Maze of Illusion Part 2 (Stage 125-132)

For stages 121-124, see part 1.

[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.

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Here 125 done with Master Bernard, Dwight, Ola Brown, and Songster Cony.

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Here is another 125 done with Free Rangers: Glenn, Xan, Shu, SoCo, Opera James, from Arsoitee STSerbvong.

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In 126, you'll have 4 Spades, Ryo, Ambers, Dice, but no Coocoos.

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126 with free rangers: SoCo, Shu, Masked Moon, Xan, by michael suzuki.

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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.

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Stage 128

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.

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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.

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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. 

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If you do not have Red Brown, here are Scott, Rei, Glenn, Shu and Sorcerer Cony.

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Stage 130 - 2 Crockys, Dice, Coocoos, 5 Spades

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.

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Here is a 129 video with pure free farmable rangers by michael suzuki: Glenn, Scott, SoCo, Opera James, Xan

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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.

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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.

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Stage 132 - King King and everyone else

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.

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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.

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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!

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Good luck, everyone! May we all find Sally one day...

Maze of Illusion Part 1

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."

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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.

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If you are a purist, then michael suzuki has a 3-lowbie strategy that may break a few fingers, but is very good as well.

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For the master of Gacha premiums, here's a video by Naratah featuring Susu, Hitman, Hip Hop Brown, Dancer King Boss and Dumpy.

Stage 123 - Dice of Death

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.

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Stage 124 - Amber, Spade, Ryo, Dice, Coocoo

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. 

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If you have Ola, SongCo and Dwight mastered, there's the LOL easy way to do 124.

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!

Gacha Probabilities - June 30 - July 3

The results are in from the June 30 - July 3 Double 5-star Chance Gacha Event! If you participated, thank you for contributing to the survey (created by 小為) to provide the Line Rangers player community with helpful information.

The Results

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 have concluded their survey once the event finished and they were able to collect 329 sets of data from participants, a total of 3449 results (raw data is here) from Gacha. Results were:

• 3★%: 1008 (29.23%)
• 4★%: 1001 (29.02%)
• 5★%: 1440 (41.75%)

This 5 star result is very similar to what the previous results were from their mid-June study which were:

• 3★%: 30.56%
• 4★%: 21.55%
• 5★%: 47.89%

The Analysis

Authors 小為 and 楊濟安 of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 posted this new article about their findings with some more information and analysis on the numbers. Contained within this box is their article interpreted in English. 

The results being 3★ 29%, 4★ 29% and 5★ 42%, by lumping the 3★ and 4★ odds together (an average together of 58% of the samples), we can say that the Gacha is only slightly biased towards 3 and 4★.

Now let's move on to some more in-depth useful information. 

1. How many times do you need to play to receive one super ranger? 

  - The authors defined super ranger as one of the ten 5★ rangers that everyone typically wants to get: KSM, Susu, Cherina, Luis, Hitman, Prince James, Dwight, Dumpy, Dancer King Boss (DKB), Hip Hop Brown. There are a total of 24 5★ rangers on the roster now (Ola is no longer obtainable). Let us assume that the odds of each ranger are the same within their star grade. The chance of you receiving one of these shiny 10 rangers is 10/24 * 41.75% = 17.40% during the event. You'll need 100/17.40=5.75 spins of the Gacha on average before you can expect to receive one of the 10 super desirable rangers. 

2. How much do I need to spend on average to get a level 80 Susu?

  - For this question, we're going to have to assume again that the chances to receive each of the 5-star rangers are equal.

   Susu is 1 out of 24 of the available 5★ rangers. Multiply 1/24 by our 41.75% to obtain 5★ and you'll get a 1.74% to receive Susu, which will take approximately 57.5 Gacha spins for 1 Susu. You need 5 Susus to max out so that means you actually need about 287.5 spins.

    Well, 287.5 spins means you have to play the 5+1 48 times (4800 rubies). I don't know how much they charge all the other regions in the world but in US Dollars on the Android Google Play market during the Ruby Event we can get 494 rubies for roughly $49. In order to get 4800 rubies, we'd have to buy almost 10 packs, which costs $491 USD! It's possible that you get unlucky and have to spend more, but there are those who scored Susu on their first few spins. The average is simply for illustrative purposes.

    That said, I sincerely hope that if you were aiming to get Susu, that you did all your Gachas during this past event because if you don't do it during the double chance event, chances are you'll end up spending a great deal more money. But then again, these are averages based on some reality, some assumption, so take it all with a grain of salt.

3. Should I spin with 20 rubies or 100 rubies? 

   - This is a popular question and to answer it, we won't talk about the part that luck plays, we will only discuss probabilities. 
    This question involves the concept of independent events. If we assume that the 6 results from playing 100 rubies are each independent events, this means that one spin of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next spin of the Gacha. The authors believe that the 6 results from 100 rubies Gacha are independent events because a lot of people reported getting four 4-stars and one 5-star, or three 5-stars and three 4-stars. This kind of result would not be possible if the game developer had set the 100 rubies Gacha to be dependent events. For instance, if we believe the Gacha is set up to predetermined dependent results, then we should often get results of three 3-stars, two 4-stars and one 5-star, with some variability but not to the extreme of some people getting four or five 4-star rangers in one shot of 100 rubies. So if we assume that both the 100 rubies and the 20 rubies Gacha are independent events then we can use the July results of 41.75% to do some calculations.

For this example, we'll just assume that the chance of you receiving the ranger you want is 1 out of 100 for sake of illustration. 

    - If you used 20 rubies x5, the chance of you getting the ranger is 5%. 

    - If you used 100 rubies, the chance of  you getting the ranger is 6%. 

Based on 41.75% chance to get a 5-star ranger, we have a 17.54% of getting one of the desirable super rangers. 

    - If you use 20 rubies five times to spin 5 times you will average only 0.877 desirable rangers (which is to say playing 5 times can possibly yield you zero desirable rangers). 

    - If you use 100 rubies once to spin 6 times, you will average 1.05 desirable rangers (which is to say you'll get at least 1 desirable ranger on average in the bundle of 6).

    The difference is slight, but it lies in the fact that 100 rubies gives you that one extra spin. Remember the answer we got to question 1 above: you need to spin 5.75 times on average before you can expect to get a desirable ranger. Playing 100 rubies puts you inside the chance to get one since you are spinning 6 times. In this light, playing the 100 rubies game is relatively better. This was deduced based on the information that was collected from the data set. Of course, your personal experience may deviate from this because this is the "average."

4. Should I spin while there is no double chance event?

The short answer is no, of course not. Here's why:

   - Since we have a 41.75% to get a 5★ ranger during the double chance event, then it goes to reason that without the event, our chances are roughly 20.88%. 

Our chances to get a desirable super ranger: 

   - With double chance event is 17.4%, averaging 5.75 spins to get 1 ranger

   - Without double chance event is 8.7%, averaging 11.5 spins to get 1 ranger

This makes it pretty obvious that during the double chance event your odds of getting something good are much higher. The authors recommend, as I also do, please resist the urge to scratch the itch while there is no double chance event going on! For if you do, you're very likely going to spend some time with this guy.

Go away, Pew. We still do not love you.

Concluding Thoughts

I've stated this before and I think it is important to repeat this: The 41.75% number was an average from a vast pool of results. It is possible that you played and rolled on some very different results than the average. And surely you have seen on the internet instances where people have rolled insanely good results. But this is why this is the average. 

The other consideration that often makes players sad after playing Gacha is the fact that your personal set of "desirable" rangers may be a lot smaller than than 17.4%. Maybe all you want are Susu, Hitman and Cherina. In that case, you're rolling on much smaller chance and the chances of you getting something you don't want are much, much higher. 

Astute players will notice that supposing 5 star chance remains the same in the future, as long as LINE continues to release more new rangers, the chances of us getting each ranger will be lessened each time. This is made especially clear when you compare the difference in the odds of Susu (1.74%) and last month's Ola Brown (2.39%) which translated to an average difference of $148. This really does put players who have been playing for a long time in a worsening situation. For instance, myself, I have almost all of the rangers on the roster (not all are masters) and the ones I still need are just a tiny percentage. The chances of me getting what I want keeps diminishing. It's a tough situation, but I can understand that as a game maker, they need to keep pushing out newer, better, shinier products for people to want to buy. For me, the breaking point is near, but for many others, there's still plenty of incentive to buy in. 

Last but not least, a special thanks to 小為 for pooling all this information for us to share.

Team Battle Mode: Basics

Team Battle Mode can be a lot of fun and challenging but it can also be a real pain sometimes. If you are new to the game or new to the latest update which introduced Team Battle Mode, please read the basic premise of it on my first post.

This post will strictly be about the goings on of the battlefield itself. The objective of this post is to give some guidance to players who are just starting out in Team Battle (or Friend Battle), so I will make a lot of generalizations. It will most likely be irrelevant to players who have already pounded their way into the top 1000 global ranking. The very nature of going head-to-head against other player teams is dynamic so there is no way to lay out flawless game plans. The only thing I can do is call attention to some general guidelines and ideas to help you formulate your own battle strategy.

By the way, for the people who are copying/translating my content (this post or any other post) for view somewhere else: I don't mind that you're sharing the knowledge to a wider community, but do me the courtesy of linking the info back to my page, please. I spend a lot of time writing this stuff and would appreciate the link back for acknowledgment. Thanks.

Rank

When the global ladder is reset, you will not have a rank and it will just show you as --. Your first battle game will determine your rank and your score (which always starts at 1000). If you started playing team battles very late after the ladder reset, you may be "--" rank for a long time before you fight your way into the top 50,000 ranks. You only get a number rank if you're in the top 50,000.

Ranks update about once every 5 minutes so if you don't see your rank change right away, wait a few minutes and check again. Your rank will reset every Monday at 06:00 Japan Standard Time. You can see both the global rank on this screen and how you stack up against everyone on your Friends list. Your badge type/icon will change according to how many points you gain throughout the week (click on the ? button to see the ranking badges). Ranking matters a lot as it affects the opponent you will be up against.

The Opponent AI 

The opponent player that you face is determined in part by your global ranking and in part by your score, though the exact algorithm I cannot say for sure. If you are just starting the week's ladder unranked, the server may put you up against some opponents of variable difficulty because they don't exactly know where you stack up yet. It's still very early in the game so I don't have any solid details to confirm this but in my own game play this appears to be the case.

From what I can tell so far, the difficulty of your opponent relies on 2 things: (1) the ranger team and the ranger's stats, which is obvious, and (2) the opponent's AI, or artificial intelligence. At low ranks, when you are going up against other low ranking players, the AI will be quite easy, simple and predictable. They'll use fewer items, upgrade slowly, and deploy rather slowly as well. I'll update when I know more definitively, but for now I will generalize that as you gain points and break through to new badge levels, the AI steps up its game. The AI seems to tune higher and sharper in terms of its decision making. You'll find that at higher ranks, the computer will make marked determinations on how to open the game based on the layout of the path and what you are doing. When it decides to upgrade minerals and when it determines is the time to rush in to attack you are active decisions, not predetermined steps. One of the things that will make or break the game is timing of item usage. At very high ranks, the AI will accurately determine when to unleash items on you to maximize utility and ruin your day. At lower ranks, the AI uses items pretty poorly, and you can turn that into an advantage.

As dinky as the game may seem at times, I must applaud the developers on their tuning of the AI for Team Battle Mode. It's really well done and it plays impressively. So far, I haven't noticed any glaringly obvious robot moves like "if this happens then the computer always does this."

Path Length

The battlefield length varies from battle to battle and the one you get is selected at random. The length of the path affects your entire strategy. In the long paths you will most likely be able to safely upgrade minerals 2 or 3 times before you have to deal with any serious onslaught of enemy units. In the short path, it's much more of a gamble. If you get units out first, you might be able to snipe the enemy tower before the opponent AI has a chance to react. If the enemy immediately deploys units but you are upgrading minerals, you could be dead before you know what's happened. 

The long paths favor faster moving rangers as well as rangers with a very long attack range. You have the opportunity to spread out your team over a lot more space so that your back row units are less vulnerable to enemy splash damage.

On the other hand, short paths tends to allow slower moving power hitters to shine more. Long range units are still valuable, but the slow, hard hitting rangers get a chance to do some serious damage in the short path. It is important to keep this in mind because for short paths you'll most likely want to apply a lot of offensive pressure on the opponent so that they are forced to spend their minerals defending rather than building up a lot of minerals to deploy big hitters like KSM. By the way, you should always be wary of enemy splash rangers on ultra short paths. The splash radius can be bigger than you thought and your tower may be taking damage even if you're not standing right outside of it.

Short paths lend themselves to really fast tower sniping. If you are quick and your team runs fast, you can also do it with long paths, but short makes this obviously easier. You can strategically plan to use your items in quick succession to overwhelm and obliterate your opponent on a short path.

Like in single player mode, in every PvP team battle you must make a decision on whether you want to battle near your tower, in the middle of near their tower. The length of the path and the composition of your team's rangers will help you determine that.

Item Usage

Supposing all rangers, treasures, upgrades, and friends are equal, only 2 things set you apart from the opponent AI: the timing of your deployments and the timing of your items. Items can give you an upper hand if you use them carefully. If you have not read the quirks I found out about Ice shot and Meteor, check them out here. The kicker about items in team battle is that the opponent can use them, too, and now we will have to consider how they can be used both offensively and defensively.

Ice Shot 

If you thought ice shot was strategically important in normal single player mode, it is even more critical in team battle mode. While the opponent is frozen, gauge your team's status. At its current state, will your forces be able to overtake their front line? When the thaw happens, will your front line be safe? Should you upgrade your minerals to prepare for a huge push after the thaw? Or do you want to continually deploy more units to directly push your way through? This is likely to be the only few seconds you have to reconsider your strategy and make big changes if necessary.

Offensive: 

  - Combine tornado with ice shot to freeze the opponent right at their tower to maximize on splash damage. This is a very strong combination to use when both teams are equally matched to push things in your favor. This is also a "rush" tactic you can try to use at the beginning of a match to stunt the opponent's army and try to snipe the tower. After you tornado and ice shot, your rangers will camp outside the foot of the enemy tower. Splash rangers will splash the tower down if you can hold that position. 

  - Used alone, you can optimize by deploying a lot of splash rangers to quickly clean out the opponent's front line defenses. Ice shot is great when the opponent has a lot of rangers sitting clumped up at the front, less ideal when their army is all spread out.

Defensive:
  - If the opponent has slaughtered your front line and you need to regroup, you can use ice shot to buy you a few seconds, but only do this if your back row attackers are healthy and plentiful so you don't waste this precious item without doing any damage on the opponent.
  - If you are desperate to get back in the game, you can use ice shot to try to tear down the opponent's tanking rangers, then when ice shot wears off, follow up with invincibility to buy yourself even more time to keep building up your army.
  - When your opponent uses invincibility, you may want to consider using ice shot if your team is not looking healthy enough to survive through it. It will prevent the opponent from scoring kills while they're unkillable but it will also mean that you cannot maximize on damage. Use this time to rally more forces or upgrade your minerals to face them again once invincibility wears off. This is a sort of desperate measure, though.

Reactive:
  - If the opponent uses ice shot on you, in most cases the appropriate response is to use invincibility. In fact, I personally use invincibility when the ice shot duration reaches about half (few seconds in). Your tanking rangers likely won't die just a couple of seconds into an ice shot, and then you gain the advantage of using the last few seconds of invincibility once you thaw. This way your rangers don't die and they will stick around to help return fire while reinforcements arrive after the thaw. Remember, a front line ranger even with 1 HP + invincibility is still unkillable for the duration of the item, so why waste it being frozen and unable to attack? In fact, you need those rangers post-thaw more than ever because the enemy army is bigger after the ice shot.
  - When your opponent uses ice shot on you, should you use ice shot back on them? This makes for a few frozen seconds when no one is attacking anyone, and the only viable things you can do while you wait are deploy more units for later use, upgrade minerals, deploy friends, or use meteor. My opinion is that ice shot is better strategically used when you can deal damage. There are other ways to defend against being frozen, like tornado (for long paths) and invincibility. Or if you're feeling confident, just let them have at your front line for the few seconds and keep doing what you are doing without wasting any items to defend.

Meteor
Meteor does damage to all enemy units in an area-of-effect, so be sure that the enemy is in a position where the meteors will land on them. By the way, from max distance, meteor will completely miss Dancer King Boss, so that's pretty cool.

Offensive:
  - Try and avoid using meteor early in the game because with fewer units on the field, you're kind of wasting the potential damage that meteor can do. Later on in the game when there are tons of enemies on the screen, meteor can really do enormous damage.
  - About a second after the opponent uses tornado on you, meteor is performs amazingly as all 5 of the meteors that come screaming down are guaranteed to hit some of the enemy rangers passing by. After you are swept backward, the opponent's rangers will start to move forward and that's when you should unleash meteor to hit all of them.
  - Don't use tornado on the opponent then unleash meteor. Doing so will likely result in the enemy only getting hit by 2 out of 5 meteors, wasting 3. If you hit tornado and then immediately hit meteor, your meteors will hit 0 units. :(
  - Combining meteor with invincibility can make a very successful push because it would have weakened the opponent and make them ripe for taking with your unkillable army. If you are having a standoff in the middle of the road, a move like this can be decisive.

Defensive:
  - Meteor isn't the most helpful for defensive plays, but if you combine it with a well-placed ice shot, you could weaken the opponent's rangers.

Reactive: 
  - When the opponent uses meteor on you, you have a split second to decide whether you want to use invincibility or not. If you do, you can save low health rangers in the back of your team. This is particularly helpful to players who use rangers like any of the Cony series (except maybe maxed SoCo), Opera James, Sindy, Ola Brown, etc. They're too scrawny to survive 1-2 meteor hits. If the bulk of your attackers are low HP and long range, you really should try to protect them with invincibility before the last couple meteors descend on them.

Tornado
Offensive:
  - To truly use tornado offensively, you will likely use it in combination with another item. However, you can use tornado to "re-stack" the enemy rangers to maximize your offensive splash damage. This is particularly useful against opponents with a bunch of KSM, Abdula or Sol (heavy hitting, slow attack speed, short range). If your rangers are fast moving or the path is short, after you tornado they'll all be stacked up and you have the opportunity to hit them. If the enemy front line rangers are fast moving (like Hip Hop Brown) and it's a long path, then their front line will burst to the middle of the path with no backup support so you'll have the opportunity to snipe their front rangers and then deal with the heavy hitting back row alone. You must time it appropriately!
  - As mentioned above, when the opponent uses tornado on you, it's a very good time to use meteor to hit the most number of enemy units. Resist the urge to tornado the opponent when they use it on you unless it is really absolutely necessary to survive.
  - Using tornado and following up with invincibility right as the teams are about to meet again is a strong move that will take advantage of "re-stacking" the opponent team.
  - You can do funny things that are a little bit offensive and defensive by timing it so that the tornado will blow them back at the same time as a big hit landing. If you're lucky, you'll hit them at half health and maybe buy another second of knock back.

Defensive:
   - Used alone, tornado by itself is a stall tactic. You buy yourself a little bit of time while the enemy walks back over to you, but if they have you cornered at your tower and splash is hitting the tower, blowing them back is a good option.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses tornado on you, should you use tornado on them? Maybe; it depends. If the opponent did it because you're getting close to their tower, you might be better off using tornado because you have the better army and you are pushing forward at that time. You don't have to, but it is a viable option if you think you can finish them off by doing so. If you are fighting a losing battle and the opponent pushes you back, then tornado against the opponent might save you. Whatever you do, don't tornado as soon as they use it unless you are purposely doing so for a reason. Especially if you are doing it to stall -- tornado the enemy when they are about to reach your front line to give yourself maximum time. If you both use tornado at the same time, all you have achieved is equalized both your positions to meet in the middle, which doesn't really gain you any advantage.

Invincibility
Offensive:
  - The benefits are obvious for offensive moves. The few seconds that your troops are invincible can make it very easy to push through a tough front. The added bonus of invincibility besides retaining your army for a few seconds is that you will likely kill quite a few enemy rangers and you'll acquire a lot of minerals for the kills, which enables you to deploy more rangers :D
  - Used at the beginning of a stage, you can quickly overwhelm and snipe the enemy tower
  - Used near the end of the game when you have amassed a huge army, you can use it to attempt to overwhelm the opponent. The only thing I must urge players is to practice keeping track of which items the opponent has already used. If you are using invincibility as an overwhelming offensive tactic, make sure that the opponent has already used their ice shot and their invincibility otherwise you may shoot yourself in the foot by using yours early.

Defensive: 
  - As mentioned above, invincibility is fantastic to use when you are in trouble, or when meteor is going to rain on your scrawny back row, or when ice shot is used on you. Of the three situations, I think using it during ice shot is the best defense because the potential to break you is highest during ice shot.

Reactive:
  - When the opponent uses invincibility, should you also use invincibility? I generally dislike using invincibility when they use it because I like to use invincibility to my advantage whenever possible. I also don't like to use ice shot as a defensive item because ice shot is also such a fantastic offensive item. When the opponent uses invincibility, I try to do one of two things instead: (1) use tornado if it's a very long path as a stall tactic. (2) Spam deployment of tanking rangers to hold the front. All invincibility means is that the opponent is unkillable for a few seconds. If you reinforce your front line, then there's nothing to fear. Once their invincibility is over, you can even retaliate with some items of your own to hit even harder.

Other Considerations

Should I upgrade minerals during a Team Battle? 

    This greatly depends on your production upgrade status. At level 80 and above, you can surely get by without upgrading minerals for many, many of the matches. For most of the lower AI matches, the computer is busy upgrading minerals and deploys nothing at the start. You can easily gain an advantage by deploying first. In the higher AI matches, the computer does not upgrade minerals and goes straight to deployment 9 out of 10 times in my experience. You are forced to defend if you upgrade minerals. 

    I found much higher success in not upgrading minerals at the start, and instead doing it when it is safe and I have minerals to spare during the match. Just don't forget to upgrade because the longer the battle drags on, the more advantageous having faster minerals will be.

Should I mimic the opponent's actions?

    No, you really shouldn't. By doing so you are doing everything it does except slower, and thus are at a disadvantage. Besides, the AI does not have to show you all 5 of its rangers. It is possible that (and I have personally seen) the AI deploys 4 rangers for most of the game, then later in the game suddenly deploy a 5th ranger to surprise you. You should go in with your own game plan, not follow the computer.

How is the opponent able to deploy so many rangers so fast? 

   If the computer does not upgrade minerals at the start, they will spend the initial set of minerals on 2-3 rangers right from the start. In addition, if they kill any of your units, they will gain minerals for the kills. And finally, the mineral max limit of the opponent player may be higher than yours and they might have started with more. The opponent may also have their rangers mastered, which means the ranger's cooldown is halved.

Ola Brown is killing everything. What can I do? 

   Ola Brown is very good and he tends to pop out super early in the fight because he's so cheap to deploy. But luckily, he's so scrawny that if the wind blows, he dies. You must take to the offense early against a team with Ola to prevent the opponent from forming a good defense for him. Tornado is also a great way to "re-stack" the enemy units so you can splash him to death. Also, from max distance, you can hit Ola Brown with the meteor item, so if you are planning on a big push, use meteor to weaken the Ola Brown troupe first, then push in. Not gonna lie, Ola Brown in any team makes things tougher. Ola Brown together with Hip-Hop Brown is a very rough combination to break, too. There's no silver bullet, I can only offer you strategy advice.

KSM is killing everything. What can I do? 

   KSM costs a lot of mineral to deploy and his cooldown is long, so the best defense against a team with KSM is a fast offense. Keep the opponent from deploying him at all by forcing it to defend as early as possible. If you let them deploy a whole stack of KSMs, then you're in trouble. If you have to fight your way through to him, remember that KSM has a rather wide hit radius but it's up in the front where your tanking rangers are. His hits will not be able to touch longer range units like Opera James, Sindy, Cony and Boss. If you must abandon your strongest short range attackers (like Dwight and Dumpy) in favor of long range attackers (like Cony, Opera, Alice, Lia, Boss, especially Dancer King) midway through the fight just to deal with KSM, do it. Strip your deployment down to only your tank ranger and your long range attackers and you will not have to fear KSM's frontal assault. Just like in single player mode, you can also stall with a couple of lowbies if you deploy them in a continuous steady stream while your long range attackers have a killing spree. Need to review which rangers have a long range? Check this post for details.

.............................

This text-filled post has gone on long enough. I may add more as it comes to me, but as far as basics, I think that covers it! 

Gacha Probabilities - June 2014

The results are in from the June 19 - June 21 Double 5-star Chance Gacha Event! If you participated, thank you for contributing to the survey (created by 小為) to provide the Line Rangers player community with helpful information.

The Results

Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 have concluded their survey once the event finished and they were able to collect 349 sets of data from participants, a total of 5782 results (raw data is here) from Gacha. Results were:

• 3★%: 30.56%
• 4★%: 21.55%
• 5★%: 47.89%

This 5 star result is over twice what the previous results were from their May study which were:

• 3★%: 49.22%
• 4★%: 30.17%
• 5★%: 20.60%

The Analysis

Authors 小為 and 楊濟安 of LINE Rangers 台灣社團 posted this new article about their findings with some more information and analysis on the numbers. Contained within this box is their article interpreted in English. Note: The numbers on the article were as of late hours of June 19 when the data up to that point was reflecting an average of 43.85%.

If you played the 5+1 Gacha with 47.89% odds of receiving a 5-star ranger, this translated to about 2.88 5★ rangers out of 6 balls for every 100 rubies played. They went on to answer some really good questions based on the 43.85% result that they got at the time of the writing of their post. Wherever possible I'll use their math and adapt it with the end-result number of 47.89%.

1. How many times do you need to play to receive one super ranger? 

  - They defined super ranger as one of the eight 5-star rangers that everyone typically wants to get: KSM, Dancer King Boss (DKB), Sorcerer Cony (SoCo), Bernard, Hip Hop Brown, Dumpy, Dwight, Ola Brown. There are a total of 20 5-star rangers on the roster so the chances of you receiving one of these shiny 8 rangers is actually 19.16% during the event. 100/19.16=5.22 spins of the Gacha on average before you can expect to receive one of the 8 super desirable rangers. 

2. How much do I need to spend on average to get a level 80 Ola Brown?

  - For this question, we're going to have to assume that the chances to receive each of the 5-star rangers are equal (side note from Panic: we know this to be untrue because Line Game Support has directly told me that the odds for each of the rangers is preset, and they have said that "rarer" rangers have a lesser chance. I understood this means in reality some rangers are really preset to be less likely to pop out). 

   So, anyway, Ola Brown is 1 out of 20 of the available 5★ rangers. Multiply this by our 47.89% and you'll get a 2.39% to receive Ola Brown, which will take approximately 42 Gacha spins for 1 Ola Brown. You need 5 Ola Browns to max out so that means you actually need about 210 spins.

    Well, 210 spins means you have to play the 5+1 35 times (3500 rubies). I don't know how much they charge all the other regions in the world but in US Dollars on the Android Google Play market during the Ruby Event we can get 494 rubies for roughly $49. In order to get 3500 rubies, we'd have to buy just over 7 packs, which costs $343 USD! Unfortunately, it sounds about right... And if you happen to be unlucky, you'll spend more. 

    That said, I sincerely hope that if you were aiming to get Ola Brown that you did all your Gachas during this past event because if you don't do it during the double chance event, chances are you'll end up spending a great deal more money. But then again, these are averages based on some reality, some assumption, so take it all with a grain of salt.

3. Should I spin with 20 rubies or 100 rubies? 

   - This question involves a concept that we've touched on before when I shared the May event's results on this blog, which is whether or not the 6 results you get from spending 100 rubies are independent events. This means that one spin of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next spin of the Gacha. The authors believe that the 6 results from 100 rubies Gacha are independent events because a lot of people reported getting four 4-stars and one 5-star, or three 5-stars and three 4-stars. This kind of result would not be possible if the game developer had set the 100 rubies Gacha to be dependent events. For instance, if we believe the Gacha is set up to predetermined dependent results, then we should often get results of three 3-stars, two 4-stars and one 5-star, with some variability but not to the extreme of some people getting four or five 4-star rangers in one shot of 100 rubies. So we assume they are independent events and we can use the June results of 47.89% to do some calculations.

For this example we'll just assume that the chance of you receiving the ranger you want is 1 out of 100 for sake of illustration. 

    - If you used 20 rubies x5, the chance of you getting the ranger is 5%. 

    - If you used 100 rubies, the chance of  you getting the ranger is 6%. 

Based on 47.89% chance to get a 5-star ranger, we have a 19.16% of getting one of the desirable super rangers. 

    - If you use 20 rubies five times to spin 5 times you will average only 0.958 desirable rangers (which is to say playing 5 times can possibly yield you zero desirable rangers). 

    - If you use 100 rubies once to spin 6 times, you will average 1.14 desirable rangers (which is to say you'll get at least 1 desirable ranger on average in the bundle of 6).

    The difference is slight, but it lies in the fact that 100 rubies gives you that one extra spin. Remember the answer we got to question 1 above: you need to spin 5.22 times on average before you can expect to get a desirable super ranger. Playing 100 rubies puts you inside the chance to get one since you are spinning 6 times. In this light, playing the 100 rubies game is relatively better. This was deduced based on the information that was collected from the data set.Of course, your personal experience may deviate from this because this is the "average."

4. Should I spin while there is no double chance event?

The short answer is no, of course not. Here's why:

   - Since we have a 47.89% to get a 5★ ranger during the double chance event, then it goes to reason that without the event, our chances are roughly 23.95%. 

Our chances to get a desirable super ranger: 

   - With double chance event is 19.16%, averaging 5.22 spins to get 1 ranger

   - Without double chance event is 9.58%, averaging 10.44 spins to get 1 ranger

This makes it pretty obvious that during the double chance event your odds of getting something good are much higher. The authors recommend, as I also do, please resist the urge to scratch the itch while there is no double chance event going on! For if you do, you're very likely going to spend some time with this guy.

Go away, Pew. We do not love you.

Concluding Thoughts

I've stated this before and I think it is important to repeat this: The 47.89% number was an average from a vast pool of results. It is possible that you played and rolled on some very different results than the average. And surely you have seen on the internet instances where people have rolled insanely good results. But this is why this is the average. 

The other consideration that often makes players sad after playing Gacha is the fact that your personal set of "desirable" rangers may be a lot smaller than than 19.16%. Maybe all you want are Ola Brown, KSM and Dwight. In that case, you're rolling on much smaller chance and the chances of you getting something you don't want are much, much higher. 

Now, the last thing that is bothering me is the fact that this event's results differed greatly from last month's. June's double chance event was seriously more than twice more lucrative (and from my personal experience, I tend to agree with the results). Such a large difference cannot be a mistake on the survey because they had over 5700 samples. May's results were done with over 2000 samples, which should still be quite accurate. So I don't think the numbers are wrong. I think this was a deliberate change in the presets by the game developers. With the release of Team Battle Mode and Endless Mode, I believe they really want people to participate and they want people to feel competitive. Nobody likes losing over and over and that can make a PvP battle fizzle out very quickly. I'm guessing that's why they've more than doubled the odds to get 5 star rangers, so people will be more likely to jump into the new modes.

So in the end, I do apologize that I did not get this post out sooner because perhaps it would have swayed some players to take more advantage of the event while it was still possible to get the best odds at Ola Brown. However, now that the "new" non-event probability for 5-star rangers is roughly 23.95%, I wonder if it will stay that way until some other significant event happens (like new area release or new ranger release). Did they increase the non-event chance from 10% to 23.95% when the "major update" came out on June 19? Nobody knows for sure when the change in the odds was made. LINE has no obligation to tell us. We can only try to figure it out with our collective effort. Hopefully this provided some deeper understanding of the gamble that is Gacha. Special thanks to 小為 for pooling all this information for us to share.

New Battle Modes Available

After an extra hour of extended maintenance to prepare for the new battle modes, we are finally able to play the game. Unfortunately, the Versus Battle mode is currently plagued by network and ranking server connection errors. Practically every time you try to get to a new screen, or if you finish a game and try to get back to the battle screen with ranking info, the unable to connect error rears its ugly head at us.

Nevertheless, I persisted along with many, many other players to try to get a head start on the global ranking. Many of my questions were answered!

The Versus Modes

Ranking:

Everybody wins

• All players who participate in the ranked Team Battle mode will receive a ranking. Your points/score determines your global ranking. [Note: battling your friends will not help you in the global ladder.]
• Players begin at a score of 1000.
• If you win the battle, you will gain points and your rank will rise.
• If you lose the battle, you will lose points and your rank will fall. 
• The amount you gain/lose depends on the ranking of the opponent you battle (pretty sure), and in small part your winning streak.
• The global ranks are reset on a weekly basis (on Monday 6am JST) 
• The rewards are really worth it to play this battle mode. Top ranked first place, second place and third place receive a whopping 1000 rubies as a prize. Lower rankings aren't bad either. 
• You will also gain experience (for your rangers, not for the player) and coins when you win battles. 
• Note that battles against friends on your friend list will not affect your score and therefore has no impact on your global ranking.
• The bottom of the Team Battle screen will tell you how long until the global ranking will be reset and winners will be determined. 

Team Battle Mode 

• Your "real player" opponent's rangers appear to be AI (artificial intelligence) controlled. There is NOT an actual person playing and controlling the opponent deployments in real time at all. (Boo...)
• Team Battle requires "Special Feathers" which are the rainbow colored feathers. You regenerate 1 special feather every 30 minutes. You can purchase additional feathers with rubies. As with the regular feathers, you also get a new set of 5 each time you gain a player level.
• Somewhat fortunately or unfortunately depending on which point of view you take, you are free to take whichever rangers you please into combat. I'm pretty sure that your opponent's team is based on who that player has chosen in their team at that moment in time, too. 
• The length of the battle path is determined at random.
• Pretty sure that whatever treasure your opponent possesses will be applied to their rangers in battle.
• Whatever upgrades (mineral, max limit, tower health and missile strength) you have will apply in battle mode. 
• You may use items and friends/sidekicks in battle mode. 
• It is possible to hit Hurry Up mode which will just cause the lightning bolts to happen. I believe it also causes all units to become half health to speed up the fight. I don't think it makes the opponent deploy like crazy the way single player mode does, though. 
• So far, I don't believe you can trigger Thomas in this mode. I also don't think you can trigger Gold Brown.
• There is no clear bonus roll when you win a team battle. 
• When you win more than once in a row, the game will tell you what your winning streak is. A low streak gives you no bonus points, a high streak (10 or more) gives you a 2 point bonus. But most of the points depend on whether you were matched against a player who was close to your rank.
• You may only battle each Friend once per day. But you can farm up as many Friendship Points as you have Friends. 

Battle with Friends Mode

• You can access Battle with Friends mode by clicking on Friends in the main screen, then click on the Friend's picture, then click on the Battle with Friend button. 
• Your Friend also appears to be controlled by AI, so it's not your friend actually playing on the other end (Boo.)
• The length of the battle path is determined at random.
• Whatever upgrades (mineral, max limit, tower health and missile strength) you have will apply in battle mode. 
• You may use items and friends/sidekicks in battle mode. 
• You win 50 Friendship Points and personal bragging rights when you defeat a Friend in this battle mode. 
• There is no clear bonus roll when you win a team battle. Battle with Friends is considered a practice for Team Battle. 
• You don't need any feathers to battle your friends.
• If your friends choose to battle you and fail to be victorious, congratulations! You will receive 50 friendship points in the mail for doing nothing other than being absolutely boss mode. Too bad it doesn't tell you in the mail whose pride you hurt today :) 

My Current Impressions

First of all, from the ranking rewards, it would appear that everyone will get 20 rubies for the weekly global ranking system so it would be worth it to buy some rubies because you'll get 20 at the end of the week anyway. It doesn't hurt to participate! You mostly battle people close to your rank score, so you won't immediately be pitted against people who have insanely good rangers; but that said, ranking is no indication of how good that person is because "they" are not playing live on the other end, it's still AI. 

It would appear that in these new battle modes, long range units are incredibly powerful (Ola Brown, Dancer King Boss in particular). Once you get some meaty rangers to tank your front line, you need some nice long range units to stand at a distance and bomb away at the enemy. The opponent AI may decide to use items on you, so you should be prepared to respond. The one that is particularly dangerous in my opinion is enemy Ice Shot. Pretty much if they use Ice Shot, I respond with Invincibility almost immediately so that it negates whatever damage they will try to do while my units are doing nothing. You can deploy while frozen but your units will just sit at the foot of your tower until the Ice Shot wears out. 

Additionally, I would strongly suggest you go ahead and start upgrading your tower health if you have previously been neglecting this upgrade category. Since they took away Tower Repair, your tower is as healthy as it will ever be and there are no take-backs once you enter combat. 

While it's kind of disappointing that it's all AI controlled opponents, it's still kind of addictive because of what's at stake (glory, ranking & rubies). Mostly the fun of these battle modes is in checking out what you can do to respond to various team compositions and enemy formations. I haven't gotten bored with it yet. Try it out! It's pretty fun (when the server behaves). 

Endless Mode

• To get to Endless Mode, you hit the Start button the way you usually do on the main screen. Then instead of selecting a stage, click on the swirly portal on the map where it says "COMING SOON". 
• To play an Endless Mode stage, you must spend a "Special Feather" which is the new rainbow colored feather. It regenerates once every 30 minutes. You can also buy feathers with rubies. As with the regular feathers, you also get a new set of 5 each time you gain a player level.
• In Endless Mode only, it appears that non-speed type rangers incur a 50% longer cooldown "tax". Dancer King Boss who is normally (unmastered) on a 7-second cooldown is now just over 10 seconds in Endless. Ola Brown who is normally (unmastered) on a 8-second cooldown is on a 12 second cooldown in Endless. My Lia is mastered, and her mastered cooldown is 2 seconds, but in Endless Mode her cooldown is 3 seconds. My mastered Xan's cooldown is 4 seconds but in Endless Mode his cooldown is 6 seconds. I believe that the cooldown of speed rangers remains untaxed, but it's pretty hard to tell since the CD is so low for speed rangers anyway. It's noticeably longer for the others. In my recordings, my mastered Hip-Hop Brown is roughly on a 1-2 second cooldown which seems normal for master level. This is a very important consideration for Endless Mode team selection. 
• Unfortunately, I haven't played much yet. It has a similar ranking system, though not a global ladder, with rewards like experience and coins, based on how long you last in battle. It's not a bad way to level your rangers if you have no interest in using special feathers for Team Battle.

New Stuff

The update gave us a lot of nice enhancements that we've been asking for as well as other shiny new things. They've greatly improved on some "quality of life" type of features. 

• When you log in every day consecutively, you will stack up and gain rewards for your good attendance. This is a weekly event and replaces our old "daily login bonus." You will be rewarded once you get your "clear" stamp for that day.
• Experience Booster item will grant you 50% more experience for some time duration (3 hours or all day, d pending on which you buy.) I expect most people will be using 500 Friendship Points to buy the 3 hour one. I don't know yet whether it stacks with Double Experience Day, but I would expect so. Once you buy it, you'll see the timer ticking away in the main screen.
• Player max level has increased to 99 from 80.
• Little banners now tell you when something "new" has been added to your game or if there's an event happening to make sure you don't miss anything.
• The Friend home screen is accessed by hitting the Friends button on the main screen, then clicking on your Friend's picture. It'll show you what rangers they have and what level they are as well as their Collection progress and Treasure progress. 

• If you click on your Friend's portrait in the stage selection map, you can access a list of your friends currently stuck on that stage, send them help and click to go to their friend home page.
• They finally fixed the display of tower health to be the actual tower health rather than maximum of 999999. Unfortunately, they have also taken away the indication of exact health on the enemy tower (likely because we were exploiting it to find out info they didn't want us to know... lol. Boo). 
• When your ranger has reached its absolute max level, it'll say that the ranger is "Master". It's not just a vanity title: Master rangers' cooldown is half of an unmastered ranger. This is a newly added bonus of reaching max level, and naturally more incentive for players to want to play more Gacha. 
• Friendship Point capacity has been raised from 990 max to 2000 max. 

• Ranger storage capacity has been increased from 100 rangers to 150 rangers. 
• The new "Invincibility Item" gives your tower and all of your rangers temporary invincibility (approximately 8 seconds by my count). 
• Auto Mode should make your life a lot easier grinding levels. Once you enter battle in a stage, you can hit the Auto button (located under the Pause button) and the AI will take over your deployment. You can still take over if you wish, or turn off Auto if you want to play yourself again. You must switch Auto mode on for every stage you enter, though. I'm not sure what the AI does to determine which ranger to deploy, but I guess it'll take some time to try and figure that part out.
• Under Settings, there's a new "Coupon" button but not sure what it is for yet. Maybe some localized promotional things will be placed here in the future.
• When you click on a team member on the main screen you'll be presented with its profile and the option to go to the level up screen. 
• There's a Skip button on the Gacha now. Yes, my prayers have been answered! Now we don't have to waste so much time spinning that dumb ball!
• We no longer get 10 friendship points if someone selects you as a friend so people with symbols prefixing their names can more or less drop that style. The mailbox now allows you to kindly reciprocate sending "help" troops to up to 50 people. 

Anyway that's it for now, I'm going back to furiously try to climb the global ladder. Competition is fierce so far. Leave some comments if you have something cool/neat/interesting to add. I'm going to say this right now because I know some of you out there are burning up about it: If you are commenting only to complain about how unfair the Team Battle mode is without any sort of constructive criticism, I will delete it. 

That said, I do hope that the new updates to the game has offered everyone something to do while we wait for more new areas.