Espionage! Part 1 - Are Pirates or Ninjas Better?

So I espionage today until I ran out of time. I hit about 30 people with my 150 gold investment.

Who paid off?

All these guys gave me money and resources.

If you are looking to make a little bit of profit, and ALOT of drama, feel free to try the espionage lottery game:

Here is your list to start from:

http://www.playsaga.com/guilds.php

Start off copy and pasting random player name into the espionage steal screen.

You pay 150 gold for your spies, sometimes you get the money back sometimes not.

There is also a cap on the number of attempts you can do on a single player per day. I can usually get 2 off successfully then the rest are failures.

Your university espionage trains help as well.

The one thing to remember is there is an artifical cap on certain players because their nations might be semi AFK or inactive. If you see a failure:

This doesn't mean their police caught you, (unlikely as most people don't field police), but instead the nation might be inactive and protected by the mighty Monk.

Drama Incoming:

• If you DO care to do a bit of espionage, be aware of the return trip. I call it people getting "Froggy".
• The froggy response to an espionage is either return espionage or raids. I personally plan on keeping a list of froggy nations here on the blog, for return response. In fact responding to an espionage attempt is a great way to be profiled and identified for army size and depth.
• Obviously there will be people bigger and meaner. Or there is the fear of the zerg response. As long as it's fun, why not do it. My response the bigger meaner people is find other bigger meaner people to help fight. Or just to get bigger and meaner. It's a video game, lets have some fun.
• Espionage is a good way to make money and resources. For a measily 150 gold I have occasional doubled my money in resources.

• Stay tuned here at sagathoughts.blogspot.com to see what happens next, or as I espionage even more people to find out the frogs.
• Oh, and what is better a pirate or a ninja? Vikings count as pirates, so it seems like pirates are better...
  

Tourneyments

http://playsaga.blogspot.com/2008/07/testing-tournaments.html

So the developers seem like they are close to releasing tourneyments. Which is very needed for end-game players.

Also as a meta-gamer, we can hopefully see alot of the PvP bugs get fixed quickly when the tourneyments become part of the scene. Considering my gates are STILL bugged, we'll see. :)

Life Infusion's Blog - Top 5 content writers:

So I love reading content in Saga. There are so many thing I don't yet know, so like people that write stuff for me to read:

1. Life Infusion. He wrote about 6 blogs today, all about one paragraph in length. http://community.teamcovenant.com/?q=blog/8 - Life Infusion is pretty funny, I interviewed him the other day, without realizing he was stuck at Nation level 25. I figured from as much as he wrote that he MUST have been 35 for months. Nope, he admittedly hates to grind. Anyway, please read his stuff, it's all good, both on the new teamcov site, and on the forums.
2. Illian. This guy is extremely knowledgeable, and seems to post all good information. He happens to be the best video maker, (or only video maker), in saga, so we all look forward to his new films. If you want to know whats going on, listen to Illian.
3. Kheldara. Best Raid info I ever found here: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/06/kheldara-interview-raiding-and.html
4. TwonsterMonster. New fresh market content is good: http://sagathoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/new-market-guide.html
5. Sauron. This guy is impossible to track down for an interview online. He ignores every message I send him. However with that all said and done, he does spam post as his "NightmareLord" forum poster. After Illian, he is one of the most talkative forum posters, although often he is quick to attack Saga, which as a player, I feel is counterintuitive.
6. Monk. He doesn't count in my list because his job is Saga, but his content is excellent. Of course he knows a little more about the game after all. http://monkscorner.wordpress.com/

In summary, I do enjoy other's writings, if you want me to list your writing over here at sagathoughts let me know, I will happily link your RSS.

New Market Guide

TwonsterMonster wrote a new guide that hit the www.sagaunit.com site today.

http://www.sagaunits.com/sagaguide/resources/SagaUnitsMarketGuide.doc

I wanted to cross-post it because it was a very good guide, yet I still had some comments on it:

1. Firstly, gathering gold for high level players is pretty easy. I can easily gather up 20k gold anytime I like in about 20mins max. And I'm only 31, so I'm sure I can even find easier ways later on.
2. Because a high level player can gather gold and mats, they can easily buy the cards from the newbies's boosters. However, the newbies (that NEED the cards) can't trade for what they need because the high level players all scoop it up. This seems a silly system.
3. I have many troops. And now that I am high level, I can easily trade for even MORE troops. ?? This seems backwards.
4. The market is plain PAINFUL for finding units you like. I think I'd rather listen to trade channel, then deal with the market. And I have more success in the trade channel.
5. The problem with the market is that the only troops you can get good deal on is the common troops that you can buy from the NPC vendor.
6. All the uncommons are priced cheaper on card sites.
7. For example you buy a common heavy cav for 2000 gold. This means in 20 mins I can farm gold for 10 cav. 10 cav cost about 5$ on the card sites. Buying from the NPC is cheaper. I happily trade 20,000 gold for almost a unit of heavy cav.
8. Buying a Treant costs 5$ on a the card sites. On the market the Treant is usually traded for 2 dark raven riders or 2 other 6 CP flyers. They sell for 4$/card on the card sites. And considering the booster pack rate is about 1 in 20 packs, boosters won't get the tradebait anyway.

Illian put it best, "Unless buying undead faction packs, boosters aren't worth buying. I buy all my singles online."

Yeah me too.

Wards and Farming for Treasure from ex-broken heroics

So my 31 Nation army has alot of troops that use Elemental Wards for Armor.

Treants, Elementals, Cherbus, Dragons, etc.

Many of these troops are good in PvP, so one of the best thing you can do for your PvP troops is to get them great items.



THE best place to get Wards for your troops is the crazy spawn at Twelve Trials part 2.



This quest basically spawns hellish numbers of dragons, every one you kill, you get 2 more. With mostly level 10 troops you will live a very short time. With a friend and level 10 troops you MAY be able to kill 12 or so of the dragons before wiping, but good luck.




The ITEM you are farming for is a Ward of Dragon Might. If you get this item consider yourself successful with the mission. This has about a 1 in 10 chance of dropping, so you will have to try multiple times. (This USED to be bugged and it dropped every time, but it's been fixed for two weeks. I wasn't 30 when it was bugged, I am taking this out of conversations.)

This is what the mission looks like when started.

Notice one of the dragons is a different color then the rest of them? Wow, what does that mean??

You will get ALOT of the boobie-prizes for this. They are nice, but not as good as Dragon Might.

Good Luck Farming!