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Thursday, May 29, 2008

A New Beginning

When SAGA first launched, players opening a new account received a good number of common troops, two spells and 3 boosters. We felt since SAGA was a new concept to many, we should get players used to opening and using boosters to augment their army.

From feedback we have learned that opening three boosters while entertaining was also frustrating if you did not receive a few key units that are needed for basic army design. Those being one meat shield to use as a tank to soak damage, one AOE type spell, and one piece of siege gear to beat missions with a lot of fortifications.

We decided that players would have a better experience if we added a Behemoth to tank a covered ram to take out buildings and a fireball for large glowy effects in addition to a little burn. We moved the boosters to be awarded after the account was purchased because they gain real value when players can trade the troops they don't need using the market for ones that better fit their chosen nation.

In total players now receive more troops than before if they register an account and a better experience during the free trial portion.

I am going to restart this blog playing a magic nation with a new account and see if I can get any further with the new units.

Monday, April 14, 2008

I make myself Jealous

There are so many options that open up for building your army when you gain access to the market.

I play a paid account in addition to this free one and spend real money to buy packs so I don’t have every single unit I want yet. To date I have spent $28.80 about the price of a lower priced gamed. I play all quests duo with a friend of mine who spent exactly the same amount.

We recently got to level 10 and started doing arena and heroic quests gaining us some amount of gold. With this gold we have been able to purchase a Juggernaut, a Covered Ram, a Catapult, maybe a couple other units, not to mention the ones we could not afford such as Stone Golems, and a Hellhound rider’s that was up this morning.

I can’t wait to register this light nation, maybe I’ll play to level 15 in free mode just to show it can be done.

Finished all level 8 Quests (Almost)

Total Play Time 6 hours 2 minutes

Finished 6 out of 7 level 8 quests

The level 8 quest “Temple of the Night” contains a Temple, Protected by five Keeps, and 7 towers, with some incredibly tough temple caretakers. I can take out the caretakers with some difficulty but my archers simply do not have the range to shoot down a Keep. I will certainly return to this quest at a later time when I have higher level troops.

I’ve decided that instead of Human Swordmaidens, I should be investing in Human Heavy Cavalry, because they are a great shock troop against the many range units I am encountering but mainly because of their high DR especially against missiles. They will be my answer to taking over Keeps and Strongholds once I have a full unit.

Status
Nation level 9
Peasants: 82
Farms: 8
Houses: 13
Lumber Mills: 3
Stone Quarey 2
Gold Mines 2
Units
25 Human Archers: level 5
12 Human Light Cavalry: level 3
21 Human Pikemen: level 2
25 Human Spearmen: level 4
25 Human Light Infantry: level 2
4 Human Swordmaidens: level 1
Fireball: level 1
Rally: level 1
Heal: level 1
Bless: level 1
Holy Light: level 1

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

FInished all level 7 Quests

Total Play Time 5 Hours 14 minutes

Finished all level 7 quests (5 of them)

I was advancing easily through the level 7 content when I came across the "Canyon River Gauntlet" quest. Prior to trying this quest I had never failed to beat one on my first try, but after getting completely destroyed three times and loosing most of my God Favor in resurrecting my troops I decided that it was just too difficult at my current level.

After finished the other four level 7 quests, I sat there staring at the coin for "Canyon River Gauntlet" at a loss. I knew I was not yet powerful enough to overcome this challenge, yet I was unwilling to continue without first finishing all content at this level.

I decided to go back and locate a quest that would help my troops gain a level or two while giving me the resources I needed to continue expanding my city. I found "Lumber Raid" to be just such a quest. Even on gold, I was able to beat the quest by putting out one melee troop and one ranged, then retreating the damaged melee troop after the first encounter and putting out a random second troop to finish the quest. In this way I was able to gain experience for multiple units while gaining god favor due to very low losses. Since I was questing on gold level, the armor drops were also superior.

After running "Lumber Raid" 5 times on gold level, gaining 2 precious peasants, over 200 wood and a smaller amount of other resources each run, I went back to "Canyon River Gauntlet" and was able to overcome it first try.

Status
Nation level 9
Peasants: 63
Farms: 7
Houses: 12
Lumber Mills: 3
Stone Quarey 2
Units
25 Human Archers: level 4
12 Human Light Cavalry: level 3
21 Human Pikemen: level 2
25 Human Spearmen: level 4
25 Human Light Infantry: level 2
4 Human Swordmaidens: level 1
Fireball: level 1
Rally: level 1
Heal: level 1
Bless: level 1
Holy Light: level 1

Monday, April 7, 2008

FInished all level 6 Quests

Total Play TIme 4 Hours 7 Minutes

Finshed all level 6 quests (3 of them)

I really enjoyed the "Dispense with the Peasantries" quest. Not only was it challenging but after I disposed of the boss unit, I had a city to pillage waiting defenselessly for me. I was able to walk away with enough wood, stone and gold to house the rest of my peasants making them happy and bringing my peasant immigration rate up to +4.

I have not been able to gain much in the way of items or gold to buy more units, but I am steadily building up my nations income. As soon as I finish placing all my structures, leaving enough room for a University and 4 Store houses I will do the next territory quest. I suspect I'll need help.

Status
Nation level 8
Peasants: 44
Farms: 6
Houses: 8
Lumber Mills: 2
Units
25 Human Archers: level 4
12 Human Light Cavalry: level 3
21 Human Pikemen: level 1
25 Human Spearmen: level 3
25 Human Light Infantry: level 2
4 Human Swordmaidens: level 1
Fireball: level 1
Rally: level 1
Heal: level 1
Bless: level 1
Holy Light: level 1

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Dark Elf Rebels

Wow that was a difficult quest for my nation.

Not only did the dark elves charge me with units that were more powerful than my own but then I was told to destroy or capture a keep surrounded by towers without being given any siege units.

I was able to take the brunt of the punishment with my Light Infantry and then deploy my spearmen in their place to finish the remainder of the battle.

The archers actually have plenty of range and take out a tower in a reasonable amount of time. Then aided by a heal spell and a bless to raise the armor of my Light Cavalry I was able to capture the keep.

At this point you would think the quest would be over, except you are then faced with a Boss unit that not only does a huge amount of damage but casts spells at each of my units.

Since I was in control of the keep I killed him by letting him kill one of my units, then waiting 25 seconds, just before I would lose the quest for not having a unit on the board and deploying a new unit for him to kill. After doing this 3 times, the keep had killed the Boss leaving the rest of the city for me to plunder, for some much needed peasants.

FInished all level 5 Quests

Total Play TIme 3 Hours 42 Minutes

Finshed all level 5 quests (10 of them)

I've decided that buying one troop at a time is not the most eficient way to build up my army since until a unit is of a certain size it isn't very useful anyway. So instead I am going to start building up my nation so that my gold can work for me while I am leveling. I figure wood is most important at this stage since I can easily get gold from quests, so I will build the Lumber Mills first.

While questing I notice that some troops level faster than others and I need to decide if I should try to spread the XP, especially to units that do the tanking, or let the DPS units level quickly so that my tanking units dont need to survive for as long before the enemy is killed. I think I'll just enjoy the game and not worry about that.

The only thing I am doing to optimize my leveling is taking shorter quest lines first, under the assumptions that the quests with more steps get harder and will need my leveled up units.

Status
Nation level 7
Peasants: 41
Farms: 5
Houses: 4
Lumber Mills: 2
Units
25 Human Archers: level 4
12 Human Light Cavalry: level 2
21 Human Pikemen: level 1
25 Human Spearmen: level 3
25 Human Light Infantry: level 1
4 Human Swordmaidens: level 1
Fireball: level 1
Rally: level 1
Heal: level 1
Bless: level 1
Holy Light: level 1

About Me

I am the Marketing Director for Silverlode Interactive. You may find me trolling the forums at www.playsaga.com