Happy 2015! New Rangers!

Happy new year, everyone! I wish everyone a very beautiful 2015 and may the fortune of Gacha be with you.

I'm sorry I can't properly post up pics and such, because I'm not on my computer. But I wanted to start a new post so that players can feel free to post their comments about the new set of Rangers here.

It's pretty cool that Fisher Brownie is available "for free"  as an event ranger. But the drop rate, as expected, is very low. Hope you guys get it! It's about time Brown's little cousin Brownie got some attention again!

Red Sand Hill + Limited Ranger Adjustments

Right out of the gate, many players have already completed all the new stages of Red Sand Hill! Hard to believe, but it's true! Almost exclusively up-to-date premium players, but still, it's quite fast to already have dominated the new map. 

One of the exciting things I found quite fascinating is the new adjustments (read: buffs) of the older limited rangers, as briefed in the notice we received prior to the new area release.

This may not mean much to some, but I am very happy about this because it brings older veteran players like me, who have for a while dropped out of the race and stopped paying for rangers, a reason to come back into the fold. My dear old faithful, Ola Brown got a huge bump in stats, as did Susu and others that followed him. Whether or not it makes them "useful" again is up for debate, but, what it represents is the idea from LINE that they recognize old rangers need to be brought "up" to make them more competitive. They've done it before for older generation rangers... and then quickly scaled up the power of the newer rangers again. So we know this "new buff" is only temporarily relevant, as with all things in Line Rangers.

Nevertheless, rejoice, friends! New area, new life to old friends, new treasure. Have fun!

Surprise 2x Exp, Coin, Treasure Day + New Area Soon!

...I'm not sure about this. I feel like we've seen these enemies before, with different skins. But nevertheless, I'm sure players are looking forward to new stages. 

It always amazes me how the game maker feels fine just throwing such disjointed enemies together into one area. The guy with the leopard print vest looks like some kind of a hippie mechanic. The cactus wielding pilot has nothing to do with the zombie kid, deformed baby, and the sports player. I mean... what is going on? Does Mephisto have schizophrenia? Multiple personality disorder? Background-wise, the area doesn't look very interesting. It looks kind of sad and desert-like... just desolate. 

Anyway, who cares, I found Sally and rescued her already. Forget it, guys. I got it. :D And don't even worry about her. She was in good health and just hanging out. I took her and she's just chilling in my Christmas tree now, eating my food and watching my TV.

If you insist on still playing the game, however, today is a surprise event:

Have fun, everyone! And HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

The 22 Days of Christmas

LINE's holiday present for all players is going on for most of the month! Those of us who have been playing a while know that 1 Gacha ticket lets you play the 10-ruby Premium Gacha, and 2 tickets lets you play the 20-ruby Premium Gacha. However, 10 Gacha tickets did not allow us to play the 5+1 Premium Gacha -- and this is still true. The special nature of these December tickets is that gathering 20 Gacha tickets this month will allow you to play the "Christmas Special 10+3 Gacha" one time. So, if you log in 20 days this month, you will have another chance to get the 4 December-only limited Christmas rangers. See the notice below for the precise language of the giveaway.

Remember, Santa Moon, Rudolph Brown, Carol Edward and Kevin are all limited to December 2014 only. Once 2015 rings in, they will all be unavailable.

For the next week, it has been confirmed that we are no longer getting 5 rubies daily for daily attendance. I know it's a bummer because we've kind of gotten used to it. But the Gacha tickets are a similar thing. Those of you who have been vigilant should have mastered Mach Brown as well (I'm a baddie, I haven't).

Also, 4 more days to enter the Character Design Contest!

Christmas Rangers Soon

Edit: New Rudolph Brown, Santa Moon, Carol Edward and... "Kevin" are here as the December rangers. The 3 LINE Friends are so cute in their holiday garb. Kevin has a silly Christmas tree t-shirt on which makes him borderline cute, I think. He's like a walrus without the tusks. Maybe he's a black bear? I'm not sure!

By the way here is how the Gacha panel picture looks for the next month, so it looks like Edward is once again the limited ranger. He's almost sure to be a splash type again. And he's still going to be screeching down the road on a vehicle since he lacks all appendages. Kevin might be a 3 star because he's off in the back of the picture. Poor odd kid left out. Brown looks reminiscent of Best Couple Brown so maybe he'll be a health ranger again. His punches shoot out Christmas trees, so I'd watch out for that attack!

Edit: they're all 5-star Rangers!

It remains to be seen if these rangers are worth getting, but I'd be interesting in having at least one of each since they're dressed for the season!

And don't forget, you have only 7 more days to enter the LINE Rangers Character design contest!

Design Your Own Ranger!

It is finally here! I have been waiting for a contest like this for such a long time. Truth be told, I have more than once tried to see if I could conduct my own design-a-ranger contest on my blog, but because of the international audience and various currencies/Google Play/App store country restrictions, I couldn't figure out the logistics of how to actually give out the prize, which I wanted to be rubies. :( But LINE is doing their own official contest so now here is everyone's chance to get their creative juices going. I'm really pleased that they opened this contest to all regions. We have a week and a half to enter!

I'll be the first to admit that I am horrible at drawing but I think I might try to think of a nice ranger to add to our collection. Everyone's always saying one thing or another about the new rangers that appear in the game. I think this is a really good chance for us, the players, to show them how it's done. What do WE want in a ranger? I'm not sure if we are allowed to use Brown, Cony, James, Jessica, Leonard, Boss and Moon but I assume that it is allowed. Did you want Salaryman Moon to be a ranger? Or Santa Claus Brown? Lumberjack Boss? Flight Attendant Jessica and Cony? Get to work! (Update: I sent them a question asking if we are allowed to design a new LINE friend ranger. The answer pretty much said to create your OWN rangers, which I read to mean do not piggy-back off LINE Friends and make a new Moon or Brown, etc.)

I encourage everyone who's ever had beef with the game's palette of rangers to rise to this challenge! Show everyone what you come up with. I'm pretty sure a 4-year old child could come up with something better than the ranger known as "Summer" lol. I would love to hear and see it if you want to share your creations. If you guys come up with drawings, please post them on imgur.com and show us a link! The prize is not just glory, it's cold hard rubies and figurines! (See Notice for details)

I *hope* that the winning design of the competition will be available to ALL players via some event or as a permanent bonus roll in the stages (so it will be a "free" ranger). I don't want the winning ranger to be the new limited edition or new Premium Gacha addition to the roster. No, the winning ranger should be ours!  I think it is only right because it is a ranger inspired by the players, made for the players, voted by the players.

Finally, the somewhat disappointing thing about the contest is that it appears to be more of a "touch-and-feel" design contest rather than a mechanics contest. What I mean is, the contest is being judged based upon the appearance of the ranger and its story. We are not given the option to suggest what powers we want our creation to possess, i.e. type of ranger, attack speed, range, move speed. I don't know if they will take it into consideration if we do submit our designs with those characteristics included. But I think if we want a balanced ranger that is worth having, it should be well-made and not just the same old crazy overpowered trend that LINE gives us every month.

So anyway, get to work! :D December 7 is the deadline!

Race Through Treacherous Swamp

A new event came in today! If you finish Treacherous Swamp before December 15 18:00 GMT+9, you will receive 1 Muay Thai Brown in your mailbox on December 16 in the afternoon GMT+9. So if you haven't finished Swamp, it's time to put the pedal to the metal. If you have already cleared Swamp, you must wait until December 16 afternoon GMT+9 to receive Brown.

In addition, for *brand new Line Rangers players only* who registered on November 25 or later, if you clear stage 60, you will receive 100 rubies in your mailbox on December 16.

It's nice to know they are still rewarding new players who joined the game. Muay Thai Brown is a couple generations back now, but depending on who you have on your team, he could still be pretty useful... my issue is with the fact that you have to clear 168 to get him. Unless you are sittingon 4 MT Brown and are missing 1 to master level, I don't see how having a single MT Brown will make a difference to your world. Oh well.

Treacherous Swamp and Second Chances

The new area is out tonight! Some people have raced ahead and completed it already, while some of us are still taking the leisurely route. The double-chance Gacha event is up again with 30% extra rubies when you purchase any right now, so if you want another shot at limited edition ranger, Red, this is your best chance. I do think that for people saving up rubies that it's best to keep saving for the next set of new rangers who will surely be even more powerful in various ways.

The other very exciting thing about the new release is the "re-balancing" of rangers. I haven't personally taken a very close look at everything, but at a quick (very, very brief) glance, many of the free rangers as well as earlier generation of rangers have gotten a mighty boost in attack power, range, etc. This type of boost will help free players and veteran players get over many hurdles, and is probably a hint at the difficulty level of Treacherous Swamp. They want to make sure that free ranger players have a decent chance if they work hard enough to master the freely obtainable rangers and as always, try, try again.

I'm kind of put off, as many other people are, about the Ninja Warrior ranger who is new -- and reportedly -- only available to paying players who buy $49.99 USD worth of rubies now. Hmmm. It seems kind of dirty to me. I mean, he's good but... is he $49.99 x5 good? You be the judge...

Edit: I thought about this again. And well, $250 isn't such a bad price for a master Warrior Ninja. The truth is, when you play the Gacha on average it will take you around $400 worth of rubies before you receive 5 of any new 5-star ranger. The $250 price tag may be a turn-off but if you think about it rationally, it IS more of a bargain and of some level of consolation that you will *definitely* get the new ranger rather than leaving it up to chance. Of course, the $400 is an average and some people can get the new ranger that they are hunting for much cheaper, perhaps even cheaper than $250. Good for them. But in my own experience, it's never been the case personally. In hindsight -- and I am being 100% serious and honest about this -- I had so much trouble getting Sorcerer Cony and Ola Brown when they were flavor of the week that if LINE flat out said if you give us $250, we will give you SoCo/Ola... I would have taken them up on their offer. In reality, I spent much, much more trying to get them in the Gacha and it was excruciatingly painful on my wallet.

That said, is warrior ninja worth it? Well, he's basically a pseudo tank unit. He has more HP/mineral than our previous bargain tank unit, Muay Thai Brown. His attack is really quite good (especially when you compare it to the nonsense that is Somchai). So as far as being useful, he is definitely good. But whether or not you need to have it is up to you and your current team composition.

Side Note (credit to T'Golf): Warrior Ninja looks like Glenn in a ninja suit. Put on a ninja suit, get upgraded to 5 stars. Well played, Glenn. Well played.

Also, the new treasure is...(Look away now if you don't want to know!)....

Increase ranger's experience gained. Taking a wild guess here, but since almost every other treasure was a 45% increase, I'm going to guess that full treasure benefit will also be a 45% bump in ranger experience gained. (BTW, some players who are more diligent than me figured out that the Waste Land treasure for Player EXP gained was also +45%).

Treasure pic credit goes to fellow LR player, Bozz. 

Good luck and have fun, everyone! I might go ahead and try to play some more Line Rangers seeing as how World of Warcraft has like a 6 hour queue to log in since the new expansion pack got released yesterday lol...

Dirty Business and Tonberries

Hi everyone. I know I'm a bit late about it but I haven't been home all day to post though I woke up and saw the splash screen about this new "swamp" that's coming up soon. I refer you to my old post about Waste Land where I basically said that we seem to be getting more and more dirty and gross as we journey closer to Sally. LINE seems to be keeping with the theme of creating new areas with a gross factor. Why can't they have made Mephisto to be a really classy villain who enjoys fine wine and modern contemporary design? For a while, I thought with the Skyscraper that we'd get to see some cool, interesting evil lair but now I'm wondering how nasty Sally's dungeon must be. Poor ducky -- she's duck, I don't care what anyone says!-- must be suffering in a horrible cell if we have to slob through a swamp to get there.

So anyway, Treacherous Swamp is the new area that's coming and if we look historically for clues, then the zone will drop live probably tomorrow or so. It's kind of odd though: They usually say new enemies added and new treasure, but this time they only say new enemies. Does that mean we're not getting a new treasure? There are still plenty of ideas for treasures I think, so I'm not really sure why they wouldn't give us a new treasure, even a bogus little one that doesn't help much would be something, and something is better than nothing. 

I read all the stuff the commenters wrote about Chuck and it's quite interesting how this 4 star birdy rocked the free player world a bit. Seems like he is good stuff. I haven't played much Line Rangers recently and I farmed him about 20 or 30 feathers and didn't get a single one and I was just like, aw, forget it. But then a couple days later Chuck became available on Friendship Gacha and I laughed because if there's anything I have a ton of, it's Friendship Points! Got 5 Chucks in a hurry and job's done. :) I guess we should have seen it coming because they did promise it in the original Angry Birds x LR notice but I wasn't expecting the Friendship Gacha bird to be the same bird as the Stage Clear bonus bird. Oh well. I felt mildly tricked by it, but it worked out in my favor. 

Red is available until November 17, so we have a few more days before I'm sure a new set of rangers will come. I was on the fence about the Angry Birds as rangers but I think I've decided now that I would rather LINE stay on point about their characters. We've had quite a few deviations with crossover events (Pili themed rangers, Toyota Yaris, Angry Birds) and yes, they were OP in their own way during their time but why can't we have more interesting LINE Town character rangers? Jessica and James have hardly been explored, in my opinion. I originally fell in love with Line Rangers because it had a story and it was a rescue mission. It tied in very closely with the lovey dovey feelings I get when I think about the LINE friends. I felt a need to save Sally and I wanted Brown and Cony to lead the charge. But now anyone can come along and bam-pow their way through the stages to save Sally... it's lost a certain charm by breaking into the LINE Town universe. I know everyone has their gripes with the current situation of the game, but my specific plea at the moment is for the game's upcoming rangers to relate back to Line Town. 

Also, where are my Final Fantasy fans? Give me a shout if you get this. The enemy in the lower left corner of the splash screen: Tonberry? If his right hand is hiding a dagger, we are all screwed because Tonberry is a bad-ass. 

Hrm...

Don Tonberry

Final note: I added a related links section and the LR database created by Jessica is quite nice and impressive. Check it out! Anyone have any other English resources out there?

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!

It's end of October/Beginning of November so of course we can't be without more new rangers. 

They have continued the Halloween Gacha theme, but it's slightly changed. Instead of a hefty 200 rubies, you spend 150 and get a guaranteed chance to obtain either a 4-star or a 5-star ranger, effectively weeding out all 3-star rubbish ranger results. The yield is now "8+2" for a total of 10 rather than "10+3" for a total of 13. The price per spin is technically better this time (by a fraction, at 15 rubies per spin), but with the number of rangers consistently rising, the odds of you getting the couple of rangers you really need continue to diminish with time.

This month, the limited ranger is "Red" who is apparently an "Angry Bird." Honest to goodness, I don't know what Angry Birds is about because I've never downloaded the game, but I've briefly seen other people play it. It's a totally different genre from Line Rangers, so this is a strange collaborative event between the two games. And being a Limited Ranger, Red is pretty powerful. He has a *TON* of HP but he's going to need it because he's ultra-close range to the enemy. He's on a very long cooldown as well. Check him out:

That's pretty powerful! Here's what I think is the thing: Brown, Cony, Moon, Jessica and James have all been going at this for months. The Angry Birds heard that some guy was messing around with their fellow bird and decided it's time to bring it. Come on, Line Town Friends. It's time to put your game face on. Don't let this crossover bird steal all the credit. [Update: Just read the game notice... This story is exactly why Angry Birds are involved in the Sally rescue!] 

By the way, if you read the notice carefully, for the rest of November, there will be other Angry Birds events which will grant more of their characters to Line Rangers players. Pretty cute! 

Kung Fu Brown is an agile close-range splash unit. His animation is really funny. It looks like he wants to shove his nunchuku up the enemies' face. BTW I'm not a kung fu expert or anything, but I'm pretty sure nunchaku are not... part of Chinese kung fu? At least not traditionally? I guess it's just a Bruce Lee theme. But back to business: 183k splash, very fast move speed... for 330 minerals. Wow, just wow. KFBrown is going to tear melee enemies a new one. 

I was initially excited to see the splash screen include a new Jessica, but when I saw what she was I'm completely underwhelmed. I wanted her to be 5-star and very powerful. I think, as many of the readers have expressed, a powerful Jessica ranger is very much overdue. We've pretty much never had a super desirable Jessica. I know, back in the generation 1 days of LR, Charismatic Jessica was a dangerous kitty, and when Warrior Jessica was placed into the map as a free obtainable ranger, it was indeed a big deal and a huge help to the free ranger players. But it's been months since she was relevant in the least. Come on, we want OP Jessica! A 4-star premium health ranger with only 2.2M health with pretty much negligible attack in today's standards... is pretty useless. Driver Brown was free and he sports 2.4M health and costs less. I really don't see the point. Sorry, Jessica :( LINE made you just as a punching bag for Kung Fu Brown (see her description).

Thunder Brown's girlfriend Thunder Cony has finally decided to join the fight. I'm not sure if I like her yet. On the one hand, she's super fast and super cheap for fairly decent attack. If she's spammable, she could be pretty deadly in PVP. And the description... well, I hope they fix it. Cony's not going to be happy about being male.

Happy spinning, friends. I haven't got any rubies to spare this time around, but if you guys are getting the new rangers, share your opinions below! Let us know how they play into the Wasteland stages, etc.

If you're not getting the results you want, here are some hilarious pictures of people, presumably in Halloween costumes, to cheer you up. I don't know where these pics were originally from or who these people are, but they are so awesome. LOLOL

Happy Pre-Halloween

First of all, yes, Waste Land is open now! The new treasure increases EXP received.

Hrmmmmmm... preparing for expansion of max player level?

Whoo! Free random rangers

I was all tickled when I got my Mach Brown and Mach Moon today in the mailbox but then when I opened the game this evening, I saw:

• Halloween Cony!!!!!!!!
• Gacha Event updated (limited time) - More on this in a minute

Halloween Cony is so cute. I love her little wizard hat. She reminds me of my first Cony, Magician Cony. When I first started playing the game, I got Magician Cony and I could not be happier. Halloween Cony brought me back to that nostalgic feeling a bit. It's funny to even use the word "nostalgic" for a game that is less than a year old, but it's been a long journey. 

Halloween Cony IS pretty OP. I like her a lot. I don't have her mastered, but even so, she's crazy powerful. Her cooldown is, as expected, a bit long, but it's not as long as some other "OP" splash rangers out there -- and this is based on no numbers whatsoever, by the way. It's based on me playing 2 of the new stages with her on my team and just kinda marveling at her. Her speed across the board is just fantastic. And the stats? Brace yourself.

488k splash damage! 3.53M HP?! :O!

Mine isn't mastered, but she's still pretty freakin' mighty

Back to the gacha event that is going on right now until the end of Halloween -- when I first read the splash screen for the first event, I was all super confused. What on earth does this even mean? Well, this is how it breaks down:

• It's a whole other gacha panel that costs 200 rubies to play once. 
• The possible contents of your gacha result are 4 or 5 stars only, meaning there are NO 3 star rangers in the Halloween Gacha
• Instead of 2 bonus free spins by paying 200 rubies, you get 3 bonus free spins (because if you do the math, 100 rubies buys you 5+1 = 6 spins, 200 rubies would normally buy you 12 spins. The Halloween Gacha buys you 13 spins instead). 

I haven't spent any serious money on the game in a few months and I've passed over a few limited rangers as a result. But this Halloween Gacha event is very compelling. It's attractive because you're guaranteed to not get any rubbish 3 star crap that frankly, I don't even use for combining anymore (I just sell for coin). It's more worth it than any Premium gachas were previously because of the 3 spin bonus. Now, unfortunately, you are NOT exempt from receiving farmable free rangers nor the lesser exciting 4 and 5 star rangers from the earlier generations, but it's still mounds better than receiving Hero Jessica for the 500th time. 

My yield from 600 rubies: 

Halloween Cony x2

Luke x3

Hip Hop Brown X2

Maestro Boss x2

Cherina

Muay Thai Brown

Junior Cony x2

Legend Boss

Luis

Somchai

Honey

Bernard

Sorcerer Cony

Gentleman James

Summer Brown x3

Biker James x3

Frog Brown x3 (first time I've gotten him in Gacha, but he was reportedly in the mix intermittently)

Sindy x2

Fighter Moon

Songster Cony

Macho Moon

Rapper Boss

Lightning Jessica

Abdula

Clara

General Brown

This Halloween Gacha event is going on for 2 weeks so if you wanna throw down some money, now's the time. It's what we've been clamoring about for months and this is LINE's response to our feedback. All in all, I'm pleased with this. This is the most satisfied I've felt with the Gacha in a very, very long time. Perhaps in all of my time playing this game. BTW, we are supposedly getting increased chances (whatever that means) to receive all October new rangers during the current Double Chance/Ruby Bonus period as well (until October 18). 

So with all that excitement, I'm heading into Waste Land! The zone looks pretty hard and I'm kind of confused, because I think I saw the birds from Maze of Illusion in the first couple stages... running out of ideas for enemy design, maybe? Oh and... guess who? THUNDER BROWN is the new farmable 5 star ranger. I would be pretty pleased with this selection, but I admit that Thunder Brown's arrival is dampened a lot by the availability of Driver Brown. Still, for players who didn't have the feathers, time or opportunity to grind stages to get the limited edition Driver Brown, Thunder Brown will make a great addition to the tanking team.

Oh and Alex is the new 4-star. Meh. :P

I hope you all have fun!

Entering Wasteland

Yes, yes, yes a new area is finally upon us. It's been almost 2 months since Ravine of Death's release on August 19th. This area is way long overdue. We were all getting so restless. The game's lost a lot of veteran and original players, but it has also gained a lot of new players so by any measure the game is still hot. Die-hard fans are still competing in Team Battle. But let's get down to business -- the rescue business, of course.

The journey we have taken so far has been descending into darker and darker realms. We started in the cutesy and shiny Valley of Wind. We went through some carnival-like play land, museums, frozen temples, fiery pits, up to perilous high... but it seems like lately we're going down deeper and deeper depths. Ravines and wastelands... dirty and dingy places with rotting fruits. Wasteland is so nasty that Mephisto wouldn't even hang out there -- he's only left a hologram of his big derriere shaped head to taunt us. Surely Sally is not here, but it is good to see that we're still getting a bit closer and close enough to at least see his sinister face.

It won't be long now. We'll dawn on Wasteland soon. In the meantime, make sure you're grabbing your Railroad Browns and Noruruns. Event ends in a week. Driver Brown is no longer available!

The Train is Coming...

Update: Newcomer Brown is a railroad theme ranger. He's only 3 star and he's a giveaway for all players who have reached player level 7. He's also available for bonus roll after specified boss stage clears. Norurun, a 4-star speed ranger, is available for bonus roll after specified boss stage clears, also for a limited time. I guess Norurun is not a water tank. He's supposed to be... a train car/carriage or a propane gas tank...or something...

I am very happy that Railroad Brown is available for everyone to get! He's a pretty decent Balance ranger for 3-stars, and excellent for new players just starting out in the very early stages, certainly. Both Railroad Brown and Norurun are available after clearing the end-stage boss stage of each area -- But only specific lower stages have the new Brown, so check the notice carefully to see which you need to grind.

Read carefully to see which stages contain which rangers for limited event

Also very cool of them to bring back: Driver Brown! He's absolutely an unmissable health ranger to have at the current stages of the game. He's very useful as a free event ranger. If you didn't get a chance to grab 5 of Driver Brown before, you definitely need to get this done now. 

________________________________________________________________________

Original Post: Could it be another new Brown is coming? This one looks like some kind of an officer who rides a whistle. He's really cute! Brown has the best outfits. He's probably being released together with the little guy below who looks like some kind of a water tank. The water tank's name is Norurun. There are only 2 in this set of new characters, so maybe it is some kind of promotional event. Or worse, maybe just some limited regional event :(

I hope it is a "free" event ranger giveaway. This Brown is pretty adorable. Based on looks alone, I kind of want to have him. Today, we also got some new stage production files so maybe new single player stages are coming as well. Time will tell.

P.S. Reader Dali is right from his previous comment. Stage 144 was significantly nerfed down today. Enemy attack damage and health points have been reduced. 144 is much easier to deal with, especially with event rangers Driver Brown and Songster Cony/Shu. Very, very doable now. If you've been stuck here, try it again today. You'll make it through just in time for the new area.