There definitely is no paywall. I have 10 cities unlocked (8 finished) and haven't spent a dime. The game is actually quite easy, due to the limits of the AI. However, one can definitely have difficulty if one insists on blazing through the quests in the first city, rather than taking a little detour to do a few challenges and get some souls to level up. You can also detour a bit into a second or third city. The end of the first city is intended to be hard, you get an epic troop as a reward (a very good one, actually). You do have to assemble a logical team, and level it up a bit with souls. Even then, there definitely may be levels you have to try a couple of times. If you post what troops you have unlocked, and what levels they are, we should be able to help you easily.
Hm interesting. I went in to the challenges immediately after the first few quests and was heavily outclassed - I just figured I would have to come back to them later. But this is good feedback, I'll re-evaluate my approach. Thanks!
I thought I'd hit a paywall a few days ago, when in fact, all that had happened is I had been playing too long and got impatient. But then I found the invade button, and at the right time you can make some nice gold....if you win. So you need confidence in your deck. Now, I'm several thousand gold up, well on the way to gaining my sixth city and life is good. I just can't wait to find Ghulvania!!
Additional confirmation. There is absolutely no paywall in sight. I'm at level 25, with 8+ hours behind me, and the game is only getting easier. I have drawn 40-50 troops/cards without spending a dime, and at least three of them are legendaries, and three are epics (the two highest rarities). (The very first boss can indeed appear paywall-y if you get hit hard by a few lucky AI cascades + the boss ability, but after a few tries you'll be the one with the three bonus turns in a row, and down the wyrm goes.) Gems of War ranks as one of the most generous freemium implementations to date, to my mind.
Can confirm there's no pay wall for sure I'm level 40+ and unlocked 7 cities and finished 6 of them plus completed about 20 challenges. I have also spent no real life cash on this game. You might feel you have hit a paywall if you're not levelling your troops, you haven't put together a cohesive team or you are not strategising correctly. It's best to check enemy troops at the start to see who has a scary ability and then consciously match the colours related to it to stop them using it even if you don't benefit. I would advise not doing the challenges till a bit later or just the first level star of each as the higher ones can be intimidating if your troops are weak. Of course start with broken spire as they would be the easiest. If your troop cards aren't viable you can always save up 1000g to buy an iron key which won't take long and you can mix and match again. Hoping all the advice helps! Don't give up. This game is amazing.
http://gemsofwar.com/forums/topic/22-nov-guild-trophy-pvp-matchmaking-hotfix/#post-726 Patch notes! No more gold being stolen from players via pvp and better cash rewards for invading. I'm in love! Plus we can maybe finally push for 100 trophies now they don't get stolen. Hooray!
If I understand it right, we don't need to push per se, our trophies will just gradually go up as people win battles.
I'm sure this has been asked and answered somewhere in the 35 pages, so I apologize for revisiting topics. Is there a good "starting path" to take? Is there a particular element that gives a better spell early on? Is it better to be well-rounded or to focus in one particular direction? I can't seem to find a "start" that works for me (but I'm probably not going far enough before restarting - also hoping for a better rare from the first pack than the ones I've seen on my first couple attempts). I went well-rounded the first time, focused on the Magic element the second time. Neither worked well (in the case of Magic, I also got two cards from my pack that used Magic, so they kept stealing mana from each other).
1. The element you pick on level up does two things. One, it gives you a tiny chance to get double mana when matching that element. This just doesn't matter that much. Two, hitting a certain level with an element triggers your getting another weapon. So in theory, you could speed up getting a better weapon by specializing. In practice, you want the flexibility to switch your hero around, and you want to get all of the high quality weapons to have that flexibility. So spreading it around is what I did, and would probably do again. Each of the colors has a decent weapon pretty quickly. Probably the first green weapon is slightly better than the first weapon of other colors, but this is actually debatable (it does less damage than some of the others but allows your choice of target). Also, everyone gets a goblin to start, which uses green, and goblin is actually a very good creature. So you dont want your weapon and your goblin fighting over the same mana, and focusing on green wouldn't be smart. So actually, even if I wanted to pick a color to focus on based on getting a weapon, I'd have no idea what color to steer towards -- which creatures your using matters. 2. Stop restarting. Just level up what you get enough to do some challenges and progress deeper towards clearing the first city. Its pretty easy to get more souls. I mean, eventually, towards the later levels, it costs a ton of souls, but its totally fine to take some creatures to level 4 or 5 and then abandon them when you get better creatures. The free Goblin your given may technically be a "common" but he is really good, and I quite often see level 50+ players with a Goblin in their line-up, even paired with a legendary or two. 3. Once you get rares, which can be charged by either of two colors, your normally going to have a minimum of one overlapping color. However, I agree it would be less than ideal to have two creatures that charge with the same single color.
56 trophies and counting. Good work team! I see kiralee got a good chunk in there, I dont know how you win so fast. Im averaging 10 minutes per match, assuming I win! Im glad the devs advised us to hold off for a week. The communication between devs and players is so open here, its awesome.
Lol it's called OMG my baby's asleep and my 4 year old is busy, must maximise time to its fullest! Hence the crazy Zerg fest on my opponents I'm also not winning all the time either made myself a nice list of players to avoid like the plague and ones I can beat.
Thanks for the heads-up (and the overall overview on your post). I've gotten used to games like this being decided ENTIRELY on the rarity of the cards, and I read one post a week or so ago (before it went global) from someone who restarted and "found things much easier because he/she got the right cards this time." That probably meant more 'found a good combination of color/effect cards' like an Alchemist and someone who could use all that Yellow mana early on, instead of the usual freemium rule of "I drew an Ultra Rare so I'm automatically better than anyone who drew a Rare." This time I have the Acolyte (who generates random Brown gems and usually helps my OPPONENT more than me). I still try to use him because of the chance of it causing a random 4-gem chain. More than the extra turn, I want the gold
I really love that goblin card. (The 2nd? card you get in the game), IMHO one of the best cards in the game even though its common. With high enough green bonus, sometimes it only takes one green clear to get it to max and you get a free turn! The only problem is that the goblin is quite squishy but will do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.
Okay. im going to try to get in a few invades before bed. Sorry for any guildies i accidentally attack
Hero (w/ red weap), Luther, Atlanta, the bard with power chord (forget name) using city with yellow mana bonus wins quick. Alchemist or Herd Master might be better than Luther if you have them -- not clear as Luther is legitimately very helpful. Goblin instead of the bard might or might not be even quicker. Probably the best teams that can be made from the free epics imho. AND strong enough to beat most epic teams most of the time. I have many interesting cards, Shadow Dragon and Siren (today), Herd Master and Flesh Golem, but its not clear to me how I upgrade my team. Shadow Dragon might need to be paired with another legendary doing true damage (armor piercing damage) to really shine, but I'm thinking about Shadow Dragon, hero with Green true damage weapon, Vampire Lord and something else (don't have Wight, which also does true damage). Shadow Dragon and Atlanta use the exact same colors, so it really needs to be a whole new team concept.
Why? No stealing gold anymore, so you may as well invade your guildies and see how their teams work out.
Acolyte is a very good card in theory, probably the best brown generator, but for whatever reason, there tend to be fewer creatures that use brown. If there was something like Goblin in brown, Acolyte could easily be OP.
Newbie question here - if you keep leveling your troops, does it start affecting their spells at some point (or does it only affect their stats?) Grateful for any input!
