troops…

Posted on June 2, 2015 by beardmonkey

Update 12.4 hit the stores a few days ago. And like most updates, it added quite some new features/additions to the game, or showcased what is to come shortly. In no particular order the updates are:

3 New offensive Hero Skills: Spearhead II, Bullseye II, Close Quarters II. Their information has been added to the Hero Skills article.
Permanent debuffs added, in addition to the perm buffs. Weapon Disarm (attack debuff) and Armor Exposure (life debuff) items function in similar fashion to BC/SW.
New T4 wall troop: Stone Sheperds (elven) / Gates of Erebor (dwarf). Apparently they are set up as equivalent to Stone Giants for Wall Troops, with massive health, although first testing showed inconclusive results. At the moment, only six can be trained once. Adding to the Wall Troop article as soon as more concrete info comes out.
New Tactical Troop: Enchanters. A new troop sporting both high defense and offense stats. Although not shown anymore, lvl 120(!) is needed to train these. More info will be added to the TT article as soon as more info becomes available.
Increased player lvl. There is good reason to think (see above) it won’t be long before the player level cap is raised from 100 to at least 120, to train the Enchanters.
Increased Hero lvl. Another cap raised is Hero lvl. A glitch a few days ago enabled players to level their Heroes beyond 250. This was then revoked, but with the update it is now official: Hero levels now go up to 280!

So that’s it for now. Let me know how you feel about the new stuff, or share any information you might have 🙂

New Hero Skills!

Posted on June 1, 2015 by beardmonkey

A small addition to the Hero Skill library came today (I presume as I just noticed), in the form of level II versions of the offensive skills: Close Quarters, Spearhead, and Bullseye. All three Skills seem to follow the same pattern as their defensive level II counter-parts, in terms of Skill % benefit and upgrade costs. Full information on the new skills will be added to the Hero Skill article asap.

Were Scrolls removed from Extra-ordinary Mines?

Posted on June 1, 2015 by beardmonkey

Lately, I’m having trouble mining Scrolls from extra-ordinary mines. I know mines have undergone some changes, most notably in the number of Tokens, but I want to know whether I’m just really unlucky, or if Scholar Scrolls have really been removed from them. Please let me know if you still find them in mines..

Download the Gear set lists yourself

Posted on May 27, 2015 by beardmonkey

So I have been thinking. In the previous update, I stated the top30 images of best sets would follow tomorrow. Not so. Instead, if you follow the link given below, you can download a RAR file containing the 2 spreadsheets with processed gear combinations, one offensive and one defensive.

Now you can look at the full lists yourself, play around, adjust the numbers for your specific random rolls, whatever, it is up to you. I just hope somebody has some use for it…The link will also be added to the Best Sets article.

Link for the spreadsheets

Best Sets updated

Posted on May 27, 2015 by beardmonkey

Finally the Best Sets article has the level 2 Legendaries added to it. As I predicted, the best sets are pretty much identical to those before, just with the level 1’s swapped for levels 2. Remember this for when higher levels are announced and the article isn’t updated immediately (assuming the trend from 1 to 2 continues in 3). The top 30 images will be added tomorrow.

Hero Skills updated

Posted on May 27, 2015 by beardmonkey

I have just released an updated version of the Hero Skills article. Although it was put out pretty soon after Hero Skills were released, no major updates have followed, leaving much of the diagrams on Skill overview and Upgrade costs empty. Took a while for me to realize this, so there you go. Only a few numbers are still missing, if you happen to know them, please leave a comment.

Next up is the Best Sets article. I am putting the new gear ** in my spreadsheets and will probably update the article tonight when I have time. Stay tuned and happy Hobbiting!

Best Sets and Legendary level **

Posted on May 20, 2015 by beardmonkey

I know one of the articles desperate in need for an update (again) is the Best Sets article. Although containing all level 1 Legendary gear, the level 2 upgrades haven’t been included yet. Now I have two things to say…or three basically, if you count “I’m gonna do them don’t worry“.

First, because ALL the new gear is basically just the level 1 Legendary gear slightly improved (not even basically actually, just fact), I still believe the Best Sets article at the moment is still relevant enough to use, at least as a starting point. I honestly do not expect any major changes when adding in the level 2’s.

That said, I am gonna update them, but as I have been away for some time, I’m not 100% sure which level 2’s have already been introduced. So what I am asking here is to describe in the comments what pieces have been released, and there base stats and specific Hero bonus. The four bonus attributes are already covered in the Hero equipment article, so I don;t need that, unless you find errors in them of course.

Thanks for being patient and see you soon with an updated article.

Absence and update on Tokens and more..

Posted on May 5, 2015 by beardmonkey

So it really has been a while since I have been active. I already explained some of the reasons in earlier posts, but right now I have been of the game and site for some weeks almost completely. Personal life took a front seat and already narrowed the available time to play the game, but also the game itself hasn’t been as fun to me as it used to.

In essence, with all the new features and additions and content being dropped in a small time frame over the past months, this game for me at least, needs too much time spent per day for players to be competitive. For me, even with this site, this still remained a mobile game to me, which I play(ed) on my phone for some time a day, but definitely not hours on end (I know many of you do though).

On of my older articles detailed a set of 10 daily things to do in the game, but such a list today, with all the new features would require a lot of time if you want to stay ahead of the game and competition. Acquire gear, farm Tokens, Hero Skills, Mining, endless batches of tournaments…I can’t just pick up the game for an hour a day and expect to be competitive in any sense, and I find that frustrating. Sure there were always times, like during tournaments, when more time and effort was required, or if you wanted to farm a lot of Smaug tokens, but there were also stretches of time when less time was needed.

And that is no more. Putting Tokens in mines might be a solution to the auto-bots, and in theory even spice things up a bit, but in an active server, mining can be frustrating and requiring attention for quite some time. I want to play this game on the side, not spend hours a day just to keep up.

But there are more things that are bothering me. Especially the pay-to-win model Kabam enforces is failing to keep me interested. I started out not spending a dime on the game, and for a year, that wasn’t necessary. Once I became a member of a top Alliance, I did spend some, and it felt good, but that feeling didn’t last. Spending, in my humble opinion, should of course give spenders an advantage, but not make them better or nearly unbeatable in every aspect of the game. Spending to get your hands on the first level 8 Artamir gems and Legendary gear made you invincible basically. Right now things are evening out again as most players acquire these items themselves, but the process will repeat.

Ugh, this probably sounds whiney to most, but I just want to explain my absence a bit. Given this site it should be clear I loved this game, but it slowly fading, which is really sad, because especially the team members/alliance play is what makes this game great.

So that said, I will slowly resume putting out articles and updating older ones, such as on the Hero Skills. I will try to keep up to date with new features, and hope I can find both the time and motivation to really start playing again….

Tokens removed from Smaug: Big mistake or change for the better?

Posted on March 25, 2015 by beardmonkey

As many of you know Kabam has been battling with auto-clickers/bots for some time now. These programs/bots enabled certain players to constantly and relentlessly attack Smaug faster and longer than humanly possible, giving these players thousands of tokens or massive Goblin kills, and the benefits that come with that.

Of course this was seen by both Kabam and the majority of players as being unfair, so action was decided upon. But the problem proved tricky and a neat solution difficult, although the suggestions on the forums and other places were plentiful. Last week, we were presented with the not that great (to put it mildly) limit on attacking campaign, where after a certain number of attacks players had to wait a cool-down period to be able to attack again. Reactions weren’t that positive understandably, and the changes would also break tournaments such as GK and BK, and possibly even CHS. So from the start this would be temporary.

Today we received an email from Kabam about a more permanent change to Tokens and Smaug. Tokens drops will be limited in the Smaug campaign map, so the old way of getting them is gone. Instead, Tokens will be added to the Calendar, Moon Rune and Goblin Caverns/mines. Also Kabam stated that the daily amount of obtainable tokens would be the same as before, but seeing as it was dependent on effort instead of availability, I have yet to see how this plays out.

Although I agree the botting needed to be stopped, I’m not too happy with these changes at all. Again, non-spending casual players are going to be hot hardest. The Calendar will likely contain limited amounts of Tokens. The Moon Rune is too irregular in timing to provide a constant income of Tokens. Mines will most likely be dominated by the bigg buff players.

And I have seen better suggestions put forward as well. One of those was to have a random element put into Smauging, like a randomly location-changing button in the process. These kind of solutions would eliminate most if not all of the auto-clickers as well it seems to me, while maintaining a nearly identical experience for normal players.

I never was a huge Smauger. I was happy to have the time to farm 30 Tokens a day, and that already helped a lot in keeping up to date with all the new features. I just hope I am being overly negative here and things will be better than what I expect them to be, but I also want to know what you think of the new Token changes, so of course, a poll (multiple answers possible):

Legendary Gear II: Kabam needs to slow down

Posted on March 25, 2015 by beardmonkey

So, the second the last pieces of Legendary Gear I have been introduced, Kabam has introduced the level II Gears already on their forum, and a level II piece as the prize of the current Masters season 2. And all I can think is: Slow down! The rate of introducing new content and features is in my opinion way too high at the moment.

People haven’t gotten a normal chance to catch up with even level I gear and level II is already introduced/foreshadowed? Why not wait with this for a month or 2 (at least)? This way the game is becoming really unattractive to non-spenders, and even to people like me who spend a little (really not that much) it is getting hard to keep up, certainly not helped by the near constant premiums and the changes to Tokens on which I’ll post shortly.

Anyways, the Gears II have been added to the Hero Equipment article, although the base Attack and Life values weren’t given yet on the forum. They will be filled in and taken into account in the Best Sets article when they are truly introduced into the game, which I hop isn’t too soon. That said, the Gear II is pretty unimaginative, basically being level I Gears with the 3* attribute changed to a 4* one. So expect little changes to overall Best Sets in that regard as well…

Upcoming Battle Mechanics series

Posted on March 19, 2015 by beardmonkey

As I have noted on some occasions, I am in the process of writing a series of articles on battle mechanics, buffs and debuffs, diminishing returns (DR), and gear choices. Although most of the topics have been touched upon in other articles, sometimes partially, questions about how buffs, debuffs and DR work are still coming in almost daily. So to give you some idea of what the articles are gonna be about, here is a small preview:

I. The basic Battle Formula

In this article I will start off with the most basic maths and theory behind combat mechanics, specifically the basic battle formula, dealing with the relation between life and attack, buffs and debuffs.

II. Separating the Buffs

In the second article we are gonna go further and look a little bit into how the different buffs interact, multiplicative versus additive buffs, and how they effect our gear choices.

III. Why your opponent does not matter

In the third article we will look at the common misconception that you need to take into account your opponent’s gear, and see why this is wrong. This will in the end give us the formulas needed to see how your gear scores.

IV. Diminishing returns and how to deal with it

With the basic formula(s) established in the previous articles, we can look into diminishing returns, what exactly it is and how it impacts your gear choices. Math will be provided to make things very clear once and for all, as this topic keeps returning in questions and comments.

V. Wrap-up (optional)

This article is still optional at the moment. If written, it will be a conclusion to the previous articles, and sum up how you ultimately chose your gear and calculate its effectiveness.

All in all, the individual articles might not be that long, but neatly separated into individual parts I think this should answer any and all questions concerning gear, buffs and debuffs, and diminishing returns. Stay tuned and I hope you will enjoy them.

Last Legendary I gears added

Posted on March 19, 2015 by beardmonkey

The last remaining level 1 Legendaries have been introduced and added to the Hero Equipment article: Thorin’s Fur I, the One Ring I, and Smaug’s Scale I. All three are top notch items, which will mess up the Best Sets rankings, so expect changes there today as well!

Don’t buy Knowledge Crystals!

Posted on March 19, 2015 by beardmonkey

With the introduction of Hero Skills I wasn’t quite sure how much of a potential money grab this could turn into, but now that I have it on my main server I can tell you: DON’T BUY KNOWLEDGE CRYSTALS! Here’s why:

Continue reading →

Changes to Best Sets article

Posted on March 11, 2015 by beardmonkey

The Best Sets article has been a long standing favorite among my visitors. While it was rather straightforward to come up with the lists when we had full sets of gear, the introduction of all the new unique Legendary gear I items made it more and more difficult, as the possible combinations of gear and their buffs and debuffs grew more and more as well…

Continue reading →

Update 12.2: Box sliders and Hero Skills!

Posted on March 7, 2015 by beardmonkey

So a rather late message on the newest update 12.2, which hit while a was on holiday, but too good not to mention anyways. This update brought some very cool changes to the game-play and added a completely new game aspect as well: Hero Skills. Starting with that, here are all the changes from the newest Hobbit update:

Continue reading →

Back from my holiday

Posted on March 4, 2015 by beardmonkey

He people, just a short message here to let you know I got back from a week of skiing, hence why it has been quiet on this site. I had a lot of fun, the snow was good, the weather reasonable to good, as were the slopes. So now that I’m back, it is time to catch up. We have a new update with some very promising and long awaited for changes, new Legendary gear, and I will continue writing an article set on buffs and debuffs. But first, I need to respond to a LOT of comments you made over the past week, so first things first! 🙂

Small update

Posted on February 16, 2015 by beardmonkey

I finally got around to making some updates on a few articles. I added the Series prizes to the Master Season article, updated the Best Sets article (not text though yet), added Oakenshield 1 (best defensive shield atm) to the Hero Equipment article. Furthermore Im working on a GK tournament article and one or more articles going a bit more into battle mechanics.

That being said, I’m finding I’ve had little time for the website over the past weeks, and next week I will be skiing so don’t expect anything from me during that week. Also, because Im rather busy, some mails and comments might go un-replied (?), sorry for that.

Sincerely,

BeardMonkey

Master Season 1 TK tournament delayed

Posted on February 15, 2015 by beardmonkey

Just a short message for all of you wondering: Yes the planned TK tournament in the schedule for Masters Season 1 week 1 (Sunday) has been delayed. This event is supposed to be held on all uneven servers but hasn’t shown up yet. People have asked mods on the Kabam forums for clarification, but it seems an answer will follow tomorrow…

Input needed on Debuff mechanics

Posted on February 7, 2015 by beardmonkey

In relation to Hero Equipment and Gem Embedding, I wanted to do a piece on how to balance buffs and debuffs. For that of course, we need some understanding of the “Battle formula”. Now for attack and life this is rather straight forward, something like:

Troops killed = (Life*life buff) / (Attack*attack buff)

But the debuffs factor in in some other way, and I would like one of you to fill me in on how, as I cant get my head around it for some odd reason, while my instincts tell me the math cant be that hard. Problem with debuffs of course is that they cannot reduce attack or life of the enemy to zero. So while 100% attack buff doubles your base attack (+100%), a 100% debuff will not reduce base attack or life to zero. So how does it fit in the equation? My guess from the above here is that buff and complementary debuff do not interact directly, like:

Troops killed =
(Life * (life buff(?)life debuff))
(Attack * (attack buff(?)attack debuff))

But more something like:

Troops killed =
((Life * life buff)/(1+life debuff))
((Attack*attack buff)/(1+attack debuff))

So in short, any help on this would be appreciated. Some time ago, someone either commented here or sent me an email with some info on this stuff, but I cannot find it anymore….Thanks in advance!!!

Some new Hero Equipment

Posted on February 7, 2015 by beardmonkey

Some new level 1 Legendary gear has been introduced the past weeks, which I have now added to the Hero Equipment article. These include the Beorn Axe, Bilbo and Gandalf Cloak, Sting, Radagast Staff and Elrond Ring.

~~Concerning the Elrond Ring I, I am not yet sure whether all (non-random) attributes apply to all troops. If one of you has one, could you please confirm whether this is indeed the case?~~ Nevermind, just confirmed this is indeed the case…

Error in Gem article corrected

Posted on February 2, 2015 by beardmonkey

Apparently, Kabam can be really messy with their communication (who knew, right?). Remember the mail which stated what the Gems would all buff? Here it is:

Seems as if Kabam is confused on what attack and life debuff means, beause as most of you have found out, the Sapphire and Citrine Gems are reversed in effect: Citrine debuffs enemy life, while Sapphires debuff enemy attack. Anyways, I changed it in the Gem Embedding article to reflect the correct buffs and levels now….

Biggest questions concerning World Mergers

Posted on January 23, 2015 by beardmonkey

So with the World Mergers becoming a reality over the coming weeks, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about how the procedure will go down. For most issues, the FAQs on the forum and the information in my article on the mergers are sufficient, but one question that keeps popping up and is worrying people is what will happen to their accounts/which accounts will be merged/which account should I choose?

People seem to understand what happens between the main account and other accounts, but less so which accounts will be merged and how to decide which account to chose in the merge screen. First off, the picture above is the icon in your city which will lead you to the merger screen where you can select your worlds to merge. It appears for everyone who has an account in a world for which the merger has been activated and it shows a count-down timer for how long it will take to the actual merger.

If you click on it, you are presented with a list of all the ‘merge groups’, the sets of worlds which will merge together. Pressing the ‘select’ button on one of the groups takes you to a new screen which shows on which worlds, WITHIN that merge group, you have accounts.

Simply put what is going to happen, is that for each merge group, the accounts you have in those worlds, and those worlds alone, will be merged together. All other worlds you play in outside of a merge group are unaffected by this, and will merge in another group. If you look at the right screen in the picture above, you see that the worlds Oin96, Vastriel97 and Thorin 98 will be merged, and I happen to have accounts in all three worlds.

By selecting a world in that screen and pressing ‘ok’, I am saying to Kabam that, from these three worlds, the world I chose is my main world with which I want to continue playing. As we know from Kabam’s information, the permanent buffs and city buildings from that world will form the basis of my cities in the new merge-world (Dwalin252 in this case). From the other accounts I will NOT inherit permanent buffs and buildings, but all other items that can be merged, such as chests and items in my inventory. This is all laid out in the FAQ.

Now it happens to be the case that my main account is in world Tinol91. This world is completely left untouched based on the decision I made above. When the time comes for 91 to merge with other worlds (not announced atm), the first screen after pressing the merge button will simply show another merge group from which I will chose 91 as my main world for that group.

So in short, Kabam is forming small groups of worlds that will merge together. WITHIN each group, you select the main account (highest buffs/TKs/whatever) to be the basis of the new merged world, and if you have other accounts in that same merge group, things such as inventory items will be carried over to that main account. In the end, for each merge group you have accounts in, you will be left with one new world to play in. In my above example, my accounts in 96-98 will merge into ONE new account on Dwalin252. I will also be left with ONE account in Bilbo262, as I have accounts in the worlds within THAT merge group. For each merge group you have at least one account in, you will be left with one merged remaining account.

To some this might seem basic and very logical, but I have seen so many people ask questions about this on the forums and in-game, that I thought I might go into this in some detail. For any further questions, feel free to ask!

Information on the new Gems

Posted on January 20, 2015 by beardmonkey

So the new Gems have been announced, and the Life buffing Emerald gems have been introduced. But for the Ruby, Sapphire and Citrine gems, we are still in the dark, although it seems safe to guess they will each buff either attack, attack debuff, or life debuff like the Emerald Gems. Concerning the Emerald gems, I have seen up to lvl IV right now, while the rest of the levels in the Gem Embedding article are hypothetical for the time being. So my question is, if you have any more info on the higher level gems stats, feel free to post them here and I will add them to the article. Thanks!

Update 12.1(.1): Unstable start but new Gems

Posted on January 15, 2015 by beardmonkey

So a few days ago update 12.1 and later 12.1.1 hit the stores. First for Apple and Kindle, and later for Android. Many many Apple users erported highly unstable gameplay, sometimes not even being able to get in-game, prompting many to not update if they had a choice. Right now, the 12.1.1 patch seems to have fixed most problems and all versions are running as stable as we can expect.

In the 12.1 update preview I already posted a list of likely things to be coming in this patch, but now we know for sure. Here are the changes from previous versions:

3D maps can now be toggled (2D/3D), hopefully removing some of the lag with the 3D map.
Heroes in Training position now defend wall and rein even when the city is closed. By far one of the biggest changes, meaning no more free wall TKs unless no Hero is assigned, and the option to simply close during TK without giving away rein troops for free.
Some changes to item orders and unpacking orders. I still hate the unpacking order. Just keep it as it was: add new chests to the bottom and do NOT have the screen jump around….
Two more slots for Oystering Boats. Useful? We’ll see..
And lastly: NEW GEMS! Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and Citrine Gems are coming. I am confident they will work identical to Artamir gems, but simply have the type of buffs for each gear piece switched around, so it would be possible for example to get Attack debuff on every piece of your CHS gear instead of just the ring…Wil scores go up to 1.5B? Probably. Will it widen the gap between top and bottom players even more? Likely. Will it make TK comps even more tedious as noone is gonna stay open? I hope not….

Finally: Troop attack orders updated…

Posted on January 14, 2015 by beardmonkey

Phew. Finally! I didnt like doing it, but I figured out all the new troop attack orders and updated the graph that goes with the article. I had to figure out the orders for the new Lake-town troops, and of course update all the orders for the older troops to see where those two figured in.

In short: For the Lake-town troops, the order is identical to the normal Tier 1 to 5 troops. The Pikemen are mostly found near the front of the other’s attack orders, while Longbowmen stay at the back, as their descriptions hinted.

Master Rangers‘ order simply adds the Lake-town troops in their normal positions, but switches Mammoths and Longbowmen in the back.

Stone Giants remain largely the same as Tier 1-5, with the biggest difference being the Pikemen moving more to the back of the queue.

Lyncean Raiders‘ attack order was already a bit messier, and the Longbowmen are now killed before Woodsmen even, while again the Pikemen move back to behind T1.

Woodsmen place the Longbowmen back at the back of the line, while again the Pikemen are staying away from the front.

So once again, take your advantage with this information for TKing, and let’s hope Kabam does not release more new troops any time soon….

More info on coming January update (12.1)

Posted on January 7, 2015 by beardmonkey

Besides the news about the coming World Mergers, Kabam also released some more info about other changes coming in the next update:

There are a number of popular requests making their way into the January v12.1 update

– 3D World Maps will now be optionable via an on/off toggle in the settings menu
– Incoming Attack Alert Icons will be added to the “My Cities” view
– Two new City tiles for Pearl Boats will be added to Lake-town
– The Battle Cry and Shield Walls cap will be raised to 150 (from 127). This will be the final amount of these items that can be applied per player.

So Lake-town is going to be slightly more useful, and all those extra perm buffs 😦 can be put to use now, for the select group who have them.

So I’m back, finally, time to catch up

Posted on January 6, 2015 by beardmonkey

First of all, happy new year’s to you all!! Second of all, wow! I had planned to do so much in the past two weeks, that seeing the fact I didn’t do much at all here is both depressing and good, as it meant I had an awesome time with family and friends over the holidays!

But, it is time to catch up, finally. I went through the posts index to check which articles needed updates and was appalled by the number that need updates or additions to be frank. Starting tonight when I get home I will start with the list and see how fast I can get rid of it. I will start with the ‘Quick wins’ and do the most intensive articles last. Here’s the list of articles in roughly the order I will tackle them:

Hero Equipment. So many new gear, so little to be found here 😦
Best Sets. Because some of the new gear is better than the old.
Attack report and Inventory overview spreadsheets, for the new Tacticals.
Gems article, for the addition of the lvl 7 and 8 gems.
Alli Boss Battles for the Lake-Town bosses
Alliance Shop, for higher levels of the buffs
Lake-town article. Some unfinished parts need work
Troop attack order. This one actually has high priority but I need some time to work this out.
T1-5 attack/life modifiers. Because Kabam seems to have changed the attack/life values of these troops without me knowing….
Tactical Troops article. For the same reason as above but also with the Lake-town troops.
New Smaug. Additional info on drops and percentages
Items list. Quite some new items but not completely sure I wanna add them. I regret this article.
Sage Tower article. for the new trades that were added

That’s it for the existing articles, but like that list, the list of planned new articles also grows:

The Tournament series articles….still
Farming Smaug Tokens article (should be small)
Bug/Improvement list article (should take a while)
Legendary books/heroes article
Article on superstition and chance in this game
An updated article on the troops discussion, as people requested it
Maybe something on Training Tacticals, just for completeness…

Given the above, please feel for me and have patience. I’ll try to update your most beloved articles first but as you can see, there is a lot to do 😉 See you soon and thanks for tuning in!

News/update

Posted on December 17, 2014 by beardmonkey

Well sort of. First of all, I just released two new articles on the new Lake-town campaign map and how to get Bard’s gear, which drops from that map. So go ahead and read those first :). Secondly, the holiday season also meant for me I had to take some time away from the blog and spend it on other things, which is not a problem, but simply means I need to catch up with a few things here at a later moment in time.

Some of the older articles need some brushing up, I need to add all the new gear (Thorin’s Fur, Bilbo’s cloak etcetera), and I still have a list of articles to write altogether, such as the series about tournaments. I hope to have some time in the coming weeks to write and update some of these, and otherwise it will be January for most of the major articles.

Im also planing on partly overhauling the Hero Equipment AYNTK article, as the gear list at the bottom is getting rather unsightly and starts to deserve its own article and a make-over. And then we also have the Legendary Heroes with Legendary gear, which im still not sure should be with the other gear or in a separate article as well….

Ooh, and I am going to see the Hobbit movie this Friday as well, and probably will want to write something about it…

Enough to do, and so little time. Alas. I wish you all happy holidays and much fun and joy for Christmas and new year’s eve!! Thanks for reading.

Bard’s gear added

Posted on November 29, 2014 by beardmonkey

So Lake-Town has been among us for a few days. I’m working hard on getting all the facts straight, and will put out an article as soon as possible which I will update the coming days, but not having the 5th city myself makes it no easier I’m afraid.

What I do have is some preliminary info on the Bard’s gear that is coming out shortly, mainly through information provided by user Marcel. Find this information at the Hero Equipment article here!

Lake-Town is released! Sort of…

Posted on November 27, 2014 by beardmonkey

So, the good news is: Lake-Town expansion with the coveted Lake-Town 5th city has been released, hell yeah! The bad news? Instead of a AToM to win it first for a head start as promised, Kabam decided to shell out again.

You can now buy *sigh* the starter pack including Deed for 750 Mithril, or 40/50 euro/dollar….And if you do not? Wait one week and get it for free! I advise anyone to just stick it out for a week and get it for free, advantage is not worth the 750 mithril IMO. Unfortunately, that also means that my article on Lake-Town will be postponed for at least a week, but too bad….

Update: Just out of curiosity Im wondering what percentage of my readers will buy it now, so…poll 😉

Update 2: Apparently, the Deed will also be available in shop separately for around 300 mith

More Lake-Town news

Posted on November 24, 2014 by beardmonkey

Kabam went ahead and made another announcement for Lake-Town, the fifth city which will be released shortly and which is being tested on a few servers at the moment, but not mine unfortunately: (click for bigger version)

So in essence, Lake-Town will function like your other cities, but resource production will focus on Pearls, which serve as resources for training tactical troops, and which are produced with the help of Oyestering Boats. Production is sped up with the new research Oystering in your academy. Furthermore, the Lake-Town Vault protects these Pearls but also your Gold from now on, and of course a new range of heroes will be introduced, such as Bard the Bowman, to level up and equip with their very own gear.

That’s it for now, any more news will be posted as soon as possible!

Massive lag with mining Gems

Posted on November 24, 2014 by beardmonkey

Does anyone else experience this? Massive lag when mining Gems? It happens on the map and with searches, and it is frustrating. Firstly, when I search for mines in the Watch Tower, the results are almost always outdated! Unoccupied mines that show up enemy or neutral, or exhausted mines listed as normal. Strangely, friendly mines are almost never wrong…..

Then when I click to go to the mine, it can take up to a minute for the mine to actually show up! At first it shows the normal Wild it used to be, and then after some time it refreshes the map or something and shows up properly..

And when it comes to mining itself, the game starts to lag enormously when mining a couple of mines. I usually mine when America is asleep, and use a few sets of pickaxes in one go, but doing so results in the map almost freezing completely. Getting back to city view completely removes this so it is definitely the mining causing?

Am I the only one (or my server, as I’ve heard the complaint from more people) and what could possibly cause these problems? Frustrating to say the least….

So what do you think of the new Index?

Posted on November 21, 2014 by beardmonkey

As you might have noticed, I have updated the Index page to look much better (IMO) and present the articles in a much clearer way. I have divided all the articles into 8 new categories, gave each category a nice banner (again, IMO), and grouped and indented articles which belonged to each other.

Presenting the index as clear as possible was always a priority for me, which is why I added it in shortly after beginning this webpage, but with all the new game features and articles written in the mean-time, the old Index had to go. But of course, I want your opinion!

So what do you think? Does it help you find articles better and more efficiently? Does it look better to you? Or do you have suggestions of your own? I’m very pleased with the results myself, but would love to know what you, the readers, think of it. Let me know! 😉

Lake Town City preview!

Posted on November 7, 2014 by beardmonkey

From friends from a (I believe) Spanish server, we have gotten the first impressions of Lake Town, the new 5th City that will be released shortly. It looks darker and completely different from the previous cities, and the main purpose will be to produce Pearls needed for TT training.

Also given the look of the Lake Town deed to open up Lake Town. These are gonna be incredibly rare during the first few weeks after introduction, so be sure to compete as hard as you can in the ToM that will award them first!

Master Ranger Might increase

Posted on November 7, 2014 by beardmonkey

So by now I believe all servers have had the Master Ranger might value changed from 0 to 10. With zero might, the Master Rangers gave attackers an incredible TK ratio advantage, and many servers and alliances decided not to use them in TK. But as there was nothing preventing it absolutely, many players complained about the MR usage in attacking other players.

Although Kabam’s initial reactions were mixed or even a bit confusing, they now gave in and gave them 10 might, making them slightly less attractive, but still better than T1. So what are your thoughts on this? Do you agree? Should the might value be even higher? Or should they have done something different. Let me know in the poll and comments. In the mean time, the might value has been updated in the TT article.

Your opinion on the new Smaug

Posted on November 5, 2014 by beardmonkey

I tried to include a poll into my last article on the new Smaug, but it didn’t really look right. So here it is: I want to know what you think about the new Smaug and his drops. Worth it or not? Also here, any suggestions or opinions please in the comments. Thanks!

Splitting up Articles from Blog posts

Posted on November 4, 2014 by beardmonkey

He everyone, as you may have noticed, the menu bar now has a ‘Articles‘ button and a ‘Blog‘ button. I decided that I wanted to make a split between the more informative, static posts, and the more subjective pieces and posts about less important stuff.

For the informative static Articles, you should think about the articles about Hero Equipment, Gem Mining, Troop Attack Order and Tactical Troops. The information contained in these is updated every now and then, but the article stays largely the same, and relevant, over the months.

For the new Blog category, you should think about articles on updates to the game, opinions on certain matters and posts not directly related to the game. These are posts you probably won’t be revisiting frequently and will be relevant only for a short while. You can assume that any major changes or additions to the game will make their way into the Articles section.

I hope that clears things up on the new menu. Cheers!

Kabam, this is unacceptable!

Posted on November 3, 2014 by beardmonkey

Update: Seems Kabam finally got it together and rewarded the correct prizes…

So, we got a nice email last week about the improved Customer Support Kabam has been implementing. All good and well, but unfortunately, it only took a week to be blown out of the water.

Last week (week 44 2014), Kabam organized the Halloween Eve tournament series, coupled with a special Halloween temporary campaign map. The goal was to collect as many Pumpkin items as possible with your alliance, which could be gained in individual and alliance base tournaments and farmed in the campaign map. Especially the individual tourneys had pretty nice prizes for the competitors (500 pumpkins, many chests).

Being the number one ally in the server at the moment, we had individuals work their asses of in these individuals. Last GK tournament, we scored 1st and 2nd. But what happened? Wrong prizes were turned out. In fact, the number 1 got the prizes for 3rd place for example. Unacceptable. And we weren’t alone. More people on the server experienced wrongful payout of prizes, and other servers followed with complaints. Tickets were written, screenshots were made. Kabam’s reaction?

“Nope, sorry, our engineers looked at it and concluded everything went as planned. Here is 5 million might for your inconveniences…bye”

Wait…what?! You are just going to deny it happened? We have screenshots of this going terribly wrong, and you’re going to wave it away and deal out some shitty compensation prizes? We need a better definition of irony for this. Come on Kabam, you send us a mail about improved customer support and only a week later you decide to screw over hard working players who rightfully deserved their prizes? I’ve been lucky to have never been on the receiving end of bad customer support from Kabam yet, but this is just terrible.

Get. It. Fixed!

Update 11.2: Even more features

Posted on October 30, 2014 by beardmonkey

Kabam seems to be really picking up the pace with releasing new content and announcements. Messages came from the forums and from the new 11.2 update of the game, which is available now in the Google Play Store. Today’s announcements:

Continue reading →

Update on new Tacticals and related issues

Posted on October 28, 2014 by beardmonkey

It seems the updates keep coming through. After yesterday’s updates, it seems preparations are being made for the inclusion of the two new Tactical Troops, namely the Lake-town Pikemen and Longbowmen. If you go to your Barracks, the building requirements (not rss) can be viewed, and they mention another few additions, seemingly connected to the new Tacticals. Continue reading to see what is known right now.

Continue reading →

Updates on the blog and game

Posted on October 27, 2014 by beardmonkey

A short post on some updates to the game and the blog.

The Gem Mining article was added last week together with the Attack Order post. Unfortunately, Kabam felt the need to change the attack order as soon as I published the article basically. The change: Woodsmen now really fight first and die before Stone Giants. I will try to update the graphs as soon as possible, but for now just keep it in the back of your head.
At the time of writing, I have just added the latest equipment to the Hero Equipment article, including the Smaug and Thorin gear. What is missing still is the Lieutenants weapon, as I do not have all info on it yet, but it will follow. It drops form extraordinary goblin caverns.
The Kabam team apparently has listened to the many complaints about the Smaug Token drop rates, and opted for changing the Smaug campaign map. In their statement they promised a more difficult Smaug, but with better drops, better reflecting the Might and gear many players by now have acquired. Additionally, you do not have to actually defeat the new Smaug to walk away with treasure, similar to the temporary campaign maps! Introduction should happen within the week.

That’s it for now, stay tuned for more updates!

Moved to a new domain

Posted on October 17, 2014 by beardmonkey

As you probably have noticed, the blog has been moved to a new domain: BeardMonkey.net, instead of the old BeardMonkey. WordPress.com (You will just be redirected to the new domain when typing in the old). It makes the URL a bit more neat, but that is not the main reason why I did it.

The main reason should also have been noticed by regular visitors. It allowed me to turn on WordAds, the WordPress offered option for showing ads on my site. What it means in short is that I will be able to make some income from the efforts put into this site. Now please note, that with ‘some income’, I am not talking big bucks. What I hope to gain is around 100,- per month optimistically, so far from enough to make a living out of, but a nice compensation for the many hours I have put into this website, and I hope you can all understand my reasoning as such.

As I have mentioned before, this site started out really small, but has grown considerably over the past year. More work was steadily put into it, and the articles started to attract ever increasing numbers of visitors. I have now come to a point that enabling the Ads can get me something back for that, and people in my surroundings suggested I should do so. And why not?

What I do want to be careful of is that the main purpose of this site stays unchanged: Informing other players about as many topics about the game, out of my own passion for playing it. I do not want to ‘shell out’ for the money, and I hope you do not see it that way!

So what do the Ads look like? Well, there are 3 ads displayed throughout the blog:

Underneath articles
A banner on top of the page
In the sidebar

Number 1 has always been there, even at the old address, I simply didn’t get paid for it. So for 1 nothing has changed for the viewer really. Number 2 is new, but I do not think it is hugely annoying or detracts from the website feel that much. Number 3, in the sidebar, is in my opinion the most annoying one, and which does sort of damage the look of the website, but for me personally not in such a way that I’m immediately inclined to remove it. Plus I do not really make use of the sidebar, so I guess it should be possible to sort of ignore it?

It is however also very important to me how you, the viewer, thinks this looks. Of course, it is not as neat as it used to be, but is it really too distracting to enjoy the website like you used to? I hope I have conveyed my reasons for doing it and hope for your support in my decision. But if you really feel it hurts the website, I could tone it down a bit.

So in conclusion, if you have any remarks about the changes, be it positive or negative, please let me know in the comments. Thanks you so much in advance, and happy Hobbiting!

Update on this Blog’s near future!

Posted on October 9, 2014 by beardmonkey

So, as some of you might have noticed activity has been a bit low in the past 1-2 weeks. This has been mainly due to private life interfering 🙂 . But do not worry, I’m not gone! I predict that activity will remain a bit low (but not zero) for the coming week (and possibly part of the week thereafter), but after that I am gonna pick up the pace again. That being said, here are some of the things coming in the near future:

Continue reading →

Explain this to me Kabam….!

Posted on September 19, 2014 by beardmonkey

So I’m staying up to date with CHS, getting little increments in score, but then I noticed this on Mirkwood 5-5:

Lower Efficiency and same Vitality, but a lower overall score?????! Kudos for the KoM wizard who has an explanation for that…..*sigh* talk about hidden game mechanics!

Update 10.3: Hero 249, new TT and more!

Posted on September 13, 2014 by beardmonkey

So a new update has hit the game and it seems promising in that it looks like a bunch of new features and troops are being introduced. Information given here is gathered from in-game mails primarily, but also from word of mouth, so stay tuned to see if those turn out to be right.

First thing I noticed was the ability to finally being able to donate more Vala stones at a time. I can now donate 60 per click…thank god for that Kabam, it was getting rather tedious. But there is more.

Continue reading →

Update 10.2: what the hell Kabam…

Posted on July 18, 2014 by beardmonkey

So update 10.2 hit the servers, and it is IMO by far the worst update yet from Kabam! Even though there isn’t really much that was updated. I thinkthere were some minor updates to the graphics, but I also got a new phone so that might be it as well. Also, a few names have been changed.

The Eldar set is now called Elven Elder, while Avari is now called Arcane. No doubt these changes came from legal disputes over the names. New “Epic” equipment has also been announced, like a staff for Gandalf and Bow for Tauriel, but I haven’t seen those yet.

But the most shocking and annoying change has been the introduction of the bulk buy and open feature. It sounds great, not having to endlessly press the damn unpack button for chests and troops, until you enter a ToM that is. Tournaments of Might have effectively been killed by this feature. No longer is any strategy required. During the last minute, you are able to pop all your troops at once and it becomes a lottery who wins….

It really took the fun out of those tournaments. Hopefully, Kabam will be smart enough to turn that feature off during ToMs….And that’s it. A small update, and definitely not one of their best. Still waiting for the new campaign map, Wilderness outposts and trainable Tacticals….

Update 10.1 Overview

Posted on June 17, 2014 by beardmonkey

Update 10.1 has hit our server a while ago, again bringing some new features to the game, although this time nothing as major as the previous updates (Hero equipment and equipment upgrading).

Read on to learn more about the new update, including an upcoming new campaign map, Tactical Troops training, and high level Vala stones. This and more, below the fold.

Continue reading →

Hero Equipment finally updated!

Posted on June 7, 2014 by beardmonkey

So, after publishing a number of shorter articles yesterday, I finally got around to writing down the newly introduced sets in the Hero Equipment article. Be sure to check it out, it once again covers every set available in-game so far on my server. Added now are Artisan, Axe Thrower, Nomad, Avari, Eldar, Wartorn Champion, Void and Guard’s.

Update 10.0: Not so Major yet…

Posted on May 7, 2014 by beardmonkey

As promised in their forum post on future updates, Kabam just released update 10.0 (at least for Android) for Kingdoms of Middle Earth. The main feature of this update should be an Alliance center of some sort.

Although no actual implementation of these features can be found in the game yet, some information screens hind at what is coming. Read more to find out what I know so far, and check up regularly on future, more detailed posts.

Continue reading →