Chapter 3: Habits of Effective Mages

1. Conquer neighborhoods for your Academy and become the most powerful Mage in your city.
   • Destroy Enemy Dominators that are attached to Gateways
   • Summon Dominators to Gateways to conquer them for your Academy

2. Advance through the 18 levels by gaining experience

   • Complete Mission
   • Catch Spirits
   • Destroy enemy structures
   • Battle enemy Mages

3. Win weekly Campaigns and earn Campaign Medals with your Battlegroup team by gathering Energy. This can be achieved by:

   • Completing Missions
   • Capturing Spirits with Attack Spells
   • Conquering Gateways
   • Banishing opposing players
   • Harvesting Dominators

Each week the Animators and the Architects battle for supremacy in a weekly Campaign. The teams gather Energy to win Battle Rounds and earn Campaign Medals.

You can gather Energy by:

• Completing Missions
• Conquering Gateways
• Building and harvesting Dominators
  • Dominators take a while fill with Energy, so you have to protect them from the enemy until you harvest the Energy.
• Banishing opposing players
• Capturing Spirits with Attack Spells

You can check your Campaigns and Mission status by clicking the white button on the bottom-right corner of the Main View. Every day you are given a number of Missions to complete, with tasks varying from capturing a number of Spirits and conquering Gateways to more exotic goals.

You earn Energy and Experience from all Missions, but the harder the Mission, the greater the reward. Some Missions also reward you with Mana Potions, which can be used, for instance, to replenish your Mana or upgrade your avatar.

Capturing Spirits is one of the main tasks in Shadow Cities, you can see Spirits randomly appear on the map and many Missions require you to capture Spirits.

Uncommon and Rare Spirits are more dangerous, and are needed to complete more challenging Missions. If you need to find a specific Spirit, you can ask your friends whether they have seen one.

You use Dominators for three things:

1. Dominate neighborhoods by summoning Dominators to Energy Gateways. Conquer a Gateway by destroying all enemy structures attached to it and then summoning your own Dominator to the Gateway.

2. Gather Energy when your team controls a Gateway. When a Dominator is fully charged up, you can use the Harvest Spell to obtain the Energy. However, if the enemy destroys your Dominator before you harvest it, they will harvest the Energy. You can harvest Dominators that are connected to Gateways close to your physical location. The harvesting distance is approximately the view you see when entering the Cloudview from your physical location.

3. Generates Power to fuel your Beacons, Wards, and Catchers.

Battle for control over Energy Gateways in weekly Campaigns. In Shadow Cities, Campaigns determine who is the winning team: Animators or Architects. Every week there is a new Campaign where you can earn a Medal. Each weekly Campaign consists of three Battle Rounds, each Round runs for two days.

You win Rounds by helping the team you are assigned to, therefore earning you Medals. If by the end of the week your team wins one Round, you earn a Bronze Medal; for two Rounds you earn a Silver Medal; and if you win all three Rounds, you earn a Gold Medal. The Medal is always unique to that Campaign.

Battlegroups

Each time that you login the first time to a new Campaign Round, you will be assigned to a local Battlegroup where you will fight along with your team members to win the weekly Campaigns by conquering Gateways, capturing Spirits, and battling for the control of your neighborhood against the opposing Battlegroup.

The world of Shadow Cities is a reflection of the real world. When you move in the real world, you also move in the game.

However, there is another way to move around that is just not possible in the real world. In Shadow Cities you summon Beacons, allowing your friends to jump to your location. For example, if you are located in Los Angeles and you have a friend in New York, he or she can open a Beacon in New York, allowing you to battle in Brooklyn or Manhattan.

Besides jumping between Beacons you can also use the Warp spell to warp to friendly targets that are visible to you on your map: Dominators, Catchers, Wards, Gateways, Beacons, and friendly players.

Cloudview

From Cloudview you have a bird’s eye view of any city. Here you can see the activity in different neighborhoods, for example, which team is dominating which neighborhood in any given city and a limited amount of the most recently summoned Beacons from your friends. In addition to your friends' Beacons you can also see a couple of random Beacons that belong to your Battlegroup teammates.

You can open Cloudview with a vertical pinch gesture in the Main View.