Decision Time: Evolution Edition

[reeisme]

So because I can never seem to find the room to upgrade my farms, food is a valuable commodity in the forest. I have a few questions on how you decide which animals to evolve to epic. Feel free to address any one or all of my questions and of course, add any of your own! That's how this works, right? ;)

1. Is there a rhyme or reason in who you decide to make epic?

2. Which of your animals have been most reliable in battles?

3. Are there any animals that you evolved to epic just for aesthetic reasons (i.e. fight technique, cool, beautiful, etc.)?

I found this related post. I'm sure there are others. http://forums.storm8.com/showthread.php?82580-Lvling-up-animals

My responses:
1. Sort of. Initially I just evolved one of each element even though they were common. Once I had them, I evolved 3 super rares that covered the 6 primary elements. Later I chose one of each type animal with special elements that I liked (Lucky Rabbit, Smitten Kitten, Snap Dragon, etc.). Now I'm currently working on Strawberry because he can fight Obsidian cyclops (earth, nature, fire and electric are all weak!)

2. Ancient sloth - She just seems to win a lot and can face off against treasure animals.
Treasure toucan - He can battle gem animals like a champ.
and Lucky rabbit - He is indeed "lucky". He often gets critical hits regardless of strength of attack, especially against spring. He's 5-0 so far against those, which is a relief because I don't have any Xmas animals. He's also currently 4-0 in this current (Wombattery) tournament... wow make that 5-0.

3. Not often although I did for Snap Dragon. Also, it's pretty cute that Strawberry throws ice cream scoops (at least I think that's what he's doing) and I'm thinking I will evolve Hippogryph because its epic form caught my attention when I was visiting a neighbor's.

[MaribouMay]

Part of what makes the game fun for me is leveling up my animals. I usually grow cherries all day to generate as much food as possible.

1. First I leveled up one SR animal of each combination. I chose ones that I liked or ones that required less food.Then I started leveling up specialty animals which have their own habitat (music, shamrock, christmas, spring, ice cream, etc.). The habitats generally hold a high coin amount and are a good way to earn coins. I am just now making more coins per day than I spend and I have been playing since November. Now I am doing a combination of SR, specialty, and ones I like. I always focus on getting the new specialty SR for battling purposes.

2. In no particular order:Menoram, Cthulhu, Treent, Cosmic Phoenix, Money Badger, Cactus Kitsune, Patriotter, Snowpossum have all been pretty reliable for me.

3. Absolutely! Harpy, Menoram, Cactus Kitsune, Bulldog, Matripony, Cosmic Phoenix, Caturn, Holly Collie, Zapra, Pigmy Giraffe, Land Shark, Dandelion.

[SummerNightSky]

1. Yes. I'm working on leveling each single element animal (Pyro Pony, Pandaffodil, etc.) to Epic. So far, I have Epic Pyro Pony and Lightning Leopard. I'm also working on getting Super Rares of a wide variety of element combinations to Epic. Only have Epic Ancient Sloth so far.

2. Ancient Sloth. Aperil Fool and Lightning Leopard as well. I don't have many high level animals, so I only end up using a handful for each tournament. I do each Battlegrounds blind, meaning I don't know who my opponent is until I enter each level, and my Ancient Sloth is my default animal for the first run through of each level. He's taken quite a few beatings when the type match-up has turned out to be unfavorable. But he's also surprised me by getting unlikely critical hits.

3. No, but that's only because I only have 3 Epics. I do keep an eye on what different animals look like in Epic form when visiting neighbors or looking up things on the internet, and there are some that I'd definitely like to evolve to Epic based on pretty/cool-ness. Typhoon Tiger and Falconch for example (have the former, need to breed the latter).

[reeisme]

Part of what makes the game fun for me is leveling up my animals. I usually grow cherries all day to generate as much food as possible.

That was great info. Thanks! It's funny bc we've been playing nearly the same amount of time but I have no gem animals and only 6 epic super rares (plus 1 treasure). BUT I have 75 million coins. Lol.

Ok, so first things first it sounds like I need to make it a priority to expand my farms each time I manage to open up a new plot of land. It's just that TL just keeps throwing new animals at me. Sigh. Good problem to have I guess.

After I finish evolving Strawberry, I was thinking of working on Pluma. I want a new, dark, super rare and electric has a lot of strengths/few weaknesses.

[MaribouMay]

That was great info. Thanks! It's funny bc we've been playing nearly the same amount of time but I have no gem animals and only 6 epic super rares (plus 1 treasure). BUT I have 75 million coins. Lol.

Interesting! It just shows how different the game can be from player to player. I only have 1.5 million coins which can disappear in an instant. But, I do have 32 epic animals so those coins went to good use. I have no idea how many SRs I have.

edited to add that I have 58 SRs please 2 more waiting to be hatched. Wow! That surprises me.

[reeisme]

Interesting! It just shows how different the game can be from player to player. I only have 1.5 million coins which can disappear in an instant. But, I do have 32 epic animals so those coins went to good use. I have no idea how many SRs I have.

edited to add that I have 58 SRs please 2 more waiting to be hatched. Wow! That surprises me.

Holy cow 32! I have 50 SRs total... 3 just from this weekend so that's pretty good. I just can't afford to feed them all... Yet.

[ogreve]

Good thread!

You touch on several subjects in one post, about which I've written several lengthy and detailed posts in the past few weeks. I shall try to summarise matters in this post, by first answering your 3 questions and then giving some summarised rationale for my choices. Later, I'll try to add links to the respective posts of mine in which I explain specific choices (and advice) in detail, for those who'd like to read a more full motivation of reasons to level up specific animals. I know that even my "brief" post style is still lengthy for almost anyone's standards, but hey, I'm a quick typer, so please bear with me. ;)

Well then, firstly the answers to your 3 questions:

1) Yes, in order of "importance" to me:
-The rarity of the animal (super rares get leveled up BEFORE more common ones).
-The elemental combination of the animals (I'm working hard on an "ultimate fighter force" so I'm busy closing some 'gaps' that can be more optimally filled by a specific elemental combination than my current "A-team" fighters do.
-The beauty of an animal.
-The earning rate of an animal.

2) By far...... the Gold Lion is not only "King of the animals" for me, but it's also "King of the hill" (and funnily enough my Gold Lions have precisely that position in my forest too, being in the topmost dark spot).

3) Heck, yes!
The Charger e.g. is 'only' rare and therefore of 'lesser' priority than the super rares, but it's such a beautiful animal that I wanted to have it at epic level even though I never use it in combat. Then, there are some super rares that are really beautiful (IMO) yet do not really fill a gap in my fighter force, but I do want to see them epic in due time too. The new Typhoon Tiger is a good example of this. And.... then there are a *very* select few animals for which I intend to raise ALL of my specimens to epic level, just because they're soooooo beautiful or otherwise beloved to me. At this moment there are only two such examples: my Gold Lions and my Aurora Pegasi. I just got a 3rd Gold Lion in the breeding den about an hour ago!!! I'm so happy! It will take a humongous amount of food to raise it to epic level for pretty much no other reason than mere prestige, but well.... It just HAS to happen. Same for the second Aurora Pegasus I got a few days ago! :P :P :P

Now, some summarised rationale that determines my choices:
1) Combat strength. The "building" of my "A team" has been well described in several posts. I'll refer to some later. Bottomline: try and identify some 5 core fighters of as rare a rarity as you have, covering ALL of the potential opponents well and raise those to epic levels first.
2) The earning rates of animals: in at least one post I went on to explain how reaching an hourly earning rate of 156,000+ coins is something I want to achieve. The reason? Well: 156,000 coins is the total cost of 1 hour of Charm Cherries (i.e. the "best" food option). If I can raise my hourly earning rate to get over that amount, I'll have surpassed the break-even point where my coins decrease when doing back-to-back Charm Cherry growing all day long. I currently have an estimated hourly coin rate of around 70,000 or so (I need to recalculate it), so I'm not quite there, but still I can grow Charm Cherries for many hours a day without my coin rate dropping too much (I tend to try and have at least a 1.5 million coin reserve for buying stuff).
Note: this factor WILL need to be done in combination with optimising your habitats such that they can hold as many coins as possible AND that you make an optimal spreading of animals so each habitat (of the same coin holding capacity) makes more or less the same amount of money per hour!
3) The beauty of animals: this has already been explained above. This is something that differs for every one. Some animals like the Beever, the Pigmy and the newly released Wombattery will probably never be raised beyond the baby stage by me because I think they're ugly at higher levels. Then, as mentioned for the Gold Lions and Aurora Pegasi, for others in due time I'd like to get multiple "prestige" epics. Think of them as the FFS counterpart of placing "banners" etc. in games like DS or CS. :P

So, these are MY reasons for making my choices. In light of what was written in this post, pretty much ALL of my actions regarding expansions, lack of decorations, specific animal upgrades, fighter raising, food growing, habitat upgrades, habitat and animal positioning, etc. can be explained. :P

[chippychan]

1. Is there a rhyme or reason in who you decide to make epic?

I've actually stopped leveling a lot of my animals up lately. I have enough at level 15 that I use in tournaments; any more and I feel like I'm endless scrolling through them to choose a good fighter for the round (I *really* wish the developers would add a 'sort' option by element when looking at the list).

Another reason I stopped is due to possibly needing a particular animal in 'baby' form to feed for a timed goal. Every new non-limited (permanent) animal I get I keep as a baby. If I get a second one I'll level it to 10. Coins also are no longer an issue for me so I don't need a lot of high-level animals to generate more coins.

If I level up anything to epic it's usually an event or limited animal that I'm pretty sure I won't need to feed for a goal.

2. Which of your animals have been most reliable in battles?

Ancient Sloth for sure. Next would be Money Badger (for some reason it seems to get more criticals then my Treasure Toucan). The rest would be: Magmacore (earth/fire), Cactus Kitsune (nature/fire), Thorilla (electric/earth), Zapra (electric/dark) and Snowpossum (water/earth).

3. Are there any animals that you evolved to epic just for aesthetic reasons (i.e. fight technique, cool, beautiful, etc.)?

- Cactus Kitsune! I love this animal at epic form & it turned out to be a good fighter in tournaments for me too (bonus!). I also love the pony-type animals so I usually try to make those epic as well. :)

[Sandybellee]

Great thread!

1. I'm trying to get together a good selection of fighters for tournaments. I have my single element commons at epic level except for the Frostfang because they required less food and are surprisingly effective in battle. Now I'm trying to get enough super rares to epic status, but it's slow work because collecting apples takes so long.

I'm also only one expansion away from the Treent so I need to start saving coins now. That's why I've now started spreading food around more and raising my numerous level 4 animals to 7-10 to earn more coins.

2. I only leveled up to participate in tournaments in the middle of the Pluma tournament so I don't have too much experience yet, but my first ever super rare Glacial Griffin has been great. It was the MVP for me in the Patriotter tournament. Ancient Sloth, Aperil Fool and Lightning Leopard have also been super good fighters.

3. Not yet because I haven't had the resources yet. But I'm sure I will!