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?