I hit level 50 sometime in the early morning and just twiddled my thumbs in anticipation to start the Imitation Game. Fortunately for today’s Imitation Game, the bases weren’t very tough and I could take out Stage 6 without a full boost since I still am lacking enough powder. That said, with all the resources garnered from my assault, I managed to hit a major milestone. A little spoiler? HQ 20!
HQ 20 has been my carrot on the stick for the longest time. It’s such a critical milestone in the game since it originally was the highest level you could hit on your HQ. Of course, now with HQ 22, HQ 20 might seem a little passe. Nonetheless, the number of upgrades including unlocking Cryoneers make this point a massive key point in the game.
For me, HQ 20 was always about the 8th and final Landing Craft. I feel that by unlocking that last Landing Craft your damage is bolstered big time and allows you to have more troop variations for more take downs. The great thing about unlocking that 8th Landing Craft is that compared to the rest of the upgrades, it’s a pretty fast thing to boost. I ended up rushing mine all the way to level 12 just to get the 4th Heavy for my Operations run. It certainly helped as I was able to solo my Operation easily, even though there were a large number of high level Cannons in the way. Without the extra boat of Heavies, I feel that my Zookas probably would’ve been fried much earlier.
Right now in having that Landing Craft level 12, I’m going to make an attempt (before my current boost runs out) to get enough resources for one more level for the day, leaving me at level 13. Then for the rest of the weekend, I’ll be upgrading it to 15, with the aim of getting it to 16 by Monday. Having that 8th Landing Craft at level 16 means 5 Heavies on that boat until I can get to level 20.
After that, my next focus will be on my Armory. Now, I know some people prioritize Sculptor or even Vault. But I don’t see at my level how 2% resource protection will benefit me that much nor do I see how the extra costly Sculptor at this point in time will provide me with anything beyond a +14% Troop Health statue. Yet an Armory leaves the door open for the next group of major Gunboat upgrades that will benefit me across the board. I find it far more useful to max out that at this stage just because I hate the idea of letting gold sit being unused or misused while waiting a few weeks until I get another shot at an Armory upgrade.
Probably, after the Armory upgrade, I’ll focus on Sculptor and slowly make the rounds upgrading my Landing Craft to level 20. The resource requirements for a level 20 Landing Craft is quite brutal and I anticipate taking at least 1-2 months before most of them are where they need to be. I’m hoping to get at least 6 to level 20 in a reasonable amount of time. The idea of having 3-6 additional tanks or Grenadiers for PVP runs is quite huge. Not to mention other useful combinations like Heavies, Zookas, etc.
Now, the other things I’m eyeing in the distance are Scorchers and Cryoneers. Yes, my Cryoneers are finally unlocked but without them being fully upgraded, I do not know what their efficacy at this stage is. And with Scorchers most people believe that they do not become useful until level 5 at the bare minimal. I only have level 2 so far and my priority for my next major Armory upgrades (at least after I hit Armory level 20) will be on Barrage, Artillery, Tanks, Medics and Grenadiers, roughly in that order (not to mention Zookas and Heavies as they’re becoming immensely useful in these Operation runs). Scorchers are more like a nice to have dream at this point in time despite knowing what will eventually provide. The truth is that I’m simply not ready to deploy them without the proper statues in place as well as my Landing Craft having enough slots for 5 more tanks (meaning 1 per in running a 3/5 Scorcher/Tank ratio).
So a sensitive topic that comes up is the idea of subscribing to the 2nd Builder. The original idea was subscribing for the sake of the 8th Landing Craft. But now that I’ve pushed it to level 12 already, I feel that it’s a complete waste. I’ve already depleted most of my resources and my map either has a bunch of really annoying bases with Ice and prototype weapons that I cannot bear or NPC bases that I don’t want to tackle at this stage. Diamonds feel like a better option overall, even though $3 doesn’t sound bad by comparison. But I’m pretty stocked up on Diamonds and don’t feel the need to subscribe to a service that I honestly don’t think I’ll be using very much.
Most of my resources simply are going to be devoted to really expensive Landing Craft upgrades. There’s just zero point in getting a second builder, even if I could take down all the PVP bases on my map. Most don’t have good resources to start even after I re-roll them. So I’ll just wait instead.
Either way, I’m quite happy this was done before the weekend. The HQ 20 rush wasn’t that bad. I did an instant complete with Diamonds. It felt worth the cost. HQ rushes generally are good spots to use Diamonds and this was no exception. I think I would’ve gone crazy just waiting for my HQ to finish over the weekend while stock piling up resources. Instead, I can just focus on pushing my new Landing Craft for the next few days then aim for the bigger targets.