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Q: What does DI mean?
A: Damage Inflicted. (If you see two numbers, the 2nd is damage inflicted indirectly, i.e., by Guardian Angel, Tattoo of Balrog Flame, or Anti-magic Field. The first number includes only damage done by your Minion directly.)
Note: the indirect damage from AMF is credited to whichever Minion is hit by each spell first, not necessarily to the enchanter(s) that cast the AMF.
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Q: How can I fight someone besides the 10 opponents the game picks for me?
A:
- Use the Higher/Lower links.
- If you become a Supporter, you can choose to have up to 25 opponents in your selectbox instead of the default 10.
- A favorites list is also available to Supporters; this is particularly useful to Clan members.
- If you know the character name, you can type it into the box using Specify, even if you don't know how to spell it exactly. You can also search by user if you want to fight a character owned by someone in particular.
- The High Score list shows all opponents sorted by score.
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Q: Why do I keep getting the message that I am still in a fight, when I haven't fought for several seconds?
A: If the fight errors out because yours truly caused a problem, it will never "finish." Don't worry; it will correct itself within a couple minutes. The error will be automatically mailed to Jonathan so he can fix it.
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Q: How can I tell whether someone is available to fight?
A: If there is an asterisk (*) in front of the character on the pull-down selection list, then this opponent is unavailable. Pick someone without this asterisk.
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Q: Why are people unavailable to fight?
A: In order to promote strategic decisions rather than mindlessly attacking a single Character over and over, a defeated opponent will be unavailable to fight again until his owner heals him, or until 30 seconds have passed.
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Q: I defeated someone twice in much less than 30s, but then I checked his fight log and he wasn't fighting during that time. So how could he recover faster than the 30s period?
A: MoeDrippins explains:
You don't need to actually fight to get your own "hey, I'm available to be fought" flag reset; all you need to do is TRY to fight. (Even though that doesn't heal you.)
So, a possibility here is that [your opponent] was attempting to fight comatose opponents, which reset his flag between each attempt.
I've seen this happen and have been on the receiving end of it.
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Q: How do I get my opponents list back to where it started?
A: Click Train on the train page. This will re-set the opponents list whether you allocate any experience to your Minions or not.
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Q: Why don't you make the opponents list center on the most recent target, so I never have to hit Higher / Lower?
A: If you think this would be easy, you are right. Unfortunately the query to populate the opponents list is quite expensive and we really can't afford to do that after every fight.
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Q: What are some factors that affect how much score I gain or lose for a battle?
A: Normally I would not divulge something it is possible for you to figure out for yourself, even in outline form, and for a year and a half I did not. But, the bogus "bug reports" I kept receiving, particularly from players at the higher levels, caused me to make an exception in this case.
- Most obviously, you will gain more score for beating higher-ranked players, and lose less for losing to them. Conversely, you will lose more score the farther below you your opponent is. (Here and in other places "rank" is an internal computation based on score and PR.)
- Stalemates are treated as losses for scoring purposes.
- The more battles it takes you to beat someone, the less his score will decrease from the loss. This does not affect how much score YOU get from the win, or how much money and xp you get. It is worth noting that you might very well not be able to lower a higher-ranked player's score in multiple battles because he is earning as much from the wins as he loses from the loss.
- If the winner is ranked below the loser, their scores will converge fairly rapidly. Otherwise, there is a minimum amount of score gain/loss that will apply. The score penalty for losing tends to be greater when you are the challenger.
- The system prefers to keep your score near your PR. If you win against someone while your score is above your PR, you will gain less score than if you had beaten that person while your score was less than your PR. This only compares YOUR score with YOUR PR, not to your opponents. So someone whose PR is above yours can still lower your score.
- The loser will lose score and the winner gain even if the winner's score is already near or above the losers. The amount of this "alternative minimum trauma" depends on each contestant's score.
- The only score updated in real-time, so to speak, is the one for your active player on your home page. Use the Update feature on the Inspect page to make sure you are getting accurate stats on a Character.
- If you think you have found a bug, you are probably wrong. :)
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Q: Why do stalemates result in no xp or cash?
A: For several reasons. The most important is that a stalemate provides little information that the score ladder can use meaningfully. Thus, no awards are given to attackers in order encourage players to find opponents they can beat, or at least lose to valiantly. As a further disincentive, stalemates are treated as a loss for scoring purposes, as noted above.