Close

desolationsailor

Shadow Era economy

Rating: 5 votes, 1.00 average.
When I started playing Shadow Era (SE), there some actions I took that I regret now. I expect with this article to help those that are starting now, to make the correct decisions.

To get the most out of SE you must understand its economy. So, let's go Q&A:

What are the resources in play in SE?
Players
Cards
Shadow Crystals (SC)
Gold
Time
Money
All of the above

If you picked "All the above" you are right, why let me explain why.


Players
No good game can be called a "game” if it's only played by one person. You as a player are the most valuable resource in game.

In SE you will find a very active community. You will not only find someone to play against each time you log in, you will also find people to answer your questions on the forum. You will find guilds that can take you to the "next level" of the game and where you can establish very tight bounds. You will find dedicated players that devote their time to host tournaments, building great tools or write great articles about the game, or the lore of Balor.

My first piece of advice is, join the community, read the articles and when you are ready find the guild that suites you best and join it. The community is here to receive you, but you have to show up. So... show yourself.


Cards
Every player wants a good set of cards and very few will have 4x of each, but all started with a pre-constructed 40 card deck. How can you go from 40 to 400 (1) in no time and with no money? Playing!

When I rose to level 13, I already had spent all my SC buying boosters (an error) but even so I could not have the cards that I needed to build my winning deck, so I sold all the cards that I didn't need or couldn't play, a few months later I would regret that choice, why?
In the current format SE is more a Collectable Card Game (CCG) than a Tradable Card Game (TCG). OK there is a market, but is a centralized one, with a (almost) fix price on the cards. That is to be changed soon, but in the meantime you have to sell the cards for half the price they cost. If you do like I did, you will sell of a lot of great cards, just because they had no place in your current deck, and in a month or so, you will be buying them back, because they are needed in a new deck that you are planning to build.

Growing up in SE, it's very dynamic, you will be playing with opponents of your ranking, and you will build your deck to win those games, usually generic decks, but soon your ranking will rise and you will be facing thematic deck, like lonely wolf or horde decks, and you will know that it's time to rebuild your deck that is the moment that you will regret the sell-off that you did before.

Keep your cards, as long as you can (preferably until you have 4x of them) sooner or later they will be useful.


Shadow Crystals
The most rare element in Balor and the most difficult to get. You only have access to 25SC for each level, and each level is difficult to transpose. Use them wisely.

As you go up to level 17, you will get 400SC, my advice is to use them to buy decks. If you do so, you will be able to gather more cards to play with your first hero. But if you want to change hero you still can, and if you are a wise player, you will chose a hero that you can use your current cards. So if you have a human mage, and you what to go to the "dark side" it's advisable that you first chose a Shadow Mage, this way your weapons, armors and abilities will carry over, but if you think that you will play better with a Warrior, then chose a Human one, this way all your allies will still fight at your side.

Later in the game, you will find ways to gain more SC, winning tournaments (2) is one of them, the other is the free SC promotions(3). After you pile a big stack of SCs, you can think of changing yours In Game Name (ING) or buying some sleeves, elements that don't make you win, but can pump up your charisma.


Gold
The standard currency in Balor. Since there is no interest rate in Balor, this capital is for spending.

You can spend it on cards, sending emails and to joining Meltdown tournaments. My advice is let it go in cards, mainly in rare or uncommon. To send emails, you can send a Personal Message (PM) for free players in the SE forum (if you know his nick). To gain some gold in the Meltdown, you have to have a lot of gold, I would say around 5k to 10k (4), this way will be able to play 25 to 50 games in 7 days, but you still have to win most of them to qualify yourself for the prizes.

Although you win more gold and experience (XP) in quick match games (QM) than playing against the AI, its much more difficult to do so in the first levels. 1st because you don't know all the cards, and don't have the time to read their effects in a calm manner, 2nd in quick match you find more difficult decks to beat and more experienced players.

My advice to gain gold fast is to keep yourself playing against the AI until level 5, from 5-9 do some QM to test your new deck, from 9-13 you should be able to win 1 out of 3 games in QM, when you are able to do one win in each two games played, go full-time to QM, but if you still have a difficulty time to make a 1/3 ratio you better wait until you build a stronger deck.


Time
"Time is money", we have all heard that, in SE it's no different. Keep in mind that SE was developed for your fun. Work (and this includes school) and family should come first, SE is to entertainment in your free time, making it more scarce, and more important to use in a good manner.

To become a top player 10% will be skill, 90% will be work. You may have been born with the skills to become a top player the cold blood, the sharp eye, the focused mind and the outstanding intuition, but still you will have to know all the cards by heart, test your deck, know all the champions' decks, and play, play and play again.

Use your time to gain all the above resources, find friends that will give tips faster than any search engine, join tournaments to gain SC and gold (and some cool cards), browse around and find what are latest decks in play, one of them may be played against you soon, and buy the cards that will help you beat them.


Money.
SE was built in a manner that you can go all the way to the top ranks, without spending a cent.

After you played this game for months, with great hours of fun and making great friends along the way, you could think of the team that has given a live time to build and code this great game.

You can support them and the game, by buying SC . Not only will you get enough resources to build any deck, you will also help this game go to the next level.



Notes:

(1) The actual number of cards is 350, 20 Heroes with 2 different arts, and 330 other cards. You can go up to 1360 cards and have the full SE set

(2) Don't expect to win a competition the 1st time you enter one. Stick with your hero, until build a grand-master-deck and you master him. After a while, you will be ready to master a new hero.
(2') An older player told me: There are several types of tournaments, check for pop-ups regularly. Play 1-2 a week you average 375-750 SC a month. Once you can do that getting other decks will be much easier.

(3) When subscribing a promotion, be very careful, some of them may require cell phone activation and you will be charged (a lot), always read the small letters.

(4) To win a Meltdown some players say that you only need 1K other 20K, but all agree you should better know most of the cards very well and have some background in meta game, to be able to stand in the battlefield.

__________________________________________________ _____________
Acknowledgments:
My thanks to the A1 Alliance, for their support while writing this article, especially Qazzaq, whose help made ​​this article readable.

Submit "Shadow Era economy" to Digg Submit "Shadow Era economy" to del.icio.us Submit "Shadow Era economy" to StumbleUpon Submit "Shadow Era economy" to Google

Updated 01-04-2014 at 11:48 AM by desolationsailor

Tags: None Add / Edit Tags
Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. desolationsailor's Avatar
    Updated de Kickstarter to Paypal link.
    Added the "What is Shadow Era", Kip thorp post link in the word "people"
  2. desolationsailor's Avatar
    Added the Pat Jay's Meltdown guide URL in "gain some gold in the Meltdown"
    http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....de-For-Newbies

    Removed the Paypal Kickstarter link
  3. Shadow Era's Avatar
    Nice article, thanks!