Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 13 [42%]

So, we’re in day 13 of Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons – Day 12). We have finally unlocked another research after a while, and it is Armories upgrade! And we immediately commenced the construction. But the real story for the next few days will be preparations for the upcoming magic dust tournament. There we will truly see if the Fire Phoenix will be a major game changer for any tournament, or it will be a nice addition for some of the tournament types. I have my doubts…

City changes

We’re ramping up the pace of our city upgrades. We have upgraded another residence to L24, and nuked one L23. I expect to sell grand total of 3x L23, so this is one of them. But we also unlocked Armories upgrade research today. And what do you know, this empty residence space came in very handy to start Armories upgrade!

This was supposed to be the trickiest upgrade left in this chapter. L23 armories are 5×5, and upgraded ones become 6×4. That’s the worst kind of setup 😉 So the plan was to switch L19 dust manufactories with L24 Armories when the time comes. But it still required some sizable empty space just to make the switch. And that’s where extra residence came in very handy.

Bottom line is, we now have two L24 Armories, and now most of the layout is stable until the end of the chapter. The last and only non-trivial upgrade left is Training Grounds, and I have a plan to make it relatively painless 😉

In other news, I have upgraded my Golden Abyss AW to L8. It was sitting there at L7 for a long time, and friendly neighbors and fellows contributed quite a few KPs there so I had to finish it. Was not planning to as we seem to be good on pop for now, but hey, an AW level is an AW level 😉

Elvenar Sorcerers & Dragons progress

Today, we have finally unlocked another research – it’s been a while! It is Armories upgrade, and I thought it would be quite useful to get it done earlier so I can deal with the shape change as soon as possible. So I even dumped another 5% Portal Profit just to close it now. As I mentioned before, we’ll need to use a lot of PPs overall regardless, so using some earlier is not a waste.

I already have enough research goods cooking for the workshop upgrade, and after that we would be able to open Banshee Promotion. That, with the Main Hall upgrade will lead us to T2 manufactories upgrade which I am really keen on getting ASAP.

Well, it won’t really be soon. Despite us getting on the steady production cycle, ETAs didn’t budge much. We’re still looking at 50 day target for Apprentices, and we should get all the KPs in about 35. I sense a big PP deployment in our future 😉

Magic Dust Tournament – recovery and preparation

Recovery mode is on from the tournament perspective. Dust tournament is probably the second worst tournament out there, right after the scrolls. And you probably remember how last scrolls went for me. Not good 😉

Again, our primary unit would be light melee. And no, I am not going to run with Sinister Cerberus. Last time was enough. Take a look at Woodelves – Day 29 report. Suffice to say, losses were similar (and terrible) for Sinister Cerberus and Sword Acrobat units – but Sword Acrobats are twice as fast to train. So I will go with Sword Acrobats this time. We need to build up as much capacity as we can. We already had a head start with ~40 squads, and now Dwarven Bulwark is producing free light melee units (not much though).

But we have a Fire Phoenix! Right? Well, yeah. But as amazing as it was in the last tournament, I doubt that it will translate as well here. The reason being that the extra damage is irrelevant if your units are dead on arrival. And our melee units will be facing ranged units with high initiative. This is… not good 😉 And Phoenix will do nothing for defense. I expect heavy casualties – though may be not as bad as without the Phoenix. We will see…