User talk:Vincent The Frugal/Archive 1

Welcome!
Hi Vincent The Frugal -- we're excited to have CastleAge Wiki as part of the Wikia community!Now you've got a whole website to fill up with information, pictures and videos about your favorite topic. But right now, it's just blank pages staring at you... Scary, right? Here are some ways to get started.


 * Introduce your topic on the front page. This is your opportunity to explain to your readers what your topic is all about. Write as much as you want! Your description can link off to all the important pages on your site.


 * Start some new pages -- just a sentence or two is fine to get started. Don't let the blank page stare you down! A wiki is all about adding and changing things as you go along. You can also add pictures and videos, to fill out the page and make it more interesting.

And then just keep going! People like visiting wikis when there's lots of stuff to read and look at, so keep adding stuff, and you'll attract readers and editors. There's a lot to do, but don't worry -- today's your first day, and you've got plenty of time. Every wiki starts the same way -- a little bit at a time, starting with the first few pages, until it grows into a huge, busy site.

If you've got questions, you can e-mail us through our contact form. Have fun! -- Catherine Munro

CA
I'm glad to help. I saw there was no home section, so I thought I'd write one. Feel free to edit the Home Guide.

I'm certain I've had two orbs of Keira, but they both may have been used up when I summoned her, therefor I put that question in the updates, and will test further (might have been changed).

Are you certain that CA is owned by Zynga? I can't find anyone claiming ownership anywhere...


 * Crap on a stick... you're right, CA is not owned by Zynga. Everyone seems to think that it is, but when I went to zynga.com, they didn't list it as one of their games... changing now...

General Pictures
I see you intend to upload the pics of the generals. Careful now. Some of the old art was removed due to legal probs.

Is there a "Wanted" list of pictures and the pages they would appear on? I have a good tool for capturing pictures. ConHorne 19:00, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * Now right now, but there should be. I'll scan the wiki for needed/wanted pictures, and should be able to post the results for what's needed here in a couple hours. Incidentally, thank you for getting up so many pictures already! Vincent The Frugal 21:24, December 9, 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to see the pictures that have been uploaded? I can't figure it out. I uploaded some with an incorrect name and would like to delete them. I also can't see what's already out there that I didn't load. Oh, and you are welcome! I'm having fun!


 * Sorry it took so long to respond, Christmas is coming and that makes me very busy. As you probably figured out on your own by now, there's a gallery of all "Files" (which is basically just pictures for this wiki) that can be found by clicking "New Pictures" on the left menu under the picture of Celesta. Vincent The Frugal 05:56, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I had not figured that out. ConHorne 15:49, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Ambrosia/Malekus Demi Quest Line
The last general for Ambrosia Demi Quest line is Liluth and Riku.

Generals for Malekus DQ line are Strider, Dragan, Sano, Shino, Vanquish, Dante, Araxis.

Generals for Corvintheus DQ line are Dragan, Zaverok, Penelope, Garlan, Cid, Terra, Elizabeth Lione.


 * That I did know. The thing is, I can't add that to the heroes page until I learn the names of the quests they're involved in. I guess I could put in "Malekus quest 6" on the heroes page until someone adds the quest names in the demi-quest section, but I won't. I'm exactly the wrong kind of lazy to do that. If you want to add it until someone offers the quest names on the wiki, feel free, you have my blessing ;p. Vincent The Frugal 06:31, November 20, 2009 (UTC)


 * Added quest names and info to quests I have access to. Will add more as I keep polishing Malekus' sword for him


 * Excellent, you go down the Malekus line, and I'll go for Corvintheus next, and hopefully we'll get the info up within a month. Er... hopefully someone else who already did the malekus and corvintheus blessing line will fill in the missing info before then... Vincent The Frugal 19:48, November 20, 2009 (UTC)

Elite Guard
Do you realize that you have to be a certain level to unlock the elite guard spots..they are as follows

Lvl 1 - Fighter, Thief, Cleric (unconfirmed)

Lvl 2 - Mage (unconfirmed)

Lvl 3 - Guardian (confirmed from here on)

Lvl 4 - Rogue

Lvl 5 - High Priest

Lvl 6 - Gladiator

Lvl 7 - Paladin

Lvl 8 - Arch Mage

Thanks for the welcome -- I'll do the best I can to update the tables, but honestly sometimes it might be easier to leave you a screen shot :-) But I know it's not easy to have to do all the editing work yourself. I really look forward to good loot tables, and so I can appreciate the work you're doing--happy to help keep track of it especially since you've done so much work already getting it all in place!


 * Sorry it took so long to get this up on the elite guard page, I was a slacker and forgot about it. It's up there now. Vincent The Frugal 04:12, November 30, 2009 (UTC)

Sylvanas siege weapon
Thanks for clearing that up about the Sylvanas battle in Keep/Monster/Siege Weapons. I was wondering why the link I had wasn't following the same format as what you'd provided above, but I was sure it didn't work when I did it your way, and of course I didn't have a non-friend account to test with. --Randy aka 69.9.28.158 10:17, November 27, 2009 (UTC)

Hi Vincent, I added the image for the commander's battle plate, but it is full size instead of thumbnail version. I wasn't sure how to edit that back. I only see options to add pictures, not tweak or remove them.

Town/Land spreadsheet
I added a link to a good spreadsheet on the land page.

However this spreadsheet can do far more than just lands. Please look it over, it has information regarding virtually everything in castle age.

We may to post it in a more optimal place like the main page. (Edit added by Garnat07, 19:25, December 15, 2009)


 * The spreadsheet is indeed useful, however, it's made with an Office 2007 version of excel. Right now most people still have the old Office 2003 suite, which doesn't work at the capacity the spreadsheet author was expecting. Even if you download the converter so that Office 2003 can read the spreadsheet, it's a bit of a pain to work with it. But it does indeed work and is very nice. I'll link it to the "Miscellaneous Info" section of the wiki, in a new "Spreadsheets" section. This was if we get more, people can find them easily. Vincent The Frugal 22:54, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Heroes
Perhaps we should reduce the Adopt a Hero page down to the incomplete heroes. It's getting harder to tell what hasn't been done. ConHorne 17:05, December 16, 2009 (UTC)


 * I gave this some thought, and I don't think we should remove the completed heroes from that page. It would be good for the people who volunteered to help get all the info up on the wiki. They "Adopted" the hero, I think they should get credit for it on the project page. Besides, there are only 5 heroes left to be "Adopted", I wouldn't be surprised if the project gets completed by New Years. If you can, just use the rightmost column to see what needs to be done until the project gets archived. Vincent The Frugal 17:46, December 16, 2009 (UTC)

Article format
Hello, this is Nic from Wikia Gaming. We are going to be giving you guys a new skin pretty soon, but I noticed that when new articles are creating on here. They are done improperly. For example, Keep. Under the See also section, you have Stats, Elite Guard, Achievements, Alchemy, and Monster - all linked under Keep. However, it would be better if you had Stats, Elite Guard, Achievements, Alchemy, and Monster as their own pages. This same error is made throughout this Wiki. I can help clean it up and move articles to where they should be, but just giving you a heads up for the future. Hopefully you understand what I mean by this. If not, feel free to ask. Also, if we need any other help just let me know. - Wagnike2 22:44, December 18, 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah... that was intentional, and I kind of wished you had let me respond before making a whole bunch of changes.


 * Ok, I don't know how much you know about Castle Age, so I'll assume you haven't played it (if you have, skip on to the next paragraph). Castle Age is a game that is played on the Facebook Platform through your browser. You play the game by selecting the 1 of 8 tabs: Home, Quests, Battle, Heroes, Town, Oracle, Keep, Army. From these 8 tabs, you can navigate to a page where you can do something with the game. It's not really a fantasy game, but it's more of a glorified resource management game (in a fantasy setting). After some time, you gain resources, and you decide what to do with them, then you wait for a few hours, in which time you'll gain resources, and then you can decide what to do with them, etc.


 * The problem with Castle Age, is that the game set up is confusing. You can only manage certain parts of the game if you are at the correct tab. The tabs where you can do things can only be accessed through one of the main 8 tabs (Home, Quests, etc.) The confusing thing has to do with the following 3 tabs: Town, Keep, and Army. These three tabs have similar, vague things associated with those tabs. I don't know why soldiers hang out in town while monsters raze your keep, or why you perform alchemy at your keep while all magic related things are in town. Or why soldiers are different from the army. It doesn't make sense to me. I found that putting each page under a corresponding section of the game helps people to navigate through the wiki and the game better. By seeing that soldiers was under Town/Soldiers, they would know that in order to edit their soldier information, they would need to first go to the Town tab. By doing this on every page, using the formatting setup that I chose, gives perspective to the entire game's navigation system. And while yes, we could link to Castle Age more often with links to specific parts of their site (which is on our To Do List), there would still be a confusing disconnect on how their site is set up.


 * Plus, Castle age reuses all of their monster names\concepts (except for sea serpents and dragons, which coincidentally there are 4 kinds of each and each have similar mechanics to others that share the suffix of Dragon or Sea Serpent). Gildamesh is both a monster, and the Orc King Gildamesh, who is involved in a special mission in the land of fire, and is a hero that you can equip. Which one gets to have the Gildamesh page? All 3 Gildameshes treated very differently, and two of them are only called "Orc King". I sure don't want to make a whole bunch of disambiguation pages. And if someone is looking up information, they would know right away that if they're looking for the monster Gildamesh\Orc King, it's not the same one under the Heroes section of the wiki. Same thing goes for the Colossus of Earth\Stone Guardian, Sylvanas, Lotus Ravenmoore, Keira, and Cronus the World Hydra (except in his case, he's secondly a soldier).


 * The thing is (like I said before) in the game (unless you memorize a whole bunch of semi-incomprehensible, annoying to find URLs), you can only access the Alchemy Summons tab by first going to the Keep tab, then the Alchemy sub-tab, then you can reach the Alchemy Summons sub-sub tab. With the previous file-system in place, it told you how to access the sub-sub tab. If you're changing the file-system, please add to every page how you can access the Castle Age equivalent page, I'll do my best to track down the individuals URLS by searching through Castle Age's source code. Also, could you change every link on the site to follow the new file-system? Seeing the "redirected from" link on every page is annoying (I would get a bot to do it, but I don't know how to use bots yet. Frankly, I know so little about making a wiki, it's amazing this wiki even exists!)


 * Will the new skin break the wiki set up? Is there a reason why it has to be the way that you have changed it? Is there a standard that all wikis have to adhere to? Why couldn't we keep it the way it was? Vincent The Frugal 00:47, December 19, 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the delay in getting back with you. I wasn't around for the weekend. But, let me start out by saying that you were correct in assuming that I've only played this game very little. With all of the other Facebook Games that I've edited on, I've never seen any of the others do their articles like you had done. Hence, why I started moving stuff around and categorizing things my way. Sorry about that, I got perhaps too overzealous with stuff and started making changes before you had been back in touch with me. So from now on - let's work together. I'm willing to compromise with you, if you want to go back to your old system let me know. I don't understand the issue with the redirected from thing. That exists on many Wikis as it is. But let's talk about positives - you guys have a lot of great content on here and you guys do a really good job. Though, I would suggest you guys try to improve on categorization. Making sure all the articles have categories. The new skin shouldn't break your format on here, if anything it will just add to it and allow more users to come here. - Wagnike2 17:18, December 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * Hi Vincent. I'm Joe from the Gaming team. The skin is basically just the color theme. Changing it doesn't affect the wiki's articles or content in any way. Since the game's official forum uses a blue theme, I planned to use a blue skin template that I recently designed. You can see it live at this test wiki. I also copied the game's logo, then cropped it, made it transparent, and arranged it to use as the wiki's logo. Have a look here. If that blue skin and the logo look good to you, let me know and I'll take care of setting them up. Thanks. JoePlay ( talk ) 22:27, December 21, 2009 (UTC)


 * I know that you're just doing you job, but it's still annoying to be told your method is a mistake and having that person correct your "mistake". Heck, when I saw the 30+ emails in my inbox about pages getting moved I was afraid we were getting vandalized... I agree, we should work together =).


 * I'm glad to hear we can keep the wiki in the former naming scheme. While I really like my naming scheme, and it works really well for me personally, I decided to set up a vote so that the users can decide which format they want. If no one votes, I'm going to change it back to what it was. If people vote that they like the more common set up better, we'll change it.


 * The issue with the redirected links is just a minor pet peeve of mine. It makes the wiki look unprofessional if it has that redirected note after clicking on almost any internal link. Not that a user-based/work-on-it-in-your-spare-time site has to be a modern marvel in technology and design, it's just that seeing all those "redirected from X" links bothers me. I'll probably just change them all after the vote when I get a chance.


 * Why yes, we all do a really great job, are beautiful/handsome, and have minty fresh breathe in the morning, thank you for noticing ;p. Good call about the categorization thing, I think Lycentia is working on that right now. If there's any more to do in January, I'll start adding categories as well (my family is big on Christmas/New Years, and it's difficult getting online when I'm staying over at my parent's house for two weeks. Heck, I'm amazed I got online at all today).


 * JoePlay, I really like that Castle Age logo. While I have grown accustom to Celesta staring at me half naked with her bra starting to fall off (I wonder what kind of people they're targeting this game towards...) I suppose we should change the logo to something more appropriate. Though, while I'm not a marketing major, I would assume that having a half naked girl giving you a Mona Lisa-esque smile with wide, bright blue eyes on every page would be good for generating more sub-conscience pageviews. But because now I realize what that pic might be doing, and because I'm not a horrible person, I think we should change the logo to the one you designed. As for the new theme, it's very nice, but I like the simplistic theme that we have right now. Of course, if I want this to be a community wiki in practice as well as in theory, I should set up a vote and let the users decide. Do you mind if I give the users of this wiki the link to your theme test page so the voters can make an informed vote? Vincent The Frugal 05:15, December 22, 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the new skin but I think it is harder to navigate and update now, imho. ConHorne 21:55, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

RE: Promotion
Sure. I'd love to be an admin. I like helping out.

Wikicode isn't TOO hard, once you get the hang of it. Just gotta experiment till it works. XD

Except Bots. I still haven't figured those out. -- Lycentia  03:43, December 21, 2009 (UTC)

Redesign/New Skin
Hello Vincent, this is Nic again. So today, I've been working on creating a new skin for this Wiki. I know that with the new logo, you were going to miss having Celesta around so I made sure to include her. As you can see on this page, this is what I have. User:Wagnike2/mainpagetest. I used the hero image graphics to make the front page stand out. And then the quests thing I think helps make this Wiki stand out. The News thing can be removed or kept based on your discretion. And the featured article/featured media can be changed too. I was just putting something out there. Also, I designed the main page with Joe's template in mind. To see what they would look like together I've given you this screenshot:. Let me know what you think as soon as possible. - Wagnike2 19:38, December 22, 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, my loneliness is so great that I would be heartbroken to not see Celesta anymore ;p. If we do set it up in a way similar to that, we should definitely make sure that there is still easy access to the 8 (old) parent articles. From the 8 parent articles, people can easily navigate to whatever info they want. We should edit the side menu to have Castle Age -> (then a list of the 7 parent articles besides Quests) and a separate thing for Quests -> (the quest articles).


 * I just worry that the more changes we make away from my original design will take away it's ease of use and reasonable navigation. (Rant) One of my pet peeves with 95% of all wikis out there (well, one of my pet peeves) is the fact that unless you know how the wiki is set up, you can't find anything on it. The creators of wikis tend to make it in a way so that people who have a lot of coding experience, experience messing around with URLs, and knowing how to search using ridiculously specific key words are the only people who can use their wikis effectively. I went out of my way to make sure this didn't happen with this wiki.


 * Also, I worry about changing the front page in the way you have shown. More graphics/words in condensed spaces D.N.E a better wiki. A wiki can only be great if it contains everything you would want to know about a subject, and if this information is presented in a way so that people can use it. Keep it simple, concise, and elegant if possible (We have the simple part already done ;p). It's ok to repeat information if there is value in repeating it (like how we have the Handy Hero Tables, as well as a separate page for each hero) I feel we should change the set up if and only if it will help make the wiki great, without filling it with substance-less fluff. To make things concise without making it small and cluttered. To make it pleasing to the eye without it being distracting. I'm sorry, and I didn't mean any offense when I said this, but I know where this road can go. (/Rant)


 * We should definitely not have a "featured media" thing on the front page. Unless we start offering guides with pictures, or start hosting fan-art, the "featured media" will just contain pictures from Castle Age, which people can just get by going to Castle Age. But on that same line of thought, we should host an image gallery of the pictures of Castle Age for those who like the artwork and want to browse it easily. Something a little more "casual browser friendly" than the "New Pictures" link on the left menu.


 * Also, I don't think we should have wiki-related news on the front page. We should definitely link it to the "community" section of the site though. The casual user wouldn't care about that and would be a waste of space, but anyone who would want to see what the community is doing would probably want to see it. ... Dang, I suppose this means we'll have to reformat the community section of the wiki.


 * And now... I should probably get some sleep before family time starts bright and early tomorrow in a few hours. Vincent The Frugal 06:59, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * So take two - here. I got rid of the featured media section, even though I disagree with your reason for it, but that's ok it's what you want so I'm trying to make you guys happy. Also, I added the 8 parent articles onto this new design and they are easy to get to and they don't ruin your navigation. Also, I got rid of the "Wiki news" and just replaced it with something similar to what you guys were already using. Well, actually it is the same exact thing. As far as changing the side-bar, I can do that later today after I go to sleep. I'm just trying to get as on to the same sort of page. A simple design is good I agree with and I agree that you have to be able to find information easily on a Wiki or it fails. However, with a better front page design - you will be likely to increase the number of editors that you have on this Wiki. Let me know where we stand with this version as soon as possible. - Wagnike2 08:58, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Editors/Smeditors, we'll just do everything ourselves right Lycentia? ;p. Good point Nic. I do like the test2 layout (though we'll need to add "Oracle" in the parent article section). What if we moved "News" over to the right to be above "New Articles"? Also, Is there an easy way to make a noticeable announcement on the front page without it interfering with anything? I've been trying to figure out how we can make a big announcement on when there's a new Castle Age build. Just something to stay up for a couple of days so that everyone can see the new changes easily, before it is added to the regular news archive section.


 * If we do keep 4 general pictures up there (which I don't know how I feel about that, but am currently leaning towards keeping it there), we should probably change them to the 4 generals most thought of when people think of Castle Age. For me those 4 are Celesta, Keira, Mephistopheles, and Strider, and I'm sure people feel the same way about the first 3. But of course this would only make me happy, and doesn't really matter in the long run.


 * Speaking of pictures... Why is it that when we upload pictures, there doesn't appear to be a problem, but when we use them in certain places, the pictures just don't work at all? On the test page, the picture for Celesta and Cid don't appear, even though they are uploaded to the site, and appear as they should in other spots of the wiki. This bug or whatever happens in quite a few places, and while it's not a big deal, it bothers me a bit. Does it have something to do with the way we're uploading the pictures or where we're getting the pictures from?


 * Also, sorry about being a bit rough and rant-y in my last reply. The holidays are very stressful for me, and I kind of took it out on you. Sorry about that, and hopefully it won't happen again in the future. Vincent The Frugal 03:54, December 24, 2009 (UTC)


 * Don't worry about the being ranty with me thing, it's totally understandable. Plus, I've dealt with people a lot worse.


 * News/Site Announcement: I can move over the news to the right above the new articles easily that's not an issue at all. To create a display message on the front page, go to MediaWiki:Sitenotice. That will display a new message on the front page that you can use to inform people of new Builds.


 * Images: As far as the image thing, the only thing I can think of is that it's a "cache" error. Which basically just involves Wiki's servers being slow once and a while. They should display the majority of the time. You guys are uploading the images properly and everything - so there's not an issue with that at all. I'll probably have the main page ready by Monday. - Wagnike2 19:01, December 26, 2009 (UTC)


 * About the site anouncement: Sweet! That's awesome!


 * About the image issue: I don't think it's that. It's not as if the pictures that don't work periodically change. It's always certain particular pictures on certain particular pages. It's particularly noticeable on the Blacksmith page. Pictures uploaded at the same time by the same people in the same way, on the same page in the same coding format sometimes do not work. Why is it that Atlantean Shield and Gauntlet work, but not the armor and the spear? I uploaded the pictures for both Dante and Illusia personally. They should have pictures on (at least) 3 pages, the Heroes page, their own individual page (Dante, Illusia), and on the Handy Hero Tables (HHT). Using the same source image, Illusia's picture appears on the HHT, and not the heroes page or her own page. Using the same source image, Dante's picture appears on the Heroes page and his own page, but not the HHT. As you can see, the picture on the HHT is smaller than the one on the heroes page and the individual hero's pages. Could there be an issue with the resizing of images? I haven't had time to comb over the entire wiki, but it seems like if an image displays at a certain size on a page, the picture will work on any page if it is that same size. What's weird is that most pictures can appear in multiple sizes with no problem. What's different about these proportionately few pictures? I don't know what any of this means from a coding perspective, but I think it may be a clue to what the problem is. Vincent The Frugal 04:05, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Chimerus Edit
I got that info from another website I haven't actually leveled or even have Chimerus. I hope second hand info is okay. I suppose its better than being blank until someone can verify it. --Ross87 23:34, December 22, 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess that's true, as long as you didn't copy it from the wikidot wiki. We're still kind of at war with them. And by "at war" I mean it's creator and I are both being stubborn and I forgot whether we're allowing each other to use information/are linking to each other. If you got it off the forums, it can stay on the site, it your source was the wikidot wiki, then we'll have to take it down. Vincent The Frugal 06:59, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * It was the forums...can't stand Wikidot --Ross87 22:00, December 23, 2009 (UTC)

12 22 09 update
I can't seem to figure out if everything they added today is supposed to be Limited Time, or if just the Angelica hero unit is the only one. The gifts are marked as limited time, but it gives out the items for ALL the new recipes. -- Lycentia  05:15, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Considering that this was kind of a huge update, I highly doubt they're going to put in that much work for stuff that's only going to last a week. I would bet that the option to create the general goes away at the beginning of the new year, and the gift item will change it's name to something more fitting.


 * Also, thank you for adding the new News page. With any luck, I should be back for editing purposes next Tuesday, and then back from the holidays for real the Monday after that. Until then, have fun ;p Vincent The Frugal 06:59, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * I believe they will keep the ability to make the general however they will probably do away with the gifts. At least for a bit, that way people who have the supplies to make the general before the new year don't get screwed by not being able to log in for a few days. --Ross87 22:04, December 23, 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, but if they do that, how are we going to summon that new epic world monster without those gifts? It's not like it's a generic monster or anything. They have siege weapons, a fortify element, a new way of recording rankings, and a new incentive to do free advertising for them by doing more "Call to Arm"s, way to much stuff for just a one week monster. Unless the items required to summon a monster starts dropping as chance items from quests, I don't see how they can make the items available in useful amounts without keeping them to be a gift option. Though knowing Castle Age, maybe they'll set up a whole new aspect to the game (like when they added monster battles) that will let you get the items. Watch, it'll be something that spends health instead of energy or stamina too... that'll be fun ;p. Vincent The Frugal 03:54, December 24, 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism
Yay! Our first vandal. We're popular now. XD -- Lycentia  01:13, December 28, 2009 (UTC)


 * I think this is an official sign that we've "made it" as a wiki. This, and the fact that we have wikia-gaming staff offering to help us. I assume they don't do this for any penny ante wiki. Clearly we're at least a nickle ante wiki ;p. Go us! Vincent The Frugal 04:05, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Private Messaging
There is really no way to do private messaging. You could always just e-mail a user if they have that option enabled on their user page. The only other feature that is semi-private is using the Shoutbox widget. Whatever you type will be viewable to "everyone" but since not many people know about that Widget or use that Widget it's essentially private. To select that Widget, just go to Preferences and the Shoutbox widget. - Wagnike2 19:15, December 28, 2009 (UTC)


 * Ah, just noticed that you e-mailed me in regards to the skin. You can change the colors of it etc. by going to MediaWiki:Monaco.css, but be aware that any changes you make on there will be seen on the whole site. But, worse comes to worse you can always undo your edits if you make any mistakes. - Wagnike2 17:04, December 29, 2009 (UTC)


 * Good to know, I'll go mess around with it in the wee hours of the morning when few people would probably use it (and announce that it's going to happen in advance) in a day or so, depending on the holiday zaniness. Thankfully it's almost over. Vincent The Frugal 06:05, December 30, 2009 (UTC)

New Feature
When I was doing clean up on the pages, I noticed you had some areas to post links for elite guard members and siege weapons and the like. I got to thinking. Maybe we could collate this into one page. Put a box to it on the the main page (below the news box maybe), simply call it "Call to Arms". What do you think? -- Lycentia  14:27, December 29, 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree we should put a link to it on the front page, but I think we shouldn't keep the elite guard links hosted anymore. If someone isn't in your army, you can't join their elite guard, and so us hosting the links isn't likely to help anyone.


 * But it's still a good idea to have a separate page that "Call to Arms" page. Considering how fast the game is growing, even though right now it would only be used for siege weapons, I wouldn't be surprised if CA added more features that would warrant a page like that. It'll be nice to have it set up in advance so we'll have less catching up to do when they do another one of their ridiculous updates. I'll set up the page when I can, but you may have to link it to the front page. I be no smort and can hmtl no good.


 * Also, if I haven't said this already, you're doing a great job! (Especially since I've been flaky all week, thank you for covering the stuff I usually do =D) Vincent The Frugal 06:05, December 30, 2009 (UTC)

Hey Vincent-
I like editing pages, but not sure which pages you would like me to edit. Is there a current list of pages that need to be editing/created? Let me know what i can do. :) SHARKY 00:17, January 2, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ahoy and welcome! Unfortunately, I was a slacker and didn't really prepare for the wiki to be edited by anyone other than myself. The only thing we have right now for a list of pages to be created/edited is my To Do List. I'm working on a better list that'll be easier for everyone to use, but I just got back from "vacation" and have a whole bunch of things that need my attention first. Hopefully I should get up a more community-friendly version of the To Do List in a couple of days. Until then... have fun with that To Do List ;p. Vincent The Frugal 00:53, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Page Names and Locations
I'm thinking maybe we should start moving the pages. No one else seems to have an opinion on it.

I think we should have a small combination of Child/Non-Child articles. Just move and name the pages like they would be normally on a wiki. Should use the full names too.
 * Instead of Keep/Monster/Keira, should use her full title at Keira, the Dread Knight
 * Loot pages should stay child articles though, ie. Keira, the Dread Knight/Loot
 * For the hero version, Keira, the Dread Knight (hero)

We can add little notes at the top of the page saying "This is about X. For the hero, see Y", and vise versa. It can be done with a template. No need for disambiguation then. I've already made and added all the navigation templates already. Just would be a matter of adjusting the links.

What do you think? -- Lycentia  14:07, January 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think that sounds reasonable. But I was thinking that we should keep some other child articles as well besides just the Loot pages. I think the Monthly Specials should remain under the Oracle, and any Project pages should remain under Projects. Besides that, doing what you said should keep the site very navigable, and it's better than my system. Incidentally, thanks for making up all those navigation templates! They're very nicely done and are well made for each of their purposes. I'm almost caught up on a bunch of emails that I needed to read (I watch 99% of the pages on the wiki, and you guys did a lot of work when I was gone, so it's taking a while to get through them all). I have the day off from work today, so I'm going to try and finish getting caught up, and start helping out for real. With any luck, I'll start moving the pages this afternoon if you don't beat me to it. Vincent The Frugal 15:57, January 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * OK, we need to change the projects naming format a little bit. The way its set up now, it doesn't allow WYSIWYG editing. Considering the fact that we want casual Castle Age players helping and adding info to the projects, we need to make it as easy as possible for them to add their info to it. So I'm going to change it a little bit once I finish making some edits to the projects themselves to see if I can keep it organized that way, but still allow the easy editing. Vincent The Frugal 03:24, January 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'll have to take your word on that one. The only difference between the two I see is the inability to easily add categories. I've never used a WYSIWYG editor before. I edit straight on the net. I didn't know there was a difference. Learn something new everyday ^_^ -- Lycentia  [[Image:Azeron sym.png|20px|link=User_talk:Lycentia]] 12:04, January 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * After moving the project pages back to just "Projects", it now allows WYSIWYG editing. There's something about putting a ":" in the page's name that disables WYSIWYG editing. I like the colon in the title, it made the project page look nice, and is a nice formatting thing if the wiki wants to have more subsections like the Projects section, but the User-friendly WYSIWYG editing it too useful for projects (especially when entering info into a table).


 * Nic, I know you read this page sometime, is there a way to add a ":" to a page's name without it disable-ing WYSIWYG editing? Also, is it just me, or is WYSIWYG an annoyingly long acronym to type out or pronounce? Vincent The Frugal 16:51, January 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Can you please tell me more about the problem with WYSIWYG editing? So far I haven't experienced any problem with pages contain ":" in name. Hanzou-sama 14:11, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * That's odd, maybe it's just me then. All I know is that I don't get the option of WYSIWYG editing, it automatically starts off in the wiki-code mode, and doesn't allow you to switch. Vincent The Frugal 17:02, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * At which pages did you have problem with WYSIWYG editor? Can you try to edit this test page and see if the problem persists. By the way, WYSIWYG is an annoyingly long acronym ;-| Hanzou-sama 14:01, January 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * That isn't a problem, but... Hmmm. I was going to give an example in my userspace of a page working and one not working, but I can't get the one that's not supposed to work to not work. But anyway, Here's an example of what I mean: Castle_Age_Wiki:Random_Vincent_Test. Vincent The Frugal 02:56, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * This could be the answer Help:New_editor ;) Hanzou-sama 05:27, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe... I'll need to read it when I'm more coherent. Vincent The Frugal 07:06, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

POWER pages
One thing i'm unsure about... When you enter info into the tables there is a section for attack/defense. Should this be your base numbers? Or should it also include the +/- you get from certain generals (like Vanquish)? I think the pages should say something either way. I would have changed it myself, but i don't know which way you prefer.

Also, i noticed that you have a sentence in the "instructions" on how to enter info on the Cronus page like "Don't enter info if you get the message.. So-n-so helped you shooting arrows, etc..." But this is not on the other pages... like Dragons, Gildamesh, etc. Should it also be on those pages? Or does this not matter on the other monsters?? -SHARKY 06:44, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * About damage in Sea Serpent and Dark Legion battles, I got an idea on how to record ship/castle health (S/CH) with each attack. As far as I know there are no ways to get the exact number of S/CH, but when with each attack there is some text like "Trebuchets from within your heavily fortified castle help deal extra damage.". My theory is S/CH is divided to several "levels", at each level there is a modifier to add/reduce damage done by attacks occur at that level, thus producing different damage reports. Presume that with a certain level, its modifier is the same for the entire level; what we need to record is just the level of S/CH when attacks occur. We can determine levels associated with different text about extra damage (like the one above), then add a column for S/CH level of the attack. For example, zero health is level 0 (not allowed to attack), near full health is level 5 with extra damage from trebuchets. It is possible that exact number (or rather exact percentage) of S/CH does play in damage formula, but for now we still can collect damage data (though it might be not precise enough) and work out the formula to see whether level theory is right or not. If my explanation is not clear enough, please tell me.


 * Also, current data tables is a little hard to add new records when you have to constantly scroll up to see column headings. It would be nice if you have a way to solve this. Hanzou-sama 15:32, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * @ Sharky: It's just your base stats. We will be able to figure out how your general affects your base stats if you list what general you used and what level they were at. I'll update the pages saying that. Also, I will add those "(So and So) helped" messages as soon as I get the real text for the one where they shoot a volley of arrows. For some reason, in the last 40 power attacks that I have done, I haven't gotten that message yet to confirm the exact wording.


 * @ Hanzou, the only thing I can think of to compensate for the scrolling factor is to take the top line of a table and repeat it every 10 rows or so. I'll start setting that up on the P.O.W.E.R. pages and loot pages this afternoon.


 * That idea about the damage numbers and Serpents and Castles is a good one. In order to implement it, we'll just need to figure out how many levels/messages there are. But getting the number of levels/messages is going to be a pain, and may take awhile to get. I'll start working on getting the numbers once I finish slaying this Lotus Ravenmoore, and post my results in the talk pages for Sea Serpents and BoDLs. If you have any of the levels/messages already worked out, please add what you know to there as well. Vincent The Frugal 17:02, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * About the issue with table's header row, I failed to find a solution in wiki help. So for now we can just copy the top row, but I think only a row at bottom is needed (because new record is added at bottom). I set it up in Cronus, The World Hydra/Loot, please check out if it's all right. I can set up other tables for you this afternoon. Hanzou-sama 05:24, January 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * You're right, that makes way more sense then putting them up every 10 rows or so. I made the changes already and did it your way. Hey, I have to do something to keep my edit numbers in the same range as Lycentia ;p. Vincent The Frugal 02:56, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Sidebar
I think I've figured out editing the sidebar. I only added the quests and heroes. Is there anything else you would like to see added to the sidebar? -- Lycentia  17:31, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * If possible, I would like the big 9 articles up in the sidebar: Home Guide, Quest Guide, Battle Guide, Heroes Guide, Oracle Guide, Town Guide, Keep Guide, Army Guide, and Strategy Guides. Vincent The Frugal 19:16, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Nicely done! The way it's set up now is better than what I had in mind. Vincent The Frugal 02:56, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

"For the next few days at 5 A.M. GMT, the Wiki's Color Scheme will change somewhat randomly while we test things for the wiki"
Can't you just test changes on Your own personal css - before making them live for all users? Random Time  18:36, January 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * I actually don't know a lot about wikis. I was doing it that way because someone told me that was the way to test things out. Thank you for telling me about the personal css thing. Now I can test things out without inconveniencing others, and do the work when I'm more coherent! Hurray for coherency! Vincent The Frugal 19:16, January 7, 2010 (UTC)

Facebook Group
Think we should have our own group? :} -- Lycentia  10:14, January 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Totally. We should call it the "Incredibly Beautiful/Handsome Castle Age Wiki Users with Minty Fresh Breathe in the Morning Association". ;p


 * I wonder how many editors of the wiki joined up because of that post on the official forums... But anyway, I suppose we could. It would be nice to see how many people like the (Wikia) wiki. I'll put it on my (not online) to do list. Incidentally, sorry about continuing to be such a slacker recently. When I was on "Vacation" I had gotten 600 emails that I needed to read or respond to. I'm now down to 20, so I should be able to pick up my share of the editing... for real this time! Vincent The Frugal 02:56, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ah, no worries. I like wiki editing. ^_^ -- Lycentia  [[Image:Azeron sym.png|20px|link=User_talk:Lycentia]] 05:30, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

Something interesting....
I have been adding info to the POWER pages for Dragons and Cronus. On these pages there's a section for Equipment Attack Power. My Equipment Attack Power has been 54 for awhile now since I haven't received any new better equipment. My main weapon has been the Holy Avenger (12 attack, 12 defense). I noticed I had enough Orc War Axes to create the Avenger (14 attack, 0 defense). I assumed this would raise my Equipment Attack Power by 2 points, but i was wrong. When I attack monsters I am still using the Holy Avenger. This leads me to believe that the defensive stat of your weapons are included somehow in your overall damage dealt. Did you know this? What do you think? --SHARKY 22:21, January 9, 2010 (UTC)

When it chooses your "best" item to use for combat (monster/duel) it picks the item with the highest cumulative attack and defense, whether or not defense helps you at all, we'll have to watch the POWER page and find out

--Volthar 15:08, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

So when we enter our Equipment Attack Power into the tables, should that number be a combination of our equipment's attack and defense?? Or should it just be a sum of the equipment's attack? I assumed it to be just attack. If it is a combination this needs to be clarified on the pages. In fact, it should be clarified either way. If the way I've been entering info is right and it should be just the equipment's attack, then shouldn't there be a coloumn for equipment defense? I mean, if you know that the equipment's defense stat is somehow used in the damage formula, shouldn't that be entered into the tables? --SHARKY 19:59, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

I have only been recording my equipment's +atk score. I have no idea if the equipments defense is actually used for monster damage. I just know defense is factored in to determining your "best" equipment because defense does help you in duels. Just because defense is factored into "best in slot" doesn't necessarily mean it is factored into your damage, although it could be. I personally think it would be pretty stupid to have your defense factor into your damage although you never know how the creator(s?) programmed it. --Volthar 20:09, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

I think Volthar is right about "best equipments" issue, but there is something with damage calculation. I just got the Avenger and the Atlantean Forcefield (10/17). Then the Atlantean Forcefield replaces Lightning Storm (15/7) as my best spell while Holy Avenger stays as it were. However for some reasons (my level and stats stay the same), compare with before my damage against The World Hydra increases notably (~300/12800). There is also slight increase in damage against The Dark Legion (~100/8400). There are 2 possible explanation for this I may think of: One is Defense stat does factor into damage (but I doubt that 10 increased Def give more dmg than 5 decreased Atk); Two is the best equipments as shown when you attack might NOT be the actual equipments used in the attack itself (or in other words, in damage calculation), and 2 increased Atk cause more dmg. --Hanzou-sama 21:02, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering myself about what kind of equipment the game would choose and how it affects your damage output. I just kind of assumed that the game just adds straight damage depending on the equipment that you use. If you look at the equipment it picks when you attack a monster, it lists the attack value of your equipment/magic, but instead of it saying it adds "Attack", it says it adds "Damage". But because it picks items with the best overall battle power (AKA factors in defense)... oh boy this is going to be fun.

The thing is, I'm pretty sure defense doesn't affect the damage numbers. From the tests I did with Cronus, I learned 2 things that support my "Defense Doesn't Matter" theory:


 * A) Vanquish deals more damage than Zarevok (by about 300 damage for me personally)
 * B) After adding 24 defense, my average damage increased by about 10, which considering the low-ish sample numbers, could just have been a matter of luck. If I has put those points into attack, 24 attack would have added over 400 damage easily.

From my earlier damage formula testing, the ones that produced inaccurate, but reasonable enough numbers, showed that X (the number you multiple your attack by) is around 28. Both Vanquish and Zarevok give a +20 attack bonus, but Vanquish normal attack and defense stats are 10 higher than Zarevok's. Those 10 extra attack points would explain why I get close to 300 extra damage out of her. If defense mattered, then her -25 defense would negate her innate stat advantage against Zarevok. Or it would at least reduce her bonus to something far from the general idea of what X is.

Unfortunately, I should have gone to bed hours ago, so I can't tell if any of this made sense. I would say defense doesn't matter, but then why would an Atlantean Forcefield be better than a Lightning Storm? A Lightning Storm clearly has more attack (but it has less battle power, even when attacking). Maybe for equipment/magic, it is based on their battle power, even if it only says it is factoring in their attack power. When I wake up, hopefully I can make more sense about this.

-- Vincent The Frugal 07:06, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * How do you calculate the damage formula? Is there some mathematical equation? Os is it just a lot of trial and error? --SHARKY 23:00, January 11, 2010 (UTC)


 * My guess would be, you start with ? = dmg, for my lotus numbers an increase in my atk stat of 5 gave me an avg of about 70 extra dmg, over 5 thats avg +14 dmg per atk stat, so with that info you could deduce for attacking Lotus that ? + atk*14 = dmg, you keep doing this for the different stats until you come up with a crude formula then you apply it to other data sets and see how it holds up and make changes. Just my 2 cents, there could be some really cool way to graph it and derive a formula or something thats above my skill level lol.

Sample based off my Lotus data: (Everything else is constant besides my level) Basically do that until a formula emerges I would think. --Volthar 01:03, January 12, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's not overly complicated once we identify everything in the equation. Initially, what we know is that:


 * (Something) = Damage Dealt


 * That "(Something)" is made up of constants and variables, and it's up to the POWER tables to figure out what those constants and variables actually are. Every column (except the "Damage Dealt" and "Signature") is there to figure out if that column is part of the "(Something)" in the damage formula. Once we figure out the columns in the tables matter, then it's just algebra (and looking at the table) that will figure out the rest


 * Also, I have some interesting news. There are rumors out there that different generals have certain hidden bonuses. This might explain why Vanquish is better than Zarevok on some monsters, and Zarevok is better than Vanquish on others. If this is true... this is all going to be so much more fun ;p.


 * In response to my own late night ramblings, I would say that there are two possibilities of what is going on. Either battle power (and not the attack of a weapon) is used during the damage calculations, or specific weapons are used at specific times because some have bonuses against some monsters. My money is on the former, because the latter sounds like a whole lot of extra coding work that no one will see or appreciate, and wouldn't be cost effective for Castle Age to do. Unless they're doing it to mess with us personally. But frankly, even my ego isn't big enough to believe that ;p. Vincent The Frugal 03:54, January 12, 2010 (UTC)

I did some early simple data analysis with the Cronus #s. I posted it on the Cronus page. Still need some more data for it to be conclusive though. --Volthar 20:09, January 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh yeah... I completely forgot that you can solve things with charts. Nicely done Volthar. For the record I loved the way that you solved it, and thank you for giving a link to the actual chart.
 * Now all we have to do is make the tables in a way that they would give more accurate numbers for the chart. This has got me thinking. Because of the whole Vanquish V Zarevok issue (when one does better than the other for different monsters) I think we need to set a specific general for the loot tables to get more accurate numbers. More info on this on the POWER project page. Vincent The Frugal 04:53, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

How were you able to determine that the equipment defence is used in the damage equation? Also, I think it is a good idea to use a constant hero. I noticed some "hiccups" in the data because of the difference between Zarevok and Vanquish. For the data I just counted Zarevok as +26 atk and Vanquish as +38 attack. --Volthar 07:37, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

I graphed out the data for the Emerald, Frost, and Gold dragons as well and posted it up on the Castle Age Wiki Projects/POWER/Dragons page. Volthar 19:43, January 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * You can tell by the way the game chooses which items to bring. If you have both a Lightning Storm (15/7), and an Atlantean Forcefield (10/17), the game will choose to use the Atlantean Forcefield. Considering the Lightning Storm has more attack than the Forcefield, there must be a reason for it. If you work out the math, (when attacking) the Lightning Storm only has a battle power of 19.9, and the forcefield has a battle power of 21.9. I forget the people who said this, but it's been reported that once they made the Forcefield, they noticed a change in damage from when they only had the Lightning Storm. Using that, I made the jump to the conclusion that the battle power (and therefore, defense) is used in the damage formulas. I could be wrong, but to prove this theory wrong, we would need to test it in the POWER project... somehow. Also, thanks for the additional graphs! I'll look at them tonight after my next meal... and after I find all the changes for today's castle age update... Vincent The Frugal 22:09, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

POWER page

 * Forwarding this message I got to you. -- Lycentia  [[Image:Azeron sym.png|20px|link=User_talk:Lycentia]] 02:16, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, I've started uploading numbers for the POWER page, and I was wondering how much data from individual users you were looking for. For example when I keep attacking with the same stats my damage will always be within a limited range, do you want say.. a max of 10 data entries for constant attack stats? then wait until my stats change in some way before adding new entries? Or would you just like all available data.

Thanks --Volthar 01:56, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

Hey, just wanted to let you know that I added a page for Battle of the Dark legion on Castle Age Wiki Projects/Where's The Loot as well as adding a link on all of the actual monster pages to the corresponding Where's the Loot page under the Rewards section. I also modified all of the loot tables a little to make them more space efficient.

Also, I was wondering if there should be a new column for the players level bracket(60-90 / 90+)?

--Volthar 13:38, January 10, 2010 (UTC)

You should add all available data. One of the things we need to solve in the damage formula is the amount of random damage the game will add, so that you don't deal the exact same amount of damage on every attack (when your stats are the same for all your attacks) The more numbers we get with the same stats, the easier it will be to figure out the random damage factor.

No, there shouldn't be level brackets. From what I've seen so far, the only things that affect the loot you get are the amount of damage that you did, and maybe how fast you killed it. In fact, I am 90% sure it's just based on the damage that you have done against the monster, and that the loot bracket theory (you need to do X damage to get Y number of loot drops) is correct.

Also, thank you for adding the loot page! It was getting kind of embarrassing that it's been that long and I still hadn't done it yet ;p.

Vincent The Frugal 07:06, January 11, 2010 (UTC)

Are you sure about that? I've jumped over the 90 level barrier 2 months ago I from my observations I was getting better items for a considerably lower damage I was doing back than. I also think that the rank you finished for your category also counts.

Xelian 08:30, January 14, 2010 (UTC)
 * I can garentee rank does not matter at all. It only seems like it affects your drops because you have to deal more damage to get higher on the rank list. And I'm pretty sure that level doesn't matter at all, because I'm regularly a slacker when fighting monsters. Sometimes when I fight them, I'm number 1 with a (crap)-ton of damage, and sometimes I don't even do enough damage for it to count towards the achievments. Granted, dragons didn't come out until I was level 70 (totally bypassed the gauntlet because of all the monster excitement, hurray for timing!), and I've always been in the highest level brackets. From what I've seen listed on the loot tables, even if you are at a high level, and you deal the same amount of damage as someone with a low level. Also, note to self: stop being a slacker and put the 40 some odd monster loot records up on the wiki! Vincent The Frugal 22:23, January 14, 2010 (UTC)

Ok, there was someone who posted some loot drops here. I would like to ask that you do not post your loot drops here. If you want to add drops to the loot tables, but don't want to sign up for Wikia, that's fine. You can still fill out the loot table and sign with "~". If you don't register, typing in "~" will list your IP address. But... I suppose on those pages, if you have a name you want to be known by (and don't want your IP address displayed) you can sign your name by writting in the name you want to be known by, as long as you date it and mention the time. Like instead of typing in "~", if I typed in Vincent The Frugal 02:07, January 20, 2010 (UTC), that would also work. Vincent The Frugal 02:07, January 20, 2010 (UTC)

I did some calculations on my own, and i found a different measurement for calculating the dmg dealt to emerald dragons, this depends on attack and defense of the player, general, and items. When i was looking for a pattern, i noticed all damage was even, so that means whatever the variable is, it must be multiplied by a multiple of 2, so when i calculated out 3 different players with several different generals each, i got each one of the minimum numbers to be calculated strait forward, then i figured out that the biggest range of dmg is 54, which only 1 person on Castle age wiki didnt align with that under the red dragon, and only 1 data set didnt line up so i am fairly confident that it was just an error in entering the number, anyways i was hoping that castle age wiki might be able to add seperate general attack and defense and items attack and defense. This worked for green dragon, however i didnt measure the blue or red dragons data that had been entered on this website because it didnt have item attack or defense - any info u can give me on this whether it matched up with yours or not would be very helpful

Thanks

Fchicken

small question
is there any way to add more than one row at a time??Takeko 16:41, January 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * There is, but it's a bit of a pain. You need to edit the wiki-code (aka switch to source mode). I recommend doing it the following way (if you're editing the POWER tables):
 * Add 1 new row the usual way (right clicking, then selecting row -> insert row before)
 * Fill in all your info except for the damage that you dealt
 * Switch to "Source" mode by clicking the button at the top of the editor labled "Source"
 * Find the new row you just added. It will look something like this:


 * 999


 * 126


 * 345


 * Vanquish


 * 4


 * 155


 * 5




 * Copy that
 * Push "enter" (on your keyboard) after the "~", but before the "|}"
 * Paste
 * If you need to make another row, repeat the last two steps for as many rows as you need
 * Return to the regular editor (by clicking the "Source" button again)
 * Now you should have all the rows you need, and all the rows should be completely filled in, except for the amount of damage that you did
 * Man, this is more complicated out loud than it was in my head. If this isn't explained in a way that other people can understand it, let me know and I'll try again. Vincent The Frugal 18:01, January 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah this is what I've been doing. I think you explained it pretty clearly and I feel sorry for anyone who has been manually entering in all their rows. Volthar 19:59, January 25, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah this is what I've been doing. I think you explained it pretty clearly and I feel sorry for anyone who has been manually entering in all their rows. Volthar 19:59, January 25, 2010 (UTC)

Lotus, et al
Hate to mention this, as it means discarding old data (again).

In order to accurately pin down the damage formulas, we should probably be including the listed damage granted by the High Priest. IE Tamara casts Holy Word: 259 damage.

The Ornery Serf
 * It's a good thought, but the High Priest always does around the same amount of damage, no matter who you are or how strong you are. The high priest will always do about 250-ish damage, and won't ever get a critical hit or anything. As long as people tell us how many members they have in their Elite Guard (so that we know if the High Priest is a factor) we should be able to account for it when we compile the data. Vincent The Frugal 20:55, February 1, 2010 (UTC)

New Unit droped from a random encounter while doing an "Earth Realm" quest
I didn't copy the dialogue, but basically what it said was: "While traveling the realm of Earth you and your Elite Guard have been jumped by four earth bandits, fight them now in combat! (or something like that. It was definately 4 of them though.

At the time, I had only one person in my elite guard.

I clicked something. ???? apparently I won the fight, and one of them was so impressed that it joined my forces. It was 2 attack 4 defense, and has the icon here: http://image2.castleagegame.com/1357/graphics/soldier_assassin_2.jpg SirSpamsalot 19:19, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

Article comments
Hi Vincent. Today I've been enabling article comments on our Facebook game wikis. Article comments replace the old method of using a separate Discussion page to talk about the article, and instead allow comments to be posted at the bottom of the article itself. See this FishVille article for an example. Is this something you'd be interested in using here? If so, I'll turn it on. Please leave a message on my talk page when you decide. Thanks. JoePlay ( talk ) 00:28, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

(I have responded to this on his talk page. For those of you who wish to know my response, and why I chose what I did, here is my reply to this. If you disagree with my assessment of the situation, feel free to argue below, and be amazed how easy it will be to follow the conversation! ;p)


 * I spend a fair amount of time on Facebook. I have also spent a good deal of time on YouTube. If these two media giants have taught me anything, it's that comments are terrible, terrible things.


 * I'm a big fan of separate discussion pages. First of all, it's much easier to discuss things on them. You can create sections and sub-sections in them, so that it's easy to find everything. You can discuss multiple things at once without trying to figure out the order in which you're supposed to read what everyone wrote. It's also a very good disconnect between the editors of the wiki, and the information contained on the wiki. What if two people are having an extremely heated debate. Do we really want everyone who will ever visit that page to be aware of their squabbling? It's clearer and easier for people who use the wiki if we just show how the argument ends on the article page. I know people love to watch other people fight, but this is a news source. We should be professional about it. We report the news to the people, and we offer backstage access to everyone who wants it. It's a win-win system.


 * I can understand the merit of having comments at the bottom of the page. Sure, it's handy for people who don't understand the severe complexity that is editing the Wiki in "Source Mode". But how easy to we need to make this thing to edit?


 * You know what kind of people "Comments" sections attract? Flamers. Trolls. Opinionated Schmucks. And people too busy to understand that people can have different viewpoints, and not be "l4m0r n00bs". Not to mention all the vandalism that would take place. Heck, if you make it THAT easy for them, why wouldn't people just go around spreading hate, advertisements, porn links and whatnot. Can you rollback comments? If not, that'll be a huge pain for the moderators of the wikis. I sincerely think that the "edit" button scares most of the people who would vandalize pages in this way, into not actually vandalizing them.


 * Just so you know, I go into detail about this to show that I don't make this decision lightly. Frankly, this all seems at least a little gimmicky. Especially since we only have the option to have either the comments OR the discussion page. If you can have both (and be able to easily remove the spam from the comments section), I would approve of making the change. But losing the organizing capabilities of the discussion page, in favor of more people twittering their thoughts about a page is something I can not support.


 * Heck, could you imaging if your Community Wiki Userpage was just a wall of comments instead of a discussion page. Would you read it? Could you read it? Now, I know very few pages could ever have that popular of a discussion page, but for the few that do... It's obvious that a comment section in lieu of the discussion page would bring more harm than good. Especially since high-traffic discussion pages tend to be the most important pages in each wiki.


 * With that said, please do NOT enable article comments for the Castle Age Wiki.


 * Vincent The Frugal 05:15, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm having visions of mass vandalism. I'm with Vincent. No, thank you. -- Lycentia  [[Image:Azeron sym.png|20px|link=User_talk:Lycentia]] 10:35, March 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the very thorough feedback, Vincent. Your points are all quite valid. Castle Age wiki will not be one of the test wikis for article comments. Cheers. JoePlay ( talk ) 20:28, March 5, 2010 (UTC)

Demi points drop
I just remembered a matter someone asked me a while ago, I'm still not sure about it. It's about the Monster Loot Project's tables. Says, I get 1-2-2 demi points drop, in column "# of other drops" should I count that as 3 (because only 3 drops) or 5 (because there are 5 points)? The same thing for Favor points. --Hanzou-sama 16:11, March 30, 2010 (UTC)
 * Short answer: yes, he should mark it that he got 5 demi-points to drop.


 * Long answer: the thing is with the loot-dropping system, is that it's loot-point based. This is basically how it works:
 * If you did at least X damage, you get 1 epic item. It will roll to determine which one you get. If you did not do X damage, you get 1 rare item instead.
 * The game then determines how many "Loot Points" to give you, based on the damage you dealt, and defense you added/shield dispelled
 * The game then determines Land drops. It takes Y% of your loot points, and allocates it to land drops. It then rolls to see which land to give you. Each land is worth a different number of loot points. Let's say 200 loot points are allocated to land drops, sky sanctuaries are woth 80, Lake Fortresses are worth 60, Castles are worth 40, Mountain Keeps are worth 20, and Marketplaces are worth 10. First the game will roll to see if you get a Lake Fortress. If you get it, your remaining loot points drop down to 120, and you roll again to try and get another Sky Sanctuary. This will continue until you do not have enough loot points to get a Sky Sanctuary, or if the roll determines that you do not get one. As soon as you roll and do not get a Sky Sanctuary, then the game moves on to the next most valuable land:the Lake Fortress. The process is repeated until you get to the least valuable land (available to drop for that monster). If you have enough Loot Points to get a Marketplace, but you don't get the roll required to get it, your loot points are put aside for the end.
 * The game then determines Epic drops. It takes Z% of your loot points, and allocates it to Epic drops. It will first roll to get the most desireable Epic item (Keira's Soul, Demon's Strength, DTG, Frost Bolt, etc) (note, you may need a very, very good roll to get these items, also, you may need a ton of loot points to qualify to get the chance to get them). It will then roll for every other epic item in the same way that it did for land (Roll for an item, if you get it, roll for it again, if not, move on to the next item), until you run out of Loot Points in this category (or until you don't have enough Loot Points to qualify for any item). Any leftover loot points are added to the Rare drop loot points.
 * The game then determines Rare drops. It takes R% of your loot points, and allocates it to Raredrops. If you have any leftover loot points from the Epic drops, it is added to your Rare loot points. Rare drops work in the same way as Epic drops do, except their loot point quota is lower, and the roll required to get it is easier. Any leftover loot points are allocated to Uncommon drops
 * The game then decides Uncommon drops. It takes just the leftover loot points from Rare drops as the total number of loot points available for Uncommon drops. Uncommon drops also work in the same way as Epic drops, but their loot point costs are much, much lower (much lower than Rare drops), and the rolls required are about the same as Rare drops. Once You run out of things to roll for, it takes your remaining loot points, and keeps them with your leftover Land loot points.
 * The game then takes your leftover loot points (from Uncommon Drops and Land Drops) and uses it to determine your demi-points and favor points. The game rolls to see what kind of point to give you (Ambrosian, Malekan, Corvintheon, Auroran, Azeonian, or Favor), and then gives you 1-4 points of that point (if it's a demi-point) (you roll for each demi-point, and each demi-point costs a/some loot points) or 1 point (if it's a favor point). This process is repeated and you keep rolling until you are completely out of loot points.
 * So as you can see, the individual demi-points earned do matter, as it'll help us figure out how many loot points are awarded overall. What we need the loot tables to do is: figure out how much damage X equals (to get the 1 special Epic drop), how much is allocated to Land drops (Y), how much is allocated to Epic drops (Z) and if R really exists, or if the loot points allocated to Rare drops is just the leftover loot points from the Epic drops. Also, figuring out the odds to maximize your chances to get favor points would be nice, but that might be way too complicated to figure out without just looking at the CA code. Vincent The Frugal 18:34, March 30, 2010 (UTC)
 * Wow, thanks a lot for a very thorough answer. Uhm, I don't mean anything, but how did you get all the mechanics above?
 * And...well, you might not understand my question. I'm sorry if I didn't explain it clearly. There are 2 columns, "Demi-points" and "# of other drops". Take the mentioned example again, in the "Demi-points" column I would certainly record "5", so you know exactly how much points were dropped; but does it matter if 5 points go in 1-2-2 or 1-1-1-1-1? If it does, then it should be recorded somewhere, shouldn't it? So I was wondering if I need to count "3" to "# of other drops" in case of 1-2-2, to differentiate it with 1-1-1-1-1 case, you already know exact number of points from the other column. Another reason to wonder is, there are no "other drops" other than demi/favor points, energy potion and lands, and there are columns for them, so it's not really necessary to have a column just for sum of all those, you can get that number anytime.
 * About the mechanics above, I'd like to discuss a few things. Accord to that mechanics, and how loot report presented when we collect rewards, I suppose each item was calculated and saved to somewhere like a list, then printed backward, thus demi points go first and land and epic loots go last. Though that was just what I suppose, but if all loot of one type are rolled before moving on to the next, shouldn't they be listed consecutively instead of mixing up with other types? The devs may mix them up intentionally, but I see no reasons for that except they are trying to hide drop mechanics or want to mess things up with us. Also, in a loot report, I've seen epic drops can come either before or after land drops, or in rare case, one epic comes after lands while other epics come before.
 * About point drops, I saw 2 favor points in 1 drop quite a few times. I haven't seen 3 or 4 demi-points in 1 drop, but I did see a drop of 7 demi points, one time only though. That really surprised me, I never thought that many of demi points can go in just one drop. Hanzou-sama 20:33, March 30, 2010 (UTC)
 * This entire thing has become a logistics nightmare. The problem with recording the Demi-Points in either way is going to cause confusion. I too, have received multiple favor points at once, and once received 6 demi-points on the same reward line. The thing is, that I believe that demi-points matter verry little in the overall loot point system. If each demi-point that you get costs a single loot point, it's going to be nearly impossible to tell the difference between that and getting 3 for the price of 1. I would say just keep everything simple, and count all demi-points received in the "other drops" column, and not just the number of times you receive demi-points in the loot list.
 * I base my last post on the loot tables here, the DSU forums, and the main CA forums. It's a loot point system because that's the only thing that makes sense. All loot drops are oddly balanced. I have found that when people receive more Epic loot, they receive less Rare loot. When people get more Rare, they get less Epic. When people get more Uncommon, they get less Rare. When people get more Favor Points, they get less demi-points. People earn more loot when they deal more damage, no matter what level they are, or how much stamina they commit (as long as they deal the same damage with less stamina). Time is not a factor (it only seems that way because on a new monsster release day, every monster dies really quickly, and everyone reports their loot, making it seem like there's more loot than normal). Based on these insights, I based the loot theory above.
 * Yeah, loot is printed backwards. As for the 1 Epic that appears above/below land drops, that has to do with "If the player did at least X damage, they get 1 Epic", and this is calculated outside of the loot point system (they might need to do a set amount of damage for a Rare to appear there as well, sometimes I don't get anything below the Land drops when I do very little damage...). The only thing I have trouble with is sometimes I get a Favor point in the Uncommon section of the reward list. That... I can't explain. Maybe Favor Points are also Uncommon drops for Dragons and Serpents, it would certainly explain why you can get them so easily from those monsters.
 * Now that you mention it... I think I have received the same loot out of order (multiple atlantean maces, with other loot inbetween them). In which case that would imply... All Epic, Rare, and Uncommon loot all cost the same amount of Loot Points, and the rolling system rolls to see which item that you get. Assuming they're rolling a D20, each item possible to get would correspond to a set of numbers between 1-20, and whatever the random number generator picks, that decides what specific loot you get in that category. And as long as you have the Loot Points to get an item, it keeps rolling (but to get a Demon Strength or a DTG, you'll have a really low chance, maybe only 1 number in 20 is linked to these items... maybe less). Then this would imply that for every monster that you kill, you receive an extremely high amount of loot points. Like if you do only 2 times the achievement damage, you'll receive 1,300 loot points (allocated to non-land loot), and Epic drops are worth 500 loot points each (so you get 2, leaving 300 loot points for Rares), Rares are worth 69 points each (giving you 4, leaving you 24 loot points for Uncommons), Uncommons are worth 7 points each (giving you 3 uncommons, and leaving 3 points for demi-favor points), and demi/favor points are worth 1 loot point each (giving you get 3).
 * Hmm, then how would that affect how the game decides to give you 1-X demi points at a time? And why favor points you can only get 1-Y points at a time? Unless... It rolls to see which point you get first, then rolls how many times you get that same point, with the max being how many loot points you have remaining. But then... why do you always get less favor points than demi-points?... Unless the number of points that you get from that second roll is devided by 2, and rounded up. That... might be it. Don't trust the specific loot point numbers mentioned above, but I would bet $5 that this is the system that they're using to give out loot. Vincent The Frugal 23:49, March 30, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I just want to verify the source of information to have appropriate point of view.
 * Favor points as Uncommon drop? Hmmm, very interesting... Never seen that before. You meant it's shown between Uncommon drops or it's green? I just think we can get Favor points from some monsters because they drop FP, while others don't. If DPs are really Uncommon drop on some monsters, that will make determining drop mechanics even more like a nightmare.
 * I agree that each time all loots of the same tier could be rolled each time to determine which you will get. But all loots might not necessarily cost same amount of loot points, just because some loots are clearly worth more than others, or should I say: more "desirable". Such a system will require player to have high enough damage to get certain loots. However such system will be more complicated and change the actual chance of getting a specific loot, even given the same amount of loot points.
 * About FPs drop less than DPs, in fact I have seen 1 FP and 1 DP drop, or even 2 FP and 0 DP drop. I guess the reason would be you will always get only 1 drop of FP (also only 1 Energy Potion), meaning if you get FP in a roll, the rest of LPs will not be rolled for FP anymore, only DP. And if assume that FPs and DPs do not cost the same amount of LP, DPs can be very cheap, together with more rolls that will tend to give you more DP than FP, except in rare cases FP drop right on first roll and you are out of LP. --Hanzou-sama 20:24, April 2, 2010 (UTC)
 * While I base my theory on the loot tables, it's still just a theory and could easily be wrong. I don't think so, but there's always the chance that I could be wrong (wouldn't be the first, or the last time)
 * I've seen Favor Points dropped inbetween greens (but the Favor Point reward text wasn't green). And yes, it is easily nightmarish now.
 * I argue that all loot (of the same rarity) have the same loot point cost. How often have we seen people doing relatively small amounts of damage, and they get DTC or Demon Strength? [rant] Heck! My second Demon Strength came from a Lotus when I didn't even do the Achievement damage on it! I did only about 150k damage on her and I got it to drop! Seriously! 150k damage! What the (F)?! It still seriously (P) me off! Even today! Considering how ridiculous it was to get the first one, and I got the second like 5 days later without even trying! It's like the game said, "Hey, remember those months you spend trying to get one item? Here's a second, useless one for free!" (B) [/rant]
 * Er... sorry about the rant. But we're all seen from the forums how people who do more than barely tag monsters can get these really desirable epic drops, not to mention the people get 1 kill on a raid, and get the Demon Strength. If you needed a certain number of loot points to get the DTG or the Demon Strength (S) like this wouldn't happen. Sorry, still a little angry.
 * The problem with your FP verses DP argument, is that a couple of times, I've gotten multiple FP drops. Sometimes, very very rarely, I'll get 2 FP to drop on a single reward line, and 1 more to drop on another reward line. Though when this happens, the 1 by itself will be placed in the middle of the green drops. Your theory could be right, if favor points are rolled in 2 seperate occasions, and you can only get it once in each occasion. Good luck proving that though, I don't think any monster will ever drop that many favor points to be able to really test it.
 * Because people tend to get less FP than DP, I could see how these two would have different LP cost in the same bracket, even if the colored loot (epic, rare, and uncommon) costs the same as everything else in their rarity. That's why in my last reply, I assumed that when they rolled for the number of Favor Points to give out, they would divide it by 2, and round up. Though I could easily see how a different Loot Point cost could fit in to the formula. (And who knows, maybe this applies to the land drops as well). Vincent The Frugal 03:16, April 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * Because people tend to get less FP than DP, I could see how these two would have different LP cost in the same bracket, even if the colored loot (epic, rare, and uncommon) costs the same as everything else in their rarity. That's why in my last reply, I assumed that when they rolled for the number of Favor Points to give out, they would divide it by 2, and round up. Though I could easily see how a different Loot Point cost could fit in to the formula. (And who knows, maybe this applies to the land drops as well). Vincent The Frugal 03:16, April 3, 2010 (UTC)

Deathrune Seige
I've been trying to find this answer for quite some time but have had no luck, so I thought I'd try you!

Whenever I assist on a Deathrune Seige it doesn't show up on my Monster page, so I can't go back to it to help more or to collect any loot..... Am I looking in the wrong place?

I appreciate your help. Feel free to bounce me an email to help. sheacsimpson@yahoo.com
 * When you say "assist" do you mean when you help to "siege" against the raid, or do you mean you spend a decent amount of stamina trying to damage it?
 * If you are spending a decent amount of stamina trying to damage it, the raid will appear under the "Battle" tab, under the "Raid" section.
 * If you meant that you are just spending just 1 stamina to help siege against a monster... It won't appear in your "Raid" list. I don't think you can get loot from a monster just by helping to siege against it. Granted, I haven't tried, but it would throw in a huge monkey wrench into any and all loot theories out there. If you want to help siege the monster again, you'll need to save the siege link that you clicked on. Vincent The Frugal 20:17, April 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Just using stamina for siege weapons most definitely won't get you any item loot. To get anything from a monster, you have to do a minimum amount of damage/kill a minimum number of soldiers (or fortifications/dispels). If you just spend a stamina for a siege launch, you get the immediate benefits of gold and experience but the monster or raid doesn't show up on your lists. Sieges let people be good Samaritans and nothing more. The Stray 17:57, April 10, 2010 (UTC)