Vega Conflict: From Zero to Hero

I’ve been playing this game for some years now. My base is mature; nothing needs upgrading or refitting, I have all ships and tech. Things have gotten a little slow; I am sort of in maintenance mode, except for the acquisition of new technology.

So, in the small hours of October 23rd , 2019, I created a second account – an “Alt”, in game parlance – to see how the game has changed for beginners in the past four years. To show my derision for the publishers, along with my talent for punnery, I gave this account the imaginative name of “KixArse”.

One thing that I did not see the first time round was that new players get a massive “Startup Bonus” for the first fifteen days:

The first couple of hours were spent playing tutorials and introductory missions. I had not intended to spend any money, but an introductory offer for 500 coins for $2 was too good to pass up. One thing to note here is that this offer is not available for long; this offer could be redeemed twice, but when I looked back a day later, it was gone, replaced by different offers. That’s a shame, as the second one would have given me a Commerce Module, which produces coins. Ah well…

The other big mistake that I made was to redeem the rewards for the initial missions, which included ship build, refit and repair tokens. These expired before I could use them, since the starting bonus made most of these operations instantaneous. Nevertheless, it was annoying to watch as scores of time tokens vanished in a puff of logic. Lesson learned…

Campaigns:

To help with the massive effort required to reach the higher tech in the game, Kixeye have designed a series of Campaigns.

• Each Campaign introduces the player to a new Faction: Rebel, Vega, VSec, Iron Star, Demon Corps, and Xeno Division.
• Each Campaign consists of four missions, which must be completed within 24 hours.
• Mission 1 gives you a resource fill-up, so it is best to start when you are low on resources. Sometimes it upgrades various modules in your base.
• Mission 2 gives you access to all of the ships in that faction.
• Mission 3 gives you a pre-built fleet of ships from that faction.
• Mission 4 gives you access to all of the tech in that faction.
• Missions 1-3 are relatively easy. Mission 4 is much harder than the other 3, but can be handily done with the fleet you got at the end of Mission 3.

Two months on, I have the following advice:

• Purchase both of the $2 introductory offers right away. They may not be there later. The coins will allow you to fill up storage which will save you farming times, along with unlocking the commerce module. This is probably the best value you will ever get for $4.
• Do the missions, but do NOT redeem the ones that reward you with Time Tokens until you need them. This will be after the introductory speed-up bonus wears off.
• Research basic Genesis Cruiser, Cargo V, Rancor Battleship, and Revelation Cruiser as soon as possible.
• Set up a farming fleet. A fleet of Ospreys with 3xCargo V can haul away 8M at a time. A fleet of Exterminators with 3x Armored Cargo Hold III can haul 40.4M. A “Cargo Peg” Pegasus with 5x Armored Cargo Hold III
• DO THE CAMPAIGNS! You will get massive rewards and shortcuts that will save you MONTHS of grinding.
• Be careful what ships you research and build. Because the campaigns catapult you all the way to Xeno Division, a lot of the lower-end ships will become obsolete very quickly indeed.

I was luckier than most; from time to time Kixeye gives away free ships, and I was fortunate enough to receive Five Manticore Battlecruisers, Five Trojan Cruisers, and one Gargoyle Carrier (all pre-fitted) which helped massively.

To coin, or not to coin?

In gaming parlance, a “coiner” is a player who has amassed a large number of coins from in-game purchases (or cheating), and uses those coins to dominate over by other players by instant-repairing their fleets and returning to battle. This is generally looked down upon by “free” players and, as a result, “coiner” is something of a derogatory term.

Having said that, game developers cannot survive without money, and any game that cannot attract dollars from the player community will ultimately fail. So my philosophy is to slip the developers of good games a few dollars when they offer good value, but don’t use coins to dominate over other players. My in-game purchases thus far have been as follows:

• Introductory $2 purchase of 600 coins (good value)
• $5 purchase of a ship upgrade (a mistake, as I could easily have farmed it)
• $10 “max-out” upgrade which saved me months of farming and upgrading, as well as giving me a fleet of six Bastion cruisers, which came in *very* useful for farming.

• 10 for a pre-fitted Manticore Mk III Battlecruiser (not really necessary, but a nice-to-have for completing my free fleet of five Mk I Manticores)
• $10 for a pre-fitted sovereign (Definitely worth the money in terms of time saved, as you only need one and do not need to farm to unlock the ship)
• $10 for two pre-fitted Paragons (useful but not necessary)
• $10 to upgrade the free Gargoyle to Mk V. (saves me having to build out a fleet of Ogres and upgrade them to Mk IV+, then farm the parts) — definitely worthwhile, though I wish they had included the Elite upgrade in this offer

Recommended ships:

It is not recommend that you build any Rebel, Vega, VSec, Iron Star, or Demon Corps ships, unless you need to build them to complete missions. The reason for this is because you are progressing through the game so fast that these ships will become obsolescent within a matter of days as better ships and tech are becoming available every couple of days. Even Xeno ships are of limited use once you have unlocked the equivalent AXIS hull. The one exception to this is the suppressor, which retains its usefulness as an anti-swarm/carrier-defense ship. Another is a fleet or two of Exterminators, but for combat they are outclassed by Liberators.

• Altairian: Get Bastions, Zeuses and a Sovereign Carrier. Not sure about Ajax.
• Umbra: You need Valrayvn, Ogres, Medusa, Wraiths, Gargoyle Carrier.
• Pharmakon: This is still in the air, as Pharmakon recently got nerfed, but I would recommend Operator, Daemon Battleships, Plexus Carrier and Omega.

The good news is that you can get deep into the game very very quickly. In a few short weeks I have been able to gain access to ships and tech that took years on my first account. The bad news is that you miss out on a lot of the enjoyment that came with taking the scenic route, such as Frigate fun (before the Great Rebalance™) and Co-op missions against Aliens using Manifold Missiles.

The future?

This account is for low-end fun; I do not see myself getting any dreadnoughts on this account; the amount of farming necessary to get one is prohibitive, let alone upgrading them to the point where they become useful. But who can tell?

See you out there in the Big Black™

IronThrone Rocks!

Once in a while an absolutely fantastic game comes along. A game that leaves you wondering how they managed to pack so much detail into the hardware and software at at heir disposal. Such games are known as “Megagames”.

About a month ago, I discovered IronThrone. I call it a MegaGame because it is actually severally several games cunningly lashed together so as to become greater than the sum of its parts.

• Castle Mode: You are the Lord of a Castle. Build and upgrading it. Train troops. Recruit heroes and dress them in the most fashionable armor you can lay your hands on.
• Town Mode: In front of your castle is a town which has some problems that you must solve. This is a simplified “Dungeon Siege” type hack-and-slash. Completing quests, which takes about fifteen minutes, gives you daily buffs that will help you elsewhere.
• World Mode: Outside of your castle is a big bad world full of monsters, NPC Strongholds, unclaimed resources, and, of course, other Lords. Are you ready?
• There are several other modes, such as Dimensional Combat, Team Deathmatch and Battle Royale

One personal observation: One thing that I find deeply amusing is that the female heroes are extraordinarily pretty, with supermodel figures, child-bearing hips, and world-class fighting skills.

This is not a complaint! Red-blooded men want to look at pretty girls; always have, always will. Before some of you ladies get all bent out of shape and demanding average (i.e., fat) women in videogames, remember that , and that the male fighters are all magnificent specimens of masculinity as well, and none of us guys feel inadequate, so please grow up.

While it is perfectly possible to play the game without spending a bean, this purchase is highly advisable If you are serious about this game. Besides, I like to reward good-quality programming. Purchases range from 99c mini-packs to huge $100 aliquots of golden goodness. The packs are well-price and give excellent value. So far I have spent about $20, in the form of five one-dollar packs, one five-dollar pack that gives a bonus chest every five levels up to 25, and one ten-dollar purchase that gave me a bunch of permanent buffs.

Like what you see? Head over to www.playironthrone.com and get your own castle. And yes, if you are worthy, you will get a dragon of your own.

One thing that impressed me about IronThrone (I’m still not sure if it is one word or two) is the level of attention to detail. Too many games are coded by folks for whom English is a second language, and it shows, in the form of poor spelling and grammar, but not Iron Throne. I did  find one typo though:

What can I say? It’s a gift. And a curse.

Planet Commander – Review

As anyone who has spent more than twenty seconds perusing this blog can tell, I like space combat games. I have been a fan of the genre since I discovered Elite, way back in 1981. Since then I have played literally dozens of these games, including StarLancer, Freespace I and II, The Homeworld series, Freelancer, and of course my two current faves, Vega Conflict and Dreadnought.

Planet Commander is the latest in this long line. I’ve been playing this for a couple of months now. You start with one ship, and can unlock and buy more as you progress through the game. Like Dreadnought, this is an online multiplayer game: you participate in online battles up to 4v4. You can only fly one ship at a time. If the ship is killed, you can move on to another of your ships until you win, leave the game, or all of your ships are destroyed. You then get points (which improve your ranking and level) and cash (Coins and Crystals). The ships come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from Frigates through Destroyers, Interdictors, Cruisers, Battleships, all the way up to the Dreadnoughts.

The game is a lot of fun and is well-balanced; my one most glaring criticism is the pricing structure. Things start off well enough; an introductory pack costs about $3, and a follow-up pack which unlocks a ship costs another $8 or so. They are decent enough value, and most players can have a lot of fun for $11. The following pack, which unlocks the Kingsword Cruiser (I find myself wondering whether that is pronounced “King Sword” or King’s Word“) is just under $17, which is a little expensive for me – but the ship alone costs $27 to unlock, so there you go.

Many of the ships automatically unlock when you reach a given level, but some ships – including the top ship in each tier – can only be unlocked with a liberal application of cold, hard cash.

• Wyrm Frigate $10.49
• Olympus Destroyer $12.49
• Reaper Interdictor $16.99
• Kingsword Cruiser $26.99
• Soul Catcher Battleship $42.99
• Nemesis Dreadnought $55.99
• Tyrant Dreadnought $112.49

That adds up to $278.43, which is way too high for a phone/tablet game.

In my opinion, such a game should not cost a player more than $100 in total… in which case those ships are overpriced by a factor of three.

Who are you calling an “Imperial Star-Destroyer”?

Bottom line: a fun game, especially if you have a tablet (I have three!). Decent value if you buy the first two packs, and you will get months of play out of that modest outlay. But the subsequent ships are overpriced, and if you play it long enough I am pretty sure that you will come up against a pay-to-win barrier.

Interstellar Pilot

Those of me who have been following my blog for any length of time will know that I am a big fan of Space games. Two of my All-time-favorite games were Elite and Freelancer. Elite was billed (rightly) as the first MegaGame, featured wire frame graphics, and ran on the BBC Model B in only 32k of memory. The second was a Windows PC game. Both of those games allow the player to interact with the universe in various ways instead of just fighting and shooting. You could be a trader, a miner, a bounty hunter, a mercenary.

I recently discovered a new game that is a magnificent addition to this genre. And unlike the previous two, it is available for the Android platform (but not IOS – ha-ha!). A game so surprising and delightful, that I have all but ceased playing two other games (Star Trek: Timelines and Astronest: The Beginning), and, following one bone-headed decision after another, Vega Conflict ison life-support.

The game is called “Interstellar Pilot“. It takes place in a “Universe” that consists of eight “Sectors” linked by wormholes.Each sector has stations (trading stations, shipyards, outposts, factories etc), asteroids (of several different types that can be mined for free resources), and lots of ships zipping about. All ships and stations belong to one of a number of factions; some are friendly, others, not so much.

There are only two in-game purchases currently available: $2.49 to unlock the Capital ships (Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships) and $1.49 to unlock the Thunder Frigate. This means that you can unlock ever ship in the game for four bucks! I would advise that you purchase at least the first one as soon as possible, as I suspect that the price will go up once word gets out and the game becomes more popular.

This is a beautiful, beautiful game. I will write more on it later.

Vega Conflict – Blueprints Redux

Recently, the brains behind Vega Conflict revised the blueprint system. As a result, many items that were previously available only available in events were moved into blueprints. This included much of the must-have tech items, such as Fusion Thrusters, Gladius Drivers and Siege Drivers. The new Blueprint layout is as follows:

Vega Cargo 20/25

• Blast Shield I
• Repulsor Shield
• Convoy Formation
• Diffuser Shield I
• Thermal Beam I
• Hydra Missile I
• Capacitive Plates I
• Tachyon Beam Turret I
• Metaphase Field I
• Gladius Driver I
• Blast Shield II
• Diffuser Shield II
• Destiny Cruiser

Vega Cargo 27/30/33

• Thermal Beam II
• Hydra Missile II
• Chicane Formation
• Capacitive Plates II
• Metaphase Field II*
• Repulsor Shield II
• Taipan Cutter
• Arrestor Beam Turret I*
• Siege Driver I*
• Metaphase Shield I*+
• Armored Hold I*
• Fusion Thrusters I*
• Creeper Torpedo I
• Condor Frigate*

Vega Cargo 35/37

• Tachyon Bean Turret II
• Gladius Driver II
• Diffuser Shield III
• Blast Shield III
• Hydra Missile III
• Siege Driver I*+
• Siege Driver II*
• Metaphase Shield I
• Metaphase Shield II
• Armored Hold I*
• Armored Hold II*
• Fusion Thrusters I*
• Fusion Thrusters II*
• Creeper Torpedo I
• Creeper Torpedo II
• Condor Frigate
• Gharial Cutter*

Vega Cargo 40/45

• Repulsor Shield III
• Tachyon Beam Turret III
• Capacitive Plates III
• Scythe Destroyer
• Metaphase Field III
• Thermal Beam III
• Gladius Driver III
• Apocrypha Cruiser III
• Siege Driver II*+
• Siege Driver III*
• Arrestor Beam Turret II
• Arrestor Beam Turret III
• Metaphase Shield II*
• Metaphase Shield III*
• Armored Hold II*+
• Armored Hold III*
• Fusion Thrusters II*
• Fusion Thrusters III*
• Creeper Torpedo II
• Creeper Torpedo III+
• Gharial Cutter*+
• Dread Battleship*

Vega Elite Cargo 50/53/55

• Siege Driver III*+
• Arrestor Beam Turret III+
• Metaphase Shield III+
• Armored Hold III
• Fusion Thrusters III+
• Creeper Torpedo III+
• Dread Battleship*+

VSec 27

• Pentagon Formation*
• Creeper Torpedo Turret I*
• Gladius Driver Turret I*
• SICO Missile I
• Creeper Torpedo Turret II*
• Gladius Driver Turret II*
• SICO Missile II*
• Eagle Frigate

VSec 30/33/35

• Creeper Torpedo Turret III*
• AP Driver II*
• NET Torpedo II*
• Midgard Carrier
• Gladius Driver III*
• Echo Ray II*
• SICO Missile III*
• Echo Ray Turret I*
• Echo Ray Turret II*
• Burst Ray I*
• Burst Ray II*
• SICO Missile Turret I*
• SICO Missile Turret II*
• Wave Driver I*
• Wave Driver II*
• AP Driver Turret I*
• AP Driver Turret II*
• Vector Torpedo I*
• Vector Torpedo II*

VSec 37/40/45

• Echo Ray III*
• AP Driver III*
• Echo Ray Turret II*+
• Echo Ray Turret III*
• Burst Ray II*+
• Burst Ray III*
• SICO Missile Turret II*+
• SICO Missile Turret III*
• Wave Driver II*+
• Wave Driver III*
• AP Driver Turret II*+
• AP Driver Turret III*
• Vector Torpedo II*+
• Vector Torpedo III*
• Komodo Cutter*

VSec 50/53/55

• Echo Ray Turret III*+
• Burst Ray III*+
• SICO Missile Turret III*+
• Wave Driver III*+
• Zeal Battleship*
• AP Driver Turret III*+
• Vector Torpedo III*+
• Lance Destroyer*

* This blueprint item was previously an event item.
+ This blueprint is also available at a lower tier, which may be easier to farm.

This article is an excerpt from my recently-updated Game Guide, over a hundred and seventy pages of hints, tips, tricks and tactics that will help you get to grips with the finer points of the game, all for a paltry $3.99. However, if you use this link, you can get it for $1 off. Make me smile – buy my book!

Astronest Review

While playing Vega Conflict, I saw an ad for another game – the oddly-named “Astronest: The Beginning“. That was before the brains behind Vega Conflict stopped offering coins in return for watching ads.. but that is another story.

I gave the game a whirl, and was delightfully surprised. While the initial concept looks similar to Vega Conflict, the execution is far different. For one thing, building ships and research are instantaneous, but use up a number of turns (called Access Points or AP), which accumulate over time. The player’s AP limit depends on the level of their “nation”.

Your Nation is a collection of colonized planets, Heroes (people that you recruit) and fleets. Each planet has facilities that generate Gold, Minerals, Research, Energy, Fleet Production and Cosments. Each facility can be upgraded for the requisite amounts of AP, Gold and Minerals. Upgrades are instantaneous, but AP takes time to accumulate, which amounts to the same thing. There is also one other currency – crystals – that cannot be mined, but may be received as a reward for missions or purchased.

Each planet may have a Minister – one of your heroes whose Governing skill gives the planet a bonus. Other heroes can be assigned to fleets (Destroyers, Cruisers, Battleships or Motherships). A planet can be operated without a Minister, but a fleet cannot go into battle without a commander. All heroes level up with experience.

The Good: Compliments

• Boots fast – under twenty seconds, far quicker than Vega Conflict or Star trek timelines.
• Runs on lower-end hardware than VC, and does not require a persistent internet connection.

The Bad: Criticisms

• The game does a good job of explaining the basics of combat, but leaves the player floundering when it comes to Trons, training, LDs, cosments, colonizing other planets and lots of other stuff.
• All of the female heroes (heroines?) are slim and pretty. I am not sure how I feel about this. I despise political correctness as much as anyone, but when you say “female head of a planetary government”, I think Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel or Madelaine Albright, not some gorgeous Blonde babe. Having said that, I do not want to see old, unattractive women introduced to the game for the sake of political correctness, but at the same time I don’t want to see people who don’t look the part. There are some who may consider that attitude sexist; I don’t care – and that will be reflected in my purchasing decisions.
  

Hi. I’m Kayla. You can like, take me to bed, or, like, put me in charge of your planet. Like.

• On a similar note, half of the men look effeminate or gay. These are the less experienced officers. The other half, the most experienced S-class heroes – have the mature, grizzled look that one would normally associate with experienced fleet commanders.

My Gaydar is going off. And the guy in the middle looks like George Lucas.

The Ugly: Errors, mistakes, and Bugs

• Poor Grammar: e.g.: when fitting out a fleet, it says “Equipping” instead of “Equipped”.
• Spelling errors: Nuff said:

 

This. Should. Not. Happen.

• In the Heroes screen, a Planetary Governor is erroneously described as a Fleet Commander.

Bottom line: A highly enjoyable game that I will continue playing, at least for the foreseeable future. Whether it will supplant Vega Conflict is yet to be seen.

Brave New World

Or: You can’t keep a good man down

More than two years ago I blogged about one Brendan Eich, the short-lived CEO of Mozilla, who committed the cardinal sin of having a politically incorrect opinion.

Way back in 2008, he made a donation opposing Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment that made same-sex marriage legal in the state of California. Even though the donation was made as a private citizen and even though he never discriminated against gays in any way during his time at Mozilla, his disagreement with the love-and-tolerance mob was such heresy that a witch-hunt was in order and he was figuratively burned at the stake. Following a political firestorm, he stepped down as CEO and resigned from Mozilla, and lived out the remainder of his days in obscurity.

Or so they thought.

What he actually did, as tech entrepreneurs are wont to do, is to start something new. A new initiative. A new vision. A new browser called Brave.

Brave is more than a browser, it is a new way of looking at, experiencing, and financing the web. Instead of the horrendous ad-supported model that we all know and… er… love, it allows users to financially support websites that they frequent, while featuring state-of-the-art ad-blocking.

I’ve been using it for about a month, and while it still has a few rough edges, but it is fast, smooth and stable (hardly surprising, given that Eich invented Javascript), at a time when predecessors like Firefox and Google Chrome are becoming bloated, slow and crash-prone. This blog post was written in Evernote running in a Brave tab.

Most important of all: No gays were persecuted during the making of this browser… though a large number of electrons were seriously inconvenienced.

Vega Conflict – More Changes

The (build) times, they are a-changin’

Not content with having ruined a beautiful game, The good folks at Kixeye are making more changes; this time to ship build times. In this case, however, the change is both necessary and good.

It is necessary because the recent changes have made some ships (Such as the Taipan cutter and marked-up ISC hulls) more useful and others (Such as the Nexus Destroyer) less, and this usefulness should be reflected in build times. In addition, there is a new Faction – Vega Demon Corps – coming in  to the game, and room must be made for them.

It is good because the vast majority of the build times are coming down. These are shown in green in the table below.

Those in red are the ones whose build times will be getting longer. The biggest loser is the Heretic Cruiser, which will take about 55 hours longer to build once this change rolls in. Other losers include Taipan and Python Cutters, Genesis and Exodus Cruisers, and the Hurricane Frigate (whose figure is wrong, but you get the picture).

Note that Fitment installation times are not changing, so my advice is to build as many naked hulls of the ships shown in red as you can. I am building as many Heretics as I can before this change takes effect (probably at the beginning of July).

Imperfect Ten

I have written before about Microsoft pushing the Windows 10 upgrade on users of Windows 7 and 8.1. I also showed how to uninstall and hide the “Security Updates” that try to shoehorn Microsoft’s latest offering on not-always-willing users.

I have nothing personal against Windows 10, I just don’t want it. However, this unwanted upgrade has brought me much additional income as a computer-fixer-person from folks who upgraded (or, more accurately, were upgraded) and then found that peripherals such as printers no longer worked. I do, however, question the need to upgrade an operating system that is still supported and works well. I also find the determination of Microsoft to upgrade users almost against their will quite disturbing.

The Bad News: Microsoft won’t take no for an answer. On at least three occasions I have “hidden” the update that pushes Windows 10 onto the machine, and each time Microsoft “accidentally” un-hides it and includes and selects itself on the next patch Tuesday. These folks won’t take no for an answer.

The Good News: To keep the Corporate and business customers happy, Microsoft has implemented a workaround that disables the upgrade. However, they do not make it easy for the uninformed user to implement this, as it involves changes to the Windows Registry. If you don’t know what that is, you *definitely* don’t want to monkey with it.

The Great News: Steve Gibson has written a tiny little program called “Never10” that makes the task trivial. Get it here.

Vega Conflict: To Coin or Not to Coin?

“Coining” is the term used to describe the practice of using in-game “coins” to speed up repairs, builds, research, etc. Since these coins are purchased with real-world money, which not every player can afford to do, it is a divisive subject. Some frown upon the practice and use the term as an insult (“don’t worry about him; he’s just a coiner”), while others see no problem with coining (“no need to worry, I’ll just coin it back”). Here are some thoughts on the subject to help you, dear reader, to make up your own mind on the subject:

• Coining is economically necessary for large-scale software development: While some people may rant and rave and rail at the “freemium” business model of software development (free to play, cash required to unlock advanced content), it is ultimately fair to all parties; players get to enjoy the game for free (remember the days of spending $50 on a game only to find that you didn’t like it and cannot return it?), with the rich and well-to-do effectively subsidize the game for the rest of us who are either unable or unwilling to buy coins.
• Coining is not necessarily cheating…: Large-scale coiners are often accused of cheating. It is easy to understand why: you just survived an epic battle and have vanquished your enemy… and suddenly there he is again, his fleet fully-repaired and ready for battle. It just doesn’t seem fair!
• …but sometimes it is: From time to time you will see folks in chat discussing “coin generators” or “coin hacks”, ways to get coins without paying for them. Just say “no”. If you have to cheat to win, it is not much of a victory.
• Coining is often a refuge for the rich, the impatient and the incompetent: It is often said that Coining is a tax on the impatient. Don’t want to wait? Spend some money. But it also allows less competent players to rule over better, but more penurious ones – at least until the money runs out. If a coiner attracts the ire of a powerful alliance, he will be forced to run through a huge number of coins in order to stay in the fight. I have heard tell of players who spent hundreds of dollars over a few days in order to play this game. Hope it was worth it for them.

For those who really hate coining, or choose not to do so, it is eminently possible to play the game without ever spending a single coin. But spare a thought for those who do; they make the game possible.?

A personal opinion:

I am a low-volume coiner. When I first started, I purchased the $2 one-time introductory offer. I recommend this, as 500 coins plus three ships for $2 is an exceptional value – normally the coins alone cost $5.

After that, I purchased couple of $5 tranches of coins at monthly intervals. But Kixeye made it too easy to accidentally spend large quantities of coins – by design – and as a result I stopped buying coins… until, many months later, they made me an offer that I could not refuse…

On Black Friday, Kixeye offered 3600 Coins for the price of 2000, plus a free Apocrypha cruiser, all for $20. To coin the cruiser by itself would have cost over $30, so I made the purchase. Nearly two months later, I still have those coins.

As a rule, I try to live within the means generated by my Level X Commerce center, which produces 20 coins per day. I rarely, if ever, use coins, which is strange, as a value my time highly in most respects, but I will waste three minutes of my time rather than spending a coin that costs less than one cent. Economically speaking, that makes no sense at all, but for me, it is a matter of pride.

Coining is a shortcut, nothing more. But it is a shortcut that allows the developers to get paid. We don’t have to like it, but it is the reason that this game can exist.

This article is an excerpt from my Game Guide, over a hundred pages of hints, tips, tricks and tactics that will help you get to grips with the finer points of the game, all for a paltry $2.99. However, if you use this link, you can get it for $1 off. Make me smile – buy my book!