The Beginning and the End

Hi everyone! Sorry I haven't been around to post much, but I've been busy with real life stuff. Season 2 released while I was out of the country and since coming home, it's been a whirlwind of stuff. I haven't played a lot of Line Rangers Season 2, but I did save Sally. I can't believe how much the game has changed. In some ways, it's given the game a new life, but in some ways it's become super complicated and the climb feels more steep. They did a good job of addressing certain player gripes, but in the process, at least in my opinion, they've created some new issues. Well, love it or hate it, I'm just glad we got to rescue our Sally finally. Spoiler alert: Turns out Mephisto is a total lamer and his boss is the one to beat. Hah!

This is a tough post to write, but this is the last blog post for Line Rangers & Friends. It's been an unbelievable run with all of you. The players around the world have breathed life into this blog in ways I never thought would be possible! The Line Rangers game was a lot of fun for me and I do continue to play it, but it has taken a backseat to a bunch of other things that I have to do and I just can't keep up with all the changes! Writing the blog has been fun for me, and I hope it was fun to read. I intend to keep writing on other topics in other places :) I thank all of you who have been readers and supporters of this blog and my writing. I wish you all the best of luck with your Rangers!

Where do you go for your Line Rangers English discussions now? I am an avid reader of Reddit and I enjoy the discussion format of Reddit so I encourage you to go to the Line Rangers subreddit to post your questions, comments and discussions on the game: https://www.reddit.com/r/LineRangers/ 

Huge shout-out to:

• My friend Stru who first turned me on to Line Rangers. Thanks for making me lose many hours of my life and so, so many dollars, Stru. 
• Rangers Elite Club: my Line Rangers friends who started many thoughtful discussions -- you guys know who you are, you are awesome. 
• Elite Rangers Masters group: the international teams represented in this Masters group have been a total eye-opener to just how big this game is and how far players are willing to go to be the best of the best. I learned a lot from these kind, friendly people. Keep on rocking! 
• Last but definitely not least - Taiwanese Line Rangers group 銀河特攻隊 & Wei S: Incredibly, incredibly smart. I am always in awe of the data that comes out of this group. Their published articles are here in Chinese. Wei S has published so many videos that have helped players. View Wei's ever-growing collection of videos here. 

Thank you all so very much for making this experience awesome! And as always, good luck and have fun!

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

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

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

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

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

Have fun, everyone! And HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Pre-Halloween

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

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

Whoo! Free random rangers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My yield from 600 rubies: 

Halloween Cony x2

Luke x3

Hip Hop Brown X2

Maestro Boss x2

Cherina

Muay Thai Brown

Junior Cony x2

Legend Boss

Luis

Somchai

Honey

Bernard

Sorcerer Cony

Gentleman James

Summer Brown x3

Biker James x3

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

Sindy x2

Fighter Moon

Songster Cony

Macho Moon

Rapper Boss

Lightning Jessica

Abdula

Clara

General Brown

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

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

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

I hope you all have fun!

New Rangers Released: Game Field to Farm Field

The new rangers are here! This is the 3rd month in a row that new rangers have hit the game in the early days of the month, so it seems like we are following a steady release cycle. On to the new stuff!

Ola Brown and Dumpy range comparison with Thunder Brown (front line), KSM and Songster Cony

Ola Brown - 5 star long-ranged Splash Ranger. Limited time only! Get him while you can because Ola Brown will only be available June 1 through June 30 GMT +9. This is the first non-melee Brown unit we have seen and he is so cute with his creepy football/soccer ball. He is currently the longest range splash ranger which works out in his favor since Ola's health is relatively low. His health is comparable to Cony, so he's quite weak. Ola will not live in the presence of Richard (green dino mini boss in Skyscraper zone) but he will serve you well from behind the fray in most other instances. His attack is nothing to write home about, but it's certainly better than the 4-star splash rangers. Ola is also cheaper to deploy than other 5-star splash units, only 350 minerals at max. In certain situations due to his superior cooldown, cost and speed, spamming a lot of Ola Brown may be more effective than deploying Sorcerer Cony, Sol, or KSM. At level 80, he has 48,898 ATK (also known as DPS)/104,781 HP. 

Dumpy -  5 star Attack Ranger. Mid-range. Absolutely insanely high attack. Makes Dancer King Boss' max attack seem like child's play, but Dumpy has a much shorter range to hit. His range is the same as Dwight and Sol. Even at level 1, he does 45K DPS, making him immediately viable to use. He's on relatively short cooldown and he costs 380 minerals to deploy at max which is really cheap! The problem with Dumpy is his health is pretty low unless you are lucky enough to get 5 Dumpies to combine. His level 80 stats are 476,905 DPS/319,334 HP. More attack than health? That's a first for rangers! 

Abdula, Dwight and Lightning Jessica range comparison with Witch Cony & Warrior Jessica

Dwight -  5 star Balance Ranger. Melee range, sort of. Insanely high attack, high health. Pretty costly to deploy but makes up for it in battle. As far as range goes, Dwight doesn't stand up where health rangers are. He's a little bit further back, which is ideal for a ranger of his strengths because he will allow the health rangers to take the direct damage while having enough health to stand in the heat of incoming splash damage and hold the line a bit if the health rangers die. His range is the same as Sol. His level 80 stats are 245,279 DPS/2,678,054 HP. Yes, you read correctly -- That's 2.6 million HP. He's pretty much a Bernard with actual damage capabilities. Dwight will be a very valuable team member despite not being a splash ranger. 

Abdula -  4-star mid-range Splash Ranger. Medium splash damage, high health, but costs a great deal of minerals to deploy. He stands the same distance from the enemy as Clara. Abdula trumps all the other 4-star splash rangers in damage. At first I was skeptical about him because he does cost quite a bit more than other 4-star splash rangers (760 at max) and it didn't feel like he did that much more damage. However, after doing some math, I have found that with the cost of his damage, he does in fact come out ahead of all four of the other 4-star splash units. So he is actually a good choice to use if you can afford him. But what's important is he has the most hilarious attack animation. Maybe Abdula is the pet chicken's name, who knows? :) At level 70, Abdula sports 69,668 DPS/381,790 HP.

Lightning Jessica -  4 Star Speed Ranger. Only way to describe her is a mini Hip-Hop Brown. High speed, spammable, cheap. Doesn't quite have the attack or health for tanking the way Hip Hop does, so my initial thought is if you have a maxed Hip Hop Brown, you probably don't need to bother with Lightning Jessica. Another thing that's somewhat off about her is unlike her melee splash lookalikes, Lightning Jessica does not stand in actual tanking range (see picture above). Her distance is the same as Sol, Dwight and Dumpy. So if you're looking to use her as a tanking alternative, I'd be a little wary. She leaves a lot of room between her hit range and the enemy's hit range, which may result in allowable enemy forward marching space. Lightning Jessica's stats at level 70 is 21,975 DPS/305,089 HP.

Position comparison between new rangers and Sol. Dumpy, Dwight and Lightning Jessica stand at the same range as Sol

All 5 new rangers tearing up the place in 117

All in all, the new rangers are pretty impressive, with maybe the exception of Lightning Jessica. The game makers have really tried to give us a wide array of ranger attributes to choose from. I can definitely foresee situations where you cannot use some of our new overpowered friends, but many situations where they will excel and give you a huge advantage.

Does this mean that we don't need or want KSM, DKB, SongCo, Hip-Hop and Bernard? Absolutely not. They each have their own strengths and will fill different needs depending on the stage and the rangers you have available. Now, if you have Dwight and Bernard, you probably won't put both on your team, but certainly if have just Dumpy and Bernard, it's not a bad combo at all. Hip-Hop as a tanking hybrid will still be better than Lightning Jessica and hold speed advantage over Dwight. Dancer King is still the king of range though he does not have the DPS of Dumpy. But sometimes safety in far-range is more important than 500-600K hits. So, it all depends!

Good luck, everyone! If you are curious about GACHA probability, check out this post.

May 22 Changes - Laughing All The Way To The Bank

AMG! NO!

Late last night (for me anyway), Line issued some ominous new game notices and minutes later retracted them. Today just after Japan's 01:00 AM we are seeing the lives changes in place. The funniest part for me is that for hours before they finished maintenance, I read that players had all kinds of issues as they were attempting to put out these changes, clearly having technical difficulties. In my mind I imagined that Line Rangers is in fact the brain child of one poor lad sitting in a room in Tokyo, clicking away on his laptop keyboard and then spilling his coffee and messing everything up on the eve of his proposed changes. And then frantically trying to fix it afterward...

The game was taken offline for emergency maintenance while the developer(s) properly implemented the new changes once and for all. For interrupting the tail hours of my favorite Ranger Day, Double Coin Day, we all got 40 rubies and 10,000 gold coins in addition to the 10 rubies they promised us daily for the month of May. Hey, I think it's a fair exchange for this rather hilarious blunder. Call me cruel, but watching them trip all over themselves during a patch cycle is pretty chuckle-worthy in my book.

The Changes

As for the changes, they are exactly as outlined in the notices from last night. Here they are for your perusal.

The change to the max level of all rangers does not require you to obtain 2 more of the same type of ranger, so we can all breathe a sigh of relief. However, be aware that the increase does not appear to stack the way the other ones did after combining to raise the max; there is no additional 20% stat increase like we did for combining rangers. The 10 additional levels is a linear stat increase. So 5-star rangers' default max is now 60, 4-star rangers' default max is now 50, and so on. If you only have 1 of a ranger and it is at its default max level, you still need a second one in order to gain a 20% stat increase. Side note: Even as a linear upgrade, the extra 10 levels takes Dancer King Boss to 121k attack and KSM to 129k attack at level 80. Godly!

Speed rangers have gotten a big high-five and now they're actually very worth considering for your team composition. Most speed rangers' mineral cost are now reverted to their level 1 base cost, with the exception of Hip-Hop Brown who remains at 210. Honey's mineral cost has been bumped down twice now, and she's so worth using now at a mere 160 mineral cost. All speed class Cony rangers are amazing as well, particularly Lucifer Cony, who packs a mighty punch for the measly cost. All of our speed class lowbies are going to reach level 20 now, but as long as their mineral cost remains the same as their level 1 to 10 cost, I see no downside to this.

Balance and speed rangers have gotten a fist-bump from the developers, too. Certain rangers have had their stats increased. I believe Masked Moon's HP and attack have both been increased, making him actually pretty decent as a pseudo-health ranger (level 80: 51.5k attack/531k HP). I don't have a hard comparison, but I do believe that Gentleman James got an increase, too. I mean, as far as undesirable 5-star rangers go, Gentleman James was unfortunately very close to the top of that list previously. 

"Some" miscellaneous rangers got buffed, like Sol. I admit I didn't always like him. I used to call him Greenie McDroopy (Fatty McDroopy's cousin. Who's his cousin? Dickey, of course.) At level 70 he was pretty decent but post-change, he's become really competitive. Sol has gone from ~13k attack at level 70 to ~30k attack. If you've been snacking on Sol instead of keeping him, you might be kicking yourself now! He has 567k health at level 80 and deals a 36k DPS to boot. Not bad at all. I'm sorry I ever doubted you, Mr. McDroopy.

Gold Brown is a cool new addition to the game. He will randomly appear in stages and he is basically a health ranger. He's a huge gold statue and twirls his way to the front line, then helps tank while jump-kicking baddies in the face. I have never had Gold Brown appear while I was farming easy stages so maybe it isn't completely random. Perhaps the game has some way of gauging if the player is having difficulty before giving you a chance to get Gold Brown.

Skyscraper Treasure Changed

The Skyscraper Treasure is finally what I wanted! Far-Reaching Insight now increases range instead of speed. This treasure won't increase your direct damage or anything, but it may indirectly save your rangers from death.

As shown in the picture here, you can see what 100% benefit of the new version of the Skyscraper treasure does. The increase isn't huge when you look at it alone, but the important thing is when you compare the maximum range of our rangers today versus the maximum range of our enemies, you will find that the extra distance may put our rangers safely out of the attack radius of certain attacks. So there you have it! Measurable treasure benefits!

Rolling The Dice: Gacha Probabilities

What Are Our Chances of Winning a 5-Star Ranger?

We all take a chance with our rubies hoping to play the GACHA machine for great rangers like KSM, Sorcerer Cony, etc. The vast majority of us have experienced our fair share of disappointment with this random generator. I read an article today where the author, 楊濟安, has taken the effort to crunch the numbers on exactly what our odds are of landing a 4 or 5 star ranger. His calculations are based on a healthy sampling from a couple hundred volunteers who shared their Gacha results. The full article goes into detail so if your Chinese (and curiosity of probability) is solid, do go and read the whole thing. Again, full credit goes to the author of the article, but I will pull a few details to discuss here for the benefit of our English speaking community. It's a burning question that we all want to know about because some of us (many of us) spend cold, hard cash and we would like to know just how much of a gamble it is.

• Full article in Chinese
• Data samples are here (courtesy of the Facebook group LINE Rangers 台灣社團)

So if you're not interested in all the gritty details (TL;DR and all that), during the "Double Chance on 5 Star" event, the probability of getting a 5-star ranger  is approximately 20%. The probability for 4-star is approximately 30% and 3 star is about 49-50%, based upon the samples obtained. Based on this, the probability of 5-star rangers goes down to only 10% when the event is not taking place. 

Other Interesting Findings

One of the assumptions that he takes on is that every turn of the Gacha is an independent event. This means that one turn of the Gacha has no bearing on the result of the next turn of the Gacha. He believes 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. I buy his line of reasoning for this assumption, and it is an important one to make.

The author imparts us with a bit of basic probability knowledge which may affect the way we interpret the possible results we get when we play. Suppose there were 10 marbles in a can and one of the marbles would win you a prize. 10 people line up to pick out one marble each, one at a time. Each time someone picks a marble, they put the marble back. The chances of each person winning the prize is 1 out of 10 -- easy, of course. Suppose the 10 people in line picked out a marble each and did not put their marble back after selecting. Now who has the highest probability of winning the prize? The answer is they all still have the same chance of winning, which is 1 out of 10. (The first person has a 1/10 chance he has picked the winning marble. The second person has a 9/10 chance that the first person didn't get the winning marble * 1/10 chance that he selected the winning marble = 1/10). All this is to say that the misconception that if you got something good from the Gacha, the chances of you getting something good again the next turn is lessened, is completely mathematically false. If the chance of getting a 5 star ranger is set by the game developer at 10%, then your chances each and every time you play the Gacha is 10%, no matter what you got in the past, no matter what someone you know recently got, no matter night or day or where you live. The numbers don't lie :)

Six 3-star rangers? Sad day.

Another question he answered was regarding the poor players who get six 3-star rangers with 100 rubies. How is this possible in a world where the chance to get a 3-star ranger one time is 50%? He uses normal probability distributions to determine that there is a 81.33% probability of not obtaining six 3-stars. If you happened to be the chap who got six 3-stars, you're in the unlucky 18.67% lot. It's not an insignificant chance if you ask me!

One last note is, he made some assumptions to show that playing 100 rubies at a time is only slightly better than playing 20 rubies at a time but the details are a bit fuzzy to me (lost in translation; I couldn't quite understand the assumptions he made to arrive at his numbers). All I can say is that he concluded that the overall result of doing 20 rubies 5 times versus 100 rubies 1 time, that the 100 rubies wins out, if only by a little. 

The article was really enlightening and fascinating. Might takes maybe a bit of knowledge in statistics and a lot of Chinese to understand, but totally awesome that someone took the time to not only crunch numbers but also explain all this stuff. Bravo and a big thank you to 楊濟安 and the people who shared their results to make this study possible. In the words of Bill Nye the Science Guy, "now you know!"

I know what you're thinking! You're thinking, 20%? Pfffltt. Screw that, I didn't get anything from my rubies! I got Lucas, Hunt, Vlad, Ryan and Jason over and over! Remember that's 20% overall in a relatively large sample pool. If you played the Gacha 100 times in a row, 20 rubies at a time, surely close to 20 of them will be 5-stars. 

I'll give you an example. I found out from my Macho Moon Friendship Point Event study that the chance to get Macho Moon during this event was in the neighborhood of 4%. However as it so happens on day one of the event, I played the Friendship Gacha 172 times before I got my very first Macho Moon. That translates to 0.6% in a sample of 172. Not even one percent! It seemed absurd to me at the time. But later on in the day as I continued to play, oddly enough, I got Macho Moon 2 out of 3 spins, which is 66.6% looking at a sample of 3. On day one I played the Gacha a total of 244 times and landed myself 10 Macho Moons. So it evened itself out to 4.1%. Day two and day three were not nearly as dramatic because Moon popped out much more evenly. But throughout the course of the day I did find myself inexplicably caught in chains of 1 and 2 stars, then later on, in chains of 3-stars. However, even the 1, 2 and 3 star quantities leveled themselves out if I played enough times in a day. This is just how statistics and probability goes. We arrive at a number that is the result of calculations from an extremely large amount of trials. Your reality after playing a handful of times may vary quite a lot from the average.

And let's not forget that the 20% is not the chance that you will get something useful to you. The 20% emcompasses the chances that you will get duds like Luke (who nobody wants lol), Xan, Sol and Alice (who are available from stage clear rolls). The chances of you getting what you want (like KSM, Dancer King Boss, Sorcerer Cony and the like), is actually quite a bit smaller. So let's not confuse what you want with the total probability of 5-star rangers. 

[Addendum: I emailed the company and asked them whether the probability of all rangers within the same star grade is the same throughout. I have been told that the probability of all the rangers is preset. They do discriminate among the rangers as they deem some rarer than others, and the rarer ones have a lower probability than the others. Therefore, while the general odds of getting 5-star rangers on a normal day may be 10%, within the 10% there is another variable which determines which 5-star ranger you'll get. We can safely assume that the more desirable rangers are the "rarer" ones they referenced. However, a smaller chance does not mean no chance, it is just less probable. It's like they say in the lottery business: You have to play to win. And if you don't ever Gacha, then you will never win. If you don't want to gamble, that's your decision. So that's it, I'll leave it at that!]

Hope this post was helpful to you guys out there! Happy gaming and good luck!

Skyscraper - Videos and Thoughts

Skyscraper: Monkey brains, bats, ladybugs, dynamite... and twerking. What's not to love?

Although I don't think I like the poodle abusing goth chick.

[Update: May 21, 2014] 
Skyscraper has been revised. The boss stages are more difficult than they were at the initial release.

As some sort of consolation for making the area more challenging, LINE has sent us all a free Cobe. I like Cobe, but, I think it's still generally a bad idea to make stages more difficult after they have been released. That's just my personal opinion on game updates, though. I suppose it'll put players without special rangers in an even more precarious position for stage progression, and those with KSM & company may wince maybe a little at the change. Cobe may help, but probably not a ton. Cobe is a good splash ranger who can get herself (himself?) up to the front line fairly quickly and can take a few hits due to medium-high HP at max level. I believe this is the second free Cobe event since the launch of the game, so veteran players may have a level 60 Cobe already.

The New Stuff

The newly available 4 star ranger is Opera James and 5 star is Masked Moon. James is absolutely fantastic as he's a powerful splash ranger who costs less than Clara and maxes out at higher damage as well. Masked Moon at level is quite a piece of work. I personally haven't found a good reason to use him yet but at max, his health is insane and his attack is formidable. At lower levels, I would pass on him altogether because you have better options for both health and attack.

And the Treasure for this area is... click to find out!

Free Ranger Videos (Up to date)

• Stage 117 Cleared - (Free rangers, no Friend: Sol, Clara, Opera James, Warrior Jessica, Cobe)
• Line Rangers Stage 119 Free Clear - English Voice Explanation- Free Rangers Sol, Warrior Jessica, Opera James, Clara, Glenn

First-time Playthrough Links 

I used Hip Hop Brown [70], KSM [55], Dancer King Boss [60], Sorcerer Cony [50], Charismatic Jessica [70] in almost all of these first attempts... just because I can. These videos were just for fun because I recorded the very first time I encountered the new stages. If you are looking for other ranger teams, I might work on those later, though there are plenty of people who do a better job of those kinds of videos than I do! I make no claims about being a good player, I just try my best with what I have, so proceed with the attitude of fun, please. [Update: All the boss stages were revised to be more difficult, featuring more mini boss enemies per stage. Videos are probably outdated but haven't had time to sort it all out so watch with caution.]

Stage 109 Cleared

Stage 110 Cleared

Stage 111 Cleared

Stage 112 Cleared
Stage 113 Cleared

Stage 114 Cleared

Stage 115 Cleared

Stage 116 Cleared

Stage 117 pwnd (me)
Stage 117 Cleared
Stage 118 Cleared

Stage 112 Cleared (Free rangers: Sol, Clara, Sindy, Warrior Jessica, Scott) - [Update: outdated due to stage revision]

First Impressions

I stand corrected on my previous predictions. This entire zone was trivialized significantly by KSM, Dancer King, Hip Hop and Bernard. If you watched my videos above, this is quite obvious. Every stage was one-shot except for 117 & 120. I got 120 on my 4th try (with Dancer King [60], Sorcerer Cony [50] and 3 lowbies). I still enjoyed it, though. Going back and trying these again with other ranger combinations will be fun.

Mundo? More like Psycho... Pet kidnapper. I don't like her. I bet she's the one who abducted Sally for the Alien King.

In addition, lowbies have made a huge comeback. I will try my best to remember to put KSM & company back in my team when I am not playing, sorry in advance if you use my help and get a Bella :( Koji (red jumpsuit enemy) is really terrible to deal with and having a horde of lowbies in the front helps a lot. Same with the dynamite enemies (not listed in the enemy collection). It's also very helpful on Stage 120 where Mundo (poodle riding boss) body slams everything in a huge radius. Might as well let her kill throwaway lowbies. 

Richard, the green dino mini boss, has an insane range. I mean, really ridiculously long range. Everything, including Dancer King Boss and probably most towers, gets hit by his splash damage. Any time this mini boss is present, it acts as a ticking time bomb because if you don't kill him in time, your tower will get splashed down and game over -- Use your Tower Repair carefully. Luckily, his attack speed is pretty slow, and he's not terribly difficult to block with a standard health ranger.

That's all the thoughts I have for now. Hope everyone is enjoying the new area's challenges.

Friendship Point Event - Macho Moon

Macho Moon is now in the mix of Friendship Point GACHA for the next 7 days. The only difference between this event and the Clara event is that Friendship Points remain at 20 points for sending and receiving help (no event-only boost to 50 pts). If someone selects your rangers as help for a stage, you get 10 points, as always.

Now's the time! Gather up your friends and try your chance at getting Macho Moon. Here is the Friend ID sharing page where you can add loads of friends, and feel free to add yourself to the list, too. Be sure you go to LINE app> Settings > Profile and tick "Public User ID" to allow people to add you.

I've had terrible, terrible odds so far during this event, but it's only Day 1. I hear others are getting Macho Moon rather quickly. Let's all help each other win level 60 Macho Moon! Remember, you'll need 5 to get him to maximum level capacity. 356K HP at level 60 with a 310 mineral cost is not too shabby at all.

A handsome, nice fellow who likes to live dangerously. And so deliciously plump at max level. 

Just when I was lamenting about how going forward I would have to use Xan or Styne as the health ranger standard to do free ranger videos, this event comes to save the day. Macho Moon is my preferred health ranger when I need someone with loads of HP. He walks faster than Brown and Styne by a mile. He doesn't cost nearly the fortune that Xan does (310 vs. 470) and has a shorter cooldown (5 seconds vs 8 seconds). All the makings of an excellent tanking ranger! I am very happy he is joining the free ranger club. I wonder if he will also be available on the spinner for stage clears in the new areas.

While we all wait for Sorcerer Cony to arrive in the mail, Macho Moon will definitely be helpful to those still working on the areas that are currently released in the game. Good luck, everyone!

[Update] Just for fun... Here are my current rollies on the Friendship Gacha. Not great odds. But the 1, 2, and 3 star results are pretty much even.