Less than a month since it launched on Beta,
the fifth level of the Guild Expeditions has arrived on the live servers. In fact, it's not even finished being balanced
and admits that at the bottom of the announcement. Here's the main points that you need to know:
Everything is now a fragment. And no, I'm not joking. Every single building or upgrade that you
could previously get in full has become fragmented, including the original 4 levels of the expeditions. Level 5 is going to either cost tons of goods
or require high defense boosts. The defense requirement has been reduced from
the original amounts, but is still very high at a max of 1967% in Space Age: Jupiter Moon. Diamonds are still nerfed, giving on average
81 per week or 4200 per year, down from 8200. So let's dive into the details, starting with
the changes to levels 1-4. You won't notice a change in difficulty here,
but you'll definitely notice the change in rewards. The encounters' rewards have been completely
reorganized, and while they've been made a lot less random, they have been made very
fragment-y. Instead of receiving, say, a Face of the Ancient,
you'll now get fragments of the Level 1 Selection Kit that you can get the Face of the Ancient
from. In total, there are four new level selection
kits, and these are: The level 1, with base and upgrades for the
Face of the Ancient and Gate of the Sun God The level 2, with the base and upgrade for
the Ritual Flame The level 3, with the base and upgrades for
the Tribal Square and Sacred Sky Watch And the level 4, with the base and upgrade
for the Terrace Farm. You might notice the Fountain of Youth wasn't
mentioned, but we'll get to that later. After playing through all four original levels
of the expeditions, you'll receive a full kit of each the level 1 to level 3 kits, and
you'll also average one level 4 kit every week. This is actually kind of nice, as you now
can choose whether you want the level one or upgrade from these kits. However, what about that Fountain of Youth? Well, you'll need 800 fragments to assemble
it or its shrink kit... and you only get, on average, 50 fragments per week. This means it will take about 16 weeks to
complete one fountain of youth or its shrink kit, equaling only about three of each the
base and shrink kit per year. Ouch. That will definitely be rough for diamond
farms looking to get more fountains. On the topic of diamond farms, what about
the diamond rewards? Well, they're still nerfed. You only get on average 81 diamonds per week,
or 4200 per year. This is a big difference from the 8200 diamonds
that you could get in the previous version of the expeditions. Additionally, diamonds are only available
from every fourth chest in Level 4 of the expeditions. In some good news though, you'll now get more
Forge Points, goods, units, and attempts, as well as more blueprints for the Temple
of Relics. And you might want that Temple of Relics if
you have a diamond farm, as you now only need a level 7 Temple to get more Fountains of
Youth per week than you would from fragments if you play all 5 levels. The other buildings are also shown here for
your viewing pleasure. If you decide not to play the fifth level
though, you'll still get more Fountains of Youth with only a level 8 Temple. But enough stalling. Let's talk about Level 5 of the Guild Expeditions. You're first greeted with a nice, calm, lush
forest. Don't let this fool you. This is going to be very hard for you to complete
today, but over time it should get easier with new, more powerful event buildings and
potentially balancing changes. As with the previous four levels, you can
choose to fight or negotiate. However, if you fight, your attack boosts
won't be used, rather your defensive boosts. On top of that, the boosts required are intended
to be quite high. The maximum enemy boosts in the Iron Age will
be about 730%, all the way up to 1967% in Space Age Jupiter Moon. That sounds hard, so what about negotiations? Those are extremely expensive in their own
right, as at the final encounter it will take 78 goods per option. This means that it can take thousands of goods,
maybe near 10000 depending on if you fail a negotiation. The only partial good news is that you can
build what are known as Fortifications to make your life easier. In total there are 7 different types. The Eagle Warrior Temple increases the attack
boosts for your defensive army The Jaguar Warrior Temple increases the defense
of your defending army The Great Warrior Temple increases both the
attack and defense of your defensive army The Temple of Infiltration will infiltrate
the enemy army, so taking away one hit point on each enemy unit. The Zacatzontli Statue reduces the number
of goods needed for each negotiation option, And the Tlacotzontli Statue reduces the number
of negotiation options by one. However, there's a bit of a problem with the
fortifications. They cost a lot of goods, and especially for
the negotiation ones, they'll actually cost more goods than they would save you, making
them a bad investment. I'll leave the decision of whether they are
worth it up to you though. Just remember that if you need them, you can
always use the boost bottles from your inventory (and the defensive ones will actually stack),
and there's the tavern boost to give yourself an extra attempt in your negotiations. After all of this, the prizes for Level 5
are actually pretty good. There's a total of seven brand new buildings
up for grabs. The Greater Ritual Flame will give a 7% attack
and defense boost to your defending armies And the Divine Sky Watch will give 5 forge
points and a 4% attack and defense boost for your attacking armies. However, it's important to know that these
versions can only be obtained from Level 5. You can't upgrade normal ritual flames or
sacred sky watches to these better versions. There's also a brand new chain building, the
Feathered Serpent Statue. This 3x2 building will give you a whopping
10 forge points and 15% attack and defense boost for attacking armies at its third and
final level. The Feathered Serpent has three 2x2 chain
pieces that can be attached, being the: Serpent Fins, that provides a 5% attack and
defense boost for attacking armies, The Serpent Feathers, that provides 20 goods,
And the Serpent Spikes, that provides a 15% attack and defense boost for defending armies. The last new building is the Forgotten Temple,
a 3x4 building that provides a 40% attack and defense boost for attacking armies, a
50% attack and defense boost for defending armies, and a 20% forge point boost, meaning
that for every 5 forge points a building collects, you'll get 6. However, Forgotten Temple is a limited time
building, and only lasts for 28 days, so 4 weeks. The good news is that you can get enough fragments
to assemble a new one by completing all of Level 5 every week. Did you hear the catch? Fragments. All of the new buildings that I just mentioned
can only be won via fragments. In total, it will take four weeks to get each
of the above buildings, or the selection kits for the Feathered Serpent's level one and
upgrades or its three chain buildings. That means that you will not get any tangible
rewards for completing Level 5 until your fourth time playing it. That's not all though - scattered throughout
the fifth level are these awesome new portraits. Don't get me wrong, these look pretty cool,
but they have a 10% chance of being won during 9 of the 16 encounters in the fifth level. This means that you will rarely get ones of
these instead of the fragments for some of the Expedition buildings. However, once you win the portraits, you will
then have a 100% chance of winning the fragments. This will affect winning fragments of the
Feathered Serpent and its chain buildings, the Greater Ritual Flame, and the Divine Sky
Watch. This means that it might take you about 5
weeks to obtain one of these buildings from fragments until you win all the portraits. Oh, and as you might expect, the fifth level
will cost more guild goods to open, between 32 of each Iron Age good and up to 192 of
each Space Age Jupiter Moon good. To put that in perspective, a level 80 Arc
provides only 162 of each of your age's goods for your guild per day. It's expensive to unlock, so you might want
to check with your guild leaders to make sure you have enough goods in your treasury to
reliably open it. Overall, I recommend trying out the fifth
level for a few weeks before drawing the conclusion that it's too hard. Yes, it's expensive, but the rewards are super
powerful, and what are you doing with all those goods you've got stored up anyways? Let me know your thoughts though! Are you excited? Have you made it to the fifth level yet? Does the whole thing need to be changed? Leave a comment! And if you enjoyed this guide, why not check
out my guide on some of the best (and worst) ways to level your great buildings? It's linked on screen now. Good luck with the fifth level, and I'll see
you next time!
