Tuesday, November 17, 2015

StormBorn Guide for New Players!

So you've just installed the game and have finished the tutorial? You likely have a Fighter, Magician, Rogue and a Scholar. You probably skipped all the word-intensive pop-ups explaining how to get the heroes you need, but you prefer some direction! No surprise there.

Important tips:
-level up all the heroes you intend to use for Attack/Defense to the maximum you possibly can
-increase the leader heroes (top slots in battle selection screens) ultimate abilities to their current cap
-summon each gender of each class for quests: start with Fighter, Magician, Rogue, Scholar & Duelist
-don't rush StrongHold upgrades; everyone wants to climb to the top, but doing this upgrade as quickly as possible can lead to difficult matches in PVP battles. Consider yourself warned!
-don't upgrade Ultimate Abilities on classes you don't intend to equip in the leader slots! This one should be common sense, but I felt it was important to remind players.

Suggestions:
-don't focus on honor too much. Attack players stronger than you are from time to time to gauge your true power and note which Army styles you are strong/weak against
-when deciding on a PVP battle and whether or not to attack a player, look at defense power, hero levels, number of heroes and evolution levels. Some low power players have excellent heroes and some high power players have some easier to defeat defenders. You have 30 seconds to help decide so use it!


Which heroes do I equip in my army?

This question surfaces quite often in chats. While army selection is up to each player, having a certain combination makes progressing in the game much easier. I decided to look at my army much like real ones. Troops, medics and leaders are all essential parts of battle. This is also the case in StormBorn. Some all-damage-dealers armies and other variations can work, but since I attack players stronger than myself and more often than not, stronger players deal more damage than I do, I need my healers to help defeat walls.

-Scholar - my squad revolves around this hero's ultimate ability. They shine the most later in battles, so most players dislike the class. When he's resurrected my entire army or an average of 3 heroes per battle, it becomes difficult to consider replacing.

-Druid - the most survivable basic healer which improved HP and armor capabilities from traits. This hero has been known to solo entire wall defenses. Two of them are also great to help keep the heal-over-time on your army for longer periods of time. Note that two druids casting heal within a short time does not cumulatively stack their healing. It's best to wait until the first heal finishes ticking and then apply a second.

-Darkmage - closer to a glass cannon than anything, at higher levels their ultimate ability heals for large amounts.

-Beastmaster - as far as utility, this class is MVP for newer players and gaining the advantage needed to overcome tougher opponents. It is the best class available from a level 1 portal, which makes evolving them slower, but well worth the effort. High HP and a frontal cone stun? Two of them for chain stun is really fun in battle.


Which class to evolve first/next?

I highly recommend all players spend a few days maxing the evolution of Fighter, Magician and Rogue. Their ultimate abilities are situationally inferior to others, but they make great troops for how easy they are to get to 5* - keeping in mind that the 5-minute-free rule works for summons, it should only take 30 hours of non-stop summons to get from 1* to 5* for each of these classes.

My personal recommendation for which classes to evolve and in order:
-Fighter, Magician, Rogue, Scholar, Darkmage, Druid, Beastmaster
-if you unlock Portal level 2 and Tier3: Warlock, Inquisitor, Disciple

Friday, November 6, 2015

StormBorn Global Launch!

Most regions of the world should now see StormBorn: War of Legends in their app stores for iOS and Android. PvP has improved as more fresh bodies were injected into the game.




A significant number of performance improvements and game changes have occurred as of late. Chat moderation is on the way, lowered requirements for obtaining an Embassy. It used to require Stronghold 7, or about a week of play; it should be Stronghold 4 soon, which can take a day or two. This is great news for all the new players starting out!

Alliance features are also in the works, such as the ability to donate a hero for other alliance members to make use of in their army. The specifics of the feature haven't been revealed, but it was a popular feature request from HonorBound, so it's not a big shock to see a version of it here. Hopefully balance and abuse concerns are addressed before it gets added. Resetting the hero level, traits, evo and gear or some other form of control is likely to happen I'd wager.



One final piece of information that we learned from the global launch is that this game is not currently cross-platform for switching devices. What I mean by that is that a player cannot begin a new account on an iOS device and then switch to Android, or vice versa. This is likely due to the differing authentication methods used by each platform. Apple Game Center versus Google Play Games. Based on the phrasing from the devs, I would think this is something that may change in the future, but it's important to keep in mind for anyone considering a new device.




If you have any questions for me, comments are welcome!

Friday, October 30, 2015

StormBorn Update 1.2 - New heroes & more!

Early this morning a new update became available as anticipated. New heroes, revamped in-game chat, expanded levels, quests, campaign and a plethora of other interesting changes have been added.

Here's a brief listing of some of the better additions:
-gem videos - this popular feature from HonorBound is being added to StormBorn, watch to earn
-in-game chat revamp - the old one crashed a lot. the new one works well so far
-additional quests - a lot of new quests were added at the level 15 range and up, very helpful and fun
-a few new beasts and a stack of heroes with titillating abilities at higher levels
-additional builder which was added due to popular demand, gems only (see gem videos above)
-over 600 bugs squashed!

Also, it was revealed that JuiceBox aims to launch the game worldwide next week!

Monday, October 26, 2015

StornBorm Hero Levelling Chart

Here are the Level and Archon prices for levelling up heroes in StormBorn. The total cost for levels 1-33 is 125250 Archon.

2 30
3 70
4 150
5 250
6 350
7 500
8 650
9 800
10 1000
11 1200
12 1450
13 1700
14 1950
15 2250
16 2550
17 2900
18 3250
19 3600
20 4000
21 4400
22 4850
23 5300
24 5750
25 6250
26 6750
27 7300
28 7850
29 8400
30 9000
31 9600
32 10250
33 10900

Monday, October 12, 2015

StormBorn Chests from the Shop

On September 18, 2015 @ ~9:00PM EST StormBorn received a fairly large update. The main additions included Alliances and in-game chat, but this update also added chests to the shop. I'm going to elaborate and include some screenshots related to chests for today. It took me a few weeks to unlock the Ultimate Chest and I didn't want to write this before having access to a few pulls from that chest.



First up is the Basic Chest, of which players can open three per day for free. The server timer resets at 8pm EST daily.

  • Chance for uncommon gear, Soulstones and Heroes up to 2 Stars!

The Premium Chest can be opened once per day for free.

  • Chance for Rare gear, Soulstones, Heroes up to 3 Stars and a Warlock!


The Ultimate Chest can be opened once per week for free once reaching Stronghold 10.

  • Get Epic gear, Soulstones and a chance at Top-Tier Heroes at 3 Stars!

Here's an example of an Ultimate Chest:




Friday, October 9, 2015

StormBorn Single-Player Events!

During the beta we have been pleasantly surprised by the launch of 24 hour single-player events, an obvious test run of the event system that is being deployed for StormBorn. Here I will briefly touch on the five different flavors we have seen so far and just how to gain points towards earning some very impressive rewards.



First off there was Gold Rush! Gold spent on anything in the game counted towards your score for the event. This first one was pretty self explanatory and ran without issue.




The next event was called Recruitment Drive and the objective here was to summon new heroes and have them complete taking an oath.




The third event was called Gain Honor! In order to score points, players had to net gain honor from battling other players.




The fourth event was called Level Up Heroes! Yet another self explanatory event, where players earned one point for each level gained per hero.




The most recent event was called Pillage Resources! Battling other players in PvP for the most resources gained earned rewards.







Thursday, October 8, 2015

StormBorn Hero Cookbook

This is a rough guide for how to summon a particular class. Only the Fighter, Mage and Rogue summons listed below are 100% chance. Other classes you can tell if you succeeded by the length of time to summon. The longer the length of time, the stronger the class. Tier 1 Fighter = Fighter + Fighter (15min) Rogue = Rogue + Rogue (15min) Magician = Magician + Magician (15 min) Scholar = Rogue + Bard (30min) Trader = Unknown (requires Portal 3) Tier 2 Beastmaster = Rogue + Magician (5 hours) Duelist = Rogue + Fighter (90min) Darkmage = Magician + Fighter (4 hours) Druid = Scholar + Magician (4 hours) Bard = Rogue + Scholar (4 hours) Captain = Fighter + Scholar (4 hours) Mercenary = (requires Portal 3) Smuggler = (requires Portal 3) Artificer = (requires Portal 3) Scribe = (requires Portal 3) Tier 3 Warlock = Magician + Duelist (requires Portal 2) Bladesinger = Duelist + Scholar (requires Portal 2) Disciple = Magician + Bard (requires Portal 2) Inquisitor = Scholar + Darkmage (requires Portal 2) Quartermaster = (requires Portal 4) Assassin = (requires Portal 4) Envoy = (requires Portal 5) Knight = (requires Portal 4) Noble = (requires Portal 5) Arbiter = (requires Portal 5) Tier 4 Paladin = (requires Portal 6) Shadowknight = Bard (or Rogue) + Darkmage (requires Portal 6) General = (requires Portal 6) Archmage = (requires Portal 6) Source for tier information located here.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

StormBorn: War of Legends - Intro & Impressions




Welcome to my initial impressions of the geo-loc beta RPG hybrid game by JuiceBox Games called StormBorn: War of Legends. This is their second title and a lot of player feedback and features from other games have been used to create this unique mobile gaming experience. The short answer is that this game has a lot of potential and is quite addictive. It is currently available on iOS and Android in Canada and Australia. The global launch date has yet to be revealed, but based on the fact that the devs are testing events and actively seeking bugs and feedback leads me to believe this will be before 2015 ends.

Currencies!

Gold - needed to upgrade buildings, abilities or traits
Archon - needed to upgrade research, buildings and hero levels 
Gems - premium currency obtained from quests, levelling or event rewards 
Candles - needed to obtain gear or crafting components, found in the Crypt
Food - needed to battle other players in PvP

Buildings!

The main building is the Stronghold. This building affects amount of resources protected from players who battle your base when you are offline. It also is a main requirement for upgrading most other buildings, and later is needed at certain levels to unlock chests in the shop and Alliances via the Embassy.

The resource buildings are the Gold Mine and Archon Well. If you are one of the unfortunate souls who avoids PvP, you'll want to focus on these buildings early and often. 

The Beast Den is the counter to base defenses. A beast is an extra hero used in attacking players. The main three are Troll, Elemental and Warbeast. Troll is a great front line meat shield with decent damage, the Elemental is a long-range medium-damage and the Warbeast is a slow moving wall breaker that can attract enemy long range heroes once it meets the defenses.

The Crypt is gear central. Initially this is where you go to consume candles for a chance at gear needed to promote your heroes. After a time there are components needed to craft gear here as well.

The Embassy requires Stronghold level 7 and then 5000 gold to build it. Joining an existing alliance is free, but starting up your own alliance costs an additional 5000 gold.


Gear!

Gear sets of 6 gear are needed to promote heroes and unlock each of their three traits. The traits are usually a boost to a specific stat or an improvement to a part of their Ultimate Ability. Traits unlock at Green, Blue and Purple gear sets.





Summoning and Evolving Heroes!

Two heroes enter the portal. Three heroes walk out. Combining certain classes can result in new and more powerful classes. If you wish to sell the hero instead of keep it, you are awarded with class-specific Soulstones which are used to evolve heroes from the same class. Here's a quick chart showing evo costs:

2* = 10 soulstones

3* = 50
4* = 100
5* = 200

As of writing this, 5* evo doesn't work, however I'm told it will be fixed in the next client update.




Battle!

Players attack other players, campaign battles and quests in partially AI controlled situations. Each player has leader slots assigned to the heroes that they want to make use of their Ultimate Abilities. Each leader hero has one Ultimate Ability that can be activated when their energy bar is full in battle. Energy recharges at different rates depending on the hero, but generally if they are attacking a target, it fills up slowly; if they are taking damage, energy fills up quite quickly. If you wait and use multiple Ultimate Abilities at once, you earn a combo bonus of up to x5. Battles have a timer of three minutes so if you aren't able to defeat an opponent within that time, you are defeated.



Check back later for guides, bugs and more! Thank you for reading.

Links:
Android
iOS

Disclaimer: This game is still being balanced and tuned. Information contained in this could change over time.