They are here! New Rangers of the summertime! If you have not checked out the new Edward video, go do it now! He's totally psycho behind the wheel, and Leonard is tapping into that madman personality for Sally's rescue! I like how Leonard is like Lucius Fox from Batman Begins as they step into the secret lair to show him his new acorn-mobile...
The most anticipated ranger, Edward, is in fact limited to the month of August only, so get him while you can. He is super fast and a big time splash ranger. My reservation is that Edward seems to cost a LOT and his cooldown is a whopping 38 seconds (standard, not mastered CD). On the bright side, he does have tons of health and is worth the cost of deployment. By the way, notice he has an adjective "Rider" in front of his name EDWARD. Does this mean we will get other Edwards in the future? :)
Compare Rider Edward to Susu and honestly it's close in damage. Edward is a bit less health, but he will survive most of anything that will come his way. The advantage with Edward is that he hits everything in the path of his acorn-mobile, which is tremendous range, and his resting position is quite out of melee range of the enemy. He's a good ranger, but you really need to give Edward sufficient support from other teammates to allow him to shine. Edward is likely to be a monster in Team Battle for his speed, range, and sheer road-ripping murderous rage.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Rider Edward
1360
141
3112.9
Very Slow
Fast
19
Susu
1140
167.14
4187.4
Normal
Normal
14
KSM
890
145.5
706.4
Very Slow
Very Slow
7
Summer Brown is so lazy... just lounging on the beach working on his beautiful tan. Very handsome, and very butch, but why so slow, Brown? Pick up the speed a little for Sally, ok?
Summer Brown is on a 12 second cooldown (standard, not master). Once mastered, he has 1.5 million HP which is huge for a 4 star ranger, even if he hits like a wet noodle. As a pure tank, he's leaps and bounds ahead of fellow 4-star health ranger Macho Moon, even more HP and HPM (health per mineral) than 5-star Thunder Brown. Really not bad if you are looking to put a cheap wall between you and the enemy.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Summer Brown
300
8.2
5078.7
Very Slow
Very Slow
6
Thunder Brown
370
44.6
3522.6
Fast
Slow
2
Hip Hop Brown
210
114.4
2376.0
Fast
Very Fast
1
General Brown
280
211.4
2347.6
Normal
Normal
2
Macho Moon
330
38.6
1769.4
Very Fast
Fast
2
Best Couple Brown
430
45.5
1847.6
Very Fast
Normal
3
Xan
500
34.0
1698.3
Slow
Very Fast
4
Chichi is the new better, faster Dwight! She's so expensive but she's worth every penny. Pretty quick and has a TON of HP. Chichi is one of the best of the new set of rangers. More health than any other ranger at the moment.
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Chichi
1040
494.8
4885.1
Slow
Fast
7.5
Luis
520
391.9
4056.4
Slow
Normal
4
Dwight
980
281.8
3414.0
Slow
Slow
6
Elle is one of only two ranged splash units in the 3-star grade (ok, one of three if you count Pew, hee hee) and actually for the 3-star quality, she does really decent damage at master level. The most impressive thing about Elle is her range. It is possible to even use her in Maze of Illusion where range is crucial to escape from enemy splash damage. She's more damage per mineral than Shu, believe it or not, and therefore more cost efficient to use. She is on a 8 second standard (not master) cooldown.
Elle has really good range!
Sorcerer Cony's 2nd little sister? Very cute, but so far not so amazing that I would want to use her for anything current content. Her range is not spectacular, which makes me wonder where she fits in, or if she is useful at all given her lackluster damage (when you compare her to other options, of course). I was wrong about her squishiness, though. Turns out, she's really butch when you look at the comparables.
Summer Cony stands too close to the heat. Her ice cream is going to melt.
Master level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Elle
290
77.5
507.3
Very Slow
Slow
4
Summer Cony
270
70.9
872.9
Slow
Very Fast
3
Songster Cony
360
99.0
411.8
Fast
Very Fast
4
Shu
460
58.7
400.7
Fast
Fast
4
Mully looks like he has some good uses. He's pretty meaty and does really decent damage, with good speed. I like him a lot in PvP because of the good balance of stats and fairly cheap cost (by today's standards anyway). The interesting thing about Mully and his closest competitor Dumpy is that they're kind of polar opposites of each other while still being very attractive choices for different reasons. Dumpy's dmg/min is double Mully's. Mully's HP/min is double that of Dumpy.They both move very fast (though in reality, Dumpy's still faster). In a game like Team Battle however, HP will get you much more actual bang for buck. There are stages in single player mode that allow for low health cannons like Dumpy to shine, but more often than not, survival trumps higher damage.
Side note... Mully's description makes me wonder if Sally wants his help or not...
Master
level stats ►
Cost
Dmg/Mineral
HP/Mineral
Attack Speed
Move Speed
CD
Mully
550
597.3
1645.1
Normal
Very Fast
4.5
Dumpy
380
1255.0
840.4
Slow
Very Fast
3
Anyway, most of these master rangers are not mine! Good luck, on your Gacha, everyone!
As for the others... leaked info hints that Cony, Elle (elephant) and Mully (white...thing) are ranged units while the others are melee units. Edward is a psychopathic driver who runs over things, so my guess is a splash ranger.
**************************
New rangers sneak preview is now available. Since the maintenance on July 30 at 16:10, a new Gacha panel picture was downloaded and reveals 5 new rangers.
It would appear that cool delight Cony and lifeguard Brown are possibly 5 star rangers, and the break dancing chick and beanie boy in red pants may be 4 star rangers. My guess is that the innocent looking worm, Edward, is making his debut as the new 5-star ranger. We all know how deadly Luis' apples are... and Edward eats apples for breakfast. He's going to be so OP.
In Line Town, Edward is a good friend of Sally's so we have often wondered where he has been in the rescue effort. He has finally arrived! If the past has been any indication, the new rangers will be coming very shortly, and so will another Double 5-star Chance Event. There is no hint as to whether any of them are limited edition, but if anyone is, probably Edward. In the past, Ola and Susu were the featured rangers in the middle of the Gacha panel.
Cony's very good at throwing weaponized ice cream. Another splash ranger Cony?
When I first heard that the Maze of Illusion treasure was increase in attack speed, my first thought was, "oh really, again?" :P My second thought was that it was one of two possible effects:
DPS (damage per second) of the ranger would remain the same, but the hit rate increases. Exmaple: Without the treasure, if Ranger X's DPS is 10000 and he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. Assume that with the treasure his hit rate doubles, then he would hit once every 2.5 seconds while his DPS remained the same, then each hit would cause only 25000 damage. This scenario causes no total damage gain, but has its perks as hitting more often can be advantageous.
Damage-per-hit remains the same while the hit rate increases. Example: If without the treasure Ranger X's DPS was 10000, he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. With the treasure, assume the treasure causes hit rate to double, then he is doing 50000 every 2.5 seconds. His new DPS would be 20000, effectively doubling it.
One way gives us just marginal benefits while the other gives us significant gains. So which way is it?
Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 has done the research for us! The text you find contained in the box below is an interpretation of their new article, Increased Attack Speed Treasure Comparison.
Article comes from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團 Author: 小為，黃郁弘 Research participants: 黃郁弘，小為，為執著，張家銘，黃名楊 Editor: 小為
Summary
LINE Rangers 台灣社團's testing has indicated that Maze of Illusion's treasure effect increases the rate of attack while preserving the amount of damage per hit. Each ranger's "attack" in the profile card represents its DPS (damage per second), and the damage per hit is derived from this number. The treasure preserves the ranger's damage per hit value according to its original DPS, but because the treasure causes an increase to the number of hits the ranger produces in a time period, it effectively is increasing its "true" DPS value. We can multiply the profile DPS value by the ranger's attack speed to find out how much the DPS has increased. For instance, Alice's profile lists her DPS as 53128. With 100% Illusionary Dice benefit, her DPS becomes 96693*. * This value was obtained by using the attack speed value discovered via research method discussed below.
So how good is this treasure? Since this area is so tough, many players have had trouble getting it. Once you get to stage 129, you have a chance to unlock it 100%. Not to disappoint, the raid team has finally obtained 100% of the treasure and solved the mystery of its benefits.
The Method
The test method used recordings of the rangers attacking as researchers watched them in 10x slow motion to see the attack speed of each ranger. They recorded it many times and took averages of their observations so as to minimize error. Their original attack speed values were posted in their first article on the topic here, which I discussed on my blog here. Here is a sampling of their findings post-treasure (measured in time between hits): - Sol's speed is now 2.38 seconds, down from 4.33 s - Witch Cony's speed is now 1.47 seconds, down from 2.67 s - Alice's speed is now 2.55 seconds, down from 4.63 s - Opera James's speed is now 1.50 seconds, down from 2.73 s Compare that to the original attack speed and you will see that obtaining 100% Illusionary Dice results in a 0.55 attack time reduction.
100% Illusionary Dice Attack Speed Coefficient
By battling a friend who does not have the Illusionary Dice treasure unlocked, the testers (who all obtained 100% of the treasure) saw that the Damage-Per-Hit value has not been changed, which is key to understanding how the treasure changes our ranger's damage.
Example: Level 70 Witch Cony
- Without treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against the tower is 35648
- With 100% Illusionary Dice treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against tower is still 35648
From this, we can deduce that the treasure does not affect base damage values. Witch Cony's original no-treasure attack speed is one hit every 2.67 seconds while with 100% treasure, she hits once every 1.47 seconds. Since the treasure increases attack speed while preserving her damage-per-hit value, it means that her true DPS value has been increased. Based on damage-per-hit:
2.67 sec/1.47 sec = approximately 1.82 times
...which means that if you take her profile DPS and multiply it by 1.82, you will get her new DPS. The treasure increases DPS by 1.82 times.
Other rangers' attack speed changes also reflect the 1.82 coefficient:
Sol 4.33/2.38 ~ 1.82
Witch Cony 2.67/1.47 ~ 1.82
Alice 4.63/2.55 ~ 1.82
Opera James 2.73/1.50 ~ 1.82
This is how we arrived at the previous example with Alice:
53128 (original listed DPS) * 1.82 = 96693
Afterword
Line Ranger stages 109 - 120 of the Skyscraper area originally released with the treasure "increase attack speed" but because they reduced the damage at the same time, they finally changed the treasure altogether to something else, increase attack range. The present treasure for Maze of Illusion carries the same description as the old treasure, but it is vastly different and very beneficial to players. Once you obtain 100% of the Illusionary Dice, go back to Skyscraper and you will realize just how much easier the area becomes with the treasure effect.
But the treasure effect is not just a DPS increase. It has substantially decreased the amount of time it takes for previously "slow/very slow" attack speed rangers to produce one hit. For instance, before the treasure, there was a very good chance that Sol would be knocked back or totally killed before landing even 1 hit of his red bomb. But now his hits are only 2.38 seconds apart (down from 4.33 seconds), so one quick burp and the enemy loses 250k!
Conclusion
Long story short, the new treasure is the second scenario that I posed at the start, the effective DPS is increased by a factor of 1.82.
Rest assured, the Castle in the Sky treasure is still in effect and it is still a factor in our rangers' damage-per-hit. The new attack speed is simply doing that amount of damage-per-hit more often.
The calculation of our rangers' damage is getting more and more convoluted as they add more treasure effects and multipliers. And it's getting all the more challenging to backtrack because they took away the enemy tower HP values that we used to measure against >:O It's all bit mind boggling, but we're getting more powerful all the same so I can't complain!
Thanks again to the gurus at LINE Rangers 台灣社團. They work tirelessly to find out all this cool information.
New notices went out to some players about a mysterious video about Sally and some gifts. And then there was no mention about where this video was or how to get our serial code to redeem gifts! Well here is the video! It's so very cute and tells the story of how Sally is, in fact, an alien fowl from the Yellow Planet! She's neither a duck nor a chicken LOL! I hope they make more episodes of this video series about Sally. I like it!
For those players who did not get the notice or are confused about this, don't worry. Simply go to your game Setting and click on the COUPON button on the right side and then you should get an event called the "Find the lucky code Event" which runs from July 25 - July 31.
Then you simply enter the code LINE GAME PLAY GOGO to redeem your free gift! The gift is random and will appear in your mailbox. You can only do it once!
Good luck, hope you guys get good stuff. Gifts vary from 3 or 4 star rangers, 2 Gacha tickets or 20 rubies.
Why doesn't Sally just do her funky dance to charm her way out of captivity? It would save Line Town Friends a lot of trouble... Work dat body.
[July 29, 2014 Updated with free ranger video selections]
Stage 125, 126, 127
For players with access to mastered premium rangers (specifically Ola Brown/Songster Cony/Sorcerer Cony, Prince James/Dancer King Boss, Bernard/Dwight/Susu/Thunder Brown, Hitman/Abdula/KSM) then 125, 126, 127, and 128 will play quite similarly. The goal is to splash down the tower (there'll pretty much be no point in time where you can feasibly single-target attack the tower). The key obstacles to overcome are getting rid of the Ryo mushrooms at the front and the Dice at the back.
The way to do it is to stall as long as possible during the enemy's first pass so that they all pop out. Then tornado them back and then allow all the non-boss enemies to walk forward ahead of the enemy pack. Then you can use ice shot, meteor, then invincibility to clear all the small enemies and weaken the slow mini bosses a great deal. Saving friend help for this critical point in time is best. This will be the common tactic used in just about all the strategies for the rest of the area. What will vary is the number of Spades and Crockys that you'll have to contend with in each stage, with increasingly stronger enemy towers. But the strategies are essentially similar.
And by the way, if you are having a lot of difficulty with stages 124+, spend the time to farm up a master Sorcerer Cony. She is very helpful.
In 125, you'll have 4 Spades, Ryos, Ambers and Dices. This is the free ranger method by Wei S, and it assumes you have access to at least a level 60 Sorcerer Cony from Stage 124.
In 127, you'll have 6 Spades, Ryos, Ambers, Coocoos, but NO Dice, so you can feel free to use your shorter ranged splash units like SoCo and Opera James. Below are 2 good examples by nunbkk.
You guessed it... it's like all of the above, but worse. The combination of Ambers, 11 Dice, Coocoos, 4 Crockys along with 7 Spades makes 128 absolutely brutal. Here is my favorite way to do 128. You need to have KSM, one other mastered long range splash ranger (Ola/Songster/Shu), and Red Brown. Your KSM can be level 70+ and it will still work, but you should have either mastered Ola or Songster to make up for it.
Of course, a free ranger strategy is possible for 128 and several great players have put out videos for it. But my favorite for free rangers is from a Thai player, Arsoitee STSerbvong.
If you have mastered Susu, and a lot of other heavy hitting splash rangers, give this one a try.
Stage 129 - Ryo, Coocoo - Lots!
129 dials the pressure back down again, and things get simpler, but more intensified doses of small enemies. I think they threw this one in here just to give you an easily farmable stage for the last piece of treasure. There are many ways to deal with 129 because of its simplicity, but for main tank, Thunder Brown is my favorite choice. He's really not that pricey to deploy, he's very meaty, and his cooldown is about 2 seconds (mastered). He's spammably delicious!
This video is by far my favorite strategy. It relies a little bit on friend help, but the majority of the pain being dealt is from master Shu while Thunder Brown tanks with his face in the shrooms.
After 129, difficult ramps up again as you head toward the end. Many strategies from 130 through 132 will assume that you have unlocked the treasure. And if you haven't, you really should farm 129 because it helps a lot.
Here is one way to do it with free + event rangers: Mastered Shu, SoCo, and Red Brown.
Stage 131 - Short path with Amber, Ryo, Dice, Crockys, Spades
131 being such a short path creates a terrible challenge with the Dice. But actually, it's not bad at all if you have Sorcerer Cony because she packs serious punch. The first hurdle is to set up your team. You need to stall the first Ryo with as few lowbies as possible, meanwhile deploying as many Conys as you can so you have a small army. Once you get a few Conys out, you can tornado everything back. Follow up with invincibility, ice, and meteor. The goal is to kill all the Dice. There rest of the stage is just keeping the enemy from moving so Cony can splash the tower down.
The Thunder Brown, Ola Brown and KSM trio on this video below by Cheng-Ling Chiang makes 131 fairly simple. If your Ola and KSM are not mastered, you could also throw in SoCo and/or Abdula in the team to increase your damage. If either your Ola or KSM are not mastered, the trio will narrowly miss the damage requirement, so you do need to make up for it by adding another ranger. This strategy does require you to have pretty high mineral production. If you're not cranking out enough units after the ice shot goes out, you might be too low leveled.
132 is the mother of all of the stages. It's got everything. The majority of videos out there require you to have Susu and if you watch the videos, even mastered Susu can't take the heat of this enemy procession for very long. I'll discuss 3 different teams to approach 132.
Premium Rangers: Another one by Cheng-Ling Chiang. This video uses mastered Scott, Thunder Brown, Ola Brown, Songster Cony and Dancer King Boss. Premium rangers, yes, but none of them are from the latest set of rangers. I love that this player pulled out Scott and Thunder Brown, rangers who have been long forgotten.
The strategy is similar to the Stage 124 technique. You stall with Scott and Thunder while leveling minerals and waiting for all the enemies to pop out. Deploy DKB and Ola with any spare minerals. Once they've beaten up your tower for several million HP, use Tornado. Then after using tornado, you wait until about halfway, when the enemies are still marching pretty close together to use Ice Shot, Friend help, Invincibility, and Meteor. After invincibility wears off and King King slaps your team with his hammer, you are guaranteed to get a Thomas, which will further slow down the group and stall while you wait for Hurry Up. You should keep deploying Scott nonstop, Thunder Brown on cooldown, prioritize Ola > Songster, and forget about DKB now. When Hurry Up starts, all the enemies lose half their HP, which should help you clear up King King, the remaining Spades and Coocoos. Once you are done with those, you have to deal with the march of the Hurry Up enemies, which includes another half-health King King. It will hurt, but if you keep the pressure on with Scott and Thunder, they should pretty much stop moving. Use Thomas as soon as you get him. Eventually, Ola Brown and Songster will KO the tower with splash. This is definitely a long battle, even with premium Gacha rangers. Impressive display by Cheng-Ling Chiang.
Free rangers including Event Rangers: if you follow this video below by 黃小翰 and his team, you're doing basically the same thing as the premium rangers, but timing is even tighter, and there's a lot of stalling. After all 5 of the Spades have spawned, you'll already be dealing with 11 Dice. The video waits for Dice #18 to spawn before using tornado.<insert exasperated emoji here!> I believe there are a total of 20 Dice during the normal phase of the stage.
After tornado, keep deploying Red Brown to stall the enemy pack to move slowly together towards you some more. Once there, unleash the pain with Ice Shot and Friend Help. Follow up immediately with Invincibility to maximize your army. Your goal while your items are in effect is to kill all of the dice. After invincibility wears off, you're just stalling again until Hurry Up and Thomas. Hurry Up will chop half of remaining health off King King and the Spades. After Hurry Up has begun, unleash Meteor and Thomas. That should get you very close to killing off the boss units so you can deal with the new Hurry Up units. No more dice spawn *until you get to the tower*, so just stall with Glenn (he's cheaper) and let Cony and Shu deal damage. Once you close in on the enemy tower, use Red Brown again because more Spades, another King King and more Dice start to appear. Continue to deploy Red Brown > Glenn > SoCo > Shu until victorious.
If you don't have Red Brown or Shu, Wei S has a pure farmable free ranger method as well. The basic strategy is the same: stall and wait for many enemies to pop out. Up until tornado it's almost the same as the 黃小翰 free ranger video, however, without Red Brown to help slow down the enemy march and Shu to out-range the Dice, you will be forced to use tornado much earlier. The second significant difference with this video is that King King is much closer to the home tower when Hurry Up begins. It's a longer distance to push toward the enemy tower again, but I suspect he did this intentionally and there's a reason for this. Those of you who read my post about Stage 108 will recall the genius of allowing Hurry Up to begin while your troops are very far away from the enemy tower. Because the enemies have to walk a great distance to you, it buys you more time to exclusively deal with the faster, smaller enemies as they march forward ahead of the mini bosses and spreads out the mini bosses so you can deal with them one at a time rather than all bunched together. This is how Wei S deals with the Amber bunnies, Crocky and the new Spades during Hurry Up. It's tougher in its own way (and about a minute longer than the method with Shu & Red Brown), but such is the life of a free ranger player. Masterful video!
This new area has created more uproar than any other new area in Line Rangers history. I've been busy and not really playing hardcore or playing to win since early last week so I've completely missed some of the drama that has been happening with the game. Though I didn't really live it, I definitely heard about some of the craziness. The short version is, the Maze of Illusion released and many players roflstomped over the whole thing just cleaving down the tower with Cherina spamming. Line then updated the area about an hour to 90 minutes later to buff the enemy tower health a huge amount to make Cherina spamming nonviable. Over the course of the next several days they did various things to the enemies and the stages to tune the difficulty back down, but at the same time they also changed some ranger stats to indirectly tune the difficulty up.
At the time of this writing, they're still tweaking some things and driving us all nuts. Strategies that worked before may not work now and strategies developed today might not work next week. Because of this, I'm almost glad that I've been too busy to really write anything about Maze of Illusion because it would have all been invalidated a couple of times over already, and that would make me pretty darn mad. It is also for this reason that I will not be recording any specific strategies because honestly, I'm not seeing the point if it's invalidated at any time. I'll discuss some good ones that are already out there, though. The area is really tough, and a quick glance at some of these numbers and it will be obvious why it's such a beast.
I did not confirm these numbers, but at a glance, these seem to be about right as of today. Who/where is nonmetoo@lineranger? If anyone knows, please comment & tell me
Example of the flip-flopping by Line: The widely distributed "Free Ranger" video for 124 made by Wei S worked really well for 2 days but on 7/22, the strategy no longer worked due to the tune-up of the stage. Then on 7/23 they reverted the stage back to the way it was pre-7/22.
I have some major gripes about post-release tune-ups, especially ones that happen five days post-release. It's frustrating to players because they've already been challenged once and may have finally nailed it down only to be slapped in the face a second time (or depending on how early you tried it, a third time). And then changing their minds and putting it back to the way it was again. I really don't see the point of it as a developer to do such needless tune ups on an already challenging boss stage. As far as boss stages go, I think the tuning of 124 is perfect where it was, "post-7/17", "pre-7/22", and "post-7/22". It is, after all, the first boss stage of the area.
My next biggest complaint is the reliance on Shu. Players without Ola Brown and Songster Cony can only hope to play with surgical precision relying on Shu heavily for ultra-long range splash to combat Dice. Seriously, what is a free ranger player to do if they missed the 2 Shu events? ...Which is why I'm almost positive that maybe in 3 weeks, they will tweak the stages again to make it possible to clear without Shu.
Stage 121 - Onslaught of Amber and Ryo
Going from 120 to 121 is quite a rude awakening. The ongoing theme of Maze of Illusion is that the damage is front-heavy. There is certainly a lot of splash, but the sheer uptick of damage on tanks compared to the earlier areas is amazing. 121 is by far the easiest stage in the area, and it's the only one that I could confidently label "easy."
This video made by michael suzuki is my favorite display of 121. It's simple, straightforward and plays to the strengths of all three of our free splash rangers (slow everything, but high damage).
Stage 122 - Ryo, Amber and Sally's genetic mutation
This stage is almost exactly the same as 121, but with the added damage from the long range Coocoo birds. It's a tough stage but it plays very well with lowbies. If you've been an avid player of Rangers in the last month or so, this video by free ranger master strategist Wei S may be right for you as it uses event rangers Red Brown and Shu.
123 may be the first place where the majority of people will get hung up. This stage is ridiculously tough if you don't have access to a few key rangers. In fact, from here on out, without ultra long-range rangers, you're in for some pain. For free players, you haven't gotten Witch Cony maxed, it's time to do that. Free players who got Shu are better off. Teams who have access to Ola Brown and Songster Cony are definitely better off. Why? The Dice enemy throws long-range splash damage to everything in the front to almost everything in the back. He deals a lot of damage and has a huge chunk of HP (even after he got nerfed post-release). I kid you not, this enemy is the biggest problem in the entire area. The way to deal with him is to simply out-range him, or wait till all of them pop out and tornado to restack them all for an all-out slaughter and hope you kill them all before your invincibility and ice shot run out. If you have SongCo, Ola, Shu, DKB or Prince, by all means, use them because they out-range the Dice's splash.
Here is Wei S' Shu free ranger video on 123. It does rely a bit on powerful friend help, but by and large a strong display of lowbie + Shu play.
At the time of this writing, Stage 124 only features 1 Spade enemy and therefore the strategy by Wei S works perfectly fine. This is very difficult to pull off without Shu (though you can replace Shu with Ola/SongCo if you have them). The highlights as provided by Wei S are: Begin with Xan, then Sol. You're stalling for all of the Ryos to come out (roughly until the procession reaches your tower and hits it for about 3-5 million HP) then you can tornado the whole lot back and begin deploying Sol, Opera, Shu and Friend Help. Right as the mushroom enemies meet your rangers, you want to use your invincibility. Before invincibility runs out, use meteor. Right before invincibility ends (try to time it so you waste as little time as possible), use ice shot. If all the mushrooms, bunnies and dice die at this point, then you know you've timed it correctly. From here on out, you're just going to need Xan, Shu and Witch Cony. Maximize your deployment of Shu and Cony by timing it so you only have one Xan out at any time. Xan can withstand 7 Spade attacks before dying, and you'll want to deploy a new Xan when the 5th attack hits the current Xan. You will likely hit Hurry Up, but you should still down the tower before the Hurry Up pressure becomes too great.
If 124 flip-flops back to the 2-Spade version at some point, you can check out this video by Katsunco, which uses Bernard, SoCo, Ola and Hip Hop. Wei S also figured out how to game the trigger so that you'd only ever get 1 Spade if the stage does pop 2 of them (one at the regular start point and one when you reach the tower).
For this part 1 post, I'll end it here at 124. The latter part of the area is quite different and needs to be discussed separately. For stages 125-132, see Part 2.
Since a lot of death is expected to happen throughout the course of this area's stages, how can you use Gold Brown to your advantage? It's "semi-random"... Gold Brown is triggered when you happen to lose a whole bunch of consecutive times on the same stage. This is an article brought to you by the LINE Rangers 台灣社團. Basically, if you fail to clear a stage about ~10 times in a row, you can expect that Gold Brown will come and assist you soon. If you wish to force a trigger, you can simply start the stage you need Gold Brown on, wait until the first friend support unit shows up, and if it is not Gold Brown, just pause the game and hit Restart. Repeat until he shows up. According to the article, Gold Brown is a Splash class, he does 235k per hit, hits once per 5 seconds (47k DPS), Normal move speed, and he has about 8 million HP. Neat-o!
Just something I noticed and thought was kind of quirky. Area 6's treasure increases tower HP. We know that Area 9's treasure increases damage by 45.45%. How much does Area 6's treasure increase tower HP? Well as it turns out, it's also 45.45%.
Level 1 Tower HP...
Tower has 14545 HP at level 1, with 100% Ancient Museum Treasure benefit
When you start the game, you begin with a tower HP of 10000 (at Tower HP level 1). When you gain 100% of Ancient Museum's treasure, your tower gains 4545 HP, for a total of 14545, or a 45.45% increase.
This knowledge isn't necessarily important, it's just kind of a "hmm, that's sort of neat" observation. :)
I previously thought that they changed the way tower HP increased by not relying only on the upgrade level, but also increasing it automatically with each player level you gain; this turns out to be false. If you don't level your Tower HP in the Upgrade screen, assuming treasure is still locked, your tower will remain at 10000 HP forever.
It's kind of funny, but on my test account, I managed to get all the way to stage 119 in Skyscraper before tower HP level 1 became a problem. Stage 119 is a very short path stage where you face off very early on with Richard the green mini boss who has the ability to long-range splash your tower. Of course, if you are playing with free rangers all the way up, you will need more tower HP much, much earlier.
But why 45.45%? It's kind of an odd number to go by. I wonder what other treasure effects are +45.45%...
Finally, the much anticipated Maze of Illusion has arrived. The new area brings new challenges and excitement.
Note: The buff adjustments to "some" balance rangers. And some buffs to "some" 3, 4, 5 star rangers.
A quick check (but not a thorough one) revealed that:
Dancer King Boss, Dwight, Sol, Xan, Sorcerer Cony, Gentlemen James, Thunder Brown, Charismatic Jessica, Cobe, Warrior Jessica, and Witch Cony got some minor DPS upgrades.
Sol, Lia, Alice, Masked Moon, Legend Boss, Honey, Abdula, Sindy, Songster Cony, Opera James, Biker James, Ellin, Fighter Moon, General Brown, and Lightning Jessica got significant DPS upgrades.
The new treasure has been revealed. I'm not all too impressed with it and it doesn't seem very original seeing as how they tried to do it once before.
The new enemies are pretty funny. Particularly "Amber" the grey rabbit that throws rabbit dolls. Go read the description. It's really funny.
One of the new enemies does not appear to be playing by the age-old rule. Dice appears to be able to assault your long-range rangers and skip right over your front-line. :O The area seems quite tough. The front line takes a terrible beating from Ryo the mushroom guy.
The new obtainable 4 and 5 star rangers may be of interest to those who have missed out on the previous events. The new 5-star ranger is Sorcerer Cony and the new 4-star ranger is Macho Moon.
Anyway, I'm short of time to play today so unfortunately not much more commentary presently. More to come!
