Difficult Stages - Stage 108

[Quick Update 5/23/14: Since May 22, many ranger's stats were buffed. There are many ways to clear Stage 108 now, but I would suggest that you invest in Sol as a team member. He is very strong these days, especially maxed out at level 80.

New Stage 108 Video - Easy Mode with just 4 rangers: Sol, Alice, Witch Cony, Warrior Jessica]

Stage 108 is the current end-stage of the release as of this writing on May 11, 2014. It's a very challenging stage if you don't have any special rangers. Then again even if you do, if the special rangers are not KSM or Dancer King Boss, you're going to have to try a few times before you get it.

The very frustrating thing about this stage is that depending on how and when you deploy your rangers, the stage will progress differently for you. The enemy formation varies somewhat inexplicably. I've had situations where in a single stage I have gotten 1.5 Evas, 2 Convini (the best possible formation). Another time I got three Evas, 2 Convini, unicycles and ice cream. Sometimes I get a normal formation of 2 Evas, 2 Convini but with unicycles and ice cream enemies sprinkled in the lineup. Also, depending on where your team is located at the time of Hurry Up, even the formation and types of enemies you receive in the death march of this stage is different. Sometimes you luck out and you only get a sparse lineup of Mabebe, Sena, Tylers, unicycles and ice cream. Sometimes you get your rear end handed to you on a plate by a densely packed stream of more Sena than you can ever defeat along with every other enemy in this zone. Therefore, I cannot really break down the stage into digestible parts. All depends on how you play.

There is hope, however. I found this one video made by a player who has my utmost respect. He not only nailed down the perfect timing for clearing this stage with an all common/free ranger team, he's also figured out how to methodically trigger the ideal enemy formation for 108 (1.5 Eva, 2 Convini, no ice cream/unicycles during regular stage, and the best possible Hurry Up scenario). This video is here, made by YouJJay. *Please* go watch his video if you need help with 108. I'm going to shamelessly take screenshots of his video and discuss them in this post. There are some things he does that I think are genius. Definitely worth pointing out to aid you in success.

The Team & Deployment Order

I'm going to assume that he has at least unlocked the Castle in the Sky treasure, though not sure if 100% or not. His team is probably fully leveled to max and the members are Clara, Alice, Witch Cony, Sol and Warrior Jessica. In his strategy, Warrior Jessica is highest priority for deployment, followed by Sol, Clara, then Alice and Witch Cony. I mentioned before about never being "supply blocked." The idea is, you may deploy anyone who is not on cooldown as long as doing so will not cause you to be unable to deploy Jessica when her cooldown is finished. Example: if you have 500 minerals when Sol's cooldown is almost done while Jessica's is 80% done, don't deploy Sol first. Wait for Jessica's to come off cooldown, deploy her, then deploy Sol when you get enough minerals. Never deploy someone else at the cost of wasting time not deploying Jessica.

Execution

I've tried his strategy several times and it's been foolproof so far. At the start, upgrade minerals to 7, then deploy Jessica. Upgrade minerals to 8, then wait until you can deploy another Jessica, followed by Sol, then Clara. Repeat Jessica, Sol, and Clara again before deploying Alice. Early on, you should only have enough minerals for those 4 anyway, so Witch Cony won't be even a thought until you have a few of those top 4 rangers.

If you time it that way, you will almost always end up in the spot that is identical to the video. Additionally -- and this is key! -- this will allow Convini to walk up *ahead* of Eva and start to hit Sol. This is very important because if he is not at the front of his group, Alice and Witch Cony won't be guaranteed to target him. If you follow this priority of deployment you will trigger Thomas when Convini's health is low and have enough fire power to defeat him before the pack of enemies backs you into your tower.

Once Eva and Tyler start to beat up on your tower, keep deploying your rangers to slow down the HP drain from Tyler. You are required to wait for the 2nd Convini to walk all the way to your tower because you are stalling for time. Time for what? (1) You're feeding your rangers slowly to death a bit here to trigger Thomas later. (2) You need to continue to damage Eva little by little in order to kill her before Hurry Up. (3) You must absolutely not be standing too close to the enemy tower when Hurry Up timer triggers because standing in various locations on the path triggers different formations. Also, standing too close can indirectly make Hurry Up more difficult for you (more on this later).  So, when the tower gets low, use Tower Repair to continue stalling. Use your Missiles as you get them. When Convini reaches your tower, Tornado them both back.

Here's the next critically important thing to note. You need to wait until Convini #2 passes the point where his text box is located before deploying your first Jessica. You need to do this because you want to end up about 1/3 of the way down the road and fight Convini and Eva there. I'll explain why soon.

As you fight Convini, Eva and Tyler here, your rangers are going to very naturally clump up into the great ball of death that you will need in order to slug your way through the Hurry Up part of this stage. If you continue to deploy in the priority mentioned, you should have no trouble getting all these remaining enemies very low. As soon as Hurry Up starts, drop the Meteor on them and Eva, Tyler and Convini will die. Now's also the time to deploy your Friend/Sidekick.

There are 3 reasons you are located here instead of further down the road. The natural instinct is to try to get as close to the enemy tower as possible after a tornado, right? You'll have less distance to have to fight through. But in this case, being far away from the tower gives you 3 advantages. (1) Your 3 heaviest hitting rangers (Sol, Clara, Alice) are very slow. The closer your army's meeting point is to your home tower, the faster and safer you can build up your ball of death army. (2) Convini walks faster than Eva. Giving him time to walk to you will allow you to focus your fire on him alone without taking extra damage from Eva. (3) When the stream of enemies from Hurry Up pop out of the tower, they will be tightly clumped, like their own ball of death. You do not want to be on the receiving end of all of that fire power. Since the enemies all walk at various speeds, the longer they walk, the more spread out they become. By the time you meet them, Sena has fallen behind and you can pick off the lone unicycle very safely. Without danger of being ganged up on, your army will get larger and larger and be able to inch its way to the enemy.

Continue to deploy your rangers, of course, and they will slowly join your mighty ball of death as you push through the enemies. But be mindful that as soon as you reach the tower, one half-health Eva will pop out. Use Ice Shot here to freeze everything in place as you splash down the tower and also kill her. After they thaw, it's pretty much a win!

Ice Shot the 2nd Eva

This method works every time. The timing and positioning are very precise and takes all the guesswork out of the formation of this stage. All kudos go to YouJJay. Go watch his videos, like and subscribe and all that good stuff.

Sounds like updates to the game are coming fast. Hope you guys clear 108 soon!

Stage 104 & Stage 108 Video Trial

Videos

[Update: Looking for new Stage 104 and 108 video guides? Stage 104 video and Stage 108 video updated since ranger stat changes.]

Testing this out to see how it goes. I don't think Stage 104 is particularly difficult, especially with this team of "free" rangers, but I just made this video to see if it'd be what I want... I put some annotations on the video to point out some important things in the stage.

Here is the link in case it doesn't show for mobile viewers.

Line Rangers Stage 104 Clear - Common/Free Team

Here is a video I did of Stage 108. I did a voice cast of this game instead. I'm sort of trying that out as well.

Line Rangers Stage 108 Video - Failed with Free/Common rangers <-- link in case the video doesn't show for mobile viewers.

Thoughts? Like/dislike? Or shut up, Panic, and just keep blogging with text?

Upcoming

I'm still working on an all-stage-obtainable "free" ranger team victory for the rest of the stages. Particularly Stage 108. There's also some funkiness about the stage. I've noticed there are about 2 or 3 different variations to the formation and ordering of the enemies in the stage (as you can see in the video above). I haven't figured out how it's triggered yet. Anyone else know?

[Update: Check out the videos & analysis specific to Stage 100 and Stage 108.]

Increasing Your Atk Power at Castle In The Sky - Flying Skateboard Treasure

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...