Era Ended

For my loyal peeps, this is goodbye to my valorian life. The game has stopped being fun, too much about the money grub and has changed to suit the boys and girls who can purchase the win.

I will leave this blog up to assist noobs, but as of March 2013 will no longer be updating any changes Gaymesh makes to their once epic game. 

Good luck to you and Battle Hard kids!

New Barbs

First the new barbarian system featured in the new standard worlds are completely different from what us golden girls are used to.

There is NO farming of barbs, don't make this costly mistake. Barbarians not only have troops, but rebuild them, so do not clear a barb unless you are completely ready to take it.
Here's a rundown to facilitate any vets or noobs that may stumble here. **Most of which I've personally verified as fact, however there are rumors and things I've heard from trusted long time friends that I believe to be true, but haven't personally witnessed. I will state as such. **

Biggest change is that you can now capture a barbarian city without a scholar. You heard me. Each barb is 100% loyal to its current native regime.

When you kill all troops in it, then repeatedly attack with a moderate force, I like 150 zerks or 250 lancers, you reduce the city's "influence".

Once you hit it enough times (you can not take off more then 20% influence per attack, so the more waves the better) and the native barbarian regime's influence reaches 0 -

You continue to attack, repeatedly, to "raise" your own influence to 100%. Once you reach 100% you "capture" the barb and can now build buildings, troops and rename the city.

However, once you cap your hold is only 50% as it takes 2% per hour to reach 100%... Um... Influenced...
Two (or more) people can reduce the native influence - meaning your guild mates can help you lower the initial influence, but it's up to you to increase it yourself.
More then one person can "raise" influence for themselves, whomever caps first, the others will have to reduce the new owners influence before raising their own again.

As I was saying, barbs build troops, but they ALL have a max of 100 Lancers, 150 Sentries and 50 bezerkers. They start the world with what you have, and VERY quickly build up to that quantity.

They have lvl 4 city hall - it is smart to level up this as soon as possible, as it makes your barb city, once capped, more loyal and so each hit from an enemy takes off less loyalty. Also opening your market is smart as new barbs don't hide resources. Which really sucks. Supporting your new barb with troops also works to increase influence regeneration, but how much difference either of these make is unknown.

While I'm talking about city hall for barbarians, I need to mention that it takes a ridiculously long time to build. **I have heard of a glitch that allows you to bypass this headache. Here's how it works: put on two city halls to build. Cancel the first one. The system reverts to lord city build times and voila! You're cooking in no time. Granted, you need a shit tonne of resources to pull this off, but if you've got the cheese, full steam ahead!   ***This glitch has been fixed by our wonderful dev's at Quark - gotta love how quickly they fix exploits but shit that's been broke for years just staaaaays broke! Great job guys!
Now once you have a captured a barb (i call mine QueenB) you'll notice somethings not quite the same... there is no stable or work shop no hiding place and no academy. None of these are available till you turn it into a lord city. If you want to turn this barbarian into a Lord City (that's what they call it) you need to send a scholar to support your barb. It takes time to build up loyalty, so don't do this as a quickie fix if someone is attacking you. Best defense is sentries, unless you have knights or guards in your lord city, but home grown def for barbs are definitely sentries. Scouts as defense is also smart, less your enemy can plan for the better. One last tidbit, if your lord cities get capped, your barbs revert to barbs immediately. They start growing troops again, and are no longer yours nor are they your new owner of your lord city. That's it kids. Basic new Barbie 101.

Options

Valor has finally allowed us some control over how we play the game. The new options menu is fantastic! You can select what you want to show, how you want it to view and what push notifications you want. I love this, it's been far too long. Here's some ss but basically it's self explanatory, just go thru and see what you like.

I recommend checking out both graphical city and graphical barracks at least once. There's a medal you can get for following the tutorial, and It's kinda fun and different. I however prefer my valor old skool. They have instituted many cool stylized build options in graphical city, and you may like it.

New Maps

So they have changed maps for the better as well. Here's a run down of the new features.

First, there is no vintage barbs. The little mounds are the barb "cities".

Second, you can view active attacks (like in rally point) within Map itself. You can only view so many then it says to view more see Rally Point. There is a graphical time bar that increases as your troops move, so at a quick glance you can view status. You can also hide the list, yet it still shows you how many rally's you have numerically on screen. That's handy, and a fantastic idea.

There is an option to toggle between vintage view and new view attack indication. Vintage is the old swords above the city you're attacking. New view gives you a color coded line indicator with a real time directional arrow for the location of your troops. Very cool. There are four colored lines to indicate which type of rally it is. White lines are your attacks. Yellow lines is support coming from your own cities. Blue lines, you guessed it! Support from your guild. And of course Red lines - incoming hostile attack. Get enough of them your map will look like fire works!!

A long time coming this next feature is. New "pinch zoom" for map has been tossed around for as long as I've been on the world forums. They took their time, and it was worth the wait bcs it works really well. This picture is zoomed out all the way to see color based city location - standard Guild mates, Ally, Nap, Enemy colors, Blue, Green, Purple and Red are plainly visible. Light brown are cities that have no diplomacy. Your city is indicated as White to stand out from the crowd.

The city search has also been stylized to blend with valors new look and feel of the map. You have the book mark feature they introduced about 9 months ago and they still haven't gotten it quite right. However, I'm willing to work with them on it bcs it's a good idea, just needs some tweaks.

Regions have also had an overhaul. They are no longer a box side by each |_|_|_| they are turned like a diamond - or a box on its side. Uncertain of the reason for this change but ok. They've also limited world size drastically. The 58k population is dead. Long gone are the 45hr walks to the other side of the world. Standard 1k worlds are 1 vintage size region, 1,000 player capacity. Standard 5k worlds are 4 vintage size regions, 5,000 player capacity. The regions are set up 2x2.

In my humble opinion, 1k "worlds" should be called "nations" or "countries" bcs they don't FEEL like a PLANET when you walked your sorry ass scholars from region 23 to region 20 for a relocation, it FELT like a trip half way across the world. My point is it was far. No matter unit speed. 5k worlds should be called "continents" or "hemispheres". Bcs they too do not feel like a planet. On a related note, they should offer vintage valor back as part of the standard worlds. Old barb system, 3 tier troop option, hell bring back no forge like WAY back in the day. Call it valor classik :D yes I'm older then forge AND market!! Shut up :-p

Android users can still play vintage valor, I just started a world on my android, yes sweet farming! Never thought I'd be greatful to farm!!!
That's all kids!

Medals

They've apparently stopped the competitions they had going for about 6 months and anyone who got trophies or medals, as it were, lost all brag rights bcs you no longer have them. That's kind of shitty, for those people who put the time in to get them. I wasn't one of those people but still. I do however love the new trophies. You get medals for preforming certain tasks and there are 4 levels for almost all of them. Wood is lowest, although its not a medal, it's a tree, but who am I to argue over semantics? Oh right! I'm me! Hahahahaha!

Moving on... Bronze is the next medal tier, you have to do something different to get it. Once you get wood trophy, it will tell you specifics on what you need to get to the next level, however it only gives you one level at a time, and you basically have to shoot in the dark to get wood bcs there's no explanation on how to achieve them initially.

You won't know how to get these gems unless you ask someone how they got theirs. Most people are willing to bestow their knowledge.
Silver is the 3rd tier and Gold is the 4th. To reach the ranks of these takes time and patience. Oh and probably skill.

Your medals are posted on a player's profile and can be accessed in portal, for your own. You can set which medal you want displayed or make them private if you're shy. :-)

Within your own you can view the list of medals you have yet to achieve. No explanation, just their titles. Intrigue!!!

That's it, metals in a nutshell. :-) Did they have to make her look 16?? It's a little creepy.

New Portal

Ok they've changed portal several times since I started this game, most were for the better. This round is much better! It's clean and precise and I personally love the stat graph. I like that it's not just points, you can change it to kill score for those of us who like to get bloody.

You have a list of all the worlds you're in for extreme ease of switching. I love it's brilliant.

You can view the world stats easily and abandon if you so choose. Or if you want to restart, each world you're allowed one restart. Lots of people do this then leave a 1085 city there active so end game winners have to cap all these tiny cities. It's douchey, and I like it! Lol!!!!

You have a worlds button at the top that allows you to view any "unexplored" worlds, participate in the speed worlds or get a list of what you're in. If you want to compare or mass abandon or I don't know ss and tweet how many worlds you are in.

That's all I can explain about Portal till they change it, again. I personally like it the way it is, but you know how gay mesh is....

New "Standard" World

Here is a run down of the new Standard in the world of valor. The brilliant minds at GayMesh, know known as Quark, (they released an "update" that said it was "bug fixes", thus far the only thing that changed was their new lame name) have thought it best to throw out "Vintage Valor" in favor of the new standard. Yeah, that's a great idea, throw out everything that made you a must have on hand held devices. Brilliance at last!
Not.

Keep in mind folks, these are just my personal opinions, I don't like the bait n switch, it pisses me off. 

Anyway, as I was saying, the new Standard Valor worlds, further known as Standard, mimic the Speed Worlds they brought in around the same time.

I'm not discussing Speed worlds in this area, that will be a whole other rant of complaints and praise for another day kids.

Here is the rundown for Vintage players to grasp the new standards.

What they kept the same:
- Basic city growth and functionality
- Troops damage, training time and troop farm cost
- Guilds hierarchy, forums and diplomacy
- Player cap rules
- Market
- Academy
- Rally Point
- Fortune wheel prize sizes (really? Can we please change this to make it worth it later on in the game??)
- Quests
- and of course purchasable perks in the store

What changed:
- Portal (Details)
- Medals or Trophies (Details)
- Map (Details)
- In game Chat is gone (thank the Gord)
- User defined toggle options (Details)
- Barbarian Cities capture w/o scholar (Details)
- Farming (details)
- World sizes (Details)
- Competition based "end game" (rant I mean details)