We’re Dirtopia Now: Archmaging and Conflict Resolution

Hey all. I am chugging along and ready to do my Amuni strategy, so that’ll definitely be the next article (it’s delightfully simple). But this was something I wanted to address for a while and it turns out sometimes procrastination pays off.

Our Fellowship used to be known as Fire & Ice. Like most new players, I plateaued around 3800 points and I couldn’t get anywhere unless I had trading partners. I was under the requirement but they needed boosts and I was eager to help. My gratitude turned into taking an active interest in figuring out the best way. I did rudimentary spreadsheets. I spent way more time than I should have trying to come up with new and improved ways to do things. About a week or two in, the Archmage had to abruptly step down. No one immediately wanted the job, but immediately two players got into a really dumb fight about the size of their trades. Both of them had multiple high score accounts so it resulted in 5 players leaving. Then others left because they felt things were falling apart and more or less half the membership were gone within a single day. I could have bailed then, but I was just getting into Dwarves and had a can do attitude. That’s how I became Archmage of Fire & Ice.

I haven’t changed the background of this blog since then, although I have toyed with the idea from time to time. One of these days I might surprise you all. Maybe a future chapter will be perfect Detroit aesthetic. Until then, the Dwarven High Rises long gone shall remain a cherished memory. I just tried to figure things out on my own and find the simplest way to get through chapters. One of the reasons I wanted to bring up the situations I faced as Archmage is to relate common experiences without naming names. Without a doubt, I’ve had plenty of good times and felt accomplishment and pride in what we’ve achieved together. Lots of players have come and gone and the vast majority of which has been very pleasant. I wouldn’t continue to play Elvenar if that wasn’t the case. But after the last Drama Bomb I had an epiphany.

How do you move past an unpleasant situation in Elvenar?

In all things Elvenar, patience is a virtue. This is especially true of Archmages, where diplomacy is key. Patience means listening to others. Patience means de-escalating the situation, no matter how petty it is. Patience is explaining to someone as many times as possible that dealing solely in cross trades and expecting the Fellowship to meet those needs within hours or less is not feasible. Patience means trying to impart to the Ladder Climber that you don’t need to use other Fellowships as stepping stones to get the most out of Elvenar. Just have patience.

Sometimes toxic personalities will test the limits of your patience. I had an awful experience with a player who had been a part of the Fellowship since the beginning who became obsessed with Neighbor visits. I’m not writing this like one of my usual blog  posts, but a good old bold point is appropriate here: Neighbor Visits are not that important. Not to the point where you make your Archmage want to quit the game more than once after trying to bend over backwards to accommodate the constant complaint that everyone is leeching off of you by not reciprocating visits as far as you can tell. The Notification system is not perfect and not a very accurate timekeeper as evidenced by how it treats Daylight Savings Time. Which is why tournaments end an hour early or later than you’re used to.

Eventually, enough is enough and you have to draw a line. They leave, and the rest of you move forward. Most of the time it’s a relief. Those who stay get where you’re coming from, because they understand what’s truly important. In the wake of that, life went on. We took a few hits from social climbers and that started to frustrate me. And yet, reflecting on that led to an epiphany: this is a long haul. Take a long haul view. When I first started playing, I was breaking down numbers and overthinking it. Settle a routine, collect according to that routine. The app actually lets me spend less time in front of the screen so I only switch to it for when I need the web interface. Don’t eat up your goods in Tournaments if it gets in the way of moving forward. Always move forward at your own pace. You’re not going to get from Orcs to Amuni any faster if you treat it like a horse race, and more likely to burn out frustrated.

Patiently plug away, and you’ll get there. And I guess that’s how Dirtopia was born.

I felt like there needed to be a change and it was time to shed Fire & Ice. I never really liked the name, to be honest. Something described as “fire and ice” usually means incompatibility. But I didn’t want to pick the name myself. But I put up nominations and votes. And threw Dirtopia into the ring and it stuck. For the record, I applied at least one vote for everyone else’s and zero for my own to make it fair. But many didn’t care what we called ourselves as long as we kept doing what we kept doing. Working together, not beating ourselves up for not getting more prizes because there’s always more contests and tournaments and dreaded Fellowship Adventures. I’m still standing because I’m patient and kind and have found myself surrounded by people who feel the same thing. And we support each other through personal hardship and tragedy, because none of this is going anywhere and we just keep doing what we do because we’re in it for the long haul.

We’re Dirtopia now. We’re doing just fine.

The New Basics: Tips and Tricks For Tournaments, Contests, and Adventures

Been a while since I’ve put something down, mostly because life has been busy and coming fast. With the long weekend, I’ve finally been able to catch up on things that have long been on the back burner. There’s a new chapter to explore (already excited about finally swapping out my Woodelves Habitats) and past events have made me want to reflect on my time as an Archmage and what the future holds. But first things first, because a lot has changed even for the features that have been around a long time. As titled, consider this a new back to basics all geared towards making the game work for you (and keeping your sanity in the process of new challenges).

If you have a smartphone, get the Elvenar app. The secret to my success is regular collections. Fortunately, my job allows for little breaks here and there. Your availability may vary, but the more you keep up with your city the faster it’ll grow. Before the app, I used the Puffin browser as it supports Flash. It was a big resource hog and I had to set my phone timer so I knew when it was time to collect. The app has finally replaces that, as you get notifications when productions are ready (it’s not perfect and a huge headache when you’re doing contests or Adventures and they’re ready to collect but you’re not). That said, it also makes things a lot easier. Doing visits take even less than doing it via browser, although treasure chests don’t show up on the app yet. To get around this, you can start your visits by browser until you collect your chests and then breeze through the rest. It even displays the highest available Culture item to hit. It also now has Tournament and Contest/Adventure support. Tournaments are just as easily done as visits, although I wish they had push notifications for those as well. You can also do Adventures although it’s not as ideal as you can accidentally swipe your thumb and ruin an entire badge or two’s worth of productions. In summary, the app doesn’t replace the browser and I don’t think it ever will. But it’s a highly valuable tool that makes a lot of elements faster and easier.

Tournaments are about KP, not relics. When you first start out, Tournaments are your go-to source for maxing out your boosts with Relics so it paid to ignore the non-boosted ones so you could concentrate on the ones you wanted. Once your boosts are maxed, though, Tournaments become more about getting those KP rewards both during and at the end so it pays to pace yourself and try to average enough points where you can easily resupply for the next one. If you put your KP into AWs that make recovery of goods easier, you get closer to it paying for itself. Mountain Halls, as always, is the best AW for Goods production. When you unlock the Halflings AWs, Elvenar Trade Center is great for beefing the Magical Manufactory spell (at level 8 I get a 66% bonus and a 17 hour duration). If you prefer to use troops, Prosperity Towers is a great way to keep your Supplies stocked. The latter is probably more efficient, and the former more convenient.

If all 25 players in a Fellowship can average 1500-1800 points in a Tournament, getting all 10 chests is very achievable. You just need to get everyone on the FS up to that point, so patience is key. As always, with Tournaments the important (and hardest) part is not to overdo it. Find how many points you can swing per Tourney and work on improving it. Tournaments give you spells and Relics to make spells, so they practically pay for themselves.

Contests are easy if you save up for “double days”. In the old days, getting enough points to get the grand prize likely meant paying out the nose in Diamonds for something that might be obsolete or you won’t have room for months later. Now you have Sets that are a bit of a space hog but chained together can give some good benefits. As of Woodelvenstock, you also get booster spells as you progress as well as bonus prizes after the Grand Prize. So while a daily prize may be tempting, unless it’s part of the Set I’d skip it and hold out for the full set. This is easily accomplished by progressing as quickly as possible so that the Relic challenges can be quickly completed by Tournaments. Keep an eye on the upper right corner because every so often the game offers double points. Collect on prize chests then. Usually the daily prize is something dinky like the temporary combat boosts, but you’re really doubling up on prize points. Pick the chests that give you the most points until you run out. Then save up for the next one and you’re all but guaranteed all three prizes.

Fellowship Adventures: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What can I say about them? You do more work than seasonal Contests with a lot less payout. It requires a lot of space and time where both are valuable commodities. I still do them because they’re there, but I don’t encourage breaking your backs over them. Adventures are driving by Fear of Missing Out aka FOMO. Last FA, we found the last map absolutely impossible to finish. No one got upset and decided to leave for a Top 10 Fellowship because they didn’t get a 2×2 Culture/Mana building. The KP prize (40KP? I forget) would have been nice, but none of us were beating ourselves up for not getting 90 Blacksmith badges. Which comes to the most important tip of all.

Never Forget Why You Play: To Play. I’ve been doing this for a while now. I was never looking to run my own Fellowship, it just happened. Many have come and gone in that time. Some have left for real life constraints. Others have left because they wanted something bigger and better. I don’t run a Top 10 Fellowship, and while points are in some way a factor I’ve never considered it to be the most important thing. For a game that relies on cooperation, there’s still competition. No matter the result, I’m always proud of those in my Fellowship for whatever accomplishments they can contribute. I’ll touch on this more later, but the important takeaway is this: patience accomplishes more than ambition ever will. I’ve been backstabbed and verbally abused by past members over things like Neighbor Visits and people who are just starting Orcs and demanding 10 Chests every Tournament so they can get upgrades to Magic Residences and Workshops they don’t even own. I’ve had people treat the entire Fellowship like servants and then leave because we weren’t taking the cross trades they demanded we take on a daily basis. Why? Is it so important that your city has the highest score and all the latest animated buildings that you treat other human beings like garbage? Don’t lose yourself in an online game rat race and forget what matters: enjoying what you’re doing and the people you’re doing it with.

I might long post about that epiphany at a later date. In the meantime, a question to my own Fellowship: do you think we’re due for a name change? To be honest, I’ve never been crazy about “Fire & Ice”. It’s a name that evokes conflict more than harmony, and as I look at the background screenshot to this blog bringing me back to the old days when I was slogging through Dwarves I realized it might be time for a change. Let me know what you think.

Elementals: A Lesson in Patience

Note to self: get a new city screengrab, but in the meantime be wistful of the time you had two rows of Central Places for my Culture Block. Those were the days. Been a crazy couple months for me but I finally have a chance to do a guide for Elementals! First impressions is the artwork on the Elemental races are pretty neat. The Air Elemental who’s just a mask and a blank space where the rest of their head goes is pretty neat. So far the peeks at the new building upgrades are on the castle-y side, which I like the look of but doesn’t feel distinct enough from Halflings architecture. My Steel Factories now look like giant stone heads constantly puking molten iron into a giant toilet bowl, but I’m used to that by now. Overall, Elementals is slow but at least isn’t overly complicated. Your experience depends on how much time and resources you have. Let’s start with the first steps.

Sentient Goods: This is a headscratcher, so try and follow along. Your first upgrades are a Tier 1 improvement (this follows the normal pattern of each chapter upgrading a Tier of Factories). This time, upgrading to Level 24 and higher gives you Sentient Goods. These replace the 24 and 48 hour bakes with 3 and 9 hour bakes of Platinum, Moonstone, and the not clunky sounding Elven Tree Gum. Your first instinct as with all chapters is immediately unlock your boosted Factory so you can get access to the new upgrades. Resist this urge: your Sentient boost is completely different from your Standard boost. What does that mean? If you’re boosted in Steel, you’re going to be boosted in Elven Tree Gum. If it’s Marble, Platinum. If Planks, Moonstone. So what does that mean? For now, you need to build a non-boosted Level 24 factory (or two) to take advantage of that boost. Which is also a separate upgrade. Now, you can still upgrade one (or all) of your Boosted factories if you want those Sentient goods. Even at non-Boosted production levels it can be handy to supplement one of your other Sentient Goods. I upgraded all 4 of my Steel Factories and produce about a grand worth of Platinum every 3 hours. Whereas my Planks at full boost (unless you spent all your Tier 1 relic on spells you’re likely to start at the max 700% which -to date- is not affected by Wonders such as Mountain Halls) produced 2800 Tree Gum per factory. Sentient Goods cost a small amount of corresponding Tier 1 Goods (for Platinum, it’s about 1300 steel for 375 Platinum) along with Divine Seeds. Remember Divine Seeds, the things you barely used and racked up in spite of it’s own decay rate wondering when you’re going to use them? Now they get to go quick as they’re used in production and research upgrades just like Mana. More on that later. First things first, get your Sentient Factory (two is more than enough) built. There’s no rush until you get the Production upgrade and the Advanced Trader built. I don’t even produce Sentient Goods until those are up and running since those two upgrades are how you’re going to get that 3rd Sentient product. It cost me an arm and a leg building two Level 24 factories for my Boosted item, so don’t try to make your own One Stop Shop.

That’s where the Advanced Trader comes in.  Your Trader gets a bit of a size tweak, but it also allows you trade Sentient Goods. My immediate thought was one of dread that even if I lost 3 of my fingers in a horrible accident I’ll still be able to count how many map neighbors are anywhere near this chapter on one hand. Fortunately, when it comes to Sentient Goods there’s no Trader Fee. Unfortunately, this means anything less than 3 star trades will sit for a while. Once I realized this, though, I had a lot less trouble moving Tree Gum. I only run my Planks when I need to build up Sentients for a research tree upgrade or to place Settlement buildings due to the decay rate (they turn into the corresponding Standard goods, but it’s an unnecessary drain on seeds to keep a big stockpile). Upgrading your Factories past level 24 also require Sentient Goods, so expect them to be here to stay (not sure how necessary it’ll be to keep your non-boosts from future Chapter to Chapter until, well, next chapter). So now that you have Sentient Goods you can produce in bulk to trade for the other two Goods, you’ll be able to open up the Research Tree and start laying down your Settlement.

It is recommended you have 18-20 free Expansions to be able to fit the entire Settlement. That’s roughly the same as Halflings, although your layout may vary. Sadly, for some reason they stopped offering new expansion slots per chapter (likely to push the Magic Residences/Workshops) so us free players have to be more creative than usual. Your Portal is 8×5, 8×8 fully upgraded so start there. Canals are your Portal Tracks, the only difference being twofold: they run N-S and E-W at 6×2 or 2×6. They also accumulate Minerals, which are used to upgrade Settlement buildings. Ultimately you’ll need 8 Canals, 3 Air Manifestations, 3 Fire, 5 Earth, and 4 Water. Earth are square 5×5 with the rest sprawling in different directions of 6×3. Again, start slow and work on upgrading your Portal. Upgrading your Portal means you produce more Minerals, which you can collect every 3 hours. Per usual, the more bang for your buck comes from production upgrades via a fully upgraded Portal. Your Manifestations produce better as well, but upgrading those require Research upgrades.

One thing you’ll notice is the patient player is rewarded. Elvenar loves its slow chapters so they can keep you busy while they come up with the next new thing. As you accumulate minerals to upgrade your Portal to accrue even more minerals, slowly adding one or two of each Manifestation as each Portal upgrade demands certain Settlement Goods to move further, you’ll notice you can produce two types of Settlement Goods with two separate options. Artifacts are the “Raw Goods” I’ve mentioned in previous chapter to create the “Finished Goods” which is Essence. It’s much more straightforward than previous chapters: Essence is for research upgrades. You have a Fast or Cheap (read: Slow) option. Faster production puts forward more raw materials for a quicker turnaround time. I’m in no rush to finish, so it’s up to you. Producing Essence takes a full 24 hours, so take your time and max out your portal first. It’s 109.000 Minerals which takes some time to collect. Producing enough Essence to unlock the Residence so I can make some much needed space (and probably run below minimum Population with 2 rows of Woodelves Habitats for the first time ever) took me 2 days. That unlocked the upgrade for the Manifestations which also took me a couple days to produce enough Essence with my Portal at Level 3 (Blooming Trader at Level 6 helps but isn’t a huge bump like a maxed Portal). I’m doing slow Artifact collection at 12 hours apiece which I’ll then roll into upgrading what I have piece by piece. Take your time to focus on maxing output and clearing away space for future placement.

Once your Portal is maxed and you’re able to upgrade your existing Manifestations to the next level, alternate producing Artifacts and Essence with Sentient Goods when needed. You’re going to have to clear 2 blocks of 4 Research tree upgrades apiece to get to the last Manifestation upgrades, so take your time and chip away at it. When in lulls, AWs are best to work on. The ones that benefit you the most in this chapter is Blooming Trader Guild for increased Settlement production, Maze of the Dark Matter for self-producing Mana and cutting on the decay rate, and the Elvenar Trade Center which boosts your Manufactory spells and gives you extra Seeds.

Speaking of which, at the end you get two new Wonders both of which aren’t terribly appealing (at least for now). But keep an open mind in the future. Eventually the stats of all your other “2nd/3rd” tiers are going to get maxed (Banshees get their 3rd star here) so combat boosting Wonders are going to have more use in the far flung future (although the increasingly stingy Expansion slots of which you can only open up 1 this Chapter are going to put the kibosh on that notion). The other reduces Seed decay. I don’t know: I’m finally seeing all the Seeds I accumulated in the lull between Halflings and Elementals get wiped out pretty quick, but I’m not willing to dedicate limited space and 5 levels of KP to bump it up to level 6 with Runes just so I can knock a couple percent off. With Maze of the Dark Matter, that’s a different story. Seeds? We’ll see.

Hope that helps. Happy space crunching!

Things I Like, Things I Don’t Like

It’s been a while since Halflings, and most of that time has been spent beefing up AWs. I just got started with Elementals so I will touch on what I briefly know so far. It’s in theme with this, which is a random collections of Things I Like and/or Don’t Like.

The Elvenar Mobile App: It’s pretty handy even though I still use the Puffin app because it doesn’t have ALL the features. If you’re using the Puffin app for mobile play and find it redirects you to the app store, use the option of “request desktop site”. That lets you log in per normal and you can switch back to mobile view. The app also arguably eats up less data so is better suited towards checking in on your productions. You also get push notifications so you don’t have to set an external timer. On the downside, it’s features are far from complete. You can use KP for research trees but not add them to Wonders. Tournaments are not included yet. Contests are, but not Fellowship Adventures. Nor is there a messaging system. This is why I keep the Puffin app handy. The other drawback is that contests throw off your push notifications if you have unused factories or you’re waiting to collect until the quest comes up. That said, it’s still handy and I have it on my phone as well as a tablet. The latter I use for the mobile app’s biggest strength: map visits. You can visit your FS which makes finding the ever elusive Builder’s Hall a snap. Same with map visits: what used to take me at least 3-4 hours now takes me 1 hour tops.

Fellowship Adventures: Our Fellowship placed 5th last Adventure and I’m super proud of that considering the level of accomplishment. That said, I’m not a fan of it. One of the key reasons we did so well was because one of our members took it upon himself to spend a considerable amount of Diamonds to clear badges. They also replaced raw Goods contributions with Spell Badges. This made me wonder if at least part of our meteoric rise was due to a lot of FSes balking at that. Now, I avoid Diamonds since the costs skyrocketed, and my issue with the premium system of Elvenar has been well documented. But if there’s one thing worth investing in, it’s maxing your Magic Academy for contests. As far as I know it’s still somewhat inexpensive to do, and even if you don’t create spells on your own it really cuts down time in contests. Largely, my beef with the Fellowship Adventures is twofold: it largely rewards those who spend a ton of Diamonds so expect the top tier “whale” FSes to take home the top prizes every time. And even so, for all the toil and work that goes into the contest, the prizes are rather paltry. The top tier clans fight over Culture items from previous contests they probably don’t need. The rest of us jockey for a time lapse spell which is always handy but the gaps between rank and reward are so wide you can plant a Sorcerers & Dragons settlement on it. Really not worth all the work everyone puts into it.

Contests: It’s funny how I recognize I still have prizes from last Winter Solstice (not this last one, THE ONE BEFORE THAT) and more often than not the short contests seem almost not worth adding to my obsolete Culture backlog. But I still do them all the same. The Halloween one was interesting because I felt like they were doing a parody of Army of Darkness (if you haven’t seen it, go watch it) but not quite. Lord Pumpkin returns, and he’s supposedly the bad guy but I just don’t get any sense of menace from someone who starts and ends sentences with Booooooo! The first time I met Lord Pumpkin and his list of demands, I imagined your advisers are privately saying “Look, m’lord, it seems like a huge hassle. But Lord Pumpkin doesn’t have a whole lot going for himself, and it’s Halloween. So we just play along so we can make him feel important.”

One of the things I like that they added for the larger month-long contests addresses my earlier gripe about how it seemed impossible to get the 3rd Prize without spending Diamonds. They didn’t have to, but they fixed this problem by offering “double points days”. I don’t know what they specifically called them, but the points towards the grand prizes were doubled if you opened chests within these 24 hour periods. It happens twice per contest, so it pays to save up your Snowflakes or whatever before cashing in. That’s a nice touch for us not trying to break the bank on a city building browser game.

Set Buildings: These are kind of neat although they require street contact.Arranging them so different buildings touch one another create bigger rewards, which is nice.

Elementals: Will put together a strategy post once I get more into it, but here’s a taste: you finally get to use more of the Divine Seeds from Halflings and finally they go as fast as Mana does. This introduced Sentient Goods, which is a whole new set of Tier 1 Goods. Upgrading your factories replaces the 1 and 2 day bakes (which is no big loss since I always set up Level 1 factories to do this for contests) with 3 and 9 hour productions of Sentient Goods (Platinum, Moonstone, and the totally not clunky sounding at all Elven Tree Gum). Sentient Goods are boosted by corresponding relics the same as other Goods, and there’s a research tree upgrade which unlocks boosts for your Sentient Goods. HOWEVER: the Tier 1 Goods you’re boosted in is not the corresponding Sentient Goods you’ll be boosted in. Confused already? That’s understandable: if you are boosted in Steel, Tree Gum is your Sentient Boost. For Planks, Moonstone. And for Marble, Platinum. Still confused? No, I get it! It means you need to build non-boosted factories all the way up to at least Level 24 in order to take advantage of your Sentient Boost. Why would they make you spend several grand worth of Population to put in a Factory or two just so you can build enough goods to unlock Research for this chapter? Trust me, I’m as bewildered as you. Not to mention the Settlement size is massive as well so far no additional expansion slots in anticipation for this chapter like they did in the past. So I upgraded all my Steel factories to produce Platinum, and built 2 Planks factories to produce Tree Gum. Which leads Moonstone. Sentient Goods decay daily by 10% like Mana and Seeds. There is also a Trader upgrade that lets you trade in Sentient Goods. Here’s the problem: unless a good number of other players (there is thankfully no Trader fees or requirement to discover players to trade in Sentient Goods) are in Elementals and boosted in the Sentient Goods you’re not producing, you’re probably going to have to rely on the Wholesaler to make up the difference unless you want to sacrifice on of your Non Boosted Sentient Boosted Factories (SIGH) to trickle that in. Your mileage will vary, so keep this in mind if you’re a chapter or more behind.

More on Elementals next time!

Sorcerers, Dragons, and Halflings. In That Order.

It’s definitely been a long time since my first look at Sorcerers and Dragons. Evidently I was so preoccupied with catching up with Halflings that I totally forgot to do a guide on S&D! Allow me to remedy this post haste.

As I said last time, going into it you’re going to need a lot of space. The Campus at Level 4 is a 10×10 grid. Thankfully, the Facilities don’t get bigger. But they’re still good sized buildings and you’re required to place 3 of each. Even with my space left over from Wood Elves and freeing up some space upgrading my Residence and sacrificing a row, I was never able to place 4 which is an optional quest (if you have space nearby but none to fit on your Campus, you can do what I did and built buildings I stuck in free spots not connected to the Campus so you can swap one for another but it’s both unnecessary and kind of a pain). The first building you’ll place is the Wisdom Square. It’s a plank-like structure which accumulates Apprentices every 24 hours. It’s slim, but considering you need space on all 4 sides of your Campus it can get in the way. I find the best place to put it is on one of the corners of your Campus.

You get 3 types of Facilities: Arcane, Necromancy, and Alchemy. When you first build your Wisdom Square, you’ll note it produces 6 Apprentices every 24 hours. Don’t fret: it’s a long chapter, but it’s not THAT long. You’ll need to build one of each Facility which you’ll want to max out first. As you build and upgrade Facilities, you’ll note you can A)produce more from your Facilities and B)upgrading Facilities increases the amount of Apprentices collected in 24 hours. You’ll note your Mana goes fast in this chapter as the requirements for research are large. Keep collecting Mana and Apprentices at regular intervals. If you have the space to build 3 of each Facility with room for your Campus to grow without having to hold out for extra room, focus on maxing buildings. Either way, the best move is to max out early and often. Yes, there are quests in which you produce “Building Block” items (thanks to Scarlet for that term) which are only used for upgrading Facilities. They won’t be much good once your buildings are maxed out, but consider that the sooner you have your Facilities and Campus maxed out, the sooner you’re collecting the maximum Apprentices need to make the Sorcerers needed to move up the research tree. A little Mana waste is worth the extra preparations. Speaking of which: I still prefer the Woodelves Habitat to Weeping Willows in term of Pop boost. HOWEVER: if you prefer the most Mana in as little space, the Arcane Library produces more Mana per capita overall.

As I said earlier, upgrading Facilities makes them produce more. So it’s much easier to focus on upgrading each of them 1 level at a time before they max at 4. Upgrade your Campus next. This also increases your production and Apprentices gathered. Once your buildings are all maxed out, it’s time to train. Each Apprentice takes 10 hours to “graduate” their school. The next part can be a bit confusing as you get to your 20 hour cooks. Note that there are 3 different Facilities and 3 different Research “Goods”. Mnemonic devices are handy here. You can think of it as terms of “undergraduate vs. graduate school”. For example, an Apprentice gets their degree in Necromancy. They can either go to Arcane School to get an advanced degree in Arcane Necromancy, or go to Alchemy School in order get an advanced degree in  Arcane Alchemy. Our Fire & Ice Fellowship’s own Scarlet explains it this way:

Apprentices are generated or ‘brought in’ by the Wisdom Square / Boulevard and collected there like coins. Once collected, you can send / spend them to study Necromancy (Zombie Master – represented by Skull), Alchemy (Potions – represented by a Flask) or Arcane Magic (Spells – represented by a Star) where they earn their Skull, Flask or Star badge. NOW! Each of these can move on to study another field, like a double major, and earn their second badge which will stack nicely with the one they already have into the Skull on Flask, Star on Flask or Skull on Star. IT DOES NOT matter which one is studied first! You can start with Necromancers and send them Alchemy to get the Skull on Flask, or you can get the Flask first and send them to get the Skull. It’s not a straight line, like “Psycho Shrooms ->Poop ->Wisdom Shrooms”. It’s a circle! (Or at least a triangle).

If you want to build all three types, do the same thing in a circular/triangular fashion. For me, starting with the Arcane Facility made it the easiest: have all 3 buildings build Arcane Necromancers. Now that you’ve used your Necromancers, go to your Necromancy Facilities and build Alchemy Necromancers. Now that you’ve used all your Alchemists, go to your Alchemy Facilities and use up your Arcanists. This will keep even distribution. Unfortunately, I found that it was easy to get lopsided on one side or the other given Research can demand more of one over the other. As long as you stay consistent with where you send your “undergraduates”, you’ll be able to keep pace.

Apart from the creepy Necromancer, Sorcerers and Dragons doesn’t have much in the way of a storyline. They’re polite and helpful and that’s about it. But considering what complete dicks the other Settlement Races are, their polite and helpful nature is refreshingly boring. Despite the grave/pissy condemnation from the Wood Elves, there’s no downside to their presence (and also no quest to tear down their stuff, so feel free to do it as soon as you start the Halflings tree). In the end, they have to go but they resurrect the Halflings. They ride chickens and they like to eat. Note, while Halflings resemble Hobbits, they are not the same thing (and not just to avoid a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate). Halflings take up a crapton of space, for example.

Does it take more or less space than S&D? It depends. This chapter is one of those “let’s try something new” ones like with how the Research tree worked with Wood Elves. I often mention that Elvenar can be like a puzzle game as much as a city building game because of the constant need to shuffle around and cram things into spaces. Halflings puts this to the test. The plus side to it is there’s a little more flexibility with arranging your Settlement. And that’s also its downside depending on how far you are with Expansions. We’ll start with the rundown of the buildings: your Trader will be upgraded to produce Divine Seeds. Divine Seeds are used in some Research upgrades, but primarily to build Fields. You can collect them every 24 hours, but you get a bonus based on A) the level of your Main Hall and B) the combined total number of Wonders and their levels. Don’t obsess much about this. Divine Seeds decay like Mana, but if you’re taking the time to upgrade your Settlement you’ll be fine when it comes time to use them for Research. Don’t take this as a cue to cram in as many Wonders as you can, but collect Seeds early and often because the bonus applies every time you collect. Therefore, you get more seeds collecting at least every 3 hours than you do every 24. Keep stockpiling them after your Farms are built for future Research.

Your Spring Grove is the classic Portal which the Irrigation Canals (Portal Roads) need to be connected to. Your Grove is the only building that expands up to 5×6, so leave enough room. Your Fields grow crops which are collectible in certain intervals, where the Farms build the finished goods. Quests will require you to build 15 Fields, although it’s best to grow 16 so you have 4 of each Field type. As for how many farms, it depends on your layout.

Here’s where it gets tricky and where you absolutely have to lay out your Settlement right away.  Farms need to be connected to Irrigation Tracks, but Fields need to be connected to Farms. Fields are 4×4 and Farms are 3×3. So at first I figured okay, no problem I’ll just alternate rows of Fields and Farms and build canals around them. Then I ran into trouble because my Steel Factories stuck out a little too far and that completely screwed me up. So I tried shifting some things around to see how I could make things work and of course I did it right before bed so not only did I make a complete mess I’m thinking I have to go to bed and I have no idea how to even put everything back together and I’m just about ready to cry from frustration.

Fortunately, the good folks at Gamer’s Gems of Knowledge were way ahead of me. That link will take you to their page where they show ways to lay out your Settlement for optimum space because you’re definitely going to need it. (They also have a chapter on S&D for you need any more info or explanation). They get 100% credit for getting me out of the bind I was in. Unfortunately, while the vertical layout seems like the best bet for me, I’m not going to be able to do that. I managed to fit 16 fields with room for more Farms I may or may not need. Once you have your Fields and Farms placed, it’s time to upgrade.

Technically, you benefit the most from a maxed Spring Grove, but the road is not so easy. There’s going to be a big lull to get there, but once you do it’ll be smooth sailing. Magic Fertilizer is produced from Farms and is a Building Block. You use it to build and upgrade Farms, so with all Building Blocks only make as much as you need. When you build a Farm, it produces Wheat. Stockpile that until you have 16 Wheat Farms. Then, build enough Fertilizer to upgrade 4 of those Farms. Why not all 16? Upgrading a Field to the next level changes the type of crop produced. Now you have 12 Wheat Fields and 4 Carrot Fields.

Now comes the question I asked myself: should I keep upgrading Fields so I can work on the Grove, or should I concentrate on upgrading my Farms? The answer is a little of both. An upgraded Grove increases both your Farm and Field output, but just to get to Level 2 you need once of each Finished type. That can take an awful long time even with a large number of Level 1 Farms. Keep in mind, though, that a Level 3 Farm only does the same amount of work as two Level 1 Farms. That said, at least take the time to upgrade them all to Level 2. You have all your Fields dedicated to making Bread, and the reason you want to hold off on Field upgrades is because A) you need more Wheat than Carrots to make Bread and B) the more Fields are growing other stuff, the less Bread you’ll be able to make. Once you get your Farms upgraded, keep 4 Wheat fields and turn the rest to Carrots. You’ll have 4 Wheat and 12 Carrots. Then convert 4 Carrot Fields to Pumpkins. Now you can make Soup as well as Bread. Soup seems pretty easy to make so feel free to upgrade a few Farms to Level 3 if you’d like. Until you’re ready to make Apples/Jelly, you’ll want to produce more Carrots than Wheat and Pumpkins since they pull double duty for making Bread and Soup. If you’re hurting for Pumpkins (as they refresh every 12 minimum), go ahead and move to 8 Pumpkins. By now you’ll have 4 Wheat/Carrots and 8 Pumpkins.

Last, you’ll want to turn 8 Pumpkins to Apples so you end up with 4 of each. Apples and Jelly take the longest, which is why I recommend taking some time to upgrade your Farms a bit. Once you upgrade your Grove, you’ll find your Farms a lot busier hence the upgrades. No matter what, you’re in for a sizable initial lull. Once your Grove is maxed out, though, you’ll be able to max some Farms with Jelly while simultaneously producing Bread and Soup quickly enough to burn through a few Research bars. There’s really no need to max all of your Farms, but about half or so will be helpful. There is a quest to have 4 Farms at Level 4 and with the rest at Level 3 you’ll be able to produce enough 6 hour bakes to keep the majority of your Farms busy. I make Jelly and Bread with my Level 4 farms and leave Soup up to the rest. I actually started overproducing Carrots so I switched a Field to Pumpkins to make up the slack. At this point you start to move rather swiftly through the Research tree so feel free to tweak your setup for what you feel is the most efficient.

As far as building upgrades, your Workshops make a big dimensional shift (thankfully the quest is optional on this one). Mercenary Camp goes Armory sized more or less. 3rd tier Factories get a bit of a shift as does your Main Hall and Barracks. My “Universal Settlement Theory” applies partly as this Chapter seems to be as long as Wood Elves and messes around with new concepts. This time: strategic use of space, which is understandably frustrating given how precious little the game gives you these days. Still, once you get everything arranged and producing like it should you’ll progress rather easily through this. This chapter gives you 2 new Wonders: Temple of the Toads, and the Elvenar Trade Center. The Temple gives you free Heavy Ranged units and a damage bonus. As someone who has relied primarily on negotiations, it’s not a thriller. Free troops do add up, though. The Elvenar Trade Center, however, is right up my alley. It significantly adds both to the duration and potency of the Magical Manufacturing spell. Considering these spells are easily gained during Tournament and at Level 1 I could double the spell time with a 50% increase, it’s definitely on my to-do list.

Will add any observations as I progress. Happy farming!

Return of The Good, The Bad, and The So-So: Ancient Wonder Changes

You may have noticed something different with Elvenar today. Your Culture is brighter, your Population is up. You may have said “suppose I better collect on my Golden Abyss while it’s there” and suddenly you get a bonanza of gold. Let’s go with the good news first: you’re not going crazy. Which leads to the even better news for once:  Ancient Wonders have been improved! Now the effects of your Wonders improve not only by upgrading them, but also progressing through the game as well. I know we all like to knock the devs for bone-headed decisions (don’t lie, you know you do) but this is easily the best move they could have made. Wonders are now better with the same KP requirements and they progressively get better the further you advance. So in revisiting my take on each Wonder, I will touch on the changes and the new verdict. Let’s begin with our first and best example.

Golden Abyss: Before, it was a glorified Residence that in spite of its size quickly became obsolete compared your actual Residences. I also advised using it as a Splinter to Shard Farm, but now that Tournaments give out Shards so it’s not as necessary to do this. However, now you have incentive to keep the Golden Abyss because both of its functions have been improved. Your Gold output per 3 hours depends on the level of both the Wonder and your Main Hall. As for the Population aspect, it is now based off Wonder level and your “working” Population. That means you get more Population the more advanced your city is. I have mine at Level 6 and its Population score is on par with my Wood Elf Residences. The Gold bonus is 204k every 3 hours, where as before it was somewhere near 30k. So it’s a big improvement, especially with its compact size and low KP requirement.

Old Verdict: Lackluster Wonder, Better Rune Farm

New Verdict: Most Improved Award

Tome of Secrets: Alas, no change to the daily KP reward. On the plus side, there’s a significant increase to the Supplies per Scout as it’s based off your Main Hall level.

Old Verdict: Diminishing Returns, But Better to Upgrade Than Use for Farming

New Verdict: Same as the Old Verdict

Endless Excavation: Again, no changes to how many Relics per Province you get. But you do get a considerable bump in Supplies depending on your Main Hall level. Still, if you’re really set on getting a glorified Factory you’re better off holding out for the Prosperity Towers.

Old Verdict: Disappointing and Obsolete

New Verdict: Not as Disappointing, Just as Obsolete

Needles of the Tempest: Apparently no change here apart from “some balancing and display adjustments”. I’m not sure what that means, but I haven’t tried out combat with the new changes.

New Verdict: Still Useless

Sanctuary/Martial Monastery: Before the change, the Culture bonus eventually became less appealing the further you progressed. Now it scales based on your minimum required 100% Culture so it increases the more you build up your city. For me, its Culture value quadrupled with the change. Army health is apparently the same so it’s still a Mixed Value Wonder. But it’s a more valuable one. Can you do better with Culture item you won in a contest? Maybe. But if you already built it, why back down now?

Old Verdict: So-So Culture, Mid Level Rune Farm

New Verdict: Great Culture Worth Pursuing

Great Bell Spire/Crystal Lighthouse: This is how I knew something was different today. Normally, at Level 7 I get 19 units of a random boosted Goods item. Suddenly, I’m making over 200 units a pop. That’s because it now scales according to how many completed provinces. The Neighborly Help portion hasn’t changed, but the important part to remember is this now makes a fine complement to the Mountain Hall. At this stage in the game, I have enough map neighbors that it takes me around 90 minutes (and growing) to complete. Think about how much 200 Goods per visit adds up, so now I have an even greater incentive to visit.

Old Verdict: Very Worthwhile, Especially With-

New Verdict: Even More Worthwhile, Especially With-

Watchtower Ruins: Like the Sanctuary, the Culture bonus scales to the amount of minimum Culture required to maintain your city. The Culture Visit bonus remains the same but you can now expect to get a significant Culture bump when you upgrade this building.

Old Verdict: A Fine Package Deal

New Verdict: Even Better

Thrones of the High Men: Before, this was a prohibitively huge Wonder purely for increasing your point score. Then it turned out the description was bugged and that it also increases your Culture. I never noticed the difference. Now it’s a prohibitively huge Wonder that matches point score increases with Culture increases.

Verdict: Still Save It For Last

Dwarven Bulwark: Both training size and free Light Melee troops scale according to squad size.

Verdict: …As a Wonder, It Still Blew

Mountain Halls:  Boost production is unchanged, but Population is now scaled to “working” Population. So its secondary benefit is now more valuable.

Old Verdict: Buy It, Upgrade It

New Verdict: Buy It, Upgrade It, Upgrade Everything Else

Prosperity Towers:  Still a 5×4 square. Still extends Power of Provision bonuses the same way. But Supplies every 3 hours scale to your Main Hall level which is a considerable increase.

Verdict: A (Mostly) More Decent Headache Free Wonder

Blooming Trader Guild: No changes here.

Verdict: Same Balm for the Ever Impatient

Heroes Forge/Shrine of the Shrewdly Shrooms: I almost didn’t pair them together this time, since the Heroes Forge now scales Orc production according to completed provinces. But it still produces half of what a single Armory produces in two 12 hour Armory bakes at Level 1. Do I really need it? No. Meanwhile, Shrewdly Shrooms is still a slightly smaller Dwarven Bulwark Wonder.

Verdict: Pass 2: Electric Boogaloo

Enar’s Embassy: Mana per Scout increases per province completed. But now that Shards can be won pretty easily in Tournaments, this isn’t as valuable as before. Which is no huge loss, knowing how much space you’ll need in the next chapter.

Old Verdict: Are You Salivating Yet?

New Verdict: No, But That’s Okay

Flying Academy: Free Mages scale to “per full squad”, whatever that means.

Verdict: Devs. Seriously.

Maze of the Dark Matter/Dragon Abbey: Both Mana effects scale to completed provinces. Secondary effects are unchanged. This makes the Maze more valuable. Dragon Abbey, not so much.

Verdict: Find Room For the Maze If You Can

That’s that until next time. Hopefully the next changes are as exciting at this one!

Orc Speed Run. Yes, You Read That Correctly.

This strategy comes kayliegrrl and passed along to me via Fire & Ice’s own Apisi. With Orcs, space is king. The Rally Points are rather large, and the more space you have to place Mushroom Farms the better. The Orc strategy from earlier still applies, but what if you’re short on space? Here’s a handy way to clear some room.

Early on, you’re taught that Culture is important and you want to keep it as high as possible. This not only provides bonuses to gold and supply collection, but you need a minimum Culture level to be able to upgrade your city. So while this suggestion seems utterly counter-intuitive to how you’ve played up until this point, it still works if you’re willing to try something different. First thing you’ll want to do is upgrade your Armories to Breeding Grounds so you can produce Orcs.  This is the only upgrade requirement, but feel free to beef up any buildings you want prior to the next step. It’ll be a while before you can do any city upgrades.

Next, sell all of your Big Culture items to make a large building space. No, really. Do it. Feel free to rearrange your city with your newfound free space to make as big a block for your Orc Settlement as you can. You’ll be selling off all those buildings at the end anyways so you’ll have the same amount of empty space to shuffle things back around. Your Culture might plummet to where you can’t build or upgrade anything that requires a Culture cost to place, but that’s just temporary. Do the Orc Strategy as mentioned in below posts. You’ll have a lot more Mushroom Farms and Rally Points to speed you along.

I haven’t tried this as a One World, One City player but it does hold water. I held onto my Ponds of Recreation (and my Wayfarer Taverns) through Orcs because it didn’t make sense to replace them until Wood Elves. But naturally it didn’t occur to me to tank my Culture for a large Settlement space. The only drawback is reduced Gold and Supplies but if your city is on hold it’s unlikely you’ll come up short when working the KP tree. And since you’ll work through the chapter quicker, you’ll only have to suffer the indignity of being filthy Cultureless rabble for a bit.

Alas, you need Mana Culture buildings for the next two chapters, so this only works for Orcs. But hey! Orc Speed Run. It’s an actual thing.

Wood Elves Endgame and Sorcerer/Dragons Sneak Peek: The New Universal Settlement Theory

(Longer than anticipated, but well worth the read -ed.)

A few odds and ends before I begin: one of the unfortunate challenges of writing strategies on this blog is that change make earlier guides obsolete. Since combat was “updated” with more units with different states, the previous guides I made are now completely discarded. Tournaments have also changed, but for the better. Now there’s only 4 challenges to complete rather than 8, prizes now include Rune Splinters (which may or may not make Rune Farming with Wonders in a post two door downs obsolete, depending on your playing style and how far you’ve gone with them). But the best news is now the participation of your Fellowship brings co-op rewards which are also much easier to acquire. I use these both as an aside to correct earlier posts, but also to point out that Elvenar is frequently evolving. However, some things more or less stay the same.

In an earlier post, I talked about a sort of Universal Settlement Theory. To review, there are common themes and structures in each Settlement chapter that correspond to common strategies. For example, how you should upgrade your production facilities and then your Portal for maximum output. Fairies and Orcs involve recipes, where different goods are provided and combined with other goods. There are also goods that are produced solely to upgrade buildings and go towards improved roads. That said, a quick overview of Orcs strategy: have as much space as you can to build as many Mushroom Farms and 2-4 Rally Points. Work on upgrading your Mushroom Farms by churning out alternating Psychoshrooms and Hardshrooms. When those are maxed, work on your Portal. Then your Rally Points. Once those are completed, alternate production of Wisdom Shrooms and Loot; make Psychoshrooms so your Rally Points can Make Poo. While the Rally Points are Baking Brownies (I make no apologies -ed.), your Mushroom Farms should be making Powershrooms. When those are done, your Rally Points should switch to Loot while your Shrooms of Wisdom take forever and a day.

All of this is a long and tedious process. But like with Dwarves, You’ll Get Through It. And at the end of this one and at the start of Wood Elves, the Orc King gets his comeuppance with a 3rd degree Mana burn. Feels good. But I’m getting ahead of myself. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, there is a definite pattern of alternating between pleasant walk in the park Settlement chapters and tear your hair out Orcs/Dwarves style. Since we’re on Wood Elves, it’s a pleasant chapter. Storywise, though, it’s a bit of a let down. The Orcs are chased away, and the Wood Elves arrive. Surprise! They’re kinda assholes. At this point you may be wondering if there is another Settlement race that isn’t pushy and demanding and more than a little condescending. But the Wood Elves make haughty demands and their response more often than not is “…” Seriously, you do what they tell you and they just respond with the stink eye. Of course, they blame you for unleashing the Orcs like they didn’t just waltz right in and take over in the first place. They have no personality, which is a shame. On the plus side, it’s also a lot less convoluted than with Orcs.

The first thing you research is Mana producing Culture items. These differ from regular items as they need road access. The Weeping Willow is just a tad smaller than the Pond of Recreation so if you have a whole block of them it’s easy to replace, which I did. They give out 3500 Culture you’ll probably gain a bit in the process. Mana is your fuel for this chapter and the next, so have as many Mana producing Culture items as possible. You lose 10% of your total stored Mana every night around 3-4 Central Standard Time (Daylight Savings Time depends on which one of these apply). It keeps you from hoarding massive amounts of Mana, but you really won’t suffer from it as long as you keep collecting and spending (which you will soon enough). You’ll notice the research tree jumps around, which it does. First thing you do is build your Glade, which is your Portal. Then you have your Forest Fabricators, which make finished goods. Then your Grafting Factories turn small amounts of 1st Tier Goods into the recipe for the finished goods that will unlock research. Use the same space, if not more, which you dedicated to Orcs. Not only will you breeze through the chapter quicker, but you’re going to need all that space soon. I had lined up 5 Forest Fabricators (4 should be enough) and about 8 Steel/Marble Grafts and 6 Wood Grafts. This was less an exact science so much as how many I could cram in the space available. As I said last time, take time to unlock expansions and building upgrades which also tend to alternate between chapters. Remember how Fairies had you re-arrange half of your map to make room for your new Workshops? Get ready to do it again (although this was actually welcome to me as they take a much more pleasing square shape). Your Residences will stay the same, but will get longer and skinnier in Sorcerer/Dragons. One annoying change is a slight dimension change of your Main Hall but it’s only a minor hassle. But if I get the chance to utilize my currently unused space dedicated for Settlements to re-arrange things, I’m going to take it. You should too.

Remember with Orcs how I said a calculator is handy for efficiency but not required? It still isn’t, but highly recommended. You only want to produce as much as you need to complete the chapter. With Orcs, that was the case with Wisdom Shrooms and Loot. With Wood Elves, the less you leave behind the better since roads are paved purely with Mana (and the requisite gold and supplies). Mana doesn’t require a lot of micromanagement, but it helps to crunch the numbers of how much you’ll have left to power your Fabricators. As soon as you build your Fabricators, keep producing Mana Tears until you need raw Mana to unlock the Grafting Sites from your research tree. Here is where things slow down a little bit, because Mana Tears require raw Mana to build your Grafts, but you also need raw Mana to unlock the technology to build them. And to upgrade your Fabricators, you’ll need at least one of each type. Keep working at it. The tricky part is that each Graft type has a different shape. Planks is 3×3 which is why I had the least amount of them, but Marble and Steel also require a bit of Tetris to maximize with available space. Again, keep working at it.

You’ll notice some shades of Dwarven chapter in this buildup, but it’s nowhere the awful slog. Grafts are like Copper Foundries, except for 2 key differences: they aren’t upgradeable (production is increased by upgrading the Glade) and they operate like a small scale Factory. The good news (great, in fact) is that you never need a lot of Graft goods to produce anything. And once you have a half dozen of them producing regularly, it tends to add up. Maxing out your Fabricators is best done this way: keep adding one of each Graft type while your Fabricators produce Mana Tears to build more. Upgrade your Fabricators one at a time when you have enough raw Graft goods. Rinse and repeat. Once you’re at capacity with Graft sites, concentrate solely on maxing your Fabricators. The only other time you need Mana Tears is to upgrade your Glade, which is the next step.

Your Glade requires Mana Tears and a small amount of finished goods of each type made with Mana and raw goods from the Graft. Only produce enough Mana Tears to max your Glade. Once those are finished, your only remaining task is to turn your graft goods into finished goods and produce enough Mana to complete the tree. Shoot for WoodElves Habitat first if you can. It doesn’t produce as much Culture as the Willows and you have to collect every 12 hours at minimum (max 19 hour collection so it’s best collected during wake-up and bedtime), but you get 1130 Culture apiece. If you have the space to replace all your Willows, you’ll be sitting on a tidy Population surplus. And given the last time the game offered a Population boosting Culture item outside of Diamond and contest based buildings was Dwarves, it’s hard to pass up.

A key thing to keep in mind: overproducing anything in this chapter amounts to a waste in some sort of resource. It’s very easy to overproduce Refined goods from your Grafts. In the grand scheme of things, you might waste a couple grand of 1st tier goods which at this point you could probably recoup in 3-9 hours. However, you can miss a golden opportunity to finish the chapter quicker AND save wasted goods. All you have to do is pack a calculator and head over to the game wiki. Once you have your all your buildings running at max level, you know how much it takes in Refined goods to make Wood Ghosts/Wind Chimes/Treant Sprouts. Divide the cost of the refined goods needed for one Fabricator by how much of a finished good that amount produces. For example (off the top of my head), 1160 Refined Steel makes 80 Wind Chimes which equals 14.5. Then multiply that result by how many Finished Goods you need to complete the chapter. If it’s, say, 900, then you’re going to need 27,550 Refined Steel to finish. Next, figure out how many Forest Fabricators you can place if you sold off all your Grafting Sites. See where I’m going with this? It can be risky if your math is off, but you can easily double or triple your progress. But the reason I advised a trip to the wiki is to calculate how much extra you need to max out those Fabricators. There’s a little down time because you’re going to want to max them before using them for Finished goods, but 9 hour bakes cut in half are quite tempting even for a chapter with only a few lulls.

Onto Sorcerers, which if current trends continue is supposed to be the “agony chapter”. But the mechanics of it are rather simple compared to Orcs. So far I’m still in the upgrading portion, but there’s no mystery I can see involving strategy. As before, Mana is your fuel and you’re going to need plenty of it. Some new Mana buildings are offered, but I’m a-okay with the Habitats and will only add a couple Arcane Mazes for space limitations in my Mana/Culture area. You’ll need more Mana for upgrades and buildings still require Mana for production, so expect some slow going. Upgrading buildings has gone rather smoothly in my short time in this chapter, so the universal rule of max your production facilities applies. In this chapter, your Campus serves as both your Portal and your “Portal Tracks”. More on that in a moment.

When the Sorcerers (and a Dragon, also a Sorcerer) show up, it’s a breath of fresh air. They’re actually polite. Sure, that should immediately make you a tad suspicious that there may be strings attached, but essentially their spiel is “we’re an elite group of magic practitioners who don’t show ourselves to anybody but you seem to be able to tap into Mana sources so we’d like to set up shop and show you some things.” Sounds great! Of course, the Wood Elves are all honked off because one of them is a Necromancer (yeah, he’s creepy but why wouldn’t he be) but mostly because it’s not their style of magic. So they give me an ultimatum: “if you let them stay, WE ARE LEAVING FOREVER.” My response: Smell you later, dicks. Their response: “…” No, really. That’s literally the note they leave on. Eh. Onwards and upwards.

Your first task is to build a Wisdom Square. It’s less of a square shape and more of a 6×2 popsicle stick rectangle, but it you get the idea. It does need to be connected to a road, but it’s a non-upgradeable building. But before you can cast settlemonte universalus debunkis hold on! As I said earlier, the Campus does double duty as your Portal and the connecting roads. What your Wisdom Square does is generate Apprentices every 24 hours. At the beginning, it generates 6 a day. But the more buildings you add and the more upgrades you do, the bigger that number grows to collect per 24 hours. We’ll cover this soon. In the meantime, note you will absolutely need a lot of space. This is why I encourage players to dedicate a good sized area for Settlement races and try to make the most efficient use of their space. You will need a roughly 20×20 grid (16 expansions) to stat, and perhaps as much as 25-30×25-30. Your Campus alone is 7×7 and while it is the only expanding “building” it gets as big as 10×10. It needs to touch the Wisdom Square which needs to be connected to a road, and since your Campus acts like Portal Tracks all your buildings need to touch them. Alchemy Facilities are 4×4, Necromancy Facilities are 5×5, and Arcane Facilities are 4×6. And you need at least 2 of each of them for one quest, and then THREE for another. It’s a monster space requirement, and since this is a sneak peek I don’t know if they’re insane enough to demand a 4th of each building.. Another downside is that your Armories and Residences are getting a little wider and narrower on each axis, but you won’t be able to do that until you have your Facilities built. As someone who was lucky yet still foolish enough to buy Diamonds for expansions back in the day before they got an astronomical price hike (and an avid Wonder collector), I’m still at a loss on how to make everything fit. Make it fit by hook or crook. I had no problem fitting 2 of each type with room to max out the Campus. As for adding a building of each type, we’ll see how compressing my Residences go.

The quest order for building the facilities is Alchemy, Necromancy, and Arcane. You then get a quest of having two of each. Knowing I needed two of each, I just went ahead and did that. Between Tournaments, Wonder rewards, and the Phoenix contest I had a KP bonanza so I was filling the tree before my Campus got built. As a result, I started with the Arcane House (the game calls them Faculty, but I’m going to call them Houses from here on out for a simple cheap joke). You’ll be producing upgrade material (Ghosts/Scrolls/Potions) solely to max out everything. The quests resolve themselves as they involve generating upgrade items and upgrading buildings. You’ll note that the amount of Apprentices you collect every 24 hours increases with every building you add and upgrade. Keep collecting and upgrading until you hit your limit. The recipes are simple. For example: Necromancy House. They’re the worst House on Campus. Fat, power drunk, and morbid is no way to go through life, son. Aaaaaand there’s that promised cheap joke. They produce Ghosts which fuel upgrades for the other 2 Houses/Campus upgrades in 5 hour bakes. 10 hour bakes turn Apprentices into Necromancers, which can be used in 20 hour bakes (yeesh) to produce finished goods of either the Arcane or Alchemy variety. This is why two of each House is required since you can produce one of each. As always, only produce what you need. It’s going to be a long chapter, but also a pretty straightforward one. Keep moving forward. You’ll Get Through It.

 

 

 

$$$$$$GET PAID WHILE PLAYING ELVENAR NOT A SCAM!!!!!!!!!!!!$$$$$$

Not to worry, readers! My blog has not been hacked by spambots. Just thought I’d have the fun with this next title, which is about using Puffin with mobile devices to play Elvenar. One of the things I like about the game is that while it favors the avid player, you can still tailor it around your life. But what if you want to pop in on your lunch break and set your factories to bake while you work? Sure, you can set it for 9 hours before you leave work. Or set it for 3 before you leave, 3 on your break, and 3 after you clock out and triple your output. Or your internet goes out at home. Either way, you do have the option of playing mobile. But wait, you say! When I try to log in from my phone it tells me a mobile version isn’t available yet! That’s true, because it’s a Flash Shockwave based web game which isn’t phone browser friendly. However, there is a free app for both Android and Apple products called Puffin which is a free download and works (largely) reliably. But there’s just a few things you need to do in order to get it running.

First, download it of course. Next, you’ll want to mess with your options. In the upper right corner are 3 dots. That’s your main menu. The important one is your cog icon which is your options button. You’re going to want to have ALWAYS Data Saving, because fair warning: if you’re not on a wifi connection it can eat up your data plan if you’re using it too often. Be sure to close it down when you’re done. Stick to lowest quality for max performance. Next, search for or put in the Elvenar site address. You’re going to get the same message, but there’s an easy workaround. In the main menu you’ll see “Request desktop site.” Move that slider over and the page will reload.  Again, don’t worry: this is only temporary. Hunt down the login bar at the top, put your name and password and check Remember Me. When it accepts your login, it’ll go to the realm menu. Return to your Puffin main menu and move that slider back to the left. It’ll switch to mobile display and you won’t have wear out your fingers trekking across your city blown up 15 times its normal size.

There’s one last thing to do, but you want to wait until your city is loaded up. If you’re doing this from a tablet, it’s easier to navigate. With your phone, turning it sideways turns the whole page to landscape view. Use whichever you prefer, but you can switch back and forth when you’re not in Theater Mode. Theater mode is in your Main Menu although you have to scroll down a bit for the options (previous versions had it closer up top, which I miss). Touching that allows you to scroll around your city using your finger. Do be careful what you touch as tapping it works like clicking on it with your mouse. There’s also an option in the lower right to select a virtual mouse, which I only use if I want to see the progress of something without clicking on it. If you want to switch views, hit the back button once on your phone and the browser and menu tab come up. Then orient your phone to which view you want and re-select Theater Mode.  Once you see it and play around with it, you get the hang of it. While I am a notorious homebody, it is nice to be able to pop in when I’m out and about and keep the wheels rolling. No matter which platform I’m on, I like to use my phone’s timer function to count down when I need to switch back to Elvenar to collect and/or set. Such is the life of a multitasker!

Ancient Wonders: The Good, The Bad, and The So-So

When I first started playing and the only Settlement to date was Dwarves, you had your choice of two Wonders after Chapter 4, which are the only Wonders which vary by player race. I honestly don’t recall if they had Wonders for Dwarves at the time or not, but since then the numbers of Wonders have greatly expanded. So here’s my rundown of Wonders in rough order of where they appear and my take on them. Your mileage may vary, and since I don’t have all of them unlocked I’m speculating on a lot of them. This is just my opinion.

Golden Abyss (I promise the rest won’t be anywhere as long -D.B.): Many of these Wonders were retroactively added such as this one, so your opinion of it can be skewed since you were probably well past Chapter 2 when it became available. For someone first starting out in the game, however, it is a very welcome addition. At 3×3, it’s the smallest Wonder and its Population bonus and Gold payout every 3 hours is a welcome boost even if you don’t upgrade it. The problem with the early Wonders, though, is that you’re probably investing all your KP in research and won’t have a lot of lulls unless you’re playing solo with a map of inactive neighbors.  Also, 3×3 in the earliest stages of the game does take up a bit of space, and by time you get to the point such as Dwarves where you can regularly pump KP into a Wonder it becomes a rather lackluster glorified Residence. But don’t count it out yet!

Have you noticed how you seem to regularly acquire Rune Shards for the early Wonders and find it much rarer to get one for the Settlements? Or when you’re doing a seasonal contest and end up with a pile of Rune Shards for a Wonder you don’t want? What I have theorized after observing this is that there is a probability percentage to which Rune Shard you get when awarded one, much like in seasonal contests. Say, a 25% chance of getting Abyss Shards as opposed to Mountain Halls (for some reason I find Orc Wonders are turning up Shards far more than Dwarves or Fairies so they may have “fixed” Wonder probability for that Settlement but not the others). I don’t know of anybody who has maxed out a single Wonder (if you have, would love to hear from you) that can tell me if you still acquire Rune Shards for a Wonder at maximum level. But apart from that daunting task, you’re stuck with a pile of useless Shards…or are you?

When a Wonder reaches Level 5 (and 10, and ostensibly 15), Rune Shards come into play and you have to place 9 Runes. After about 4 or 5 Runes, your Shards start getting dashed into splinters. More often than not, you’ll need to fill up your Broken Shards meter which then instantly forges a Rune. Sometimes you get lucky at this stage but most likely you’ll burn through a ton of Shards to upgrade further. Aggravating? Sure. You might not find it worth getting 3 dozen Rune Shards just to upgrade a lackluster Wonder to level 6. So don’t! When you fill your Broken Shard meter enough to forge a Rune, quit out of that window and open up an as yet built Wonder you do want. That’s how I got my Mountain Hall constructed even though I rarely see a rune for it. The Golden Abyss is handy for this because you easily acquire Rune Shards to do this and requires a relatively low amount of KP to get it to Level 5. Considering how rare it is to fill the Rune circle without forging runes, you can turn your disappointing “lackluster Residence” into a mini-Rune Farm.

Verdict: Lackluster Wonder, Better Rune Farm

Tome of Secrets: Another early Wonder which is nice to have early on. The smattering of extra Supplies when scouting a Province doesn’t make too much of an impact especially when you get in later chapters when you can make more from a single Workshop in an hour between 2 day long Scouts. But the real prize is one 1 KP in 24 hours at level 1. You might rush to get this thinking oh man, if I level this up to 6 I’m going to get an extra 6 KP a day! This thing practically pays for itself! It doesn’t: every 5 levels, you get a bonus 1 KP a day. If you dedicated yourself to maxing out this Wonder, you would get 4-5KP a day for all that trouble. That said, KP is KP. And this is one of those lower level Wonders that are easy to pick up Rune Shards for. At 4×4, it’s easy to find a place for it.

Verdict: Diminishing Returns, But Better to Upgrade Than Use for Farming

Endless Excavation: When Tournaments came about and I was pouring tons of resources into them to increase my production boosts, this seemed like a godsend. Bonus Relics? Don’t mind if I do. The Extra Supplies after 24 hours was just an added bonus. Then I found out your production boosts cap at 700%. So now it’s just taking up space.

Verdict: Disappointing and Obsolete

Needles of the Tempest: Speaking of obsolete: the combat changes now making army building much faster renders any training time upgrades outside of your existing combat buildings pointless. This one also increases the damage of your Light Ranged units by tiny percentages. Overall it’s completely useless and Rune Shards are rather rare for this one.

Verdict: Pointless on Two Fronts

The Sanctuary/Martial Monastery: I call Wonders like these Mixed Blessings. One of the benefits (marginal increases in troop health) is not going to be of much interest to you unless you’ve somehow learned not to have the snot smacked out of you in battle in the latter chapters. It’s Culture rating, however, is more appealing to a certain point. As you progress in later chapters, however, you’ll find its worth as a 5×5 Culture building to be a bit lackluster. However, this is one I get a LOT of rune shards for, and at higher levels the payouts for player contributions are much better compared to your Chapter 2 Wonders which never seem to become as inviting to collaborators. It’s not as good as its counterpart, but it does have its uses.

Verdict: So-So Culture, Mid Level Rune Farm

The Great Bell Spire/Crystal Lighthouse: Another Mixed Blessing, but while larger than the Sanctuary/Monastery it does have a far more valuable secondary function. The not terribly useful one gives you a tiny portion of a random boosted material every time you visit someone. But the real prize is longer Neighborly Help. This one takes a considerable amount of KP at higher levels, but extending the timer on Cultural Help is a major benefit. And again, I tend to rake these Rune Shards in almost as much as my Sanctuary. The next Wonder makes these a must have for Culture lovers.

Verdict: Very Worthwhile, Especially With-

Watchtower Ruins: This one is a sleeper because at first glance it seems lacking. The Culture bonus is not much and you probably have 2×2 items from contests with higher Culture. But the real promise comes from the increase in visit rewards for Culture. 10% at Level 1 doesn’t sound like much, but consider it takes only 158 KP to raise it to level 2 and add an extra 3%. By Level 5 or 6 you have over 20% and that’s per visit. So if you have 8 big Culture buildings of, say, 2500 apiece. That’s an extra 500 Culture per building for a total of 4000 Culture in addition to their doubled amount for visits. Combine that with the Bell Spire and you have more bonus Culture or longer. At 4×5, you can easily place it in a row with other buildings.

Verdict: A Fine Package Deal

Thrones of the High Men: As you all in Fire & Ice know, I’m not terribly concerned with the points game. While a higher point count leads to a higher Fellowship ranking which generally makes recruiting easier the higher you are, it’s not the end all and be all. Which leads us to this Wonder: it’s REALLY FRIGGIN HUGE. And all it does is increase your score according to how many Wonders you have and how high this Wonder’s level is. This is for bragging rights only, and I only picked it up for experimental purposes.

Verdict: Save It For Last

Dwarven Bulwark: There was a Dwarf Wonder/That looked like a shoe/For its size just for free Light Melee Units/…

Verdict: As a Wonder, It Blew

Mountain Halls: This is a must have, and if you have any need for the Wonder Farming method it’s this one. As I said earlier, your production boost through acquiring Relics caps at 700%. After that, there is only two ways to increase your Goods production outside of spells: advanced upgrades to your Factories, and the Mountain Hall. The Population increase is paltry, but it already increases production by nearly 25% by Level 3. It’s bulky, but well worth having. It’s also so attractive a lot of players are going to have this, and its payout increases handsomely as it increases. Everyone wins with Mountain Halls.

Verdict: Get It, Upgrade It

Prosperity Towers: I’m currently in the Wood Elves chapter, and one of my Level 22 Workshop at 4×5 produces 5,000 in Supplies in 3 hours. At Level 1 Prosperity Towers which is 5×4 (making it tricky but not impossible to place near my Workshops) it produces 7500 Supplies every 3 hours. It also gives you a small extension to your Power of Provision spell. Rune Shards (at least for me) are hard to come. But before you dismiss this as a glorified Workshop, consider that advantage of NOT HAVING TO REARRANGE YOUR ENTIRE CITY LAYOUT EVERY TIME A SETTLEMENT WORKSHOP UPGRADE COMPLETELY CHANGES THEIR DIMENSIONS.

Verdict: Ahem…A Decent (Mostly) Headache Free Wonder

Blooming Trader Guild: The first Wonder with a 3rd benefit. One gives you better deals with the Wholesaler aka The Thing You Barely Used In the First Place Before They Messed With It. The other deals with knocking down the Trading Fee for dealing outside your territory. Both are fairly underwhelming for such a bulky Wonder, especially if you’re in a Fellowship where you don’t need to resort to extreme measures to trade. The one thing that makes this worth getting, though? 5% bonus to Portal Production at Level 1. If you’ve been through or at in the Orc chapter, you’re going to want to find space for this one.

Verdict: Balm for the Less Than Patient

Heroes Forge/Shrine of the Shrewdly Shrooms: It’s not a good sign I’m pairing these together. The Heroes Forge at Level 1 gives you 300 Orcs a day, or 1/4 of a level 23 Armory you’ve already upgraded prior to getting this with a bonus to Heavy Melee unit damage. As space becomes more and more of a premium, the more you’re going to want to pass on these. With the Shrine of the Shrewdly Shrooms, it’s a slightly smaller version of the Dwarven Bulwark and about as useful.

Verdict: Pass.

Enar’s Embassy: 20k Mana reward per scout? Yes please. Free Broken Rune a week? Don’t mind if I do. All of this at level 1?

Verdict: Are You Salivating Too?

Flying Academy: The Sorcerers and Dragons chapter just came out and I’m already at a complete loss on how to fit everything that’s getting bigger with only one vertical strip of unlockable territory to make it happen. So no, I don’t think I’ll be completing the trifecta of free army units I’m already not using.

Verdict: Who Are You Kidding, Devs?

Maze of the Dark Matter: If you haven’t gotten to Wood Elves yet, here’s the rundown: you get new Culture buildings that require roads and they produce Mana. Mana is used for upgrades and making Settlement Goods and is going to be used in the Sorcerer/Dragons chapter. Also, at 3pm CST 10% of your mana store “decays” aka is deducted from what you have stored. It’s a bigger deal if you have 100k Mana stored up than if you had 100, obviously. But all in all, it’s not that big a deal because when it comes to mana either you’re using it up to make Goods and the decay is negligible, or you’re stockpiling and biding your time. Still, this building produces mana every 3 hours and reduces the percentage of decay which makes it a useful Wonder.

Verdict: No Idea If You’ll Have Room for This

Dragon Abbey: The last Wonder to date, so it’s fitting it’s a Mixed Blessing. Pointless bonus to Mage unit damage coupled with 1500 Mana per Spell cast. Mana’s pretty plentiful as is so I don’t get the feeling this that big a whup.

Verdict: Go With The Maze if You Must

That’s my take to date. Do keep in mind I’ve only gotten to the Dwarf Wonders by now so everything after that is pure speculation. Happy Wondering!