If you play Warhammer Online

Look for me on Server Name: Red Eye Mountain on the US servers.

My characters will be named Gos something.

Short Break for updates

I case you've been wondering, I'm taking a break from daily updates.

Playing other games at the moment.

I'll resume when I get more time for Saga.

I wonder if they fixed the bugs...

"• Final Tournament Test Thursday • 27 August 2008 Tournaments are almost ready but we need your help. Tomorrow Thursday August 28th between Noon and 4PM EST, the SAGA staff will be on the live servers playing in tournaments. Please join us in playing as many tournament games as you can. We want to have at least 5 tournaments running simultaneously. In order for this to work, we need everyone joining the tournaments to play at least 1 game. Please do NOT leave if you didn’t get good troops. If you want to concede, please do so after entering a game. There may be a little something for those who do well in tournaments, and coal in your stocking if you enter tournaments then drop before your first game, and by coal we mean ineligibility for any cool future promotions we have planned." - https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7514

Finally I can play paid tourneys and open those packs I've been saving.

Market Price in Gold/Mats for Cards:

http://www.sagatraders.com/marketguide/

So Sagatraders has given the trade list.

This brings the point of WTH is Silverlode thinking when they made the market so poorly. Why not allow big gold trades for units, why limit us?

Why not build a better search engine.

Anyway, as a sample, here is the undead list. Overall its a pretty good list.

If you can get to Level 35 you can farm a TON of gold. Good way to play for free imo. Get to 35 then start collecting your army.

Items might give flying?

I'd love to see a flying deathbringer...

Getting Peasants for your Undead Army

So on my Order Army I did kill the beast.

It works really well.

Sadly on my Undead army my peasants aren't reproducting as well as I like, and I have to go steal some from the game.






Slow as a Chersus up a Hill seems to be the one that Brotherhood people use.

It's pretty lame as slow, but if you are looking for more workers, they do live here.

What good are the new Deathbringer unit?

So looking at the deathbringer, it's hard to figure out his appeal.

Well, honestly, this is an excellent PvP unit for undead.

It's best feature is that it has the damage and range to kill 6CP units, which are very common in PvP. Eagle, Gryphons, Ravens, Treants, Elementals, etc etc, this units damage is targetted at putting the most dps on a unit with alot of hitpoints.

It has all of the stats that matter for a good 6CP killer. Speed - Range - attack speed - and a snare.

It fires two shots per attack, one followed quickly by the second. This allow microkiting.

It is fast with a very decent stamina pool, a big hitpoint pool and a 31 DR.

The only disadvantages are the low morale, and the fact that they are ranged and machines.





Here is a videa with a level 2 Deathbringer vs a level 10 Treant pack. The Treant was winning so I had to move it around so you get the idea of the damage.

Battle Server problems since the patch...

If you've been since the undead patch, you will undoubtably realize that the Saga "WAR" screen is not working that well. You might be fine for an hour, then go into a 20min period where you can't connect.

This affects:

• Join tourneys
• Starting Quests
• PvP fights

So pretty much everything except tooling around you nation screen.

If you try and try again, and again, you might get in, but your 70 attempts is probably screwing up other players.

It's 'probably' the tournaments that are doing it, but we haven't seen much from the developers.

Big boy got changed!

Near double the hitpoints and now he's a sexy 6 CP unit.

People are loving the humongoblin.

I have to admit, he makes questing very easy.

I have to do a shoutout to my new Undead Guild, and my two members - Dispater and Forsaken Dread. Our combined level is 37! Thats end game lol. - Still recruiting more. If you like Undead, its the place to be.

Undead Territory Defense will be staffed by...

We all got like 10 of them :)

If you are rolling a NEW UNDEAD army, make sure to send me a tell about the all UNDEAD GUILD.

Only requirement to join is that you are rolling undead...

You must have lots of Humongous :)

66 Undead Factional Packs, what I got...

Forsaken Warrior 78 - 3 Troops
Undead Reaper 25 - 2 Troops
Undead Pikeman 19 - 1 Troop
Undead Archer 25 - 2 Troops
Undead Raider 26 - 2 Troops
Forsaken Rider 25 - 2 Troops
Undead Arbalister 19 - 1 Troop
Death Knight 13 - 1 Troops
Diabolist 14 - 3.5 Troops
Necromancer 10 - 2.5 Troops
Lich 5 - 5 Troops
Wight 12 - 3 Troops
Forsaken Dragon 8 - 8 Troops
Humongous 10 - 10 Troops
Abomination 6 - 6 Troops
Bone Wagon 10 - 2.5 Troops
Death Bringer 7 - 7 Troops


Visions of Death 12
Earth Fire 6
Horror 14
Fell Trance 8
Regeneration 1

Wow, alot more of the big CP troops then the low CP.

I expect sagaunits and sagatraders to drop their prices some this initial run.

Make sure you remember the sagathoughts discount on the right if you are buying any units. -- >

INSANE undead packs...

So Undead are out! WIN

But seriously, these Undead faction packs are amazing.

Not yet...

Undead Release on Friday

"The day has finally come. We’re bringing out the dead on Friday August 22nd. After the servers come back up from the August 22nd patch the undead will be available as a playable race. The Undead Faction boosters currently available as preorder items on the saga store will be removed prior to the patch. The Undead Faction boosters contain undead in much greater quantities than regular packs will after Friday, so if your planning on building an Undead city you may want to pick up a few" - Source https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7393

Fixing the inbalance between attacking and defending.

The problem in tournaments is that the attacker is at a disadvantage.

You don't control a respawn point, so if the defender beats you, you basically are in big trouble.

My suggestions is to have a neutral keep in the middle of the board that an attacker can capture to provide a respawn point.

This would help tournament games become more fun, as currently there is alot of running away instead of attacking.

A lot of Tournament bugs still plaguing the system

Illian posted a good post on Tourney bugs:

https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7375

"1. Point system is horrible. Right now its whoever can kill the ENTIRE enemy
unit. - 5 pts per killing entire enemy unit (counts if the enemy retreats his
unit). However, having a healing unit or garrisionning will keep you from losing
the negative five points and this AGAIN favors the defender. I like to attack in
tournaments but right now.. the biggest advantage is to the defender in points,
dam from towers, and WAYY closer deployment zone. The point system needs to be
addressed greatly especially with how it calculates. For one, killing an entire
unit takes 5 poitns but a healing unit healing an entire can return anywherefrom
5-25 pts! The poitn system needs a major overhaul.

2. Healing bug still
there. They said this was fixed.. yea right.. it was like they said it as fixed
to shut us up because NOTHING about healing = massive point gain even after full
health units was not even addressed/fixed. Basically.. if the point system is
only focusing on units killed.. you just left it to whoever has the healer
becomes the advantaged defende that is most likely to win. Id rather had 3
faction units with a healer instead one with 8 faction units. And id probably
win...

3. The forfeit bug is still there despite me and my guildies
attempt at reporting it SEVERAL times. Then tournaments come back up with the
announcement that Saga believes it is bug free... there hasn even been any real
FIXES!!! The forfeit bug happens due to the fact that there is a leak in the
structure. If u forfeit or someone else does.. there is a hole where u can join
otehr tournaments u already forfeited and that battle can overlap the current
one. This can cause big problems for example. I forfeited my first tourney
today.. i made it ot the final on my second tournament and my enemy was suppose
to be pacfist. However, somehow i played this guy naed xenophobe (dunno if he
was from another match or my old one), but i beat him and it counted as my final
match up! i didnt even play pacifist and it said i beat him. "

This happened to me a couple times with the forfeit. I didn't like my cards after a win, so I forfeit, then it showed 3 tourney games up for me.

Also defending is VERY much stronger then attacking. I never attack now, it's game over if I lose without getting a tower.

Tournaments back up, but you can't play undead...

Free tourneys are back running, but the undead faction is not playable. There was a past build where you could play undead.

Everything looks pretty smooth now.

Give it a try if you haven't played alot of tourneys.

Lich? How to use it?

So looking at the Lich the one thing that struck me funny is that I didn't notice the first time that the Lich has a 60 yard range...

This is pretty big for a card with an ability like this. You can definitely "microkite" this guy.

With two of them, and a bunch of snaring archers like these two below:

You can pretty much microkite much of the opposing army.

Poison Bolt - Fear - Plaque Shot - Fear you should have broken the opposing army morale.

Add in the Raider or Archer instead if you prefer.

Your AR on your troops is junk, as is your damage:

According to Lifeinfusion's DPS chart you best DPS bet is the Undead Archer.

http://files.filefront.com/currentsaga+cardsxls/;11518948;/fileinfo.html


However, I often like to control my troops in a pile at once. If you are like me, then you'd want to stack two Lichs and Three Death Bringers.

All have 9 Speed, and will move at the same rate.


This is a pretty good 5 unit army. I feel bad for anyone that has to fight 2 Lichs and 3 bringers.

With 100 Stamina and 5 snares you can kite for a LONG time. Especially in Tourneys.

Undead Full list

Ok we knew Abom would be amazing, but this is even better. 31 DR? 8 Speed, 29 AR? Chase card.

Undead Arbalister is kinda squishy. I was expecting a 80+ range, and we end up with 60...

Undead Archer is a 2CP unit. 23 AR 25 DR, kinda weak, but the snare makes up for everything. 65 yard range means this is actually usable. Undead has a serious range issue when 65 is the longest they can shoot. What no muscles on zombies?

Death bringer has a placeholder graphic, but overall its a massive card. 31 DR and 9 speed? Its a permasnare.

Diabolist is what I assumed it would be. A nuke like a fire elemental. 7 speed is good enough, but overall this unit is pretty much PvE.

Creeping Dread is the first spell of the five. 25 Godfavor snare, but only 25% snaring per card. With a stack of 4 cards we will see what it can do. Long duration, good for tourneys.

Earth Fire is spell #2. Damage over time, decent. Costly GF price.

Forsaken Dragon is a beast. 35 DR makes it impossible to hit with many archer units when buffed. These will rule the skys.

Horror is spell #3. Nice debuff, cheap and long duration.

Humongous is still the beast we thought it would be. 31DR is better than I expected, but 9 speed is pretty slow for a speedy unit. HP is low, if you can hit this, it will die. I really like the Aboms more.

Undead Knight has a 30 DR. This is massive for capping towers. 8 speed, but overall a solid unit.

Lich is like Humongous. If you get on him, he dies. Large radius fear though, 25 radius is very big.

Necro has a large radius heal too. I like how this will work. Hard to say if they can take a pounding. 24 base DR is low.

Pikeman are as squishy as human archers. I definitely like them for early tourneys though.

Raiders are a weird look at anti ranged. I hope they work out, but I can't tell from the stats.

Reapers were one of my early favs. I like 9 speed infantry, very useful for my playstyle. And 27 DR is enough to make them useable as a 2 CP unit.

Riders are great tourney cards. I will love using these.

Fell Trace is a stun. We love stuns for PvP. Funny to see the undead get one.

Visions is a castable Fear. Seems a little low, probably only dropping 70 morale. But combined with your Lich and warriors... Very combo intensive.

Bone Wagon is a chase card. Nothing but awesomeness here.

Finally we rap up with our third chase card. Wight is so awesome, its hard to find anything to complain about. 31 DR is massive on a flyer.

You can Play all 5 Nations at once...

"Explanation of new ticking system:
This new system has been implemented to allow you to PLAY ALL 5 OF YOUR NATIONS AT ONCE. (Yay!) In order to activate ticks for your nation though, you will have to actively do something with that nation in terms of battling.
Ways to get ticks:

• Do a Quest. Successful completion of a quest will give you 12 hours worth of ticks. If you lose a quest, the same equation which determines whether Gods are Satisfied in PvP is brought into play. If you legitmately tried and lost, you will get your 12 hours of ticks.
  
• Fight a PvP. If the Gods are Satisfied, you get 12 hours.
  
• Raid or be raided. You get 12 hours.
  
• Play a tournament. You get 12 hours per round. Basically, you get 12 hours of ticks per battling action. You can store up to a total of 7 days worth of ticks. If you are offline more than 3 days, you only get those 3 days worth of ticks all at once though. (An improvement on our current system where you only get 2 days worth.) " - Source the Patcher notes

I personally think this is hot. I was going to play my Undead army and retire my light, but now, I guess I will play all three.

Where's the Undead?

A guy at my work told me if "he" had a blog, his post today would be, "Where the F is the Undead?"

So, in honor of Ed, that's all I will post today.

Saga wants your card ideas for main armies

Saga wants CARD IDEAS again for when the undead army releases.

It looks like each normal army will get 4 troops. Help them fix the tournament scene by putting in more good pvp troops.

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=21544022054&topic=5906

They are taking feedback in this facebook dicussion thread.

Tournament Strategies - Rushing

I've played only about 40 tournament games so far, so I'm no expert.

However I have done 2 good games with Illian, and fought 38 other people.

Here are some tricks I would recommend keeping in mind doing tournaments.

1. People tend to get cocky when they draw expensive troops in their army. I fought a guy that had a treant/longbow, and rushed right at my keep in the beginning with 5 troops. I kited him through the center of my side of the board and spawned a heavy cav troop that I used to pretty much wipe his army.
2. YOU CAN'T LOSE THE OPENING BATTLE WITHOUT TAKING A SPAWN POINT. This is a big rule. If you rush the opponent you had better win the overall damage number or gain a watchtower to spawn reenforcements at. If you WIPE on your assault and you are down in terms of points, then you HAVE to assault again. You can't go defensive, the opponent can just wait for the clock to tick out.
3. Save your big cards until the first battle has begun. Rush with commons. If you are going to push, bring your commons. You will need those big cards later. Just be afraid of AE troops.

These troops are some of the BEST to use early:

PIKEMAN - Slaughters any cav that attack your troops
HEAVY INFANTRY - Kills annoying machines
HUMAN JAVELINEERS - Kills cav
HUMAN XBOWS - Long range makes opponent have to fight you
HUMAN ARCHERS - Kills the dragons that come to AE you.

If you rush, use as big a pack as you can, you need to be able to sit on your watchtower and cap it. Target opponent that can counter cap your watchtower first. Ignore the ranged. You may want to fient to one watchtower and send a light cav to another for a cap. Sending 4 infantry to a watchtower and 1 to another is a good strategy.

Once you TAKE the watchtower set your spawn point and GARRISON all your hurt troops and bring out your factional troops. The opponent will have been trying to kill your commons, and now have to deal with fresh factionals.

Now pound him with your factionals.

This is for you Ironforge!

Official Answer to all of Ironforge's emails arrive:

"Upon close inspection, the Espionage system is difficult to exploit in any practical fashion. Any given nation can only sustain a few successful espionage attempts in one day. After each successful espionage attempt, the chances of an ensuing success against that nation decrease by 15%. This means that the standard number of possible successful espionages that cause damage is 4 per day. University upgrades and the size of the nation’s Police force can cause the exact number to fluctuate. After a point, it becomes impossible to successfully espionage a nation for the remainder of that day. Also, as further attempts become increasingly difficult, opposing nations will likely fail several times before their attempt succeeds, costing more in resources than the damage they will inflict. Players can increase the likelihood of thwarting espionage attempts by purchasing university upgrades and increasing the number of peasants assigned to be Police in Peasant Management.

Similarly with raiding, once a player has been raided and their buildings damaged, it becomes less and less effective to raid them (because they have nothing to steal!). Also, as wilderness territories are an opt-in system, players should carefully consider the advantages and consequences of moving their territories to wilderness.

After long and careful thought, we have decided that the system works well in its current state – though changes will continue to be made, particularly with regards to world conflict. Claims of “excessive” raiding and espionage will no longer be entertained when they are conducted in the normal spirit of the game. (Given that this is a combat game, “normal” spirit certainly involves destroying one another’s armies, cities, etc.) We will continue to monitor abusive behavior, and act on specific instances of bullying, harassment and poor sportsmanship (including retaliation against game moderators)."

Let me translate into English:

Don't whine about getting attacked either through Espionage or Raids.

Sure wish they would leave the free tourneys in game...

Wouldn't it be nice if Silverlode would leave free tourneys in for awhile, or possibly offer them once a week? Paid tourneys M-Sa free on Sundays?

Tournaments fun continues

I got my first win. Besides alot of crashs I did pretty well.

Had a couple EPIC battle I wish I could have fraps.

Sadly I had to play while at work.

Crashing to Desktop on 2/3s of my PCs:

So since the last patch I've had a couple PCs I play on have an issue with launching Saga. It patches fine, but when the patcher hands off to the launcher, it dies.

Hopefully YOU don't have the same issue, but if you do, here is the post that helped me.

https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=39953#39953

I installed this, fixed everything.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/thankyou.aspx?familyId=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displayLang=en

Monday Tournaments 4PM EST

"TOURNAMENT TEST MONDAY •
11 August 2008
Tournaments will be turned on for further testing at 4PM EST or shortly after a mini patch scheduled for today to put in some additional tournament code. We expect the event to last 4 hours but may take it down early to fix any problems that arise."



More free tourneys.

Basic Tournament Strategies

After yesterdays test, it probably good to do a short article on how to WIN tournaments based on the new system.

Here are some of the strategies I liked for discussion:

1. 3 Offense 2 Defense: This is one of the best generic opening strategies. You send your 3 Maraders to take the opponents watchtower, and you have 2 troops on defense to stop them from taking one of yours.
2. 5 on Defense, run the clock out. This is a strategy used against me. It's VERY defensive, and personally I find it pretty boring to play against. Basically you run the clock out after beating back the assaulting force. The best way to beat this is to split your Offense into two forces. MAKE SURE you cap one of the watchtowers. After that you should be able to reenforce.
3. 4 on Offense, ignore your backcourt. This is a good opening strategy with a decent spell. Send 4 troops to assault their KEEP, burn the spell then disband it. When the opponent comes to take your towers use the last troop to countercap their caps. Illian used this well with using a battering ram to stop caps.

More Tournament Tests

"We are going to run another test on Monday or Tuesday, keep checking the news page for the announcement. This time the tournaments will be in trial mode. They will cost neither event tickets nor boosters to play, however no prizes will be given. Think of it as practice."

If you didn't get a chance to play, you should try it when it come up again. It's MASSIVE FUN.

Another Sample Tournament Video

Here is another look at the Tournament Beta this weekend. I think we are done after this, basically there were three tournaments.

Illian won the first and Kheldara the second.

Although with the server crashing, they disquald my second match. (I'm the horse).

Sample Tournament Video - Short

This shows the battle between me and Illian (he won) :)

Gives you an idea of the layout.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGTKe_as1rA - Direct Link

Tourneys up in 30min!

So I confirmed that so far it looks like Tourneys are still opening for free in 30 mins.

Jump on for free EVENT TICKETS. (You still have to buy packs to play).

Free Tournaments tommorrow!

https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7161

"To give players a sneak peek and help us find any remaining potential problems, we are going to upload the tournament code and run a limited public test tomorrow between the hours of Noon and 4PM EST.

During the public test, NO event tickets will be charged, however full prizes will still be awarded."

FREE Event Tickets.

Card Submissions - VOTE now!

So the Card Idea Post is up, ready for voting:

Please go here and vote, let your opinion count.





The big front runner is our friend the NEUTRAL FLYER. Yes that is a great idea.



Sadly for us Nature players my ICE ELEMENTAL is the only submission. WTH Illian, you too busy to send in some ideas? Comeon, Nature is great, but we need more troops!

If you are a Nature player, please kick in a vote for Icey if you don't mind. Troops that Stun in PVP help Nature.

Anyway, heres the post to link to: https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7143

Still no patch. Probably next week.

Tournament bugs still plaguing the new code I'm sure.

I will reemphazise this idea. You don't want to join a tournament and have it crash on you. Wasting $11 is no joke for players.

Give them time to keep working it.

I estimate from the Undead update that undead are probably about a month or so from being finished too, so something like September.

Undead Update

Undead Development update • (Source: Saga News)
7 August 2008


"So, here are a few detailed notes that have been gathered from the various departments:
- All 17 of the new Undead Units have been fully modeled, textured and added into the game.
- 16 of those units have been fully animated (the Forsaken Rider's attack animation is currently being worked on).
- All of the Undead buildings have been modeled, textured and added into the game.
- The building animations (for when the buildings are destroyed) are also being worked on.
- The Undead battle interface has been completed and added into the game.
- The Undead nation interface is 90% complete (one small window remains and will be finished today).
- The icons for the nation interface are done, as are the icons for the Undead units and Spells. Only the spell icons remain to be added into the game engine.
- The character portraits for the Undead have been completed and added into the game.
- The music for the Undead has been completed and added into the game (check out the SAGA Facebook page for a preview!)
- The sounds for the Undead units have been recorded, edited and mastered. They are being added into the game today.
- The programmers have finished adding and modifying the game's code to add the Undead as a full-featured faction. They're now working on tournaments, along with some other new features.
- Monk spent many hours of his recent vacation running battles with the Undead, adjusting their stats and balancing their abilities.
- Only 19 particle effects remain for the Undead's physical attacks, specials, and spells. The Art department has been working on those, and inform me that each particle effect takes about 3 to 6 hours to create, adjust, and add into the game.
- The card art for the Undead units has been completed. The cards won't be added to the website until launch.
- The card art for the Undead spells is waiting for the final approval of the spells' particle effects.
- The quest writers have finished with the Undead tutorials and territory quests, and are currently finalizing which quests the Undead will be able to undertake. (On a side note, we got three new quest writers last week, and they're working on some brand new quest lines unlike anything SAGA has seen before. More on that another day.)
- The quest map (here's a new item) is being expanded. The art director has been working on this over the last week, and is nearly finished with it (To explain, the art director, amazing man that he is, drew the quest map by hand. He brought the original quest map into the office the other day, and it was amazing how much detail went into it - It's about 4 feet tall and almost twice as wide).
Lastly, the testers will be resuming full time testing of the Undead as soon as tournaments are finished (which, if all goes well, should be today or tomorrow). During testing some of the stats, abilities, spells, animation effects, and various other items will continue to be fine-tuned for release.
So there you have it, the run-down of Undead development. "

More updates

Bugs in tournaments would be bad. If you have to pay 11$ for entry, then you lose due to a bug, you will be PISSED.

Give Silverlode time to fix bugs...

Update on Tournaments and the Patch

So stay tuned to main Saga Site for more info.

Personally I don't mind waiting. I'd rather see a good product/experience.

No patch yet...

So far patch hasn't hit, nor any notes.

However, they are moving the chat bar around in missions.

https://www.playsaga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7126

New Patch is Tommorrow

Patch tommorrow if all goes well.

Hopefully it contains alot of good stuff.

Warlords of the East as good loot as Mithril Mines?

So someone on the boards is stating Warlords of the East is running for him/her as good loot as Mithril Mines.

I figured I haven't covered this quest that much, so here is a video, and a loot screen.








Overall I would say that Warlords is EASIER, although with a boss mob at the end that has a high hit rating, it seems slower to me then a fast Mithril. It does drop less loot, overall, but with the number of mobs, it seem decent enough.

If Mithril is causing you pain farming, then Warlords is definitely a good quest.

It also is good for leveling your flyers.