Objective of the Game; Upgrading/Setting up Party
While the game lends itself to be a strategy game, which it is in every sense, it isn't one where you command your units in battle. It's more of one where you set up your party and toss them into a pitbull fight and watch them duke it out with other players/enemies/NPCs or things. But for the most part the game is about upgrading. Upgrading to ludicrous amounts of detail to about 7-9+ different ways to increase the power of up to 5 characters/heroes in your party, plus a backup slot / hero that comes at level 70.
Levelling in the game is relatively lightning fast for the first 33 levels or so.(It should literally take about 30 minutes to get to level 30) After that it takes about a day to level each day utilizing the 50 loop quest granted each day at server task reset time(midnight on the server you're playing). If you're starting a new server, you should be able to get to level 30 in less than an hour. I'm serious. A majority of the game's features are unlocked, so 1-30 is pretty much tutorial mode.
Now the ways of upgrading your character are:
1. Enhancing Equipment
2. Socketing Gems into your equipment
These are beginner ways to start upgrading segments of your character. Having all equipments enhanced to a certain level will cause bonus combos to activate giving extra bonuses to your character.
Enhancing is simple, pay a certain amount of gold(in game currency) and the equipment goes up +1. Having 200,000 gold in game is actually VERY little. Later on enhancing goes to absurd quantities of gold. There is no trading in the game so all your resources are exclusive to yourself. You can however Gift stuff to people, but exchange nope.
The same goes for having certain level of gems across all sockets be a high level and a third one called Refine level as well.
Socketing Gems if you want to unlock the combo bonus more easily don't unlock more gem slots. If you do you're going to need more of the same level gems.. or higher level gems to activate it. Once there's an open slot it disables the combo activation. But the bonuses are pretty small compared to a decent level gem being slotted in. Nowadays, the best gems you should have in each of your items are: HP, PATK/MATK, PDEF, HIT RATING, DODGE and either CRIT,MDEF or AGILITY if you have your 6th slot, depending of your needs (these excepting the fuse gems that are harder to get and comes in time at higher levels; then you give up at mdef and pdef for them).
Other ways you'll unlock at how to upgrade your character/heroes later on at level 30ish are:
3. Training
4. Upgrading
Training is a way to increase your character's stats by an additional amount. After exceeding a certain + rank it'll also unlock elemental shifts in your character. Each character has their own special effect that'll unlock at certain qualities reached. So training your characters will increase stats linearly. They also account for overall boosts later on that give percentage increments.
I don't mean to overuse the word upgrade but the game has a lot of nouns occupied or synonymous with the word upgrade but Upgrading your characters in League of Angels grant them a percentage boost increase in stats, and after every 3 levels upgrading also increases their Active Skills if they are a hero recruit. Your main character has their own skill page that upgrades differently. Upgrading is a bit different than Training where it's a chance to upgrade, however with each failure the chance to upgrade increases for the hero/character that you're investing in. Training just requires an x amount of stones to level up.
Now those are 4 basic ways to upgrade your entire party, each separately.
Early on you'll encounter those methods first, however at about level 45 a significant level where the new recruit tavern unlocks, you'll be able to recruit new stronger heroes that have different skills and abilities and better stats. But the next few ways you'll unlock upgrading is at level 50 and 51. Those ways are:
5. Refining
6. Rune Page
7. Gem Enhancing
8. Elemental Attunement
9. Enchanting
Refining is rolling extra stats on your equipment, they cost refine stones that you can acquire from Jackpot activity which is just like a slot machine, you get 20 points to roll each day. You can generally roll yourself about 80-100 stones each day. Refining isn't too big of a boost but it does help and getting all the stats to roll to a certain grade will grant combo active bonuses to your character.
So there's 5 stats there to roll and you might be thinking its impossible to ever max it but those locks on the side let you prevent rolling that stat at a cost of more stones or diamonds(realmoney). If you lock 4 of them the cost will be about 300 stones to roll the 1 stat you want changed. So the more locks the more cost of course, which means you can eventually max out the equipment with insane stats.
Rune Page unlocks with the Eternal Spire a PvE activity. Runes grant percentage extra and special effects when certain runes are unlocked by powering up lit runes already. The experience for the runes are randomly distributed between lit runes.
Runes grant a lot of bonuses and the final unlock on the weapon rune later on helps add Angel rage in battle which is a huge boon.
The amount of runestones it consumes is a bit retarded though however you also gain equally just as much from traversing the Eternal Spire.
Gem Enhancing is pretty straightforward you get Gem Enhancement stones from doing Gemology, a PvE activity that's like Bejeweled. It grants you gems and after a certain threshold of points you've gained you get Gem Enhance stones. You can also get it from the Arena shop and various in-game events. Gem Enhancing is much like Training, where you just require a certain number of stones invested in to level it. Each level of Gem Enhancement increases the effect of ALL gems equipped on that char by 1%.
Elemental Attunementis only available to your recruits/heroes. Elemental Attunement unlocks with the Inferno at level 50. It requires Element Crystals, and each time you roll elements on your characters it'll either increase an element damage&resistance or lower it. If you put the setting to Advanced or Ultra the chances to increase element damage & resist are higher than downgrading. At high elemental levels you'll only be shoving Ultra setting.
Element attunement is very important for your recruits, it not only grants them bonus damage on top of their attacks it also helps reduce Angel blast attacks and help them survive team wipes from enemy Angels. So make sure you do power up your recruits Elements! They're the only ones that consume the Element Crystals.
And finally Enchanting.
Enchanting is a huge way of boosting up equipment. It requires enchant stones gained from Elite challenge battles in Eternal Spire. Enchanting equipment gives it a huge boost for example Helmet enchant, 1 enchantment level grants 1% extra total hp and on top of that another 5000. It's HUGE.
Enchanting is definitely worth investing into the characters you want to keep or be sustainable in battle as the effects are enormous and often change the tide of battle between people.
Your main character upgrades differently than your recruits/heroes.
Your main character also has Avatar items they can wear (costumes and wings) that give big boosts, and your Mount is what grants your Main character extra stats via Training/Upgrading and has their own skill page which consumes Warsouls granted from doing PvE or PvP activities.
Your character's active skill also chains into other secondary and tertiary skills that are granted to you as you level. So say you perform Wrathstrike, then there's like a 50% chance Valiant banner will go off, and later on there'll be like a 20% chance Executioner Strike will follow Valiant banner all in 1 turn. Only your main character has such abilities.
At level 45 you also get a Job Change based on your starting class, each class has 2 options at 45. The change is permanent.
Question you might be having in your head at this point is this probably costs a lot of real money. Surprisingly you can obtain all this by putting 0$ in. Avatar items and Mounts too. You just need to put some dedication in and patience. There are events in the game that grant avatar items simply by completing objectives each day. They are very doable and can be obtained before the end of the event deadline assuming you start on Day 1. (Sky Archer for instance takes 30 days but free player can obtain it by 22 days in if they do all the non-pay stuff everyday).
Your main character also has an Emblem page but to upgrade that you just have to participate in Guild activities or contribute to guild levelling and guild bonuses.
ANGEL
On top of that, your Angel is the most important to power up. They exist as an entity to accelerate battle causing AoE attacks to the ENTIRE enemy party every 3 turns very early on. Later on theres ways to speed up the Angels actions, but that's MUCH later (level 61+). Your Angel evolves with Seraph Stones causing the Angel's stats to increase by a % aswell as adding ALL elemental types of damage and grants your main character elemental resistances.
Evolving an Angel generally takes a lot of Seraph stones, you can of course unload real money to obtain tons of them from the shop going at 30 diamonds each but that's just a dumb way of going about it. Seriously. There's events in the game that help you gain these stones in massive quantities as a free player and a small paying player. You can also buy them at the Team Arena Shop which costs dragon crests that are EASILY obtained each day from winning or losing team arena battles and hot events that require you to participate in team arena to grant you bonus surplus of dragon crests.
Angel Tears on the other hand are a bit more difficult to gain and they are used to raise an Angel's level. After a certain level threshold is hit Angels can't level any further until you ascend them with Holy Crystals which can be found in PvE dungeons or buying them at the Arena Shop or Tarot shop or real money shop.
Now you might be thinking "I'll just invest all my resources into 1 Angel".
While this may be a good idea there's also ample reason to not do that because there's these things called Covenants in League of Angels and Guardian Angel assignments.
Covenants grant passive bonuses to your ENTIRE party when certain conditions are met with Angel levels and evolutions.
You don't need the Angel active in battle to receive these. The angels just have to be unlocked, at that level, and at the specified evolution or level if stated to receive the bonus for your entire party in the respective row specified. These put together make strategy important in party composition.
Guardian Angel is assigning an inactive Angel to grant extra stats and boosts to a character. These are huge, and can be further boosted with Cherubstones that can be aquired at Arena Shop or Tarot Shop or real money. They are hard to obtain in any format of currency.
So there are lots of reasons to also upgrade your other Angels you may have unlocked.
Angel Halo is a passive ability applied to your party at the beginning of every battle for both sides(if there is an Angel on the other side). This again plays into pre-battle strategy. Based on where your party is positioned they are granted extra stats. So be mindful of where your Main is and which recruits would benefit the most for being in a certain position!!
When you unlock new Aegises make sure you level them too! Each Aegis provides extra stats to your Angel and are very cheap to upgrade at early levels.
Player vs. Environment
League of Angels offers plenty of Player vs. Environment activities. Some mentioned above are like Gemology which plays a lot like Bejeweled. Match 3+ blocks and they explode you get a gem and some points. You can only make so many moves a day. At level 45 the advanced tab of Gemology unlocks which let you get special stat gems each day. Each move doesn't require you to match something though. Chaining cascades or gem matches grant you extra gems and points.
But other PvE activities I want to highlight are the Eternal Spire, Erebus, Inferno and Dark Abyss. You can however just do the regular area dungeons or blitz them. But those are very standard and will be introduced to you within the first few minutes of gameplay.
Eternal Spire is a giant tower climb that unlocks at level 51. It goes in stages and levels. For each level there are 10 stages. When you first start the enemies are fairly weak. They will continuously get stronger as you go higher in the stage. You do not restart at floor 1 when attempting again. Upon completing a level you can Blitz/auto challenge that entire level for auto completion of those previous floors to gain Runestones to improve your Rune Page as described above earlier.
It takes 10 minutes for auto blitz to complete 1 level so you can go afk for 3 attempts or 30 mins if you queue all 3 to complete which are given each day or do other things in the game while it goes to auto challenge.
At every 10th stage a boss awaits your party. You may fail this multiple times but you can attempt it with different party compositions. For me sometimes I had to move main char upfront so my party survives in the back to deal additional damage and to tank damage so my healer doesn't get killed. My char also has armor that respawns them once in battle each battle which mixes things up a lot so quite some experimentation is needed when the battle is a close call. Sometimes its just straight luck with your Angel's Aegis Skill triggering repeatedly like stun from Cancer Aegis.
Erebus however unlocks at level 40. This is the place where you now start getting materials to craft level 40-80 gear. You get 2 free attempts each day. Traversing through the erebus is like a dungeon crawler, it involves planning your movement, answering trivia quizzes, opening treasure chests, making sure you don't step on traps, grabbing movement powerups, grabbing party attack powerups, fighting bosses, enemies, removing fog of war etc.
Inferno unlocks at level 50. This is a bit more difficult it requires a team of 3 if you want any chance at getting an S rank. It's like the Erebus but it's timed! Not only should these runs be completed within 2-4 minutes for the highest rewards they also require coordination between your team. Inferno consists of enemies, artifacts, treasures, teleports, and a boss. And obstacles. Everytime you move in the inferno your cooldown timer increases. Sometimes you'll randomly get a a shitty interference of +10 sec to cooldown. If your cooldown timer hits 30s you're frozen until the 30s counts down to 0.
Dark Abyss is a relatively new feature placed in recently. It unlocks at 55, and is simple dungeon dive. You get a choice of 3 opponents of easy medium and hard, and after beating a certain number of enemies you get to pick a buff to buy based on stars you gain from defeating which difficulty opponent. There's 50 stages to each section of the Dark Abyss for a total of 150 stages. You get 2 tries each day and when you think you're going to brickwall or die always select a super strong friend on your friend list to carry you a level or two to make ranking for bonuses and items. Every 5 stages you complete grants you item rewards for improving your party.
That's all I wanted to go over for Player vs. Environment, there's also Team Dungeons as well and Guild Boss andWorld Boss but those occur at certain time intervals each day and you just zerg yourself in at those to get gold. Zodiac Challenge is also PvE its a tough 2 monster and 1 boss battle dungeon. The maps can be redone each day. However your furthest Zodiac challenge will stay dead for whatever you've killed until you kill the boss, meaning mobs you've slaughtered on the way don't respawn until boss is dead. The Tidal Pool is a simple minigame where you just fire nets at fish to gain Soulstones for Training your heroes/mount. Garden is... straightforward.
Player vs. Player
Okay so player vs player. This is probably where most concerns lie with any player coming into this game if they're going to compete. Is the game Pay to Win? Yeah it is if you wanna be at the very top. But how many games are you top #1 at. I can honestly say I've never been top at any game I've played in for very long or at all across many games and mediums. Be real. Don't compare yourself to someone unloading loads of cash into their character/account.
Another thing is to start on a new server so you're at a level playing field with everyone else! Starting on an existing one would mean a larger population but also a longer climb but would also mean more targets that you can probably win against or lose against. Goes both ways.
The game does set you around people around your investment level, time-wise & payment-wise. If you've paid next to nothing you'll generally lie within the middle range of power among most people in a server if you play every day. If you play here and there casually like a single player you'll probably be in the lower end of the server's population power. Paying a lot of money will of course set you to be at the very top. Paying some money will get you a decent amount of stuff for very little. Very little meaning less than 10$.
There are some exclusive events however that do require heavy moolah to participate in but for the most part free players can participate in every event and with enough effort get some pretty huge rewards from it if played smartly. Playing smartly meaning you stockpile resources and unload it all on an event and overwhelm others, perhaps even paying players.
In any case PvP in League of Angels generally has 3 main ones you'll participate in a lot whether you're a free player/paying player/unloading credit card player.
ONE IMPORTANT THING TO KNOW IS: Battle Rating in the game does not dictate who will win, it only merely indicates who might win.
Team Arena is probably the most forgiving among free players. Team up with crazy high-end paying players because tehy're always looking for low levels and weak ppl to party up with so they don't queue with insane groups of people from other servers that are way too strong. Team Arena is always fought Cross Server wise, so you won't be fighting people on your server.
Party Position Setup.
Team Arena is intense, 3 players vs 3 players and 3 angels on each side. So the battle goes wild, eventually 3 aoe attacks go off on each side wiping practically everything. The lower bracket generally is under 150 levels of combined levels between the 3 of you. So if you got 3 level 50s you're going to get matched with level 51-61s on other servers. If you're 149 total then you'll be matched in the newbie brackets and probably higher chance of winning. Something to keep in mind. Team Arena is a lot more different, a battle rating deviation of over 150k and you can still win. Meaning if you're 150k above one team you can still lose, or vice versa.
Arena on the other hand is fairly random, you're given 1 strong opponent and 1 weak opponent and 3 in between. Defeat all 5 and it'll refresh and give you a spur of new opponents. These opponents are always rated around your character and are against people in your server. If you get enough points from it you'll be automatically enrolled into Domination elimination match that's held once every 4 days. If you win that you get extra Prestige and rewards and items and people can make bets on who's going to win.
So Domination looks like this when you qualify from succeeding in Arena, there are rank brackets in Domination.
And finally Clash of Might...
Clash of Might I have to say is strictly a Pay to Win thing to get to the top, in no way would a free player ever reach the top in this. It is solely a ladder climb, you beat anyone above you in rank, you take their place and they take yours. There's not much to say about this other than you click on who you wanna challenge. If you beat them you give 'im a thrashing and steal their rank, or you fail and stay put.
Wyrm Race and Raiders is another PvP activity. Wyrm Race is simple you send off a dragon for money and things each day once. During its flight for 15 minutes people can attack it up to 10 times reducing the gold rewards by like half if they succeed all 10 times. Brutal. You can always "hire" an escort from a friend.
The other is Raiders, it's more of a PvE PvP hybrid, where PvE you just click a button rolls 3 items for you to synthetize upgrade materials for your party. If you don't have the items to synthetize you can rob players of shards that you're missing and steal it from them to gain the shards. There's also Twilight Clash but that's guild vs. guild to occupy castles for daily rewards.
And finally Cross Server War.
Cross Server War I find is very balanced one each side matchmade is generally some strong players some weak players, both exist on each side. The only time I see landslide wins are because people aren't coordinated or objectives are lost in the gameplay. It plays like a MOBA and goes on every day in a 7v7 format. Rewards from this are to upgrade your clothes and wings or to give you emblems that cause special effects for your main character to trigger their skills more often. So participate in this if you're having difficulty in those other ones. It's very enjoyable even weak players can wipe strong players. Your HP doesn't regenerate after each battle, so you will die eventually unless you're hiding from everyone just grabbing regen powerups when they spawn and if they spawn. If you get killed repeatedly without killing someone you're also granted a major damage buff until you slaughter someone too!
Events
The game has TONS of events to help you gain materials for your party to improve them and upgrade them. You can participate in pretty much 90% of them without having to pay a cent. However there are certain crazy ones that do require some input of real cash or a LOT of cash. But I feel the game has a lot to do and events are always abundant there's so many that there's 3-4 pages of them zz... So really even a free player will be occupied when playing League of Angels. Here's an example of something every player can obtain the whole list of event rewards. Easily doable.
Always take advantage of the events they even grant things that cost real money sometimes for free and you can stockpile those for events when they come around again. Some are on rotation some aren't, or are seasonal or something. But either way keep a look out and do the objectives and your party will grow pretty strong pay or free player.
So there you have it guys, League of Angels. That's some of the things the game has to offer, there's more that I haven't unlocked or reached yet but I hope this review helped you out or gave you some insight. I definitely think you should give it a shot if you like pre-strategy games. League of Angels lends itself to being a strategy game in the sense of preparation not so much during combat. So you're like a commander outside of battle setting up formation, during battle you don't give commands you watch how it plays out.
All you have to do is get one match of gems in Gemology to earn these 20 points. It's that easy! If you're trying to save Gemology energy for something like the Tycoon, then just make one match (spending just one energy) and you're good to go.
