Dungeon Empires -- Leveling up my monsters woots!

Dungeon Empires continues to beat me up mercilessly . . . just look at this nonsense I'm fighting. LOL


Skeletal Warriors with 101 hitpoints and fire damage boosts. *shiver*

OH! Here's another . . . ATTACK OF THE ZOMBIES!


When I see fat zombie on the right hand side, I want to do exactly what it says in that box underneath him in the picture . . . . also when I see that big dude, it reminds me of another evil purveyor of death from good ol' Everquest. Remember Grummus? Good times!

I've been hitting a few of the 15+ non-player dungeons to see those baddies. They're still pretty tough for me, but I love a good challenge. Not a challenge that's TOO difficult mind you. ;)

Anyway, I've finally reached the stage in my progression where I can put monsters in the training room and level them up. Basically all you do is stick your monster in this little sidebar window here and click away!


If you're lucky enough to get to box six in the training progression before your monster gets fatigued, then they level up! You can use dragon ore to "protect" your monster from fatigue, but . . . meh . . . who cares. So far my monsters haven't been losing any progression when I only partially fill their uber "squares of training." I've just been able to keep leveling them up right where I left off after a few hours goes by.

Anyway, once you fill all six squares, the test tube to the right of your monster's portrait starts to glow and fill. If it rises above the line needed to level your monster, bada bing bada boom, you get to come over to the next screen and choose how you want to develop your monster's stats.


Work it funky skeletal warrior guy! Now if only I could name my monsters . . . I think I'd call this one "Cheekbone the barbarian."

So there you have it! If you're into Dungeon Empires, remember to look me up (stingite) and come destroy Cheekbone the barbarian in my dungeon. :) He's now an AC+7 one-star skeletal warrior. I don't think that really counts for much, but at least it's something. ;)

Happy dueling!

So addicted to Dungeon Empires . . .

Dungeon Empires entirely sucked my soul into its void last week, and I'm still trying to find a way out. I really have Arkenor to thank for pointing me to the vast expanse of this free-to-play monster of a game, which I kind of thought would be a nice distraction from whatever it was I was distracting myself with. You know, I kind of have a shtick going with a few blogs like Wizard101, LOTRO, Rift, DDO, Mytheon, and oh . . . just everything you might find links to at happydueling.com. ;-) I may have to start a Dungeon Empires blog after last week LOL!

The concept appears simple at first, and then slowly by slowly you start to see that this is in fact a very complex game from Gamigo. I think I might actually be more in love with the concept of this game more than the game itself, which is like two games in one.


Rawr! Dungeon Empires! Dungeons and empires . . . that's like evil upon evil, isn't it? Rawr!

So in Dungeon Empires you take the role of a male hero . . . First complaint, where THE HECK are the female heroes? This has absolutely got to change. You can't just make male heroes the only option anymore. In fact, I have a few complaints about the "masculinity" of this site in general. Two words: Succubus bum. They even put a lipstick heart on the succubus bum to draw your eye right to it. LOL. Egads Gamigo, CHANGE. Your core audience could be much much larger because this is a great game hiding behind bad Marketing. Luckily with the magic of F11 and full screen mode you can hide said Succubus bum.

I digress . . .

Anyway, your male hero can take on one of three emphases: Strength, Dexterity, or Intelligence. These stats form the foundation of your character's abilities: Basically Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard. Although, much like classic Diablo style, these classes seem to be able to learn each other's skills interchangeably (I do believe). They just each start with different starting skill. (Wizard life drain for me, yay!)

At first look Dungeon Empires looks entirely pedestrian. Leveling appears pretty standard. (Check.) Combat is turn-based. (Check.) Gothic-style succubus bum on the front page. (Check.) Yup, this is a strategy-based RPG, but what's absolutely un-pedestrian about the game is that you're simultaneously leveling up your own dungeon full of creatures. Basically, you're roughly given a 24x24 space to layout your dungeon, room by room. You pack your dungeon full of creatures and furniture that buffs your creatures. To do this you have to "level" the rooms in your dungeon to unlock their ultimate potential.


The kid inside of me who used to forge his own dungeons on graph paper giggles at this aspect of the game.

Rooms and creatures aren't freely given beyond the tutorial though. It takes quite a bit of adventuring in other people's dungeons to find the bits and pieces that can fill your dungeon. Fear not! If you get bored with the look at feel of player dungeons, you can always play through a few offerings that Gamigo offers to you as pre-built dungeons from them.


Just a little different look can do wonders to breaking up the monotony. Is there monotony? Yeah, there can be. Unfortunately this game can move a little slowly, and especially if you don't really know what you're doing, but read on . . . I've got a few helpful tips and a link to share to make it not so painful.

If I've piqued your interest in this game a touch and you're going to try it out, do yourself a favor and after playing through the tutorial, stop by the Dungeon Empires forums and read this guide from Silverdash. It's just chuck full of good information.

Here's my main tips that I've gained from the past week of play that might help things go a touch faster.

1- Click the mini-map in dungeons to move from area to area. This alone makes the game move much faster. If the door you're running to is far enough away, your character will hurry up and sprint to the next doorway.

2- Ice Shield. Get this spell as soon as possible. It's been by far the most helpful spell in the game aside from the health drain you get as an intelligence-based character. If you have the mana for it, cast this spell immediately after every battle to prepare you for the next room even if you still have remaining protection from your old ice shield.

3- Keys. It took me a bit to understand that if you don't get at least six keys, those keys disappear after the level and are cashed out for 20 gold. If you're ever faced with a chest that gives you the option of choosing either a key or an amount of gold less than 20 gold, take the key!

4- Leveling rooms. Leveling rooms is accomplished through a system of trading in runes. Leveling a room from first to second level only costs around 3 runes, but this quickly doubles and then some. Without purchasing dragon ore (cash shop money), you can earn runes by throwing random fixtures and rooms that you find from adventuring into "the shredder" down in the lower right hand corner of your dungeon creating interface.


If your dungeon is full of monsters, you may want to start choosing rooms and fixtures instead of gold. This is doubly true if you find yourself in a dungeon you just know you're going to die in because if you die, you lose your gold (and exp too *ouch*), but you'll keep all the rooms, fixtures, and monsters that you pick up.

5- GOLD! If you log in consecutively five days in a row, there will be a nice shiny reward of 2,000 gold for you at the end of the rainbow.


That gold can equal a lot of new monsters for your dungeon. Too be honest, this game is really all about trying to build a dungeon that people will die in, but not always . . . what I mean is that you'll get money and items even if someone conquers your dungeon. The very fact that someone entered your dungeon and played through it will equal a reward. (I've yet to have someone die in my dungeon, but I've heard the payout is much greater if someone bites the big one in your space you've created).

6- Dungeon Pathing. Let me tell you something about the dungeons I've died in. They all have led me from room to room in a very serial and methodical method with one path eventually leading to the end. For this purpose look for rooms that have two door ways so you can build a torturous path for your intruders to walk. Don't give them a break by putting your ending near the beginning; otherwise, they could leave your dungeon at any time. No no no . . . make them pay mercilessly . . . .

7- LOGGING ON! LOL! This website is not bug free. You need to try your username starting with both an uppercase character and a lowercase character. Eventually you'll get the right username. It's just a little bit tricky. Also, even though this is a browser-based game, you'll have to have the Unity player. No worries, the site should walk you through everything you need.

Well, that's about all I've got in me at the moment on Dungeon Empires. Sadly, I've been neglecting my paid subscription games over this free to play. hahaha! I hope you guys give it a shot, and if you do . . . HEY, search for "Stingite" in the dungeon list and walk my butcher's path. ;) (You may want to level a bit first)


I'll be sure to see your name in my inbox in game like I did with Arkenor.


Dang! He survived! ;) I SHALL GET YOU ARKENOR!

If I actually make it to the later stages of the game, I'll have more to post on this subject, but until then, see you in the level 5-15 bracket!

Happy Dueling!

I'd rather be playing Monster Galaxy . . .

"I'd rather be playing Monster Galaxy . . ." was exactly what I Twittered yesterday morning, but no one responded, so I figured I'd better inform you all that, Oh dang, there's a new Facebook game that's got me! Yes, yes . . . it's a strange path my Facebook game addictions. While steering clear of the Farmville and Farmville knock offs, lessee, I've played some game about Heroes, Oregon Trail, a vampire slayer game, a couple pet dragon games, a spore game, Bejewelled, and now . . . MONSTER GALAXY!

I actually didn't know this game was a Facebook game when I first read about it in the most recent edition of Beckett's Fun Online Games magazine (the one with Monkey Quest splattered all over it), but following the link provided in the magazine led me to log in to Facebook and before you know it, I'm spamming the world with Monster Galaxy requests.

I provide this link to you with much trepidation: click! (OH DANG, I followed my own link and got sucked in again! Back to the blog post)

Let me just cut to the chase: It's like Pokemon, but they're called Mogas. Need there be any other reason to play? Actually, it has decent music, a fun combat system based on opposing zodiac symbols, cute characters, a social hook, and some strange humor ala Gaia Online.

When you start, you pick a Zodiac symbol and then get a starter Moga based around that. I chose Leo, and out of the three choices placed in front of me because I chose Leo, I went with the Radiojack here (which I named Stingite of course . . . )


My Radiojack is napping right now to heal up since he's a little damaged. Napping is essential after a lot of battling. There is a catch though: the more you nap and the higher the level you are, the longer it takes to heal your Moga through napping. OR, you could just use a blue coffee and heal your Moga up instantly! Be careful, those blue coffee from the associated cash shop are addicting!

Here's all my Moga hanging out at my home. I've managed to accumulate a herd of 22 Moga so far . . . and growing!


The game has a quest system to it that allows you to earn things like blue coffee and star seeds (star seeds are like poke balls) as a reward for finishing the quest. Here at the beginning, most quests are all about catching Moga, but I'm starting to get quests that seem to be about meeting strange characters and helping them out. "Strange characters?" you ask?


Yes, Sheep guy has compromising photos . . . I'd normally avoid a guy like this out in public because of his lack of a shirt and hand-hooves, but the reward was too nice to pass by (um, think it was pretty much a requirement to help Sheep guy out to progress in the storyline anyway ;)).


I love those Starseeds! Can't get enough of them! Again, star seeds are available in the cash shop, but I'm a dirty free to player who doesn't have a lot of cash ;).

The Woolfe that Sheep guy needed me to fight wasn't too bad, and the battle went by so quickly that I didn't even think to get a screen capture. Whoops! Woolfe just looked like a wolf in sheep's clothing. WOOLFE! CLEVER NAME!

Anyway, I won't spoil the surprise on what Sheep guy's incriminating photos looked like (yes, you get to see them), but I will let you in on his scary post-threat.


OH MY WORD, SHEEP SKELETONIZING! Now that's a scary thought. LOL. Like I said, strange humor here.

Let me know if you start playing this game and like it or have any tips to share. It seems pretty straight-forward and my kids think it's fun, which is the most important thing.

Enjoy!

Happy dueling!

Attack of the AT-AT Review (Classic Game Room)

Seriously . . . I'm such a big fan of Mark from Classic Game Room. This review of the AT-AT just puts it over the top. I had to share.



My wife says I want to be this guy . . .

Can't wait for part 2!

Happy Dueling!

Last Day of Risia Ice Games 2010-2011

So, I’ve been playing a lot, and I mean A LOT, of Dungeons and Dragons Online lately.

It all started when the Risia games hit Stormreach, and I had been doing my best to earn those stinking tokens. It's funny but this was actually a learning experience for me in more ways than one. It also made me realize exactly how steep the learning curve is in this game . . . all from a simple exercise in jumping for tokens.

When you look at the history of the game, DDO really has been around for many years . . . 2006 in fact. It doesn't feel that way for me though since I really didn't start playing until it went free-to-play. What I didn't realize, or give respect to, was that people have been playing this game all along, and there are still people playing this game who jumped on board back in 2006.

I remember when it first launched my friend Tony asked me to come play with a few of his friends there, and I turned him down because I was having a hard enough time justifying the expense of an Everquest subscription. All it took was it going free to play; yeah, I'm that cheap. BUT WAIT! I'M NOT! For Christmas my wife sprung and bought be $50 worth of DDO tokens. WOOT!

I digress.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the Risia Games!

So, the Risia games apparently are almost as ancient as DDO itself. Every holiday season, people don there ice skates and zoom around on large ramps collecting coins that can be redeemed for awesome stuff. The people in the know make bank. The people who aren’t in the know or don’t care to be in the know, lose bank.

I fancy myself as one of the fast ones of the slow group this year. I did get a +5 Ray of Frost and a cool ice damage weapon after all.



You see, all the hubbub centers around these “motes” that you get from redeeming coins from your ice escapades. You use motes to do things like add damage to a weapon or create an eternal Ray of Frost wand. It’s some reasonably cool stuff. You’ll hear people in the trade channel auctioning off “icy burst kits.” Basically these kits are everything you need to progress your way through all the combines at the ice forge you need to make an uber weapon. It’s like three recipes and 300 motes, and these things go for tens of thousands of plat.



I’ve learned a few things from my fascination with collecting these little coins and motes. I even worked out a cool system of grabbing three white coins and a blue coin, logging out my character, logging on another character and grabbing two more coins before the coins had respawned for my first character. It was kind of fun, until . . .

Until?

Until, a guild mate told me how he and some friends were gaining purple coins in a kind of cheap way. A blue coin is better than a white coin, but the purple coin rules them all with its reward. Basically they were having a high-level person teleport them to a spot where you could easily feather fall down to grab the purple coin over and over and over. I didn’t take his invitation to do this because it just irritated me. Here I was trying to work out some snazzy system of grabbing the junk coins while unbeknownst to me, you could get it some cheap cheating way. GAH! Just irritating to know that I had spent all that time being stupid and thinking I was cool when this dude was OWNING everything with a high level clicky.

That’s when it hit me. I’m a low leveler, and I suck. Sure, I felt a power surge when I found out I could cast a firewall and trick mobs into running back and forth in my fire while I was invisible . . . but I’m still just a ninth level sorcerer wannabe.

In retrospect, I should have swallowed my irritation and just joined my random guild mate in the cheat way of gaining purple coins. Seriously, I should have because it’d be great to reap the rewards. But, I have to say it would be MUCH MUCH cooler to earn a purple coin the legit way . . . even if I’m not a monk who can do these fantastic jumps. Check this insanity out:


By the very last day of the Risia Ice Games I finally figured out that strength modifies jump. /smacks head. HEY! DON'T LAUGH! I'm a sorcerer, ok? I don't know these things. I rock the firewall and invisible farming scheme I got going on, remember? Not smashin' heads and jumping walls. Well, I do have the jump spell in my arsenal now.

Perhaps next year it'll be me with the uber teleport clicky helping out guild mates get purple coins, eh?

I was just happy to finally make it to the third ramp by the last day. The fourth and final ramp eluded me.

Next year, you're mine, purple coins!

(I did make about 20k plat off of this, so . . . you know . . . awesome for this little ninth level sorcerer. ;p)