SylkeCherub's Getting started tips

SylkeCherub

Just start playing? I bet you have a lot of questions!
This will not answer your every question, but hopefully I’ll give you enough information that you won’t feel so blind and/or uninformed.

First – when you finish reading this post – if you haven’t already, I encourage you to read through the forums. Some of what I’m about to go into has already been touched on by others and it’s a good idea to listen to other points of view. Also, remember that I am just a player like you who decided to write down his experiences with the game. I am not “right”. I am giving advice from my own experience and game playing style. You very well might disagree.

Heroes – The heroes in this game can be acquired by two methods. You may purchase some of them with game coins, which are acquired as rewards for completing dungeon quests and selling your unwanted gear. The rest can only be acquired with gems. Gems are given very sparsely as rewards for completing difficult dungeon quests, leveling your party, and probably a few other things as well. Gems and coins can be bought with real world money in the game store just like many other games. Fair warning – Gems are EXPENSIVE.

Gems – The use of gems is in your face the entire time you play the game. It’s up to you to decide how you will use them when you acquire them. They can be used to buy new heroes, buy skill points for your heroes, speed up training of your heroes, purchase weapons and armor, revive your heroes in battle, purchase mystery chests, and probably more that I am not thinking of from the top of my head.

FREE Gems – That’s right, FREE - or, in some cases, make a purchase and gets gems as a bonus. At the top of the game screen you will see a button for free gems. Tap on it and a pop-up will appear to watch a video for 1 free gem. These videos usually last between 15-30 seconds and advertise other games or services. There is also a button that says “Get More” gems free. Tap on it and you will be taken to a page sponsored by “Tap Joy” that will offer other ways of getting gems for free. Some will give you gems for installing and running other apps. Some will ask you to try their service. And, still others, will ask you to complete a purchase. All of them will award you gems.

SylkeCherub, how do you use your gems? – Funny you should ask. I use my gems for two reasons ONLY. I use them to purchase new heroes. And, I use them for training my heroes. As far as I’m concerned, all other uses are not worth my gems.

Hero Skills – Each hero has a skill tree. Follow this link for a decent description given by Karnage and scape211 on this forum. (http://ggnbb.glu.com/showthread.php?4349-List-of-Skills-for-Premium-Heroes) When you train your heroes, it costs time and money. Both increase as you increase in level.
For each level you will be given 1 free skill point. For 5 gems, you can get 2 skill points. This is probably the single best use for gems in the game. If you are gem poor, choose the hero you think will best utilize the extra skill points.

My Favorite Heroes and Why

1. Fel’mor – If you are only going to buy 1 gem based hero – this is the one you want!

1.1. Provocation – This will agro the entire battlefield – be sure to wait for all mobs to complete their entrance unless you are absolutely desperate.
1.2. Stun Charge – This causes an instant dash to the target dealing 3X his normal damage (which is already noteworthy) AND stuns them for 5 seconds (Stuns DO NOT work on bosses) This usually is a sure death to your target – I save them for poison spitting spiders.
1.3. War Shout – This increases damage and attack speed (and healing btw) by 30% for all heroes for 15 seconds. Spam this, because it’s easy to forget you have it and it makes a considerable difference.
1.4. Vampirism – This gives you up to a 20% lifesteal with every attack. (Fel’mor hits hard, so this is a noteworthy skill)

2. Kassia – This is my second choice to spend gems on. She comes with a high base damage giving her skills (identical to Alia) a feel of being on steroids.

2.1. Deep Freeze – This freezes the enemy for 10 seconds and deals a BIG hit. ( I save these for Darkness mobs)
2.2. Arrow Storm – This rains arrows on the whole screen. I like to call the “Clear Screen” because except for the last levels it destroys everything on the screen
2.3. I maxed out Accuracy and Agility after these, and put my last few points into Rapid Shot

I also purchased Nar’Ghal with whom I’m well pleased. I wanted another tank, and once you use Fel”mor, Tiberius is worthless. The more I use Nar’Ghal, the better I like him, but his base damage is weak, so he doesn’t hold a candle to Fel’more. I think he’s overpriced. He should probably only be 325 gems.

Also purchase worthy is Nixx. Nixx is similar to Thea, but I like her pain field skill called Sorrow. A useful crowd control spell.

SylkeCherub

Game Play (a few tricks to remember)

Attacking mobs (Dodging) – Mobs intelligence and strategy increases as you level. Dodging is important. You can avoid range attacks and melee attacks by moving! Don’t stand still if you have the time to move. If you get far enough away from a melee swing, you can avoid it – this gives your healer and extra tick to heal you to full health before you go stand toe-to-toe again. Likewise, you can move out of the way of incoming ranged attacks.

Kiting – Kiting is the art of capturing agro and making a mob chase you around the battlefield while another hero chips away at their health. This can be done on an EPIC level by using Provocation with Fel’mor and Arrow storm with Kassia – if the battlefield is super dangerous throw down a healing aura with Tlanac. (Tlanac is my healer of choice by the way – I like his Healing and Thorn auras – I wish I would have put more points into his skills from the beginning, but I got the most important skills for my playing style)

Offtanking – Sometimes it’s necessary to Offtank. What this means is to let your main tank take on a heavy hitting mob (often a boss), while you let your damage team (or a second tank) take on other mobs. (Often magic mobs hit very hard, take them down fast while your tank holds the attention of the “big guy”.)

Agro collection –*Remember to pick up agro with your tank BEFORE assigning your damage dealers. You can't do much about it when they automatically engage the enemy, but you will save much misery by hitting a mob once with your tank, and then assigning your damage dealer to that mob. As soon as you hit the mob with your tank, move him to the next mob, and then the next, and so on until he has the Attention of all the mobs on the screen. Assign all of your damage dealers to the biggest threat and move through them. Do not separate the damage dealers to different mobs! If you do, the mobs take longer to eliminate. Mobs swing with the same force with 1 hit point as the do with full health.

Multiple hero control– You can move more than one hero at a time! Use two or three fingers at the same time to drag and drop control your heroes. Example: Put one finger on Z'dar and one finger on Kassia and drag BOTH reticals over the top of an incoming boss. Or, use this tactic to quickly move multiple heroes out of the way of incoming mobs while you advance your tank to the incoming threat,

Gear Swapping – One of the things this game has not implemented yet is a way to remove your gear. This can make it difficult on a guy (or gal) who is trying to swap gear. As you gain levels, it can take a whole day or longer to train your favorite hero. It may not seem obvious at first, but since your main hero is usually the one taking the most time to train – your replacement hero would probably be MUCH better if he/she was using that hero’s gear! The work around is easy. As you gain rewards, save your junk gear. The following is what I like to save:

· Shoes, Chest, Head - for each material (Plate, Leather, Cloth) – you only need one of each
· Weapons

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– Dagger, Axe, Sword, Wand, Bow
· Shield

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– Shield (duh), Orb

As you level, these low level junk items become easier to look over because they other items will have tier levels making them jump out more. As you get more junk items, just see which one sells for more and sell it. You aren’t keeping these for their value – they are just place holders to allow you to remove weapons from heroes and move them around.

Important! Keep in mind that just because your hero is training doesn’t mean you can interact with him/her. You can upgrade and swap gear while they are training!

One last thing – Before I go, let me just say that these forums are a great tool for venting frustrations, working around problems, getting information, etc. Please remember that we are all here to get help, give help, report problems, etc. The Devs and forum admins DO LISTEN and I have personally seen MANY player’s suggestions implemented in the game. Be patient, sometimes they don’t communicate and program as fast as we’d like (and sometimes the answer is no). But, they do care and they do listen. Meanwhile, talk with the other players. There may be a work around to your problem.

—SylkeCherub

SylkeCherub

Feel free to add more game play tips if something is working well for you

Glamazon

Thanks for writing this up. Sticking it now.

Crovack

A few other tips:

The archers primary arrow attack as well as Nyxx' s pain field, the tank's charge+stun, as well as other CC abilities are particularly strong against the darkness enemies that cause fear. Killing them quickly while they're controlled can keep your characters available to fight rather than a panicking liability. If crowd control/speed kills aren't practical, let your least relevant hero engage the enemy alone. Once they're feared, bring in the cavalry.

Mines that are retaken by enemies give experience equivalent to completing the mission for the first time. As you may have noticed, redoing mission tiers you've already completed gives substantially reduced experience, but redoing mine missions don't have this reduction.

The archers' maxed out aoes extend off screen. This allows it to hit mobs that are in the process of moving onto the screen at times. This allows you to use it on packs that trickle in and still attain value when using it early.

As you pick up skills, keep in mind that those who are based off of weapon damage scale differently than those that don't. If your gear is weak, non-weapon damage skills are very strong. Later in the game with better gear, weapon damage skills scale far better with gear improvements. Also keep in mind that other stats vary in usefulness too. If a skill always crit by default, gear with crit rate increases will have no effect, whereas crit damage increases are always relevant. The value of attack/cast speed increases on ability usage is unknown to me, but I do not believe they play a role.

Ranged characters, on the whole, are of more value (imo) than melee as the game progresses. Melee face two major issues: travel time to get to the mob in which dps=0. This makes even a higher damaging melee have a difficult time keeping up with ranged attackers. Combine this with the fact that being in melee range makes them more vulnerable to being attacked, and things become very difficult to justify. Some melee are still a lot of fun and are fully capable of fighting easier content, but those with limited resources focused on challenging progression fights will want to favor ranged.

Kassia is by far the strongest dps. Alia and Z'dar would be roughly tied for middle of ranged dps. Leogan has some strengths, but overall I find him the weakest of the ranged dps.

Brenna is my favorite melee dps, sorta. I find Rognan to be very weak and I speced into swiftness over Rage, as the defense cost was a too big of a liability. That said, my favorite melee"dps" is Nar'Ghal. He's technically a tank, but I put him helm, bp and boots with +critical rate. An armguard with block and a scythe with hit rate. I'm maxing Dark Reaper, Gore, Strength and Reflex (total +12 extra skill points). The result is a very high dps melee with offtank capabilities at the high end and can main tank anything that doesn't 're q hire Fel'Mor.

For tanking, F'M has no competition for pure tanking. The aoe taunt taunt all but required at times and is easily the most influential skill in the game. Tiberius is just awful in comparison and I previously described my use of N'G.

For healers, I prefer Nyxx, then Tlanac and Thea last, but the difference in power I find to be less substantial and particularly the difference between Nyxx and Tlanac is rather situationaly dependent.

rewand

Guide links

As you get better in the game you will be making decisions about which items to keep, which Hero's to buy and whether or not to invest in Runic upgrades. Here are some guides to help your decision making.

Item Guide
DPH, Hero & Party level Guide
Runic Item Guide here
Items capabilities list (public spreadsheet)

Suggestions regarding the spreadsheet:

If you see an item there which you own but with different stats, don't just go deleting it add to it. The level's can be listed as 0/1/5/10 with corresponding capabilities scores like 100/105/125/150. Also note, the source of the item can make a difference in capabilities. Chest won items often have larger bonuses than battle won items.