Elvenar Woodelves – Day 29 [84%]

So, we’re in day 29 of Elvenar Woodelves chapter (see previous day at Elvenar Woodelves – Day 28). I expected some excitement over our chapter progress, but it turns out this was nothing comparing to what has happened during the first day of the scrolls tournament. Pure. Unmitigated. Disaster. Yep, it was that bad. Keep reading if you’re not of the faint of heart. You have been warned…

City changes

And now we have finished all the residences upgrades for this chapter. We’re practically done with everything that we planned to upgrade for this chapter. The things that remain are Main Hall and Mercenary Camp upgrades, and there is a good chance that I will kick these off tomorrow. I am also just waiting for the builders to kick off L5 upgrade to the Blooming Trader Guild, which will boost our settlement good production by another 1%.

Apart from that, I am still trying to squeeze L1 buildings for the event into every nook and cranny, but I just don’t have anything left available. After Mercenary Camp upgrade I will be able to move Builders’ Hut away from the road, and free up a tiny bit of real estate connected to the road. But that’s pretty much it.

Also, event timing is a bit awkward – right at the end of the chapter. So some of the special Elvenar buildings that I will get will still be at Woodelves levels; I also don’t have almost no space to spare with fully built out settlement. But I also just finished all the residences upgrades, so several event quests that require upgrades to high level buildings might be tricky. Usually, residence upgrades take care of that, but I almost finished the whole upgrade program, and next chapter upgrades are not close.

So I will likely upgrade my workshops one last level, as I just have enough pop, culture and the orcs, and builders will be available for these long builds.

Elvenar Woodelves progress

As anticipated, I activated Mercenary Camp Improvements today, and now we’re well underway on filling in SS Upgrade 31. We’re getting close to the end, with only Greenery Street, SS Upgrade 31 and Ancient Wonders of the Woodelves remaining as techs that require settlement goods. Drone Rider Promotion needs regular goods and mana only.

And just as I said yesterday, it will come down to the wire again. As you can see KP intake accelerated a bit, and now is neck in neck with the Forest Fabrications of Woodelves of Elvenar. And tomorrow is going to be a relatively big KP day, even if not the biggest. The critical question is, will we be able to avoid tech lock before starting Ancient Wonders? We will clearly need to activate all the other techs before tournament is over, but if we manage to unlock the AW tech, this will make a nice large KP sink where we can dump tons of KPs from the end of the tournament, and then just wait out the slow non-tournament days.

But if we will reach Saturday without opening AW tech, there is no place we can dump all those KPs into. That would be a time for Portal Profits! 😉 But we may still avoid it. Based on current forecast we may have just enough time to pull it off! Exciting days lie ahead 😉

Scrolls Tournament – 1* Day

Today is the first day of the infamous scrolls tournament. And 1* day it is, I don’t know how else to describe it. I thought it might be bad, but reality turned out to be much worse. Much, much worse. I though gems tournament a few weeks ago was the worst thing in quite a while – I forgot to place Unleashed Units Upgrade, and lost ~60 squads in round 1*. But after correcting that mistake, I was able to recover easily.

Well you know what? This time, I didn’t forget to put UUU down. I checked. About 5 times. Nope, it is there and it is not expired. So with UUU on, I managed to lose whopping 75 squads in stage 1* with 20 provinces as usual. Yep, you read that right. 75 squads! This is more than twice the amount of squad losses in 1* for several previous tournaments.

And the kicker? As if that wasn’t bad enough, these 75 squads were Sinister Cerberuses. Which take almost twice as long to build. Holy cow, this is bad. I already lost more troops in 1* than I started the tournament with (I did break it in two parts to complete event quests, so had a bit of recovery in between). And I already had a couple of defeats – in round 1*! Baaad, I tell you.

So for 2* and onwards I will be switching to Sword Acrobats. I don’t expect them to do much better fighting, but I can produce them twice as fast. Given that I have no stockpile of either troop type, I don’t expect to be able to recover during the tournament. There will be a lot of catering, and price will be high.

Terrible, just terrible. But we will survive. I think 😉

Event – Evolution of the Phoenix

Today is another day in our current 4 week long event – Evolution of the Phoenix. Again, 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 day 28 post. So here are my stats so far:

I haven’t opened any chests yet, but plan to go for several Golden Palaces tomorrow. This would enhance divine seeds production later in the Halflings chapter. Apart from that, I am already more than half way done with the sequential quest line, and got almost 1,600 essence so far. But earlier quests grant less essence, so there is a lot more than that in the second half of the quest line.

Even despite my severe space crunch right now, the event is pretty easy so far. There are no quests that require building non-boosted manufactories. Number of required relics/encounters is lower than it used to be. So far, things are going very smoothly. And after going after Golden Palaces tomorrow, I don’t see anything worth pursuing until quite a bit later. I should be done with the main quest line by that time, and will have as much essence as is possible to play with. Looking forward to it!