So I finally beat the game after 5 days or so. I completely missed the transfer period from HI because I became preoccupied irl.
*I bought the 13 gem deal for $8.99 once, so I believe I got ~3 more egg spins than a nonIAP player*
Anyways, my thoughts on the game,
The OM seem mandatory to be able to progress at a decent rate in the game, I’m pretty sure the devs intended it this way. That said, I did farm the goldmouth mission like people suggested and shot from 15 to 23 with the assistance of 2 gems. With all the OM done to a logical limit (was just barely making it through battles in Chapter 3, halfway done the chapter), there wasn’t much more you can improve before entering the Champion League and then onto the G4 + Beritus.
I found Tardel relatively easy, Uvestra seemed like a joke (I know a lot of people complained about her), but I might have just been lucky. Also, probably I only beat the game because one egg rolled me a Mechadino. It was priceless in most of the Grand Four and fight against Beritus. I also had a Dinorider that abused throw/timestrike/bloodcrave and a Freezard using Unwanted Friends to make the fight easier (the actual time I won, they ended up not helping much, tbh. I just had perfect timing on my moves apparently).
Joanna took forever for me (probably 20+ tries), I had a perfect setup for the first half of the battle, but the second half was always a mess and relied a lot on the Warca not doing anything ridiculous + a million amount of stuns. I would go from being 12 monsters vs 8 early on to 6 v 6, and then it would just go downhill from there. My main strat was: leave her frostbrave (far left) and archeloth (far right) alive the whole battle til near the end. Before Atlanteon came out, I low healthd the other three so it would use Heal All and kill itself. Kraken dropping in after the whale poison revenge was countered by a Raijin stun bomb + timestrike. Everything in the middle two slots is killed until Warca, then focus fire it til its dead (its Wave (all) is deadly, or w.e its AoE was). Kill the Seasteed immediately that spawns soon after to avoid another stun bomb. Her last few monsters just came down to a sloppy amount of death roulette/last stand, death revenge, or another stun bomb. Stun Bomb + Galvboss and Thunderhoof as last two did wonders.
Line up (don’t remember perfectly, but was similar to this):
4* Dinorider
4* Mechadino
2 Voltiger (She had a habit of ignoring this, so it would always die late)
4* Freezard
0 Moji (for Delgrave fight I rolled a Clioangel and used that instead)
3 Leobolt
3 Raijin
2 Hellataur
4* Nilox
0 Grizzrex
2 Rhynobrawl
1 Stormfox (replaced by Seasteed after this fight, use it instead btw, Seasteed is better)
3* Glyther
4* Spitegrin
3 Thunderhoof
4 Galvboss
Total cost: 92. I had 98 cost space, didn’t have Puffoxin, didn’t learn about it til after.
This is the exact lineup I used for Delgrave (~5 tries). I used the exact same for Beritus and the last boss, beat both on first try. Most of it just came down to stuns and timestrikes + bloodcrave. Last boss, my Galvboss solo’d 50% of his health lol. His dusk all took out 4 and left my Galvboss alone. It was a race against time, the Bronzeshells started killing themselves at this point.
2 Voltiger
3 Mammut
4* Mechadino
4* Freezard
3* Clioangel
3 Leobolt
3 Raijin
3* Nilox
2 Hellataur
3* Frostknight
3 Seasteed
2 Rhynobrawl
3* Glyther
3 Thunderhoof
0 Grizzrex
4 Glavboss
Total cost: 100
Idk about others, but to me, Beritus seemed the easiest. His monsters seemed to take almost a normal amount of damage, in comparison to the BS going on in the Joanna fight. Delgrave’s seemed quite beefed up as well. Beritus’ just seemed lie you needed to know when you can kill his stunners, and when you can entrance stun/stun bomb his team. All battles were close except Uvestra (I had 9 monsters left when I won). You can definitely do these fights without legendaries, I feel like it would be easy if you did.
On a side note, I’m getting absolutely destroyed by the first battle in the Khanate arc. Any tips? They seem even beefier than the G4 monsters. I guess I could go and farm ingredients to ultra evolve the rest of my stuff.