Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 03 [13%]

So, we’re in day 3 of Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 02). We’re recovering a little bit as far as tournament is concerned. But is it too little, too late? Also, S&D settlement popped up in the city practically overnight. But so is another shantytown! Why? What is going on here?..

City changes

Whoa, look at that – yesterday, we didn’t have any settlement to speak of (well, there was this Wisdom Square), and today the have almost a full University right there! Yep, today was a huge KP day, so we activated both Campus and Alchemy Faculty. And the builders got busy! They put down the Campus, and now we have 6 Alchemy Faculties. Six!

But my Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons target for L1 Campus is only 2, and even for L4 campus it’s 4. Well, as we can’t build other faculties yet, we’ll make some surplus of Flasks in these extra faculties, and then will tear them down when the time comes. We have space and builders, so that’s efficient use of resources. Not to mention that ramps up our apprentice production in the Wisdom Square (as measly as it is).

Shantytown is back!

But wait, it seems that shantytown of L1 buildings is coming back! But I thought that we were done with the event? Well, so did I, but we’ve got some extra quests, with some massive requirements. But this timing is actually not bad at all! We still have some space, and can reasonably clear some more – unlike the last time when we were really pushing the limits. So as you can see, there is a ton of new L1 workshops and T1 planks. And we’ll need that many to keep up with all these 24/48 hour productions!

The only problem is, we didn’t have any pop to build – we used all the excess on upgrading Mercenary Camp to L6 and L7… New residence upgrades are still days away, and this ghetto is too big to be supported by low-level residences. What a pickle. How to deal with that?

Well, event buildings to the rescue! I am usually not big on culture/pop hybrids, but this is a perfect opportunity to deploy one. Our fellowship won Fields of Gold 4×3 building during last Fellowship Adventure, and I didn’t even have plans to put it down unless necessary. It is necessary now, and I had a perfect 4×3 spot for it that is kept there to facilitate residence upgrades – which will come later. And when this time comes, I will simply remove another 4×3 hybrid building with lower pop (A homestead and two baby buggies, 720 pop vs 1430 pop). This was just perfect.

So now I have tons of pop again, and can keep upgrading Mercenary Camp up to L8 😉 Oh, and I relocated Carnival set into South-East corner, as planned. So despite these unexpected event changes, things are looking pretty good!

Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons progress

So we’re done with Campus and Alchemy Faculty research, and are more than half-way done with Necromancy Faculty. That was a lot of KPs for today! And we keep negotiating map provinces as well. No wonder we’re running a bit ahead of the research plan by about 1 day now. I expected that; once we move into production phase we will slow down again.

Apart from that, ETA picture looks as bleak as before. We haven’t run into research that needs settlement goods, but we will soon and that’s where we will have to start dumping portal profits. Only then the ETAs will improve. Until then, we’re about 3 weeks (!) behind the KP schedule. Well, more like 2 weeks considering that KP rate will drop, but still. Ouch…

Silk Tournament – 2* and 3* day

Today was a big tournament day. Big in terms of KPs – but also big in terms of losses. But it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, so there is that. So first things first – losses on 2* day (worst loss day) were about 60 squads. That’s a lot, and significantly more than in the previous crystal tournament (35 squads). But I also got an answer as to how effective Unleashed Unit Upgrade really is. Yesterday, I didn’t have it enabled for the first 15 provinces or so, and total losses from 1* round were higher than the ones for 2*. I didn’t think it would be that material given that you get more absolute losses in later provinces (and I had UUU down for the last 5), but results are pretty clear. Yep, I wasted a ton of troops yesterday – entirely unnecessary.

But the 3* round looked much better – it was almost on par with the crystal tournament (22 vs 20). That’s close enough. I am wondering now if my results for crystal 2* were accurate. Other tournaments had about 45 squad losses for 2*. We’ll see how other stages look like, but I remember that crystal tournament losses in 3* and later were uncharacteristically low. Not sure what happened then.

While things are looking better, the unfortunate consequence of insufficient troops in the beginning, and slaughtering them off without UUU means that we’re already pretty low on troops. We’ll probably manage to fight all stage 4*, but after that I am not so sure. We may need to do some catering. We’ll see…

Event – Evolution of the Phoenix

And what do you know – when I thought that I am all done with the main quest line of the current event, Inno decided to add another 20 quests.So today is another day in our current 4 week long event – Evolution of the Phoenix. Again, I won’t be repeating much what is written elsewhere, so check out these resources:

• Thorough description of the event, mechanics, quests and prizes at Elvenar’s Gems of Knowledge: Evolution of the Phoenix
• Handy spreadsheet of quests and prizes by TomatoeHu: www.tinyurl.com/phoevo (expired). All credit goes to her!

Also check out what I am planning to go for in the Woodelves – Day 28 post. So here are my stats so far:

New quests are significantly harder – as in, they require more space or more time. There are plenty of 24/48 hours productions, so that’s why you see shantytown back in my city 😉 But if I play this right, I should be able to close it before I need more space to expand my settlement.

In any case, additional quests are very much welcome as they will allow to evolve my Phoenix by 1, maybe even 2 extra levels. If very lucky, it may allow to max it out. Well, my daily draws were anything but lucky so far…