Right out of the gate, many players have already completed all the new stages of Red Sand Hill! Hard to believe, but it's true! Almost exclusively up-to-date premium players, but still, it's quite fast to already have dominated the new map.
One of the exciting things I found quite fascinating is the new adjustments (read: buffs) of the older limited rangers, as briefed in the notice we received prior to the new area release.
This may not mean much to some, but I am very happy about this because it brings older veteran players like me, who have for a while dropped out of the race and stopped paying for rangers, a reason to come back into the fold. My dear old faithful, Ola Brown got a huge bump in stats, as did Susu and others that followed him. Whether or not it makes them "useful" again is up for debate, but, what it represents is the idea from LINE that they recognize old rangers need to be brought "up" to make them more competitive. They've done it before for older generation rangers... and then quickly scaled up the power of the newer rangers again. So we know this "new buff" is only temporarily relevant, as with all things in Line Rangers.
Nevertheless, rejoice, friends! New area, new life to old friends, new treasure. Have fun!
...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:
The new area is out tonight! Some people have raced ahead and completed it already, while some of us are still taking the leisurely route. The double-chance Gacha event is up again with 30% extra rubies when you purchase any right now, so if you want another shot at limited edition ranger, Red, this is your best chance. I do think that for people saving up rubies that it's best to keep saving for the next set of new rangers who will surely be even more powerful in various ways.
The other very exciting thing about the new release is the "re-balancing" of rangers. I haven't personally taken a very close look at everything, but at a quick (very, very brief) glance, many of the free rangers as well as earlier generation of rangers have gotten a mighty boost in attack power, range, etc. This type of boost will help free players and veteran players get over many hurdles, and is probably a hint at the difficulty level of Treacherous Swamp. They want to make sure that free ranger players have a decent chance if they work hard enough to master the freely obtainable rangers and as always, try, try again.
I'm kind of put off, as many other people are, about the Ninja Warrior ranger who is new -- and reportedly -- only available to paying players who buy $49.99 USD worth of rubies now. Hmmm. It seems kind of dirty to me. I mean, he's good but... is he $49.99 x5 good? You be the judge...
Edit: I thought about this again. And well, $250 isn't such a bad price for a master Warrior Ninja. The truth is, when you play the Gacha on average it will take you around $400 worth of rubies before you receive 5 of any new 5-star ranger. The $250 price tag may be a turn-off but if you think about it rationally, it IS more of a bargain and of some level of consolation that you will *definitely* get the new ranger rather than leaving it up to chance. Of course, the $400 is an average and some people can get the new ranger that they are hunting for much cheaper, perhaps even cheaper than $250. Good for them. But in my own experience, it's never been the case personally. In hindsight -- and I am being 100% serious and honest about this -- I had so much trouble getting Sorcerer Cony and Ola Brown when they were flavor of the week that if LINE flat out said if you give us $250, we will give you SoCo/Ola... I would have taken them up on their offer. In reality, I spent much, much more trying to get them in the Gacha and it was excruciatingly painful on my wallet.
That said, is warrior ninja worth it? Well, he's basically a pseudo tank unit. He has more HP/mineral than our previous bargain tank unit, Muay Thai Brown. His attack is really quite good (especially when you compare it to the nonsense that is Somchai). So as far as being useful, he is definitely good. But whether or not you need to have it is up to you and your current team composition.
Side Note (credit to T'Golf): Warrior Ninja looks like Glenn in a ninja suit. Put on a ninja suit, get upgraded to 5 stars. Well played, Glenn. Well played.
Also, the new treasure is...(Look away now if you don't want to know!)....
Increase ranger's experience gained. Taking a wild guess here, but since almost every other treasure was a 45% increase, I'm going to guess that full treasure benefit will also be a 45% bump in ranger experience gained. (BTW, some players who are more diligent than me figured out that the Waste Land treasure for Player EXP gained was also +45%).
Treasure pic credit goes to fellow LR player, Bozz.
Good luck and have fun, everyone! I might go ahead and try to play some more Line Rangers seeing as how World of Warcraft has like a 6 hour queue to log in since the new expansion pack got released yesterday lol...
Hi everyone. I know I'm a bit late about it but I haven't been home all day to post though I woke up and saw the splash screen about this new "swamp" that's coming up soon. I refer you to my old post about Waste Land where I basically said that we seem to be getting more and more dirty and gross as we journey closer to Sally. LINE seems to be keeping with the theme of creating new areas with a gross factor. Why can't they have made Mephisto to be a really classy villain who enjoys fine wine and modern contemporary design? For a while, I thought with the Skyscraper that we'd get to see some cool, interesting evil lair but now I'm wondering how nasty Sally's dungeon must be. Poor ducky -- she's duck, I don't care what anyone says!-- must be suffering in a horrible cell if we have to slob through a swamp to get there.
So anyway, Treacherous Swamp is the new area that's coming and if we look historically for clues, then the zone will drop live probably tomorrow or so. It's kind of odd though: They usually say new enemies added and new treasure, but this time they only say new enemies. Does that mean we're not getting a new treasure? There are still plenty of ideas for treasures I think, so I'm not really sure why they wouldn't give us a new treasure, even a bogus little one that doesn't help much would be something, and something is better than nothing.
I read all the stuff the commenters wrote about Chuck and it's quite interesting how this 4 star birdy rocked the free player world a bit. Seems like he is good stuff. I haven't played much Line Rangers recently and I farmed him about 20 or 30 feathers and didn't get a single one and I was just like, aw, forget it. But then a couple days later Chuck became available on Friendship Gacha and I laughed because if there's anything I have a ton of, it's Friendship Points! Got 5 Chucks in a hurry and job's done. :) I guess we should have seen it coming because they did promise it in the original Angry Birds x LR notice but I wasn't expecting the Friendship Gacha bird to be the same bird as the Stage Clear bonus bird. Oh well. I felt mildly tricked by it, but it worked out in my favor.
Red is available until November 17, so we have a few more days before I'm sure a new set of rangers will come. I was on the fence about the Angry Birds as rangers but I think I've decided now that I would rather LINE stay on point about their characters. We've had quite a few deviations with crossover events (Pili themed rangers, Toyota Yaris, Angry Birds) and yes, they were OP in their own way during their time but why can't we have more interesting LINE Town character rangers? Jessica and James have hardly been explored, in my opinion. I originally fell in love with Line Rangers because it had a story and it was a rescue mission. It tied in very closely with the lovey dovey feelings I get when I think about the LINE friends. I felt a need to save Sally and I wanted Brown and Cony to lead the charge. But now anyone can come along and bam-pow their way through the stages to save Sally... it's lost a certain charm by breaking into the LINE Town universe. I know everyone has their gripes with the current situation of the game, but my specific plea at the moment is for the game's upcoming rangers to relate back to Line Town.
Also, where are my Final Fantasy fans? Give me a shout if you get this. The enemy in the lower left corner of the splash screen: Tonberry? If his right hand is hiding a dagger, we are all screwed because Tonberry is a bad-ass.
Hrm...
Don Tonberry
Final note: I added a related links section and the LR database created by Jessica is quite nice and impressive. Check it out! Anyone have any other English resources out there?
When I first heard that the Maze of Illusion treasure was increase in attack speed, my first thought was, "oh really, again?" :P My second thought was that it was one of two possible effects:
DPS (damage per second) of the ranger would remain the same, but the hit rate increases. Exmaple: Without the treasure, if Ranger X's DPS is 10000 and he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. Assume that with the treasure his hit rate doubles, then he would hit once every 2.5 seconds while his DPS remained the same, then each hit would cause only 25000 damage. This scenario causes no total damage gain, but has its perks as hitting more often can be advantageous.
Damage-per-hit remains the same while the hit rate increases. Example: If without the treasure Ranger X's DPS was 10000, he hits once every 5 seconds, then his damage per hit is 50000. With the treasure, assume the treasure causes hit rate to double, then he is doing 50000 every 2.5 seconds. His new DPS would be 20000, effectively doubling it.
One way gives us just marginal benefits while the other gives us significant gains. So which way is it?
Our friends at LINE Rangers 台灣社團 has done the research for us! The text you find contained in the box below is an interpretation of their new article, Increased Attack Speed Treasure Comparison.
Article comes from: LINE Rangers 台灣社團 Author: 小為，黃郁弘 Research participants: 黃郁弘，小為，為執著，張家銘，黃名楊 Editor: 小為
Summary
LINE Rangers 台灣社團's testing has indicated that Maze of Illusion's treasure effect increases the rate of attack while preserving the amount of damage per hit. Each ranger's "attack" in the profile card represents its DPS (damage per second), and the damage per hit is derived from this number. The treasure preserves the ranger's damage per hit value according to its original DPS, but because the treasure causes an increase to the number of hits the ranger produces in a time period, it effectively is increasing its "true" DPS value. We can multiply the profile DPS value by the ranger's attack speed to find out how much the DPS has increased. For instance, Alice's profile lists her DPS as 53128. With 100% Illusionary Dice benefit, her DPS becomes 96693*. * This value was obtained by using the attack speed value discovered via research method discussed below.
So how good is this treasure? Since this area is so tough, many players have had trouble getting it. Once you get to stage 129, you have a chance to unlock it 100%. Not to disappoint, the raid team has finally obtained 100% of the treasure and solved the mystery of its benefits.
The Method
The test method used recordings of the rangers attacking as researchers watched them in 10x slow motion to see the attack speed of each ranger. They recorded it many times and took averages of their observations so as to minimize error. Their original attack speed values were posted in their first article on the topic here, which I discussed on my blog here. Here is a sampling of their findings post-treasure (measured in time between hits): - Sol's speed is now 2.38 seconds, down from 4.33 s - Witch Cony's speed is now 1.47 seconds, down from 2.67 s - Alice's speed is now 2.55 seconds, down from 4.63 s - Opera James's speed is now 1.50 seconds, down from 2.73 s Compare that to the original attack speed and you will see that obtaining 100% Illusionary Dice results in a 0.55 attack time reduction.
100% Illusionary Dice Attack Speed Coefficient
By battling a friend who does not have the Illusionary Dice treasure unlocked, the testers (who all obtained 100% of the treasure) saw that the Damage-Per-Hit value has not been changed, which is key to understanding how the treasure changes our ranger's damage.
Example: Level 70 Witch Cony
- Without treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against the tower is 35648
- With 100% Illusionary Dice treasure, Witch Cony's damage-per-hit against tower is still 35648
From this, we can deduce that the treasure does not affect base damage values. Witch Cony's original no-treasure attack speed is one hit every 2.67 seconds while with 100% treasure, she hits once every 1.47 seconds. Since the treasure increases attack speed while preserving her damage-per-hit value, it means that her true DPS value has been increased. Based on damage-per-hit:
2.67 sec/1.47 sec = approximately 1.82 times
...which means that if you take her profile DPS and multiply it by 1.82, you will get her new DPS. The treasure increases DPS by 1.82 times.
Other rangers' attack speed changes also reflect the 1.82 coefficient:
Sol 4.33/2.38 ~ 1.82
Witch Cony 2.67/1.47 ~ 1.82
Alice 4.63/2.55 ~ 1.82
Opera James 2.73/1.50 ~ 1.82
This is how we arrived at the previous example with Alice:
53128 (original listed DPS) * 1.82 = 96693
Afterword
Line Ranger stages 109 - 120 of the Skyscraper area originally released with the treasure "increase attack speed" but because they reduced the damage at the same time, they finally changed the treasure altogether to something else, increase attack range. The present treasure for Maze of Illusion carries the same description as the old treasure, but it is vastly different and very beneficial to players. Once you obtain 100% of the Illusionary Dice, go back to Skyscraper and you will realize just how much easier the area becomes with the treasure effect.
But the treasure effect is not just a DPS increase. It has substantially decreased the amount of time it takes for previously "slow/very slow" attack speed rangers to produce one hit. For instance, before the treasure, there was a very good chance that Sol would be knocked back or totally killed before landing even 1 hit of his red bomb. But now his hits are only 2.38 seconds apart (down from 4.33 seconds), so one quick burp and the enemy loses 250k!
Conclusion
Long story short, the new treasure is the second scenario that I posed at the start, the effective DPS is increased by a factor of 1.82.
Rest assured, the Castle in the Sky treasure is still in effect and it is still a factor in our rangers' damage-per-hit. The new attack speed is simply doing that amount of damage-per-hit more often.
The calculation of our rangers' damage is getting more and more convoluted as they add more treasure effects and multipliers. And it's getting all the more challenging to backtrack because they took away the enemy tower HP values that we used to measure against >:O It's all bit mind boggling, but we're getting more powerful all the same so I can't complain!
Thanks again to the gurus at LINE Rangers 台灣社團. They work tirelessly to find out all this cool information.
This new area has created more uproar than any other new area in Line Rangers history. I've been busy and not really playing hardcore or playing to win since early last week so I've completely missed some of the drama that has been happening with the game. Though I didn't really live it, I definitely heard about some of the craziness. The short version is, the Maze of Illusion released and many players roflstomped over the whole thing just cleaving down the tower with Cherina spamming. Line then updated the area about an hour to 90 minutes later to buff the enemy tower health a huge amount to make Cherina spamming nonviable. Over the course of the next several days they did various things to the enemies and the stages to tune the difficulty back down, but at the same time they also changed some ranger stats to indirectly tune the difficulty up.
At the time of this writing, they're still tweaking some things and driving us all nuts. Strategies that worked before may not work now and strategies developed today might not work next week. Because of this, I'm almost glad that I've been too busy to really write anything about Maze of Illusion because it would have all been invalidated a couple of times over already, and that would make me pretty darn mad. It is also for this reason that I will not be recording any specific strategies because honestly, I'm not seeing the point if it's invalidated at any time. I'll discuss some good ones that are already out there, though. The area is really tough, and a quick glance at some of these numbers and it will be obvious why it's such a beast.
I did not confirm these numbers, but at a glance, these seem to be about right as of today. Who/where is nonmetoo@lineranger? If anyone knows, please comment & tell me
Example of the flip-flopping by Line: The widely distributed "Free Ranger" video for 124 made by Wei S worked really well for 2 days but on 7/22, the strategy no longer worked due to the tune-up of the stage. Then on 7/23 they reverted the stage back to the way it was pre-7/22.
I have some major gripes about post-release tune-ups, especially ones that happen five days post-release. It's frustrating to players because they've already been challenged once and may have finally nailed it down only to be slapped in the face a second time (or depending on how early you tried it, a third time). And then changing their minds and putting it back to the way it was again. I really don't see the point of it as a developer to do such needless tune ups on an already challenging boss stage. As far as boss stages go, I think the tuning of 124 is perfect where it was, "post-7/17", "pre-7/22", and "post-7/22". It is, after all, the first boss stage of the area.
My next biggest complaint is the reliance on Shu. Players without Ola Brown and Songster Cony can only hope to play with surgical precision relying on Shu heavily for ultra-long range splash to combat Dice. Seriously, what is a free ranger player to do if they missed the 2 Shu events? ...Which is why I'm almost positive that maybe in 3 weeks, they will tweak the stages again to make it possible to clear without Shu.
Stage 121 - Onslaught of Amber and Ryo
Going from 120 to 121 is quite a rude awakening. The ongoing theme of Maze of Illusion is that the damage is front-heavy. There is certainly a lot of splash, but the sheer uptick of damage on tanks compared to the earlier areas is amazing. 121 is by far the easiest stage in the area, and it's the only one that I could confidently label "easy."
This video made by michael suzuki is my favorite display of 121. It's simple, straightforward and plays to the strengths of all three of our free splash rangers (slow everything, but high damage).
Stage 122 - Ryo, Amber and Sally's genetic mutation
This stage is almost exactly the same as 121, but with the added damage from the long range Coocoo birds. It's a tough stage but it plays very well with lowbies. If you've been an avid player of Rangers in the last month or so, this video by free ranger master strategist Wei S may be right for you as it uses event rangers Red Brown and Shu.
123 may be the first place where the majority of people will get hung up. This stage is ridiculously tough if you don't have access to a few key rangers. In fact, from here on out, without ultra long-range rangers, you're in for some pain. For free players, you haven't gotten Witch Cony maxed, it's time to do that. Free players who got Shu are better off. Teams who have access to Ola Brown and Songster Cony are definitely better off. Why? The Dice enemy throws long-range splash damage to everything in the front to almost everything in the back. He deals a lot of damage and has a huge chunk of HP (even after he got nerfed post-release). I kid you not, this enemy is the biggest problem in the entire area. The way to deal with him is to simply out-range him, or wait till all of them pop out and tornado to restack them all for an all-out slaughter and hope you kill them all before your invincibility and ice shot run out. If you have SongCo, Ola, Shu, DKB or Prince, by all means, use them because they out-range the Dice's splash.
Here is Wei S' Shu free ranger video on 123. It does rely a bit on powerful friend help, but by and large a strong display of lowbie + Shu play.
At the time of this writing, Stage 124 only features 1 Spade enemy and therefore the strategy by Wei S works perfectly fine. This is very difficult to pull off without Shu (though you can replace Shu with Ola/SongCo if you have them). The highlights as provided by Wei S are: Begin with Xan, then Sol. You're stalling for all of the Ryos to come out (roughly until the procession reaches your tower and hits it for about 3-5 million HP) then you can tornado the whole lot back and begin deploying Sol, Opera, Shu and Friend Help. Right as the mushroom enemies meet your rangers, you want to use your invincibility. Before invincibility runs out, use meteor. Right before invincibility ends (try to time it so you waste as little time as possible), use ice shot. If all the mushrooms, bunnies and dice die at this point, then you know you've timed it correctly. From here on out, you're just going to need Xan, Shu and Witch Cony. Maximize your deployment of Shu and Cony by timing it so you only have one Xan out at any time. Xan can withstand 7 Spade attacks before dying, and you'll want to deploy a new Xan when the 5th attack hits the current Xan. You will likely hit Hurry Up, but you should still down the tower before the Hurry Up pressure becomes too great.
If 124 flip-flops back to the 2-Spade version at some point, you can check out this video by Katsunco, which uses Bernard, SoCo, Ola and Hip Hop. Wei S also figured out how to game the trigger so that you'd only ever get 1 Spade if the stage does pop 2 of them (one at the regular start point and one when you reach the tower).
For this part 1 post, I'll end it here at 124. The latter part of the area is quite different and needs to be discussed separately. For stages 125-132, see Part 2.
Since a lot of death is expected to happen throughout the course of this area's stages, how can you use Gold Brown to your advantage? It's "semi-random"... Gold Brown is triggered when you happen to lose a whole bunch of consecutive times on the same stage. This is an article brought to you by the LINE Rangers 台灣社團. Basically, if you fail to clear a stage about ~10 times in a row, you can expect that Gold Brown will come and assist you soon. If you wish to force a trigger, you can simply start the stage you need Gold Brown on, wait until the first friend support unit shows up, and if it is not Gold Brown, just pause the game and hit Restart. Repeat until he shows up. According to the article, Gold Brown is a Splash class, he does 235k per hit, hits once per 5 seconds (47k DPS), Normal move speed, and he has about 8 million HP. Neat-o!
Just something I noticed and thought was kind of quirky. Area 6's treasure increases tower HP. We know that Area 9's treasure increases damage by 45.45%. How much does Area 6's treasure increase tower HP? Well as it turns out, it's also 45.45%.
Level 1 Tower HP...
Tower has 14545 HP at level 1, with 100% Ancient Museum Treasure benefit
When you start the game, you begin with a tower HP of 10000 (at Tower HP level 1). When you gain 100% of Ancient Museum's treasure, your tower gains 4545 HP, for a total of 14545, or a 45.45% increase.
This knowledge isn't necessarily important, it's just kind of a "hmm, that's sort of neat" observation. :)
I previously thought that they changed the way tower HP increased by not relying only on the upgrade level, but also increasing it automatically with each player level you gain; this turns out to be false. If you don't level your Tower HP in the Upgrade screen, assuming treasure is still locked, your tower will remain at 10000 HP forever.
It's kind of funny, but on my test account, I managed to get all the way to stage 119 in Skyscraper before tower HP level 1 became a problem. Stage 119 is a very short path stage where you face off very early on with Richard the green mini boss who has the ability to long-range splash your tower. Of course, if you are playing with free rangers all the way up, you will need more tower HP much, much earlier.
But why 45.45%? It's kind of an odd number to go by. I wonder what other treasure effects are +45.45%...
Update: Maze of Illusion is confirmed to be releasing approximately at 8am JST on July 17. Maintenance is happening as usual, then release.
Oopsie Daisies!
Early this morning, Line "accidentally" revealed that the new area called Maze of Illusion is going to be released July 17. The new area will come with new treasure, of course. It will also feature 7 new enemies. The splash screen was released everywhere and then true to "oopsie" Line Rangers fashion, was pulled out minutes later. Probably another accidental push!
Found these pics online
The new enemies look like Alice in Wonderland meets board game bonanza. I'm honestly pretty disappointed it is only one new area and not 2. We have it on good authority that 5 new areas are coming (don't ask me where, I cannot confirm), but maybe they're going to release them one at a time.
July 17 is only a week away! I can't wait. I have been dying to play new stages for a long time.
Line Rangers Survey
By the way, if you have not checked it out, go in-game to "Settings> Notices" for a new notice called Line Rangers Survey. If you do not see the new notice, try to restart the game. I had an issue where it showed up, then disappeared, then reappeared again.
They want to know what you like about the game, what you like least about the game, what can be improved/fixed and what suggestions you have for them to make the game better. There is no character limit so write as much as you like. I highly recommend that everyone who feels passionately about the game do this so that the game developers get the message directly from their players about what we want.
Me? I sent them 11 bullet points of top items I wish they'd do. Remember to be respectful and constructive because if you just tell them their game sucks and the Gacha sucks and you don't give them any intelligently formed opinions, it will not be useful.
One of the finer details of the game which I quietly pointed out in my "Did You Know?" post months ago is that the attack range of different rangers vary. In my own gameplay, I mostly memorized their ranges in relation to each other, and that's how you'll find I described them throughout most of my posts. But our Taiwanese Line Rangers friends have now unmistakably shown us how ranges differ by putting 39 rangers on display! (Valid as of the time of this writing.) Contained within the box is their article interpreted in English.
This article comes from: LINE Rangers台灣社團 Authors: 黃郁弘，小為 Photo Editor: 黃郁弘，小為 Revision: 小為 Testing Team: 鈺，楊濟安，Hsingju Wu，ShawTim Liu，黃名揚，標準兔，黃郁弘
In their article, "Attack Distance Measured: 39 Team Members," they took 39 4-star and 5-star rangers and with a ton of time, feathers, and screenshots later... lined them up in one incredible picture of ascending attack range. I'm not going to say anymore -- seriously, just click on the link! Scroll down and look at the picture. It tells a thousand words. Note: the testing group all have 100% treasure achieved in Skyscraper zone's Far-reaching Insight which increases attack range.
Picture below is a translated table of the rangers quantified by range. Click to enlarge view.
Ok, cool, right? Of course. They also shared one really keen finding. Honey the speedy bee ranger has the same range as Sol. But she has an interesting attack animation: she arches back and then lurches forward to sting the enemy. They found that when Honey arches backward, it's not "just" animation; her position actually shrinks backward, taking her out of immediate enemy hit range. When she swings forward to sting, she is back in melee hit range again. So it is possible for Honey to avoid being the first target to be attacked when she swings back and forth! Weird. I wonder if the same sort of swinging motion applies to Dwight, whose attack animation is quite a lot of space.
They also pointed out that Songster Cony is actually a pretty good ranger because her long range (quantified at 11) gives her a lot more survivability over other choices like Opera James. At max level, Ola Brown's DPS-to-cost ratio is almost identical to that of KSM (140 vs. 146). But Ola Brown's attack range is unprecedented for splash attackers and his attack speed is incredibly fast, making him a truly great asset to the team.
The set of pictures at the bottom of their article show the difference in various rangers' standing distance between having the Skyscraper area treasure at 0% and 100%. They used Friends' rangers to illustrate the difference. (Edit: By the way, this means that when you use your Friends, no treasure benefits apply to their rangers.)
Range is really quite important to keep in mind as you progress through the more difficult stages. Sindy makes herself invaluable as a freely available ranger in so many stages because of her ability to out-range enemies. In the same way, Witch Cony is also a very good choice but with less DPS. Ola Brown can reportedly solo the first 80+ stages due to both his very far reaching ball and his high attack speed. Why is Dumpy such a high impact single target unit with such a low cost? Because he is relatively short range with relatively little HP, making him vulnerable to death. Clara and Opera James are two of the most closely related free rangers, but why does Clara cost so much more while doing less damage even though Opera James has longer range? Clara's value lies in the fact that she is obtainable 72 stages before Opera James and sometimes move speed is more highly valued than sheer DPS (Players who were around for the original version of stage 84 will know what I mean!).
In almost every ranger vs. ranger comparison, there is a reason for why one stat is low and another stat is high, justifying their various cost and cooldowns. Attack range is one very relevant stat to compare. Hope that this was illustrative and useful.
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!
I wonder if I'm the only one who saw these two "new notices" because as soon as I saw them they disappeared. I saw one on my husband's iPhone and the second notice on my Android. I wish I screenshot them because they were dramatic changes... There's no evidence that the game has changed yet, so maybe they accidentally pushed out new notices and then retracted them?
IPhone notice: (not iPhone specific, I just happened to read it there, and these are what I remember from memory of reading it once)
-Changed speed rangers mineral cost so that it does not increase as they level up
-adjusted balance of ranger stats (no specifics were given as to which rangers and what stats)
-increased max level of all rangers by 10. (Oh my stars!!!! This would be amazing.)
-Gold Brown will randomly appear in stages as a friendly ranger (did not say what Gold Brown does or what kind of ranger he is)
I was so excited that I grabbed my phone and wanted to see immediately if the changes were live. But when I started my game my Android got a different notice...
-We found out there were some glitches regarding the stats in the Area 10 treasure which have now been fixed.
-We've also revised Ranger attack speed to Ranger attack distance
So does that mean, as many people have found if they tried to really paid attention, that Skyscraper's Treasure (increase attack speed) in fact does nothing at the moment? And they plan to change it to attack range/distance?
Did anyone else see these notices go out or am I hallucinating deep into the night? I have a screen shot of the Android notice which I'll post if it has not gone live by tomorrow morning.
Clear Stage 100 by May 30, 2014 and you will receive Sorcerer Cony for free in your mailbox on June 5!
This post is just for Stage 100 as it has come to the forefront of players' attention during the Rangers Event Sorcerer Cony giveaway. I've collected all the stuff about this stage and put it all here for reference.
Stage 100 was really difficult and since a couple weeks ago it was tuned down in difficulty, but still pretty challenging for some. Since there has been some back and forth about it with several of my readers, I'm putting all the links I think are useful for people to take into consideration. And these are food for thought only, not an exact guide. Keep in mind, all my videos have the 45% attack bonus from treasures, and I would imagine that the other Youtube video makers do as well.
Stage 100 is tough on the front line while also delivering tons of very annoying splash damage on your team. It's important to take into consideration the DPS, speed, and cooldown of your available rangers when seeing if they will rise to the challenge of this stage.
At the start of the stage, as long as you stay on the left half of the pathway and don't cross the midpoint, you will only have to fight a steady release of Tyler (airplane enemy). It's plenty to deal with on its own because when a lot of them stack up, your health rangers will melt in seconds. If you're using any health rangers, make sure that they can be sent out quickly and if they can't (like Styne), you will need a faster ranger to back him up (like Moon). Both direct damage and splash damage rangers are useful in this part of the stage so long as you have someone safely in the back doing it.
Once you finish off the airplanes and cross the midpoint, you'll start to get Mabebe (chicken enemy) and a lot more ice cream enemies. The thing that's going to determine whether you win this latter part of the stage is the size of your army when you cross the midpoint. If Stage 97, 98 and 99 have taught you anything, it's that you don't cross the midpoint with a skinny army. You need a rather large "ball of death" as you walk across the middle.
That ice cream is gonna die in about 2 seconds!
The ball of death is when you have a healthy clump of rangers and your entire team approaches the enemy front in tight formation. No super speed rangers are dashing ahead of the group. Your fastest and slowest rangers as well as your melee and long-ranged rangers are standing together pretty closely, all meeting with the enemy together, thus able to start firing on the enemy all at once. Said another way, it's when you build up to critical mass to quickly get rid of the next big enemy in front of you without losing any rangers. Your team will only continue to grow past this point. This is the kind of team formation you need in order for the ice cream enemies to die as soon as they get into damage range. For example, if Xan and Jessica are running ahead halfway across the path to meet a Mabebe and an ice cream alone, they're as good as dead because Ellin/Sol/Alice/Sindy/Clara are way in the back, not even in firing range yet. And by the time they get there, the big meaty health rangers are all about to die, then your long-range team will die too.
Side note: Even the video that uses 2 lowbies has a ball of death. It's the group of Sindys and Claras in the back.
The entire group moving closely, killing each of the 2nd wave of enemies off one by one and inching forward
This takes a considerable amount of planning when you are fighting Tyler to control how quickly you kill him so that you buy yourself enough time to build your team up while making its way toward the middle. This may mean holding back on Friend, Thomas, Missile and other Items. If you don't have enough total DPS to kill the ice cream as soon as they pop out, you can say goodbye to your army in the second half. I would even go so far as to say, if you are barely making it through the Tyler half of the stage, re-think your team as the second half will surely kill you, and if not, then Hurry Up will. I highly recommend keeping Ice Shot as long as possible so that you can use it to freeze the enemies at the foot of the enemy tower towards the end (or right as Hurry Up begins).
Hurry up? Who cares, you have the ball of death. Everything melts as it meets with your team.
The things to pay special attention to whenever you're watching a video of someone's gameplay are:
When they upgrade minerals and when they stop
When they use Ice Shot and Meteor, and where
When do they deploy Friends, if any
Which ranger in their team is top priority for deployment, which ranger(s) are deployed only when everything else is on cooldown and you have mineral to spend which will not get in the way of you deploying your top priority ranger when it is ready to deploy again. RTS players will know this phenomenon as not being "supply blocked", thus always able to get what you need most deployed ASAP.
It's a tough one but by no means impossible. It takes planning, good timing and lots of practice. Hope all these are helpful! Good luck!
One of my previous posts dispelling some of the confusion with ranger attack power and damage per second brought on an interesting discussion from one of my readers, ferro. The treasure from the Castle in the Sky area is a Flying Skateboard, which increases ranger attack power. But exactly how much does this treasure benefit attack? Since the game never likes to put actual numbers on anything, here's how we broke it down.
If you're not interested in math, the conclusion is that the Flying Skateboard increases ranger attack by approximately 45%. That's huge, so definitely make it a priority to farm all your treasure pieces in the zone. In fact, if you are having trouble with Stage 108, I'd encourage you to farm stages 99, 101 and 105 for all the pieces.
For my illustration of how we calculated this 45% increase, I began with two maxed out level 60 Sindy. Sindy's profile states her DPS (damage per second) is 17488. Sindy's attack speed is Very Fast, and she hits about once per 1.2 seconds. From this we can figure out that each one of Sindy's arrows hit for approximately 20985 damage as base damage.
Stage 25 tower after 1 hit - No Treasure
I took Sindy to Stage 25 where the enemy tower health is 90,000 HP. A single hit from her showed that her damage was 21569, which is pretty close to what we predicted.
Stage 25 tower after 1 hit - 100% Treasure
The above pic is damage from Sindy in the same stage, but this time with 100% of the Flying Skateboard treasure acquired. Her damage from a single hit was 31373, which is 9804 higher than previously.
A difference of 9804 damage is about a 45.454% increase between having treasure and not having treasure. Sindy's true DPS with full treasure benefit is 25437 (assuming from the math that she does 1.23336 hits per second). If you compare that to the no-treasure profile stat of 17488 DPS, it reflects also that it is a 45.45% increase of DPS. Ferro did his own experiment with a level 60 Ellin and arrived at the same result.
45% is a significant amount of DPS increase. The first time I cleared Stage 108, it was pretty much down to the wire. The second time I went back to Stage 108 after acquiring all the treasures, it felt much, much easier. I'd guess about 45% easier :) Is it worth farming for? In my opinion, absolutely. Grab your Friends, grab your Items. It's time to buckle down and farm this zone.
Section one 3 stars. We have one of her wings. Uh oh. I heard ducks like both their wings...
Section two 3 stars. And Section three is a wooden wheel [1 star], then a cart wheel [2 star], then a tire of some sort [3 star].
Umm. We keep finding Sally's stuff. Are we even going to find her alive at the end of this adventure?! We keep trying but Sally's never at the end of the zone...
