Awakenings are here

[Attirm]

17 hours ago, jamanga said:

Thanks for the info. I'm in similar position being sub-450 upon the change i.e. needed to awaken 450 for Mythics and L5 first... which hurt a bit re: gems.  You did really well to get to 550 - I get that through a koban bank you could get a bunch more XP, can I ask did you also buy some more gems?

No, I have not purchased gems, but I am carefully spreadsheeting and planning my gem expenditures to get the best value. This is my current breakdown:

• Mythic: 2 at level 550 (1 Dom, 1 Play)
• Legendary: 18 at level 550 (1 Dom, 2 Ecc, 2 Exh, 3 Phy, 2 Play, 2 Sens, 2 Sub, 4 Voy) 3 at level 500 (1 Exh, 1 Play, 1 Sub)
• Epic: 2 at level 550 (1 Ecc, 1 Exh)
• Rare: 2 at level 550 (1 Ecc, 1 Sens), 7 at level 500 (2 Dom, 1 Exh, 1 Play, 3 Sens)
• 5-star Common: 4 at level 550 (1 Dom, 3 Ecc) 18 at level 500 (1 Dom, 4 Exh, 2 Phy, 3 Play, 4 Sens, 4 Sub)
• 3-star Common: 2 at level 550 (2 Voy)

All of these girls were grandfathered to at least level 401 prior to the awakening update, so the total expenditures to date on awakenings have been: 

• 3,375 Dominatrix gems (1,159 currently stockpiled)
• 4.400 Eccentric Gems (687 currently stockpiled)
• 4,275 Exhibitionist Gems (489 currently stockpiled)
• 3.550 Physical Gems (931 currently stockpiled)
• 4,700 Playful Gems (116 currently stockpiled)
• 4,000 Sensual Gems (744 currently stockpiled)
• 3,200 Submissive Gems (483 currently stockpiled)
• 4,950 Voyeur Gems (433 currently stockpiled)

This currently gives me 30 girls at level 550 and another 28 at level 500. Provided I awaken everyone currently at 500 to 550 that means I'll only have to awaken two more girls to meet the requirements to reach level 600. Although this looks like the halfway mark, almost all the level 500's are commons so it will only cost me 6,600 more gems to get them all to level 550. I currently have 5,000 stockpiled.

However, as you can see my current gem balance is all wrong. I've over-committed to Playful girls, I've got an excess of Voyeur and Eccentric gems with no more girls in need of those (to the extent that I'm starting on 3-stars), and Submissive gems are nearly impossible to get which means I've made basically no progress since the initial 3,000 giveaway. So I'm not quite as close to level 600 as the overall gem totals would indicate.

On 11/28/2021 at 8:54 PM, LukeWarmbath said:

Why should people be punished for collecting girls but only leveling the girls that are actually META for PVP? I have 450 girls in my harem, only 15 +/- are META and of those, I only use about 10 of them for my weekly team depending on the buffs they get, and I'll go out on a limb here and say it's probably the same for others.

To be fair, it depended on how many Mythics you had. If you had few mythics then all 5-star girls are meta (both before and after the awakening update) and before the update 3-star girls would come up fairly often (not so much anymore). While the power gap between Mythics and Legendaries isn't that big, it is big enough to overwhelm blessings on weaker girls and render them too situational to merit using. 

So a guy like me with only 2 mythics had my entire 5-star harem kept mostly up to my current player level, and was frequently dumping books on 3-stars when they happened to get double-blessed for the week. As a result I had a lot of girls already close to my level. I also check the forum every so often for news and got forewarning of awakenings, so I was able to intentionally grandfather my 3-star commons (which I normally wouldn't bother levelling up) so I would could use them as cheap awakening fodder.

I do agree that Kinkoid may want to revisit the stat balance. The vast majority of released girls are 3-star legendaries. These were at least viable under the old system, in the sense that you got so many that on any given week there was a pretty decent chance that someone was double-blessed, and the cost of dumping books on one girl every other week to bring her up to your level wasn't bad. But in this system it is completely unjustifiable to awaken them, and as such they are useless in PVP.

Among the 5-stars, there are a number of balance issues that will be hard to correct. I don't think there's any way to address the problem that Mythics are simply over-tuned; they should have been 10% stronger than Legendaries, not 15% stronger, and that extra bit of power means they utterly invalidate lower-rarity girls. If they were just 4% weaker than they currently are, you'd see 5-star commons on battle teams much more regularly.

One possibility to fix this is to eliminate either the Rare or Epic rarity. These are largely deprecated rarities, as Kinkoid almost never releases new Epic or Rare girls (the most recent "Epic Days" events have released only Legendaries, lol). Why not just combine Epic and Rare into a single rarity and buff all the girls up to the stat line expected of Epics, then buff all Commons up to the stat line that Rares currently have. That would get us back to four rarity grades (Common, Epic, Legendary, Mythic) and would close the power gap to make lower-rarity girls have a better shot at relevance. I doubt it will happen, but it'd be a good change.

Edit: one final stat issue that I really should have mentioned is the unusually large variance among Legendary girls. The weakest legendary girls (like Golden Bunny or Taria) are actually closer to the Epic girls than they are to their fellow Legendaries, with a 5% gap between the weakest and strongest legendaries. This really needs to be tightened, as right now girls like Golden Bunny and Taria are Legendary in name only, and their stat line really makes them more like Epics. Heck, they'd be better off as Epics as at least then they be able to dominate during the Week of the Epic.

37 minutes ago, Redbeard said:

Like I said: the only one's that benefit from this change are the lower level whales.  I was actually able to compete at under level 450 in D3 not for the top spot but, top 4 occasionally and top 15 all the time.  As a mostly free player at 451 I now have 0 chance for top 4 and will be lucky if I am in the top 15 as you still have the level 490-500 whales but, now you have the level 350-480 whales who all seem to now be at 550-600.

My experience has been the exact opposite of you. I'm also a player under level 450 in D3. Pre-awakenings, I would consistently take top 45 and occasionally take top 30 (I have no idea how you're taking top 4; the power gap between me and the level 490-ish players was just too large and I lost too many fights to even have a shot at top 15 under the old system). After this change I'm now easily taking top 30 and am contending for top 15, so I'm definitely seeing a huge improvement in my league results.

You definitely don't have to be a whale to hit 550. I'm already there as a free player, and if I'd been level 451 before awakenings arrived and was able to grandfather one extra awakening I'd already be level 600.

Edited November 30, 2021 by Attirm

[Redbeard]

 Getting top 15 hit players when they are un-boosted keep your boosters up, while using the correct one's sometimes you need more power, sometimes more ego. use the purple mythic item at the right time and, use the correct equipment.  I had won D2 before level 400 and D2 4 times in a row, while finishing top 15 each time in D3.  

Now, I "should" barely make top 15 why because guys have level 600 already.  Just like you I have no idea how you are at 550 already without paying.  I am at 500 and have lots of girls still to level.  As far as strategy, equipment really does not matter, boosters help a bit but, catching players upboosted really makes little difference.  The strategy I am seeing now is guys at 600 sitting with all mythic.  That is it and, they have more power then anyone else.  

[Attirm]

4 minutes ago, Redbeard said:

 Getting top 15 hit players when they are un-boosted keep your boosters up, while using the correct one's sometimes you need more power, sometimes more ego. use the purple mythic item at the right time and, use the correct equipment.

While I do watch to catch people unboosted, that requires me to be online and checking during that brief period as most refresh it very quickly. For some players that's a window of several hours that I might have a serious chance of catching, but for others it might be at an hour I'm just not stopping by to check or am fast asleep. Of course, I'm always using full legendary booster and use my best equipment. The mythic booster only makes sense if going for top 4, which I'm not even close to.

In my current league at the current moment, the only players below level 450 who are in the top 30 is a level 442 at 12th place, a level 437 at 20th place (that's me), a level 428 at 21st, a level 410 at 22nd, a level 425 at 26th, and a level 424 at 30th. None of us are even arguably within shooting range of 4th place given how few fights are left at this point in the week. I've left a lot of easy fights, so I can still potentially have a shot at top 15, but it's a slim odds at this point.

As for how I'm at level 550, I gave the full breakdown of exactly how I spent my gems to do it. I've spent about 32,500 gems to get to where I currently am. The vast majority of that was the initial 24,000 gem giveaway plus the half-dozen 360 gem giveaways they've done since. Admittedly most high-level players have more Mythics than I do, but they're not that much more expensive than Legendaries (1 mythic = 1 legendary + 1 common, so if you have a full team of 7 mythics as opposed to my 2, that only puts you 5 common girls behind me). 

 

[Redbeard]

I guess it depends on the league I have a 375 in 5th, a 404 in 6th, a 393 in 7th, 441 in 8th, 447 in 10th 441 in 11th.  I am in 19th at 451. I will finish top 15 as I have quite a few fights left against weaker players.  My league is screaming lower level whales.  Yours not so much.  I think more will start looking like mine.  With the whales at 600-700 very soon.

[jamanga]

2 hours ago, Attirm said:

All of these girls were grandfathered to at least level 401 prior to the awakening update,

Good on you for excellent resource management! This is the main difference, quite a lot of my L5 girls weren't at level 401 upon the upgrade change. A few were under 350. I also have a huge submissive stockpile - so will be looking for these types of girls, probably common 5* to move up too. 

[jamanga]

I just opened up the 500-550 levels for my harem, and have just taken one mythic to 550 so far, to gauge the effect (lvl 500: 14280, lvl 550: 15708 so 10% increase).  The "team 500" girls are made up of 6 x mythics, 32 x legendary 5* and 12 x common 5* (including Jennie for the next blessed days - I always think of Forrest Gump saying "Jennie" in my head when writing her name for some reason. I'm probably just losing it).

I am level 419 and started with a reasonable stockpile of XP but still not enough - I ran out and had to market-refresh around 15 times (~630 kobans). No $ spent on gems for chests.

I really wanted to take New Year Estelle to 550 first, however I was 8 gems short of the 750 blue gems required... patience is a virtue so they say...

Finished low on orange, red and blue gems, the rest I have ~2000 or more. Happy this grind i.e. the +2 awakenings above your player level, is complete now.

Edited December 1, 2021 by jamanga
typo

[Attirm]

1 hour ago, jamanga said:

 and 12 x common 5* (including Jennie for the next blessed day

On Nutaku, Cunegonde is blessed next week, so I've already got her up to 550. 

Common girls are really, really cheap to awaken, so personally I think it's worthwhile to awaken all 22 of the 5-stars. Awakening 22 commons has the same cost as awakening 5.5 legendaries, but for most players will give better value while also making it easier to reach the next threshold. If you've got a full mythic team their combat power is a bit low, but for those of us with only a partial mythic lineup they frequently end up as viable picks, so awakening them makes a lot of sense. Same goes for the rare girls. 

The best value, though, are the two Epic 5-star girls, Summer Geekette and Travel Gwaenelle. Not only are they almost as strong as legendaries while being cheaper to awaken, but they actually have really rare qualities. Surprisingly among the Mythics and 5-star Legendaries, there's only one girl with dark hair like Geekette, only one with light brown hair like Gwaenelle, only two with Aquarius sign like Gwaenelle, only 4 with Indian Headstand like Geekette, and of course they're these are the only two girls that can take advantage of Week of the Epic in the first place. That's a lot of blessings they face little competition for.

1 hour ago, jamanga said:

I really wanted to take New Year Estelle to 550 first, however I was 8 gems short of the 750 blue gems required... patience is a virtue so they say...

Sensual gems can be obtained from Places of Power, from the "It's Just Natural" temp PoP, so if you have one of those you're likely to get some within the next 24 hours. Not to mention Kinkoid has been giving away 90 of 4 different colors every day and that will probably continue tomorrow. So you probably won't have to wait that long.

[jamanga]

2 hours ago, Attirm said:

you're likely to get some within the next 24 hours

Right now even! The new patch has Finalmecia dropping sensual gems and I just got 20 of them..

I have those 2 5* epics who I have always had a soft spot for, thanks for the extra analysis

[Attirm]

7 hours ago, jamanga said:

Right now even! The new patch has Finalmecia dropping sensual gems and I just got 20 of them..

I have those 2 5* epics who I have always had a soft spot for, thanks for the extra analysis

Sake and Nike are dropping a whopping 25 Submissive and Dominatrix gems respectively. Those are the two rarest gem types, so it's very appreciated to finally see a good way to farm them. I really want to farm some submissive gems, but there are event girls to grab right now so that will have to wait!

[Zorba the Geek]

On 11/30/2021 at 9:15 PM, DvDivXXX said:

Damn. Before reading this, I was almost excited when I saw the notification: "Zorba is still here!".

What screenshots? I don't see any in your post.

It's a know very mild issue, actually. Just close the Market, or click on the portrait of the girl you want to awaken past 401 to visit her Harem page, and it will take your latest awakenings into account. By default, the counter doesn't update itself as long as you're still in the same "Market session".

I answered my own question regarding leveling up my girls to open the gems upgrade option.  I found out one has to go out of the market and into the harem.  It's a bit of a glitch in the system.  Checking the gems unlock requirement from there told me that I had, indeed, leveled up enough girls to unlock the next level.  I still think it's a crock, though, and wastes a lot of time I don't have.  Add to that annoying business with the blessings and it can be a once-a-week grind to change my team.  The last blessing rewarded 'playful' girls, which meant I ran out of those yellow gems and couldn't level up Val Levitya in all accounts.  Her stats were amazing.