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Behind the Scenes: The Spire of Eternity

Marindor

Well-Known Member

Behind the Scenes: The Spire of Eternity



Dear Humans and Elves,

We are very happy to be able to share some early news about a brand new, upcoming feature with you: the Spire of Eternity!

This new feature will be coming to Beta soon, but we'd already like to provide you with a sneak preview today. Check out the video below, where several members of Elvenar's development team give their exclusive insights into the development of the new feature they've been working on for the last months!


Keep your eyes open, because we will share more news very soon!

What do you think the feature will be like? Are you looking forward to it as much as we are? Let us know by posting in the discussion thread. We are very much looking forward to your feedback!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

The Spire of Eternity


Dear Humans and Elves,

We hope you liked the video we posted last week (see above, if you haven't seen it yet!). Today we bring good news: you can play the Spire of Eternity on Beta now!

Disclaimer: Please be aware that the version of the Spire of Eternity that we have released on Beta now is not yet the final one, and is not yet complete. We wanted to make the feature available on Beta as soon as possible, while it is still being actively developed, so that we are able to get early feedback from you, our community. This will also allow us to react quickly to your feedback.

As promised, we will give you some more information about this brand new feature, in which you explore a total of three levels of the Spire of Eternity. You will play a character discovering the Spire, heading for its top. On the way, you will find your way impeded by spirits guarding the way, but also chests filled to the brim with treasure.

It is up to you to unblock the way by challenging the spirits in a fight. And for the first time in Elvenar, some of these battles will require you to navigate up to three waves of different enemies. You will need to select your units before the waves begin, and you will not be able to select new units in-between, so choose wisely! We will of course make it possible to see all the different enemies you're up against, per wave, to help you pick the best selection of combatants to lead your team to victory!

spire_unit_selection_mobile.png


The spoils
The Spire of Eternity will come with many treasure chests filled with loot and rewards for you to explore and discover. The possible rewards include many things that you already know, such as Instants that'll help you get some extra Coins and Supplies, but also Diamonds, Magic Residences and Magic Workshops you can place in your city, Spell Fragments and Combining Catalysts to use in Crafting, Boosters, and much, much more!

To top that off, there will be lots more loot, including some unique rewards that have never before been seen in Elvenar! We won't share all the details just yet (go find out!), but there'll be new buildings and a unique building set that is only available through the Spire of Eternity.

And we're not done yet!

spire_reward_chest_wide.png

Lots more still to come!
It is important to know that the current implementation of the Spire is only a first playable version, and we'll still be adding more features to the Spire of Eternity itself.

For example, we want to make it possible to convince the spirits to move out of the way by offering them resources. Being ghosts, communication can be a little tricky, though, so you will have to find out what it is that they want to receive by trial and error in this game of Diplomacy. Luckily, they will be able to inform you if they accept your gift, or if other spirits are interested in their stead. This will help you determine what to give to each of them.


spire_diplomacy.png

Currently, battles can only be fought using the auto-battle feature, but we're tweaking the regular, manual battle in which you can control your own units slightly for the Spire, and as soon as that's done, you'll be able to use that in addition to the automatic battle system.

In its first version, the Spire will be a single player feature. But once everything for that is working as well as we want, we plan to give it multiplayer elements too, so that you can experience the discovery and rewards the Spire provides together with your friends!


Check it out NOW!
The Spire of Eternity is available on Beta now for anyone with a Beta account that has at least reached Chapter 3. The first round will last until Friday 7 June 11 AM (CEST). This is a bit shorter than the intended runtime of the Spire, but for the very first round we would like to make sure that it starts and ends at a time where our development staff is available in the office, so that we're available to monitor the situation and fix technical issues, should there be any. If all goes well, we will start a second round shortly after the first one ended. We plan to have the Spire of Eternity available in regular intervals (similar to the Tournaments), but that will not yet be the case for the first test rounds on Beta, as long as we want to test it as much as possible.

The Spire of Eternity is also developed for our Mobile apps, but it is not currently available yet. We aim to have it playable once version 1.81 is in the Stores for all players. This means we will activate the Spire as soon as we can, most likely some days after the full release of version 1.81.


And that's all that we can share about the Spire of Eternity for now. Check it out on our Beta servers now if you want to have a look for yourself. We're also happy to discuss the feature on our forums, so please head over to the discussion thread, and let us know what you think!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

The Spire of Eternity



Dear Humans and Elves,

The first run of the Spire of Eternity ended today at 11:00 CEST but we won't leave you hanging for long. The next Spire of Eternity will start at 12:00 CEST today. It will now run for 5 days and 6 hours, which is the intended complete duration that we plan to keep long-term.
Still, this is not the final schedule, as we want to allow you to continue playing and giving feedback directly while closely monitoring the technical side of things during office hours.

What has changed compare to the start of the first Spire run?

Bug fixes
We fixed a lot of bugs thanks to your reports, including but not limited to the following:
  • Spire opening accidently when moving through the city or collecting productions.
  • Magical Buildings caused problems and have been removed from the rewards list for the time being. Dwarven Armorers offer a temporary replacement while we work on resolving the technical difficulties.
  • Issues with wrongly displayed quad size.
  • Errors after finishing last Spire encounter on map 3.
  • Spire not accessible after visiting neighbors.
  • Rewards missing in some chest tooltips.
Spire image on city map
Some of you reported that the image on the city map background looks blurry, doesn't pop out enough from the background and doesn't live up to the level of detail you are used to from Elvenar.
We started improving on this with a new graphical asset but are still thinking about further solutions to make it look more like an interactive element instead of a background decoration.

Balancing adjustments
Right now, the Spire can feel quite difficult, especially for non-fighters. We believe that adding the manual battle and Diplomacy, which are in our development focus right now, will reduce this feeling significantly. Nonetheless, we already made a few adjustments to the balancing that will help you with your first adventures in the Spire of Eternity, even before all other features are added:
  • We reduced the difficulty of the first four encounters (reduced number of enemies)
  • Adjustments in enemy star levels. These will now only increase a Chapter after you unlocked the respective counterpart, which leads to reduced difficulty for Chapter 4 and 7 players.
We continue looking at your feedback, as well as the analytical data we are collecting to see where else to improve, but believe that bringing the manual battle and Diplomacy will bring the most value and will allow you to test the overall difficulty of the whole feature a lot better.

More changes to come
We are working hard on bringing new features, improvements and bugfixes on a daily basis and are looking forward to more feedback and ideas on how to improve the Spire further. So please do keep your posts coming in our dedicated discussion thread!
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

Spire of Eternity


Dear Humans and Elves,

This is a short update to the state of the Spire of Eternity to inform you that we have activated the Manual Battle in the Spire of Eternity. You will be able to choose between either using the Manual Battle, where you can decide the next moves of your troops, and the already available Auto Battle, in which the game's AI will fight on your behalf.

Head over to the Spire of Eternity now, and see if you are able to beat those fights a bit more easily now, especially in the later encounters and the wave battles that you told us were difficult to complete with Auto Battle! :)

And as before, please let us know your feedback by posting in the discussion thread, and reports any bugs you find in the Report a Bug section of the forums.

Thanks to everyone who has played the Spire so far, to everyone who gave their feedback, and for all the bug reports!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

Spire of Eternity


Dear Humans and Elves,

First of all, thanks to all of you have helped us test the brand-new Spire of Eternity on Beta! Over the last weeks we've received lots of feedback, as well as bug reports, and we've been steadily going through all that to improve the Spire further. Simultaneously, we have been working on implementing new features. We have already released the option to choose for Manual Battle for the Spire encounters to the Beta community, which made fighting a little easier - especially for our less-experienced fighters. And now, we are ready with the first implementation of the Diplomacy minigame that you can use to use resources to solve encounters, which should negate most of the battle difficulties for those who do not wish to fight their way through the Spire.

Today we want to give you some more insights in what that will look like!

The Diplomacy minigame
We had already briefly showed you an early version of Diplomacy in one of the posts above, but let us dive into it a bit more now!

You start Diplomacy by clicking Convince in the encounter window. From there, you will be lead to the minigame, where you will face 5 Lost Souls who each want a resource. Being ghosts, they will have trouble communicating with you, but they do have means to let you know if they like the resource you offer them, whether one of the other ghosts needs it, or if none of them needs it after all. It is up to you to use your 3 turns to find out who needs what.

spire_1.png

Disclaimer: the exact costs of course depend on your own progress.


In your first turn, you will have to guess to see which ghosts needs what. After you've selected a resource to offer for each of the ghosts, you click the 'Offer' button that will reveal what each of the ghosts think of your offering. This will look like the image below.

spire_2.png

As you can see, none of the ghosts actually wanted Coins in this case. Now you know for the second turn - let's try again!

spire_3.png

And we got lucky, and got the right resources for the right ghost already in the second turn.

Now that all the Lost Souls have the resources they needed, your attempt at Diplomacy has been successful! The ghost guarding the chest will allow you to take the reward, which will also make it possible to progress to the next chest, where we can again choose to either fight the ghosts, or attempt a more diplomatic approach. Up to you!

spire_4.png

Diplomacy is available in the Spire of Eternity on Beta now! We're eager to hear your thoughts on this new feature, so please let us know your feedback in the discussion thread!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member
Dear Humans and Elves,

With our daily update today, we have decreased the overall squad size in the Spire of Eternity by roughly 20%.

All encounters have less squads participating in battle, both on enemy and on player side. This means that you will need less units while the overall strategical challenge in the battle remains the same.

Please let us know what you think about these changes in our feedback thread.

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Mystery Chests in the Spire of Eternity


Dear Humans and Elves,

Today, we activated a new feature within the Spire of Eternity: Mystery Chests.

Mystery Chests have a chance to appear when you complete encounters in the Spire of Eternity, and offer great rewards for those who find them. The place where a Mystery Chest spawns is random, and can be anywhere on the level of the Spire you are currently on. The further you progress, the easier it will be for you to open a Mystery Chest right away. Should it spawn behind a Gate, you will need to unlock the Gate before you can collect the mysteries that await. But worry not, the Mystery Chests do not ex-spire unless the event ends before you collect their loot.

mysterychests.png

The Mystery Chests come in three tiers, Rare, Epic, and Legendary, each with their own set of potential rewards. These rewards include Set Buildings to build your own Moonstone Library Set which you can only obtain through playing the Spire of Eternity, buildings unique to the Spire such as the Dwarven Armorer, the Trading Station, and the Genie, and various types of Enchantments and other Spells in different rarity tiers as well.

Those who set out to climb the stairs of the Spire of Eternity and discover the mysteries that lie within shall henceforth be rewarded for their efforts with these special Mystery Chests!

One note for Mobile players: The Mystery chests will be available fully from Mobile version 1.85 onwards. With version 1.84, you will still see some parts of the Chests (e.g. a pop-up telling you to collect any Mystery Chests before going to the next level of the Spire), but you won't be able to do in the app yet. However, you can collect the Mystery Chests via the browser version in such a case.

We hope you like these changes, and as always are very happy to hear your feedback. Please let us know what you think by leaving a post in the discussion thread!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member
Dear Humans and Elves,

We have made some balancing changes to the Spire of Eternity:
  • Diplomacy costs for Tier 1-3 Basic Goods, Tier 1-3 Sentient Goods and Divine Seeds were lowered by 20-50%.
  • Some Coin Rains and Supply Windfalls were replaced with Time Boosters.
  • Tier 3 Goods are now requested in Diplomacy from Chapter 5 onwards instead of Chapter 4.

Please let us know what you think about it in our Feedback Thread :)

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Teleport Building Spell


Dear Humans and Elves,

Today we have updated the rewards available from the Spire of Eternity on Beta! It is now possible to receive a Teleport Building Spell, which can be used to teleport a building into the inventory. This Spell works on many buildings, with some exceptions, such as limited Settlement buildings, Main Hall, Trader, Ancient Wonders, and some more.
spell_teleport_1.png

The Teleport Spell is exclusively available via the Spire of Eternity, and can be found in some Encounters in the Spire, including some early ones, Boss Encounters, and it is a potential reward in Mystery Chests. The Teleport Building Spell replaces some other rewards from these Chests.

encounter_reward.png

From the Inventory, you can either place them back into your city, or you can disenchant the building for Spell Fragments to use in Crafting.

We're very curious to hear your feedback. Please let us know your thoughts by posting in the discussion thread!

Kind regards
Your Elvenar Team
 
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Marindor

Well-Known Member

Multiplayer in the Spire of Eternity


Dear Humans and Elves,

The Spire of Eternity is getting a brand new, multiplayer feature! Together with your Fellowship, you will now be able to collect points by completing Encounters in the Spire of Eternity to unlock additional rewards. Points earned by individual Fellowship members are added to a Fellowship score, and unlock many different rewards that will be granted to everyone in the Fellowship, providing that each member reached the milestones needed to become eligible for additional rewards. Curious how it all works? Then read on for more details!

Progress in the Spire of Eternity, together with your Fellowship
Gather your Fellows and complete Encounters in the Spire of Eternity together to make progress towards additional rewards. These rewards depend on personal and Fellowship progression and are granted after the Spire of Eternity ends on Fridays. Fellowship reward chests contain everything from Boosters, Combining Catalysts, and Portal Profits, all the way to Teleport Building Spells and Diamonds! The Fellowship Points that you gain when playing the Spire of Eternity are what's required to unlock the chests.

SpireMP01.png

Participate to unlock rewards
It's important to note that, in order to receive the Fellowship rewards, you will need to participate in the Spire of Eternity. Fellows of a Fellowship, together, unlock rewards, but every individual player must also complete Encounters in the Spire of Eternity to make themselves eligible to gain the rewards the Fellowship has unlocked. To help you see how much progress you and your Fellowship are making, we have created a new overview that will be available as a side-panel while you're in the Spire. You can find it via the new button in the top-left of the screen while you're within the Spire of Eternity.

SpireMP02.png

Expanding this (click the green arrow), will make the full progress bar appear:

SpireMP03.png

On the progress bar, you can see your own progress (shown in the center of the progress bar), the Fellowship's overall progress (the purple bar), the rewards that your Fellowship has unlocked (on the right side of the bar), and the individual progress of each of your Fellows (on the left side of the bar). Some example scenarios could be:
  • Your Fellowship has earned enough points to unlock two reward chests and your own progression is going towards unlocking a third chest (this is the situation displayed in the screenshot above). In this scenario, you will receive the rewards from the two chests the Fellowship has unlocked at the end of the Spire of Eternity (on Fridays).
  • Your Fellowship's progress is ahead of your own. To obtain all rewards the Fellowship has unlocked, you'll need to complete further Encounters in the Spire of Eternity to also become eligible for the rewards your Fellowship has unlocked.
  • You have earned enough points to unlock many rewards, but your Fellowship's total progress is not yet enough to unlock them all. In this case, we'd recommend you encourage your Fellowship's members to also complete some more Encounters in the Spire of Eternity, so that the Fellowship as a whole also unlocks these rewards and those eligible receive them at the end of the Spire.
I'm not in a Fellowship, can I still play the Spire of Eternity?
Yes, you can. If you are not part of a Fellowship, the Spire of Eternity is available as before. But, you cannot get the Fellowship rewards of the Spire if you are not also part of a Fellowship. While it is possible to make progress towards these rewards and unlock some of them if you are the only person in a Fellowship playing the Spire of Eternity, you will need multiple people to unlock all potential rewards.

Rewards redistribution and rebalancing
With the regular Beta update on Monday 25 November, we will make some changes to the rewards distribution in the Spire of Eternity.
  • Slightly lowered the chances of obtaining the Mana Plant, Endless Scroll, and Gum Tree set buildings.
  • Increased the chances of obtaining Diamonds from several Guard Encounters, and adjusted the amounts per drop to reflect these changes.
  • Increased the amounts of Diamonds that can be received from Boss Encounters.
  • Moved a reward of 4 Combining Catalyst reward from the third Guard Encounter to the Multiplayer rewards. A reward of 2000 Spell Fragments takes its place.
  • Moved some Teleport Building rewards to the Multiplayer rewards and replaced them with Portal Profit 10%. This affects two Boss Encounters.
    Note: The Teleport Building Spells that can be received from the 4th Encounter, and those that can be obtained from Mystery Chests are still there, unchanged.

Disclaimer: remember, this is Beta!
On Beta, we are launching the Multiplayer features for the Spire of Eternity in a state that is not yet 100% complete. We do this so that we can get your feedback as early as possible in the development process, and we highly encourage you to share your feedback in the discussion thread, and to report any bugs you may find in the bug reporting section of the forum. We recommend updating to app version 1.93 as soon as it becomes available, as this version will have several bug fixes for bugs that we have already found.

Any parts of the feature are subject to change, and may be different once released to the full Elvenar community across the world.


We hope that you enjoy the new feature, and the additional rewards that you can now get from the Spire of Eternity. Please let us know your feedback by posting in the discussion thread!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

Trophies in the Spire of Eternity



Dear Humans and Elves,

Grab your Fellowship and earn Trophies in the Spire of Eternity! From now on, Fellowship profiles will show 3 different types of Trophies: Gold, Silver and Bronze. Your Fellowship will receive the highest Trophy that it has unlocked each week after the Spire of Eternity closes its gates. These Trophies remain in the Fellowship profile permanently so that you can easily show everyone how well your Fellowship performed in the Spire of Eternity in the past! You'll need the following amounts of points for each of the trophies:
  • Gold Trophy - Fellowship gathered 1330 or more Spirit Essence
  • Silver Trophy - Fellowship gathered 520 or more Spirit Essence
  • Bronze Trophy - Fellowship gathered 110 or more Spirit Essence
We wish you a lot of competitive fun in acquiring the Trophies and are of course looking forward to hearing what you think about this new addition in our Feedback Thread!

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member

Spire of Eternity: balancing changes


Dear Humans and Elves,

On Monday, 16 March, we will make several changes to the balancing of the Spire of Eternity. With these changes, we make working your way up the Spire of Eternity more focused on the gameplay of the Spire of Eternity, and less time-critical. They also emphasize the multiplayer aspects of the Spire, as we would like for people to enjoy the feature together, using teamwork, and for that to work we need to ensure that this is also possible. However, shorter timers on the Gates also means that we need to adjust some of the rewards, specifically the Diamonds, that can be obtained through the Spire. Still, the amount of obtainable Diamonds has slightly increased with these changes, but they have been redistributed over the various rewards. Below you'll find more details on the changes we're making.
  • The timers on the Gates will be made shorter, so that time pressure will become less of an issue while moving through the Spire's levels.
    • Gate 1: Remains at 10 seconds
    • Gate 2: Remains at 3 hours
    • Gate 3: 7 hours (was 9)
    • Gate 4: 9 hours (was 12)
    • Gate 5: 7 hours (was 9)
    • Gate 6: 7 hours (was 9)
    • Gate 7: 7 hours (was 9)
    • Gate 8: 12 hours (was 24)
    • Gate 9: 9 hours (was 12)
    • Gate 10: 9 hours (was 12)
    • Gate 11: 9 hours (was 12)
As stated, to counter-balance for the lower amount of time required, we need to make some adjustments to the Diamond rewards to not suddenly give out much higher amounts. Therefore, we're making the following changes:
  • The amount of Diamonds that can be won through regular Spire Encounters has been decreased.
  • The amount of Diamonds that can be won from the final boss in the Spire has been increased.
  • The amount of Diamonds that can be won via the Spire's Fellowship rewards has been increased.

Ultimately, for those who manage to complete the whole Spire of Eternity, there are now slightly more Diamonds to obtain. We believe that, together with the recently released Trophies, these changes will help in making the Spire of Eternity more appealing for you and your Fellows.

As always, we're happy to hear your feedback! Please let us know your thoughts by leaving a message in our discussion thread.

Kind regards,
Your Elvenar Team
 
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