Comprehensive strategies, tips and tricks for arena tournament : Hustle Castle

This document is to show how to improve your chance to win at arena tournament with various methods and information, some of which still require further case studies. As the information has been acquired mainly based on my experience it may lack information that can only be observed in higher level range.

Dedicated to all clan members of Black Vampires

0. Purpose of Arena Tournament

  The key of this game is to maximize your power and the best way is to get as many legendary items of your current fighter level. Below list is about how to get legendary items and chances to get legendary items goes down from the top of the list.

  a. Arena : Master Chest(100% from TR7), Artifacts(from TR?), Updated Items(from TR?)

  b. Portal: I understand it gives you legendary amulet and so on but it seems to only be available for high-level members as it requires very high power to defeat stages worth farming. I will update more information when I get there.

  c. Reward Chest from Clan War: Legendary chest and above provides legendary items. The epic chest also provides legendary item by rare chance. They tend to be distributed to a clan member who has gained the highest glory point.

  d. In Market: you can have the legendary item out of Ad-watcher's Chest and the Mystical Chest but the chance is pretty low.

1. Level Bracket

  a. What is it? : In order to win the tournament first we need to understand the level bracket. Hustle Castle tournament matching system decides your opponents by an average of your fighters' level and lets you play in a certain bracket where all of your opponents have a similar average level of their fighters. However as it could simply take too long time to find opponents of exactly the same level as yours the developers of the game has turned the matching curve into stair, in which some brilliant players have brought out a unique strategy to win the higher place in a tournament : as long as the average level of your fighter stays under the level limit of each bracket you can have one higher level fighter than the bracket level in your squad.

  b. Bracket list: In below list, the left number is the size of your barrack and the right number is the average level of your best fighters.

     4x30, 4x40, 4x47, 4x55, 4x70

     5x40, 5x47, 5x55, 5x62, 5x70, 5x77, 5x85, 5x92, 5x100
     6x40, 6x47, 6x55, 6x62, 6x70, 6x77, 6x85, 6x92, 6x100

     (in bold are the brackets with a lack of players and a long waiting time in queue)

     Bracket list by u/BeewizFr

  c. How is the average level of your fighters calculated

   - The average level is calculated with levels of the best fighters among your whole castle dwellers no matter which chamber they are in your castle. When calculating the average level people normally count fighters they have in a barrack but a fighter outside the barrack can be counted if he/she is higher level than anyone in the barrack.

   - The average level is always rounded down (for example 47.9 => 47). u/BeewizFr

As soon as your average level is over a bracket level, you go to the next bracket. For example, with an average level of 48, you go to the level 55 bracket.

2. Strategy and accompanying cons.

  a. Da Trick: Set one fighter's level higher than the others. That's pretty simple but it will give you even higher chance to win a tournament. Below are some example and a few requirements

    - If you are in the 4x30 bracket, set your squad as 27 30 30 36 of which average still remains at 30.75. 

    - The highest fighter has to be a melee tanker. continuing with above example, the 36lv melee fighter with legendary or epic item set of his/her level would be felt like a golem to the opponent 30lv fighters and would carry most of the fight alone. In many cases, it is recommended to have two top level fighters as melee fighters unless you have legendary archer/mage set and all blue items for the melee fighter.

  b. Preparation Stage(legendary Item farming) : Legendary item is still essential so you need to prepare legendary item set for the highest level fighter and at least epic sets for the others.

    - First of all, you will need some farming of arena point till you accumulate enough point to buy first master chest. The master chest should be the one you can get a legendary item by 100%. When you have low-level fighters like 30 the best strategy is to farm a melee legendary items for your strongest level fighter, let's say 36, then you will be able to start winning the tournament more easily.

    - Next, you may want to equip your lower level fighters with epic or legendary items which will improve the chance of winning. Once you level up your TR room and crafting shops you won't be able to get legendary items anymore for lower level fighters. Before moving up to the next level bracket you need to prepare enough legendary items for lower fighters in the next level squad in the plan. For example if you currently have 27 30 30 36 lv fighters and the next bracket you want to farm is 47 you will have to accumulate arena points that you can buy at least 5 master chests, 3 for the lower 3 fighters(43 47 47) and 2 for the next strongest fighter (51). If you also want to be competitive in clan war you would need an extra one or two more chests for 2 more fighters, total 6.

    - Arena points gained by tournament rank does not increase as you level up, while the cost of apple to participate in the arena does. For this reason, you may consider staying in a certain arena bracket for a very long time to farm enough points to buy legendary items for much higher level not just for the next level.

    - Once you level up your TR room you won't be able to get the lower level item, and your lower level fighters may have to fight in green or blue armors if legendary items were not acquired in advance.

  d. Cons: When your barrack capacity is less than 6 employing this strategy would make you difficult to in clan war against opponents who have the same throne room level as yours but have maxed out training for all 6 fighters. For example, if you have 4-crew barrack filled with 36 30 30 27 level fighters and then you deploy them to the war way point of 6 fighter slot your 6-man squad has to be 36 30 30 27 + 27 27 (total 177, the latter two 27 level fighters cannot exceed the level otherwise you would move to next arena bracket) while your opponent with the same TR6 would bring 6x40 (total 240) fighters and if the opponents fighters are equipped with similar tier items of yours but of their maxed-out level, you won't be able to win that waypoint even though it's only for TR6, which really matters sometimes.

3. Troubleshooting: Cases that cause an unwanted change of level bracket and how to fix it

  a. Two higher level fighters than current bracket level(75% confirmed)

      If you have two fighters with a higher level than your desired bracket level you would most likely to be moved to the next level bracket. I am not yet 100% sure how it works but by several cases, especially from the 40lv bracket, I have found two higher level fighters than your current bracket cause unwanted change of bracket even though the average level of fighters does not exceed the limit.

  b. 5 level gap
      I have been developing this theory with a few but plausible case studies and this may only work for other level brackets except 30 level bracket. This is pretty similar to above issue (a.) but when you have a too low level fighter that is still counted to calculate the average, it may cause a problem. If the lowest level fighter, Tink, is 5 level lower than the next lowest lever fighter, Tonk, the lowest level fighter, Tink, is excluded from the calculation of average fighter level, which will increase the average more than what your expected. Below is tested results in 40x4 bracket. If you want to stay in 40x5 bracket the fighter average level has to be smaller than 41.

    - 35 40 40 46 : in this case though the average level does not exceed 41 as the 35 level fighter is excluded from the calculation the average is (40+40+46)/3 = 42

    - 35 36 40 46 : in this case the gap between the two lowest fighters are smaller than 5 but the average of three higher level fighters is 40.6 and the gap between the number and the lowest level fighter is 5. This squad was matched to 47 lv bracket and has brought the new hypothesis.

    - 36 36 40 46 : works fine at lv 40 bracket but there are 6 level gap between top and the second high level fighter

    - 36 38 41 46 : the average is 40.25 but was matched to 47 lv bracket. The gap between the average of top two fighters(43.5) and the next high level fighter(38) is more than 5.

    ∴ level gap explains many cases but it may have exceptional case such as if only one high level fighter exceeds the limit(41~) of the bracket it may have 5 level gap from the next high level fighter who remains inside the level limit(as 40).

  c. Going back to lower bracket : If you don't think you fit in your current bracket as you don't have enough number of legendary or epic items, or by accident you leveled up a fighter and stepped into the next level bracket you may want to consider to go back to previous bracket. Here is the simple way and some explanation.

  - Banish fighters and lower your average level.

  - If above does not work.

      Banish the fighter whose leveling up was a direct effect on the unwanted change of level bracket. Check if you have high level fighters in other chamber than barrack which may be affecting the average calculation.

4. Cost of items in arena store : 

  a. Legendary artifacts(changing) : from TR?

  b. Legendary items(changing) : from TR?

  c. Master chest : 5200(TR6) / 8350(TR7) / 16700(TR8)

Credit

NAN_KEBAB, Kimi_Raikokken, u/BeewizFr

Interactivity

Interactivity : different characterestic from old media

Interactivity is, maybe, what humankind eager to experience all the time. That could be loving and being loved allowing and being allowed, and sharing ideas. Though they're saying that interactivity could be the key difference from the old media, I think it has been in old media, too, and what has been changed is the time between action and reaction by artists and audience respectively. In old media, such as drawings, artists have to wait a certain amount of time to get responses from audiences as a kind of criticism or buying the drawings. And when the audience or general people want to say something artists usually catched them and express it onto their drawings. The new media that we know as computer and screen based thesedays provides both of artists and audience faster interaction. With simple inputs, such as a mouse click, actions with the body or verbal, the audience can experience output that the artists want to show.
long term interactivity
short term interactivity

With the new media artists have provided audience more experience, not just a still image or scene. It is sometimes immersive or extractive, and the both have database to support emmersive abundant information. There are two kinds of this interactivities: one is open and the other is closed. The Open interactivity is usually with live database that is updated in realtime so audience can feel experienceing always new things. Audience can also be artists(providers, producers) by updating information by themselves. The closed interactivity can be with rather small database. Though sometimes the database is huge the audience are still limited in certain interactivity. Open interactivity can be explained as registrational interactivity.

I believe misinterpretations made by the audience are a general issue as people usually misunderstand each other. Misleading to unexpected results is also general one. We can see many people make others lost on the street because of false information. We need to know that these problems is not newly made within new media but is general problems that can be occure in human interactivities. What should be focused is just to provide ideas through product or art more effectively not to think much of its elegancy. Hence people would be able to experience interactivity more deeply and accurately. Manuals, help informations, tutorials should be also included in the immersive interactivity.

Elements of successful game

What's between analogue and digital?

Huge improvement in technology used to seem to open new horizon in every field including art that should not be distinguished from technology sometimes. Digital which is normally considered as a new media that emploies numbers to present materials doesn't mean a break between analogue and digital, rather it is also a sort of those magnificient improvement in technology which have leaded us into the new world. As we've installed computers and similar electiric machines into daily life, almost every information is transferred into numbers especially '0' and '1'. These two numbers are also another small medium that enable us to interact with computers, and now we've taken computers as one of media that enable us to interact with the world.

With computers people can avoid the conventional hard and time-spending ways of producing, instead they can have more abilities and opportunities to produce or create. Fixed consumers now have become producers at the sametime and what they produced through digital media are no longer leaved as fixed products but have fluidity as they can be edited by others at anytime. This is maybe because this powerful new media are making not just the end products but interactive methods in which people could interact with other. The term 'user' seems to be the representative word to describe these phenomena. Users are living in the cyber world and in the cyber world like internet communities, communicative applications and virtual games all the activities by the users become products that other users would consume. These active interactions are totally because of digital technology that has strong functions to allow people easy to reach other.

"Let there be light!" said the Jewish god, and the light became one of the major media as we interact with world through lights with our eyes. Now we've got the two electric signals that would have been existed long before we realized. And with the digitization we seem to be on our first step to do or create somethinng we haven't experienced before. To someone these phenomena could mean second Renaissance, vast opportunities of creation as it's again open to human interaction, to another these would just historical reemergence amid a massive circulation of evolution in both technology and humanism in turn. And to the other this might mean a chance to guess what the next powerful media would be.

We've only thought about the media that are around ourselves. To see it different way I need to mention of light and eyes again. First, we use the light to see objects around us. If we analyse the light on the base of modern science, it is a form of wave like sound and object. When we had no eyes or ears we would interact with the surroundings only with tactual sense. And at one point we found a new medium, sound. We'd developed auditory sense since that time and then developed visual sense with light. At each point we developed ourselves in biological way using media like sound and light which all started from the form of vibration. Whenever we found new medium we'd developed new abilities to use the medium effectively and we didn't need to distinguish them as the old and new one. Currently we're using the three media all together. But as the three senses differentiate their performances in the ratio 70:13:7(visual:auditory:kinesthetic), it's obvious that the sense with the most recent media(light) is the dominant.

Things we can reconfirm through these asumptions are the fact that new media is on the extention of old media(as all the tree are form of vibration)and whenever we apply new media eventhough media gets changed, we do not just walk away from the old way of manipulating previous media. This can be explained by using two hands, two ears and two eyes for perspective observations in touching, hearing and seeing respctively. Interactivities also can be explained in this way. As we have developed our interactive organs from the way of receiving senses to sending signals and then iteratively, you can guess we are in the scene of applying new way within new media.

Now, if we see digitization as the most influential change ever recognized, we can think of how our body or mind would be accustomed to it. In short future there could exist a hero like Neo from the movie Matrix, who can control virtual world as if he were borned with the ability that might come from a evolution we would suffer. We already have seen huge gap in computer using ability between generations. I hope in the near future we can make 5 volt electricty by ourselves to manipulate certain future devices rather than having cybernetic chips within the body. If the time of the implented chip comes, maybe, following inconvenience wouldn't go further than the first time we wore clothes.

Since I believe the digitization is about outer expansion using machines sometimes I want to see what would it be like if it were not with machines. If you can say today's science, including electricity, a result of westernization I want to see what would it be like if we're living in the easternized world. Maybe we could have more chance to focus innerspace like Qi, inner force or magical power in Tibet. Who knows whether we could have telecommunicated with telepathy, shared other's vision and thought, lived without any food, had unlimited memory and teleported wherever you want to go.

What's New Media?

Concept of (new)Media

blanket-like description which is usually used as plural to refer to a coherent entity.
Enormously general and hence vague term.
Different or unusual things.
can be used to mark a break with history
Tones from out of nowhere "Rudolf Pfnninger"

1. The media as an Institution

• Communication media
• Institutions and Organization : the press, cinema, broadcasting, publishing, etc.)
• cultural n material products of the institutions : forms, genres of news, movies(material forms)
  We should investigate the wider processes through how its content is distributed, and by whom is consumed and regulated.

--> social institution,

• far less settled, known and identified
  rapidly changing set of formal and technological experiments(try)
  complex set of interactions between new technological possibilities and established media forms
  
  

2. Intensity of change

• Media never stand still.(a state of constant flux): Differences of media and communications, in their appearance and timing of change, are widespread in every sector.
• Experiencing nature of change became an absolute marking off from what went before.
  - Because it is made of current cultural elements..
• Kinds of change with which new media are associated.
  - A shift from modernity to postmordernity (key marker of changes)
  - Intensifying processes of globalisation (element enabling multinationalism)
  - A replacement, in the West, of an industrial age of manufacturing by a 'post-industrial' information age
  - A decentring of established and centralised geo-political orders

3. The ideological connotations of the new

• new
  - the most recent
  - better
  - cutting edge
  - avant-garde
  - place for forward-thinking people to be
  
• derived from a modernist belief(social progress delivered by technology)
  modernist belief : existed throughout the twentieth century and have roots in the nineteenth
  
• hope and claims : opening creative, communicative horizons
  
• new = a range of developments <--- powerful ideological movement = narrative about progress in Western society
• ideological neutral : the innocent enthusiasm for the 'latest thing' in whole sections
  

quotes

We live in this very weird time in history where we're passive recipients of a very immature, noninteractive broadcast medium. Misssion number one is to kill TV


Jaron Lanier, quoted in Boddy 1994:116

Photographers will be freed from our perpetual restraint, that of having ... to record the reality of things, freed at last from being the mere recorders of realility, our creativity will be given free rein.

Laye, quioted in Robins 1992: 56

Media could be a representative example that shows a need of integration of every field of study.

Song Eui-Kwon

Traditional Thoughts on Art : history of old time

Plato
"history of philosopy is but a series of foot notes to plato."
- Alfred North Whitehead -
○ his achievement : exploration of the process of inquiry, philosophical dialectic
○ His positions :
- in Republic : addresses the nature of justice
presupose the view of art as techne(employment of the best means to produce desirable ends)
- in Ion : complete and self-explanatory.
- in Symposium : in this concept the major question is of the nature of love,
○ addressed better education than traditional one : gymnastic for the body, music for the soul and their order(book II)
○ warning to avoid imitation : against goods or art that only imitates its appearance using mirror(book X)
1. god(the only creator)
2. carpenter(first descendant of imitation)
3. painter(second descendant of imitation)
○ art : imitation of nature

Aristole : Plato's student.
: most influential philosopher for his science.
○ mimetic theory, mimesis
○ concerned with reality : to describe, not the thing that has happened, but a kind of thing that might happen
○ values of imitation : benefits of the kinds of emotional gratifications from poetry.
○ gave important questions considering nonrepresentational art of twentieth century
○ explores the nature of art as production


David Hume : the most prominent spokesman for empiricism(based on experience).
○ all knowledge comes from experience but that experience offers no unassailable foundation for knowledge
○ causation can only be understood as constant conjunction, linking of events in the mind based on its past experience.
○ morality is founded on internal principle of sympathy and sentiments toward others.
○ his postion : reliance on mechanisms internal to the mind and a skepticism toward the foundations underlying experience
○ Taste : the primary notion, for there is no authority beyond taste for the evaluation of works of art.
○ offered psychologistic analysis, offers no foundation for a theory of art.
○ posed centeral problem of the philosophy of art,
- any theory can do more than describe the workings of the human mind when confronted with works of beauty and power.


Immanuel Kant
○ Critique of judgment : most important and influential work in aesthetic theory.
easy
○ Hume : concerned the necessity in scientific understanding or morality
but synthetic resolution of the central problems of modern philosophy
○ there are fundamental principles in the human mind that constitute its cognitive powers, that enable it to synthesize its manifold experiences into unity. space and time are forms under which we must experience our surroundings in order to experience them at all.
○ Critique of Pure Reason : analysis of the principles that define the concepts whereby we can experience and understand the world surround us.(understanding under causal necessity)
○ Critique of Practical Reason : define the concepts of moral obligation and duty.(reason under the concept of freedom)
○ nature of art : falls under the concepts of necessity or freedom, denies that art is a form of understanding or morality.
○ uniqueness, autonomy of art by nenying that aesthetic judgement and taset are objective.
○ judgements of beauty must be universal, shareable by everyone who posseses good taste.
○ view of the beautiful : the symbol of the good
○ conception of the aesthetic as the free play of imagination
○ delight in the beauriful and sublime is a delight in the cognitive faculties of imagination and judgement freed from their subservience to reason and the understanding - that is freed from the constraints of propositional discourse
--> influenced Schelling and Hegel


G.W.F. Hegel
○ giant among Kant's immediate followers
○ the notion in kant that the principles of rationality and understanding are found within the nature of consciousness itself are conjoined in Hegel with the principle of freedom as the giving of law to oneself.
○ conception of history as a progression in consciousness, from consciousness to self-consciousness and then to self consciousness of self-consciousness. the giving of law reflextively to oneself as lawgiver.
○ process of developmenet on consciousness : dialectical, opposion moments, conflicting principles, reconciled in a synthesis which supersedes each monment, only to undergo conflict itself and subsequent supersession.
○ the fulfillment of the process is consciousness aware of itself as free cause of itself
○ Absolute Spirit, Absolute Idea, realizable only throughits own history, universal in the concrete.
○ View of art : based and limited on sensuous medium, self-consciousness.
- throught classical period is the highest period of art because whole universe was most completely realized in sensuous form.



Friedrich Nietzsche : made tradition devoted to the search for epistemological foundation.
○ there're many truths, since they're historical products.
○ values are created, not found in nature.
○ the creation is successful only by acknowledge both our own role as source of value and limitation of our understanding due to historical and social condition.
○ polarities : order and passion(defective without the other)
○ tragedy requires their integration and it's supreme achievement of mankind.


Nelson Goodman : Language of Art
○ art functions symbolically, cognitively
○ art is cognitive as science
○ emotions function cognitively in art
○ claims cognitive authority for art and weakens the unique cognitive authority of science


Martin Heidegger : his book 'Being and Time' defines ontological difference, ○ approaches it within the context of human experience and being.
○ Beings can be only if there is a meeting place between Being and human being.
- meeting place : Appropriation, Framework, Clearing
○ Art takes us into the Clearing in which the conditions of thought and being can be interrogated in new ways, in which things are

Inspiring or just surprising?

Golan Levin

the truly soft side of software

What first popped out of my head is two words 'new media'. I was trying to find something extraordinary or serious meanings from the video, and because I'm also in the 'Introduction to media art' class, I couldn't help from having caught that kind of words. But still, the video didn't go further than an exhibition of the latest media technologies. About at one-third of the video, when is right after I saw him "playing" the media, with his both hands manipulating a pen and an optic mouse, I started to have a somewhat strong feeling on the video.

His improvised looking performance, though maybe you may not call the simple mouse control a performance, was creating inspiring sounds that can amount to a well made New age music. He seemed not so much to know how to click exact points on the screen for musical notes, but rather to be roughly aware of the boundary of each pitch. And, by simply manipulating two mouses he has reversed the traditional way of thought presenting a "video music", not a music video.

He showed that we can have a computer, that somehow these days limits your activity like imagination, as a new media and one of the most impressive instrument ever imagined. It seems all he tried is starting a new category that could be attained only by creation. And I can feel those all creative works are gradually becoming the most important and fascinating elements of art.