Elvenar Chapter 17+ – Upgrades Preview

[Updated 2020-10-12] Chapter 17 – whaaat, still?! 😉 You may want to start with our Research Preview and Production Preview, but today we will be talking about upgrades that will be unlocked in Elvenar Chapter 17. And we’ll take it one step further, and take a look at what can happen in chapters 17+ – all the way up to Chapter 20. So let’s take a look at what is speculated so far – of course, anything you find here is subject to change. Or it might be entirely made up. You have been warned.

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT! Now, if the intro above didn’t get the message across 😉 The following post is potentially a one giant spoiler for the upcoming chapter. So if you don’t want to spoil this until it hits actual beta or live servers, you should stop reading just about now. Or if you just don’t like to engage in rumors and speculation, you should press that Back button now. You have been warned!

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Why Look Into The Future?

OK, so why would you want to look at some speculation over the next chapters? Well, Chapter 17 is obvious – it’s the next chapter and it is likely coming soon.

But Chapters 18-20 are a long way out, and whether current rumors about those are true or not, all kinds of things may – and likely will – change. So why look there now? The way I see it, it is to glimpse a little bit into the current thinking of the development team on where do they plan to take Elvenar next. In other games, developers tend to engage with the players, have roadmaps and/or discussions about what’s coming next, or at least how they think about evolving their games. This is not what we have with Elvenar. There have been no communication from the developers about future direction. Like literally none – this is not something they do. They just drop changes into our laps, and that’s it.

This is a pretty bad setup, especially for a game that lasts for years. And many actions you cannot revert (expansions, upgrades etc). So without having some ideas of what the future holds, you’re stuck with making suboptimal choices.

Rumors of some changes months and years in advance – subject to change at any time – won’t change that. But it may give you an idea of what developers are thinking right now. You’ll still have to deduce that, which is too bad. But it seems that’s the best we can do given developers silence.

Chapter 17 Upgrades Summary

Alright, there are quite a few things that can be upgraded after a particular research is unlocked in chapter 17. So let’s get that out of the way before we start looking into more distant future of 17+. So many of the upgrades are expected (Main Hall, residences, workshops, T3 manufactories, armories). But others are either unexpected (Advanced Trader, Training Grounds again), or different (Barracks and Mercenary Camp got just 2 additional levels).

So here is how chapter 17 upgrades situation looks like:

One building missing here is an Advanced Trader that we will be able to upgrade to L6. It’s not here because not much is known about it’s production in the new chapter. But at least it won’t change dimensions and it will stay at 5×5.

Main Hall is getting expected 2 upgrades, from L38 to L39. Unexpectedly, it doesn’t change shape in this chapter either, and it is at least 3rd chapter with 8×8 dimensions. Not that I am complaining 😉

And as expected, we will also get an upgraded street tile with more culture.

Dimensions

But you can see that a lot of buildings change shape though. Not necessarily size, but quite a few flip dimensions. This would be pretty annoying to reposition, but it should be doable without size changes. And some do those flips even though it is not expected. E.g. workshops just changed shape (and size) in chapter 16, and now they change shape again (though not size).

So residences, workshops and armories get 2 extra levels each and flip dimensions. All T3s grow from 5×5 to 6×5 or 5×6 as they gain extra 4 levels, as expected.

All military buildings change size and shape. And there is a shocker – Barracks is actually going down in size (6×7 to 6×6)! Whoa! I don’t remember anything like that happening, at least not in the later chapters.

Efficiency

Not only total output from upgraded buildings increases, but their efficiency (per tile output) goes up as well. In chapter 16 most upgrades increased efficiency by about 20%. This time around, we have more dispersion. Main Hall capacity went up by almost 50% (get ready to dump all those capped resourced in the new tournaments 😉 ). Residences improved by about 22%, with armories by about 18%, so both similar to the last time. Workshops got better efficiency improvements at 27%. But T3 manufactories got whopping 37% better on a per-square basis.

Keep in mind though, that the efficiency numbers above only account for production and size of the building itself. It doesn’t account for pop and culture required to support that. And as you will see below, some of these buildings will need massive amounts of both. So the usual pattern is likely holds – the most recent upgrades (at least for manufactories) are usually less efficient than levels a chapter or two behind. This depends on how you get your population and culture, and might not be true if you have extremely efficient sources of both.

Military

All military buildings reached the same training speed in Chapter 16, and keep it in Chapter 17. As training speed is not a production in itself, and doesn’t follow the same rules, so those efficiency numbers are not directly comparable to other numbers. But you can see that of all these buildings Mercenary Camp size went up the most (20%), while they all got the same speed increases.

Main Hall

Let’s look at Main Hall upgrades:

So as we have mentioned already, Main Hall dimensions do not change in this chapter and stay at 8×8. But it seems that 8×8 is there to stay for now, at least until Chapter 20. Main Hall upgrades continue to chew up a lot of pop and culture. There is a lot of variability in those projected requirements chapter over chapter, not sure why. Chapter 19 alone will need 25K pop and 15K of culture to get two of its upgrades. This is a lot, even by the Main Hall standards.

Main Hall continues to take extremely long time to upgrade, but this is nothing new. Incremental increases here are pretty marginal. We will be closing in on 4 days per level construction time.

Coin and supply caps continue to grow, with a usual 10:1 ratio. And ramp up in chapters 17-19 is pretty massive, much more than we’ve seen before or expected. Between chapter 16 and 20, capacity is growing by more than a factor of 3x! I strongly suspect that this is due to the new tournament.

Costs

On the costs side, Main Hall still needs a lot of coins, but increases are not that significant, and it actually goes down quite a bit as a percentage of the cap. We still will need mana, and these scale up quite dramatically. Are you ready for 4mm+ of mana per level in chapter 20? This is practically my whole long-term mana cap in chapter 16. Given how stingy mana production increases are per chapter (I’ve got none in chapter 16), the only way for me to hit that would be to do mana decay reduction (which I currently do not do). Or dump enchantments with Dragon Abbey, but enchantments might be a lot less available with the new tournament setup…

Well, at least we don’t have those 2mm+ regular good costs we’ve had in chapter 16. For now, the future upgrades only need coins and mana. This might change at any time though.

Advanced Trader

OK, so Trader upgrades are coming. The last time we’ve had one was in Chapter 14, and it enabled us to trade T6/S3 sentient goods. There were no expectations of additional upgrades there. Well, that changes now. Starting from Chapter 17, we will be getting an extra level every chapter. Here is how it looks like so far:

Unfortunately, at this time not a lot is known about the most important part – what these upgrades actually do. There are rumors that L6 will allow to acquire a new resource – unurium, but what is the exact setup is unknown. Ditto for later chapters. It is possible that we will be getting another class of goods (on par with regular and sentient goods).

What is currently known is that at least dimensions stay the same for Chapter 17. But it is not going to last. Starting from Chapter 18 it will start to grow for the first time, and will quickly get up to 6×6 in Chapter 20. So if you placed your Trader in the static part of your city layout… well, you’ll have to make some changes 😉

Upgrade in Chapter 17 is not cheap – you’ll need 300K of S3. But as a one-time cost this should be quite doable. Just don’t dump all your sentients in the Spire right before the upgrade 😉

So watch this space, once we hear more about Trader production we should update this.

Residences

Let’s look at Residence upgrades – both regular and magic ones:

Residences did grow from 5×3 to 5×4 in Chapter 16. And then in Chapters 17-18 they flip into 4×5. And then grow again to 6×4 in Chapters 19-20 (no flipping though?). Residence dimension changes suck, as this often requires significant redesign of the city layout. At least as long as size stays the same, so depending on how you stacked your existing residences you may not need to remodel that much. Depending on how many residences you’re running, you will probably want to drop some when residences grow.

Benefits

Individual residence pop increases look fairly steady, except when they jump up a bit due to size increase in chapter 19. So most of that is an efficiency increase – which is good. Or is it? Take a look at those culture requirements – there are some massive increases there. Each upgrade in chapter 15 needed only about 2K worth of culture; such an upgrade in chapter 20 will need 10K+ of culture! Admittedly, the pop increase is also higher, but not to the same degree.

Coin cycles reach 24 hours in Chapter 17, and stay there all the way into Chapter 20. That’s unfortunate as we won’t be able to increase our coin storage in residences proportionately. All residences have the same 3h early collection which also stays the same.

Residences still have somewhat reasonable construction time; but there is a big jump in Chapter 17 from 22h up to 29h.

Costs

On the costs side, regular residences are moving away from fixed costs. Mana, fixed T1 and sentients are dropped from the requirements. Now you still need supplies, but also regular goods which are pinned to your boosts (but are also spread out pretty evenly regardless). Total amounts looks quite manageable.

And starting from Chapter 17, we see unurium making an appearance again. Yep, it is not just for the guest race buildings. All residence upgrades will require unurium, and requirements grow by a factor of 5x between Chapter 17 and Chapter 20.

Nothing is overly unusual on the Magic Residences side. After jacking up prices from 1400 up to 2000 diamonds per residence in chapter 16, this price sticks around all the way through chapter 20. And in chapter 20 magic residences reach 1mm+ max coins (and almost 34k of pop per building). Nice!

Workshops

Let’s look at Workshop upgrades – both regular and magic ones:

Workshops dimensions change in a really weird way. 5×5, then 5×6, then 6×5, then 5×6 again – but for two chapters, and then 7×4. The last one is actually a reduction in size from 30 down to 28. Weird I say 😉 And unless you have very few of those, remodeling every chapter can be pretty annoying.

Benefits

Production increases past Chapter 17 do not look particularly amazing, but look at those culture requirements again! For very modest production increases, you will have to tie 10K+ worth of culture – per each upgrade. Unless I am missing something here, this doesn’t make much sense. So while core efficiency goes up, it probably doesn’t after you account for increased pop and culture requiremens.

Workshops are notorious for having very long construction times. Well, that didn’t change 😉 Increases are gradual though, no weird jumps here. We’re closing in on 2 days per level in construction time by Chapter 20. By itself it may not matter too much, but if for whatever reason you need to build one from scratch… Ouch. This may take a long, long time.

Costs

On the costs side, regular workshops will still needs coins and orcs. We won’t need regular goods, but we’ll need supplies. And starting from Chapter 17 coin requirements jump up quite significantly. Still, this is unlikely to be a big problem.

Orcs requirements also jump up, but not dramatically so (and those requirements dropped a bit in chapter 16). So unless you have a lot of regular workshops this probably won’t be an issue.

And just like with Magic Residences, costs for Magic Workshops are the same. They jumped to 2000 in chapter 16, but now will stay the same all the way up to Chapter 20.

Armories

Let’s continue with our preview of Elvenar Chapter 17+ upgrades, and look at the Armories now:

Armories size also jumps around. Chapter 17 doesn’t change the size, but flips the dimensions to 4×7. Then we’ll get size reduction to 5×5 which will stay for 2 chapters before growing again to 5×6.

Other requirements continue to grow much faster than benefits. Between Chapter 16 and Chapter 20 training size grows from 500 to 800 (only 1.6x increase) and orc production grows from 1600 to 2700 per 12h (about the same, but let’s say 1.7x increase). But total pop requirements go from 6.6K up to almost 20K (3x increase), and culture from 20K up to a whopping 43K (>2x increase). Looks like terrible value to me.

Interestingly enough, they dropped construction time by 2x in Chapter 17 (from 21h down to ~10h), as well as coins requirements (see below). Doesn’t make it much more appealing. 5x Chapter 20 Armories (not a huge number) as it stands will clock you about 100K of pop and 200K of culture. Ouch and ouch.

As far as orcs production, we do see gradual increases. But still veeery gradual… I’d call them stingy. And while we see output time efficiency improvements, there are no improvements in input efficiency. It still takes the same amount of supplies per unit of orc production. Upgrades do not change that.

Costs

On the costs side, Armories were getting more expensive in terms of coins, supplies (and seeds). But from Chapter 17 numbers suddenly drop. And we’re not talking a little bit. Chapter 20 Armory will cost 3x less coins than Chapter 16 Armory (!), and less supplies as well. And won’t need seeds.

I sense a plot to lure players into upgrading where actual increases in benefits are subpar vs culture/pop requirements 😉

Tier 3 Manufactories

Tier 3 Manufactories get 4 more upgrades in chapter 17. The last time we upgraded these was in Constructs! So let’s look at these upgrades:

These are very similar, so it makes sense to look at them together. All tier 3 manufactories grow in this chapter 17 from 25 to 30 tiles. That part is not unexpected, it’s is time for T3 to get upgraded. But the next progression seems to break the usual mold of 4 levels every 3 chapters. Next upgrades come in each chapter, and just one level in each. And boy do they also ramp up all the requirements! So between L27 and L31 the pop requirements go up by more than 2x, while culture requirements go up by even more! Manufactories were always population hogs, and this just takes it to another level. At least their culture requirements were always pretty modest, but this is no longer the case.

Culture/Pop vs Output

Having said that, this part is not unexpected. This is similar to the increases we’ve got for T2 in Chapter 16. But it doesn’t stop there. Between Chapter 17 and Chapter 20 pop and culture requirements roughly double. Production, surprising as it may be, seems to grow in the lockstep here. So 1x L34 manufactory looks roughly equivalent to 2x L31 manufactories – but takes significantly less space. Ain’t that unusual? 😉 Compare that with L31 vs L27, where culture/pop requirements also roughly doubled, but production output increase was significantly less.

Construction time is also growing up rapidly. We were at about 30h per upgrade in chapter 14. Now we will start with 44h and go all the way up to almost 60h. Again, that’s per single level. I hope you won’t need to build one (or several) from scratch…

Production

Tier 3 manufacturies still produce both regular T3 and sentient T6/S3 goods. We do see gradual increases here, but nothing to write home about. No huge jumps here, just output time efficiency going up.

In Chapters 18-20 production increases are quite sizable, and roughly correspond to 4 combined levels before. Except we don’t have them every 3 chapters – there is one every chapter.

Interestingly enough, in the last T2 upgrade all levels (L28-31) were all the same efficiency with respect to sentient inputs, i.e. it took the same amount of seeds/T3 to produce sentients no matter what the level was. In the T3 upgrade this efficiency continues to slowly go up all the way from before L28 and up to L34. The input efficiency of inputs for regular goods (coins and supplies per unit of production) has been constant for a long, long time, and it didn’t change with the new upgrades.

Costs

On the costs side, tier 3 manufactories still need coins and sentient goods. Regular goods are replaced with supplies. Coins requirements jump up by a lot, but that’s not the big news. That would be introducing mana requirements for the upgrades, and we’re not talking token amounts here. Each of the levels will clock you at 1mm+ of mana. To upgrade a single T3 manufactory all the way in chapter 17 will take almost 5mm worth of mana. And almost 2mm of regular T3s. Sounds expensive…

So as usual, Chapter 17 upgrades do not look particularly appealing right away. Chapters 18-20, however, look more appealing at this moment. Well, a lot of things can change before we get there… 😉

Tier 2 Manufactories

We don’t get any new upgrades for Tier 2 Manufactories in Chapter 17 as we’ve done those in Chapter 16. But we will be getting more T2 upgrades in Chapters 18-20, so let’s take a look at these upgrades:

These are very similar, so it makes sense to look at them together. All Tier 2 manufactories grow in Chapter 18 to 30 tiles, and then they keep flipping from 5×6 to 6×5. Apart from that, you can take a look at Tier 3 manufacturies discussion above, and Tier 2 follows largely the same pattern in Chapters 18-20. Pop and culture requirements also double up over that period – but so is production.

All tier manufacturies start to look almost the same at those levels on most parameters except for regular goods cost that follows the same 1:4:16 pattern. Apart from that, different tiers are very similar (but higher tiers require a bit more pop and culture per tile).

Curiously enough, upgrade costs in coins and supplies drop quite significantly for those levels, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. In any case, that’s probably some of the least important characteristics.

Tier 1 Manufactories

We don’t get any new upgrades for Tier 1 Manufactories in Chapter 17 as we’ve done those in Chapter 15. But we will be getting more T1 upgrades in Chapters 18-20, so let’s take a look at these upgrades:

These are very similar, so it makes sense to look at them together. All Tier 1 manufactories shrink in Chapter 18 to 24 tiles, and then they keep flipping from 6×4 to 4×6. Apart from that, you can take a look at Tier 2 and 3 manufacturies discussion above, and Tier 1 follows largely the same pattern in Chapters 18-20. Pop and culture requirements also almost double up over that period – but so is production.

All tier manufacturies start to look almost the same at those levels on most parameters except for regular goods cost that follows the same 1:4:16 pattern. Apart from that, different tiers are very similar (but higher tiers require a bit more pop and culture per tile).

Curiously enough, upgrade costs in coins and supplies drop quite significantly for those levels, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. In any case, that’s probably some of the least important characteristics.

Military Buildings

Finally – let’s talk about military production upgrades. Here, we’re breaking the usual pattern. We used to have 4 levels of upgrades every 2 chapters, alternating between Barracks/Mercenary Camp (chapter 15) and Training Ground (chapter 16). Well, in chapter 17 we’re getting upgrades for all three at the same time, but just 2 levels each. And after that, we’re projected to get a single upgrade to each every chapter. So here is how these upgrades look like:

So all military buildings change dimensions in Chapter 17 (with Barracks actually shrinking!). After that they flip dimensions, some growing, some shrinking a bit for a period of time.

Pop and culture requirements for all these buildings are fairly modest, especially given how important these are. Growth there is fairly gradual. Except for Barracks in Chapters 19-20, there are some big jumps there. Weird, because that is not exactly the best building out there…

Benefits

All military producers by chapter 16 start to look almost exactly the same. Similar sizes, similar pop and culture requirements, exactly the same production speed. This pattern continues all the way up to chapter 20. This is interesting, because what they produce is definitely not the same. So you may not need/want upgrade buildings which units you’re not using, or not using much. Simultaneous production in all 3 buildings may or may not change that.

Training Grounds change dimensions, and none of the sides stay the same. You’ll likely need to find a new space for it. But on the other hand, it now looks just like an Armory or a Crystal Manufactory, so you may be able to lump these together. Pop and culture requirements also go up quite a bit – about a factor of 2x. But considering there can be only one Training Grounds, this is not as bad as some other buildings. Pop increases are tolerable, but once again, we’re looking at significant increase in culture requirements. You may want to get prepared…

Construction time also continues to grow, with Training Grounds taking longer in later chapters – again, not sure why. Regardless, this is unlikely to be of any concern at that stage of the game, with 1 building each and 1 upgrade per chapter.

Training speed continues to grow gradually for all buildings, there are no jumps here. Very pedestrian increases, but very useful nonetheless.

Costs

On the costs side, we will still need coins, supplies and orcs. Requirements are fairly similar to the previous upgrades. Orcs actually go down, given that we need fewer levels per chapter. Apart from that, there is not much noteworthy here.

Streets

Let’s wrap up our Elvenar Chapter 17+ upgrades preview with the street tiles. We’re getting usual street tile improvements:

There is not much to say about it, it’s rather straightforward. We’re getting smaller culture increase in Chapter 17 comparing to Chapter 16, but then the pace seems to pick up again.

Costs

Chapter 17 drops requirements for coins and supplies per tile quite significantly. But instead, we now have T3 requirements there. These are fairly modest for the end game. Still, we’re replacing capped resources with uncapped ones, so it will eat into our stockpile a bit. Doubt that it will make much of a difference though.

Well, at least we don’t need guest race resources for streets, or some more exotic resources (yet). Costs for Chapter 18-20 are obviously placeholders, we don’t know much about projected costs there.

Streets do not provide enormous amounts of culture, but any extra culture without additional space commitment is very welcome. Especially given significantly increased culture requirements as of late. So upgrading all roads in the time between chapters is usually a no-brainer as there is no downside. Yet 😉

So this is it for now. Let me know what you think about this preview of Elvenar Chapter 17+ upgrades in the comments below. Certainly let me know if there are other things that you know about these chapters. But I think this is it for now. We’ll see if there are more rumors out there, or if any changes will be made.

Stay tuned! 😉