Spark Run!

[Poncho]

Did you guys have to spend 2500 gems for the third slot, or was it “free” if you had 5 slots open in the old version?  I never opened the 5th slot in the old version, as I was usually able to complete the run with just 2 characters.  But if I want the third slot, I have to pay 2500 gems.

[MillForce2k]

@poncho I had five prior and didn’t have to spend anything to unlock the third. You may not have to unlock the third slot if your two bots are strong enough to get through, though it will take longer for each run.

[FortressMaximus]

I agree it seems like this is a net positive change, and yes my third slot was already there without needing to upgrade.   And I suppose that at least theoretically you only need 1 or 2 bots to get full sparks,  as long as you can keep them alive long enough.

[deindiaan]

Looks OK the sparkrun 2.0, did a run with 1250% promo, took about 6 levels. 3300 sparks.

[moi]

I think this renewed Spark Run is a perfect way to use the exces of coins that most players have and don’t know what to do with it. Btw, you can always decrease your level (aka difficulty) if you want to use less coins (, but of course you’ll get less sparks.)
First time I see an improvement in this game since a very very long time!

[GrimLockdown]

@fortressmaximus Thx for experimenting the Spark Run 2.0!

I tried it myself. I used two fully promoted TFs (Nautica and Blaster) and one bonus squad TF (purple crown General Optimus Prime). I think it took me 6 stages (only one Jungle) to board the Astrotrain (and Nautica had a half heart of health left). Having a bonus squad TF in the Spark Run team seems to shorten the run quite a bit.

I think this is an improvement and I like it. I get to spend millions of excessive coins I have and I get to test other than green crowned TFs in the Spark Run.

[ABT]

I like the new Spark Run 2.0. You can definitely earn a lot more sparks per run and also allows for more runs per day (I have plenty of coins saved up, so that’s not an issue.)

I just did 1 run so far. Stats:

Promotion: 630% (3 bots @ 210% each; no 4x bonus)

Level: 301

Reward: 3010 sparks (3311 after watching ad)

Coins needed: 218,100 coins

Full Points: 1,250,400

Segments needed (for me): 9 segments to hit points, Astrotrain came on the 10th (?)

Time needed (for me): 10 minutes total

Bots: Reached full points with my first bot (lvl 25 Blaster), but then the status changed to “calling Astrotrain”, and nothing happened until the NEXT segment, so he died when I stopped playing thinking it was already over.

Overall: I’m happy with the new Spark Run. I am able to use my lvl 25 Blaster who is relatively pretty fast already, was able to spend about 50% of the time in vehicle mode which help speeds things up even more. Much more “fun” than the Challenge Run where you are stuck with VERY SLOW bots.

Showing the points on the screen is actually helpful as it let you know how many points destroying each object is worth. The progress bar is also a lot easier to understand, so you can see how far you are from reaching the full points/end.

It would be nice if they can show the number of segments you have reached. Typically, the chances of a crash goes up the longer and more segments is played.

 

[GrimLockdown]

I made another Spark Run. Why not!

So the level/difficulty was 302 and now the target was 1,257,200 points. Just like previously I used two green crown TFs and a purple crown bonus squad TF. I think the run was one stage longer (because the Jungle was the last). Blaster had at least a heart of health left.

And now the Spark Run tower is locked! I have to wait 3½ hours it to open. So one can’t make an arbitrary number of runs.

[ABT]

@grimlockdown I did another run as well. My Spark Run is now locked too. Technically, I did 3 runs today as I did 1 BEFORE the update and 2 more after. I think I finished in 10 segments, but may have lost track after a while. More stats:

Level: 302

Reward: 3020 sparks (+10) (3322 (+11) after watching ad)

Coins needed: 218,800 coins (+700)

Full Points: 1,257,200 (+6,800)

[GrimLockdown]

I made two Spark Runs this morning and now the Spark Run tower is locked. So, it is two Spark Runs per day.

I used the same TFs as yesterday but today the total promotion was 1,000% (yesterday it was 960%). It took me 6 stages to reach the target points.

[Andrew]

The extended run (I’m hitting 10 segments, 11 after the junk segment you have to do once the Astrotrain is called) is a bit like the Watching Paint Dry endurance test. It’ll probably be better once I get the promoted squad in play but now I’m doing 120% more work for only a 20% uptick in Sparks.

The Astrotrain call needs to be fixed- it should appear at the end of the current segment rather than require you to do another segment for junk points.

[Poncho]

My gripe is, if you don’t complete the run, you get nothing.  At least in the previous version, you could get about 1500 spark, and it didn’t cost anything to play.  It also takes too long.  I feel carpal tunnel symptoms.

I was unable to complete the run with 2 bots in 2 attempts, so I grudgingly spent the 2500 gems for the third slot.  I decreased the difficulty to 250.  I reached the target score with one bot, but it died waiting for Astrotrain.  So, for anyone who’s interested, my experience is that you can complete the run with 2 bots if you decrease the difficulty (but I do not consider myself to be a particularly skilled player, so take it with a grain of salt).

[Andrew]

Did a second run today- 16 segments, 17 with the junk segment.

[ABT]

@andrewinireland Now that the initial excitement of the update is starting to wear off, it’s starting to feel tedious. I did about 4 runs (level 301-304) since I updated, and each one got longer and longer. I can’t even keep track the number of segments anymore (definitely more than 11).

On my 4th run (level 304), it took almost 15 minutes to finish (w/ 3 bots @630% promotion). After it finished, I even played the ad for an extra 10% to get 3344 sparks. Then, I returned to the map, and it had the wifi logo with the X label on the buildings on the map! This meant that at some point the game lost connection to the server (although my wifi was working fine and even let me play the ad!). When I restarted the game, all of the sparks earned from this run was missing, basically the run didn’t count, and I had to do the Spark Run again (another 15 minutes)! I occasionally get this problem when doing LONG challenge runs (over 15+ minutes) which is extremely annoying because that meant none of it counted!

Also, I can see myself using up all my accumulated coins (@20M at the moment) since I’ve been spending over 400K a day to do 2 Spark Runs a day. I don’t think I even earn 200K a day to replenish my supply so at some point I will not even be able to do a single Spark Run a day. I kind of miss the old-style where it’s FREE for the 1st spark run of the day and runs can complete in 6-8 minutes.

[MillForce2k]

Wow! My device must be really slow (Galaxy S4). My runs are taking about a half hour!

I was surprised today, though. On both runs, the Astrotrain came somewhat quickly after being called.

[Andrew]

This “update” definitely feels like it’s designed to reward those of us that are in the “God Tier”, i.e. those of us who have been around longest and have accumulated large hoards of resources. I currently have 32 million gold which means I can easily play the Spark Run for about 4-5 months at the top level. Which means I will be able to promote my bots faster than newer players. The old Spark run was a level playing field, this one tips the hand in our favour.

[GrimLockdown]

@andrewinireland You are right! I think that every update since (and including) the infamous 2.0 has been geared toward us “old–timers”. This game must nowadays be super hard for beginners (if there are any of them).

[Andrew]

@grimlockdown I have wondered in the past if R/E are deliberately sabotaging the game to try and shed players. I’m sure that once the licensing fees for using the Transformers IP are higher than the amount of money the game is pulling in, they’ll be pretty quick to pull the plug.

[GrimLockdown]

Two Spark Runs today. Now with 1,290% promotion i.e. green crowned Nautica and two bonus squad members. It took me 5 stages.

The best strategy is to have an overpowered green crowned TF who can survive 7–9 stages and two bonus squad TFs. It costs 9,200 sparks to promote a TF from 0% to 105% (gold crown). Four times 105% is 420% i.e. twice of that one gets from non bonus squad green crowned TF. It probably also means 1–2 stages less.

[FortressMaximus]

I used to feel like I had enough coins to last forever,  but now I’m down to my last 10 million or so.  By playing less these days, I am definitely burning through them much faster than they come in.  Upgrading characters and accessories takes a pretty good number of coins, and now this.  I already stopped buying steel crates due to the poor value vs cost, and at some point may have to stop doing spark runs I guess.  Oh well 🤷🏻‍♂️

[ABT]

@andrewinireland Technically, the old SparkRun 1.0 was not really geared towards a level playing field either. You need to have spent a ton of gems unlocking all 5 slots, and a TON (millions!) of sparks upgrading at least 5 bots to green crown to get the best rewards, so most newbies/relative new players probably wont be able to earn 2400+ sparks per run anyways. With that said, the new SparkRun 2.0 is just as bad if not worse because of the high coin requirements.

@grimlockdown I’m not sure if the 2.0 update necessarily alienated the new players either. I felt the opposite effect as “old timers” had the most to lose with this update. I had hundreds of accessories upgraded (some to lvl 30+), and all of that was taken away with the 2.0 update. However, I think the main problem w/ the 2.0 game update is the difficulty earning gems. That affects new and old players, but probably worse on new players as they never had a chance to farm/accumulate gems the old fashion way via the Lab and Spire. Now, you really have to pay for gems.

@fortressmaximus I’m in a similar boat. I had over 100M coins at one point when coins were pretty much useless. I’ve since spent most of them (down to 20M) on Steel Crates (sometimes opening 20 – 30 day). (Note: it’s the same Steel Crates that occasionally awarded accessories upgrades that were nuked to level 1 w/ the 2.0 game update). I probably should have saved them now that they’re required for Spark Runs. With about 20M coins left, so I’ll probably run out in a few months.

 

[Pako]

Just when we thought that coins were pretty much useless…. bang! Back to farming coins lads! I am down to 16 million. Most of my hoard will go to the spark run.

@millforce2k, I used to play on a S4 mini, I didn’t realise the game was faster until I switched phones.

[Pinokio]

Interesting, what the max level now? Can be 360, 380, 460 even. I think next cap is 340.

[GrimLockdown]

@papakarlo There needs to be no limit. One pays more and more coins and the point limit also grows. Plus if you fail to reach the point limit you get nothing.

Level 400 will probably cost 290,000 coins and the point limit is at least 1,900,000. I’m probably can finish that level but the cost is becoming untenable.

[MillForce2k]

@grimlockdown That’s an interesting strategy. I may have to rethink not peanut butter spreading my sparks. At 9200 sparks to promote to gold crown, it will only take three runs (above L300) to recover those sparks).

@pako My tablet died, though it’s no better than the S4, so my only native option is my current phone, a Galaxy S6. I guess I could install BlueStacks to do the spark runs on the computer, but I’d have to get used to playing with a mouse.