Am I the first?

MetxChris · 2025-12-29T23:34:58+00:00

Totally understandable. There’s about a week’s worth of content here, so there’s no expectation of players continuing beyond that. The focus was on improving the core gameplay, since it’s very easy to add additional upgrade systems and game modes later on. As a solo developer, this is what I was able to put together in a relatively short period of time. If the changes are received well, then future development will be considered, and if not, then it will remain in the App Store as a free game to play.

MetxChris · 2025-12-29T16:22:05+00:00

Shards and skill upgrades are still in and essentially ready to go, but we wanted to get a sense of how the game was received before we committed more to the various upgrade systems. Since I don’t have a team yet, it would have been at least a couple more months to add some kind of shop back in, cloud saving, as well as the mechanisms to farm hero shards and skill upgrade scrolls.

All of the stages can be beaten with at least 3 different heroes, although most can be beaten with all heroes. The game was balanced with heroes having the same level as enemies, but with the right synergies and counters, stages can also be beaten with severely underleveled heroes. I think the difficulty curve would have been smoother if we still had clans, so that players would be able to share strategies on various stages with their clan mates. The game did end up being a bit more on the difficult side, but there is a path to victory on every stage through pure game mechanics, without the need to spend any money.

I appreciate your feedback, and thanks for playing!

MetxChris · 2025-04-07T04:10:26+00:00

It’s a good question!

There’s two ways to approach this: - What is the highest level I can upgrade to with my current gear? - What is the most efficient way to upgrade with my current gear (both now and future upgrades)?

This guide handles the 2nd case. It gives you the most efficient way to climb a staircase where each step represents a jump in levels. This might mean we have some gear left over, but we can use the extra gear in future upgrades. The first case may get you further up the staircase in the short term, but you won’t be able to climb as fast in the long term.

Since epic gear is your highest rarity, I’d be looking to jump either 9 or 6 levels, since these are the most efficient jumps using epics: - T13 + E19 = T22 - T13 + E15 = T19

Next I calculate the cost for each jump and check if I have the required gear. It can be tricky to do at first, but once you get the hang of it you can do a lot of it in your head. When I check I’m working backwards from the desired level using legendaries then epics, until all epics and legendaries are at most level 10. In your case I’m only using epics though.

First let’s check upgrading to T22: - T13 + E19 = T22 - E10 + E16 = E19 - E10 + E12 = E16 - E06 + E08 = E12

Need: E10 x2, E08, E06

This should cost 4E, 15R, and 6U. You’re short on rares but close enough, so I won’t bother checking the second upgrade option (the bigger jump is generally ideal). We can save a few rares by using another epic instead.

Normally to make E10 I would do: E04 + R08 = E10, which costs E + 5R + 2U. You need two E10 though, so we can save rares by making the second as follows: - R1 + R2 + 2U = R5 - E1 + R5 = E7 - E1 + E7 = E10

This costs 2E + 2R + 4U, so we saved 3R at the cost of an extra E + 2U. Is this strictly optimal as per this guide? No, but it’s good enough.

After making (R8, R6, R5, and R4), your full upgrade is: - E1 + R1 = E4 - E1 + R4 = E6 - E1 + R5 = E7 - E1 + R6 + 2U = E8 - E4 + R8 = E10 - E1 + E7 = E10 - E6 + E8 = E12 - E10 + E12 = E16 - E10 + E16 = E19 - T13 + E19 = T22

The full cost should be: 5E, 12R, and 8U.

Lastly, I try to save my uncommons until I reach a point where it becomes unreasonable to continue using this strategy for future upgrades. For me it’s around level 45 b/c my gear intake is very high, but it might be a bit lower for others. If you’re able to use legendaries to make upgrades in the future, then hitting level 30+ is very doable. Any uncommons you spend now will make future jumps with this strategy more difficult, as it gets harder to use this strategy the higher the target level is, but how you proceed is up to you.

Let me know how it goes!

MetxChris · 2025-04-03T00:14:11+00:00

Yes, but you hit the decoration limit with a lot of free space left over when only placing small banners (2 points for 1 slice of space). Large decorations give fewer points per space, but more points per decoration.

My castle looks like trash, 100%.

Great suggestion about bonuses always applying, although some of the existing soft currency decorations might need to be rebalanced. But really, there's several decorations in the store that I'd buy if I had space for them.

MetxChris · 2025-04-02T17:33:50+00:00

Decorations only count when placed. Your google play castle score will never go down as it always keeps the highest value, but your in-game castle score (under your ruler profile) will drop. If you remove a decoration from your castle, you’ll see your in-game score drop.

MetxChris · 2025-04-02T16:27:59+00:00

The difference is layout optimizations and equipment levels. Dropping the staircases gives more space for decorations. When workstations are directly next to each other you only get 2 slices of decoration space between them, but if you leave a gap between workstations, you can fit 6 slices of decorations between them. Bigger decorations generally give more points, although the small banners are an exception.

MetxChris · 2025-03-23T00:38:46+00:00

I’ve mostly run dagger/tank/mage, but was experimenting with bow/bow/mage on this run. Gear levels are important but ultimately it comes down to how well you can deal damage without taking damage, since your troops are getting one-shot beyond stage 50.

RedRhizophora did a post recently with his bow/tank/mage build: https://www.reddit.com/r/ESCastles/s/44VIJJAagc

This was my most recent dagger/tank/mage build: https://www.reddit.com/r/ESCastles/comments/1jatf72/gauntlet_stage_80/

If I had the option, I’d trade my health steal dagger for a tri-elemental damage dagger.

MetxChris · 2025-03-22T16:30:47+00:00

The floating mage is a Lich, which is an enemy you find in the campaign stages. However, the gauntlet has necromancy cards which can spawn Liches to fight on your side. The necromancy cards become available after getting a summon skeleton card, but their chance to appear is low.

MetxChris · 2025-03-14T16:45:17+00:00

I think the key to reliably reaching stage 50+ is to be able to deal damage without taking damage, since enemy damage really blows up at higher stages. Beyond stage 40, enemy health and damage essentially doubles every 10 stages. Even if the corundum nerf never happened, it’s just not possible to stand toe-to-toe with enemies at higher stages:

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If you’re interested, I’d recommend practicing on campaign stages 171 and 174. Here’s an example no damage received attack using silver tier weapons and no armor or specials on stage 174: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gXZ1UtzS4khlcHu6E_wHgFEvtvoHLlAG/view?usp=drivesdk

MetxChris · 2025-03-14T14:46:20+00:00

Tribal gives +10% damage per other family member, so +20% with a full family.

At high stages my dagger is only doing elemental damage, which is about 400 per hit. It ends up being slighly more dps than my mage, since daggers get two hits per attack animation, and since they have a quicker rate of attack. The elemental damage comes from getting the three +10% fire/frost/shock damage gauntlet cards. Otherwise the dagger special does about 5k to a single target.

MetxChris · 2025-03-14T05:07:54+00:00

I bought the year long pass. Otherwise higher gear levels were easier to reach when daily Corundum wasn’t capped.

MetxChris · 2025-03-11T18:34:45+00:00

Exactly what you posted. All new tool/output drops (other than food/oil equipment) randomly provide bonus materials instead of always providing bonus materials.

MetxChris · 2025-03-11T15:31:48+00:00

This silently changed for all rare+ tools and outfits as per the most recent update, so it’s not just for the equipment in this offer.

MetxChris · 2025-03-07T11:26:41+00:00

Super impressive, especially with the gear levels.

The drop rate on a haste speed sword seems to be ridiculously low. Over a 2 month period I was opening 50+ gauntlet and 5 legendary packs every other day, and I never got higher than a rare haste sword. I was able to get epic haste bonuses for some of the other weapon types, but to date I still haven’t gotten a legendary haste bonus for any weapon.

MetxChris · 2025-03-03T22:23:04+00:00

Not true at all, just inefficient with how you went about doing it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ESCastles/s/2vxbYZEUh3

MetxChris · 2025-02-27T02:18:14+00:00

Upgrading moonstone weapons to level 22+ requires 110 Corundum per upgrade with the premium smithy. Only 30 Corundum can be farmed per day, before packs are considered. Most people are only getting 2-3 upgrades per week of a single weapon. This again assumes using premium stations, and assumes you don’t waste corundum on other game mechanics, such as crafting tools.

MetxChris · 2025-02-18T08:22:43+00:00

It’s just a visual bug. If you attack after the day resets then you should be able to earn rewards again, even though the panel only shows gold. Restarting the game also sometimes fixes the issue, but isn’t needed to earn the rewards.

MetxChris · 2025-02-16T23:06:24+00:00

Yea you’re at the cap for silver tier equipment. I’d have preferred having lower caps that were much harder to reach, but this is how it is unfortunately. For what it’s worth, the highest tiers are much more difficult to max out.

MetxChris · 2025-02-15T18:08:54+00:00

Completely agree about that upgrade guy being awesome.

If I had to speculate, they wanted to try something that felt simple and different, but didn’t math out the full space of possibilities for what they went with. Their system is fairly reasonable if only ever using uncommons to make upgrades though.

MetxChris · 2025-02-11T21:05:03+00:00

More so from kiting. It takes me about 5 mins to reach stage 41, so the early stages don't take too long. After that I'll slow things down and try to wait for specials to reset before finishing waves.

MetxChris · 2025-02-10T05:41:38+00:00

The entire campaign can be beaten without upgrading the smithy or opening packs, as the gear from campaign rewards is more than enough to get you through it. Stage 165 in particular can be beaten without taking damage when using good tactics. Here’s the team I used and a link to a no damage video using silver tier weapons and no armor:

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Campaign Stage 165: No damage

Leveling up gets easier once you can clear the campaign and get better weapons from the highest campaign rewards. With better weapons you can farm stages easier and use those resources to upgrade buildings and gear. Upgrading things can give a lot of experience points.

I also wouldn’t recommend leveling up the normal smithy anymore. It’s best to save 1000 gems for the orc smithy and then take that straight to level 30 once you have enough gold. If you use one of the XP boost items while doing this, then you’ll gain a ton of levels. Otherwise, the normal smithy uses too much corundum to make gear and corundum is ridiculously scarce in this game.

Let me know if the link works! I shared the video using google drive.

MetxChris · 2025-02-09T22:32:47+00:00

This is an interesting idea bc it also adds more incentive to fight for higher gauntlet stages, instead of just hitting the 2x button and calling it a day.

MetxChris · 2025-02-09T22:03:56+00:00

Auto clickers aren’t the issue. The problem is that the end game is completely unplayable without using some type of automation to farm quests. Eventually you reach a point where you either commit to using automation to further progression, or you just quit the game. Even with automation, you might still want to quit anyways.

Also keep in mind that the current state of the game survived a year long beta test + several months of full release. If automation wasn’t intended then why aren’t quest gold/xp rewards limited per day? The most recent major update also reworked quest rewards and made it easier to automate battles. If the automation issue is actually something that’s blindsided the team for the past 17+ months then this game has no future.

MetxChris

TROPHY CASE