So I'm back...

Logged in Saga yesterday on my two accounts.

I'm not going to say it was my first time back since I stopped writing this daily blog. I've been back before, but this is the first time I really felt like playing.

If you as a reader read back some of the history on tis blog, you will find that I bought a stack load of undead factional boosters before they released that army. Strangely now playing, I find that the undead have a lot of PVE promise now, similar to machine.

If you add the new rogue troops to the undead army, it really makes leveling fun. I leveled my undead army to 20 without a lot of the normal nonsense, I still have my 35 nature army, but undead seem better.

Anyhow, why am I writing again?

I never really stopped. I wrote a wow blog for awhile on Gameriot. I write a paintball blog here on blogspot. Sorry saga thoughts just didn't hold me after 120+ posts.

What do I want to do here?

Well, I think there's a lot of metagame still left to do in the PVE side of the game. As much as I thought pvp would be golden here, honestly saga is a great relaxing persistent pve daily game.

I plan, to write more about pve, maximizing and minimizing to setup the most rewarding pve process. Whether I'm successful, we will see, but hopefully I will at least entertain my number one reader - ed - who still subscribed to a dead blog for two years.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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