D&D Gaming Memories – Idle Champions

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Idle Champions

Idle Champions is a new idle game that came out in March 2020 on Steam.    It’s apparently been in Early Access for three years.

The main screen, with your party

Fans like me of AdVenture Capitalist can immediately relate to the game after running through a few times.    You go on an adventure, and hopefully you can complete it.    Either complete or incomplete, it should earn you Favor with a deity (Angel Investors) which boosts you a % amount for your next run through.    With this boost, it’s easier to level up your characters for the next attempt at the game.

Unlike a traditional RPG, your characters do not keep their levels from reset to reset.    So they’re the Businesses in AdVenture Capitalist.    Levels don’t mean much, and neither does money.    You earn gold to level up your characters with and pass higher and higher levels in an attempt to earn more Favor.     The more dungeon levels you pass, the more gold you earn and therefore the more Favor you earn.  Spend Favor (not too much now) to earn additional bonuses like extra damage or shorter cooldowns for your party.

The writing is kind of fun and there are scripted conversations that the characters have as you go through the adventure.   Adventures are a new and obvious feature.    Achievements, as far as I can tell, are tied exclusively to passing various adventures and progressing the campaign through to the end.

Other new features include gear.    Each champion who makes up your party has six gear slots which can hold one of four gear rarities.

Bruenor has gear of each rarity (color) plus the Shiny special

Gray, Green, Blue, and Purple gear are kept for each champion/character, with a vast gulf from one level to the next.    Your champion uses the best gear automatically.    This drops as you adventure, and can also be purchased (by buying chests) through the game store.

Your gear can also be “Shiny” like Bruenor’s green ring.   His rings increase his Rally ability by 37.5% (Gray), 131.3% (Green), 225% (Blue), and 412.5% (Purple).    Shiny increases your gear by 50% and Golden by 100%; but it sounds like it doesn’t matter until you get to Purple gear.    If you pull a duplicate item, your existing item gets a buff, so I suppose with enough duplicate Gray Rings Bruenor might end up with over 412.5%, but I wouldn’t count on it.

So the way you play the game is threefold.

• Progress the campaign(s)
• Unlock / Buy new champions
• Rack up the Favor
• Gear up your champions

The premium currency is Gems, earned as you go through the campaigns or bought.  You can buy a number of familiars with it, and familiars are unexpectedly useful.   They click for you.    You can set them to do damage, or they can press the level up button when offline to keep you charging deeper into the dungeon without you needing to personally do anything.

Idle Champions also has campaigns (Planets).    Each one has its own favor.   I have 4 or 5 unlocked but am working mostly on the “Grand Tour of the Sword Coast”.    If you recognize that reference, you probably play Dungeons & Dragons, and the game is based on the Forgotten Realms campaigns from there.    Other campaigns unlock as Events which may or may not earn you extra champions.

There are the main campaign scenarios (Waterdeep Tour) and the challenges (Lost in the Deep, etc)

The final AdVenture Capitalist reference; spend less than 1% of your favor.    The game will permit you to spend more, and it may even be a good idea in some cases, but this is a good place to start.

So far I’ve earned 6 billion favor for the first campaign and have unlocked 5 additional champions, and have a smattering of purple gear for them.    And am enjoying every minute.

 

Statistics, July 2016

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Pokemon Go, Vikings

I’m a little bit late for this statistical review having just returned from Yosemite and parts nearby.    Even in 2016 the Internet coverage for Verizon in the area is really bad.

Vernal Falls. No Internet nearby.

Ingress

Got a bunch of Ingress in and it remains my traveling game.

• 35,284,000 AP.   1.2 million for the month, not bad considering I spent a week in Sketchy Internet Land.
• 2,307 walking kilometers (IE, 1,434 miles), so I added 64 to this badge.   That’s going to take a while yet.
• 1,712 Unique Captures and 3,438 Unique Hacks.   Added a bunch as I traveled.   And yet, not even halfway to platinum for either.
• 1,823,000 MU scored.   That’s 28k for the month, which is really low.

Pokemon Go

In the one month the game’s been out I find myself kind of bored with it, but still playing it.   Great way to kill time while waiting for an Ingress hack timer to refresh.    Level 15; Caught 60 Unique Pokemon, and seen 61.

AdVenture Capitalist

They’ve changed up the game somehow – I think they’ve added additional spots for you to buy higher % efficiency for your angels.   Whatever it is, it’s working – I’m at 4600 newspapers on both Desktop and Mobile, looking forward to 5000 coming at some actual reachable point in the future.

Marvel Heroes

31 heroes at level 60, and passing the cosmic trial on more of them ; Hawkeye has passed as has Black Panther.    It’s all about two things to pass the trial – Good artifacts with Blessing of Hela; and Omegas.    With DCL not having gone live yet I am going to try and pass as many heroes as possible and see where that comes up.    The odd thing is, if they all pass it, I feel like I’ll be done with the game.    And if the trial disappears I might also be done with it.

Statistics, June 2016

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes

Ingress

I find myself slowing down with Ingress.   Having a lot to do at the office is the main culprit, but I’m also getting tired of driving around to random spots (and the EXACT SAME random spots) for the game.   Still, I plan to never go below “Take one action a day, that helps the team.”

• 34,060,000 AP.   That’s 1.7 million for the month, probably mostly early in the month.
• 2,243 walking kilometers (IE, 1,394 miles), closing in on 2,500 for onyx.
• 30,000 hacks achieved (Gold Hacker).
• 1,795,000 MU scored.   That’s 51k for the month.   Still crawling along

I need to find time to get together with my buddy – now he’s got a smartphone and is ready for me to teach him Ingress.   It would be fun to play with someone else.    But of course, it’s summer, there’s no time for anything so far.

AdVenture Capitalist

I am at the 4,500 newspapers mark on Earth.   This is where the “guys on the internet” say that it slows down.   Seems accurate to me.    I should be ready for a reset soon, but in the meantime, all I’m doing is waiting a week to check on the game.   That’s not much fun.

Marvel Heroes

The promised DCL is not here quite yet, but the anniversary event continues until Midnight on the July 4th holiday.    This awesome event allows you to collect cake slices to make a cake – 365 needed – which then has a legendary item inside.  I’ve collected quite a few.

My current activity is maxing out the Legendary items my heroes have – 20 so far.   I’ve unlocked Deadpool but not levelled him to 60 yet, and I have 28 heroes unlocked.   I am sitting on a ton of game currency – 1,500 splinters, tons of the various currencies like worldstones.

The Danger Room is some of the best content in the game.   It’s hard if you pick a high enough level scenario (Blue or Above), and doable with the White or Green ones.   I am playing as many of these as possible mostly for the Merits you can earn.    I think, to pass Hawkeye on the Cosmic Trial, I’ll need many more ultimate upgrades than the simple two that he has.    I need 7,500 for my first purchase, and have 2,300 so far.

June has been absolutely fantastic in the game.   I wonder if I will continue to enjoy it so much without all the bonuses.   Still, who am I kidding – there’s always a bonus event going on in the game.    And importantly, I’m avoiding spending money because all the content I want to consume is not premium.   I’ve spent a bunch already and it’s paying off.

Statistics, May 2016

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes

Time for a wrap up of May 2016 in gaming.   I think I’ll keep this one shorter.

Ingress :

• 32,360,000 AP.    About 3.5 million in a month, once again.    I don’t expect to earn that much for June, because work.
• Gold Purifier reached (30,000 resonators destroyed).
• 2,150 of 2,500 kilometers walked.   Almost an Onyx Trekker.
• Just over halfway (5,867 of 10,000) to Platinum Mind Controller (Fields).   Nothing else is even halfway there.
• 1,744,800 MU scored.    A mere 41k in a month.    That’s disappointing.   I wish I was able to field more.

AdVenture Capitalist :

Nobody cares but me 🙂 , but I’ve completed the Moon.   The remainder is to complete Earth on both Mobile and Desktop.   I need 21 and 22 Megabucks, respectively, to unlock the 7,777 times multiplier.

It seems like it’s still slow going.   A lot of people say before you can end the Earth game, the universe would die of a lack of heat, so it may never happen.   But I’m going to try.

Marvel Heroes :

Currently I have two prestiged heroes – Captain America (Blue Prestige, ie, 2x) and Hawkeye (Green Prestige, 1x).   22 heroes at level 60, and 4 more unlocked and working their way up.    9 Team-Up heroes unlocked.

I think the prestiging is as good a way as any to say which ones are your favorites, and I like both Cap and Hawkeye a lot.   I am leveling up Storm and have decided she sucks; but Iceman is being leveled and is a lot of fun as a Summoner.   Finally, someone who can summon for me, since I have built Doom instead as a magical force.

With over 600 eternity splinters, I am wondering if I want to unlock more team-ups or just sit on the splinters.   So far I’m just holding onto them – I have four more guys to level up, there’s no hurry.

The fun part of prestiging is doing it all again with a hero you like.  The benefit, however, is getting costumes and trying for a random good one.   Or just getting a costume via a couple of nearly impossible ways, or just for free because Gaz wants to be nice.   I have an awesome Scarlet Witch costume, and a stupid one for Hulk – seriously, what’s he doing with RAM HORNS ?

I have no desire to spend more money on the game given all of that; about 1800 “G” currencies in the bank; and all the stash space I think I can use.    I’ll feel pretty good about selling any uniques that won’t fit, especially given Hightown, and the ability to farm them quickly.

And the biggie – I’m close to another Cosmic Trial attempt.    3,850 Omega points, and my self imposed floor is 4,000.

Statistics, April 2016 (Late edition)

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes

Ingress :

• 28,765,000 AP earned.   Almost 3.5 million in a month.    If that pace continues, well, yes, I will end up at L16.
• 3,000 unique hacks.   1,500 unique captures.
• 8,235 links, once again, over 1k in a month.
• 5,214 fields.   Over 500 in a month.
• 1,703,000 MU scored.   That’s 127,000, although, most of that was in a single day.
• 37,600 Builder and 28,200 Purifier.
• 5,500 Liberator.    Made gold, need 15,000 for platinum.

Closest badge to completion is Purifier, only need to kill 1,800 enemy resonators for gold.   The one I’m most interested in is the one I’ll probably never complete, Onyx Illuminator – only 4,000,000 MU total need to be scored.

Marvel Heroes

Now with 24 unlocked heroes, Blue Prestige Captain America, and 3500 or so Omega points.    Just a matter of grinding it all out.    Spiderman and Colossus should be at level 60 soon.

AdVenture Capitalist

On the mobile : The moon is complete !   Still working the Earth.   And the desktop has quite a ways to go.   The mobile gets so many more advantages versus the desktop it’s not even funny.

Oxygen Bars !

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist

There were some important changes yesterday to the silly-and-completely-addicting money game “Adventure Capitalist”.

New Multipliers !

#1 – When you have the app open, you’re getting a x5 multiplier.    If you’re really determined, you can leave the game open for a long time and get a fair amount of extra money.   I don’t think I’m that determined but it’s nice to see.

#2 – After you make each of your investments on a planet (Permanently) platinum, you can also add this multiplier for the megabucks.    77.77 x is a pretty nice jump.    Next level is 777.77x.

And then, at 5 am this morning, it happened.   I got over the long mountain climb to reach 2,880 oxygen bars and suddenly things are advancing very quickly.    Of course, part of it was this 77.77 multiplier being added but it was nice to see it finally happen.

I have about 50 more unlocks on the Moon, and a ton of them on the Earth.   Now, however, the Earth is completable depending upon how fast you can accumulate megabucks, the in-game premium currency.

My next reset, to be processed after blogging, will involve 10,000x the number of angels previously held.   It could be the Moon will be finished post haste if that trend continues, similar to the Mars planet.    And then it’s just a matter of finishing up the Earth, and laughing all the way to the bank.    Holding 5 Novemtrigintillion dollars at the moment – go ahead, try and relate that to a real life number, you can’t.

Ah, the thought of having that much money…..

Statistics, Feb 2016 month-end

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, World of Tanks

With a mammoth case of writers block, I figured I’d toss out where the stats have me in various games I’m playing.

AdVenture Capitalist –

• 850 Untrigintillion angels on Earth (Mobile)
• 649 quattordecillion angels on the Moon (Mobile)
• 12.5 quintrigintillion angels on Earth (PC)
• 2 quindecillion angels on the Moon (PC)

The next real hurdle is getting to 2,880 Oxygen Bars.    Quite a ways to go, considering costs – I have 2,654 in my current mobile game, and 2,671 on the PC.

Ingress

• 21,755,000 AP earned, still Level 14
• 2 Onyx badges (Guardian, Recharger)
• 5,914 of 25,000 links for platinum.
• 3,771 fields of 10,000 for platinum.
• 45,659 of 50,000 glyphing points.
• 1,533,000 MU scored of 4 million for Onyx
• 4,782 of 5,000 for gold Engineer.   Getting close.
• 21,600 of 30,000 for gold Purifier
• 28,000 of 30,000 for gold Builder
• 4,192 of 5,000 for gold Liberator

I’m taking a different approach to the game now.   Instead of trying to help cover Southern California, I’m more hyperlocal in a few select areas.   If you quit worrying about big operations, that changes the game a lot, as well as taking the pressure off of playing all the time.   Downtown Burbank is of course the main focus.    And wherever I travel, I keep Ingress in mind.

Pt Mugu has a neat little campground I was not aware of, and it also contains four portals in various spots – one being behind an “Hours of Operation” barrier.   The Malibu guys seem to want to link to it to keep a block up, so I’m holding the keys I own and charging that portal.    Sometimes, it’s the little things.

Marvel Heroes

Not feeling a lot of interest.  Get in, play for a little bit, and log off.   I’m moving Black Panther along and he’s almost 50; he’ll make my 18th Level 60.   Still collecting items for Level 69 unique crafting.    It’s fun playing in Hightown with the guaranteed unique from every boss wave, this is helping me move forward with the “Completion” of relic stacks.    Once I have 1,000 of some of them, I can start giving them to the unfortunate later heroes who don’t get any yet.

World of Tanks

No particular end to this game in sight.   One single empty tank slot, and 159 filled (!).   I have vague desires to :

• Unlock every tank
• Ace mastery for all tanks (39 so far)
• Finish one nation – buy all the tanks.
• Finish more lines.

In a sense I’ve finished one line given that I have the Maus; the German TD line ending in JPE 100 still contains one TD I never bought and thus isn’t “Finished”.    Sitting on 5 million credits waiting for something to happen worth spending on, and currently saving above that mark for the Tier X STI gun.

I’ve been playing two low tiers in the hope of Aceing them.   Skills keep going up, so it’s hopefully a matter of time and good luck.   And I’ve got four TD’s I’m grinding up as well.

Multiplier and Angel Management

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress

And gaming, as always, continues – even if I can’t write much about it.

Resource looked like an interesting game.    An economic focused augmented-reality/location based game.   So I installed it, loaded it up, and played with it a bit.   Until I realized I was going to be driving someplace to start up clay pits, which is very close to Ingress play anyway, and I uninstalled the game immediately.

Ingress gets play occasionally.   I’m not making trips to places to play the game anymore, as in “Oh, I need to pick up the pizza?” and my route ends up like this :

Running an errand, Ingress style.

But if I find myself near a portal, I’m hitting it.   And I got bored at lunchtime today and took an Ingress walk, which was a lot of fun.

AdVenture Capitalist remains a fascinating diversion.    Teaching a sense of scale via numbers is the best thing about it.    Don’t worry about your millions when you are counting in decillions.   The tricky part being game balance.

This….. is Mars.

All milestones have been achieved.   I achieved them in a few days time, due to an imbalance in the way angel investors are earned.    So, nothing further to do here.

And this is Earth.

According to the guys on the internet, Earth is not solvable.   The only way to unlock everything similar to Mars, is for thousands of years to pass in real life.   I’m continuing to advance it anyway since it’s fun.    Getting 5,000 newspapers would be quite an achievement.   And if nothing else, they’ll probably rebalance this at some point.

I previously finished off the Earth……… and promptly quit playing.    Dollars to donuts, a lot of people did the same, so the developers made sure you couldn’t just finish.

Then there’s the moon.

The moon is a special case.    Here, the balance is tweaked such that certain investments are much more valuable than others.   How is that ?   It’s all about Oxygen bars.    Getting 2,880 of them gives you a multiplier on them of 666666.    Even with the previous unlock (55,555) buying one oxygen bar is more valuable than hundreds of moon shoes.     So eventually I figured out a few things about playing the moon.

First – Moon shoes and gravity booths are pretty useless.    Buy moon shoes only up to 2,560.    Unless you somehow have enough money for 5,120, which gives an unlock of 999999999.    Not happening to me anytime soon.   Gravity booths should only be purchased to the degree they “don’t matter”, because the money is better spent on oxygen bars.    Cheese mines would be very useful but they follow a pattern similar to the moon shoes – just buy 1,024 of them.

The other investments are useful to buy for fun, and can provide small incremental income amounts – especially when they are low cost.   Can you buy 200 helium farms for a x7 unlock ?   Well, sure.   But don’t buy them until you hit that point.   Keep buying oxygen bars.

The game linked above gives 21 untrigintillion income per second after buying a single oxygen bar.   Buying 150 helium farms gives the amazing return of 700 trigintillion and costs more.     So I’m only buying to get myself big multipliers, or oxygen bars.

The strategy is to increase your angels by 50% with each reset, to hasten the time when you achieve 2,880 oxygen bars, and then the game should be finishable in a short period of time.

Notice how these are mobile games ?  Yep, I’m pretty much on mobile right now.    I’m also playing the Vikings game from Plarium, which is easy simple timer stuff and not something I’m sure I’m enjoying.   Really, the best thing is AdCap.

 

As I wait for the Downloads

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, SWTOR

And the quietness continues.   Sometimes, you just don’t have a lot to blog about because Real Life.   Kids take priority.   So does taking care of your wife.     Your job.   Et cetera.   Still gaming, but not as much to write home about.

I now have an Adventure Capitalist account installed on my mobile as well as the PC.   On both, the goal is still the same – finish all the unlocks and find out what happens after you have 999 Novemnonagintillion dollars.   The mobile gives you a +5% bonus just for being logged into the Kongregate website, so they can track me and sell whatever information they can glean from my phone.   I guess it’s a good bargain.

I now have Daredevil at level 52, and am waiting for something to finish…..

2016 is here !

There are a metric ton of achievements suddenly built into the Steam client.   The update happened during the day Friday morning so I am only able to start the update Friday night.   I bet the servers are slammed.   I should also end up with some serious achievement spam once I can successfully log in.

I’m also still waiting for this to finish, for reasons of idle curiousity :

Star Wars time ?

And finally, Ingressing at the moment is a matter of charging the guardian only.   180 plus days in.

Gaming in 2016 ?

Tags

AdVenture Capitalist, Armored Warfare, Ingress, Marvel Heroes, Master of Orion, Pokemon Go, World of Tanks, World of Warships

What will gaming bring me in 2016 ?   I’m not sure, but here are my guesses :

Games I’m Playing Right Now :

Ingress – At some point I’m going to be completely done with the game and cease to log in.    Changes in game mechanics might tweak that.   For instance, better key mechanics, such as unlimited key storage or use of keys inside the capsules you’ve purchased; or real defense, that actually stops an attacker flat, or server priority for defense instead of offense.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a fantastic game, but it just looks like for me, Doc Burbank, I’m done.

Marvel Heroes – A name change is coming in a few days and it will magically be Marvel Heroes 2016 !    This amuses me, because you usually associate name changes with big feature changes.   I’m aware of nothing new coming besides the changed name and the usual game tweaks.

But Gazillion is impressive.   They apparently took a total turd at launch time, and much like Everquest 2, improved it over time until it’s becoming a real gem.    Achievements.   Danger Room.   More heroes.   Midtown Madness.    Cosmic Levels.    More currencies than you can shake a stick at, which after a while, you get used to and enjoy having.    I really like this game, although my interest waxed and waned over the last several months.

Best guess is this will get played to some degree all year.   It’ll probably cost me money for something – Heroes, Bank Slots, or Costumes.   God help me if I start buying costumes, you could blow hundreds of dollars on that stuff.    I remain about $40 invested in the game, but I’m tempted to buy more.

World of Warships – This is fun, but I’m very low on ship slots and not that interested in spending more money.     And so this killed the game for me.    I haven’t logged in for a month or so…. but I’d like to.     Unified accounts (like were originally promised) would probably revive my interest and convince me to spend “Wargaming Gold” on new ship slots and continue playing.

And the other reason I don’t play this is because, simply put, I’d rather play tanks.

World of Tanks – More tanks to play and unlock.    Marvel shouldered this one aside again and I assume I’ll be putting in matches once again soon, after the Marvel winter event.    Best guess is this gets playtime in chunks throughout 2016.

Adventure Capitalist – This barely counts as something played, but oh well.   I enjoy accumulating my quattorquindecillion’s worth of money.    But given the low level of daily play (1 minute?) I will probably continue logging in for the entire year.

Games On My Radar :

My Steam Library – Just like the rest of nerd gaming-dom, I have a large library of games I’ve lightly or never played on Steam.    I was not the slightest bit tempted to buy anything over the Holiday sale.   Far too much has been purchased and not played, and yet, odd as it is, it was enjoyable to search out all those bargains and buy them.   If I never play them, I got some amusement out of the whole process and learned something new – the joy of buying things for its own sake.   (My wife knows all about this phenomenon….)

Star Ruler 2 comes to mind, along with Wasteland 2 and Dino D-Day (Ridiculous idea !  Fun as hell !   Will the game match up at all?)  as games I’ve not played for any good reason.    Cities : Skylines is the one I want to play the most, and yet, I’ve never logged in and played the game.   City builders have been so dissapointing over the years after Simcity 4’s massive goodness – and irritating problems – and yet the premise still seems fun.

Regicide sounds interesting as I continue to wait for a Battle Chess game to pass across my radar, but I was after a sub $10 price point.   It’s at $10 during the Steam sale.

Star Wars : SWTOR – this has gone free-to-play, and I admit, I’ve read very little about it.   But I am intrigued enough to perhaps try it out in the free-to-play world.   If I had to pay for it like at release time it would be a definite no go.

Armored Warfare should get another try.    Maybe they can improve the queueing time to the point I’d actually like to play.   I don’t know.

Games To Be Released :

Pokemon Go – This sounds like it might be fun.    Travel to different spots in Meatspace, and collect various Pokemon.    Fight virtual battles.   Level up your Pokemon at a Gym, and acquire powers.    Trade with other players, not a very exciting concept, since in practice this usually doesn’t work that well and ruins a game.   Maybe this will be different.   Expected release date is “2016”

Master of Orion – Can Wargaming move forward and publish this one well ?    Did they pick the right studio to develop with NGD ?   Time will tell.    The real question is, was it just the first really good 4X in space so it’s remembered fondly, or is there something about the experience that will stand out during a remake ?   I really, really hope it’s the latter, although I’m enough of a fanboy that I bet I’m buying the thing on release day no matter what.  No release date is hinted at.   Hopefully it’s 2016 sometime but you never know.

Now, I can look back next year and see how well these ideas stacked up with whatever happens during the year.