I said that the stockpiles of worthless ascension mats and unneeded excess crafting mats would disrupt the game too much if they had value suddenly with the Alchemy Lab.
What happened was that transmuting one kind of item to another is too expensive to do it FOR THE ITEMS CREATED.
What we have is an alchemy lab with ham costs limiting low level use, and gem cost rising at the top levels to become more of a limiting factor.
Some modes have a little use for what they create but not much. The reason to use it is to run it for a month or two farming alkashards to get real loot. The transmutation is pretty much incidental.
Free/cheap late game players can spend the ham on it with low levels.
High paying players can spend gems on it with high levels.
For me, neither option provides me with enough value for the resources.
I might build and finish it for lack of anything better to do with iron, since I have about 10 extra Dblades that AL10 can convert into other 4* mats for me.
Yea boolz already crunched a ton of numbers for me. Ginormous hunk of
Enough that i won’t even build it
Even running it daily for alkashards ends up being like 3.5 more mats per yr or some
And the ham costs for doing so is just insane.
Man i just can’t believe they took that idea, made us wait 2 yrs for it, then monetized it down to useless. I mean i guess it’s not surprising but still pretty disappointing
I have not, and likely will not build the thing. It seems to be of little to no practical use.
It’s a giant waste of resources. And unless they fix everything about it, I will not build it. I don’t need my iron and food depleted in one swift swipe.
It is sad. When I started playing I did everything I could that the game offered. That was the real reason I joined an alliance, to find out what this “Titan approaches” thing was all about. Then came AW and all the quests. Even the emblem class quests and raid tournaments i participate.
I got Hunter’s Lodge but the only thing I use is the harpoons for titans. I’m leveling up the advanced buildings but all that will do is give me a larger reserve.
Alchemy Lab seems useless to me, as do the Costumes. Both are in no way F2P friendly. And from what I can gather Path of Valor may be more of the same.
IMHO the last truly good addition to the game was AW.
Edit: oh yeah, Hero Academy. It will be to heroes what Alchemy Lodge is to mats.
I’ve quit messin with the advanced buildings outside if the storages to increase my daily raid chests loot since i fill more of those than any other chest.
But yea AW has been my favorite part of the game for a long time and was the best addition. Wish they would build on that instead of adding other bs. But then again it took forever to get AW right and on a consistent schedule soooo maybe it’s best they leave it alone(tho i still think some kind of playoff system would be kinda cool)
Advanced houses make me happy. Two at level three can supply your entire recruit demand for four TC11s, and they only need to be emptied every eleven hours. Take them both to level nine and you can run a TC20 and three TC11s and have another 68 recruits daily to stash for occasional runs at TC2 or TC19. And that’s without doing anything but logging in and collecting resources.
Edit: to keep this on topic - that’s the kind of passive functionality that I think makes an advanced building useful/worthwhile. I feel like the Alchemy Lab missed that by not being passive enough, because the costs are so high. I’ve already done the work to farm the mats going into transmutations, I shouldn’t have to use all my raid and world energy to have enough food to keep it running.
Ok but they’re a luxury TBH. I never ran out of ham before advanced houses even when running two TC20. Now I don’t even bother collecting ham on some days. Nowhere to store them. If I have no use for the new buildings they are adding that require the additional resources they’re just gravy.
Stockpiling training manuals, feathers, or minor healing pots is free. You do not have to buy or build storage space, they just pile up. If people who have farmed for two years have tens of thousands lying around unused and unusable, that is too disruptive to the game economy.
Heroes sitting in inventory do have a cost. You have to buy extra slots with gems. You forgo the XP that other heroes would gain by eating them.
It isn’t disrupting the game economy to make 1/1 heroes you are unlikely to ever level up have more value than before since stockpiling them does have both a cost and a finite limit, unlike the inputs to the alchemy lab. (Besides ham and gems)
If the Hero Academy is not priced out of reach like the Alchemy Lab has been then perhaps my dupe fatty feeders will have some value beyond nutrition. However, recent events have me not holding my breath.
Alchemy lab too me with the current costs is just SG pushing the envelope to see if they can maximize revenues. I’m sure they will adjust it over time when it doesn’t drive the revenues they expect.
If greed was the motivation for the AL, I suspect SG failed at it … I know of very few players spending gems with it.
But maybe I give players too much credit for seeing it as a bad value to spend gems that way unless you are already spending a LOT of money on the game and have no reason to avoid spending thousands per month.
Postscript … greed in the long term could be motivation for not disrupting the game economy. That would make many long term players or potential long term players less likely to stay and continue spending over a longer timeframe.
But as a short term revenue boost I suspect it is poor.
OTOH, adding two new 5* heroes to each challenge event and buffing old event heroes with family bonuses does work in getting players to spend in the short term (I personally know of at least one player who spent $700 chasing Riddles heroes…)
But on the other hand by making the alchemy lab useless, it keeps players spending to get mats in other areas and other ways such as the shop gambles, atlantis summons, etc + keeps people spending gems to farm for sought after crafts
So sure i guess on the surface it was an ill attempt at greed but we don’t know how many players slowed down on spending for asc mats thinkin AL would be the cheaper route. There are already players slowing down on hero summons in a wait n see status about hero academy. Which i knew of some people that weren’t chasing mats as hard as normal due to the same thinking.
Alchemy lab had a risk factor involved and SG crushed it while saving face by following through with something they knew players wanted.
The Beta Beat (v23) [NOW RELEASED] – Sharing the Big Picture on What's Going on in Beta: Stronghold 22/23 & Alchemy Lab, New Challenge Event Heroes, New Knights of Avalon & Pirates of Corellia Challenge Events, Costumes, November/December HOTM: