I am a free player, but somehow I am able to play the following subscriber levels:
Protect and Serve
Borrowed Sword
Timber Turncoat
I tested all the another levels, and I can’t play them, but I can play these three. Why is this?
Those three levels are not yet fully released–they’re in their Adventurer playtesting week, where anyone can play them for free and give feedback on them before we release them to everyone. After Adventurer week, they become subscriber-only.
Would love to hear any feedback you have on those levels to help balance them!
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As you mention balance, I have remarks on new levels. Previous weeks, new levels were more or less difficult, but after thinking, they were feasible. Sometime they were too easy for some player with big armor or big swords, but ok.
This week, new levels looks pretty hard, and to be honest seems for me impossible. Ok, it happens before, and most part of the time something were missing and finally it succeed. But this time, I really feel without solution.
It’s the case for “restless dead”. Ok, it’s announced super hard, but I can’t find ways to succeed as with the previous super hard levels. Too much skeleton by far.
Same for vital powers, I’m far from getting the bonus (I don’t talk about success only, because I succeed without changing the default code as explained in an other thread). I tested few strategies, but I’m still far from the goal.
Maybe I’m too old, I need retirements 
I don’t really complain. I just give my feeling if it could help to balance. If other players can tell if they succeed or not these levels… Or maybe I need to switch to other type of hero. There is more possibilities with rangers or magicians (but I don’t have any equipment for them). Just for information, my hero has 3000 in armor, kithsteel, and the speed ring. (ok, so that means for sure the problem should be the guy in front of the keyboard 
)
Hurray, for PEBKAC!, I know thee well.
I’m still working on this week’s play-test levels, so I’ll only speak to Restless Dead.
Kevin (level creator) wanted a subscriber only type hardness…
I can do it with Anya, 2271 health, boss star 1 and the Master Sword (my only subscriber acquire) but not kithsteel sword. (The Master Sword cleave does not kill them just damages them heavily(skellie@150-115=35hp) which is allows the clean up crew (all soldiers) to be able to handle them).
And from talking with Kevin, he had to think about it before deciding that this was OK, and not making it . . . HARDER. (since I hadn’t figured out a way to do it without the subscriber only sweet master sword)
P.E.B.K.A.C
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
2 Likes
I played all three levels and here are my thoughts:
Borrowed Sword
The instructions in this level (attack enemy with highest health) and the scenario seems like a not-done-before level strategy, which is good.
I did as the instructions said and made the archers attack the enemy with the highest health (constantly switching targets). However, in some executions all the archers survived while in others they all got killed by the yetis, meaning there was a lot of luck involved. This inconsistency could be a problem.
Protect and Serve
Assigning soldiers to each defensive position looks cool and it was my first time using “defend”. Getting the bonus was a matter of appending the position with the upper-right coins to the defend array and summoning more soldiers to defend. This level also makes me wonder if there is a good way to get the details of the most recently summoned soldier. I ended up doing a findNearest() after each summon and then appending them to the soldiers array. It would be nice if summon() also returned the thang that was summoned.
Since there were a lot of thangs, the level was somewhat laggy.
Timber Turncoat
This level was more fiddly.
The setting of the level looked familiar; it was probably from one of the previous ones.
I failed every time the warlock was summoned and concluded that I had to pass the level without losing a single troop. The strategy I decided to try was making them retreat if below a certain percentage of health. Initially, when sending soldiers to the right, I made them all go to the same coordinates, which resulted in them clumping together, which made it harder to retreat quickly. I eventually made then form some sort of vertical line instead. I also noticed that if I made them retreat too early, there wouldn’t be enough soldiers remaining to deal enough dps, so the retreat health percentage also required tweaking.
Maybe there was a different way that I was supposed to do this level.
Overall, they work. And I got gems and xp that I would’ve missed if they were paid levels.
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