So I'm running a team of 3 Nytes trying to rank ALL proficiencies for them...

But it's ridiculously expensive. :|


Want to rank them as Shadow/Air/Light? That'll be 75k! Need to swap their points in Health, str/int, dex, and agil? That's another 75k for a total of 150k!

Time to swap back to your main, fully-ranked combo for bosses? That's another 150k!

Mess something up and have to reset them all again? That'll be 50k for every mistake! :D


...
...
...

At this rate I'll sink 1-2 million gold into these just swapping around to rank different proficiencies through the Week of Love alone. I don't even want to know how much I've sunk into them over the past several months...

Can't we have like, a 1-time payment to unlock the proficiency or something? Buy it once and swap it freely? Or at least make it cheaper? This is getting ridiculous and I'm going broke over something stupid. :|


Edit:

Healing cost is also getting stupid. 55k every death while trying to take out the new boss... And I've already drained nearly all of my mender's talismans so I'm stuck saving them for the stupid "use 18" every week thing...

*faceplants keyboard*

Speaking of messing up...

Being able to swap these WITHOUT having to go all the way back to the barracks would be great.


... just realized I didn't switch over the HP, INT/STR, DEX, AGI things again so my Air Cannon has health and agility still...

And I have to go all the way back to the barracks to fix it...

For another 25k gold....






(I have ragequit the game three times over this in the past WEEK.)

yes. Yes to both- both lower cost and being able to freely swap the points
Especially if the technical recommendation for birdboy is that having at least 1hp prof on all party pets is a good choice because that's not... really what you want for literally any other enemy?
So you have to go to the barracks, swap your profs for 25k (possibly for all 3 pets, for 75k, depending on their usual setup) to have hp profs, get all the way through all the enemies between you and birdboy (assuming you have already located his room and beaten all other bosses on the floor), fight him, probably lose, repeat a few times until you get sick of it, swap your profs back to the usual for another 25-75k to go back to your usual grind setup,,,
(25k is, what, about 4200 gold per prof point)

and why IS it that we can only swap the profs at barracks or outside of LG? like... what difference is it going to make, really, beyond forcing you to go "oh, wait" and trudge all the way back to barracks and then all the way back to the boss if you forget to do something with them? it isn't like you can somehow cheat if you could swap the profs whenever?

I know earlier on in learning the Temple I got to one of the bosses and was like "I wonder if doing x to my prof setup would work better actually?" and then promptly discovered the 'you can't change profs in LG' thing to my combined dismay and irritation

please for both scath's and xav's reasons ><

Xav are you aware you can heal in the town in the caves every 10 minutes? I use revives and potions from mission pouches in the barracks to heal when i die

Not an option when I'm running a themed perfume in the temple. I don't want to botch my data pool with any non-temple encounters, and the portal isn't in the village.

Takes forever just to find a pet in the temple so it takes me literal hours to clear a perfume, if not days when I'm stuck on mobile the whole time which makes battles and movement take 5-10x longer...

(Which is why I've also suggested/begged for the ability to pause themed perfumes... and exp philters for that matter.)

Unfortunately, Gold inflation continues to be an issue within Sylestia's economy, even after many measures taken over the past couple of years. It definitely has slowed down considerably, but I am struggling to get Gold actually out of the economy at this point - it's kind of stagnated. Those with lots of Gold are just not willing to part with it.

Many features like this are intended to keep static Gold consumption going. So, in regards to just simply the mechanic here of the cost, I view this as warranted.


The secondary reason is that things are intentionally set up so that players are encouraged to utilize more than just 3 Pets. It helps increase demand for battling, leveling, and more max stat pet breeding projects. If everyone could get by just simply having 3 pets, it would decrease the demand for all of the aforementioned areas. This is also something I am not willing to reduce. However, the option certainly is there if players wish to go that route.

I am sorry, but a reduction in this is probably not going to happen for the foreseeable future as it is specifically intended to work the way it's working.


Lastly, awhile back, I made it so that re-entering the Lost Grove automatically puts you into your Barracks if you have built them. You can safely leave the Lost Grove, return, then teleport to the Ancient Temple and not risk any encounters along the way.

Those with lots of Gold are just not willing to part with it.

Yeah we've got those in the real world, too; they're called billionaires. The difference is there's more luxury stuff to buy in the real world, like mansions and boats and sparkly gems and shiny metal, but even then they run out of things they want to buy and just sit on their wealth.

I'd assume some of these people aren't as active in The Lost Grove and needing to swap team proficiencies and so on which makes your "gold sinks" useless against them. Even if they are, it's a drop in the bucket for them.

Just because the ultra-wealthy exist that doesn't mean the rest of us can comfortably afford these high costs.

It'd be like telling eveyone who's broke "well, billionaires have tons of money so we're going to make everything more expensive for everyone! Oh, you're one of the players who barely scrapes by and these "gold sinks" are making it difficult for you to continue playing? Well too bad, there's too much money held by a select few in the world so there. :D "





... I'm seriously about to give up on The Lost Grove.

It takes millions of gold for barracks and gear upgrades, and I struggle to manage it. It costs me hundreds of thousands just swapping pet procificienes around, which means I have even less for upgrades, and all of this I have to work out while also funding my pet projects.


If I decided to give up on the Grove and just grind gold off missions like so many others, or if I decided to stick around in Temple1 eternally and blast everything in 3 rounds and sell off the gear rather than turning it into powder for upgrades, I'd be one of those ultra-wealthy gold hoarders. But I'd rather actually engage in the gameplay and actually do something. It's just getting to be too expensive for me to justify trying over and over again to beat the last boss when I'm sinking 150k gold just to swap my team from A to B!


So far as it affecting stats pet sales, Krin I have HUNDREDS of stats pets. I breed them. I could have a team for nearly every species. I've even got some that are better than my team by a small degree of stats. But I happen to LIKE my 3 Nytes and I want to stick with them, and I KNOW that you have a tendency to require specific mechanics on bosses which would require them to change proficiency. (Such as now; Water/Fire/Fire won't work on the new boss so I have to change them.)

And that's how many players are. Heck I've got friends who adamantly refuse to upgrade their team out of loyalty to a certain team they've had for ages, even after I've bred and custom-dyed a superior stats pet as a gift for them.

The only real incentive I've seen for people getting multiple stats teams is the leaderboard contests during seasonal festivals. They want the Rikki this year? They need a Rikki team. Going for the Luff theme? They need a luff team. So on and so forth for all the species in some cases. Maybe for not-festival related things a player may want 1 of each proficiency, but even then it's usually a result of specific battle requirements or community recommendations for faster fights. In those cases it's usually "I'll keep my main team and just have x on standby" - not like they'll need 5 shadow tanks waiting around.

But for those of us who are trying to push the new content, we're the ones getting the short end of the stick.


I want to keep my Nytekrie team.
I spent hours, weeks, LITERAL MONTHS getting each of their proficiencies up - the same amount of effort anyone else would put into ranking a pet.

Why should I be financially punished for this? Because A B and C have a boatload of gold they won't spend? Seriously? How is that any fair?

Hi, player who doesn't want to spend their gold here! Fully agree with everything Xavion said, and Scath's post above. The LG has a ton of gold sinks, and I simply . . . don't buy them. I collect 2 very expensive species on the site, and prefer to save my gold for that during fests rather than buy a portal that offers only a convenience upgrade to my experience. If the sinks become necessary to engage with new content then in all likelihood I simply won't engage with said content. It's 100% unfair to punish players who actively want to participate because I and some other players are stubborn and like watching lil numbers go up. Additionally, I question the idea that there's a gold inflation issue. I'd wager players spend most of their gold buying items from other players, either directly or via broker, and most prices I see seem pretty fair. Catas remain at fairly stable prices each fest, and given how easy it is to earn gold, I'd say something like 400k for a fabled cata is fair. I do see overpricing/underpricing, but it's almost always people being unaware of prices, not some inflation driven mark up. Maybe I'm missing something, but from what I've heard about prices in previous years, if anything, gold prices have FALLEN, not risen.

Anyway, TL;DR - agree with Xav and Scath.

Edit:
Been thinking about how so many issues that all boil down to "issue with the grove" have been popping up and I gotta say I think it's just burnout at this point. We waited so long for the new content, and it turned out to be pretty much just as thankless and only getting MORE thankless. Forget the bosses, SO many revives wasted in the second/third temples dealing with those stupid unstable voidlings. Plus with a fest event being at least partially tied into it, it just constantly feels like we're being forced into doing stuff that just feels miserable. Temple grinding is even more monotonous than the caves or forest, the bosses only show up once a week and there aren't even like, elites who spawn every so often to mix things up. Just constant same enemies once per room. Finally beat one temple? Boom new temple now it's even harder with a practically impossible boss (for third one at least, margarine isn't too bad as far as difficulty jump). Grind grind grind and your reward is: more grinding. It's just really demoralizing.

Maybe I'm alone in feeling this way, or it's a minority of players, but I think it might help if the poll feature was used a bit more often - eg "how do you feel about the temple", or just some way that community feedback is welcomed. Writing giant forum posts takes a lot of energy/time, and I know a lot of people feel weird/nervous about PM-ing the admins directly. Cuz I hear a lot from other players about issues, but I don't think that feedback is getting through up to the admins.

I know I already posted in support of this but I want to explain. I'm a full time student who plays sylestia when I can to escape the endless grind of studying and academics. I enjoy collecting certain themed species, doing projects, and battling to progress the story and to strengthen my pets.

I enjoy the lost grove, I do. I think it's a wonderful concept, upgrading buildings to increase certain bonuses and upgrading equipment to give you an edge in battle.

However, it is so expensive. I imagine for other casual players like me, it's hard to balance the LG sink with project and collection expenditures. It's terribly weighty compared to the other two, and I collect tagged nephini, which are notoriously expensive.

With the new temple, I have to re-upgrade new gear, along with spending hours in the temple (sometimes weeks if RNG is unkind). Like what Aeling said, the more time and gold I put into the LG for a tiny increase in battle power, the more disillusioned I get.

And considering a taunt-capable tank is essential for dungeon number 3, that's another month or so I have to sink into ranking an earth or a shadow because i made the 'wrong choice' of ranking a water for my entire sylestian stint. I consistently hover around 2-3m gold if I'm lucky and not paying Ael for nephs.

Not to mention the original purpose of this thread - the fact that we need to switch prof points around for ONE boss (at least 50k per boss attempt, because the dungeon refreshes every week) is yet another sink I can't afford but at the same time is necessary for progression.

Like I said, I really do enjoy playing in the LG but the time and gold required to attain certain necessary upgrades make it incredibly draining at times.