[greatleo]

I don’t see these new sets on my iPad. Are they Android only? What are their effects?

On Ios, the three most recent new sets (but they’re not brand new) for Red, Chuck and Matilda are the following. I assume (and can you please confirm) that these are not what you are referring to.

Red: Primal Power (Primal Axe and Primal Spear):

60% chance to deal 45% bonus damage per negative effect on target. Removes all negative effects from target.

Chuck: Mana Shell (Mana Mist and Mana Well):

All allies have a 60% chance to be immune to negative effects.

Matilda: Cleansing Light (Heavenly Sceptre and Heavenly Case):

35% chance to remove positive effects from target. Each removed effect heals all birds by 5% of maximum health.

[greatleo]

Generally I ignore the Black Ninja (3 stamina) battles, focusing on the Master Ninja (5 stamina) and Shogun (7 stamina) battles.

I have two separate games/logins running: Regaterleo and Gertaleo. All birds are currently at level 50, with Mastery of 10. I’m working on the long, slow, slog up to Mastery 11.

Over a long period of time I’ve used automated battle mode with Star Reef Castle to accumulate mastery and lots of snoutlings. As a consequence, in each game I have over 200 each Greater Pig Cherry Juice Rank 2, Pretty Fruit Cake Rank 2, and Burning Veggie Cakes.

On my games, Shoguns ignore damage < 564, and Ninjas ignore damage > 589.

I use two line-ups. Both include Samurai and Mage.

My Samurai deals 3×351 damage with the Dragon Breath Set.
My Mage deals 556 to all enemies with the Twin Lightning Set.

Master Ninja battles allow 4 birds, so I add Cannoneer (3×415) and Marksmen (2×422 + 302 per attack)

I start out the battle by hitting Master Ninja with Marksmen, and then feed the Rage Chili to Mage. If Master Ninja isn’t taken out in the rage, Samurai and Cannoneer are available to finish him off. In about 8 battles (so far), there usually only 2 pigs left, and they don’t last another turn.

For Shogun I add Capt’n to my mix. The battle goes as follows:

1) Use Capt’n’s Whip Up to increase Samurai’s strength by 60%.
2) Feed the Rage Chili to Samurai to put a serious hurt on the Shogun.
3) Consume two Burning Veggie Cakes to renew the Rage Chili, then feed it to Mage.
4) During the pigs’ turn, take serious damage, but survive.
5) Take 1 Veggie Cake, which usually fills up the Rage Chili. Take another if needed. Take 2 Fruit Cakes (or 1 if 2 Veggie Cakes were needed) to restore everyone’s health to an acceptable level (and allow me to get 3 Stars).
6) If the Samurai has lost his Whip Up ability, renew it with Capt’n. Otherwise, start the turn by hitting the Shogun with Capt’n
7) Feed the Rage Chili to the Mage. This usually wipes out the level, or gets us down to 1 or 2 plain Ninjas, which allows victory.

[greatleo]

It appears that if you want to stop receiving e-mails about follow-ups to a topic, the only way to do it is to post something and uncheck the notify box.

So please accept my apology in advance for this off-topic post.

[greatleo]

@mnnla2. Darn. I tried twice to paste the HTML code for a table representation, but neither one worked. Fiddlesticks.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael If I may make a suggestion, change the KPC row of your first table so the final column reads “14+28*”, and a note with an asterisk explaining that killing the King Pig guarantees 14 points of mastery.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael It wasn’t toothgnasher with the post, it was me, @greatleo.

[greatleo]

I know a secret! Neener, neener, neener!

OK, OK, I’ll share.

On page 12 (currently) of the Good place to rack up snoutlings discussion, @dr_ishmael presented a table showing the mastery per wave and cumulative mastery per wave for all of the castles. While CPC is the best for the first 2 waves, King Pig Castle offers more total mastery through the first 4 waves. Ishmael didn’t show mastery for the boss waves, wave 5, which is where the secret lies.

@mvnla, I think next time you edit the first entry in this forum, where you summarize the findings, you should add Ismael’s table.

Anyway, during times of boredom, I’ve been manually playing KPC, including trying to get some cheap mastery in the boss wave.

Here’s the secret: King Pig drops mastery 100% of the time.

I assume that, as a boss, he drops double mastery. That would mean taking out King Pig is equivalent to taking out 6 little piggies. That’s potentially huge. Given that Wizpig is also vulnerable, the final wave here can be lucrative.

For just about everybody reading this forum, the key criteria is using automated play to maximize mastery-gained per time. Given the number of strong bosses in KPC that require two turns to take out (and that’s in efficient manual play), I’m not sure KPC still measures up. Anyway, it’s probably worth a look.

I’ve developed two teams from my remaining mastery level 9 birds that can work through KPC manually in an effective manner:

Thunderbird + Sea Dog + Skulkers (best)
Knight + Mage + Rogue (second best)

For team one, you can usually take out King Pig in one turn. For team two, if wave 5 is entered with a full Rage Chili, King Pig and Wizpig can usually be taken out at the end of the second turn, and Prince Porky in turn 3 or 4.

Additionally, team two can often beat the castle in automated play, if Epic’s automater doesn’t play *too* stupidly.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael I track my number of trials by putting hash marks on a piece of paper; four vertical marks and a diagonal slash. I have two completely separate games running, one on my iPhone and the other on my iPad. Each is linked to a separate Rovio account and Facebook account.

I run my tests by hand on both devices at the same time to save myself real time. I make a hash mark on my test sheet, explode on one, explode on the other, restart one, restart the other. So the damage numbers and counting are finished by the time I get to the restart.

My Dec. 14th test in particular makes it even harder for me to restart too early, since I was testing taking out all of wave 1, and all of wave 2 if possible. In that case, there was a lot less “multi-tasking”, i.e. each games spent even more time waiting for the other to wrap up a wave.

What I find really weird is that the results of both my tests seem to confirm each other, while your two tests confirm each other as well.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael Huh… Interesting and confusing. In my tests I also counted Wealthy Rogues, but didn’t subtract them in my count of pigs dropping mastery. I forgot that they don’t give mastery.

Here are new numbers from two of my tests factoring in Wealthy Rogues:

Dec. 12:
Bombs exploded: 200
Pigs exploded: 1000
Mastery-dropping pigs: 989
Mastery earned: 2191
Mastery ribbons: 313
Drop rate: 31.65%

Dec. 14:
Pigs eliminated: 855
Mastery-dropping pigs: 844
Mastery earned: 1869
Mastery ribbons: 267
Drop rate: 31.63%

Even factoring in the Wealthy Rogues, I still get numbers that are lower than yours.

Additionally, given the number of tests you and I have both run, each of us has numbers that should produce at least two significant digits of accuracy. That is, my result should be trusted to at least 31%, and your result of 35.96%, i.e. 36%, should also be trusted.

At the moment, the only question I can think to ask is: do you run your tests on an Android device? I run my tests on an iPhone and an iPad. Those are definitely different code bases.

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 You’ve already answered the question yourself, but anyway, I got the info about Big Boss dropping double mastery from the work of @dr_ishmael.

[greatleo]

I ran two separate tests during which my birds took out all 6 pigs–in one turn–in the first wave. If possible, take out all 5 pigs in the second wave, again in one turn. In all tests I used a Berserker (mostly for its Explode feature, but it’s also very powerful when the Rage Chili is filled) either a Paladin or Samurai, and either a Spies or Mage.

Here’s the tactic I used:
Attack Big Boss with Paladin/Samurai and either Spies or Mage.

Scenario 1: If any of the weaker pigs are still standing, use Berserker’s Explode to finish off the wave. After wave 2 loads, restart to wave 1.

Scenario 2: All of the weaker pigs are killed. Finish off Big Boss with Berserker and proceed to wave two with the Rage Chili still filled. Attack Rogue Leader with Paladin/Samurai and either Spies or Mage. Finish off the wave using Berserker’s Explode. After wave 3 loads, restart to wave 1.

In each case I ran 50 Wave 1 attacks, and tallied the number of Wave 2s. That number depended on the randomness of chain attacks from Red and Mage/Spies. I assume that the Big Boss drops mastery with the same chance as the weaker pigs, but with twice the value.

Here’s my raw data (I’m pretty sure I spaced out undercounted a wave here):

Test 1, Dec. 13:
Regater Leo mastery before/after:
Paladin 4379 – 3385 = 994
Berserker 7725 – 6731 = 994
Spies 1718 – 724 = 994
Wave 2 scenarios: 9
Total Mastery drops = 994/7 = 142
Mastery opportunities: Wave 1 = 350 (i.e. 50 x 7 [Big Boss = 2, plus 5 weaker pigs])
Mastery opportunities: Wave 2 = 45 (i.e. 9 x 5 pigs)
Total mastery opportunities: 395
Mastery probability: 142/395 = 0.395

Gerta Leo mastery before/after:
Paladin 16932 – 16057 = 875
Berserker 36376 – 35501 = 875
Spies 5392 – 4517 = 875
Wave 2 scenarios: 10
Total Mastery drops = 875/7 = 125
Mastery opportunities: Wave 1 = 350 (i.e. 50 x 7 [Big Boss = 2, plus 5 weaker pigs])
Mastery opportunities: Wave 2 = 50 (i.e. 9 x 5 pigs)
Total mastery opportunities: 400
Mastery probability: 125/400 = 0.3125

Test 2, Dec. 14:
Regater Leo mastery before/after:
Samurai 1281 – 301 = 980
Mage 11612 – 10632 = 980
Berserker 1710 – 730 = 980
Wave 2 scenarios: 18
Total Mastery drops = 980/7 = 140
Mastery opportunities: Wave 1 = 350 (i.e. 50 x 7 [Big Boss = 2, plus 5 weaker pigs])
Mastery opportunities: Wave 2 = 90 (i.e. 18 x 5 pigs)
Total mastery opportunities: 440
Mastery probability: 140/440 = 0.318

Gerta Leo mastery before/after:
Samurai 9826 – 8937 = 889
Berserker 34595 – 33706 = 889
Spies 3111 – 2222 = 889
Wave 2 scenarios: 13
Total Mastery drops = 889/7 = 127
Mastery opportunities: Wave 1 = 350 (i.e. 50 x 7 [Big Boss = 2, plus 5 weaker pigs])
Mastery opportunities: Wave 2 = 65 (i.e. 13 x 5 pigs)
Total mastery opportunities: 415
Mastery probability: 127/415 = 0.306

Finally, we can combine all of these results to hopefully get a more accurate probability:

Total mastery dropped: 142 + 125 + 140 + 127 = 534
Total mastery opportunities: 395 + 400 + 440 + 415 = 1650
Mastery probability: 534 / 1650 = 0.323

Honestly, I’m tempted to throw out the very Test 1, since I’m pretty sure I under-counted waves, and it’s an outlier. Meanwhile, Test 2 gives numbers very close to my first test where I only took out the 5 weak pigs in wave 1:
Probability = Drops / Opportunities = (140 + 127) / (440 + 415) = 267 / 855 = 0.3123.

This value is very close to the 0.313 probability from my very first test that took out only the 5 weak pigs in wave 1, 200 times.

The only way to really know if Big Boss drops mastery with a higher probability than the weaker pigs is to craft some birds that have no chain attacks, and then take out the Big Boss, and only the Big Boss, say, 1000 times. Small numbers of runs contain too much randomness.

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 @toothgnasher Sorry, I’ve been away from the Interwebs for most of today.

I ran my two tests with 3 birds each: Paladin, Spies and Berserker. Regater’s 3 birds each gained 1022 mastery, Gerta’s 3 birds each gained 1169. So the total mastery dropped is 1022 + 1169.

I’ve run another test where Paladin and Spies attack the Big Boss before Berserker explodes, taking out the whole side. I’ll post results tomorrow morning.

Note that you really need to run a lot of tests to get significant digits. My 5/16 number is a guess.

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 @dr_ishmael I haven’t seen anyone post the chances of a pig dropping mastery, so I decided to run a test myself.

Cutting to the chase, I believe the chances are 5/16.

I ran the test on CPC (Cobalt Pig Castle). At the beginning of the first wave I exploded a level 41/9 Berserker to take out the Bird Catcher and 4 Stick Pigs, then restarted. Repeat 200 times for 1000 total kills.

Total mastery increase was 2191. Each pig potentially drops 7 mastery points. 2191/7 = 313.

So out of 1000 opportunities for a pig to drop mastery, 313 actually did, for a 0.313 probability. Note that 5/16 = 0.3125.

Further details: I run two games, Regater Leo and Gerta Leo, linked to two separate Rovio accounts and Facebook accounts. One runs on my phone, the other on my tablet. I ran the two simultaneously for 100 tries (200 total), which saved real (clock) time by overlapping operations on one while the other was reloading. Regater Leo’s birds gained 1022 mastery, while Gerta’s gained 1169, for the total of 2191

The total test time was 31:56, averaging about 69 (68.6) mastery/minute. The average user running one game would get a somewhat more than half that, so let’s guess 36/minute or 2160/hour, non-automated.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael @toothgnasher Wow. OK, now I *really* understand it. In less than a half hour I got 882 mastery points for my Knight, Priestess and Berserker in Cobalt Pig Castle.

The first wave has a Big Boss, a Bird Catcher, and 4 Stick Pigs. For the first several tries, I took out the entire wave. Bomb’s Explode took out the weaker 4 pigs, but Big Boss always needed two or three more hits before losing. At that point I had to wait for the next wave to load.

It then occurred to me that since it’s more or less an issue of probabilities, then quickly restarting after the Explode might give faster mastery increase. This seems to bear it out.

Again, thanks Ishmael for your patience.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael Re: the Master ribbon, never mind. I see them now.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael Thanks for your last posting. I think I get it now. From your investigation, is it the case that all (or perhaps most) pigs have the potential to give the same # of mastery points (perhaps with the exception of bosses)?

Given that, it seems then that a simple strategy would be to do as @toothgnasher managed to figure out: wipe out a bunch of pigs in a small amount of time, and play the odds for mastery.

BTW, what does a “Mastery Ribbon” look like?

Thanks again.

[greatleo]

@dr_ishmael I don’t care for places like King Pig’s Castle, where I have to fight a combination of pigs that ignore greater than X damage, like Prince Porky, and pigs that ignore less than Y damage, like a Guard Captain or Royal Guard. In 3 out of 5 waves, there are birds that can only successfully attack certain pigs. Samurai is the most useable Red character, and Cannoneer is the most useable Bomb character, and even then I have to re-arm them with weak weapons to make them effective across all waves.

Additionally, the final waves don’t lend themselves to automatic play.

I don’t quite get your concept of “potential mastery points per wave”. One reason is that I’ve never gotten anywhere near to your potential numbers on any castle. Right now, I’m getting 42 mastery points total, for all 5 waves, from King Pig’s Castle. That’s less than 30% of the potential. Meanwhile, SRC is also giving 42, with the advantage of 120 snoutlings per trip through. Every 3 trips through I can buy 5 more Rage Chilis, with 60 snoutlings left over. I have a degree in Math, so I understand the concept of randomness, but SRC has proven day in and day out to be the best performer.

On top of that, the final wave of King Pig’s doesn’t lend itself to automatic play.

In Star Reef Castle, any bird I pick, with any weapon set, is usable against any pig in every wave. And a lot of combinations lend themselves to automatic play. In my book that’s a huge bonus over King Pig’s Castle.

Recently I’ve been working to raise my Knight, Cleric and Berserker from level 8 to level 9. Together they are a particularly weak combination since their secondary abilities don’t support each other very well. Despite that, I’m able to easily win wave after wave of SRC (albeit by hand), and finally got my Cleric to level 9. They all deliver damage that Prince Porky would ignore.

[greatleo]

Please Ignore. I’m posting this so I can disable “Notify me of follow-up replies via email”.

[greatleo]

@toothgnasher good points about the limitations of King Pig Castle and Desert Pig Castle. In addition, because of the combinations of ignoring high damage and low damage, you’re limited both on the character classes you can use, but also on which weapon sets they carry.

@partshade

On Dec. 1st I measured the mastery increases for Desert Pig Castle and Star Reef Castle in back-to-back attacks using the same characters, and got a surprising result: SRC is much better. I expected them to be the same.

Here’s the data, showing before and after “Mastery to Next Rank”:

Desert Pig Castle
Samurai (Mastery 9): 30636 – 30594 = 42
Capt’n (Mastery 8): 10249 – 10207 = 42
Marksmen (Mastery 9): 47980 – 47938 = 42

Star Reef Castle
Samurai (Mastery 9): 30587 – 30531 = 56
Capt’n (Mastery 8): 10200 – 10144 = 56
Marksmen (Mastery 9): 47931 – 47875 = 56

I remeasured SRC just now, since it almost seemed to good to be true, and it’s even better than before:

Samurai (Mastery 9): 29010 – 28947 = 63
Capt’n (Mastery 8): 8605 – 8542 = 63
Marksmen (Mastery 9): 46875 – 46812 = 63

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 @satanicoo I’ve also encountered the frozen rage chili. It only happens in autoplay mode when I try to interrupt it.

However, I found a safe work-around. Only interrupt during the pigs half of the round. That has never failed me.

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 Wow! Thanks for your two suggestions; Star Reef Castle and now Sunken Pyramid. Picking a team that neither wins nor loses is a brilliant idea. I’ve racked up thousands of snoutlings over several weeks with Star Reef. Now with Sunken Reef, I don’t have to spend a lot of time restarting the level. There must be a cave somewhere that has lots of Mummies like Sunken Pyramid, with the advantage that you don’t have to wait until Sunday to play.

The only additional suggestion I can make for Sunken Reef is that if you have the Pickpocket set pair for your Bomb bird, use them instead of Paladin to rack up even more snoutlings. My trio of Cleric, Cannoneer and McCool have been stuck in Wave 1 for over an hour now.

Again, thanks

[greatleo]

Thanks, @sutekh137. I have two games linked to two unique e-mail addresses and Facebook accounts, one running on my iPad and the other on my phone.

Like I said, I had hoped to check my birds’ statuses and snoutlings before proceeding to the winners page, but Epic takes you straight there without allowing you to go back. It’s no big deal…

[greatleo]

Did the competition even work?

I have two separate games going. Birds in the two games are at level 33, but the Gerta Leo group has mostly mastery level 7s and 6s, while the Regater Leo group lags, almost evenly split with mastery levels 6 and 5.

I won the competitions in both of my games. Using Friendship Essence, in both games I spun to win 1500 mastery on all birds and 1500 mastery for both Red and Bomb. In neither game did any of my birds advance to the next level. While this is mathematically possible, it didn’t seem likely given the state of my birds, and considering that it’s a lot easier to advance from 5 to 6 than from 6 to 7. I’m not even sure if I was credited with the 600 snoutlings. It’d be nice if they animated that.

I had wanted to check my levels before going to the winners page, do that to see where things stood, but unfortunately, the game didn’t give me the chance to do that…

[greatleo]

@mvnla2 Skulkers are very useful. With Matilda Druid, drag Skulkers onto her and she’ll attack a random enemy, but all of them get affected by Thorny Vines. This works well in the Bamboo Forest with all the ninjas.

In fact, if you use Skulkers with McCool, it’s as if he hits all enemies at once, so you’ll get even more snoutlings.

[greatleo]

Hi @mvnla2 (we’re friends here and on Facebook). I just started a new topic that relates to Bottomless Cave and to racking up snoutlings: “Lightning + Sea Dog + Skulkers = Max Power”. This could solve your problem if you have a FB friend with one of the 3 birds. With luck, I might even be one of them.

I’ll quote my article, to save you the trouble of going there:

“I have been using the combination of Lightning + Sea Dog + Skulkers for a few weeks now, and have found it extremely useful against strong single opponents. I’ve also used it to blast through the Bottomless Cave without taking any damage.

‘When Sea Dog is Ganged Up, if you use Skulkers’ Tricksy Trick on him, the first hit is 35%, but the second hit is full power.

“Against a single opponent, first hit it with Skulkers to get the 30% damage multiplier. In the Bottomless Cave, apply Tricksy Trick on Skulkers so both pigs have the multiplier.

“If you have the Golden Chili, use it on Lightning. You’ll get 2 hits with Lightning, 1 hit with Skulkers (a good amount of damage), and 3 hits with Sea Dog.

“Then, on the next turn, using Lightning’s Lightning Fast and Skulkers’ Tricksy Trick, you can get 5 full power hits with Sea Dog, plus 1 35% hit. That’s a devastating amount of damage. Over 2 turns, it’s much more powerful than Wizard + Pirate + Skulkers.

When dealing with pigs that charge up for 3 turns, if you have a spare turn where you won’t take damage, make sure Sea Dog stays Ganged Up.

I’ve also used this combination on Wave Pool to knock out Spirit Caller 7 or 8 times in 10 waves. When you have the rested bonus, it’s a good way to level up your birds in a hurry. You also get around 160 snoutlings. If your spin gets the treasure chest, you get two Greater Vials, needed for Pig Cherry Juice.”