About Gathering Sprites
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- tommasso
- Enlightened
About Gathering Sprites
Most of these will be stating the obvious but I myself did not know of leapfrogging until level 14 since I did not RTFM and give the FAQ some quality time... So here goes:
1. There are currently 36 different types pf sprites. 4 houses X 3 colors X 3 ranks.
2. If you are looking for a specific type and are in an realm with many sprites in the same house, though not quite the rank or color you like. Try to kill off one or two when your mp is full and chances are the one you want will pop up. The chance is much slimmer if this realm consists of sprites of mixed houses, or the same sprites of a different house. Sometimes this is easier than frequent jumpings, especially when you have too many friends and switching to the sky map almost always give you a screen freeze for a few seconds. 1.1.3 impose a friend mage limit, which should improve the sky map switch but it does not help those already made too many friends before the app upgrade. I for one enjoy the traveling aspect of the game more than anything else and do not like the friend limit. My suggestion to fix the sky map drawing freeze would be to draw only the 50-100
closest beacons to the player and put the rest of the friends on the list view. Though this may not help if the generation of the list happens at the same time as the generation of the sky map.
3. This one is a general spell casting technique. After your first war chant, pull down the spell mask before the spell goes off and drag the Z with your finger but don't let go. Wait for the screen quake/flash effect and then release your finger to cast the next war chant immediately. And repeat the process until the sprite is captured/opposing mage is banished. In my personal experiences, you can reliably pull off two spells before the sprite's first hit before level 14 and 3 spells before the first hit after level 14. And that means you would rarely get hit by lower level sprites.
4. In 1.1.2 (no experiences of prior versions of Shadow Cities myself), if you draw the Z waiting for your spell going off but get hit by the sprite first, your spell drawing will be lost and you would have to redraw the Z again. In 1.1.3, keep holding your finger on the screen through the hit vibration and your Z would remain, already to go after the finger release.
5. If you miss the spell mask pull down button and go to the sky map instead you will have to lock on/tap to the same sprite again. The irritated sprite is the one running in circle and casting back war chant. Though in group hunting you may have several sprites running around at the same time so remember the house/color/rank of the sprite you are capturing to avoid the confusion when losing your spell focus.
6. It is perfectly alright to walk off in the mid-hunt. Let's say you see that you have enough mp to cast three war chants and your average hit is around 300 hp. So you think capturing a 500hp sprite should be a cake but got, wouldn't you know it, three consecutive 100hp hits. If you have enough HP, the opposing sprite is a lower level one giving low hp stings and you have been hopping around for 10+ minutes just to find it, you can certainly endure the minor hp losses and wait for your hp to replenish. Other than that, you can just warp out of the current realm. Be sure to remember the realm/beacon's name if you want to return for that particular sprite. However, if you return too early, the same sprite would remember you and starts to cast war chant upon your entering so beware of that.
7. When a campaign is going on and two or three of the same sprite you want for a mission is in the same realm, pick the one with the lowest hp because the mission energy gain is greater than the minor energy gain when fighting higher hp/rank sprites. And you save your mp and reduce the wait time for mp regeneration. When there is not an ongoing campaign, fighting high hp/rank sprites give you more xp points than the lower ones.
8. When (a) low level mage(s) is/are present, more low hp sprites (regardless of sprite ranks) would appear in the realm. That makes for an easier hunt. More high hp sprites would appear when you hunt alone in high level, or in a realm with (a) high level mage(s).
9. This one is about the hunting etiquette, when your fellow mage initiated the capturing, let him/her finish it, even if s/he is getting the one you want so badly. You would be very pissed, too, if you used up all of your mp fighting a 1600+hp sprite, only to have a fellow mage jump in and steal the capture at the last moment. The same thing goes for the enemy stronghold demolition derby, when a fellow mage starts on a ward/beacon/dominator. This is of a much less concern when you are fighting off opposing mages as winning as a whole is paramount at the moment.
10. It would be nice to check on the fellow mage in action and give him/her a needed healing when the health is low so s/he won't get banished by the sprite.
Please point out any error I have in these. Thank you for reading.
Most of these will be stating the obvious but I myself did not know of leapfrogging until level 14 since I did not RTFM and give the FAQ some quality time... So here goes:
1. There are currently 36 different types pf sprites. 4 houses X 3 colors X 3 ranks.
2. If you are looking for a specific type and are in an realm with many sprites in the same house, though not quite the rank or color you like. Try to kill off one or two when your mp is full and chances are the one you want will pop up. The chance is much slimmer if this realm consists of sprites of mixed houses, or the same sprites of a different house. Sometimes this is easier than frequent jumpings, especially when you have too many friends and switching to the sky map almost always give you a screen freeze for a few seconds. 1.1.3 impose a friend mage limit, which should improve the sky map switch but it does not help those already made too many friends before the app upgrade. I for one enjoy the traveling aspect of the game more than anything else and do not like the friend limit. My suggestion to fix the sky map drawing freeze would be to draw only the 50-100
closest beacons to the player and put the rest of the friends on the list view. Though this may not help if the generation of the list happens at the same time as the generation of the sky map.
3. This one is a general spell casting technique. After your first war chant, pull down the spell mask before the spell goes off and drag the Z with your finger but don't let go. Wait for the screen quake/flash effect and then release your finger to cast the next war chant immediately. And repeat the process until the sprite is captured/opposing mage is banished. In my personal experiences, you can reliably pull off two spells before the sprite's first hit before level 14 and 3 spells before the first hit after level 14. And that means you would rarely get hit by lower level sprites.
4. In 1.1.2 (no experiences of prior versions of Shadow Cities myself), if you draw the Z waiting for your spell going off but get hit by the sprite first, your spell drawing will be lost and you would have to redraw the Z again. In 1.1.3, keep holding your finger on the screen through the hit vibration and your Z would remain, already to go after the finger release.
5. If you miss the spell mask pull down button and go to the sky map instead you will have to lock on/tap to the same sprite again. The irritated sprite is the one running in circle and casting back war chant. Though in group hunting you may have several sprites running around at the same time so remember the house/color/rank of the sprite you are capturing to avoid the confusion when losing your spell focus.
6. It is perfectly alright to walk off in the mid-hunt. Let's say you see that you have enough mp to cast three war chants and your average hit is around 300 hp. So you think capturing a 500hp sprite should be a cake but got, wouldn't you know it, three consecutive 100hp hits. If you have enough HP, the opposing sprite is a lower level one giving low hp stings and you have been hopping around for 10+ minutes just to find it, you can certainly endure the minor hp losses and wait for your hp to replenish. Other than that, you can just warp out of the current realm. Be sure to remember the realm/beacon's name if you want to return for that particular sprite. However, if you return too early, the same sprite would remember you and starts to cast war chant upon your entering so beware of that.
7. When a campaign is going on and two or three of the same sprite you want for a mission is in the same realm, pick the one with the lowest hp because the mission energy gain is greater than the minor energy gain when fighting higher hp/rank sprites. And you save your mp and reduce the wait time for mp regeneration. When there is not an ongoing campaign, fighting high hp/rank sprites give you more xp points than the lower ones.
8. When (a) low level mage(s) is/are present, more low hp sprites (regardless of sprite ranks) would appear in the realm. That makes for an easier hunt. More high hp sprites would appear when you hunt alone in high level, or in a realm with (a) high level mage(s).
9. This one is about the hunting etiquette, when your fellow mage initiated the capturing, let him/her finish it, even if s/he is getting the one you want so badly. You would be very pissed, too, if you used up all of your mp fighting a 1600+hp sprite, only to have a fellow mage jump in and steal the capture at the last moment. The same thing goes for the enemy stronghold demolition derby, when a fellow mage starts on a ward/beacon/dominator. This is of a much less concern when you are fighting off opposing mages as winning as a whole is paramount at the moment.
10. It would be nice to check on the fellow mage in action and give him/her a needed healing when the health is low so s/he won't get banished by the sprite.
Please point out any error I have in these. Thank you for reading.
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- Seil
- Awakened
Although there are technically 36 varieties as far as a mission objective may go, there are actually at least 53 different spirits and each of those is capable of being any of the 3 elements. There are 13 discovered inriks, tiermes and drioma and 14 discovered dannan thus far. Each which different names and varying strength etc(all of this can be checked in my Spirit-iary thread in General)
The reason that this affects the statistics here specifically is that all houses have more normal varieties than uncommon or rare, and two houses thus far seem to have a different number of uncommon compared to rares as well(dannan have 5 rare varieties and only 3 uncommon for instance).
Anyway, this is quite the thread, great job
Oh also why do you call spirits sprites? o.o
The reason that this affects the statistics here specifically is that all houses have more normal varieties than uncommon or rare, and two houses thus far seem to have a different number of uncommon compared to rares as well(dannan have 5 rare varieties and only 3 uncommon for instance).
Anyway, this is quite the thread, great job
Oh also why do you call spirits sprites? o.o
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- tommasso
- Enlightened
I noticed, after reading the other posts, that:
1. "sky map" should be "cloud view".
2. "spell mask" should be "rune pane".
This is what happened if you did not RTFM...
1. "sky map" should be "cloud view".
2. "spell mask" should be "rune pane".
This is what happened if you did not RTFM...
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- Seil
- Awakened
Cloudview is indeed the proper term, however I'm not really sure of the official term for the rune pane, I just personally prefer that term lol. Spell window, rune pane, drawing screen, whatever =p
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- Khamos
- Staff
Seil
Cloudview is indeed the proper term, however I'm not really sure of the official term for the rune pane, I just personally prefer that term lol. Spell window, rune pane, drawing screen, whatever =p
All of the terms sound logical
We've been using the term Rune Layer i.e. in the Shadow Cities Help.
Edited by Khamos (June 15, 2011 18:10:04)
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- Gabriel
- Awakened
Also, warping locally (from beacon to dominator, back to beacon, back to dominator) frequently gets another spirit to show up. Warping to gateways seems to do this best.
