Last night I was up really late studing the trivia about how to hatch a pet hybrid. For people who dont already know this and do it, then let me just say that I would highly recommend studying the wiki pages on how to "mix" one pet with another one and get a hybrid pet out of it.
Ok so basically I was up late studying this and its amazing how many variations you can get. Wiki has the catagorised into Schools which is helpful.
Then I had this dream (after I logged out and went to bed) that you could take like a half a dozen of the ordinary pets and sort of trade them in at the hatchery and get one really cool pet that would be a henchmen, that you could epuip to you and would act as a minion in Battle, not just give a card.
For example, if you took 6 Plague Ninja Pigs (that all give a card) maybe you could trade them in at the Hatchery and get a level 30 or level 40 Henchman. Wouldnt that be totally awesome?! And then just keep it either unequipped as a pet, in your house, or equip it to you and take it with you into battle.
When I woke up I was pondering this dream for awhile. I think there is huge potential here to make up for some gaps that players have in leveling up. Recently people keep asking me how I level up so fast? I mean, like dozens of people have been asking me that. And part of is that I used henchmen to get through the Hall of Valour, on Grizzle. If you havent already done so, you will eventually have to beat the Hall of Valour and it is very difficult if not impossible to do, without henchmen.
But there is a problem in general that as you progress through the levels of difficultly in the game, it gets alot harder when you go into Dragonspyre. Your character is not going to be able to match the double or triple health of the Bosses just on leveling up, health and your damage cards.
Even players that are legendary, who call another legendary wizard freind, still need extra help in Celestia. I know because they call me to help them!! Even with 2 legendary wizards, you still need a full compliment of wizards present (legendary or otherwise) to beat a Celestia Boss.
That seems like a huge handicap. Calling in henchmen for every fight? Thats a bit much, isnt it? I mean, yes, for the Hall of Valor, or for some of the bigger fights on Dragonspyre, or maybe for some of the wintertusk bosses...........but for all of the fights, everytime? That seems like it would get really expensive also, since Henchmen cost crowns!
If you do the math, to get through to Legendary you would have to spend crowns on every fight to summon henchmen, it would start costing a prohibitive amount of money to even progress through Celestia.
That is a bit of a gamble, since yes some people will pay it but then some will just leave. Not everyone wants to spend their grocery or gas money on the crownshop to beat a virtual reality game. So realistically, if there could be an alternative way that players could have the option to buy a perminent henchmen, it would insure that all the wizards stay in the game, through to the end and customers dont quit from what they see as adverse conditions.
Now think through the idea of "breeding" henchmen as pets!
How fun would that be? You could do it the same way that Hybrid Pets are bred, to make sure you get the cards and levels you want! That would be sooooooo fun.
Another aspect is that they are making Castles with a fighting arena now. An example is the Fantasy Castle, but also the Celestia Observatory. These both have a fighting Arena.
How cool would it be to have a HenchMan as a pet, who you could place into the Arena?!? That would make the Arena considerably more usable. If you had more than one henchman pet, you could switch them out. Maybe one day have one, the next day, another: according to which freinds were coming to visit. Right?
yeah, last night I checked my freinds list and it seems like at least 3/4th s of them are dead links, of people who have left the game in the last month. I cant help but wonder if the problem is this crowns and henchmen thing, since players often mention it to me outright in chat, during game play!
Speaking in chat during gameplay is a bit difficult and limited, so you know it must be a sore point. It is surprising how often it comes up!
Plus, there is the added problem that the more people that leave, the more intense the issue becomes. You cant call other players to help you the higher up you go. The dungeons wont let them in, if they arent the right level, for starters. The quests are more difficult so you dont enjoy re-playing the dungeons for fun as much, you have your own quests to finish which are quite challenging so you dont want to go running off after a half dozen people who need another wizard to win............
sigh, I think this is truely a brilliant idea, the more I consider it.
