Huh, I've only had it crash once on my iPhone 3G (and I had been using Safari, with like 4 web pages open, so I probably just ran it out of memory). Do you have version 1.1? It says that one is more stable or something. Speaking of which, I just noticed that a version 1.1.1 is showing in iTunes - but not on my phone yet. The only new thing in the "what's new" section is "Will not erase save-data when updating" (too late for me, but as the lost expansions didn't cost to redownload, no big deal).
Yup, update 1.1.1 is live! The only real difference between this and 1.1 is, when updating from 1.0, all your data is copied over to the new save format. Sorry about any problems/confusion from the 1.1 update - for your troubles, here's a code to unlock a new mini-expansion, Curious Elixers: 164-209-433 (it'll only work on 1.1 or higher). Curious Elixers adds two new potions, Dwarven Gutbustin' Grog and Zongeroo.
The newest version 1.1.1 of the app stated that one of the changes included "balance tweaks" to the game. Unless I'm missing something, it doesn't look like any of the cards have changed. So how was it tweaked? Changes in the shuffling algorithm to make sure monsters aren't clumped? EDIT: Ahh ... I see what has been done now. They've changed the "Gold Value" of many cards. Crap, now I have to go through them all and update my spreadsheet.
I saw that, but I think those other "changes" after the one about keeping saved status when updating were left over from the 1.1 update.
Suggestion for the app developer: Make an extra online leaderboard based on win percentage (also accounting for number of games played), rather than high score. Under the current scoring system, there is an optimal strategy for getting high scores (stack multiple treasures, drop a huge monster on them, then Wiggy the monster and sack the next drawn hero to bring in the points). Because of this, getting a high score simply involves cycling through lots of games until a random shuffle happens to drop those few cards in the perfect order. There's no skill in that at all, especially since you don't even need to win the game to rack up the points. The people sitting highest on the leaderboard probably lost the games that gave them those high scores. I'm sitting at #15 on the "multiple expansions" leaderboard now, and I lost the game that got me there. That's totally ridiculous. I had been maintaining nearly a 1:2 win ratio before I discovered the "treasure-stack / wiggy" strategy. After that, I said screw it about winning the game, and went purely for the high score. My win ratio plummeted to about 1:5, but I was getting higher scores -- even when I lost. The strategy for getting a high score conflicts with the strategies for actually winning the game. That game design decision seems contradictory. Win percentage is the true skill-based ranking. A given game may be won or lost from luck, but over many games the player with better strategy and tactics will have a better record.
+1 This! Or... double or triple the amount of points you get foryour heroes on the board when you win. (Not monsters stacked with gold - just more points for your heroes, maybe even including the one you just drew to win the game.)
STRATEGY ARTICLE I want to share a basic strategy tip I apply in my Dungeon Solitaire games. Many of you have probably already discovered this strategy on your own, but perhaps there's a new bit of info here you might not have considered. Downchaser Strategy Goal: It's hard to get powerful killing units out on the field early in the game. So a key concept is how best to delay an enemy overrun while you setup your critter cuisinart. One early game strategy to help delay things is to set up a "lopsided" hero in the bottom slot of the Hero Stack with the Chase Down tie ability. Implementation: Most of your heroes have lopsided stats. None of your heroes start with the chase-down ability, but there are 5 cards that can give it to them -- 2 Item cards and 3 Traps. Here are the stats of those 5 cards: Don't be scared off by the word "trap" though. Traps can be played on an empty slot on either side of the battle. If you have an open bottom slot and you get one of these 3 downchaser traps, place it in your bottom hero slot to prep for your downchaser. But if the board is getting cluttered, and you've not yet drawn one of these traps, then you should consider laying a lopsided hero in the bottom slot when one comes up, and hope for one of the 2 Item cards to drop. Remember to not equip your hero with a different item in this case, as you will not be able to place the Chase Down equipment on him later. If you have a choice (and oftentimes you don't), it's best to use a hero with high Fight rather than High Magic, because one of the above sets of modifiers will be used on them to grant them the Chase Down ability. There are three "-1" Magics, but only two "-1" Fights. There's also a "+2" Fight, but as I note below in "The Bottom Line" section, you have a tough choice regarding the BFA Item. Your safety number here is to have a 6 in your downchaser's hero's higher stat, regardless of what the other number is -- though smaller heroes can suffice quite often. None of the enemies have base stats above 6, so your chaser will be safe as long as you don't fall victim to one of this strategy's weaknesses discussed below. Weaknesses: Your weaknesses with this strategy are monsters with Chase Down or Slayer abilities that you can't kill outright with brute force from your downchaser. When possible, you must avoid putting such monsters into the monster slot opposing your downchaser. Enemy downchasers will clear your downchaser off the board with them -- undoing your work. Enemy Slayers will flat out kill your hero before your hero's Chase Down ability even triggers. Enemy upchasers are also annoying, though not necessarily lethal: It's best to have your downchaser be in the bottom slot, but if he gets cycled up to the next higher slot by an enemy upchaser, your hero can continue feeding enemies off the board in chain-reactions, but you're eating up two slots for this effect now. If this happens to you, resist the urge to place an enemy downchaser across from your hero to get him back into the bottom slot. An enemy down-chaser will move down to the bottom slot with you, and your hero will be stalemated in that bottom slot -- effectively neutering this strategy until a Potion or a higher-level downchaser of yours breaks the tie. The Bottom Line: The goal of this strategy is to cycle monsters to the bottom of the deck while you bide your time to build killer heros in other slots. Do not neglect to build those killer heroes! That B.F.A. Item (love that name, by the way) might make your bottom hero even better at chasing down monsters, but it might be better suited to buffing your White Knight above, depending on your board situation. Just keep in mind that eventually you will be overrun by monsters you can't chase down (enemy Downchasers and Slayers). You need a killer hero or two to to take care of those guys.
Agree 100%. The bonus for actually winning the game should be much better. The way it is now I could care less if I actually win the game or not and getting a high score is completely dependent on luck. I think the game is incredibly addictive and with a few tweaks to the scoring system, it could easily become something great.
This is definitely true. And it's frustrating because the game is so luck based. I'm pretty proud that I was able to figure out this strategy for myself I'm not really trying to get high in the leaderboard however, I just want to get all of the achievements. Good game although it's a little too luck-based although I guess that's what you expect when you play a solitaire game. There is definitely some strategy though as I just found out when I screwed up the placement of one of my heroes and missed out on the chance of getting the "win a game with all of your heroes equipped" achievement. Hope this game gets tweaked a little more so that the win loss ratio ends up being closer to 50:50.
I don't even mind the winning % as much as the fact that winning doesn't do anything for you. You can get higher scores by losing than playing smart and going for a win. I actually hate it when I draw too many heroes and win before I can stack up all the treasure modifiers and get the big points bonus.
I hit the jackpot today! managed to get my modifiers up to 700 and then I managed to get a 2000 point card. Enough to put me at #11 in the Multiple Expansions category (Canuck in Japan). What I don't get is that although I managed to get a 1,500,000 score I didn't get the 1 million gold achievement. What's up with that? Are score and gold not the same thing?
Oh and I managed to win that game as well. Everything just seemed to fall into place that game. I even got the "RPG geek" achievement on that one.
Has anyone been able to win or lose in 10? That seems ridiculously difficult (or good or bad luck if you will). As tough as this game is, in order to lose in 10 you would have to draw 8 monsters out of ten or else push the monsters up into your castle. Seems pretty difficult.
Congrats! As much as I complain about the scoring design, it still is pretty exciting when it looks like all the cards are dropping in the perfect order. Sounds like a bug to me. Good find.
I've won a game in 10, but I've not lost one in 10. Actually, I didn't know that "lose a game in the first 10 turns" was an achievement until you pointed it out. Now I'll go try for it. I must say, I do like the decision to incorporate OpenFeint into this game. The achievement system adds a lot of mini-goals to the game so you're not just trying to do the same thing over and over. Until an app-stability update happens, I don't see me getting the "Last Stand" (use every card in the deck) achievement. The game is almost guaranteed to crash with fewer than 10 cards left in the deck. At least, that's been my experience.
Are you using Version 1.1 or higher? Those should check for that achievement when you finish the game (1.0, unfortunately, only checked during gameplay, so missed out on end-game bonuses). Also, if you get multiple achievements at once, you may not notice them all - unfortunately OpenFeint just draws multiple achievement messages on top of each other. They should still show up in your achievement list within OpenFeint, though. Hmm, we've never seen a crash like that. But we are working on a new update to the game (a big one) that will improve stability among other things - the game will use a little less memory (so should last longer for devices that are running low on memory before Dungeon Solitaire is launched), and a couple other potential crashes in rare situtations have been discovered/fixed.
I want to add something to my suggestion. If you're going to use win percentage as a ranking criterion, you should ensure that games a player intentionally quits count as losses. Currently, quit games are not factored into win-loss stats. That means a player could maintain a 100% win rate by simply quitting every game he is about to lose. However, since many users are experiencing crash problems with the app, it would be best if you could make sure that crashes are not counted as losses. I've not done any iPhone development before, but many operating systems provide an application with some indication that the previous session was abnormally terminated. Such info will help you to not punish the user for an app crash.
