Snakes Alive: Pixal Tips!

Welcome to Snakes Alive's Pixal Tips Page! Remember that dueling gives XP and leveling through getting friends!!

As of version 0.0.7c - 4 Jan 2009 TRICKY QUESTIONS * Gloves: Luck is the amount a roll is adjusted, Effect is the chance that adjustment will be made. This cannot exceed the dice rolls natural maximum. Luck is applied to all dice rolls including attack, defence and shield so is a VERY big deal!!! Gloves with 90% effect and a Luck 1 will add 1 to almost every roll. Gloves with a Luck of 0 are useless :( * Action Points regenerate every 30 minutes. Duels regenerate every 5 minutes. Tournament fights regenerate every 10 minutes. * Higher level skills are not somehow inherently better than using lower level skills - they are only supposed to be better than lower level skills. GENERAL TIPS * An action point regenerates every 30 minutes (confirm?) so you should try to have all active Pixals on 11/12 Action Points or lower at all times. A duel requires a 5 minute rest period and a tourney fight requires 10 minutes rest for your Pixal. Use a timer to ensure you get your attacks in every 5 and 10 minutes to maximise the number of attacks per hour. * You can mouse over the skills in the fight screen to see what math was used to find the result of your attack and your enemy attack. * You can mouse over skills in other screens to see their effect (beware typos). * There is NO CONFIRMATION screen currently on "Sell" item and "Remove" Pixal - doing either will lose your item or kill your Pixal straight away! Beware :( * Your 3 attacks are always in order, the defensive skills are randomly selected from the five picked by the enemy player. Use this to your advantage. * When selecting defensive skills the currently selected attack skills will not be available for selection. To unselect these attack skills you (currently) need to do a fight with no skills. You should probably assign all your skills to defense when you log off. * Once you win new skills and have more than 3 of one card you may as well add the extra cards permanently to defense as you will only ever need 3 of one card to attack. * On the home page you can see the "Strongest Pixals" - these are the Pixals with the most XP. Click on the Pixal logo to get to this screen. * On your "My Pixal" page is your current position on the tournament, with the five Pixals you can attack next listed. Also a list of recent fights involving your Pixals and a list of last few times you earned gold from sitting in the top 5 (paid every 45 minutes). ITEMS AND THE SHOP * You should think very carefully before spending your initial gold - try to level up to 2 without having to buy items, then look for good level 2 items. The first thing you will need is the best weapon you can find - most important is best hit chance, then damage - a 2d3 weapon does more middling damage around 3, a 1d6 weapon does random damage spread through 1 to 6. * Check the "Buy Items" link on your My Pixal page every day as the items are randomly selected each day - if there is an item you can use that you can afford you may want to snap it up. Don't sell any items unless you need the gold, as these items can either be used by other Pixals or at least their Sell value is safe until you need the gold to spend. * The classes of item that benefit you are: Weapon, Armour, Glove and Shield. The rest are vanity. The glove adds luck which can give some vital extra damage. The shield add defence but only if the attack lands within their coverage (a 70% coverage has a 70% chance of being activated each round). * It is important to have a weapon that has a high hit chance and good damage to overcome enemy defence, and a good defence to minimise the damage taken. Note that defence never lowers the chance to be hit, only reduces the damage taken, if the damage taken is reduced to zero this is effectively the same as if the attack missed. You can augment your defence with skills, or you can use skills to lower the chance to be hit. CREATING PIXALS * You probably don't want to add new Pixals to your gang until you have one strong Pixal with good gear using the gold you have - just be careful you don't make it easy for others to steal your gold away before you spend it! * There appears to be no effect of selecting different races - note that those races without human legs cannot wear pants (but they do wear Armour that is a robe) and they do not wear boots. * Note that female Pixals have additional vanity selections such as skirts, dresses and girl boots (very pricey!). HOW TO GRIND GOLD? If you are having trouble making gold you can try the following grinding approach: * Enter a Pixal in the tourney and fight each opponent for max gold and XP. * Meanwhile level your other Pixals with duels, this will also give new skills when you level up. * Make sure you set your defensive skills as others may try to attack you to take your gold. * Once you reach as high as you can in the tourney, duel your tourney Pixal to the next XP level for another skill. * Then quit the tourney - your Pixal is now level 1 ready to collect more skills :) * Enter your next highest level Pixal. * Rinse and repeat. Eventually you will make enough gold and levels to break into the top 5, set up a good defence and try to sit there and make gold from the reward every 45 minutes. When you have enough time to sit and play through your action points repeat the above procedure. Once in the top 5 however it may be more enjoyable just to try and sit there. I CAN'T HIT ANYONE With a lower level Pixal you may have difficulty landing a blow, and if you tie you lose against a defender, thus you need to focus on being able to overcome the enemies defence. * Take note of the enemies defensive skills if any: if there are any Jumps use 3 Waits, if there are any Charges use 3 Rolls. If there are no skills at all you should be using your Jumps and Charges. * Level 4 skill Stun increase your chance of overcoming the enemies defence and Level 3 skill Aim gives you a better chance of landing a blow (which will hopefully do more damage than their defence). * Select all out aggressive skills and hope that the enemy misses and that you do at least one hit point of damage. * Buy weapons with good hit chance, and a high damage range. * Get some gloves that add luck - these help with your attack. HOW CAN I SET UP GOOD DEFENCE? * Make sure you put skills in all 5 slots - your defensive skills are randomly selected from this list, any blank spots could mean you don't use a skill in one of your rounds. * You should have one Roll skills and one Wait skill in your defensive mix to discourage the enemy using Jump and Charge against you. * Evade and Sand are good skills to use as it allows you to avoid attacks entirely even if the enemy uses skills to increase their damage. * You should consider one or two offensive skills as well, preferably ones that cannot be countered, to do some damage to win the defence if your attacked gets a lucky hit in. * An opponent with no defence skills is definitely more likely to be defeated and makes it easier for the attacker to select skills. HOW CAN I LEVEL QUICKER? * Look for friends with weak Pixal one or two levels above your Pixal. For winning these Duels you can get 50 or 25 experience points per win. * Before each dual, remove your best gear from other Pixals and give it to the Dualing Pixal - if it can wear the gear. This maximises your winning chance. * Rotate through your Pixals, by the time your finish Dueling with all your Pixals the 5 minute rest period will be up and you can start again. This levels all your Pixals at once - and as you gain new skills all your Pixals can take advantage of these. * Remember a level 1 Pixal can still use a level 4 skill like Stun - which is great for a hapless Pixal that has no defensive cards set up. * As you approach the 2nd half of your leveling the XP for killing someone your own level drops from 10 XP to 5 XP. * Once you reach level 4 the next level is pretty hard to reach, you should probably save time rather than trying to grind all your Pixals to level 5. Just grind your main Pixal perhaps? Certainly you would not level your Pixal that you are rotating through the tournament as they will back to level 1 when they leave the tournament. * You always receive 1 XP minimum so if stuck, pick on the weakest level 1 Pixal to creep over the line :) HEY I LOST GOLD WHILE I WAS LOGGED OFF? Yep - every time someone defeats your tournament guy in combat you lose 10% of your gold to them and drop a position in the tournament, and they take your place. So they can only take your gold once. When you log on check the latest fights column and look for TOURNEY results. The Pixal listed first started the fight, the Pixal in bold won the fight, the $gold listed in red is gold you lost, if the $gold is in green this is gold you made by defeating someone else in the tourney. To protect your gold you can: * Buy items to sell later - however you will get nowhere near what you paid for them. * Buy items you do need now, rather than later. As soon as you can afford something you can use you should buy it - particularly as that item may not be available the next day (the shop inventory is random). * Stay out of the tournament - if your Pixal is not in the top 5 when you log off it will not earn gold while you are away - consider taking it out of the tournament (reduces the Pixal to level 1) and when you log back on entering one of your other Pixals. * Once in the top 5 set up a very good defence - if you are too difficult to beat opponents will prefer to leap frog you. * Log on regularly to spend your earned gold otherwise you will become too juicy a target - players can click on your Pixal, then your name, to check how much gold you have and therefore how much they can gank you for. * If you have more gold than the guy above you, and you defeat them, and they are logged on, if they are able to defeat you back - they will make more gold than you do from the exchange. Either spend some gold, or defeat him then remove your Pixal from the tourney and get another Pixal to climb the ranks and gank him again... and again... and again -> until he calls you names :) * Around 3000 gold makes you an attractive target (killing you nets 300 gold) and you need to hang onto around 5000 gold to buy really nice weapons. HOW DO I DO BETTER IN THE TOURNAMENT? * The defender is at a disadvantage so you need to be logging in regularly to make attacks. If you are persistent you can beat a Pixal that is a level higher and has better gear than you because you will learn their defense skills, and eventually you will get lucky and they will get unlucky. However if the Pixal is two levels above and better geared it may be futile to keep trying. * Try attacking at a non-peak time when others are not logged on so they cannot respond, and get into the top 5 and earn some gold before they bite back. * If you want to know a Pixal defensive cards then use a non-tournament Pixal to Duel that Pixal, this helps you decide which skills to use in the Tournament fight and does not waste 10 minutes. * Make sure you set all 5 defensive cards and don't make them all the same as they will be too easy to predict. Include one or two aggressive cards unless you are confident you can be unhittable (zero - zero means you win on defence). * You get no benefit (currently) by winning a defensive fight, and you get XP and gold for winning a fight you start -> so be a fight starter :) * Don't jump Pixals if you have time, you will get more XP and gold this way. * If stuck in the tournament consider leveling your Pixal for skills using Duels - once up a level you get an additional point to your attack and defence and can buy/use gear from the next level up. This may help unstick you. * Keep trying to beat the guy above you - you might consider changing tactics, but sometimes you are just unlucky. After three tries using one tactic you should usually try a change, give up or leap frog that opponent. * Usually a balance of defence and attack skills works best, along with a bit of luck in which rounds the enemy hits and misses, and how your skills match up against the defence skills, along with the dice rolls of course. * If in the top 5 try to go up a rank before the next payment is due. If you look at the latest payments it shows the time of the last payment, 45 minutes after that the next payment will go through. Payment at Rank 1 is a huge $200 gold and is halved for each level down to Rank 5 ($12). Ranks below this (currently) earn no gold at all during these periods. * Make sure you hit refresh before you start your next tournament fight, someone may of attacked and defeated you during your 10 minute break and that may change who you want to attack. The most likely time for a "revenge hit" is immediately after you take someones spot in the top 5! SKILLS - 3 new skills every level. * Each level up awards a skill, each level has 3 different skills - you will want to level up several Pixals several times in order to ensure you have at least one of each level 2, level 3 and level 4 skill, and often you will want more than one of a particular skill. * Parry1 lvl1: Adds 1 to your defence, thus removes 1 point of damage against you. Only get one Parry1 card. Never use once you get Parry2. * Jump lvl1: Increase Damage by 50%, decrease chance to hit to 70% level, nullified by Wait. Charge is better, you only get two Jumps ever. If you feel fairly safe against the opponent you can use these with your charge to increase chances of doing some damage to win the fight - especially if your weapon is under the 70% chance to hit anyway (so good at lower levels). * Charge lvl1: Increase Damage by 50%, nullified by Roll. Better than Jump but you only get one Charge ever. As long as your opponent is not using Roll this is a great card as it activates each round, but is no good if you miss. * Evade lvl2: 50% chance of "evading the enemy attack". This will only mitigate some damage, although most of the time that will be enough to cause no damage so this is a very useful defensive skill. * Roll lvl2: Roll away from attack chance 10% (down from 30% with ver 0.0.7), plus will nullify a Charge used against it. Use this instead of Evade if you know your opponent has Charge in the mix. * Wait lvl2: Reduces damage to 75% of your normal damage, unless Jump is used then your damage is 200%. Only good if you know opponent is using Jump - a good trick is to use 3 waits to guarantee you catch the Jump as this will do a lot of damage. Keep this in mind if you try to use Jump in defence. * Parry2 lvl3: Adds 3 to your defence. Perfect to use when your opponents weapon is fairly evenly matched with your defence, this card will always take 3 damage off the opponents attack rendering you almost undamaged - you just need to make sure you can hit him once. Other more evasive and countering cards are better when your opponent has a high damage weapon. This card is rare as it activates every time to full effect and can be relied upon to always effectively beef up your defence by 3 - usually a Jump, Charge, Rage or Stun is required to overcome it. * Stop Weapon lvl3: A 70% (ver 0.0.7 up from 50%) chance of halving the enemy weapon damage. An average card, the good thing about it is that it will halve the original damage which then has your defence removed from it - meaning it is very unlikely they will do any damage if the card activates. Use if you have decent defence. * Aim lvl3: Improve your hit chance by 10%. If you feel your defence is fine against your opponent then this is a very good card to improve your chance of landing a blow to avoid a zero-zero draw and a loss when you are the attacked. * Rage lvl4: A 50% chance of increasing your attack by 50%. The advantage of this card over Charge is that it cannot be nullified by Roll and you can have more than one card. Not a great card but you could use to try to overcome high defence. * Stun lvl4: A 50% chance of removing the enemies defence. This is a great card, you should use it always if you can afford to have a non-defensive card in play - hopefully your damage will outstrip any damage they do back anyway. Note that this only removes the Defence portion not the Shield ability - so a good shield is a good thing to have against stun. * Sand lvl4: Decreases the enemy hit chance by 30%. Sand is good if the -30% will take your enemies hit chance below 50% (for example crappy weapon or they are using Jump which puts their weapon at 70% chance to hit minus 30% leaves only 40%), otherwise Evade might be better - the only downside to Evade is that if you take a really big hit Evade will not remove all the damage but this happens rarely (unless its a bug). * Grapple lvl5: 75% of nullifying the enemy skill. This would be good except it means you have to fore-go an aggressive card of your own. This card would be best used when you have an attack advantage over your opponents defence and don't want them to be able to multiply their own attack with a card. If your enemy is an even match then this card may just result in a round where you both don't have cards - or worst case he gets to use his card and you don't. If the defender has no defensive card set there is no point using this card, but it might be a good card to set for your own defence. * Dodge lvl5: 50% chance of dodging an attack. This replaces the old evade and would make it hard for your opponent to land a blow. Best used when you don't need help to do damage to your opponent. * Sharp Aim lvl5: Increased accuracy to hit by 30%. This relegates the old aim lvl3 of 10% as the old Parry lvl1 is replaced by Parry lvl2. As Sand can reduce your accuracy by 30% this would always negate that card. This is a good card for your lower level characters (or a high damage weapon that is inaccurate) that have accuracy at 70%, but if your accuracy is close to 100% already and you are not expecting your accuracy to be reduced by Sand then another card would be better. This card will not help against dodge or evade and anything above 100% is wasted (I assume). A good card when you have the advantage on attack and just want to ensure you make a direct hit - it probably is not a good defensive card. * Thrust lvl6: Increases attack by 50% and reduces accuracy to a max of 75%. This is a but like Jump except it is 5% more accurate and it cannot be defended by Wait. But otherwise Charge is better as it is +50% attack with no drop in accuracy, but is nullified by Roll - so Charge should be used when you don't expect Roll to be used. As Charge is such a good level 1 card sometimes players use Roll quite often knowing it is likely to be coming. Rage adds +50% attack but only 50% of the time. So the only real advantage of Thrust is it will always activate and nothing can defend from it - good with a weapon that already has you around 75% accuracy - essentially an improvement on the rage card from 50% to 75% assuming your hit chance is 100%, could be good card for lower level Pixals combined with Charge fighting against those who don't have much defence to be nullified by Stun. * Trap Weapon lvl6: 90% chance of halving the enemy damage. Replaces Stop Weapon at 70%, this and Grapple are good to use for defence of your tournament Pixal. XP LEVELS The increase in base damage and base defence is very important as it is guaranteed and does not require a dice roll, since defence and attack is at least one roll a level Pixal with a weapon and armour will effectively have a base damage of 2 and a base defence of 1. Note also that your chance to hit is increased by 2% every level which is one of the few ways to consistently increase the chance to hit. * Level 1: 10 XP per win versus other level 1s till 50, then 5 XP, if you pick on weak level 2 opponents you can level within the first 12 action points. If you pick on weak level 3 opponents you'll get 50 XP then 25 and 25 to level up in 4 wins :) 0 to 100 XP +1 damage +0 defence at starting level 1. Weapon hit chance +2% +2% every level to the chance to hit added to the weapon hit chance, your hands have a 50% hit chance. ----> The level 1 Brown gloves have Luck: 0 and Effect: 50% for $910 gold <----- * Level 2: A well equipped level 2 Pixal can beat a naked level 4 Pixal easily, and a poorly equipped 4 fairly easy for 50 XP at first, then about 25 XP once past half way. 100 to 400 XP +2 damage +1 defence total bonus at this level, and +1 to damage and defence every additional level. Weapon hit chance +4% ----> The level 2 Crossbow weapon hits 75% of the time and does 1d10 damage for a price of $3,600 odd gold. <----- * Level 3: Need 500 XP to level up to 4, not as hard as it may sound, if you can beat on a weak level 4 you will still get 50 XP early on. 400 to 900 XP +3 damage +2 defence. Weapon hit chance +6% ----> The level 3 Brown Shield shields you from 1d2 damage if the coverage of 70% is activated. <------ * Level 4: Need 700 XP to get to level 5. There are much less XP rewards, once around 1200 XP you will only receive 5XP per victory against another Level 4, before that about 10. Once your server has a level 5 this will be alleviated. If you own a level 5 you should defend it well to keep others from mass ganking it. 900 - 1600 XP +4 damage +3 defence. Weapon hit chance +8% ----> The level 4 Grey Fist Gloves has 1d3 Luck and an Effect of 70% for a price tag of $13,500 gold. <----- * Level 5: Assuming you need 900 XP to progress to level 6, for which there are items available. 1600 - 2500 XP +5 damage +4 defence. Weapon hit chance +10% ----> The level 5 Great Sword does 4d4 damage, an 80% chance to hit, with a cost of about $26,500 gold. <----- * Level 6: Another guess you will need 1100 XP to progress to level 7, there are few level 7 items so far so the main benefit would be +1 to damage and +1 to defence that you get every level. 2500 - 3600 XP +6 damage +5 defence Weapon hit chance +12% ----> The level 6 Metal Breastplate armour absorbs 3d4 damage for a price of around $8,000 gold. <------ * Level 7: Good luck :) 3600 - 4900 XP +7 damage +6 defence Weapon hit chance +14% ----> The level 7 Unicorn Shield shields 4d3 damage with a coverage of 80% with a price tag of $90,000 odd gold!!!! <------ Version 0.0.7 Changes * New shops, lower level items for beginners. * New fancy items and some price changes... level 8 items... ----> The level 8 Twisted Sword does 7d2 damage at 75% for $50,000 ! Minimum of 7 damage averaging 10 damage. <----- * Stop Weapon skill (lvl3) now 70% chance of halving enemy damage (up from 50%). * Evade skill (lvl2) now 30% down from 50%. * Roll skill (lvl2) now 10% chance of avoiding attack (was 30%) plus the usual nullify charge.