Did You Know?

Did you know that...?

On some levels, if you advance toward the enemy tower too quickly, you trigger a second set of enemies to spawn and the stage becomes harder at the beginning. Don't believe me? I didn't either. I noticed it first on stage 60 when sometimes the stage would pour enemies in my direction, while sometimes it was much easier to deal with.

Known stages with mid-point triggers: 60, 76, 80 81, 88, 95, 97, 98 ,99, 100, 101, 104... and many more.

Take a look at stage 60. Stage 60 always starts with one big elephant boss accompanied by two blue mages. 

If you open by powerleveling minerals, the boss will most likely be 2/3 way to your tower and you'll battle the elephant boss like this. If all your rangers remain on the left side of the pathway, all you will contend with is the elephant boss and some blue mages. Relatively easy.

Unfortunately, if any of your rangers (including lowbie units) tread past the midpoint of the path, you're going to trigger a long stream of big pink bouncing enemies. Stage 60 becomes significantly harder and you will need a lot more fire power to deal with the boss and all these beefy pink guys simultaneously.

If you safely kill the first elephant boss on your half of the path, you will see the first pink enemy pop once you step past the midpoint. Then you can safely deal with him and his friends without a boss also wailing on your tanks.

Here is a look at what happens when I purposely choose a very fast moving team and I send one lone Jessica out to meet the boss about 5 seconds after the stage starts.

The pink guy bounces out right as Jessica passes the midpoint. Him and all his friends will soon all be rolling out along with the blue mages. 

Many more enemies pop out if you choose to fight the enemies on their side of the pathway.

Be on the lookout. When in doubt, try letting the enemy come to you and fight them on your turf. See if that doesn't make things easier. Also, re-evaluate the Move Speed of your team. Most times faster is better but sometimes, it can screw you over.

Specifically for stage 81, if you manage to fight the pack of skating penguins that spawn at the start on your half of the screen, the three white enemies with 7 eyeballs who do splash damage to your front line will NOT spawn until you have finished killing the penguins. This makes stage 81 a great deal easier. I opted to use Frog Brown as my health ranger instead of Macho Moon because Frog Brown walks much slower and his HP is comparable. And while yes, 81 has a very short pathway allowing the penguins to get uncomfortably close, it is well worth the effort if you don't also have to deal with the multi-eye guys right away. 

Other Interesting Stuff

And finally, the following is a list of some, perhaps obscure, interesting things that aren't explicitly stated anywhere in the game.

 - The mailbox can hold a maximum of 200 items at a time, but if you exceed that, you won't necessarily lose it. The actual capacity is 400 gift items, but it will only show the most recent 200. Once you start to empty out your mailbox, your older mail will flow back in. If you leave items unclaimed for more than 7 days however, then you are out of luck.

 - The ranger profile tells you how much damage per second that ranger can do, not how much damage they do per hit.

 - When a ranger or an enemy unit is knocked back the first time, it means they've reached half health. When they get knocked back a second time, they will die. The type of ranger you choose has no effect on how often an enemy is knocked back.

 - Rangers all have different maximum range.

 - Various rangers have different cooldowns (the time before which you can deploy another of the same ranger). Splash rangers generally have a longer cooldown than their same star rating single-target rangers. Speed rangers typically have shorter cooldowns than everyone else. But even within class and star rating, some rangers have varied cooldowns. This is important to keep in mind for stages where the enemy comes at you ultra fast at the start of the stage and you need to deploy lots of rangers fast to defend.

 - Speed class rangers outrun other class rangers even if they are both listed with Move Speed "Very Fast". For example, Health ranger Xan's Very Fast is still slower than Speed ranger Honey's Very Fast. Splash ranger Warrior Jessica's Very Fast is slower than Speed ranger Elf Cony's Very Fast. Even among different Speed rangers, their move speed varies. Honey is slightly faster than Elf Cony, and Glenn is faster than Scott even though all 4 are listed Very Fast. Speed rangers across the board also have lower deployment cooldowns than other class rangers.

 - If you synthesize/combine a ranger with another of the same exact ranger, it will gain a 20% bonus to its stats (as well as increase its maximum allowable level by 5). You can do this up to 4 times, totaling to a maximum of 80% increase. Though the lovely splash screen (shown below) is gone, this principle is still applying to all rangers today. Keep this in mind because often times if you only have one of a 5-star rangers, they may not be better than a five-combined 4-star ranger. [Note: There is currently a bug in the game where it says you gain 20% more attack and HP every time you combine the same rangers together, no matter how many times you do it. This is incorrect. The 20% bonus applies only the first 4 times you combine the same rangers.]

 - As soon as you unlock all 3 sections of a Treasure, the help that you get from that Treasure kicks in. To get full benefit, you need to get 3 stars from all three sections of the zone. If you have not unlocked at least 1 star from all three sections, the Treasure will not be active.

 - All bonus events and login bonuses reset according to Japan local time. Time your playing time accordingly to benefit from events.

 - When you play the Normal GACHA machine with Friendship Points, the color of the ball that pops out has no bearing on the rating of the Ranger you receive.

 - Sometimes the game will award you something called a "GACHA Ticket" which you can use to play the 2 to 4-star Normal GACHA machine. If they only give you 1 Gacha ticket, don't spend it on the Normal Gacha! They will likely hand out another one some other day. If you get your hands on 2 Gacha tickets, you can play the Premium GACHA which gives you a shot at 5-star rangers.

 - If you choose to bring a Friend with you to battle but you do not deploy your Friend during that stage, you lose the privilege to deploy that Friend for 24 hours anyway. Choose carefully! Same with Sidekicks.

 - Pinch your screen and you can zoom all the way out to see the entire stage pathway. :O

More to come as I think of them...