Zafaria Test Realm Patched!

Recently, the Test Realm has been updated with a few new tweaks:

Transcription

Kevin:  Hey guys, Battleblood here.  So, there're some exciting updates in the game now, in Zafaria!  I'm actually on the Live Realm farming Nastrond -- I'll soon explain why we're farming here.  

First of all, there's been an update to the Henchmen.  You can actually fight with creatures of the Spiral...next to you.  So, you can literally have a Helephant -- well, not a Helephant, but one of the Black Cultists from Zafaria -- as a Level 70 Henchman.  They're supposed to be stronger, since they're more expensive.  I think they're 400 Crowns, but they're (supposedly) worth it.  They're worth buying -- I guess -- if you're in a rut, or if you're stuck somewhere.  They have higher Critical Rates...

At the same time, the creatures of the Spiral (in Zafaria) also have higher Critical Rates themselves.  Thus, your battles could be a lot longer than before.  I know their Health has spiked up along with their Critical Rates.  What that means is that there's a chance you might be spending much more time fighting than running around and questing, depending on how many teammates you have, and it might be harder to Block their Criticals.  You might have to shield more, or even use Conviction in your decks now, especially to ensure that you don't become stunned.  I remember from last night fighting Life mobs, and they've used Forest Lord on their first turn, and they actually saved up Pips to to another Forest Lord after that.  Because I was by myself, I had to work out some heals, get my own Vengeance up (so I can Critical better on them) and escape the battle faster to collect the Health wisps.  That's the good news: there's an abundant amount of Health wisps flying around.  Therefore, you might not struggle that much, but it's all about what you do in the battles now.

I don't know if the Bosses themselves have changed, but I'll do a Vlog on that when I get the chance.

As for now, Pet Feeding has also been tweaked a little bit!  But, before we get to that...

Some spells have been amp'ed up or nerfed:  there are the Sirens, which have been nerfed -- it went from 900-something damage to 800-something; Dr. Katzenstein's Monster has been renamed -- or, maybe it's always been that way (I haven't been paying attention) -- but it's called Dr. Von's Monster, and it does Life Steal still, but now it's buffed so that it adds a 25% Infection on the target; and, Chimera has about 30 damage added to each head, so it's an increase of 90 -- they didn't really add any other special effects (which is a little disappointing for some Balance wizards; I was kind of hoping that one of the heads might give a small DoT that does 90 damage to help remove shields from one Spiritual School).

The reason why I'm in Nastrond is because KingsIsle has expanded the window on what items can give Pet XP (PXP)!  To follow up on the last Vlog, where I said that it was based on regular or holiday Crowns items: now you can feed Auctionable items!  Last night, I went into the Bazaar, and bought a bunch of Level 0-1 Amulets (which gave Firecat), and started feeding my pet those.  It actually gained 1 XP here, and 1 XP there!  Most of the time, though, it received gold.

Now, that's not totally profitable if you're looking for an income of gold.  In the example above, I'm purchasing these Amulets for 38 gold each, but received only 2 gold back if my pet didn't gain XP.  My strategy is to collect as many Non-Auctionable items as possible, and feed that to my pets!  The cool part is that there is no difference between feeding your pet a No Auction item (and receiving gold for that) than selling it to a Shop Vendor (like the Seamstress, for example).  

So, what I'm doing here is collecting as many No Auction items as possible -- since it's from a high-level world, I'll have a chance of 4 XP per feed, if I get lucky.  Or, I can get the same gold I'd get if I sold it to a vendor, (plus some additional rewards like Reagents or Treasure Cards).

Plan to plant many Pink Dandelions, King Parsleys, Silver Trumpet Vines, or any of those plants that tend to give their own seeds at Mature or Elder.  I know that Silver Trumpet Vines sometimes like to give two of their own seeds at Elder; Prickley Bears also do this.  There's a small chance for Pet XP when you feed your pet these surplus seeds.

If your items are Auctionable, I would recommend selling to the Bazaar if you're short on gold, rather than feeding it to your pets.  If they're not Auctionable, you can feed those items on-the-go to make room for Auctionables!  If you'd like to see the results of the Pet Buffet Survey yourself, you can go to http://tinyurl.com/petnomefeedresults, or you can conveniently visit the Petnome Project and browse the links towards the top of the front page.  There will be a spreadsheet which has collected a bunch of data from numerous contributors, and if you scroll down towards the bottom, you'll pass the light-blue colored text (which represents the data accumulated before this Test Realm Patch) and come upon the current data in solid, black text.  It will help give an idea of which items are giving PXP!

Last, but not least, if you look at the Update Notes on the official site, they've scratched out the word "sometimes" and written in "occasionally" (in the Pet Feeding section).

I hope you've enjoyed this video; if you did, please Subscribe, Like, and/or Comment if you have some questions, and I hope to see you guys in the Spiral, and hope you've enjoyed your day!  Peace out!