I understand that fortifying helps the attacks, and so I fortify for that reason. But I also hear it increases loot drops. Is this true?
It is added with your attack score for your overall total when determining loot drops. 100,000 from fortify is the same as 50,000 fortify + 50,000 attack or 100,000 attack. If epic drops occur around 500,000 for a monster, just make sure that attack plus fortify is greater than 500,000 even though individually they might be under, say 300,00 attack and 250,0000 fortify.
When I was lower level, I got upset because it looked like some people were doing a lot of damage and not a lot of fortifying. As I’ve gotten stronger, I’ve realized that my damage keeps going up but damage to the ship/wall/city/forcefield stays the same. I always fortify back whatever damage is dealt (plus a little more) but my ratio of attack to fortify is increasing dramatically as my attack increases. The moral of the story: low levels should fortify while higher levels should unleash the fury (as long as they fortify back the damage).
I hadn’t heard that fortifying increases loot drops, but I’m glad someone started that rumor. 
The big thing with fortifying is to keep an eye on the monster’s response to your attack. If it says something like, “your well defended blah blah allowed you to do devastating damage,” then attack like crazy. If it says, “the damage to your ship/town/castle is screwing up your attack” then stop and fortify, or wait until someone stronger does, because you’re pissing your stamina away and it’s going to start taking many times more attacks to do the same damage. I’ve gone into Epic Team battles and done nothing but 300K defense and my loot drops are fine. It also makes you popular and you’ll notice big-hitters stopping in your battles and helping you. Believe me, make friends with 300-500 level power hitters and let them see you fortifying, because they’ll help you out later. I also do CTA’s on their battles. They notice things like that, and can afford to drop one million damage (or defense) on your battle some time when you need it. It’s nothing to them.
Change generals when you fortify. Never, ever fortify or fight a fortification battle with Vanquish. She drops your defense by 25, which is a nightmare. Use Celesta or if you were able to buy them, someone like Lailah or Dexter with increased defense. It makes a huge difference in how much your fortifying actually does, and their regular stamina attacks prevent A LOT of the monster’s counter-attack damage. With Vanquish, you’ll do 200K damage and take 250K damage. Why bother? With someone like Lailah, you do 200K damage and take only 100K damage. Big difference.
In other news, I was going to blow off the Underworld quests for later, but now you can create a general out of it, plus the ridiculous money and experience you get from the quests, so I guess I’m doing Underworld now.
Did anyone get to take advantage of the Raid glitch yesterday? I didn’t, but for a couple hours or so every time someone clicked in a Raid it instantly killed the Raid giving out 25,000 to over 100,000 battle hearts. Lots of people created Chase yesterday, not to mention the other stuff you make with battle hearts.
No, I even participated in Raids. Just not at the right time apparently.
They just released the details on the Arena. It looks like a beefed up Battle page with some cool rewards (Genesis as a unit! He’s too powerful to be a general with 100A & 100D). You have to sign up so nobody is drafted into what I assume will be bloody chaos.
I’m a little weaker than I would need to be to reach the highest levels, but I went ahead and entered for fun. Even if I continually get destroyed, I really won’t be losing that much money. And at the end of April, I at least get something for my willingness to sacrifice myself.
Anybody else joining?
Arena sounds like a PvPer’s wet dream. I’ll probably opt in, but I’m curious how often you get “summoned into battle.” It’s five stamina per battle. Luckily I’ve got plenty of stam, but still.
It’ll be interesting to see how I end up ranking, but I know there isn’t a chance in hell of getting Genesis. Too many odd little PvP builds out there. I’m better off dreaming of a Spartan Phalanx someday.
I’ll opt in if I’m pretty sure it won’t screw up my other daily monster hunting activities. Do I really want to opt in and waste all my stamina feeding other players’ rise up the ranks? Essentially we’re all donating stam so a few hardcore PvPers can have Genesis. It’s a gift to them, on my dime.
I hope it will stop the jerks in PvP that bookmark or excessively chain because they’ll be too focused on Arena. Since it’s opt in, you shouldn’t find people with only a few friends that just want to do quests or hunt monsters. I almost quit Mafia Wars after a couple of months because some guy would not stop attacking me. Eventually he got bored and left me alone, but I was this close to leaving. (holds fingers a half inch apart)
I don’t mind others freeloading off my weaker build to get better gifts. I’m not going to spend a lot of time in there attacking anyways. My character has higher defense than the forums recommend so I should survive longer if I let others attack me. Worst case scenario, I lose a few million dollars and earn 3 stamina potions for my efforts.
Nobody seems to know for sure which kind of players Arena is going to favor. My first thought is that exotic PvP builds are going to walk away with all the good stuff, but you never know. If you’ve got stronger than average defense, I bet you’re going to have attackers bouncing off your wall right and left.
Some PvPers are worried because the Arena might favor those with high stamina (more attacking obviously) and those with high health. I have a feeling players aren’t going to be able to heal themselves while in Arena, until the game auto-heals them. Battle could be a back and forth attack and counter-attack until whoever still has health wins.
I’ve been predicting for awhile the devs would figure out a way to screw people who neglected health. They did the exact same thing with stamina and energy.
I guess we’ll see at noon, PST. You’re in China, aren’t you?
As for those scumbag chain attackers, and especially those chain attackers who hide, it’s open season on them and I for one am planning on slaughtering everyone on my battle feed who has attacked and hid.
As for me, well my BSI is only 2.9, and I just recently went over level 200. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. I’m a quester/hunter with a balanced build. 520 energy, 316 stamina, 305 attack, 280 defense and 142 health. Glad I started praying to Aurora and got her amulet.
On the battle page, I regularly stomp players two levels above me, and a fair share bounce off me while I"m away. I think my defense is higher than a lot of people, but I’m also thinking I’m going to get slaughtered in the Arena where every self-respecting PvP build really ought to be. My personal dueling gear is all best in slot, except for Lotus’ Death Touch Gauntlet, but that’s only two points off my Stone Skin.
For now, I’m planning on spending a lot of stamina right out the gate and see what happens. With luck, maybe I can quickly move into the second or third rank and defend it. If the game auto-selects opponents like it does in Raids, I could do well. My opponents in the Arena are going to be more self-selected though so who knows. I’ll bale on the whole thing if it looks like I"m just donating stamina.
As for Mafia Wars, the ridiculous gifting and searching for collection pieces has worn me out. I’ve got over 100 gifts and requests sitting there waiting and i’ve decided to ignore it all. Zynga is just too crazy with all that crap. Same with VW.
Yes I’m in China. Noon PST is 3am for me. Most of the time it works to my advantage with their updates. I’m one of the first to see announcements and new monsters. Not today. I’ll wake up tomorrow and see if what’s happened or if I’m still alive. (Hopefully if I wake up I’m alive.)
I built my character as a balance between all 3 builds (quest/monster/PvP). My BSI is a 4.37 at level 185 (314en, 197st, 474at, 335de, 176he) . I don’t enjoy PvP but I wanted a stronger build to avoid being pushed around. If I cared, I could massively improve my battle rank which is currently Commander. I might enjoy the Arena though.
I tapered off my energy once it reached over 300 since it takes longer than a day to refill. One advantage to leveling up slower, I get more “free” stat points from the Demi-Power blessings. I’m slowly filling out my remaining quests while focusing more on monsters. Even so, I’m missing the DTG and the newest “best” items from the elemental monsters. Just in time for the Arena, I received the Tempest Storm from Ambrosia a few hours ago.
I occasionally think about slowing down and making myself stronger for the long-term, but I’ve never played a game that long-term. People talk about the gauntlet at level 300 and if I’m still playing long enough to get there maybe I’ll regret it. I guess there’s two ways to prepare for the gauntlet. The first way is to slow way down so you can actually fight with people 400 levels above you when you get there. The other way is just go fast and keep going fast until you’ve got 1000 points on everything just from frequent leveling.
I dunno.
So how was the Arena for you? It was a pretty easy waltz up the ranks. Getting knocked back and fighting my way back up is another matter. I don’t think I’m in it for the 37 days.
I’m doing pretty good. I’m staying in the Hero tier. My losses are minimal when I’m attacking but the other losses can come fast. In the 6 hours when I went to sleep, I received almost no wins but 25 losses. Still, I should hopefully get the awesome sword in the end. A lot of people are quitting this season making it easier to stay near the top and get the good equipment (dropped out people take the bottom %). Next season I’ll drop back to the middle of the pack.
My biggest complaint has to deal with the selection of opponents. Right now I have people at Level 110 or Level 248 with full armies. That’s 70 below or 60 above me. And the worst part is that it doesn’t refresh every few minutes so I’m staring at either people already dead or people I can’t touch for a couple of months.
Yeah, it’s kinda hard to see where you really stand when you’re pitted against either Mike Tyson or an 8 year old girl scout, and either way they’re both dead anyway. Also, the people who are dead in the Arena are actually perfectly well and alive outside the Arena.
I hear today the scripters and botters can now attack anyone they want in the Arena, so getting Genesis has lost some of its luster.
Arena just finished early and I am a Hero. I never broke into that Legend status, but I really did want to either. That said, I love the new equipment.
I just went from having almost all of the best equipment to having the best equipment, bar none (I think). Zarevok’s Meat Cleaver (+3 attack & +3 defense with Zarevok equipped) is a primary hand weapon so it went from Genesis sword in the mid-20’s to a 44. AND the Gladiator’s Strength is magic with a 25 attack. I didn’t have the magic from the Ice Elemental yet, so I don’t know its stats, but I’m sure it’s still a big upgrade.
While I think the arena is broken, I’m glad I entered this time. Before I enter again though, there better be some awesome equipment or changes to the format. It is easily the most frustrating experience in Castle Age (except for the first day of Raid - that was a nightmare).
Anyone else do well?
Yeah, that’s why I stayed up late tonight. To be honest, I got sick of the whole thing three days ago and haven’t played. I was Legend when I quit, and had enough APs to make Hero just now when I checked. I could have gotten the Genesis unit, but the game started to feel like homework so I blew it off. Glad I got the Cleaver, though. I didn’t want to be the only kid on the battle page without one, especially since I just slipped into Lt. General, and the attacks are up a bit.
I hope they don’t have another one for awhile, but if they do I think two weeks was enough. It was a real stamina fest, but I’m glad I never had to use a stam refll. I had a level 1100 farming me for points for awhile. I don’t know if I showed up on her Arena page or she found me on someone else’s Vengeance page, but getting hammered everyday by players 100’s of levels above me wasn’t much of a test of where I stand against my own level group.