Roman Hrdlička aka Duke_Srg

CASTLE AGE Thoughts on leveling and gameplay

ver. 1.1 (Jun 20th, 2012)

Obsah 0. Prologue – Powerleveling guide from CA forums ............................................................................... 3

1. Opening word ..................................................................................................................................... 4

2. A word on stats in general .................................................................................................................. 4

I. Simple reasoning ............................................................................................................................. 5

II. Hard currency ................................................................................................................................. 5

III. Questing deficiency ..................................................................................................................... 5

IV. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 5

3. A word on favor point farming ........................................................................................................... 6

I. A blast from the past ...................................................................................................................... 6

II. The situation before the latest nerf ................................................................................................ 6

III. Situation after the latest nerf ..................................................................................................... 7

IV. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 7

4. A word on energy ................................................................................................................................ 8

5. A word on stamina .............................................................................................................................. 8

6. A word on attack and defense ............................................................................................................ 9

I. A quick note on BSI ......................................................................................................................... 9

II. Raising battle stats .......................................................................................................................... 9

III. Notes on monsters ...................................................................................................................... 9

7. Notes on health................................................................................................................................... 9

8. Notes on army ................................................................................................................................... 10

9. Notes on combat............................................................................................................................... 10

10. Notes on general stuff .................................................................................................................. 10

11. Notes on Divine Power ................................................................................................................. 11

12. Notes on buying stuff .................................................................................................................... 11

I. Monthly generals .......................................................................................................................... 11

II. Chests ............................................................................................................................................ 12

III. Refills ......................................................................................................................................... 12

13. Notes on Conquest ....................................................................................................................... 13

I. Notes on Hero Crystals ................................................................................................................. 13

14. Epilogue ........................................................................................................................................ 14

0. Prologue – Powerleveling guide from CA forums

Phase 1: Why Power Leveling?

Without going into huge detail and tons of mathematical formulas the basic premise of why one would want to power level is to acquire skill points at the highest possible rate. The easiest way to understand this is by drawing a comparison between the slow leveling PvP template that has a goal of maximizing SP gained per level vs. the power leveler. The slow PvP Template trying to maximize BSI often has a poor energy and stamina typically in the 120–300 range. For this example we will say that they level every 3 days based on their energy and stamina (we all know this varies between 2–5 days/lvl). That means in 1 year they will level approximately 120 times which will yield 600 skill points. If they gain an additional 4 sp/lvl from quests and blessings then they will obtain an extra 480 skill points. This totals just below 1100 skill points in 1 year. The power leveler on the other hand has very high energy, stamina, or both. In their case they level 2–3 times/day. For this example let’s say they level 2 times every day since this is the lower end of the spectrum. In 1 year they will level up approximately 725 times which yields a whopping 3625 skill points. Even if they only level 1 time each day that is still 1800+ skill points. Add in demi blessings and possible 1 extra sp/lvl from questing and you can easily add in an extra 2 sp/day which is an extra 725+ per year. This totals to 2525–4350 skill points per year. It is extremely clear with those simple examples that BSI does not matter. It is a thing of the past during the early months of the game. The power leveler will overpower the slow leveler in no time and unless the pvp template changes his stats he will be left in the dust forever. For more reading feel free to checkout this 100+ page thread on the forums, but I pretty much summarized it in the last 2–3 paragraphs. http://174.37.115.166/cforum/showthread.php?t=32124 Phase 2: Stat Goals for Power Leveling

These choices come down to personal preference and playstyle. We will begin with the ideal template and then progress to various options and their advantages/disadvantages. The idea of power leveling is to maximize your ability to refill for the maximum amounts, and also to farm FP to continue refilling as frequently as possible. I will omit stats regarding attack/defense since after achieving the energy and stamina requirements you will be pumping up attack and defense forever. Template 1: The Pure Power Leveler

Energy: 2000

Stamina: 1000

This template can destroy everything in the entire game. You can refill for the maximums without needing to equip any generals. You will level extremely fast and after achieving these goals you have tons of options for farming FP. Once all of your quests are completed you can focus solely on leveling fast. You can use all your energy on the 20/35 quest for maximum experience per skill point or use it to fortify serpents to farm a ton of FP. Your stamina can be used to farm legendaries, farm serpents + skaars + ragnaroks for FP, or for war + battles. Template 2: The Power Leveler

Energy: 1667

Stamina: 833

This template is the exact same as the pure template above. The only difference is that you will be using the generals Hyacinth to refill for the full 2000 energy and Solara to refill for the maximum of 1000 stamina. It also has the advantage of allowing you to return to pumping attack + defense 667 skill points earlier than the pure PL template.

Template 3: The Energy Leveler

Energy: 2000

Stamina: 300

This is probably the least favorable build for power leveling. Energy may have the highest experience per skill point but if you only do the 20/35 quest then you will severely cripple your skill point acquisition from questing. The same will occur if you are farming serpents for FP rather than questing. Its greatest use is if you are beginning from level 1 since energy is fastest early on and then once you are at the cap you can focus on raising stamina to be able to quest and farm FP at the same time. This can however also be a solid template goal for a pvp wall build to use to convert to power leveling. Template 4: The Stamina Leveler

Energy: 300

Stamina: 1000

This build is a favorite among players converting themselves from pvp templates to power leveling templates. Since pvp builds often have high attack they do truckloads of damage to monsters. This high attack allows them to use minimal stamina to farm serpents for FP, refill stamina, and then farm more serpents. After hitting the 1000 stamina mark they can then return to their attack + defense stats while leveling much faster due to being able to farm FP and refill. The 300 energy allows them to have a full day to regen naturally and also to continue questing at a decent rate to farm additional skill points. However it does not have the flexibility or speed of the pure power leveling templates since it cannot use both stamina and energy for fp farming.

1. Opening word

Thanks to Ezekiel Wilson I have had the opportunity to once again read this guide. I agree with it in general but there are a few things that in my opinion need a correction. I will present my observations on these topics in the two following paragraphs.

2. A word on stats in general

There is an excellent and rather short topic called "Does pumping Ene/Sta get really get you higher Attack/Defense on the long run?" (http://174.37.115.166/cforum/showthread.php?t=21863) I definitely suggest everyone reads it. The math they do is very good, nothing revolutionary but the bottom line is correct – if you put excessive points into stamina/energy, you can NEVER become as strong as someone who puts all his points into battle stats; even though you will have higher level, your battle stats will always be weaker. I will try to make the same point using basic reasoning rather than presenting the outcome of an unknown mathematical model. Assume you will put ALL your stat points into energy. It has been proven to be the fastest way of gaining XP as energy has the highest XP return level (approx. 1,4 XP/ENE). If you start like this and overcome the first levels which have been made easier, you will soon hit the 30+ level range where XP needed for the next level do equal 12,5 times your current level. That means that if you put 9 stat pts into energy each level, you will on average gain exactly as much XP from your energy on levelup as you need for the next level, allowing you to level indefinitely. Eventually, it will become impossible to do that but it is VERY possible to retain 9 LSI (LSI = Level Strength Index = (ENE + 2 * STA + ATT + DEF) / LVL)) while leveling fast so basically we can assume that if we put all our stat points into energy, we will keep this leveling rate forever. However, stat point income analysis shows that maintaining LSI of more than 9 on a long-term basis is not possible without the additional stat points that come from achievements, battle/war ranks and gold medal monster kills. In other words, to level indefinitely (24/7 playing CA and doing nothing but leveling) you have to pump energy all the way as long as you can. Now there are three reasons, all of which I will explain in the following sections, which show why a slow leveler is inevitably stronger that the fast one.

I. Simple reasoning

Well, it is really quite simple. While you have to only pump energy to sustain your leveling rate, not being able to put a single point elsewhere, the typical Total PvPer would raise his ene/sta to 120-ish levels so he never reaches the max if he logs in twice a day. All further stat points he puts into att/def. He definitely DOES level, his leveling rate is deteriorating constantly by 17 minutes 30 seconds per level (time necessary to regenerate 3,5 energy and stamina, equaling 12,5 more XP that he needs to level up compared to the last level) but he is gaining massive battle stat points. So while he is much lower a level than the energy hunter, he is getting stronger and stronger while the energizer remains extremely weak. When the energizer starts to amass battle stat points, he simply follows in the PvPer's footsteps but he is already MUCH weaker and since he no longer increases his energy/stamina, he is losing leveling rate at the exact same speed as the PvPer once was (since the XP needed for each and every next level grows linearly). Therefore as they both have been losing their leveling speed at the same rate, we can assume that their level and stat difference remain the same, ergo the energizer can NEVER even catch up with the PvPer. Actually as the PvPer will probably have great battle achievements and battle / war / festival duel ranks, he will be at an advantage over the energizer even more. The advantages a leveler will have are the amount of loot from monsters and gold medal monster achievements, assuming that he has been also pushing stamina as well as decent attack.

II. Hard currency

We were originally assuming that if you pump 9 energy per level, you can level indefinitely. Unfortunately, that is not at all true. When you reach Underworld quest area, you will find out that you are seriously limited by monetary income as the items required by quests in this area and all areas beyond are ridiculously expensive and also lower your income substantially. If you have been leveling from scratch 24/7 up to that point, your income is nowhere near where you need it to be, thus effectively putting a stop to your leveling effectively any further. You will only be able to gain 5 skill points per level until you gather the money which will slow your leveling quite a great deal. Furthermore, if this happened in the Underworld, it will happen several times again if you do not systematically decrease your leveling speed by putting points elsewhere. Which by itself isn't such a bad idea, since to actually do something in the game, one can not only level energy. If you have zero (or extremely low) stamina, you are seriously wasting your limited resources, as you most likely also have a life and do not sit in front of your CA showing monitor 24/7. You need at least as much stamina so as to never hit the maximum value by regeneration, only when leveling up. Suggested value would probably be at least 150 (regenerated in a little over 12 hours) but since the time the Festival is present, you should really max out all the stat challenges, which for stamina at lvl 8 is 362. Also, if you have like 1 attack and defense (actually 6 as the training grounds give you 5 of each for free), you can never successfully battle which also wastes your resources as battle and war ranks give serious amounts of skill points and zero attack players can only really kill dragon type monsters as they are stamina based (so your battle stats do not matter as far as loot is concerned). So all-in-all, sooner or later you will probably start raising other stats too.

III. Questing deficiency

Even if you successfully overcome the trivialities like monetary problems, there is actually one more thing that will definitely put your leveling to a halt. Once you have finished all quests, you are out of luck. Well, skill points actually. Skill point income from quests is a very important part of your endeavors; if you can't gain any more skill points via quests, you will start to lose your LSI. It is absolutely impossible to keep LSI above 9 without the added 1,5 to 2 points from quests that you will typically gain per level as an Energizer. This is the reason why I do not recommend raising energy only to insane levels while forgetting all other stats.

IV. Conclusion

If you have read all I have written on this topic, you are definitely a devoted player, eager to learn something new. This is a good sign, one can never improve sufficiently all by himself. Anyway, for those of you with less patience for my writing I will present my findings in a more compressed fashion.

Power leveling is in my opinion necessary in Castle Age. It is even more so now when the game has been out for almost 3 years and there is a lot of stuff for you to do. New players starting from scratch will probably want to employ it as they will want to be able to do something fast. Anyway, the great truth preached by power leveling gurus saying that this way you WILL inevitably become stronger than the PvP player is as a matter of fact a lie. You can NEVER become stronger than BSI-hunter, unless you play it smart, meaning you also get a decent basic attack (200-400), a shitload of stamina (800-1000, based on your energy base, with Solara at your disposal) and employ a very strong part of CA experience that I will detail in the next paragraph.

3. A word on favor point farming

Favor point farming is in fact what makes Castle Age so different from many other similar games. The developers put a very strong tool in the hands of the players, something similar to what Prometheus did when he carried fire down from Olympus to the Greeks. In this game, the players can influence greatly how many Favor points they will have in their hands by spending time and stamina killing weak Serpents. Serpents that otherwise drop absolutely nothing useful (assuming we already have all we need to get to Atlantis) but their demi slot requirements are so low in terms of damage (stamina) that they allow for extreme gains. Here are some facts.

I. A blast from the past

I actually used to believe that serpents and dragons were balanced out a long time ago so that the excessive favor point farming was no longer possible. This is what I have written on this topic some time ago: "Your best bet for farming FPs is now Skaar Deathrune, along with some exceptionally good loot (Epic Deathshields and Deathrune Hellplates are as good as they come from such a lowly monster as Skaar is). Based on some observations it turns out that if you do 1M of damage to a single Skaar, you will gain 3 or 4 Demi slots which on average will yield about 0,8 FP. With this in mind, you actually need to do 12,5M dmg (to 13 different Skaars, 1M to each) to gain 10 FPs or in other words,a free refill. With attack value of 1000 you will do about 300k dmg per a 50 stamina attack which would require you to have about 2100 stamina at your disposal each level (along with 1000 attack) to be able to get a refill each level. This is nothing you will readily have, even if you level once every two days, thus you regenerate 576 stamina during that time, you would still have to have over 1500 stamina; don't expect to get there before level 500, even if you pump all your points into stamina (which is not very wise anyway, for certain reasons that I will try to make clear quite soon). Favor points spent on refills will earn you 1000 stamina immediately, which equals about 2300 XP, so if you were leveling once every two days, you could theoretically be doing this indefinitely, provided you never used any of your stamina in a different way that to attack Skaar."

II. The situation before the latest nerf

Anyway, no good researcher publishes something he has not verified so I conducted a little search, which Ez Wilson again made a bit simpler when he published his paper on leveling and FP farming in which he mentioned this guide: http://174.37.115.166/cforum/showthread.php?t=30977. Having read that and done some simple math I realized that in fact I was a fool to distrust serpent farming effectiveness. For Demi slots opened by doing damage, let's see what we are up against: Emerald Serpent: 1% (was 2%) chance at (1)Fp / 10% E Potion Sapphire Serpent: 3% (was 5%) chance at (1)Fp / 10% E Potion Amethyst Serpent: 6% (was 10%) chance at (1–2)Fp / 5% E Potion Ancient Serpent: 8% (was 15%) chance at (1–2)Fp / 5% E Potion Skaar Deathrune: 20% chance at (1)Fp / (5?)% E Potion A quick glance tells us that Skaar has by far the best FP chance for his demi slots, however opening his slots is unfortunately more difficult. Emerald and Sapphire Serpents are on the other hand absolutely worthless. Let's take a better look at that: Amethyst Serpent: 155k will typically reward 1–3 demi slots (Tagging / Low Reward) 160k will typically reward 2–4 demi slots (Sweet Spot)

320k will typically reward 3–5 demi slots (Over-hitting) 1,000k will typically reward 4–5 demi slots (Severe Over-hitting) Ancient Serpent: 230k will typically reward 1–3 demi slots (Tagging / Low Reward) 235k will typically reward 2–4 demi slots (Sweet Spot) 470k will typically reward 3–5 demi slots (Over-hitting) 2,000k will typically reward 4–5 demi slots (Severe Over-hitting) Skaar: 470k will typically reward 1–3 demi slots and 1 Epic Skaar item (Low Reward, does not count towards Skaar achievement) 540k will typically reward 2–4 demi slots and 1 Epic Skaar item (Sweetspot, but still does not count towards Skaar achievement and exploiting may ruin the kill) 1M will typically reward 3–4 demi slots and 1-2 Epic Skaar items (Over-hitting but necessary for successful Skaar kill) 1,5M will typically reward 3–5 demi slots and 2 Epic Skaar items (Serious Over-hitting) 10M will typically reward 3–5 demi slots and 2-3 Epic Skaar items (Severe Over-hitting) Now let's do the math. First we have to clarify when hitting serpents, you have always a chance to get 2 FPs in your demi slot, no matter how much or little damage you do. For Skaar however, that does not hold true, you can only gain 1 FP from a slot. For sufficiently high attack skill (1000+), players will do the same amount of dmg/sta on both serpents and Skaar (around 7 for 1500 att). As doing 160k to Amethyst, 240k to Ancient Serpent and 540k to Skaar opens the same amount of slots (approximately), we only need to compare the % rates of FP drops with damage. Doing that and assuming that the chance to get 2 FPs instead of 1 with serpents is equal to 50 %, we find out that on average by doing 1,05M dmg (which you will do for 150 stamina with 1500 attack) we gain: 1,77 favour points from Amethyst Serpents 1,61 favour points from Ancient Serpents and 1,17 favour points from Skaars Deathrune, along with 2 Epic Skaar Drops (epic serpent drops are trash, no point in bringing that up). With some additional math we easily see that Serpents' FP return rate is way higher than Skaar's. This would even suggest that farming amethyst serpents would be more efficient, with a return of 11,8 FPs per 1000 stamina opposed to 10,7 from ancients. However, this is not necessarily true. With 1500 attack, it is actually impossible to hit the sweetspot as with 20 stamina you underhit it and with 30 you slightly overhit. With ancient serpents the setup is much more favorable which generally means that for someone with this high attack skill both serpents are probably equivalent, returning approximately 10,5–11 FPs per 1000 stamina.

III. Situation after the latest nerf

The developers have addressed a multitude of high-level-players’ behavior which more and more included scripting used for farming serpents, thus gaining significantly more FPs than was the spent stamina’s worth. The result was implementation of a mechanism that prevents any player from gaining more FPs per 1000 stamina than is its worth, i.e. 10. Most players that do not farm are most likely not affected as they mostly spend more than enough stamina on monsters to be gaining ridiculous amounts of FPs but serpent farming has been effectively shut down. No one probably wants to spend literally tens of hours doing something that they may not turn into any profit.

IV. Conclusion

Farming favor points is still a very strong means to getting strong fast. It is actually the only possibility for someone with excessive stamina to beat the BSI-hunter in terms of raw combat strength (attack and defense combined) over time. Well, of course not the ONLY way, but waving your credit card around wasting real money to get BETTER in a game is in itself stupid. But there are still a few things that I think need to be said. A wise proverb says that time is money and in this game, it is certainly prominent. Farming serpents full-time is EXTREMELY time-consuming, not to mention quite boring and apart from favor points you gain virtually nothing. Yes, it is the ONE AND ONLY way of leveling truly indefinitely as you do not need skill points to level up using refills, you only need to have 1000 stamina to refill, the number of refills needed only slows your leveling a bit in real time. But anyway, REAL TIME is of the essence here as you only spend 20–40 stamina on each serpent and you need a constant supply to meet your needs. Several serpent farming groups provide the supply but any time anyone posts a

serpent to kill, it dies within minutes. Meaning that to be able to constantly spend 1000 stamina, over and over again, you would most likely need to play CA 24/7. I don't know about you but that is certainly not something I would like to do. For me, farming Skaars is a much more viable option. Their best return for a 1000 stamina to a player with 1500 attack is 7,8 FPs and about 13 Epic Skaar drops. However, we must clearly state that doing only 500k damage to a Skaar is exploiting. If all 70(!) hitters did only 500k dmg, Skaar would fail even with all weapons launched. Not to mention that it is VERY difficult to get people to click on your Skaar to launch all weapons and equally difficult to get 70 people to attack it. By doing 1M dmg each, Skaar can be killed easily and it still provides about 5 FPs along with 10 Epic Skaar drops per 1000 stamina. That of course does not enable infinite levelling but allows you to keep a life and also the forums provide absolutely sufficient supply for everyone to kill Skaars in this manner all they want.

4. A word on energy

Energy is primarily used for questing, gaining you additional stat points. Its secondary purpose is defending, fortifying, healing, strengthening and crippling: in other words taking care of special monster actions that they do to prevent us from slaying them. As your goal is primarily to gather stat points which makes you stronger, you do NOT want to waste too much of your valuable energy doing these other things. Especially if your defense is very low as it would be very difficult and require more energy. There is one thing in particular that has been on my mind regarding quests and high level players. These extreme players (lvl 2000+ in summer 2011) have probably finished all their quests already. If that happens, your stat point income per level drops considerably as you no more gain any more stat points from quests. Therefore in my opinion the most LSI-effective way of playing would be having almost all the quests finished, finishing the last one at the exact time when the developers would introduce new Land. Keeping this in mind, you would probably wonder how much energy would be needed to sustain this rate of leveling. Aforementioned guide would suggest that 2000 energy is more than enough. It was, however, written a long time ago and after some testing it turns out that in no way that is enough for a common player these days. When you hit Water II, your stat point income is slowed considerably compared to previous lands. Starting in Mist III there are 3 subquests per main quest. Leveling once a day having 2000 energy to spend on quests gets you nowhere near the end within reasonable time frame. So what is my recommendation on energy stat? Get as much as you can as fast as you can. But once you reach 1000, you will probably want to turn your attention to other stats as well. 2000 then seems to me as a reasonable maximum which in your own interest you should not overcome when power leveling. You would not be able to level that fast anyway.

5. A word on stamina

Stamina is used to battle other players in all ways currently available (Duels, Invades, Wars, Festival Duels, Guild battles, Festival guild battles). You want to have just enough so as to never hit maximum but you do need decent stamina if you want to be able to do something fun. Questing may be nice and rewarding (in terms of stat points, of course) but it is far from interesting. By having decent stamina I mean aiming for at least festival maximum (362) but if you ever want to use refills, you should really get much more. With Solara (monthly general turning 20 % of your energy to stamina at lvl 4) and 1000 energy, you would have to have at least 900 stamina to fully refill and I would actually never suggest using energy refills. You need shitloads of stamina to get legendary drops and you do most likely need to use a refill if you are ever to get a Gold medal from a 650M HP monster like Azriel, Corvintheus and even more so from the new ones like Typhonus, Magmos or Malekus which also have Divine armor. Stamina does give much less XP than energy in general (about 1,1 per stat point on average from monster hunts) with one exception, Wars. When Warring, your XP gain (in case of a victory) is randomized between 16 and 42 points which gives 1,45 per stat point which is better than average energy gain from quests. Even though it is clear that you will lose your leveling rate if you put points to stamina instead of energy (unless you war constantly which is fun but to be able to do it, you need very, very good loot), you should definitely do it if you want to be able to do some fun stuff and you should absolutely do it if you want to farm FPs.

6. A word on attack and defense

Attack is somewhat important to monster hunters for doing damage to monsters which determines your loot. However, for that reason you need not raise it above 1000, it only has very minor effect after that for the reason I will explain in the third subsection. It is, however, extremely important in PvP, in my opinion being very much superior to Defense for that matter (see second subsection). Defense is also somewhat important to monster hunters for taking care of the second bar in whatever way is needed. You should note, however, that it's far less important than attack as you may be able to heal your party damage of a 1000 stamina's worth by spending a little more than 100 energy when having only moderate defense if you use a power attack general like Maalvus or Orc King. Defense is also moderately important in PvP but as I will explain in second subsection, it is far less important than attack.

I. A quick note on BSI

BSI or Battle Strength Index is the sum of your attack and defense, divided by your level. Some players feel their strength gets very much reflected in this index, raising it to incredible heights and probably expressing their worth by this number. Some would probably compare it to measuring Johnsons. In any way, you should always keep in mind that no matter which "strength index" you feel is important for you, in the end the only important thing is your overall strength (i.e. your skill point total). Having 9 BSI on level 100 may be impressive but with that many skill points devoted to attack and defense, you have very, VERY little of anything else. Which means you level up very slowly. Which means that while you improve somewhat, your faster-leveling opponents improve more than you do, thus beating you in the long run. Not in terms of battle strength perhaps but in terms of loot they certainly do.

II. Raising battle stats

If you start to raise battle stats, ALWAYS raise Attack first. We call it the Berserk build after the Berserk spell from Heroes 3 (the forums use the term Glass Cannon instead). If you want to win when attacking, you need Attack. Offensive victories are something you can control. Defensive victories are something you CAN'T control. If someone loses to you, they will most probably not attack you again. EVER. So if you want to actually GAIN some ranks and XP, you WILL need to attack yourself. And here we go again, you need Attack. The dominance of Attack stat is certified by no defensive loss penalty (you lose ABSOLUTELY NOTHING important in a defensive loss, only a ridiculously small amount of gold). On the other hand when losing while attacking, you lose your valuable stamina, thus XP. So you need attack for this not to happen. And finally, attack is also what makes you able to damage monsters more effectively so again, you NEED Attack primarily.

III. Notes on monsters

There has not been a scientifically evaluated study of attack damage and healing in monster battles but my own personal experience tends to show that monsters use logarithmical scale for determining damage and healing, with basic threshold positioned at monster level. That means that if your attack and/or defense (modified by generals) do not exceed monster's level, you will do only minimum damage or heal only minimum amount. However, once you reach the threshold, your damage/healing will increase two times and will continue to grow further with diminishing results. Generally with 1500 attack, you do approx. 7000 damage per stamina to damage based monsters. With only half that (750 attack) you do approx. 83 % of the damage and with 30 % (450 attack) it is approx. 75 % of that damage. The highest level of a contemporary monster is approx. 350 so you need more than that amount of attack/defense to be able to damage/heal monsters reasonably.

7. Notes on health

Health started to be of ANY value only recently with the introduction of guild battling. Before that the more life you had, the weaker you in fact were (quite ironical, ain't it?). This was caused by the fact that you only needed life to battle but the amount of HP never determined victory in any way and you could heal yourself for almost no cost anytime you wanted. However, when YOU were chain-attacked by someone who always

defeated you, then the more life you had the more attacks he could dish out before killing you, thus the more experience and battle/war points he could gain. With the introduction of guild battles health started to be an issue, even more so when Guild battle format Arena and Festival started. Not only are you given free health for completing health feats but the one-hour-long battles give advantage to high-hp players. It is still true that by putting points to health you are making yourself weaker (you are not putting them anywhere else where they could actually do something useful) and that many players will primarily attack these ppl to hunt points as they have a much higher chance of beating them than with the low-hp opponents but by wasting tokens doing that they may actually jeopardize their team's chance of victory.

8. Notes on army

Army count is only important for invading and for gaining small skill point bonuses from Festival Army Feat (9 skill points altogether for having 1000+ army). Anyway, it should be noted that many strong duelers tend to disregard army altogether which makes them extremely vulnerable to high-army-low-strength invaders. To beat someone with 4000 defense and 50 army you only need 400 attack if you have army of 501. It really doesn't bother me if someone like that chains me to death repeatedly as a result of me daring to kill him in the first place, the battle points gained in such a way are usually much sweeter than the 1-3 XP loss for dying.

9. Notes on combat

Starting in 2012, there have been changes made to the combat system. A simple matter of effective attack vs. effective defense has been enriched by introducing Physical Piercing and Resistance and Elemental Offenses and Defenses (currently there are 4 elements: Fire opposes Water and Earth opposes Wind). Physical piercing and Resistance are very simple. For every 10 points of difference between your piercing and opponent’s resistance you get +1 % bonus to your attack in computing success or failure of your attack. Negative difference imposes a malus, of course. Elemental attacks are quite tricky, though, and there have not been conclusive test results as yet. Supposedly you get the same bonus for having and elemental offense equipped but the opponent can only cancel this if they have the same defense equipped. If they have another elemental defense, it does them no good when fighting you. Furthermore, if they have a defense from the opposing element, the offensive bonus gets doubled (and is not cancelled, that is). Thus the most efficient are seemingly the physical bonuses as they are always in place if you attack someone or defend from an attack.

10. Notes on general stuff

a) To determine the best leveling strategy there are many guides. My opinion is simple: the most stat-point-effective strategy is to have almost all the quests finished so that you always have as many skill points for your level as possible. To do that, you need Energy. Actually, a lot of it. But remember – if you don't have it, there will always be many skill points you can't allocate because you haven't finished the quests. Your BSI does suffer greatly but remember, you aren't unbeatable because of insane BSI. You will only be unbeatable if you have that many att+def combined so that the opponent has much less. To kill monsters you do need stamina and to do it REASONABLY you need quite a lot of it. AGAIN, your BSI will suffer but if you don't know what I am about to say, you should have read the lines above more carefully. And last but not least – currently the Refill caps are 2000 for Energy and 1000 for Stamina. If you EVER want to refill anything, you should ONLY do it if you have at least this amount otherwise you are NOT getting the maximum for your Favor points (to put it simply, you are losing money).

b) Take your time and study the game. There are VERY many easy achievements that give stat points. There are monsters which are very easy to kill for a gold medal victory which gives you stat points. STAT POINTS IS WHAT MAKES YOU STRONG. Know where you can get them.

c) NEVER forget to collect a daily blessing. It gives you stat points that you need.

d) You should ALWAYS try to do PvP unless you are a total monster hunter (you have 6 att and 6 def from Training grounds and that's it). There are VERY MANY skill points that you can gain with the Battle and War ranks, not to mention 15 and 15 skill points for 5000 Duels and Invasions won.

e) Regarding festival feats: you are in fact getting FREE skill points, what's not to like? DO IT whenever you hit the threshold. The maxima are 725 for Attack, Defense and Energy, 362 for Stamina and 500 for Health. In each department you get 24 skill points free altogether. Army gives up to 9 as I have mentioned, for 1000 army. You may not want 500 health unless you happen to own Aurora or Jahanna, or Corvintheus or Aurelius which increase your attack and defense, respectively, for points of health you have. You DO WANT everything else, trust me. You WILL EVENTUAL-LY need 700+ energy and 350+ stamina anyway if you want to maximize your fighting ability (actually you will need 500 Stamina to unlock the biggest buttons) so you do want these feats.

f) Some may probably object at this point that there are links in CA wiki that allow you to use the buttons you cannot yet have (due to your insufficient stamina). Yes, that is true. And just to clarify – in his last post regarding cheating one of the developers (Kori) clearly stated that doing this is considered cheating, albeit a not severe case. I don't know what your individual policies on cheating are but mine is simple – DON'T DO IT. If the developers ever decide that you are a bannable cheater, they WILL ban you meaning they will immediately set all your stats to zero and disallow you to use the application in the future. It is almost impossible to convince them they were wrong and even if you manage to do so, you will probably lose several weeks or months of playing as they only deal with such cases when they have the time which is far from often. And in CA, time is of the essence, those who play longer always have the advantage (an unfair, though not at all bannable one). You get my point, right? :)

11. Notes on Divine Power

Divine power is a neat new concept designed to probably prevent lower-lvl high-stamina monster hunters to easily get each and every piece of loot available in the game within a few months, thus getting bored and quit playing. However, I don't want to elaborate on this topic because I simply don't have to. There are several good articles on this topic already, one just needs to do a little research. The good basic explanation is http://castleage.wikia.com/wiki/Divine_Items and a nice analysis http://174.37.115.166/cforum/showthread.php?t=52830 The only point I have to disagree with this analysis on is the Kraken armor and helmet. Yes, it does require shitloads of energy to go through all the quests but they also do yield skill points from the other alchemy items. And well, stamina-wise the relics are by FAR the easiest to get, if you have Jahanna and Aurora completed. There are very few drops from Alpha Krakens but almost all epics are extremely useful ones (a 12/12 glove is otherwise extremely difficult to farm from Lotus). The relics have good drop rates and only require 9 mil. dmg to get 2 guaranteed epics (it's twice as hard with other monsters).

12. Notes on buying stuff

There are some ways to gain Favor points during the game. Eventually, you will come to the point where you can buy something. Well, unless you want to drown the developers in money, you can NEVER buy everything so you will have to choose. I will try to present you with some viable choices.

I. Monthly generals

There are actually not many viable choices. The very best that comes to mind is Zin (+15 Stamina when attacks, 23-hourcooldown), for monster attacking Maalvus (combining 3 times stronger Power Attacks with +3 % critical chance) and for guild battles Sanna (heals +4 HP as a Cleric in guild battle when victorious) and Daphne (-20 damage taken, +20 damage dealt in defensive battles, regardless of victory). Some argue

that Adriana (-3 def to every War council slot of your opponent) is extremely useful, I am inclined to disagree. You will eventually get Hyperion (+2 attack to each slot of your War council) from War of the Red Plains and I don't think that 1-point difference per slot is worth 30 favor points. Also if you want to refill stamina and have a decent energy base, you probably WILL want Solara (20 % energy transformed to stamina, 2:1 ratio) so that you don't need to raise stamina all the way to 1000. In 2011 almost all monthly heroes upgraded one of the guild battling abilities or the basic ability. That is extremely lame most of the time. Good example of that is Deshara, described as a must-have for rogues. But her +40 damage as a rogue on a win is only good when you win AND you are not stunned. Deianira’s ability works even when you lose AND even when you are stunned so this is kind of a no-brainer. Another good example is Meekah who improves warrior’s Confidence damage bonus from maximum +50 to maximum +90. The only problem is that to actually keep that bonus you have to keep Meekah as your main general for the whole duration of the battle and of course, you cannot lose or the bonus goes down. But the single best defending general for anyone (no exceptions) is Daphne, hands down. When changing to Daphne, you lose the upgraded bonus the first time anyone attacks you, no matter if you win or lose. So again, Deianira works much better. But there are actually some good choices in this field. One of the more annoying (thus useful) is Syren, upgrading Confuse chance to hit self from 20 % to 30 %, a very strong option for Confuse mages. Warriors that use Guardian/Sentinel should consider Joan (+50 dmg absorbed, +5 resisted), clerics with Resurrection/ Revive should certainly use Tefaera (+25 health gained upon reviving), mages who were lucky enough to roll Zurran in a chest MUST get Alexandria as it increases mage damage bonus to +20 at lvl 4 with him and arguably the best rogue bonus is Aethyx (+2 turns and +10 dmg/turn for rogue Poison translating to 315 total bonus damage of Poison, making it a much better choice than actually attacking). In 2012, in compliance with the improved combat system, the monthly heroes started to give physical and elemental offenses and defenses. Keeping in mind the ever-so-slight overall growth of monthly general stats, they are actually worth thinking about. But the single best among all of them is Kanbe, an almighty figure with 7 personal items to improve his stats (all for 25 FPs ofc) but especially his 20 Divine Power, 20 Physical Piercing and 10 Earth Offense are a very good choice when you decide to go for the latest monsters, all of which have some kind of physical resistance and elemental defense as well.

II. Chests

Chests are always a gamble. Anyway, we all like to gamble sometimes. And there are some very good heroes you can get there. From Alpha, there are Mephistopheles (+40 army limit for invading, offensive and defensive) and Orc King (5x power attack). From Vanguard, Malekus and Ambrosia are somewhat useful but not worth the money I guess. From Onslaught, Aurora , Azriel and Azeron are very useful, perhaps worth gambling for. However, the most useful abilities are perhaps in Oblivion chest: Xira and Halcyon with their 25 % of def converting to att and vice versa, Miri Bladebourne (+10 % critical on next attack with 4-hour cooldown), Kobo (-2 items needed in Goblin Emporium rolls), Corvintheus (+1 defense per 3 health) and finally, the all-mighty Banthus Archfiend (+50 % critical on next attack with 12-hour cooldown, which might seem useless; however, the newest monsters have up to 200 stamina buttons which would generally allow you to have each and every hit with +50 % critical chance. Anyone can say overpowered?). Annihilator chest is full of stupid class abilities which are only by a NEGLIGIBLE amount stronger than what you can buy in a guild shop for your coins and there are only 6 heroes altogether. Anyway, Zurran (+8 dmg to tower as a mage, plus has one other monthly hero, Alexandria, as his equipment, increasing the bonus further to 10) and Elaida (+25 HP healed with Heal ability) are no doubt very, very powerful. Beginning with Annihilator chest, the epic heroes' strength started to grow to ridiculous proportions. This means that generally any epic hero in one of these 3 newest chests (Ascension, Wrath and Conquest) is a step up in war strength, not to mention the strength of their abilities. Namely in Ascension chest almost all heroes are extremely powerful: Aurelius (+1,1 def per 3 health), Jahanna (1,1 attack per 4 health), Agamemnon (+30 att vs. monsters, +3 % critical chance) and Misa (not Epic but her +30 Energy when attacks, 23hr. cooldown is stronger than Zin) and Evalice (also not Epic but her 30 % defense transformed to attack is stronger than Xira). Only Alyzia is quite weak. All the epic heroes from these chests also have innate Divine Power ability which does not require them to be equipped, quite handy to have around.

III. Refills

Buying refills is NOT recommended unless you have 2000 Energy or 1000 Stamina or you are at least very close to these numbers. The days when serpents were RIDICULOUSLY overpowered with their 15 % FP

chance for the Ancient and 10 % chance for the Amethyst are fortunately over – back in those days you could easily farm almost 20 FPs for 1000 stamina allowing you to generally generate two refills using one. No wonder we have that many lvl 1500+ players, they must have been exploiting this like crazy. Anyway, it is still possible to farm back your refill even today, as I have already shown so if you want to spend time doing it, you are good to go. Get Solara and go wild. Just be prepared that it is extremely time consuming, so don’t say I didn't warn you :)

13. Notes on Conquest

In late 2011 a new guild feature has been added, having been given a noble name – Guild Conquest. Each guild has several areas of interest, the guild Lands, where it must defeat monsters to gain access to lands which produce two resources: Wood and Iron. Those resources are then used in War Shop to buy items which contribute to certain guild abilities and a hero that is somewhat useful as he gives +22 health at level 4 that can be used to boost the entry health of a guild battle. The items are actually very weak but the hero is worth buying as it is another hero to add to army. With this new feature a multitude of Guild Achievements has also been introduced, divided into 3 groups:

• In the first group there are 8 achievements for using certain skills in guild battles. There are 2 skills per class and to earn maximum level, a skill must be used 2000 times. The hardest to earn are rogue skills as they are 2 skills that cannot be used all the time: Backstab (passive but only useable when targets have full health) and Evade (passive but only triggers 20 % of the time or more, if you have the items or the Epic general). But I probably need not point out that these are effectively “free” stat points and each of the skills gives 15 SP so all the achievements should be earned asap.

• The second group contains a mixture of various personal achievements gained by using certain guild features. Three of them are, however, very strong on SP as they give 26 per achievement. Two of these are pretty easy to gain as they only require doing conquest attacks and collecting resources. The last one is difficult, however, as it needs you to do substantial damage to guild monsters that guard the lands – 5 % of their hit point total. That is almost impossible for the strongest monsters (600M hp ones, like Alpha Mephisto), quite difficult for the middle tier (300M HP or so, like Gehenna) and doable for the lowest tier (100–120M HP ones: Genesis, Ragnarok and Bahamut). Two of these achievements are also very hard to gain: Minimum Monster Achievement for which you need to collect while doing at least 1M dmg to a guild monster is pretty easy still, but gaining 2000 defensive victories in a conquest battle is almost impossible. As there is no difference between attacking high levels and low levels (like there are in a guild battle), in a conquest battle most people will only attack opponents of a much lower level, that they are certain to defeat. Only the players with highest BSIs (at least 6 but preferably much more) have a decent chance of getting that one.

• The third group consists of group guild achievements only which do not give personal bonus. You will likely complete them later rather than sooner but really, there’s no rush.

The 4 lands in Land of Fire can be “sacked” by opposing guild which means that the guild then has to defeat an Orc Invasion to regain access to the land. The lands in the Land of Mist yield better resources, only last for a limited time (288 hours altogether, this includes the time necessary to defeat the guardians) but most importantly, they are currently the only source of Hero Crystals.

I. Notes on Hero Crystals

Hero Crystals are the only means to power up your generals, or in other words increase their level beyond 4. The only sources are currently the lands in Land of Mist area of Guild Conquest. If a guild owns a land there, their members can once per day pray to Cassandra by “exploring” the land and they have a chance to receive the crystal. The chances depend on the number of lands the guild owns in the Land of Mist (15 % per land, up to 4 lands) and on the number of generals at level 5 or above (1 % per general, up to 30 generals). It is currently unclear whether the 4 generals that have been raised to 6 with Hero Medals count towards this bonus but it would seem that they do. The best strategy at presents seems to be to get 30 generals to level 5 asap, then enjoy the biggest possible bonus of 45 % at one land or 90 % at four lands. The biggest level at present is 15 so plenty of crystals are needed to actually be able to get there (this is why it is necessary to have as big a bonus as possible).

14. Epilogue

Well, that's about it. I hope that you liked this little... guide for lack of a better word. If anything important comes up, there will be more updates.