: <glub> <glub>

[Jamairoqui]

I think you have to get 75 mastery stars in order to unlock the Arena (which is on Terence’s ship). So if you’ve done all the levels, but not gotten 2 or 3 stars on a few, you’ll have to go back and replay some to get enough stars (you get one star for each star you get on a level, so if you finish 25 levels and 3-star all of them you have enough stars to unlock the arena, I think). If you have more than 75 stars, then I have no idea why it’s not unlocking for you. You can check the number of stars you have by going to your camp and tapping the bottom part of the totem, that has the stars on it.

See this walkthrough here that shows what it looks like when you unlock the arena:

[Jamairoqui]

Anyone else noticed that when you fulfill more than one daily Arena challenge on the same battle, the game crashes? For example, say the 1000 medal daily challenge is win battles with 5 different headgear and the 1500 medal challenge is knock out Bomb with Chuck 3 times. If I win the first battle I play with Rainbird, Witch, and Rogues and then I play a second battle with Wizard, Witch, and Skulkers. During the second battle, I knock out the opponent’s Bomb three times so at the end, assuming I won the second battle, I had won battles with 5 different headgear and knocked out Bomb three times. This fulfills two of the three daily challenges on the same battle. However, at the end of the second battle, before the reward wheel appears, I get the message “Epic has stopped” and have to restart the game.

The battle still registers, in that both daily challenges are fulfilled, but I never got to spin the reward wheel. It does not matter which two challenges I meet (or if I get all three on the same battle), if I get more than one on the same battle, the game crashes.

Since it still registers the battle as a “win” I don’t lose a life, and it’s not a huge problem. But still, if other people see this issue, it kind of suggests that Chimera doesn’t do a thorough job debugging their code. This is not a hard thing to spot in testing.