December 06, 2018

Gears of Doom & Why Treasure Potions Cannot Be Banked

Gears of Doom & Wheel of Doom

We’re getting a lot of reports on the Gears of Doom and the Wheel of Doom which are not bugs.  The most common two are “not getting gears” and “can’t spin the wheel”.

The most common one is the player banked the first gear and seems to have forgotten it.  Once you place one in your bank, the next one (or two) will go there as well.  Look in your bank.  I’m sorry folks, but there just isn’t time to send each of you an email saying “They’re in your bank”.  

This is also one of the two causes of “can’t spin the Wheel”.  The Gears simply will not work until you take them out of your bank.  So, look in your bank and then remove them to use your spin!

The other cause of being unable to spin the Wheel is you do have to be level 10 for the free spins.  Why?  Because we want to encourage players to play the game!  That is what games are made for, after all.

The next most common result when checking those reports is many people seem to have a misconception on when they will be awarded Gears.  Please look at the following chart.

The week for awarding Gears is personal to you.  It begins the day you pick up your first Gear, and will not reset again until 7 days after that.  You cannot collect more than 3 Gears in your “personal week”.  (See Player A)

If for some reason, you do not manage to log in and collect all 3 Gears in the 7 day period, you will collect the next one the next time you log in, and your restart day will be the day after you use them to spin the Wheel. (See Player B)

We are also investigating options to make this much easier from a player perspective as well!  Keep an eye here on the Design Notes for updates on that!

Why Treasure Potions Cannot Be Banked

Yorumi had to do some new magic and make Treasure Potions unable to be banked to prevent loss of them when players would bank them, and then get more, and try to force the stacks to merge.  While the TPs did not vanish every time you tried this, thanks to some backend magic, if you moved them enough times, eventually one stack would vanish.  

This ONLY happens when it is stacking items which are triggered by player actions and are forced into your inventory, and you have a stack in the bank as well.  So 3 items - Treasure Potions, Daily XP Boost! (1 hr) and Power Gems.  So please don't try to force any other stacks to merge!  They will do it on their own if you just let them.

We explored many ways to stop the Treasure Potions from vanishing, and none of the options which previously existed were fool-proof.  This is when Yorumi got his magic bag out and completely rewrote Treasure Potions so that they could not be banked.  At all.  

This is not a “quick and easy” fix by any means, which is why it was only applied to Treasure Potions, as they have taken on the role of a form of micro currency with the Doom Merge shop, and especially the Platinum Item of Donated Awesomeness.  

For all other items:  There are two types of reactions stacking items have when you already have a stack in your bank.   

For items that you have to pick up manually, it will not allow you to pick it up.   In that case, you may be able to retrieve your stack from your bank and then pick up the item.  

For items that are automatically added to your inventory, it will go into your inventory, and into your bank when you relog if you do not try to force it to stack with the others.  Trying to force it to stack with the others in this case could cause the item to vanish.

In both cases, it is always best to remove your stack from the bank before collecting more items.

We are still looking at better solutions, but we did need to do this to prevent any more loss.  So please, don't try to force any other stacks to merge!  They will do it on their own if you just let them.