I recall reading an analysis of the chance that any player will get a Light or Dark Nat 5 in Summoners War. It was well reasoned, and showed the math that you would probably never get one. Unless you were lucky.
I’m lucky. I have Pontos, the Light Sea Emperor.
S1 – Transfers a harmful effect to the enemy.
S2 – AOE attack that silences enemies for 2 turns.
S3 – Grants immunity and invincibility to all allies for 1 turn.
Based on that last skill, it sounds like the obvious runing choice is triple will, which should make that timeframe four turns instead of one, unless there’s some exception carved out in the code I’m unaware of.
And of course, where do you get will runes ? That’s right – the Dragons basement. My Tricaru project takes on even more significance based on that.
It turns out someone has already made an even better spreadsheet than the one I came up with, and I’m using this to try and solve the 18-ish piece puzzle of getting runes to achieve the Tricaru team. The good news is I have the three 2/4/6 runes on the first Icaru, with one set even being determination, thus giving me more wiggle room for the stats.
Been farming all day the rifts in search of either runes, or rune materials, but so far haven’t added to the three existing. Slot 1 is easy, but slots 3 and 5 have very steep and random requirements so it’s a question of waiting for the RNG to settle.
I recall something I learned in math class about random numbers – the anomalous results tend to “clump”. I am hoping that I get some nice clumpy results and more Nat4 and Nat5 light & dark creatures.
The new hotness in Summoners War is building a team to clear the Dragons basement. The meta team is usually called Tricaru, which consists of three Icarus, plus Verdehile which long time players all have.
You might think, as I did, that the difficulty is just creating three Icaru with full second awakening, but that would not be correct. The challenge is runing each Icaru. I had no idea it would be this difficult when I started.
The magic number is getting 2381 extra defense points for me (as per the community’s table). Okay. That doesn’t sound hard, but it turns out it actually is.
Target Defense
2381
2 Defense Artifacts
(200)
Slot 3 Rune (Flat Mainstat)
(160)
Slot 2 Defense (63%)
(463)
Slot 4 Defense (63%)
(463)
Slot 6 Defense (63%)
(463)
Wildcard Defense points needed
632
So far, so good. But then you realize what all this means based on the rules of Summoners War runes. You CANNOT have a Defense % substat on any of the 2/4/6 runes because that’s the main stat. Also, Slot 1 is the Attack rune and therefore can’t have any defense stats, either flat or percentage.
Flat Bonuses
0
2 runes left (3, and 5)
Amount per rune
316
So what percentage?
42%
Defense Max
8%
Potential Defense – Legend
40%
There might be some rounding issues here, but point is made.
So – to do this without “special” rune sets, you need two runes with almost perfect rolls and perhaps some good grinds added to close-to-perfect ones. Do you have any of these ? Yeah, me neither.
Maybe you could make this work with every rune having flat defense stats as well, but that’s not likely. Every roll into flat is a roll that can’t go into percentage, after all.
So with that out of the way, you have two rune types of value here. Guard runes, and Determination runes. Guard : 2 runes gives a +15% defense bonus. Determination : 2 runes gives EVERYONE on the team a +8% defense bonus. Just to make it more painful, Determination is hard to get since they come from rifts or crafting…….. and Guard runes come from the Dragons dungeon.
Dragons. You know, the dungeon you are building these creatures to conquer.
I started playing around with the spreadsheet above and I think I found the sweet spot, where getting the stats is difficult but not impossible.
Target Defense
2381
2 Defense Artifacts
(200)
Slot 3 Rune (Flat Mainstat)
(160)
Slot 2 Defense (63%)
(463)
Slot 4 Defense (63%)
(463)
Slot 6 Defense (63%)
(463)
Additional Defense points needed
632
Guard Runes (3×15%)
(344)
Determination (1×8%)
(62)
Wildcard Defense points needed
226
Flat additions
0
2 runes left
113
Required amount
32%
Per rune
16%
Much less stressful
This starts to get more do-able. Somehow, acquire at least one Determination set with high defense values and figure out how to plug that into an Icaru. Or, give Verde a Determination set. Either works. Get 2/4/6 Guard Defense runes (Believe it or not, I don’t have a single one :cries:) And getting 16% per guard rune just means getting a double roll on a rune and/or adding some grind. Get flat stats for an even easier time.
The best way to get 6 star Guard runes is running Dragons 12, and my current team passes it a mere 50% of the time (Verdehile, Dusky, Fran, Loren, Spectra). Still – it will happen eventually with these parameters. I can also craft Guard runes to shorten the time, hopefully.
This will be fun, even if it takes a very long time to finish.
Summoners war continues to be the best game I’ve never played.
Nearly all game events can be autoed – but they auto in real time. So you hit start, let a game event finish like running a scenario level to level up your monsters, and you ignore it for a couple of minutes.
PVE milestones include beating the scenario (Done), Tower of Ascension (No Problem – you do this monthly), S rank in all the rifts (Done), and having various dungeon teams to run for runes (Done).
There is a fantastic tool for sharing your profile which has gone through several technical challenges. It requires you to use Bluestacks, but Bluestacks has decided to stop working on my machine. It complains that “The Engine cannot be started” and no amount of googling can help me figure out what’s wrong, nor Uninstall/reinstall, so I’ve given up. My profile is here. I had to do it manually and it took forever, plus it’s missing runes since manually inputting those would be insane. It’s current as of a couple weeks ago.
One milestone I’m still working towards is 100% on arena towers. These make a really big difference in every aspect of the game. I have just one or two levels for the light and dark towers left to achieve.
Another milestone is the Hard version, Tower of Ascension. I have beat it once at level 100, but beating it consistently has eluded me. It’s too hard, like falling off a cliff hard, compared to level 99. And the other levels take several minutes to complete, while manually doing 100 takes around 20 minutes. I could be happy with the time if I could beat it, but it doesn’t happen. So for the moment I’ve given up.
And another milestone is the Tartarus guild dungeon. There are four difficulty levels, and I can beat some levels on the 3rd. Many I can only beat on the 1st (Easy), to my chagrin. So I keep working on my stable of creatures to see if I can get some that will make this work.
The final milestone is probably guild flags. Mine are at level 8, and I have four of them I’m trying to get up to level 10. Like arena towers, the flags give you a big advantage in any guild environments, like Tartarus.
I don’t really enjoy the PvP. It’s a bit like being a puppy and getting stepped on. I don’t grind my runes for days and days looking for an extra 2% HP, so I don’t do well.
I have somewhere around 85 six star monsters (the best quality level) and am working on a whole bunch more. Maybe 25. It’s quite a bit of fun in that idle manner.
The monetary policy in the game is so weird, that some of it needs another post. My carefully considered opinion about spending real life money on the game boils down thus :
None of the hyped packages are even close to worth it. Would you spend $100 for a 5% chance at a good monster ? And “good” monsters only help your game like 1%. Bad idea.
So the devs spend a ton of effort tricking the players into spending money on things that don’t matter, while giving them the illusion that just another $100 will unlock that last thing that you need. It’s predatory and insane.
At the same time, the devs are careful to balance the game for maximum enjoyment and they do a pretty good job, all things considered. Strange considering #2 isn’t it ?
The daily pack for $5 gives a good amount of crystals. I don’t buy these because I’m drowning in crystals but your mileage may vary.
I’ve been at this for 2 years and it’s anyone’s guess as to how long I’ll continue to spend time being distracted by my phone while I’m sitting in front of the computer doing something else.
The Rift of Worlds is the place you get two things : The Homonculus, and Grindstones.
Rift of WorldsThe Rift Raid is a three person round where, after forming a party either by inviting your friends or by going through a matching waiting room, you fight a three headed dragon. Rewards include Grindstones, mana, and maybe other things. Grindstones are an interesting thing. You can add them to the runes your monsters have for additional stats. So if your rune has 5% HP and you add a 1-3% grindstone to it, you’ll have (say) 7% HP afterwards. If you power up your rune further and increase it, the grindstone stays (I think).
Random Party Matching
The more interesting area is the Rift Beast “Raids”. They’re fights. You pick a good team composition and go after them. Light, Dark, Water, Fire, and Wind. Each beast requires a different team and give different rewards.
To get the Homonculus (Meant to be the best monster in game, I am hearing it’s not all that) you need to collect the element crystals – like Water Crystal, etc – and a bunch of magic crystals as well. Once you have the homonculus, you also grind to give it a full set of skills, but this monster has a customizable skill tree.
Homonculus. Can be Wind, Fire, or Water with different trees.
You can get two Homonculi – One Light/Dark, and one Water/Fire/Wind. I understand the one I’ll want is Water.
Reddit does not describe this place well, but I have an idea where to head with all of this. But first, I am running the Giants dungeon looking for “better” runes – which means either getting the correct Legendary runes to drop, or so many that I have a ton of mana stones to power up Heroic runes and hope they end up good – with the main goal being to improve the stats for Sigmarus. You see, my entire Dragons team is too slow, so I’m starting with him in an attempt to improve their stats to the point where I can run the Dragon dungeon with a high degree of success.
I continue to move forward in Summoner’s War. There is an absolute wealth of information available in both the Summoners War Reddit, and various guides that you can easily find by googling.
After conquering the scenarios, and soloing Faimon Hell with your farmer (Lapis, the Water Magic Knight usually) next thing to do is conquer Giants Level 10. This gets you access to the most important runes in the game, 6 star level. After that it’s expected you’ll conquer the Dragon dungeon to level 10, and clear the Trial of Ascension on Normal mode.
I’ve managed to conquer the Dragons dungeon. I can beat DB10 maybe 50-60% of the time and I’m working on upgrading runes to get farther. The trial, I am less successful at.
Trial of Ascension has what the Reddit calls a safe team :
Veromos, the newbie’s best friend. Cleanser.
Belladeon, Healer and Armor Breaker.
Mav, the Penguin Knight tank and provoker.
Spectra, Griffin who slows the enemy team
Baretta, DOT’er par excellence
This team gets me to 55 with not much thought but there are certain floors which need adjusted strategies.
Light Lich Boss. When this guy pops in, substitute Colleen for Spectra. The Lich will heal quickly and constantly defeating you; but Colleen has a heal block to prevent this.
Ragdoll + Drogans. Ragdoll is the Dark Dragon Knight, Drogan is the Dark Inferno. Part of the key is to kill the Infernos via DOT, but the safe team got wiped every time until I substituted Colleen. I don’t really understand why.
What I need to do to progress farther is to 6 star Colleen – all the others are already level 40 and 6 star – and to find more monsters for any of the tricky floors.
These two are the main progression areas – conquer the Trial of Ascension, and 95%+ Dragons team – that I need to move forward. But I’m stuck to some degree.
To progress the Dragons, I need to get “good” 6 star runes. The runes in slots 2/4/6 are most important, and most rare. Best would be if the ones I get are legendary, but to get even useful 2/4/6 slot 6 star runes is incredibly slow and grindy. I get bored. At least I have a pair that I want to swap out for Sigmarus (Giants Monster), that I just need to save up mana for. So, it’s going to some degree.
The Trial…. I don’t know what to do next. The floor I am stuck on has Julianne (the Light Vampire), and dark Martial Cats. I have tried swapping in Colleen, and Rica, level 40 Occult Girl. No success. Reddit is finally failing me for good advice.
There is another avenue of the game that’s not well documented that I’m exploring – the Rifts. But I’ll save that for another post.
With Veromos fused, the newbie level excitement of Summoners War seems to be finished, but the game itself is certainly not.
Veromos Stats
I now have leveled and 6*’d Veromos, and he is level 40 the maximum level. I have also 6*’d Belladeon, and am in the process of leveling him up to 40. Before I need to worry about my third 6* I need 4 more 5* fodder/rainbowmons, and I have plenty of max level 4* to use – the trick is getting all the level 1 4* creatures to do so. Baretta – the Fire Sylph, the beast of the Tower of Ascension – is in progress of being fused. I have all four of his “ingredients”, with three to level up to 30.
Belladeon stats, in progress
I can now farm the Giants dungeon to GB7; can often – maybe 50% – win the GB8 dungeon; and have successfully cleared once the GB9 dungeon. All the teams current runes are +10 or higher, and some of my situational monsters too. I’m collecting my runes and biding my time with equipping them until Free Rune Removal in April.
Top of my Monster Storage page. So many 4* I can level/evolve.
I got tired of hoarding my Mystical Scrolls and I went ahead and used them all – 61. I got a lot of 3* fodder for leveling, and a lot of creatures 3* and 4* to level up. I did not yet get a Natural 5* though. The creatures I have stored away for leveling up are now too numerous to mention. I’m most interested in getting a 5* max Rina, the Water Epikion Priestess.
The main team remains the suggested Newbie team :
Veromos
Belladeon
Shannon
Bernard
Konamiya
Elucia is retired – can’t really find a use for her, Mikene surpasses her in every way. Other situational monsters include
Mikene – Very useful for needing Water or Healing, as a natural 4*.
Teon – Light monsters are usually neutral fights, plus revives.
Khmun – My PvP leader, good offense and protection with that shield he throws
Lapis – Sometimes my farmer, sometimes for Water. Much less useful with Vero around.
Kaimann – Rounds out my Water list for drowning Fire mons. High defense.
Fodder process is roughly :
Feed 1* monsters to something 2*, evolve it.
Take 3 2*’s and level them up and evolve.
Get a group of 3 3* and max level them.
When enough 3* are available, create 4* level 1’s.
When enough 4* are available, evolve a rainbowmon to 5*
And for my many 4* creatures I only need to decide to evolve them with the 4*’s. Most of the game now is about grinding hard, and hoping for the lightning strike of summoning a 5* creature. I could also fuse Sigmarus, one of the Phoenix creatures, which is a grind on par with Veromos, but so far I’m resisting that. Grind on !
It was quite a lot of grinding for the food monsters, but then it was finally done. I was able to 5* all the monsters for the Veromos fusion.
Next step was to burn up every angelmon in my inventory. They brought Mikene, Askia, and Argen up pretty far, but I didn’t still have any dark angelmons. So the yeti Kumae would clearly take the longest. On to Faimon Volcano Hard, with farmer Lapis, for experience grinding. And eventually made all four max level 5*.
It’s finally ready.
And then, it was done. I had my Dark Ifrit.
Veromos !
I spent some time leveling him up (along with, of course, more food monsters) until he was 25, then I tried out Giants 7 and beat it. I put the violent runes on him which are given as a reward for fusing him.
So now, I should do several things.
Awakening Materials for Darion, Mikene #2, and Veromos. Mostly high essences, naturally.
Run the GB7 dungeon in the hope of better runes, which I’m getting a better idea of what “good” means. These are probably just to hold onto until April when FRR happens again.
Get that mana. I have an insatiable appetite for mana stones. Storage expansion, rune powerups, and ability to summon all those scrolls come to mind immediately.
Begin the fusion process for Baretta. I bought a Martial Cat from the guild shop, and the rest of the creatures are all farmable. He is needed for the Tower of Ascension, my possible next target.
Create enough food monsters for 6* Veromos. 3 5* food creatures in inventory; plus I’ll want to do Belladeon soon after him.
I now have three of four Veromos fusion monsters at 4* max. The other one needs two levels only; and I want to 5* my mummy Namib. But to 5* these guys, you need four 4* monsters at level 1.
Enter grinding up fodder monsters to 4*. Boy, this is a huge pain. I have gone from having 120 monsters summoned and ready for use, to 60 monsters and running low on food materials. I’m even once again levelling up 1* monsters as part of the grind.
First, you level up three 1*’s. Then, if you have the right food, take those same creatures and level them up and evolve to 3*’s. Then, level them up to max and let these guys sit. Time to create a new batch of thee level 1 3* monsters, feed them to one of the 3* max creatures. You now have a 4* level 1 food monster.
Storage on the right shows a bunch of 4* level 1 monsters. The others I’m saving.
I have 13 of the 20 materials needed to get all of these creatures leveled up, but I’m a bit distracted by the event over the weekend –
Not the Magic Shop – which is a cool event too – but the Elven Ranger secret dungeon. I can use any Elven Rangers for skillups for my Light or Fire unit. I understand one or both of them should be good; and getting skillups for anything that doesn’t drop is a challenge at best. So it’s a question of grinding the secret dungeon over and over – and if I’m bored, I just switch to the 4* food grind.
I also found out some interesting things about summons and powering up. If you use a 1* to power up a monster, you get the most XP for it by powering up another 1* monster. It also costs the least mana. So this suggests that you never use a monster to power up anything high – probably no better than 1 level higher than the powerup, if that. Combine this fact with the fact that 1-15 on a 1* monster takes less XP than 1-15 on a 5* monster, and you have some useful info when asking yourself what to do with all of those summons.
Speaking of lots of summons – I have that. 650 Unknown scrolls, 29 Mystical scrolls, and a few of the higher ones. I don’t see where there is any need to open them at the moment, given that I’m pushing for Veromos, plus the fact that they have a minuscule chance of summoning something high anyway. I’m only opening as many Unknown scrolls as I need to keep the food train on its tracks.
And after Free Rune Removal, and rejiggering all my runes – we were able to clear GB7 with a friend’s rep monster ! That’s a milestone. This is the first dungeon which you are suggested to grind infinitely for runes to equip on your monsters. Star ratings of 3-6 can drop beginning here. One more thing to add to my list of “things to do in the game”.
Summoners War decided to do a patch last night, with a few gameplay tweaks related to raids and such; and a new set of challenges related to the Veromos fusion. Timely !
The new Challenges tab
First up was simply examining the Fusion info, which I was intimately familar with. Next, you needed to 3* a group of monsters – one fire, one wind, one water. Presumably the tutorial aspect here is to get players used to evolving the star stages of their monsters.
Ifrit Challenge details
The next steps are the things I’ve been working on and blogging in previous entries : Level food monsters up, awaken them, and then make one fusion monster. Now, for those of us who have already done this, the statement is that doing ANY fusion will make all these achievements fire, so I just have to get through the first nine, and then fuse my second Mikene, and the three on the far right will auto complete. How lucky for me – that I got all the stuff for Mikene and am ready to fuse her !
Between the Fire dungeon and Magic dungeon today, I got all but 5 of the needed high essences for awakening……. but I also got a nice surprise. The reward for fusing the Vampire is 10 High Magic essences ! So once I fire that achievement I will have enough for both Mikene and the Succubus.
So now it’s back to the evolution grind, with a bit of a twist – making sure to get these new achievements to go off.
I have made the maximum village level in Summoner’s war :
The sad thing is, no more free energy every level up
I now have to acquire “mentees” at some point. I have 24 hours where my mentors still show on my page, then I think I can add them. After I have Veromos as a rep monster, I think I’m valuable to people. I need to seek out more standard friends with him as rep too.
My main gameplay for “All Attribute Weekend” is getting high essences. Clearly, it’s very hard to acquire them in any quantity for high level awakenings. It would help if I was running higher dungeon levels, but I’m doing a lot of 4’s so that my non-maxed monsters can grind the XP.
Running almost nothing but dungeons, I have managed all the high level essences for Water, but still short on Fire and Wind. And this is before trying to get any Magic essences – since Magic is every day, and other than this weekend, the elemental dungeons are time gated.
Planning on a 100/100/Infinite cap for each essence
Amusingly, I have acquired all the monsters needed to fuse a second Mikene (Water Undine) – obviously, getting the secret dungeons is the easier thing to do, versus acquiring essences. I want to keep the second one, if I can get it created, and I may want a third someday for additional fusions.
I have finally jettisoned all but 5 or so of 1* monsters and my storage is full of 2* on up. I am ready for some grinding up of food monsters.
To Game For Life 