underspire

[Snow]

if i understand it correctly underspire replaces explore. So basically if you need to farm stones and given stones drops only in one city (like blue/red in mist of scales only) you need to wait a week? How retarded you must be to do this crap?

[YardByrd]

The Underspire is a gem eating monster. I worked hard for those gems and so far the rewards just don't seem worth it. The way the price of EVERYTHING available to buy in the shops there keeps increasing means many new players don't even stand a chance in there. You should have released a whole new separate game.

[Laedric]

It's just one kingdom you can't explore and farm in. Most of the secret stones spawn in different kingdoms. You can get the information where to go in your inventory.
How much gems will be necessary to complete underspire we will see after a full week of playing it.

[ZebraThree]

Explore being replaced for the week is the worst part of 7.0 for me. As you say, some two-colour Arcane stones have no alternative source. Also, when a single colour kingdom is featured there'll be considerable slowdown to their Minor and Runic trait stones as we'll have to gather from two-colour kingdoms.

[cinedine]

My issue exactly.
For some reason this seems to be the only thread talking about it. I already thought I imagine things.

There is absolutly no reason why it should replace Explore and it baffles my mind that it does. We can have a faction event and still do normal delve runs, even with that faction completely indepently. I do not get why this should be any different.

Originally posted by Laedric:

It's just one kingdom you can't explore and farm in. Most of the secret stones spawn in different kingdoms.

10 out of 21 only have one source. Thanks to the developers doing a stupid think and having the three latest kingdoms all have colours we already had 2 options for. Hellcrag elevated Red/Brown even to four options.

Blue/Red
Green/Red
Green/Brown
Yellow/Brown
and the six single colour stones are all only available from one location. The single colours might not matter that much, but they are needed for the Tarot and Ace of <Suit> troops, all needing a whooping 18 to fully trait, as well as the guild guardians and guild wars troop which even need 30 to full.
The single colour kingdoms are also a great way to get Runic Traitstones of a certain colour (well, Whitehelm, Pridelands and maybe Forest of Thorns at least. The others you can get en masse from doing Underworld)

[enichols5]

Underspire only replaces Explore for the kingdom of the week which would be okay if it were a better game. There is almost no loot and having to use torches or lanterns is just a money /gem grab. Also it makes no sense that the lanterns do not last longer than the torches. You want us to pay actual money for them but they last only one room?!? It is just greed.

[sfnhltb]

Originally posted by enichols5:

Underspire only replaces Explore for the kingdom of the week which would be okay if it were a better game. There is almost no loot and having to use torches or lanterns is just a money /gem grab. Also it makes no sense that the lanterns do not last longer than the torches. You want us to pay actual money for them but they last only one room?!? It is just greed.

Seems like the bosses drop minor/normal orb of glories fairly frequently (got 2 minors and on silver tier from the first three bosses this time), so it seems a much better way of getting your mythic (and eventually legendaries) Elite levels than any other game mode so far, which follows the standard pattern for live service games - add new currency (shiny stuff), make last added currency easier to get (elites), it allows newer players to slowly catch up while not allowing the long term players to instantly finish new content by using their stocks of previous currencies.

In terms of underspire it seems like we should be able do two or three bosses a week with just the freebie torches, and maybe a couple more spending a few gems per day (which is easy once you have played for any length of time and get 25 or so gems each time you collect tribute). It doesn't seem all that bad, especially compared to endlessly grinding explore for tokens to build medals, and there are epic vault keys for random free stuff and extra imperial deeds for those later kingdom levels. If they only also dropped 50+ pet food regularly that would cover most of the stuff I am short of nowadays.

Personally not seeing not being able to get a particular arcane from explore one week each year for the ones without 2+ options is really all that big a deal either, just get the following week instead, although I agree there doesn't seem to be any obvious reason why it has to replace explore - does the entire kingdom's land turn into a giant pit trap that drops you into the underspire for a week, and then they go away at the end of the week?.

[Snow]

@sfnhltb: you got 7 torches daily. so how many bosses you can kill per day? in explore 2 i can get 1 stone per 10-15 mins (farming exp for a class too). so dungeon does not even remotley comes close to it. and remmeber that in dungeon your troops are very limited.

[sfnhltb]

Originally posted by Snow:

@sfnhltb: you got 7 torches daily. so how many bosses you can kill per day? in explore 2 i can get 1 stone per 10-15 mins (farming exp for a class too). so dungeon does not even remotley comes close to it. and remmeber that in dungeon your troops are very limited.

I went all the way just on free torches (either the daily allotment or the ones you can buy with gems, which I have long since run out of uses for all the ones given just for logging in) - killing all 6 mini bosses and the final boss - Diamantia @ level 300 is pretty nasty, but still won first time with the "very limited" troops, in fact I only lost one fight in the entire run (got unlucky with skulls against a team that buffs the first troops attack). It was 110 rooms cleared in all, so about 15 rooms per boss fight, so both the 50 and 100 gem packs of torches each day are about what is needed to get to the end.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3008660243

Overall I got 2 Minor orbs of glory, 1 orb of glory, and 1 major orb of glory = effectively 7 Medal of Nysha's worth of Elite upgrades on Mythic troops, plus I also got 3 chaos orbs, all turned out to be boring, some Dragonite I don't need, a couple of other minor orbs I don't need (one orb of minions which is okay but I need food far more), and a couple of Epic Vault keys that didn't have much of value either.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by sfnhltb:

It was 110 rooms cleared in all, so about 15 rooms per boss fight, so both the 50 and 100 gem packs of torches each day are about what is needed to get to the end.

Then you have been exceptionally lucky. One user on the official forums was just shy of 150 rooms, using lanterns to rule out dead ends and (IIRC) still bought some of the keys.

Also the torches accumulate to 2100 gems. IMO that is nowhere near what the rewards are worth. The orbs of glory you can get by spamming E12 just as well, the dragonite is just a drop, cursed runes as well, and the minor orbs of minions is not worth the heavy investment and the possibility to losing out on it due to bad luck with room generation and choosing your paths.
And we are not talking about the orb of wisdom on the third boss.