In GCL, you couldn’t easily tell whether you are going to set a new XP record during a battle, because of the various XP multipliers being calculated only at the end of it. It’s not the case anymore, the XP multipliers rolling in the battle outcome panel are gone. Each XP you earn is being added to the battle’s total XP instantly (and boosted with any applicable multipliers -like the mana pool tier bonus- on the fly).
The outcome panel has multiple tabs now:
- “Outcome” tells whether you were victorious, how much XP you got, and what items (including achievements) you acquired.
- “Blood & Ashes” (it’s not just about the kills, but the destruction of enemy buildings as well, hence the fancy name) lists and counts the things you killed or destroyed, and also gives a list of your top killing instruments (e.g. what type of damage dealt the final blow – tower shots, poison, gem wasp stings etc).
- “Mana & XP” tells how much mana and XP you gained from each of the sources (kills, shards, sparks, gem refund etc, as you can see in the screenshot – it’s still rather sketchy, but you can see the concept).
- “Activity” shows any other miscellaneous data, like how many times you cast spells, banished monsters, or activated shrines.
The XP system in the GC series is different from what you can see in the majority of games. Instead of getting XP every time you beat a stage, here all you got is the sum of your highest XPs reached for each stage. If you want more, you have to go back to a previously beaten stage for another round. The main idea behind this is that in the mean time you get more skillful (both as yourself, getting more familiar with the game and learning new tricks on Youtube, and as the wizard you play, with the skills you learn, and in GC2 the talismans you find and equip), so returning to an already visited stage, you can find new possibilities opening up: you can deal with more summoned monsters, build up your defenses and get rid of enemy buildings earlier, so you end up with more XP in the end.
One major frustration with all this is that if you are defeated, or can’t beat your previous XP record, you get nothing for your efforts. So, in GC2, you will have two types of XP:
- The primary XP source will still be the sum of your highest XP earned for every field in every battle mode.
- If you lose a battle or can’t beat your previous XP record, then a ratio (some 30%, haven’t decided on the exact value yet) of the XP you earned will go to a “secondary XP pot”. This pot has a limit, that increases every time you gain a wizard level. So, it’s not infinitely exploitable, but if you get utterly stuck in the game, you can replay a few battles in “relax” mode to gather some secondary XP, or, if you are unfortunate a few times, you will still get some XP at the end of the battle.
Your XP bar will fill from both directions, and a marker shows how much of the bar can be filled with secondary XP. If you level up a lot without getting any secondary XP, you can even end up with all the XP bar being able to be filled just by playing and losing every time (every time you level up, your secondary XP limit increases and the marker on the XP bar crawls to the left).
Btw, if you lose a battle, you will still get your stat increments as well as any achievements you unlocked during the battle.
Coming up next:
29th of October:
World map
12th of November:
Weather
