New Feature: The Labyrinth - Started December 6th 2023 at live

[Master-17]

By the way, at least dodging attacks works without any relics. I noticed that my heroines dodge retaliatory attacks even in the first battle, when there were no traces of any relics yet.

[Magic1986]

32 minutes ago, Horsting said:

Same here, all girls were gone 3 fields before the last boss. I did use a stone to recover all of them. The first runs on test server were easy, the last two significantly harder, but I was not sure whether I was just unlucky with the relics. Now, after having lost all girls moreless at the same progress at live server, I think they raised the difficulty. To be true, I went the hardest way this time, took all orange opponents I could. But since harder opponents give better relics (AFAIK), this is not even a bad tactic, to be stronger against last opponents. And I did "correctly" select the girls according to their actual strengths, instead of the misleading ones shown by the game.

As I wrote before, check the stats to know which girls are really good tanks and DDs:

• "Mages" are better tanks if you do not expect the front to be defeated anyway: CH currently gives defence, while HC gives only ego.
• CH girls ("Mages") are not supposed to do raw damage, but to faster cast their spell. However, neither do the GS5 special spells work currently, nor does CH give any mana related stat. KH currently raises starting mana.
• Hence best to use 2 CH girls in the front and 5 KH girls in middle and back. If you face orange or boss opponents, where you expect to loose, at least the front girls, only then use HC ("Tank") girls, since against opponents with high damage, their higher ego makes them last longer than the higher defence of CH girls does. I.e. HC girls are fodder to use in first battles against strong opponents to not loose the more valuable KH and CH girls too quickly 😅.

With the stats fixed, hence (according to info page) HC girls being really tanks with increased ego AND defence, with CH providing starting Mana + Mana regeneration and the GS5 spells functional (I expect them to do something significantly more valuable compared to a regular attack, while currently it is the opposite), the difficulty could be actually fine. Thinking about it, how is it even possible that this feature gets released, with a fancy new use for the GS5 skills, when this was obviously never tested by anyone 😂😭.

Thanks for that explanation.

 

For your last paragraph:

Like many other major features: really short testing period on the test server and then a rushed release wit severe bugs. This has been done in so many features that i feel like ignoring new stuff entirely for the first weeks would be the best.

[Horsting]

20 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

By the way, at least dodging attacks works without any relics. I noticed that my heroines dodge retaliatory attacks even in the first battle, when there were no traces of any relics yet.

Yep, they have a low base chance to dodge, probably based on harmony, not sure. It is higher against weaker opponents, so it is some stat relative to opponents, which makes harmony likely. However, it becomes a relevant chance only when you have a relic which raises the chance by a fixed percentage. Legendary is 40% IIRC, which is not nothing, especially if you are able (or forced to due to lack of team-wide relics in draft) to get it combined with this one:

However, currently against red/orange and boss opponents, I usually loose the whole team, so such single-girl/element relics are not worth it (if you get an alternative).

Btw, after one run at hero level 420:

-2200 from shop and code. So it scales with hero level as well. But still, with 13.2k per 20 shards and 1 run per 2 days it will take

13200*2/(4430 2230/2)=24 days to get the girl into SM shop and
13200*5/(4430 2230/2)=60 days to finish her (hmm, quite precisely at Laby season end?)

if you finish all 3 floors every 2 days. And this is currently not assured, as long as the bugs (=difficulty) remain and no further free stones are provided (a second code for 3 stones was just shared).

EDIT: Whoops, I forgot the free shop + code coins. Fixed above with -2200 coins from shop + code.

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Horsting

[Master-17]

So, at least for mythic girls the magic attack of the 5th skill works. "Shield" heals the entire team (and it seems to the maximum health).

Defeat Medication, for some reason, heals the girl entirely, and not the specified percentage of her health.

P.S. The game offers to take another such healer, does it make sense? 🤣

Edited December 6, 2023 by Master-17
P.S.

[Yamiray]

Just now, Master-17 said:

Defeat Medication, for some reason, heals the girl entirely, and not the specified percentage of her health.

I noticed that and guessed it was a bug because I have this one at 16% and the one where at the start of each action heals you and this one fully healed the girl where the other one barley healed her at all.

[Horsting]

24 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

So, at least for mythic girls the magic attack of the 5th skill works. "Shield" heals the entire team (and it seems to the maximum health).

Hmm, it did not work with my Elder Magus Bianca with shield at level 5. She still did a "Not so dangerous spank". Probably it was fixed within the last hours, or it does not affect all players/girls. Healing the entire team is quite nice for a spell that is done after a few rounds. EDIT: @Master-17 Which class was the girl in your case? In my case it was two KH ones where it did not work, one M6 (shield skill at level 5) and one L5 (reflect skill at level 4). I was just thinking whether it works for "Mage" (CH) girls only or so^^.

Regarding "Defeat Medication": I had only a common (6%) one, and if I checked it correctly, it did actually not heal to 100%, but to close before 100%. I was wondering whether it accidentally heals to 100-X %. I think I saw numbers closer than 6% from max, but not sure how it interacts with Rejuvenation.

Edited December 6, 2023 by Horsting

[Master-17]

12 minutes ago, Horsting said:

Regarding "Defeat Medication": I had only a common (6%) one, and if I checked it correctly, it did actually not heal to 100%, but to close before 100%

It seems to me that this is a scale error. In fact, it is 100%, but in the initial amount it is rounded up, and when a cure occurs, the real amount is shown. Although I could be wrong.

[Master-17]

Why the enemy concentrates 90% of the time on one target, while mine always spreads damage across the entire line???

And it’s especially infuriating when the enemy has one hit of HP left, and my next girl hits the enemy with maximum HP

Edited December 6, 2023 by Master-17

[Lolliz]

I've gone through it on HH, CH and PSH now. So for now, it's fun, cause it's new. But I guess Champions were new at some point also, and now it's just awful. And given that we get about 2200 (?) coins per run, it would be just enough to be able to make it within the 60days per girl. But of course only, if you don't have to spend coins on a revive once within those 30 runs. And obviously always take the coins you can get on the floors. So, if there is no outside source of those coins, once you miss just one coin stack or have to revive (for coins) once to finish, you will never be able to get back on time (given the current plan).

As I've compared this to Champions already, for players who play several accounts or on several servers, this can get tedious soon, I guess. I'm not sure I see myself doing this on all 3 servers every two days for the next months, especially given the pressure on time explained above.

The game itself is an ok copy of slay the spire, but, bugs aside, it doesn't feel very rewarding to go through the stages.

There is absolutely no incentive to go for the hard way and choose a better opponent over a weaker one. It's just more punishing.

The relics mostly seem mediocre at best. It's didn't really feel like I got through the floor smoother, just because I had gotten some legendary or even mythic buffs. Especially as solo-girl buffs and even elemental buffs feel pretty useless. As you don't have chance to revive a particular buffed girl, those buffs can go to waste pretty quickly. As you dash through like 70 girls throughout the run, a single one isn't really worth a lot here.

And as this is was the "easy" labyrinth, I guess there has to be done some balancing (and good incentives) to go for the hard version at some point, where this could involve several revives.

So, the mode itself is fun for now, but definitely needs some of tweaking to be enjoyable on the long run.  

   

[LukeWarmbath]

They really need to rework the enemy scaling, and create incentives for fighting medium and hard enemies instead. It doesn't make sense that an easy enemy is roughly half of my teams power, but a medium is only about 750k lower, and hard is equal or higher. I get the impression that relics boosting your teams power is tripping the scaling of the enemy teams and making them stronger as well, when they should be making the hard enemies easier to clear without 5 or 6 of your girls getting melted. But maybe my impression is wrong 🤔

Also, what's the point of girl skills if we can't use them in this mode? Oh right, it would make it easier 🙃

Edited December 6, 2023 by LukeWarmbath

[LukeWarmbath]

42 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Why the enemy concentrates 90% of the time on one target, while mine always spreads damage across the entire line???

And it’s especially infuriating when the enemy has one hit of HP left, and my next girl hits the enemy with maximum HP

I had girls on my team die because of this.

[Master-17]

In general, I passed on the first try without using hearts (resurrection stones), but only received about 1800 coins (4248 - 2400 (?) from gift codes). I tried to go through the resurrection plates, but sometimes they only restore a few percent to a slightly damaged girl, when you have several “tired” in your team, so this is a disaster. It is necessary to ensure that the resurrection slabs are first selected from completely tired girls, and then, if there are none, the damaged ones are treated.

And it’s also important to try to choose opponents whose speed is lower than yours, then your girls will attack first (and there is a good chance of knocking out at least 1-2 opponents before they hit you) Otherwise, the enemy will be able to take your girls out of action before they can be useful.

However, if this is the EASY LEVEL, I’m afraid to imagine what will happen on the more difficult ones...

True, they seemed to promise us that at more difficult levels there would be greater rewards, so perhaps the costs of resurrections on them would pay off?

Edited December 6, 2023 by Master-17

[Master-17]

Yes, in addition to healing the team with a “shield”, the following special techniques were noticed: Protecting one ally with a shield, “Dick slap” (not sure of the exact wording) causing huge damage to one enemy, Adding a certain amount of mana to all allies, "Cold shower" allows all allies to take another turn (?), Deals damage to 2 enemies over 2 turns (ignition icon on them). I don’t know which 5th skill is responsible for what. Looks like it depends on the girl element(?)

Plus, it seems that the enemy has a random relic, because at some point the enemy was finishing off my girls who were practically killed (about 5-10% of the maximum HP)

P.S. A separate post to highlight useful information from the overall impression of the activity.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Master-17
More special techniques

[OmerB]

Let's say that we're getting 2100 tockens on each 48 hours ( that's what I've got today) - so 63,000 on 60 days.

Now, 20 shards of the new girl cost 13200. So we can get 4×20 shards of the new girl (that's only in the easy method).

[Horsting]

21 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

And it’s also important to try to choose opponents whose speed is lower than yours

That is actually an important point. Is there a quicker way to know this without checking each of the opponent's girls?

I wonder why you got so much less coins: Only the 3 floor bosses and treasure fields give them, right? And the treasure fields do give only a minor amount, so getting one more or less per floor should not result in >200 coins less (than me). Will be interesting to find out how the amount of coin rewards scales with level. I'll take some notes next run, and on test server now.

30 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

I tried to go through the resurrection plates, but sometimes they only restore a few percent to a slightly damaged girl, when you have several “tired” in your team, so this is a disaster. It is necessary to ensure that the resurrection slabs are first selected from completely tired girls, and then, if there are none, the damaged ones are treated.

Uff, I never saw this happening, nasty, and I fully agree.

[430i]

Does anyone have an experience whether identical relics stack? I would imagine something like "all girls gain 6% defense" will stack. But what about the "Rejuvenation" relic - restore 6% ego for each girl before attack?

[hihi1237823]

 

I saw screenshot with 9 items for sale in the market. Mine only got 8. Is this normal?

 

[Master-17]

27 minutes ago, 430i said:

all girls gain 6% defense

Forget about relics that add protection! This is such a small thing! At best, damage protection is 15k with 100k damage dealt to you. Typically this is even less. Take relics for damage and healing.

[Horsting]

52 minutes ago, 430i said:

Does anyone have an experience whether identical relics stack? I would imagine something like "all girls gain 6% defense" will stack. But what about the "Rejuvenation" relic - restore 6% ego for each girl before attack?

As far as I could see, it does stack. But I did not note everything down. For "Protective Bubble" I am 100% sure, for "Finish Move" I had no chance to check.

For "Defeat Medication" of course it currently does not make sense to collect more than 1, since it heals to 100% in any case.

Btw, boosters seem to have no effect on the girls stats in laby, do they? On test server I put on 4 Ginseng, but the stats did not change. At first I thought they have higher ego, but then I recognised that your own girls' ego is different from opponent to opponent. A mechanic I do not understand so far.

And another one. On test server, where my hero was level 247 and in between became level 248, with the following coin rewards:

• Floor 1 treasure: 29, boss: 287
• Floor 2 treasure: 58, boss: 574 (exactly x2 of floor 1)
• Floor 3 treasure: 87, boss: 861 (exactly x3 of floor 1)
• The treasure fields seem to give 10% (rounded up) of the bosses. One should be able to get 2 per floor in average.

This is at least close (or even the same) as with level 420 on live server, so probably I did remember wrong (or the numbers changed) and it does not scale? Somehow makes sense given the fixed costs for the girl.

20 minutes ago, Master-17 said:

Take relics for damage and healing.

Often one does not have the choice, or only between damage for a single girl or defence for everyone, where I prefer defence highly. But otherwise I agree: Same as in B.D.S.M: Since damage values are higher than defence values, the same % defence is less than the same % damage. KK seem to never respect this simple logic for balancing. The only defensive relic that is sane, is "Protective Bubble", since is has significantly higher values.

Edited December 7, 2023 by Horsting

[430i]

Its hilarious how rushed this feature is. It seems they copied some HTML code from the Boss Bang event and did not even bother deleting the unneeded UI text and elements, they just hid them.

[EpicBacon]

So played thru the first easy mode without looking at the forums first, and I have some takeaways.
This is basically slay the spire at home, nothing wrong with that tho, I do like slay the spire.

For the initial girl pool to add, I just chose auto, since I had no idea of how much of each class i would need,
I do like the battle team setup, it makes sense and its adequately explained how it works.
The only thing I have to complain about is that I didn't seem to be able to add girls freely, even if I chose say frontrow, the game seemed to put the girl into the backrow first.
You also cannot see damaged girls in that screen, so I would have to leave the screen then enter a battle square, to then see who I would need to change out.

For the battle itself, nothing much to complain about, my tank girls didn't feel especially more tanky then other girls, atleast not in terms of hitpoints/defence.
And no matter how much defence I added with relics It did not seem to matter much, During the later battles my tank team would often leave the battle with low hp and would have to be switched out.

Speaking of relics, once you complete a battle, a screen pops up, with three relics for you to choose from.
And here I run into another problem; should I choose the one that gives my domination girls extra X or should I give my exhibition girls extra Y?
I have no idea, I don't even know how many of each girl I have in my current team, or how many in total i brought in.
There is no way to minimize this screen, I cannot click on something to review my girls.
There is no way for me to make a value judgement here, at best it would be an educated guess.
Therefore If i got the option to choose something that gave bonus to all girls, then I focused on that instead.

And sometimes I got the option to give a certain girl a big buff. That's great, is this girl in my team? is she alive? what is her condition? I do not know. I am not allowed to check.
This should be a simple fix, either have a tooltip showing mow many girls said relic will affect, and for individual girls, just pop up a screen with her status on.

Anyhow, floor1 and 2 went relatively fine, the first battle on floor 2 seemed harder then the first floor boss, so that felt a bit strange, but on we went.

At first I did not understand the number on my girls, but it was soon apparent that its the battle order, I don't know if this is fixed, based on some sort of "speed skill" level or element, it looked like I was given priority earlier on, then on late floor2 and the rest of floor3, the enemy team basically just got a start on my team.

This starts to become a problem... When fighting against a strong enemy team with starting order, they basically get to choose 1 frontrow girl from my team to remove from battle, and severely damage the other to where she will be completely useless round2.

When you take into consideration that my team loves to spread damage out as much as possible, its not uncommon that I leave all the girls in the enemy middlerow at less then 10.000 hp each at the end of my round, allowing them one more attack, sometimes even triggering their mana ability for extra an extra slap in the face.

Speaking of mana abilities; since I have no read up much at all on the laby, I didn't know what abilities were good. Most of them just seems to be the "something something slap" for some extra damage.
Venus did have healing tho, I am not sure if its attributed to her being element white, or just because its Venus, but healing is nice.

Unfortunaly, the healing rarely came into effect at all. A lot of the times my battles ended with all of my girls at
94% or 95% mana, and they never got off, In the instance that the battle went so far that it could go off, Venus was too low on the battle order, meaning some of the damage dealers go the turn before her, and ended the battle.
I even had a round where Venus was able to get off her heal, but the enemy team had just defeated my second Tank with their final attack, and Venus's heal affected no one. That last one did not feel great, but hey that's what Rng does.

The later battles on floor3 were just slogfests, with the enemy team able to delete a girl at battle start meant that  I had to try each of them atleast 2 times in order to proceed.
The boss is just a harder version of the battles leading up to it; and without the revive all, I would have no chance defeating it.
I am sure once I learn a bit more; things will become easier, figuring out the best team combination; and what relics are better then others.

So my final thoughts on this;

It's kind of fun, I like games like slay the spire where you navigate your way thru a gauntlet; getting stronger on the way.
I's different;  it does require a bit more thinking compared to something like bossbang where you click 100 times in a row
No monetization that I can see; They could amp up the difficulty and offer us revive pots for kobans to make sure we would need to use several in order to win, I haven't seen any of that yet, and for that I am greatful.

My tank girls does not feel tanky; I don't know what makes them a tank, does their mana skill do something to do with tankyness? I don't think I've ever gotten a tank girl to do her skill, as battle is either over, or the girl is no longer around
They have done some sort of evade skill, so I guess that's something

Is the battle order set or random?, Is it something I can effect? If i get a round off before the enemy, I know its going to be fine, if enemy starts, well.. its usually back to team setup screen for me.

Relic popup, and giving me no option to check what, if any value the relics offered will contribute to my team.
Girl mana skill; I could find no way ingame to check what skill said girl has, as mentioned I could only find the "slap" and "healing" skill, maybe there are more in the patch notes, i should take a second look.

For now, this looks decent, probably some small kinks to sort out, but this looks promising

Suggestion: Let us be able to mark 2-3 girls are priority targets; so If we defeat the front row, instead of spreading out the damage evenly, there is a chance that they will actually defeat a girl, thus making sure you have a higher chance of surviving the next round

Edited December 7, 2023 by EpicBacon
suggestion

[Master-17]

1 hour ago, 430i said:

[Magic1986]

5 hours ago, Master-17 said:

Why the enemy concentrates 90% of the time on one target, while mine always spreads damage across the entire line???

And it’s especially infuriating when the enemy has one hit of HP left, and my next girl hits the enemy with maximum HP

I guess thats what the relic is for which kill the enemy girl if they are below a certing % oftheir max HP. Got one with 3%. If you can stack those you can avoid this.

for now the best relics seems to be the one that heal your girls, give shields in any form and reduce incoming damage.

[Master-17]

1 hour ago, Magic1986 said:

the best relics seems to be the one that heal your girls

At the same time, rejuvenation is practically a useless thing, since it restores a very small part of the health of even an almost defeated girl. Even green opponents remove more in one attack than this ability restores.

[garadron]