Journey for better heroes - A painstakingly long road to TC20 (and beyond) for a F2P

Shohoku79 · January 25, 2024, 7:33pm

The beginning of the year started the arrival of 5* Legendary Troops, it’s something that has always been on the mind whenever I started this game (e.g. there are 5* heroes, but only 4* troops?). But the idea back then had always just been something simple like if they were there, what would they have been called, definitely something legendary or celestial just to fit that namesake right? Fast forward a few more years, we saw the arrival of Ninja / Magic and Styx troops, all of them were still 4* troops, then this 5* troop showed up, and they look like existing troops with excessive amount of Christmas decorations as clothing. I currently have 5 maxed Epic troops that are convertible to Legendary troops, but I don’t really want to part ways with my best troops because of how long it took me to get them maxed and why they are still useful to me. There were also chances to summon for them, but the odds, just like every other portal, sucks a lot. Maybe one day I will have some Legendary troops, if not from summons, then for sure from a dupe 4* troop that I can train up.

With the Season of Love coming to a close, and another seasonal event looming (Lunar New Year), there does not seem to be much left to do on the calendar for January. So I’ve decided to just up my FS counter a bit, but not go overboard, so I dropped one EHT in, out came Voluptas, the 4* cupid. Probably the best summoning result with just one EHT as I already have Zarola from last year. She adds to my back log of yellow heroes to work on, and yellow used to be my color with the shortest amount of heroes to work on, now I think is the most. There is just a ton of Yellow support heroes out there, but a new one is a new one.

New opera heroes arrived with the new challenge event, having been holding off on summoning with challenge coins until a revamped CF2 (if they ever do one), the arrival of a new 3* kind of stirred the pot a bit. I have enough C coins for seven summons, what are the odds of me landing the 3*? Decided to take a bit of a gamble, I dropped the first 10 coins in, Trainer hero, then it’s 3* vanillas, a 4* trainer that could be pretty big chunk of food, then on the very last c coin summon, I got the Swan Maiden. Whew!

Haven’t finished any of the events tiers, so there is still that 15 coins for me left to collect, but yeah, it’s time for me to start saving challenge coins again.

That upped my FS little more than I had wanted, but that’s another 2 new heroes for the collection.

Until next time.

Shohoku79 · January 27, 2024, 3:44am

Not going to spend too much time on this because this would have been relevant like years ago. But tonight HA10 spat out Telluria to me. With Gravemakrer and Vela already waiting on the roster, I can now finally field the infamous GTV defense.

If this doesn’t call for a big ol’ Huzzah, I don’t know what will.

I am not sure when I will get to Telly here, but she’s definitely way down on the priority list there with many ahead of her (including her sister Silvaria, who is still sitting at 1/1).

Any way, moving right along…

Elayanith · January 27, 2024, 7:15am

Maybe she will be buffed to old glory, which today is still nothing, in the February unbalance update.

Shohoku79 · February 2, 2024, 3:46pm

We probably all had some point where we accidentally did something that we normally wouldn’t. For example, the recent Mystic Summons introduction that, if only partially triggered, e.g. maybe there is a break or hiccup in connection during the ad loading, may have jump back to the summon screen, and you might instinctively tap on the summon button, and what comes up, before the Mystic summon is loaded again, is the summon by gems. Long time players will never gem summon in the daily portal, but myself included have had this happen that we know never to press it, but our finger moved faster than our brain and tapped, 150 gems gone to pulling a 1* feeder. Or, we might have been tired when playing, and being half-awake, end up performing an action or make a purchase that we normally wouldn’t. I too have had this happen where 600 gems gone into buying very expensive looking crafting/ascension material that I could’ve farmed.

Last night was a bit different, having finished the CoE Ice earlier and the impromptu inserted Goblin and ended up with 4 feeders, my FS counter is already at 90/100 with about a month left to go for the current list. I need to be cautious on where to spend my summons, so I am not forced to take someone from the current list, which I can if I must, but I prefer not to.

So I was just finishing up some POV/POG tasks I intended on finishing, then it’s time to work on some S4 avatar missions on reduced WE usage with TU in town, I remembered one minute I was doing my levels and about to just call it a night, then the next moment I knew, I was staring at the portrait of Aqualith.

Apparently, in my almost unconscious state, I had somehow navigated myself to the Untold portal, and with just a hair over 100 Untold coins in my inventory that I didn’t really have any intension of spending because of my FS concern and backlog of heroes, managed to somehow tap the single summon button, and pulled Aqualith.

FS now at 91/100, not sure how I managed to sleep summon a Aqualith, but a new one is a new one, another 4* added to the collection and a blue backlog.

Gargon · February 2, 2024, 4:23pm

Alessia? well there is an Alasie, too but that´s a hotm.

Happy hero hunting!

Shohoku79 · February 2, 2024, 4:59pm

Thanks, I have it corrected, I mixed up the a and e in her name.

Shohoku79 · February 9, 2024, 7:40am

Wasn’t expecting much from the Lunar portal since the new ones are all 5* and the rest are S1. But art style prompted me to do a pull at least.

One EHT in, the green flash resulted in Belith, but Gladius came in tow.

That’s a FS uptick, a roster space gone, my first HoTM for 2024, and another Ice hero backlog.

Probably not going to pull any more from the Lunar portal.

Shohoku79 · March 4, 2024, 6:22pm

Empires and Puzzles have been celebrating its 7th birthday for the past week, and today was the last day of its celebration.

As generous as the developers have been giving free gifts as they had been recently, they are still giving you chances at them, instead of outright giving you a specific hero outright. Today was a little different, for the first time in its 7 year history, a player now has a chance to purchase Elena and Richard outright with money (this along with a few more additional items), for most players, this should be two straight chips to go into the Soul Exchange later this month as opposed to “OMG it’s Elena and Richard, who I’ve always wanted!!”

What is interesting to me was a few things that I heard about this.

This is the first time when specific legendary heroes can be bought, instead of summoned. But for the first time in 7 year history of this game that you are buying a specific hero, fated summon is different because it requires some level of input before picking someone specific.
The vanilla 5* token that gets sold during Soul Exchange will not necessarily get you Elena or Richard for sure, and this deal to purchase Elena and Richard is cheaper than buying 2 vanilla 5* token.
There are people in my alliance that said after many years of playing, they still do not have Elena / Richard.

Leading up to today’s Fated Summons List refresh were wish lists, followed by predictions, as well as plenty of chances to try to get me to pick from the previous list. I stayed my hands and had my counter sitting at 99/100 for a few days (a few of the up-ticks came from things like Goblins, Covenant, and Contest of Elements), some of the associated currencies came about from webstore gifts and shared alliance gifts.

From Covenant portal came Edelaide, my first Hunter hero, then quickly followed by Cedar, that’s 2 Hunter heroes, and unfortunately, both yellow 3* to add to my Holy backlogs. Probably attributed to the fact that I didn’t have as many yellow heroes prior to this influx. So, with the list refresh early morning today, Iooked at my summons available today, and decided to drop a single gem summon into the Birthday portal, not because I didn’t have other choices, but I can always use someone new and I didn’t want to end up with someone that was going to have a costume later.

That was a Joukahainen dupe.

But I got to pick from the new list now, and wasted no time in grabbing Guardian Panther, one of the oldest Challenge Event heroes. I don’t care if she was outdated and I didn’t care that she didn’t have a costume. I wanted her since I realized how important EDD was to damages, and I did not have EDD in Dark, and Sergei was just no where in sight (besides, it’s not like its always going to be Dark EDD with him). As soon as I am finished with my current 5* Purple projects, it’ll be G. Panther time.

Shohoku79 · March 18, 2024, 4:33pm

Since picking up Guardian Panther 2 weeks ago, things have been relatively quiet with some events and related summons coming and going. No, haven’t started working on G. Panther yet, and it’s just trying to finish current projects that is holding things back. There is always something vying for attention, it’s just whether one wants to give it.

So while not really looking to summon in portals that is slated to still have costumes released, I kind of took a slight break on that, and dropped 5 keys worth of summons in to the costume masquerade chamber. In a way, sort of a relief that I didn’t get any toons, still not quite over the style yet. But from a few dupes, I did pick up new Tiburtus and Little John costumes 2, well, these are 4* that are going to be taking precedence over my current 5* Nature / Darks, but at least these are relatively quicker, still do take time and resources away from the others though.

Owl Tower is here again. The lack of Owl Troops is a bit surprising, but I think the Legendary Troops probably had something to do with that, rather than creating a new 4* Troop that people can still spend ETT to summon for, might as well pour money into trying to sell people shiny new 5* troops. I had some Tower coins left over from last tower end and Monster Island loot, so in these went. One dupe 3* and the other is a new blue 4* Owl Olbec, my first Owl hero, it once again, would move my 5* projects back after I am done with the current Aqualith and now this fellow.

Valhalla has been a very dreadful experience to try to farm at even during Valhalla Forever, even on earlier stages, each stage takes a long time to do, and Gnomes are so rare that I think I found 1 the first day and 1 each the next day. Plus they don’t all drop coins (even though one of them did this time, but it was only 5), I am not spending Loot Tickets on VF because they are all for Atlantis. I have comparatively least amount of Atlantis coins and Valhalla coins vs. the others, I didn’t summon in either of these for March.

New week, Goblins and Springvale, I had two Goblins summons ready to go right off the bat because I didn’t summon in the last one for not wanting to go over the FS counter, no longer a problem now. I got a dupe and a new Goldie, second Goblin, a very good one I hear, and another yellow 4* added to the pile of projects.

While I am not particularly fond of the self debilitating Springvale heroes, their art styles are at least kind of nice and still somewhat in-line with this game. I had EHT to spend from not summoning any from Santa’s Challenge (kind of giving up on Rudolph there), this is just to keep up the Fated Summons counter for this counter and I am hoping to get Mother North from the list for my first reviver, yes Alberich is there, but I am leaning towards MN. That, and also to check to see if I could grab the March HoTM. Any way, a few coins in, I got dupe Lady Woolertons that went to feed herself (she is coincidentally my current 4* yellow being leveled), a dupe Jack O’ Hare with costume (which were both finished), a few more dupes in, then I got the new 5* Piggy Timothy, my second Springvale 5*. Self-debilitating yes, but I have the least amount of Fire heroes to work on now, so this helps, and plus the artwork still does work for this game, unlike the Toons.

Soul Exchange is next week, my TC20 has not been extremely productive in spitting out dupe 5* since I took Athena-C last December. Now that the candidates have all but confirmed, it’s just finding out where they would fall. I currently have enough to pick from a teir 1 for sure. I am currently sitting at 13 dupes ready to go, with the 14th still being cooked inside HA10, and just needed one more dupe, then I could decide whether to take another break from HA10 so I could swipe at tier 2 again, barring that HA10 spits out someone new of course.

But being that I am already pretty close to my roster cap again, and if I don’t grab someone at tier 1 this time and try to save for the next, I would have no room for feeders, so I bit the bullet and part way with 300 gems for roster space purchase.

Decisions, decisions.

Steve1 · March 18, 2024, 5:45pm

May I suggest bailing on LadySheep and going straight to Goldie? She’s 10x better.

Shohoku79 · March 18, 2024, 5:51pm

Thanks! I know Goldie does a lot more than the Wool Lady, but you see, once I start my projects, I always finish them, so while Lady Wool could be delayed, she won’t be bailed on or ditched. I may go straight for Goldie right after finishing Lady Wool here though, but I have the most abundant of support heroes in yellow now, but an apex card like hers should definitely get prioritized.

Shohoku79 · March 24, 2024, 11:47pm

Soul Exchange makes its return this weekend and there were no shortages of speculations of who is going to be there, where certain heroes will end up, and who is on whose wish list, etc. Starting from the previous Soul Exchange, it looks like SGG is now revealing the candidates via blacked out silhouettes and it was still up to the individual forum users to piece together where they will land and that has been pieced together with very high accuracy.

Leading up to two days before the reveal, I’ve actually had 13 dupes ready to go, and 1 inside HA10 ready to be released on Friday night (assuming a dupe vanilla). But based on my past performances with 5* acquisitions, that would likely meant I will stick with picking at tier 1 and get a small head start on the next Soul Exchange in June.

Friday morning I had just finished Epic tier for Opera event, and there was enough coins for me get 1 summon in, after previous night of just upping the Fate Summons counter by 4 by exhausting my inventory of coins hoping for some new but didn’t get any, I pulled a Domitia out with that one summon. Which means, that is 14 dupes ready and 1 in the HA10 cooker. So this HA10 release on Friday should decide who/when/where I would pick from the Soul Exchange.

If a dupe 5* vanilla with/without costume or a dupe 5* non S1, I pick someone from Tier 2 when Soul Exchange starts. If non-S1 new comes from HA10, then I wait until the very last moment that SE portal is active to see if one of my TC20s would pan out and spit out another dupe 5* so I could get a tier 2 pick or stick with a tier 1 pick. Either way. my HA10 will take a scheduled break until Soul Exchange happens.

HA10 on Friday night ended up being a dupe Thorne, but since he can’t go right back into the cooker, we wait, and all the 300 or so prepped recruits end up going to create some 2* feeders to provide some food for the existing heroes.

Saturday, one my TC20s spat out yet another Domitia, seeing how it is very unlikely that I will pick up 4 more dupe 5* until the event ends on the 27th, I sent one of the dupe 5* into HA10 to start the cooking process again. 15 ready to go when Soul Exchange starts on Sunday.

Soul Exchange started, and after contemplating on the choices I had gone through in my mind (about chances at, rarity, possible needs, current backlog situations, and narrowing down choices, etc. I ended up selecting Xiaotu, fire rabbit and my first Lunar New Year hero, and hurray, roster space relief.

Now it’s time to go back to getting more dupe 5* for the next Soul Exchange in another 3 months, will see where I am when that happens.

Shohoku79 · April 3, 2024, 8:35pm

Last weekend I think I witnessed a record of some sort, including the usual daily summon portal, I think someone mentioned that there were 9 different summoning portal active in the portal screen like a shopping mall window.

Magic Tower made a return, not the Owl Tower, but Magic Tower, knowing that I had been saving up Troop Tokens ever since the developers introduced Legendary Troops and no Owl Troops. I had 50 to go in, and 49 of them turned out to be mixture of 3* and 4* classic troops with 1 lone 4* Magic Troop, and it was a yellow, and happens to one that I am missing, now I am just missing a purple magic troop to complete the magical collection. Not holding my breath really seeing what happened to my Ninja collection (missing the red ninja troop), and there is only 1% chance of getting the exact troop I am looking for. This was probably the best situation I could’ve hoped for, but ouch those odds suck.

Portal-wise, with the recently completed Monster Island that garnered some tower coins, I was able to get a summon in even before completing a single stage of the tower. It’s a 3* vanilla, figures. Seeing my gem count, even though there was a goal set for their usage during Masquerade Portal, I thought I was going to do a 10x, surely something should give right? When compared to all the available portals, the Magic Tower Portal is the least expensive, so 2600 gems in, 9 vanillas and the only one new is the Kornel, the red 3* gardener of the school of magic. Can’t complete the 3* collection and no HoTM. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

Finished the tower on Normal, which is typically where I would stop any way after collecting the completion Path of Valor points. It sat there for a while, then I see that I am few coins away from another tower summon, figured why not and just going to go up 1 on FS, I finished enough stages in Impossible tier for a summon. Coins in, and I pulled Sergei, my first 4* Magic Tower hero on the roster and another Dark EDD option.

I’ve played the game for years without any dark EDD option, and both G. Panther and Sergei were on my list of candidates to acquire given the chance, and now I just got both of them within a month of each other. Unreal.

Now I just have to hope for a more dependable EDD in Nature, looking at you Almur and Evelyn.

Until next time.

Shohoku79 · April 8, 2024, 5:52pm

Atlantis Rises, subject of constant nerfing (in terms of the number of days, number of sea dragons cap introduced, etc.) is now exclusively where I would spend my Loot Tickets, being that the primary goal for me in this game is collecting heroes, and AR is the only event now where the rare enemy drops exclusively summoning currency, and despite heroes being outdated comparing to others, still has heroes in the summoning portal that I still don’t have.

Atlantis Rises is also almost always showing up with Costume Masquerade at the same time nowadays, have a feeling that was done on purpose too from the developer’s stand point.

Since this month’s costume does not contain anything related to Isarnia, it is another month of key and gem hoarding. But Atlantis portal gave me a slight tug this time around. Since the last time I started saving Atlantis pulls, I’ve had enough for 5 total summons, and this number just get slowly trickled in from sea dragons bagged and gifts from the webstore.

Midway through the day, after spending all of my Loot Tickets (which had very slim pickings of Sea Dragons today), I started auto farming other stages, while getting some costume chamber stages in. Event is not yet over, but at least I am still getting guaranteed trickles of Atlantis coins in as long as Sea Dragons show up.

Without any new heroes (especially on the 3* costume front) being sent into the pipeline, normally this would have been another stay at the portal, but today I had one of those adrenaline rushes as a new Path of Valor / Giant just started, and I now spend my silvers tokens saved up to get that summoning challenge done, having tossed about 16 or 17 in, watched the mystic summons, and just thinking about possible new additions, I started thinking I might just do one Atlantis.

Melia (C), dupe.

Then it just didn’t stop, Jahangir, Namahage, Gill-Ra(C), all dupes. Man, this is not going well, with only FS counter going up to show for.

Then, on my last Atlantis coin pull until I am out of summons, Wilbur and costume showed up.

Didn’t let the fact that the bonus chest yielded very lackluster results, and the Mystic Summon that followed now that I no longer have enough currencies for a full summon that came along and got me Belith didn’t bother me because I got Wilbur’s costume, one of my high priority targets in this portal (the other one being Proteus costume), because I still use Wilbur a lot in my PvE team, and having the CSB to improve his survivability makes a ton of sense to me. Sure it’s a shame that I spent my hoarded coins saved for when more 3* costumes are released (e.g. Namahage today would’ve been great if he had a costume), but the end result of grabbing Wilbur’s costume isn’t too shabby.

Shohoku79 · April 15, 2024, 3:21pm

April chugging along, with Springvale finished a long time ago and my spending of EHT done since pulling Timothy soon after Springvale opened weeks ago, it’s time to keep saving and see where I would use the EHT next, last year I didn’t do any beach party summons because of how weird the vibes looked when they first showed up, will see if there is any more better designed hero this time, otherwise, it might just be Kalevala and/or Morlovia again.

But until then, it’s just going through the quests, get the coins, and keep the Fated Summon counter going.

Alliance Quest of Clash of the Knights are here again. Once again, the more they update the story, the more they don’t quite make sense, Ravens and Wolves started battling each other, then Stags and Bears showed up to challenge them for rights to stay at the hotel for one weekend. They some how went 2v2, but ended up all squeezing into the hotel castle and clean the stables. All this time your own heroes are cleaning up after their mess, but not before, springing their endless traps of dishonor and dealing with their goons that were sent to collect your lunch money.

By calculation, and with my alliance’s eventual unlock of all tiers, and the free gift at the end of the week, there was enough for one summon with Alliance coins and 9/10 for next time. Figures that they would leave something on the table. Coins in, dupe 3* came out. Not expecting much from the Mystic Summon that activated the second day, but out came Franz. He immediately took priority over the 5* greens I am working on while still finishing up Lionstring.

Goblins make a visit, new Guardian heroes make their debut (in the summon portal and story only), having 2 summons available from staying from pulling last Goblins got me two dupe 3* vanillas right off the bat, another 3* dupe vanilla after going through the first 7 stages of Goblins to get enough for a 3rd. Then, seeing that the Goblin Village quest looks like it would be using the same Goblins lineup in lieu of having Guardian heroes added in, I activated the free 10 minute Timesaver VIP, and in less than a minute and 3 Loot Tickets and corresponding amount of WE spent later, I bypassed the last 3 Goblin stages and collected their rewards.

Enough for a 4th Goblin summon, a 3* dupe vanilla once again. But this time, Zarga followed, so it wasn’t all that bad.

So now, I have a feeling that although I would still consider saving my Loot Tickets for Atlantis Rises, I wouldn’t mind just parting a few here or there for previously completed event quests for the sake of time, battle items usage, and most importantly frustration avoidance. One thing I could think of where I may have to keep doing multiples of was the Convenant Quests where if boards sucked, I am screwed type of situation. If this can be done, frustration is gone. Wouldn’t be such a bad idea, actually.

Shohoku79 · April 23, 2024, 2:12am

Challenge Festival, normally I would have waited for more 3* and 4* costumes to be released. Even though they seem to push for CF1 a lot these days, but they are just doing everything in their power to release the 5* and costumes. Which made me wonder if they are ever going to release costumes for the ones that are not 5* at all, e.g. G. Jackal has costume, but partner in crime G. Falcon still doesn’t.

Not that I am expecting any thing wonderful, but I ended up spending the few Challenge Coins worth of pulls because the prospect of no S1 vanillas is a good incentive, ended up having 3 pulls or so, one of them gave Cheshire Cat, where the costume is new. This made my first CF costume.

Also, now that Timesaver VIP is here for a while, the 2x speed play is nice and all, but what was even better to me was to be able to use Loot Tickets on previously completed Quests, especially the later ones. So far, I’ve found them to be usable on Goblin Village and just most recently the Astral Elves, the time, battle items and frustration saved helped tremendously. As I normally would’ve saved Loot Tickets for Atlantis Rises, I am willing to part with a few of them to finish these later stages that would have costed quite a bit of resources to finish if I were to play them again.

Astral Elves finished, didn’t get anything new from the summons. Contest of Elements Holy done (haven’t been able to use Loot Tickets on them yet, will see if every element is cycled through will make them work). Dupe Kinsaishi, but the second pull I did got me Steropes, my first Styx 4*, and another yellow to add to the backlog. Will I ever get to my 5* yellows again, only time will tell.

Shohoku79 · April 29, 2024, 4:59pm

More and more currencies are being added to the game, signaling more hero types/factions to be added, but what hasn’t changed was vanillas S1 heroes used as fillers in these portals.

It appears that my days of hoarding keys and gems to be used is coming to be tested this May when Isarnia with her costume 3 is slated to be featured. I don’t have problems with S1 getting 3rd costumes, but it’s the Toon design that I still have problems with. Having Isarnia already padded with C1, means, if I can pull her Toon, I’d get the padding for C2 and C3. But I will have to use the Toon version for maximum benefit, such is the times I guess.

Speaking of costumes, with more S4 costumes being released, I dropped a set in and got me Poppy costume. I still do use her a bit in 3* tourneys so her Costume bonus would help. She’s also my first S4 3* costume.

HA10 over the weekend also spat out Leonidas C1, the Spartan costume that offers Dark EDD, a 5* fully trained up would offer better survivability than G. Jackal that’s for sure. So once the current projects are finished, Leo-C would get the priority over other 5*. Then this would mark an end to the active services that Jackal provided me against purple titans.

Better late than never.