Epic Alibear

So when the days have gone dark, what have I been doing? (Watching Stargåte SG-1 with Valentine, actually, but beside that:) I've found a new mobile game I'm getting addicted to. Heroes of Dragon Age. I could resist it for a long time, but then when I saw someone post of FB that they had gotten both Ali and Fen on the same day, I just caved... Those are my two favourite characters in the pixel worlds, closely followed by Garrus (but still waiting for a Heroes of ME :D ) And now playing that I also caved in and begun another playthrough of DA2, now playing as a female mage who is on her way for a rivalmance with dear Fenris.



The game itself is very simple. You put together a party of four heroes plus one large creature, each kind having separate special abilities, area of effects and factions that have strenghts and weaknesses against other factions (rock-paper-scissors type of thing). You can get your heroes from random packs (like a TCG) or from certain events from the game campaign. You can upgrade said heroes with either combining with other heroes or by exp gained by completing nodes in the PvE campaign (each node is a battle against fixed enemies) or PvP battles. The heroes are familiar characters or enemies from the DA game, which makes it very intriqueing for me, the semi-obsessive collector. Too bad, the best characters are all very rare... And the campaign however gets tricky very fast, which leaves you to a stall, your only option being grinding for better heroes or some very careful strateging (let's pretend that's a word).

Since I'm not that much of a strategist, I wanted better heroes, my main party consisting of four rares and an uncommon large. I needed an epic (or even better, legendary) character, but those didn't come easily from the packs. As in, it was very, very rare to get one... But I'm patient, right? I could grind my rares slowly to higher levels, using all of my accumulating gold for packs, hoping for that eluding red border.  The money and exp mainly came from PvP, since I was stuck on PvE, getting my ass kicked in every node I was trying to progress. I only did battles on few specific grinding nodes, with little exp/gold to gain, but which dropped runes and common/uncommon heroes that I could then use to upgrade my rares. But it was getting tedious, with no reds in sight.

Now, each player had a chance to buy one ultimate pack with real money, with a guaranteed epic + other perks. But I was holding off on that, because for one I hate spending money on something virtual. And because there are several epics that I'm not that fond of (although would use in party), and there was such a slim chance of getting one of my grails. So I wanted to see if I really wanted to play this long term, so even if I got something crappy from the real-money-pack, it wouldn't be so bad as I could try to get those grails later. Since my patience has its limits :D

But today I noticed, that while grinding for gold, I had also managed to level up my current heroes enough and accumulated some neat runes to finally beat some more nodes and actually make progress. It took like a few days. So I decided that yes, I would be patient enough to grind further. And since I'd get those grail epics in the long run, I could splurge that 1,75eur on the ultimate pack. And it worked out for (almost) the best result! I got Grey warden Alistair <3

I simply could not believe my luck! True, Ali's not the best epic out there, but he is my second favourite character of the series! And now I just need to level him up and grind away to maybe score that eluding Fenris... And by the mean time, I can flirt with the more talkative Fenny in DA2 ;)

Honestly, to have Alistair, Fenris and Sebastian in my party... Don't even know if they'd match up good XD It wouldn't matter...