Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 02 [07%]

So, we’re in day 2 of Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 01). Another week, another tournament has started. And another snafu right from the get go. We’ve got yet another crappy start. This is not a good pattern to follow…

City changes

As anticipated, I didn’t finish Campus research, so changes today are relatively minor. I keep building temporary Weeping Willows for that extra mana, so got 2 more for now. These will be sold when I start ramping up the settlement, but for now I have space and nothing to build.

For the same reason (and with a bit of extra pop from temporary residences) I started to upgrade Mercenary Camp – it is now at L6. Have to keep the builders working 😉

I have also deployed 18 Royal Restoration spells into one of the Frost Carved Christmas Trees, and upgraded it to S&D chapter. This jacked up its mana production from 19,600/day to 25,600/day. This is more than a whole Willow!

Carnival set is pretty good!..

But somewhat unexpected change is the blob on the East border. This is actually a set from the recent Carnival event that I’ve got while in Orcs. I didn’t plan to put it down (was thinking about disenchanting it for spell fragments). Luckily, one of my fellows pointed it to me again, and I did run some numbers on it.

Carnival set is actually pretty damn good! My primary target is Marching Band building which will start producing divine seeds in Halflings, and will do it better than all 4 Golden Palaces that I’ve got so far. And the seeds is what I am after.

Getting a single 2×4 building attached to a whole useless set didn’t sound like a good idea. But the set is far from useless! Revelers Fountain seems to be an excellent mana producer in 3×3 footprint. And Jester’s Tavern looks decent as a T3 producer, but it is also bigger at 4×4.

Festive Fireworks and Banquet are decidedly less useful (coins/supplies/broken shards etc), but at least Fireworks building is small (2×3). Banquet, on the other hand, is massive at 5×3, and nets the least benefit (to me). Well, it turns out that I don’t have Banquet 😉 I am pretty sure I had it, but probably disenchanted it some time ago. The good news is, I don’t really need it even in a set. Only one building benefits from 4 links, and it is Revelers Fountain for some extra mana. 4th link boost is noticeable, but probably not worth extra 15 squares even if I’d still have Banquet. But I don’t 😉

…but there are no free lunches.

Now, it’s not an entirely free lunch – as I’ve got the set in Orcs, I will need to upgrade it using Royal Restoration spells to make it truly useful. The good news again is, I don’t need to upgrade the whole set, only the buildings I really like. Which means I will need to upgrade Marching Band and Revelers Fountain, for the total of 17 RRs per chapter. This is pretty good for the benefit provided! I probably won’t be upgrading Jester’s Tavern – while decent, it is also 16 squares, and it is just not worth the RR commitment. Festive Fireworks I am definitely not upgrading, it will be there purely as a set link booster.

Now, current location is temporary; I will likely move it to the south-east corner tomorrow. But bottom line, upgrading this Carnival set as well as the Winter Market set should solve all the mana and divine seeds issues up to and including Halflings. That would be awesome! Now, I just need to get more of those Portal Profits… 😉

Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons progress

Just as I mentioned above, I haven’t finished Campus research today. But tomorrow will be the biggest KP day of the week, and I expect to unlock the Campus, and likely activate Alchemy Faculty as well. I should have just about sufficient mana to do so.

With that, tomorrow we should start filling in the space with the Campus and as many Alchemy Faculties as I can build. While initial setup will be 3/3/2 (Alchemy/Necromancy/Arcane), there is not reason not to overbuild Alchemy while I can’t build the other ones. I will need more Flasks from Alchemy earlier on, comparing to other upgrade goods.

Silk Tournament – 1* day

Today is the first day of the silk tournament, and it didn’t go well. Again. What is happening, tournaments seem to go much worse for me than a few weeks ago. Look at those losses – it is practically double of what I had just 2 weeks ago. I’ve lost 64 squads just in 1* round, doing the usual 20 provinces.

Wait a second, it might have been, ahem, my mistake – at least it contributed significantly. It turns out that I forgot to place Unleashed Unit Upgrade building (+25% health)! Well, I did after I noticed that something is wrong, but by that time I was already doing province 15. Yeah, I shouldn’t be making mistakes like that…

Having said that, the losses still seem to be on the high side. I am comparing with 2 weeks ago, crystal tournament. We used the same primary unit – Elder Treant, and losses were pretty small. Let’s see how it looks tomorrow, when I can compare apples to apples. But so far my assumption that 120 squads would be more than enough might not hold. That would be bad…