Thursday, December 29, 2016

Summoners Journal #2 - The Penguin Knight Event

I can not describe my feelings properly on the Penguin Knight event. "I love it", "I hate it", "It was enjoyable". These emotions doesn't quite fit my feelings on it. "Boring" is a lot closer but still not quite there. I think the best way to show my feelings on the event is to explain how the event works. And before I can get into that I need to explain a few more details about Summoners War mechanics.

I mention in episode 1 that monsters come in grades from 1-star to 5-star and all monsters can be evolved into 6-star monsters. What I didn't go into was how much effort it takes to evolve monsters above 3-star. Evolving a monster has two requirements. First the monster needs to be at max level. A monsters max level will depend on its grade. 1-star monsters max level is 15, 2-star monsters is 20 while 6-star monsters is 40. In essence each grade above 1-star adds 5 to its maximum level. Not only do higher grade monsters have a higher level cap, they also have a different experience table. 1-star monsters require 460 xp to go from level 1 to 2 while 6-star monsters require 1150 xp to do the same. Needless to say the higher a monster's grade, the harder it is to level them up to the cap. The other requirement to evolve monsters is that you need other monsters to sacrifice. The monsters being sacrifice needs to be the same grade as the monster you are trying to evolve (though their level doesn't matter). You also need a number of monsters equal to their star grade. That means to evolve a 3-star monster, first it needs to be at level 25 and you need three other monsters that are also 3-star. To evolve a 5-star monster you need five other 5-star monsters! This is a daunting task. The game does help with this pain staking process by giving out Rainbowmons as possible rewards. Rainbowmons are monsters that can never be used in combat but come at max level for its grade so you can immediately evolve it. That makes them extremely valuable.

With that understanding of how evolving and Rainbowmons work, this is what the event is. Every time you evolve a non Rainbowmon monster into a 4-star, 5-star or 6-star monster, you get a free Rainbowmon. There is a limit on how many Rainbowmons you can earn and of course the event is only a limited duration. So to take advantage of this event you need to evolve as many monsters as possible during this 2 week long event. That means leveling up a large number of monsters as quickly as possible. For me that meant playing the game in a mechanical way to manufacture monsters. The story missions is the best way to level up monsters if you have a single monster strong enough to solo it on the hardest difficulty (all monsters fighting on the team earn the same amount of xp). I probably played a set of maps at least 500 times during one week of this event. Spending most my time playing the same map over and over again is so boring but at the same time the reward is so good that I can not NOT play it.

It was kinda hard to make an equivalent example to miniature gaming. But I think I came up with something with a similar vibe. Imagine if someone near you was running an escalation league that used house rules you were not a fan of and require over half your army be newly assembled (and you have to prove it). However the host is giving out really good door prizes. In addition to door prizes every week you show up with two new units that you put together and painted that week, you get a free box set of your choice. I think most hobbyist (if you can afford the initial investment) would endure playing with bad house rules multiple weeks if it nets you 10 free boxes of miniatures.

And that's basically how I feel about the event. I can't say its a bad event because its giving away really valuable rewards. but at the same time its making me play in a way that makes me hate the game. I played the game a lot less these last 2 weeks following the event. I needed some time off. That said, I have made sizeable improvements because of the event. My account level which was 43 before the event is now max at 50. After playing for over 5 months I never had 6-star monsters until this event. I was close to getting my first 6-star before the event but I needed a small boost from early in the event to finally evolve my water knight into a 6-star. She gain a cool aura and was my strong point for leveling everyone else up.


By the end of the event she reach max level 40 from leveling other monsters. It took nearly the rest of the event to get enough monsters to evolve my second 6-star monster, my dark fairy. I almost considered myself done with this achievement, but the event still have a couple hours left and there were a few more Rainbowmon that I could still earn. So I continued grinding nonstop those last few hours until I got every last reward from the event and I evolve two of my mid tier monsters from 4-star to 5-star.



One of the last rewards I earn from the event is a Light & Dark Scroll. This scrolls is fairly rare and quite valuable. I will go into why this is the case in another episode. Scrolls summon a random monster and up to this point I haven't used the scroll I earn from the event. So I will end this piece by using said scroll now as I'm typing this, write down what monster I got and sign off. Ready ... and I got a Light Bearman. Well I will talk more about this next time. Until then, have fun and thanks for reading.

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