Guide on spending gold

[Ikier]

What is it with this gold? Some players use it in abundance and some don’t use it at all. For a long time my stand was clear and something like: “I will not spend real money on a free game. I can play without gold and keep in top20/top40 in the rankings. Spending gold is almost like cheating.” I had bought a little gold, but it wasn’t much.

Since then my perspective has somewhat changed, especially due to 2 things: I won gold in the Valor competition and again in beta-testing on Trial by Sword. I learned that gold can help make my gameplay more fun – especially when sometime buying queue extender which is my personal favourite. I buy gold so that I spend less time on Valor and a little more time in RL. The other thing on this is: If there where no gold spenders there would be no Valor. When we buy gold – we buy bread and butter for those who develops this fantastic game in which several of us spends hours everyday. So – on a personal note – I have decided to buy a little gold frequently and Valor will still be a cheap hobby for me.

After that has been decided – the question is then what to spend gold on. As with most things in Valor I aim at getting the most out of as little as possible. You need to agree with yourself how much is that edge the gold offers me worth? I tried creating an overview on the items that can be purchased and how I view them.

Tickets for speed worlds:
For 5 tickets you can enter a speed world – the part in Valor where it is Pay To Play. If you want some faster action and / or hate how Valor worlds takes months to complete – speed worlds are a fantastic way to play and test yourself. If you are good at it and win – you can even earn more gold than what you spend. It is fun and fast paced – but be aware that you might end up addicted to that part of Valor as well. If you like speed worlds – then it is worth it for sure and those (up to) 2 hours of fun are much cheaper than going to see a movie!

Queue extender – 50 gold:
This is my favourite for sure. Simply because it means I don’t need to log on as often to build up my cities – thereby not having to excuse myself as often from Real Life. It is a very valuable item early on in the world where you have short building times. As the world progresses and the cities you cap are larger the value of this item is decreasing. Still – it is very powerful when managing many cities while having to cap small cities. Another powerful time is if you get under heavy attack and the attacker uses rams – it makes a huge difference if you have to queue up walls level 1-2, return to queue level 3 and again with 4 and 5... when you can just queue up 1-5 and move on to next city.

1000 Bulk Resources – 25 gold:
This can be a very powerful purchase very early in the world where you wait on resources and where 1k of each is heaps of resources. Later the benefit from this is far less. If you need resources for a scholar or scholarship then keep in mind that a full scholarship comes at the price of 1,000 gold and a scholar will cost you 1,250 gold. Often it will be better for your wallet to be more patient – but that goes for the most items. Resources come instantly which of course is an extra benefit.

1000 Clay OR 1000 Wood OR 1000 Iron – 10 gold each:
Again, early on this can be a very powerful purchase if you are lacking just a small amount of 1 type of resource. Do notice that for 100 gold you can buy 10k resources here – but 12 k if you buy them as bulk resources. Resources come instantly which of course is an extra benefit.

Clay OR Wood OR Iron booster – 50 gold each:
Buying boosters on all 3 resources in 1 week is expensive, but also provides a LOT of extra resources – and far more than the 18k you can get from using 150 gold on Bulk resources…even early on! To point out the math: If you have 1 city with maxed resource productions then in 1 week you will get an extra 1,008,000 resources in total – or enough to buy 8 scholarships and have something to spare. And remember – this goes for each city! During early expansion it helps you to easier build buildings and train troops at the same time.

Instant Resource Trade – 25 gold:
For 25 gold you can instantly trade resources in one city – converting one of the resources you have in abundance into a sp**** resource. This I will only use in a very special situation. You can do 2 instant trades for 1 booster which gives you resources and not just swap resources. It can be worth it though – especially if you have a highly profitable farm that only provides one type of resource. Basically – my objections to this one is that it doesn’t provide me any new resources only exchanging those I already have – like when I trade in the market. Balancing resource production is more profitable – but it requires practice.

Speed Ups:
The following purchases are available:
Reduce by 15 min – 10 gold
Reduce by 1 hour – 20 gold
Reduce by 2,5 hours – 40 gold
Reduce by 8 hours – 100 gold

In general – speed ups are for the more heavy monetizers. If you use a good amount of gold you can really race building up – especially early on. Speed ups to raise a wall can also be very efficient when under siege. 100 gold spend to raise the wall fast from 5 to 15 can make the difference – question is if a better chance to save 1 city is worth the gold. As with all of these – it also depends on your wallet. When you have several cities Speed ups doesn’t provide much benefit compared to the cost – but early on it can really speed up your growth.

Truce – 50 gold:
At the price of 50 gold you can secure your lord cities for 24 hours – but your barbarian cities can still be attacked and you can still attack from them. In the new Trial By Sword worlds truce are a less efficient defensive weapon than in old standard worlds. However – remember that once you get out of truce you have 24 hours where you can’t truce. You know it…and so does your enemy. I have seen truce used many times. Often it has just prolonged the inevitable destruction of a player – but it has also happened several times that is has given the defender several hours to rebuild, organise regrouping, organising guild and organising real life to such degree that the next attacks could be repelled. I have met players who wasted a truce because of 10 incomings – but I have also met a player who chose to truce because he was at his best friends wedding. Used correct it can be a powerful truce – but think twice before you truce. Also – is it worth staying in world X at the price of eg 4 x Truce and 4 x Combat Medics? It depends on the perspective and the wallet.

Combat Medics – 50 gold:
To me – Combat Medics seems to me like a waste of money unless you are having many hundreds of large battles. Of course – it can be the little things that determines who is winning a certain battle over a city…or multiple cities if you are under siege. If the attacker has send just enough troops to clear and cap you – then you can save your city. But if the attacker has sent a good amount of waves to overkill you – all you did was killing a fairly small amount of extra troops on the attacker. On the other hand – if you receive massive support with massive attacks on many cities…then Combat Medics in total makes a big difference and can give you and your guild an edge.

Loot thirst – 50 gold:
If you farm a lot – that extra haulage can provide a huge difference. In the early days on the new worlds – you can really haul a lot extra with the same troops. I must admit that although I am a heavy farmer early on – I haven’t used it. I am stuck on my ordinary way of calculating haul capacity. But if you farm a lot – or you plan to farm a lot for the coming week (maybe because you need scholarships) it can in total give you many more resources. Just make sure you use it a lot.

Prestige – 50 gold:
Prestige gives you 5 extra hits on the loyalty / scholarhit. Effectively it means you are sure to cap with 4 scholars – and might even cap with 3. I recommend to use it with consideration. If you have the needed scholars – prestige has no effect for you unless your enemy kills some of your scholars. If your scholars are killed – prestige has no effect! Early on when scholars are few it can give you a faster expansion as you can cap faster on the “longer” walks. If you face a player who is good at sniping your scholars – then prestige just might give you that extra edge, especially if loyalty has already been lowered. However, I find that the best use of prestige is when you are to very quickly recap a city. Reason is this: On a TBS world the loyalty is regenerated at 2 / hour – or 1 every 30 minutes. When a city has just been capped the max loyalty is 25. Now – a scholar with Prestige lowers loyalty 25-35 for each successful hit. This means that in the first 30 minutes after city has been capped you only need for 1 scholar to have a successful hit (with Prestige) to be 100% sure you recap the city.

[Ikier]

Reveal Incoming Troops – 10 gold:
The biggest fallback on this is that it only reveals what troops are coming in that specific wave. Often you have multiple attacks on the same city and just because you know what is in one of them doesn’t tell you about the rest. If you reveal an attack and it is a fake – you will be wondering if the rest are fakes. If you see it is a real attack, or maybe even a scholar attack, you will still be wondering if the rest of the attacks are real or fake. If you only have a few incomings to a city you can choose to reveal each wave and it will give you valuable information to whether you should stack the city, remove troops or just let them hit. If they bring ballistas you might not want to dodge them… You can also use it to confirm the hits you believe are scholar hits in order to snipe them. Revealing incoming troops can quickly be very costly indeed – but it can also provide you valuable information to plan your defences.


Ikier

[ThatValorPlayer]

Very informative write up Ikier.

Just to add on to the combat medic thing; At times i will invest in medics and send a single wave of 10 troops to as many enemy cities as i can. This gives a rough estimation on the enemies strength. (1 troop is saved each time, therefore giving a report of troops inside.)
To defend against this tactic - send your troops away and let the waves die on the wall. Since the report only shows troops inside, the enemy wont get as clear an idea.

[Zoom]

This was an extremely informative thread. Something that I think would be very helpful for the new players is adding a list of things you would spend your gold on in order. Somewhere along the lines of Que Extender > Boosters > Bulk Resources and maybe add when it would be a good time to use a Speed up other than the free ones you get. For example "Use an 8 hour speed up when making an academy, or whatever you think it should be used on".

[MyName999]

This was an extremely informative thread. Something that I think would be very helpful for the new players is adding a list of things you would spend your gold on in order. Somewhere along the lines of Que Extender > Boosters > Bulk Resources and maybe add when it would be a good time to use a Speed up other than the free ones you get. For example "Use an 8 hour speed up when making an academy, or whatever you think it should be used on".

To me only the Resources boosters are worth in the beginning, and not too early... I used them twice, maybe after about 5 days once I leveled my resources up to >lv15 because +25% isn't really efficient when under 1000-1500 rsc/hours, I think, as farming give much more incomes thant this...

I don't use queue extenders as never have enough resources to queue more than 2 contructions ;-P

Anyway, everyone has his own strategies based on his gameplay.


Gratz Ikier my friend having made such great and complete post (as always...)!

[MyName999]

About combat medics, the thing is that if you send at least 20 troops of any kind, as 5% is saved you always have troops going back, and with this a nice report about the attack giving you useful informations...

[Jothemaster]

Just a quick question, if you nuke a city with 20 scholars and combat medics, does the revived scholar do loyalty damage?

[Poisonousdeath]

No it doesn't yes iv tryed lol

[MyName999]

Lol was a bizarre idea, but troops revive after the battle, not before, as they die during it...

[Jothemaster]

Darn, I wanted to troll someone with that