Mastery Points

[burbman]

@mvnla2 – from what I understand, SRC should be a great place if all you want to do is farm mastery. Just reset after the first wave.

[Anonymous]

@mvnla2 The only thing I could think of is using birds that hurt all pigs ( Chuck and Spies Blues for example ). The only problem is unless you use Rainbird there’s no “Real” healer. Of course Paladin and Spies healing could be enough but IMO I just don’t trust Auto Play.

[dr_ishmael]

@mvnla2 I gave up on leveling any of Red’s classes via auto-play of SRC, because he stupidly uses his defensive ability whenever a pig is 1 turn from completing a “charge” attack – including when the undead are about to revive. This drastically decreases his damage output on every wave, and pretty much guarantees that you’ll get overwhelmed by summons on wave 4 (assuming that didn’t already happen on wave 3, of course).

The only class that might be viable in SRC is Avenger, since its support ability isn’t defensive, but it sucks so there’s no point in wasting the time on it.

[angryde]

@dr_ishmael. There are ways of circumventing the inconveniece of Red’s defensive shield – but you need a relatively high level wizard/trickster(s) + druid (negating wave-iv re-spawnage). All in all, SRC is the best place to farm snoutlings + mastery points (simultaneously). It’s the best compromise option (discussed at length on this thread and elsewhere).

[cosmo2503]

@mvnla2 as you probably know all my birds are class 10 so I can’t give any proven advice but to increase Paladin’s mastery I’d try him in Old Nesting Barrows 4 where he encounters one to one battle with level 14 Red. I guess if you have only one of your birds into battle with pigs that bird will get all mastery points for that level.

[Spooky]

@cosmo2503 Old Nesting Barrows 4 doesn’t give you any mastery points. Just did like 10+ battles but my Paladin’s mastery is still the same as before.

I have a question about this emulator and Auto-Play.
I tried to install it on my computer at work (the links at the youtuve video), but it seems not to work coz it need windows vista & up while i have here win xp. So i will try it on one of my old computer at home. But my question is can i play on my android phone while it auto-play on the pc?

[dr_ishmael]

@cosmo2503 All birds in a battle receive the same mastery points. I just tested with 1 bird at SRC, a Rogue on the first wave dropped a mastery ribbon, and the bird received 7 mastery points – just the same as when I have 3 birds and all 3 receive 7 mastery points.

There is a random bug where one bird doesn’t receive the points. I’ve seen this happen immediately after I’ve changed a bird’s class. Exiting the battle and re-entering the stage fixed it.

[Bubbley]

@dr-Ishmael if you don’t mind fighting the battle try the 10 wave battles in Pig Pen you can get 160 plus mastery points without bonus. That’s how I pushed my Paladin to 10.

[MVNLA2]

I’ve been using SRC on auto-play to level up my birds as well as collect snoutlings. Although there may be an optimal combo for maximizing snoutlings/min, many random combinations of birds do pretty well. There are some that don’t do well, however. I’ve tried more combos than listed, but didn’t keep notes on all of them.
In general Captain with pickpocket is really good, while any SeaDog or Paladin combination is less than ideal.
Since SeaDog and Paladin are two of my favorite birds, I would really like to find a combination that works well for them.
Good combinations:
Tricksters, Captain with pickpocket, Druid with honey
Tricksters, Captain with pickpocket, Druid with honey
Thunderbird twin lightning, Princess with Yin/Yang, Captain pickpocket

Poor Combinations:
Thunderbird with time jump, Princess with Yin/Yang, SeaDog with pickpocket

[KillerKea]

Sea Dog, Tricksters and a healer like Rainbird works really well. For the Paladin there are plenty of combinations that work well, just be sure to include Captain or Tricksers and a healer. If you use Princess with the Sea Dog, be sure to equip the Sea Dog with an offhand item that reduces his health to be at least a few hundred below the Princess and hopefully below the Tricksters’ health too. I posted the following a month ago in the “Good place to rack up snoutlings” thread.

If you have some good set items and a good mastery level, then all you need to beat it on auto play is a healer, a bird that can dispel and a third team member that does good damage.

Team for beating Star Reef Castle on auto play
1. Healer – Druid, Bard, Cleric, Princess and Rainbird all work fine. I haven’t tried the Priestess yet.
2. Dispeller – Trickster or Captain are best. Lightning bird can dispel, but it is only 65% of the time. Samurai also works even though he can’t dispel. His defensive formation is almost the equivalent of dispel since it reduces damage 40-50% and he will always use it or a rage chili right before WizPig attacks.
3. Any bird that can help your team do a fair amount of damage. Otherwise you might lose a bird on wave 3 or get stuck on wave 4 where the Banshee and Necromancer can summon ghosts and undead.

Because you can switch between Trickster, Captain and Samurai you can train all your classes. I’ve used this to help nearly all my birds gain mastery levels, but what really helps is being able to buy all the training in the dojo with the snoutlings earned here.

[MVNLA2]

@KillerKea — Thanks! I’m working on mastery for Thunderbird, with Princess and Captain thrown in for good measure. When I get Thunderbird to level 7, I think I’ll work on Sea Dog and Paladin; both are level 9, but really want to get them to level 10. I am buying everything offered for snoutlings in the DoJo, but it is still a long march.

[ToothGnasher]

I *might* have made an error in my book keeping, but it appears that in 3.5 hours of continuous play one of my birds (Captn/9) got more then double the mastery of the other birds in the same fight (Bard/8, and Tricksters/9). That was a nice glitch since it takes a LONG time to go from 9 to 10.

I now have four 9s, and one 10. Everything else is 8 except Thunderbird (7). Curiously when my account was nerfed back to zero and they credited me with LC I made use of the knowledge that 75 LC upgrades are the most effective.

Even if I gain 700 mastery per bird per hour, It will still take at least 664 hours of continuous play to get all the birds to level 10.

I’ve also grown fond of Skulkers. In a direct attack he increases the damage of the attacked bird by 30%. If you apply Skulkers to himself, he applies his 30% damage increase to all the birds. Skulkers + Captn = effective explosion. An even more effective explosion can be had by having Captn power himself up for 60% more damage in his attack!

While it takes at least two turns to achieve, you can do some serious damage using the attack @razorblade described in his post here.

[MVNLA2]

@Toothgnasher — Very interesting. I’m not keeping real careful track right now, but have noticed some surprising increases that don’t seem evenly distributed. Attributed them to lumping lots of different kinds of battles together. Will have to keep more careful track.

[MVNLA2]

@Toothgnasher — Haven’t seen anything strange yet today, and I did start keeping careful track. A couple of questions:
3.5 hrs of continuous play should have included one trip to the Dojo. Did you possibly forget that or get more points for Captain than you counted?
Did your birds win all the time, and did they all last to the end? If one or more of them gets knocked out, they might not get credited with as much mastery as those who are there at the end.

[elektrobank]

I use only my two birds on cave 1.5 (10 waves). I don’t know if this is the most effective grinding method, but I get through in approx 5 mins (12 times an hour). Ave 85-90 points per bird = 1000 points per bird per hour.. but again only two birds.

Snoutlings – ave 70 oer round, 840 per hour (plus random 50 snoutling pigs and any 10 snoutlings on the spinning wheel after each round).

Jailbroken iPhone with Veency and JitBit Macro Recorder Lite… The only (major!) issue is the ads… I seem to see a pattern of around 30 mins to an hour of the video ads, then 30 mins of the static ad, then no ads.. which then allows for a perfect loop for grinding with a macro.. unless someone calls :)

[ToothGnasher]

@dr_ishmael wrote

I gave up on leveling any of Red’s classes via auto-play of SRC, because he stupidly uses his defensive ability whenever a pig is 1 turn from completing a “charge” attack

In Desert Pig Castle (DPC), there is very little need for protection… but it would take forever or be impossible to defeat Porky at the end so playing until you get to Porky and restarting works pretty well. I ran through several times with Pirate/9, Paladin/9 and Thunderbird/8 and only at the third and fourth waves are there any “ramp ups”. Curiously Paladin never chose to protect.

One of the fastest mastery accrual rates I managed (using autoplay) was DPC playing only the first three waves using: Captain8, Trickster8, Wizard8. However my best totals so far were last week on SRC (complete all levels) using: Captain8, Tricksters8, Wizard8

Weapon choices do matter, Usually with Captain I use my weak, but effective Sugar Rush Set (Candy Bomb and Candy Chain) because of the massive healing effect you get every so often.

@elektrobank In fact you short change yourself since all birds get the same mastery points whether you play one bird or three. That’s why SRC is so popular… you can use 3 birds. If SRC is too hard, there are many other levels where the mastery accrual will be slower, but autoplay would be safe.

FYI: The best “power up” I got is the golden chili. It allows you to have a chance to win the first wave every time. Better than any single item I can think of.

[ToothGnasher]

@mvnla2 I’ve been tweaking my spreadsheet that I use to keep track, so I’m not positive the wild swing wasn’t do to some error… like forgetting to include the powerups, but it seems unlikely I’d have missed one bird.

[elektrobank]

ToothGnasher – thanks for the info :), I tried SRC for an hour (724 MP x3 = 2172 MP total) which is (slightly :p) better than cave 1.5 (1000 MP x2 = 2000 MP total) but waaaay more snoutlings on SRC too.

[MVNLA2]

@toothgnasher @dr_ishmael — If you’re having problems, like I was, using SRC to increase mastery for red and Sea Dog, try the suggestions of @killerkea above. I haven’t tried his suggestion for the Paladin yet, because I’m currently working on Sea Dog. I’ve tried Sea Dog, tricksters, and Rain Bird, as well as Sea Dog, Princess, and Tricksters, which has the added advantage of increasing mastery for Princess at the same time. Both work well.

[dr_ishmael]

@toothgnasher @mvnla2 I seem to get upgrades for Red at the dojo much more often than the other birds, so I’m still getting plenty of mastery for him that way. And I’ve been farming other castles with him, as ToothGnasher suggested.

Actually, I’ve gathered data on all the castles; here’s a summary of my findings:

Wave 4 of MPC is a bunch of bombs, which don’t drop any mastery. I didn’t consider the boss waves, since specific classes are required against both Prince Porky and Wizpig, and they usually take longer to defeat than non-boss waves for fewer mastery points.

Theoretically:

• If you’re able to focus on Epic, the best accrual rate should be achieved by applying @razorblade’s suggestion from here to CPC wave 1.
• If you’re only able to check on the game intermittently, then KPC is best since it has the highest cumulative total of potential mastery points and the best average per wave. SRC is only slightly worse, though, so if you also need snoutlings, it’s still the best place to be.

We’d need some actual timed trials like ToothGnasher does in order to verify my wild claims, of course. :)

[KillerKea]

Most people should have more received more mastery for Red than any other bird because the events have Red right next to the All Birds award and most people will spin until they get the All Birds award. The wheel for the events looks like the following going clockwise:

All Birds, Red, Bomb, essence, Blues, Matilda, Chuck, essence

2/3rds of all people who spin until they get the All Birds award will also have the bonus for Red.

@mvnla2 I recently got my Sea Dog up to mastery level 8. Now I’m able to take out a golden pig that has 9000 health in one round and I don’t even have a set for Bomb yet.

[MVNLA2]

@killerkea — Congrats! My Sea Dog is level 9, and it is a long, long way to 10. Can you take out all the GPs? (they change by day). I usually start with Paladin, because he does the most damage if there is a single enemy.

[MVNLA2]

Some more “statistics” of small numbers. Thought I would try @killerkea’s suggestions for using SRC to increase mastery of Paladin.
Have tried two combos so far.
I’m level 41
Paladin level 9 with dragon-scale; Princess 8 Yin/Yang; Captain 8 pickpocket: gets stuck on wave 4 ~30% of time (did not track exact numbers)
Paladin 9 dragon-scale; Princess 8 Yin/Yang; Tricksters 8 mixed set: Gets stuck on wave 4 ~10% (1/9) of the time, which is probably about as good as the Sea Dog combos I tried. Without bomb with pickpocket set probably get fewer snoutlings, but didn’t keep track.
Both of the combinations I mentioned above for Sea Dog do lose some of the time, but not very often.
Back to Sea Dog.

[KillerKea]

I haven’t gotten any golden pigs that have 10k+ health. I think the toughest one I fought was something like 8944 so I rounded and said 9000. There is a combo that will do 9000 damage in round 1 and the set items I’m using are level 33 or lower and mastery of my birds are level 8.

If you want to almost guarantee completion of SRC, you need a bird that can damage multiple enemies. Spies and Wizard are great for that, but set items like BEEP and your Dragon Breath set should work well too.

[MadMike]

I tried SRC on autoplay with paladin(dragonbreath), capt’n(scissors) and spies(beep)/wizard(no set). Both teams never loose but with spies goes faster obviously because of set. Note that they are all lvl 8 and 9 classes.