Hero Wars: January 2025

January 18th: Mid-Month Check-in

Haven't upgraded Orion since his debut.

This has been an interesting January thus far. We've had several events that granted some nice rewards and events that were more of a pain than expected. I'm not usually big on brawls but the Orion one had me interested.

While I didn't encounter the much talked about defense teams, I did encounter some strangeness in terms of random results. The first 2-days of the event were pretty manageable with me completing all quest stages. Come Day 3 and things take a turn for the weird.

While my defenses held up and I earned Brawl Coins, the matches went from doable to not making much sense. In the end, I was able to make some purchases from the Brawl Shop which was a relief as I'm often unable to do anything due to not earning enough coins.

Another interesting event was the Great Storm. Now with the last Great Storm, I was able to get enough storm resistance to tackle the Boss and it was a success. Unfortunately, this time around felt different.

I'm usually able to make it all the way around the map without having to repeat battles but this time wasn't the case. There were some where I had to repeat attacks plus I wasn't earning a lot of Action Points like before. The bright side is that I was able to purchase some gems for Albus as the adventure that his remaining gems are tied to require a full team of 3-players (Adventure 9).

Yeah I know there are going to be those that'll say this is a bad move but I'm not in a guild with active players. And before it's suggested, no it's not that simple to up and move to another guild. Anyway, I loaded up on some gems and went about my way.

After this came Ascension to Asgard which had a whoopsie in one of the task chains. Devs were informed and the tasks were auto completed the next day. That was a relief as I didn't have enough resources to do much of anything outside of using the Astral Seer.

Last but not least is Area of Conquest. Every player is having a different experience. Some are matched accordingly while others aren't properly matched. In addition to this, there are bugs and delays. 

Some aren't seeing information on their opponent's lineup and I've experienced not seeing all guilds on the map from the drop down menu. Moreover, scores and rankings weren't updating right. Some hours later, the fixes for the drop down and scores have updated accordingly. 

As for ranking rewards, it would be nice to have chests of some kind that'll let us choose a warflag (which will be great for those of us that are missing some) along with a choice of patterns as not everyone wants/needs the patterns that are given out currently.

In addition to this, there have been some discussions about the ability to remove patterns (especially the red) without it costing upwards to approximately 15 USD - during an x3-sale - to do so; [The math I used: $0.99 x 15.15 = $15.00]. This is 330 Emeralds (the lowest amount for $0.99) multiplied by 15.15 which equals approximately 5K emeralds [rounded up from 4,999.5].

January 19 thru 24

By the end of Area of Conquest, I placed between Rank 1 and Rank 3 on my accounts. This mode could do with a progress bar; similar to the ones on the seasonal tasks screens. It's a big unknown for what is required for each level-up as it's hidden from view [plus you can't upgrade the castle one level at a time].

It would also be nice for additional information to be included in the event article. Like how many coins you can earn from winning/losing fights. Moreover, why isn't there an AoC shop for making purchases?

Purchases made in the shop can be applied to castle leveling which will help guilds who are looking to encourage fellow guildmates, if they have them, to help with upgrading the castle level. Items that can be included in the shop: War Flag Chests (includes all war flags), Explorer's Moves, Golden Thread, War Flag Pattern Chests (includes all patterns), and maybe Gift of Dominion? Probably dreaming on this one but it's a start.

With that said, there are two big changes I would like to see in addition to the castle level progress bar. 1) The fog needs to be removed and 2) remove the cap on movement. Covering the map with fog is unnecessary and annoying when combined with limited moves. Moreover, limiting movement doesn't fit this kind of gamemode.

It's currently the ban phase for Cosmic Battle and it's a nightmare. So far only one of my accounts is in a bad spot as a hero from my main team is now banned. It's bad because I don't have many heroes that are well built in that particular account which leaves not much wiggle room.

I'm not worried about the other web accounts as they aren't situated with a solid team yet and my main Facebook account isn't in a bad spot, yet, but it's still early since voting is still taking place. Still trying to wrap my head around how some of these players vote for heroes to ban.

Tournament of Power is Coming

From what I've read in the announcement, one of the top goals is to increase your heroes' overall power as much as possible during the event. It sounds interesting but I barely have the resources needed to upgrade my main team of heroes. I'm waiting for Cosmic Battle with hopes of earning enough coins to get some artifact chests as that's where I'm lacking at the moment.

In addition to this, there's a major shortage of Greater Insignias, Vibrant and Greater Crystals along with gear items as some heroes' Ascension level can't be upgraded unless they meet the specified rank requirement; didn't notice this prior as it wasn't an issue since focus was mainly on my tank of whom is Red Rank.

The event itself is still an unknown at the moment as it'll be somewhat different when compared to it's mobile presence. I don't see myself getting far as you can't spend what you don't have.

January 25: Cosmic Battle Begins

First three fights on FB, great and simple. 4th fight: high powered team that resulted in a loss. 5th fight: looked high powered but some how won - not complaining.

That said, it's currently a waiting game as I have to wait until my attempts replenish in order to continue participating.

1-Day Later

Yeah...I'm done. I got back to where I wanted to be and now I'm just waiting for the event to end.

Osh 115 Fights

Did something interesting and unexpected; especially for me. I switched up one of my teams for fighting Osh. This resulted in me having to reshuffle heroes for two other teams since the experiment team consisted of heroes from those lineups.

To put things in perspective, I have 3 heavy hitting teams for Osh that haven't changed (hero-wise) since April 3, 2022 [around the time I started writing this down]. The only changes that occurred related to pet patronages. This experiment involved one of my The Phantom Orchestra 65 teams as I was curious about how the hero combination would perform against Osh.

My The Phantom Orchestra 65 team consists of 4-heroes that come from 2 of the 5 established Osh teams. This includes 1 of my Top 3 heavy hitters. As a result, it left two of my teams 2-heroes short.

So I took two heroes from the team that was left out and added them to the heavy hitting team. For the last team, I threw in two heroes I never used before. I was surprised by the results as I wasn't expecting much outside of hitting my boss damage goal.

More damage was done during the January 24 - 26 Session when compared to the January 10 - 12 Session. I usually take screen captures but by the time I remembered the boss change was already taking place [11:00 pm my time]. The main difference with the experiment team is the damage output.

It does amazing damage against Osh 115 while doing just enough against The Phantom Orchestra 65. The main positive for The Phantom Orchestra is that all 5-teams are doing around the same damage each.

The Phantom Orchestra 65 Team

 

The Team

Galahad - Oliver

Nebula - Cain

Sebastian - Fenris

Augustus - Albus

Polaris - Khorus

Albus

Tournament of Power (Facebook)

An interesting event that launched on the 28th. Unfortunately, there was a snafu on the Facebook platform that resulted in the event statue not appearing. Usually this isn't a big deal; however, it was later learned that the statue had to be present in order for earned points to count.

The situation was eventually remedied via support ticket. My participation in the event can be summed up as: just do your dailies and whatever else you planned. For me, my focus was to finish working on Thea so that she could be promoted to Red Rank so that I can finally continue upgrading her ascension skills.

Got some of the remaining gear from the Cosmic Battle shop which helped me with the event. So far, I managed to get into the Top 10 and was finally able to get some Guild Quest points which has been slow going as of late. One thing I will say about this tournament is that the rewards could use some work.

The daily rewards aren't great and the final rewards are only for the Top 3. There's nothing for the remaining participants outside of what they'll earn from checking in daily. Granted, something is better than nothing but, those daily rewards...are minor in comparison.

We got 4-days to go with this event so anything can change. The change could be welcomed or confusing; anything's possible.

Winds From the East

A Lunar Skins event. Despite the Aurora splash art on the loading screen, no such skin was visible in the selection menu. Not only that, but there's no new skins that can be seen (it's just 7:05 AM UTC/2:05 AM EST). 

Yes there's the expected shop to purchase the skins OR you can unlock them with skin stones. So the current problem, if it's one at all, is that there's no noticeable new additions to the Lunar Skins line.

January 31: Wrapping Up the Month

I was able to get Thea (FB) and Lian (Web S1) to red rank. I found it funny that they both needed the same item in order to get promoted. So that gives me 3-heroes on FB that are red and one on web. So far two of my goals for the month were met.

It's going to be a while for the other heroes as grinding for gear in this game is hit and miss. I still remember the days when only 10-30 fragments were needed to craft a single item. Now I'm approaching the point 150-200 fragments are needed to craft one of many that are needed to forge a single item.

Hoping for an event that rewards Explorer's Moves and looking forward to any titan event that's planned for February. Going to be starting the documenting Guild Boss battles anew, more or less, since I dumped the papers going all the back to 2022.