44 replies to this topic

[mountbara]

Just because I have not seen much in the way of game guides, I thought i would post this. The top players all know this stuff, most;y gained through trial and error or top player game info sharing. I'll try to post once a week, allowing time for people to discuss each individual post, add their own nuances, or completely debunk whatever I have posted

 

 

[mountbara]

#1 Your best friend in early levels -  Mission successes. There are so many low level successes that can be gained and with a little bit of fore knowledge, harvested. An example of this is saving a 5 note item to be used in the sewing machine. There are success missions for using this up to 100 times. Since the cost of using the sewing machine is equal to the cost of the item to be changed, saving a 5 note item saves notes better used for skill points. Other examples are refreshing the shop fully gearing your character, buying an epic item from the shop. There are dozens of these low level very fast successes than can be done in a day or two.

 

Your next best friend is films. Films serve several purposes, they get you fans, which are needed to complete parties, which give tons of items, items than can be used to upgrade your gear, sold for notes, or saved for the item selling temple. Films can also give diamonds, items or skill points. Each of these are important, with (in my opinion) skill points being number 1 on the list. Refreshing your films until you get skill points is almost imperative for upper level players, there is no easier way to gain them on a daily basis. More skill points means your character is stronger. Base skill points not only stay with you as you change gear, but are augmented by studio and individual boosters. 

 

Finally, your last best friend is duels. Duels give notes and on occasion, items and diamonds. Free, without experience. So many people zoom up levels which is fun, but if you are not gaining the notes, items and skill points to match your level, you will get killed in duels and probably lose interest in the game.  Duels are a way to gain these things without leveling. And of course, there are successes for dueling which are fairly easy to achieve, such as wins in a row, 100 in a day etc. Duel early, duel often Also, there is no shame in dueling people well below your level to avoid gaining glory which moves you up the ranking list. If you are trying for wins, why take a chance dueling someone you might lose to?

[CaptC]

I think what you call Mission Successes, I call achievements. They are awesome throughout the game, not just early on. Extra energy rewards should be stashed - IE, don't turn them in until you need the extra energy, usually for a temple that rewards activity. Skills are very valuable early, true.  But skills get super expensive late, so free skills are huge. A five skill achievement is worth over 2M notes to me at the moment.

 

Particularly fun is opening up a new high level area like Beverly Humps, with all those yummy new 5 mission achievements that reward skills!

 

I would also add that mission selection is very important. Early on, I suggest picking missions that have high experience rewards. The idea is to explosively grow to catch up in levels to your studio mates, but also to get you out of the relatively low paying low level missions as fast as possible. But as you note in the duels section, Mountbara, experience based players are thin, without muscles to fight effectively. At some point in time, you need to stop gaining levels, and gain skills. I recommend players switch mission selection at levels 125 to 150. Start selecting missions based upon big notes rewards, and concentrate on buying skills.

 

There is nothing hard and fast about when to switch to notes based missions, though. You want to go experience based until level 300, and then start building skills? Go for it! Success at such a strategy depends upon your tolerance for being a wimp in dueling, and to your studio's tolerance to you being a liability in studio fights. If you start getting frustrated with being beaten in duels by players of much lower level than you... time to switch to notes based missions.

[mountbara]

I think what you call Mission Successes, I call achievements. They are awesome throughout the game, not just early on. Extra energy rewards should be stashed - IE, don't turn them in until you need the extra energy, usually for a temple that rewards activity. Skills are very valuable early, true.  But skills get super expensive late, so free skills are huge. A five skill achievement is worth over 2M notes to me at the moment.

 

Particularly fun is opening up a new high level area like Beverly Humps, with all those yummy new 5 mission achievements that reward skills!

 

I would also add that mission selection is very important. Early on, I suggest picking missions that have high experience rewards. The idea is to explosively grow to catch up in levels to your studio mates, but also to get you out of the relatively low paying low level missions as fast as possible. But as you note in the duels section, Mountbara, experience based players are thin, without muscles to fight effectively. At some point in time, you need to stop gaining levels, and gain skills. I recommend players switch mission selection at levels 125 to 150. Start selecting missions based upon big notes rewards, and concentrate on buying skills.

 

There is nothing hard and fast about when to switch to notes based missions, though. You want to go experience based until level 300, and then start building skills? Go for it! Success at such a strategy depends upon your tolerance for being a wimp in dueling, and to your studio's tolerance to you being a liability in studio fights. If you start getting frustrated with being beaten in duels by players of much lower level than you... time to switch to notes based missions.

Yes saving energy rewards until they are needed, something I do and forget to add to my notes. Thank you for the reminder  

[mountbara]

#2 What exactly are base skill points versus your total skill points? Base skill points are the skill points you have received from the game in things like missions, films, purchasing with notes. You  retain these no matter what (if any) gear you have on, whether you are in a studio or not or whether you have a booster. Your overall skill points are what is shown when you look at a profile. This includes all bonuses from studio, boosters and items worn. I will use my character's numbers as an example.

 

Strength    Base - 3295   total -  9116

Stamina    Base - 3376   total -  9652

Charisma  Base - 3486   total - 10557

Finesse     Base - 3422   total - 10984

 

It is in your best interest to increase your base skill points as much as possible, however, unless you have bonuses you will be at an extreme disadvantage. A fully augmented studio in the "facilities" gets a 50% bonus on their base stats. So if your base stat in strength is 3295, it would increase by 1648 to 4943. The 50% skill booster gives another 1648 bringing it to 6591. The glitter powder enhancement "epic" gives another 5% for another 165 points to 6756 and the items I am wearing give another 2360 points to 9116. It's best to be in a studio with a fully upgraded facilities for your best stats increase, as well as spending the 99 diamonds every week and making sure you have glitter powder for the full amount of points you can get. The items you can get from the shop, missions, duels, purchase from wanda's secret store, slot machine, etc etc increase in point potential as your level increases. So the higher level you have, the more point potential from items you have.

 

Your points versus your opponents points determine the percentages the rng (random number generator) use for things likes critical hits and dodging.

Edited by mountbara, 04 November 2017 - 03:40 AM.

[mountbara]

#3 What is a studio, why should you join one? A studio is a group of people joined together with the goal of becoming stronger players. There are many advantages of joining a studio. The studio has 5 boosters that they can use, 3 of which are upgrades to the studio, 2 of which can be purchased. Motivation - which boosts notes gained from missions and work. Popularity -  which boosts experience in missions.  Facilities -  which boosts your basic skills ( read post # 2 to see what basic skills are). These are part of the studio and once upgraded, never diminish. The other 2 boosters are mission time reducer, which reduces the time of your missions by 10% and duel reward increaser, which grants 10% more rewards from duels. Studios which are fully upgraded, meaning the first three boosts are at 100%, are the studios you want to join, Normally, these are studios near the top of the ranking list and usually have a waiting list of people wishing to join. Studios can have no more than 30 people in them at a time. Studios are run by a boss, with a second layer of people in charge called producers. Bosses can kick anyone from a studio and promote or demote anyone. They can also control how the studio looks, change the name of the studio, purchase cakes or doubles (used in studio battles). Producers can do anything the boss can do except promote to boss or producer. 

 

Now, why should you join a studio? Each week, the BBE has a studio competition called "temple of unfulfilled desires" for which they earn studio diamonds (diamonds the studio can use for various upgrades and purchases, such as the boosters mentioned above)  xp and skill points for the members. Winning the temple can gain each member up to 10000 xp and 36 skill points. Also, studio members work as a group, doing things such as not dueling other studio members ( allowing you to keep glory), voting for studio members films in the big bang awards and of course, the temple.  

    So by joining a studio, you gain access to the temple (free sp), boosters to help your play, and a group of supportive, like minded individuals. 

[RosyCheekz]

There are other benefits to joining a studio. You can pick up a lot of good tips from more experienced players, which will make you a stronger player. And there are a number of studio successes, which give you rewards as well.

 

While a 100% upgraded studio is ideal, they often have minimum level requirements and usually are full. Lower level players can benefit from joining a lesser studio in the interim (blatant plug?). Just joining a studio gives you a success, no matter how low-level it is. And most smaller studios are not going to hold it against you if you get recruited by one of the big guys. After all, you gotta do what's best for you. 

                                            Rosy

[CaptC]

There is nothing more fun than taking a newly minted studio up the challenge board. Just beware, this is a long term time investment, and it takes roughly $500 of diamonds to turn a new studio into 100% upgraded.

[GingerSnaps]

And I'm just beginning that journey with my new studio on NU1. Now, if I can just find me a core of regular players to build it around...

 

Probably should put a post on the classifieds...

[mountbara]

In post #1 we covered three ways to gain early advantages in the game, let's look at films more closely.

 

You can get 9 skill points for a single film, each film has 3 stars to reach. The first star can give you 2 SP, 1 diamond or common gear, the second star can give you 3 Sp, 2 diamonds or rare gear, the third star can give you 4 SP, 3 diamonds or epic gear. The start menu for the films will show you on a mouse-over what the film gives. Each film is different ranging in time from 30 minutes to 3 hours.

 

The three missions for films are "task" "fighting" and "skill", each in 3 different levels from easy to medium and hard. Task gives the smallest amount of xp fighting the next and skill the most. You'll find that doing just tasks will not allow you to finish a film in the required amount of time, so make sure you watch your time and energy closely and adjust which ones you need to do to finish on time and avoid a note spending to continue. The longer a film, the more fans you get. You need fans to be able to complete party missions without spending diamonds to move to higher levels of the party, so doing films is something you should be doing as often as possible.

 

******IMPORTANT****** when you select a mission, the clock resets to 0, so you lose whatever seconds you had ticked down. Make sure you click immediately after it turns over to zero to avoid losing time. If you are doing mostly task missions, you'll find every second is important.

 

How to maximize your sp and time from doing films: You may refresh films at a cost of 9 diamonds to get three new choices. Do this if your choices do not have a film that gives you sp. Nine sp films are rare and probably not worth the cost of refreshing until you get one, but multi sp films happen about every 7 refreshes or so and is recommended for those people willing to buy diamonds. Also, to speed up your films, you may buy 15 energy boosts for 5 diamonds each, really good for making 3 hour films last minutes instead. Finally, instead of waiting an hour between films, there is a 19 diamond "skip" option which allows you to do the next film instantly. For those people who can not spend a lot of time playing, this is highly recommended.

Edited by CaptC, 18 November 2017 - 12:44 PM.
Edit requested by poster

[GingerSnaps]

Thanks for the clarification!

[mountbara]

Today we will discuss a few small tips I have found useful: Save an item, the lowest cost you can get. If you are a beginner, the cost would be 5 notes. The longer in the game you wait to save it, the higher the cost will be. The sewing machine has mission achievements which can gain you skill points, items, or diamonds. The cost of using the sewing machine is the same cost as the items sell price, so if you have a 5 note item, it costs you 5 notes. If you have a 35000 note item, it costs you 35000 notes. This will save you tons of notes as you go along in the game. This also shows up as a dickstarter task, so even after you complete the sewing machine achievements, it is worth holding on to the item. It can also be used for your daily washing machine use (assuming you don't need it for equipping items) and your daily refinement (same thing.) so holding onto one as-cheap-as-you-can-get-it item is very useful.

 

Use the washing machine and refiner daily as well as refreshing the shop selection. There are mission achievements for all of these and of course, the item you stored for the sewing machine can be used for this.

 

Battery achievements : Add every single person in the top 50 players  to your friends list. Often times, these players will add you to theirs if they see you requesting batteries from them. Top players know that active players will request batteries and send them so it's always a good idea to add. This helps in the ever increasing numbers of batteries you have to send for the achievements.

 

Dueling for achievements and items/diamonds: It is not necessary to duel people near your level to get items or diamonds. You will always get notes (notes vary based on the level differences between you and your opponent) but items or diamonds are randomly given as long as you get at least 1 point of glory in the duel. If you are not wishing to move up the glory rankings, and there can be many reasons for this, find the lowest ranked person you can attack and still get 1 sp. Mark this number down somewhere for future usage and do all of your attacks in this range. Not only will you still get items and/or diamonds, you no longer need to use missiles in your attacks, saving missile costs, and the person you are attacking loses no glory, as the amount of glory you gain is more than the amount of glory an opponent loses in duels. This is a win/win  for both people. You get to pile up your duels and wins totals ( both achievements which go ever higher, currently working on the 20000 myself) and the people you are attacking lose nothing, while you gain items and diamonds and a few notes.

[CaptC]

Glory is not why I duel, but that doesn't mean I actively want to avoid it. There are achievements for gaining specific amounts of glory, too.

 

I also bet you a dollar most people do not take it as a gesture of kindness, if you are murdering them daily, even if they are losing nothing.

[GingerSnaps]

I also bet you a dollar most people do not take it as a gesture of kindness, if you are murdering them daily, even if they are losing nothing.

 

Those that don't understand the workings of duels & glory won't. All they'll see is someone picking on them and think they're being bullied.

[CaptC]

Look, I get it. I know it's a brutal board mechanic, where the strong are rewarded for mercilessly killing the weaker. I understand that people try to soften the social effects. I just question whether attacking for no glory is really the right way.

 

Given that you are necessarily beating up on relative newcomers if you are getting no glory, I think it likely you will be hitting people who do NOT understand the workings of glory and duels. Some will ask you about it, and you can explain, I suppose.

 

The rest will just think you are a bully, and from my point of view, they might be right. You are, after all, demonstrating your superiority for no direct gain, so you can avoid "offending" someone who is higher up the glory board. Your victim might even justifiably consider you a coward, afraid to take a chance at losing to better opponents.

 

No matter what method you use, someone is going to ask, and you are going to have to explain. I prefer to just play the game, you know? If you show up on my duel screen and I think I can beat you -- I just take the duel. If that offends you, for any of a variety of reasons, that's on you. 

 

But I'm a person too, and if someone asks me the favor of not dueling them, I will find another target. (Note: Demanding that I leave you alone, with or without explicit threats, is not asking for a favor.)

[mountbara]

Look, I get it. I know it's a brutal board mechanic, where the strong are rewarded for mercilessly killing the weaker. I understand that people try to soften the social effects. I just question whether attacking for no glory is really the right way.

 

Given that you are necessarily beating up on relative newcomers if you are getting no glory, I think it likely you will be hitting people who do NOT understand the workings of glory and duels. Some will ask you about it, and you can explain, I suppose.

 

The rest will just think you are a bully, and from my point of view, they might be right. You are, after all, demonstrating your superiority for no direct gain, so you can avoid "offending" someone who is higher up the glory board. Your victim might even justifiably consider you a coward, afraid to take a chance at losing to better opponents.

 

No matter what method you use, someone is going to ask, and you are going to have to explain. I prefer to just play the game, you know? If you show up on my duel screen and I think I can beat you -- I just take the duel. If that offends you, for any of a variety of reasons, that's on you. 

 

But I'm a person too, and if someone asks me the favor of not dueling them, I will find another target. (Note: Demanding that I leave you alone, with or without explicit threats, is not asking for a favor.)

if you use the method I suggested, it's best to pick "dead" players, ones who's accounts are dormant. That is, if you wish to avoid looking like a "bully". After getting thumped over and over again as a lower level, and vowing I would get to the point no one could do that to me again (still not quite there, but close), I no longer care about wins and losses other than how it affects my glory ranking. You will either play the game, or quit in frustration. But this is the case in every game and part of why I put this topic up here. To allow those who want to grow stronger a chance to learn and perhaps find that just because you are getting dueled often, does not mean people are bullying you. It took me several months to figure out, it's all part of the game.

[mountbara]

and to be honest, I no longer use this method. Once I got to the point where I could beat all but the very top levels, I start on the rankings list where I can beat them, and work my way down until my playing time is over for the day. This method was meant for those who are starting out to mid level players.

[Socrates]

Thank you for this very informative post.  It really helps those of us starting out.