Feeding the Corruption

Maybe this has been covered elsewhere. Wouldn't it be easier for one of the quest leaders to set up a production-focused town right near the Heart, and just start making daily sacrifices of basic scouts? It's way less expensive for the rest of us to send horses to supply that town, rather than build the scouts ourselves. There shouldn't be much upkeep if someone is constantly feeding them all to Audrey.

If that doesn't generate points fast enough, maybe a few cities would do the job.

It seems very unlikely that occasional random feedings will result in real progress towards another heart beating event.

Edited by Brandmeister - 12 Jan 2017 at 15:15

no moon phase, for the Fortune Teller answer:

the conditions to be met are linked to:

• the # of crafting researches you've achieved in the city sending to the FT
• the # of visits from ditto city to the FT (it seems you need to send a first time, then a second to get the opening to Duraz Karag)

Edited by Hopper - 12 Jan 2017 at 10:14

--Mostly I have questions, but also some observations.

"A coordinated arrival is a good idea also, and I think we could do both methods. I was thinking that since many of us cluster towns, both individually and as alliances, that a bunch of armies sent from the same general location would also arrive about the same day and/or time. My goal was to keep things simple, at least at first, and focus on generating support for this project. However, if others want to get together and coordinate an arrival, I'm all for that idea too."

-- If a staging area was created, how long can soldiers stay at a spot/town/etc, whether it is your alliance's town or otherwise? For the sake of logistics, would it be necessary for each participant in the HoC quest to have a town created nearby? At the very least, if they have enough levels in their Consulate, they may be able to see the movement of thieves around the area, if that occurs. Then it might be a much more simple task to coordinate attacks.

"4. There is a relationship between one step of the quest and a moon phase, that we are confident about, and most of do think that other parts are related to moon phases. But we don't have evidence of any others. The tentacles escape from towns on the first New Moon after the HoC stopped beating."

-- Does it take a full moon to get it beating and a new moon to spawn the tentacles? Have there been any HoC attempts during a full moon or is it only started on the first of the month? Full Moon: Unutterable chaos takes full hold over the land.

"5. To keep tentacles from escaping from towns, we don't know what to do. From talking to players who did the quest in 2014, they all had support armies in their towns because they were told to get ready for an attack. No one said that they sent thieves for support, and I think this is a good idea since one of the messages suggested that thieves were the culprits. They also said that they did not surround their towns until after tentacles escaped and were growing on the squares around their towns."

-- If a settler can create a town nearby, then maybe a Consulate with thieves may allow vision of the aforementioned thieves. The potential for quick resupply may also help.
--What about sending settlers in to start a town close/nearby the temple locations, if for nothing else as staging areas? Or create three towns near each of the temples, by whatever alliance that would send the most to each square for feeding the Heart of Corruption, and use them for staging areas for everyone to use. Send more to temple 1, 2, or 3 depending on the status of the quest at the HoC temples. If a Non-Aggression Pact may help, then do that.

-- Point is, landing them all at the staging area would allow for a faster and much more coordinated 'attack' of the suicide troops into the HoC. How many staging towns are needed to get things rolling? Might I suggest also using a nearby market hub or some other neutral location everyone can send all the units to.

"Just occupy the surrounding 8 squares with armies.  Does not have to the same player armies."

--So, what are the square locations for the temples and corruption, or does that not stay consistent?

-------------------
From http://www.puzzleslogic.com/illy/

"Heart Of Corruption

HoC (Audrey) was beating 2 times: 1. Apr - 5. Apr 2012 and 19. Oct - 23. Oct 2012
When beating it has 73+9 corrupted squares and 3 nearby temples are also "corrupted".

Youtube video from 20th November 2013 HoC feeding: http://youtu.be/zvp05MGhiRA
download: hoc_20nov.mp4 (24mb) each frame (illy screenshot) is done 30 seconds after every full minute

4 new corrupted squares in video are added at: 19th 17:45, 19th 22:36, 20th 04:22 and 20th 20:05

Experiment: 30 identical armies (lvl 0 stalwart commander + 1149 stalwarts) where hitting from 19th 22:03 to 19th 23:30 every 3 minutes. At 22:36 (after 12 armies) new square appear. Following 18 armies with 20700 stalwarts where not enough to corrupt another square (so theory about 50k exp for 1 square is not correct).
Next square was corrupted at 4:21 - 4:22 after Audrey was fed with many more units. From my alt (yellow armies) it got 9 diplomatic groups with 54702 scouts hitting 3:03 - 4:20 and 2 armies with 2844 charioteers and 1677 knights hitting 4:03 and 4:21. Around another 10 armies where hitting before new square appeared at 4:22.

My next experiment will be using only scouts but to get some results I first need maybe 200k of them."

-- http://lunaf.com/lunar-calendar/2012/04/01/ Moon phase on 1 April 2012 Sunday is Waxing Gibbous. Notice Waxing Gibbous ended on 6 April 2012 when the Full Moon started and was only from 6-7 Apr 2012.
-- http://lunaf.com/lunar-calendar/2012/10/19/ Oct 19 had Waxing Crescent, Oct 22 had First Quarter.
-- Twelve Armies of 1150 each = 13,800
-- Eighteen Armies of 1150 each = 20,700
-- Ten Armies of 1150 each = 11,500
-- Total = 46,000
--More testing may be required to find the sweet spot for troop numbers and moon phase timing.

*Note: some minor editing was completed


Edited by Batmap - 11 Jan 2017 at 06:53

Commanders that go to HoC cannot be resurrected.  It's possible that some people would want to sacrifice such a commander for this purpose, but your pool of volunteers will likely be limited.

Many others are asking similar questions. Some sent and want to send more, but don't know if they should wait or not.

Basically, we feed the heart until it beats. If the heart is not beating, then it needs more food. So send all the units you want to send, and whenever you want to send them.

It takes a lot of units and a long time, which is one reason why I am suggesting a monthly feeding. It is a reminder that we need to keep feeding it. Once is not enough. Feeding the heart is an ongoing, nonstop thing if we want to finish this quest. The monthly feeding day is not a limitation, but I'm hoping it will encourage more people to get involved and keep us motivated to keep sending units. And if we have a group activity, we can motivate and remind each other.  I know some people who wanted something to do that has a little more structure rather than everyone randomly sending units at any time. As new players join, they will learn about the quest and see what we have been doing, and it might the thing that gets them hooked on the game. I would not be surprised if a new player came along with a fresh perspective and solved the quest, since the rest of us have been stuck for a few years now. Personally, I didn't like Illy that much when I first tried it, and I thought it was okay the second time I tried it, and it wasn't until I learned about the mysteries that I fell in love with the game and became addicted.

So feed it until it beats, and don't stop until it does. Feed it any time. Send as many units as you want/can afford/whatever.

We're doing this as a community and if some people miss a month or send at a different time, it's okay. It's all good and it all helps. There are many players who are not interested and are not sending anything ever, and that's okay too. There's something in this game for everyone. If I wasn't doing mysteries, I'd be doing something else, like a war of walls or Thunderdome. Those are important parts of the game too.

And let's keep the conversation going. Brainstorm, share ideas, and talk about the quest and put our heads together to figure this out. There's a link on my profile to an open chat room that anyone can join and we can talk about the quest, mysteries, factions, or whatever. There's no registration or sign-up required. Use any name you want also, but come by and let's talk.
Exploring the Mysteries chat room