In game priorities and time management.

[Muzzleloader]

Musical group.

[Nifelheim]

Yeah it has certainly been a drain on resources... I did just awaken the Warrior lol for the final time and I’m 10.65 Million worse off for it, but that should keep me going for a while...

If we had all refused to cough up that much sot per round I guess they would have changed it but not everyone’s on the forums....

On a side note Amathir are you able to explain the clan name Jomsvikings here or is it personel?

Jomsvikings were viking mercenaries from around the years 1000-1100. also an album title from some band called amon amarth... nothing special compared to Sydney's finest Sad-ex!

[rags-6094]

Sydney has no night life anymore all nightclubs and pubs have a curfew type arrangement due to too many punch drunk killings..
I hear whispers that may change soon so where has this SYDNEY band been playing?

[pepe-8610]

I feel that the new requirements for toons and dungeons are insane. I mean, all MAX AWAKENED Lord of Lights and Lucifer for one toon is just going too far, for me at least

[Amarthir]

Yeah it has certainly been a drain on resources... I did just awaken the Warrior lol for the final time and I’m 10.65 Million worse off for it, but that should keep me going for a while...

If we had all refused to cough up that much sot per round I guess they would have changed it but not everyone’s on the forums....

On a side note Amathir are you able to explain the clan name Jomsvikings here or is it personel?

I'm a fan of Amon Amarth and one of my favorite albums is called Jomsvikings.

The Jomsvikings themselves were an order of Viking mercenaries or brigands of the 10th century and 11th century. They were staunchly Pagan and dedicated to the worship of such deities as Odin and Thor. They reputedly would fight for any lord able to pay their substantial fees and occasionally fought alongside Christian rulers. Although they were Pagan, the institutions of the Jomsvikings in some ways anticipated those of the Christian Knightly Orders of the later Middle Ages.

They were pretty picky about who they let in, Once admitted, the Jomsvikings required adherence to a strict code of conduct in order to instill a sense of military discipline among its members. Any violation of these rules could be punished with immediate expulsion from the order. Each Jomsviking was bound to defend his brothers, as well as to avenge their deaths if necessary. He was forbidden to speak ill of his fellows or to quarrel with them. Blood feuds between members were to be mediated by Jomsviking officers. Jomsvikings were forbidden to show fear or to flee in the face of an enemy of equal or inferior strength, though orderly retreat in the face of vastly outnumbering forces appears to have been acceptable. All spoils of battle were to be equally distributed among the entire brotherhood. No Jomsviking was permitted to be absent from Jomsborg for more than three days without the permission of the brotherhood.

I just think it sounds neat lol

[Amarthir]

Sydney has no night life anymore all nightclubs and pubs have a curfew type arrangement due to too many punch drunk killings..
I hear whispers that may change soon so where has this SYDNEY band been playing?

Also I didn't read the answers from other folks before I copy-pasted their Wikipedia page lmao

[Esquatcho]

The key for me was realizing I can’t chase everything anymore in this game. Even if I was a big $$$ spender I think trying to chase everything would be a chore. I’ve learned to pick and choose the goals I find important and focus on those.

This. Ive gone down the path of savings, skipping some chars, so that I can be sure to get one when I NEED to. I decided to do that after having a crack at a few events in a row and getting nix after burning maybe half the ironite to get there. The risk on event souls is just too much. So yeah, gotta keep the ironite up high enough that if you go for it, you can be 100% sure of getting what you want/need.

The hardest part is working out what your need. I probably should have gone hard at dark lillith, but instead went for Lucifer.

But yeah, like I have said before, I think you just erally have to put to the side the idea of having everything and instead be more focused.... And more importantly, play what you enjoy! If you enjoy being top 100 in arena, good on ya, and who gives a stuff about the other grinding

[Natasmai]

Amon Amarth! Jomsviking is a killer album. Johan Hegg is awesome...

Also, everyone should check out GimmeRadio.com (also an app for android and Apple).

Extreme metal radio, all day every day.

[Azagthor]

I agree that SOT costs are ridiculous.. as I posted before NO DUNGEON anywhere should cost more than 10SOT to run.. that's 12 runs via natural SOT.

The fact that the "daily" dungeon basically eats ALL your SOT in 10 minutes.. is laughable.. that should be a 2 SOT per run dungeon... and why I've collected nearly 100 daily keys.

The SoT costs of higher level stuff really surprised me. Makes it very hard to run all your troopers each day if you're doing any dungeons or even BNW/LoL stuff unless you're buying refills. The daily dungeon, what feels like it should be a reward, costing so much SoT, is just plain strange. Nice when it pays for itself, but that should really be the default.

[Blade]

A great post you opened there! I was also thinking about my playing style and if I should or could change something, as I see myself falling behind recently. But to be honest, I don't see that many options (apart of spending money of course, but I stopped that). My list of missing characters used to be pretty short, but the game changed and now my list is so long that I cannot even do the colour coding anymore, as the sig is getting too long. I think I already found very effective ways to save ironite and to play as effective as possible, but this is all consumed easily by the heavy SoT demands in the new game features, mainly dungeons. It all started a while ago.

The change started (in my pov) with the release of the passive Eddies. Only Wickerman was easy to get and Samurai showed up a second time. The next step was to introduce the pay-only-characters starting with the wolf but spreading to Eddies quickly.

The next big change was the introduction of the permanent dungeons instead (or in addition) to the event dungeons. I really do not like that feature for several reasons and all the consequences that are connected to it. Yes, some long-term goals are really nice to have, but the needed amount of time and SoT is out of any line! From this perspective, the mega-event was great in terms of creating a huge fear of missing out that will push players into spending cash for event souls in the future, as noone wants to grind a year to get an old event character.

I did the grind for Malakhov, as he dominated the pvp meta, but much later than many other players. Now he seems not to be that important anymore. I did the grind for Beast Ed, but more for the reaper talis. Maybe I should have saved that ironite, but did we expect the LoL dungeons to come? Plus raven, maya, airstrip and so on? I didn't. And so far I skipped raven, maya and airstrip.

The introduction of the LoL dungeons was the next big thing and quite a killer for me. The mega-event was nice and most players should have gotten at least one LoL (like me) plus some cool talis sets. But I did not really get the consequence of having (or better not having) the LoLs, Dark Lilith and Lucifer. Now I have such an ultra long way in front of me, that does not really help my motivation. Getting Lucifer may take like a year for me I'd guess and long before that, Lucifer is (hopefully) replaced by the next overpowered character.
But where should this lead to? I don't really know when the limit is reached in terms of ultra powerful characters and skills? Personally, KP was somewhat the limit for me already with his skill to just remove buffs and apply curse and permadeath every turn. That was already too much in my perspective, as it just nullifies the majority of all other skills and talis sets that apply buffs. We have seen now that there can be even more powerful skills and talis, but still there is some sort of limit. Will we see a skill that just deletes a character from your enemies account? A lot was released around reducing damage, now we see tallis that just avoid damage completely up to 2 rounds. Will the next ones extend that to 5 rounds? It is clear that this would be complete bullshit and the danger is real that by the constant "need" to develop (and sell) characters and talis that are more powerful than what we had before, things will become even more senseless and ridiculous (if we cannot say this about several aspects already today).

So what to do? What are the options?
1) invest (a lot of) money
2) accept to fall behind
3) skip events and dungeons (which also means you may fall behind)
4) improve resource management in order to get ironite and spend it very wisely and only if it's absolute worth it

Honestly I don't see another option (apart from just having luck with the free event souls), but feel free to correct me. Improving resource management can help a bit, but as I said before, this is all taken up quickly that you won't notice a bit of saved ironite here and there. As long as characters, dungeons and talis are released in the recent pacing, there is no way to keep up with everything, especially as the devs can react to what we players do. Example: gold price to summon souls was increased, we players were shocked. New ways to get gold were given and players learnt how to deal with the gold issue, so many players found a way to stockpile gold again. What is the response of the devs? Release cosmics that cost a lot to evolve, release awakening that costs a lot and smash out a spending event "forcing" us to spend >300 M gold! And surprise surprise, you can buy gold for cash with some new "best value" offers.

To me it is very clear that with the change from NF to Navigator, the perspective has changed clearly to generating more income. And using Maiden's tour over the last 2 years to get more players into the game - which is nice (as long as the servers could handle it ). Probably it was the right step for the game (and the company), as our relatively small group of longterm players has a different playing and spending behaviour than the new guys that want to catch up with characters, relics, talis and awakening (while the latter is more oriented to us longterm players as we have e.g. the evo stones stockpiled. This was also the reason why so many other new resources were released).

Probably mobile games are just not meant for longterm players, especially nowadays with this infinite offer of games that show up every day. Problem is: Maiden fans have already proven to have a longterm interest in something. I guess most mobile games like to have a rush of new players that buy to be competitive, play for a while, lose interest and leave the game (and server) for the next "generation" to start the cycle again. In that regard: honest congratulations to evolve the game in a way to stay interesting for old players but also getting a lot of new players into addiction! Still I can't get rid of the feeling that the past years were mainly meant to generate addiction and use that now and milk the playerbase plus the newcomers.

Back to topic: I will go for a mixture of (2), (3) and (4), so a bit of acceptance to fall behind, skipping some dungeons (e.g. maya, airstrip and raven sofar) and improve my management even more. I was saving up a lot of resources to be able to react to certain events etc. I am disappointed that I did not realise how important dark lilith would have been to get the shortcut to Lucifer. But well, this can happen if you have a life and a second job next to lotb

Sorry for long post, potato