Friendly Surrenders to the Super Hero Squad Online Paywall

I couldn't help myself. I had 10 bucks of Christmas money burning a hole in my pocket, and I wanted to speed things up . . . and that I have!


Since I had about 300 gold and 14000 silver banked, the extra 500 gold from a subscription plus the fact that gold populates the prize wheel everyday now PLUS the fact that you get 20 gold for logging in everyday instead of just 5 meant that I was able to buy an army of Super Heroes. Mostly Agent Only heroes mind you, but heroes none the less. That jumped my Squad level up, and all of a sudden I had an extra hero thanks to Colossus being the reward for getting your Squad level past 200.

It's like I'm drowning in heroes now! 21 heroes in fact and 11 of those are brand new. In essence, I doubled my squad size last night. LOL. (I highly recommend building up a lot of silver before you become a member, so you can buy all those Agent only heroes out of the gate.)


Forget paywalls, now I'm fighting herowalls. Leveling all these Agent Only heroes will be a high priority when I'm in game for now . . . that, earning tickets to spin the prize wheel, and finding all the hulks to play missions with:


Hmmmm, I imagine just spending some time chatting during busy times will help me find people to play missions with, or yes, I may have to buy those heroes myself (might take me a good portion of the month I think).

I'm only subscribing for a month at this point. I'm hoping that will be enough to get me through a few more challenges. As to be expected, my kids interests skyrocketed last night when they saw me purchasing hero after hero thanks to the subscription account. It wasn't enough to pull Kyle off of Roblox last night, but we'll see.

Until next time, this is the Iridescent Time Hound saying, hero up and . . .

Happy Dueling!

Friendly vs. Super Hero Squad Online's Paywall III

Ohhhh, this is a steep wall right here that I’ve come up against. By my math, I’m going to need at least four heroes (above and beyond the 11 heroes I have now) to make it past the next paywall without paying. That’s just harsh! But it makes sense. I mean, this is a company we’re talking about here that needs to make some money. You can’t just go on and on playing this game for free can you? Well, essentially, yes. I think that’s part of what I like about it. You can definitely keep playing this game for free. It just takes time with a splash of determination—or stubbornness—take your pick.

By my calculations, if I just log in, level my heroes, destroy a few troublebots, and spin the pay wheel every day, I’ll soon have two more superheroes purchased with gold and silver by sometime next week. Specifically Bucky Cap and Mr. Fantastic.



Not the most exciting superheroes in the world to me, but definitely two relatively cheap superheroes. I like cheap!

Anyway, the stretch from Paywall II to Paywall III (or raising my hero squad level from 100 to 200) was pretty fun actually. From all appearances, the most awesome challenge of the bunch happens right here!


It’s win 10 card games against another player. OH YEAH, TIME FOR SOME HAPPY DUELING!


I did it! (But only after going through a number of decks until I found my awesome pinkish purple death deck.)


The PvP card duel in Super Hero Squad Online is an interesting one. The best way I found to win this challenge (without spending too much on booster packs) was to organize a deck that is evenly balanced with blocks and heavily geared toward one type of damage. (I might be a little light on yellow blocks)

That and a little patience with the cards were my recipe for success.

I'll be honest though . . . I'm about ready to surrender to the paywall and subscribe for a month. Unfortunately my kids have lost interest in the game. They do that though, and if they see me playing with a subscription account, they'll come running back. :)

I still like this game on a personal level because, well, there's a part of me that loves these characters and comics in general. See! I even have a few old Captain America comics in my collection.


I can't wait to play my Bucky Cap character for a taste of Captain America! After looking at my issue 305 of Captain America though, I want to play as Captain Britain now! (Dang comics were a lot cheaper back then: 65 cents, wow) Of course, Captain Britain is not to be confused with Lord British . . . I wouldn't mind playing as Lord British either. I'm ready for an Ultima/SHSO cross over game, but is the world? ;)

The next post about Super Hero Squad Online you see from me very well may be as follows: Friendly Surrenders to the Super Hero Squad Online Paywall.

Hard to tell. :) It all depends on how stubborn I'm feeling.

Happy dueling!

Super Hero Squad Online Raffle Winners!

Time is now up for the Super Hero Squad Online Raffle and random.org has chosen our winners.

Thank you all so much for playing.

Grand Prize winner of 1,000 Silver is . . .

Jacob aka World Daring Wasp!

Runner up winners of 500 silver each are as follows:

- Pyro Ninja Pig
- Alexander Fire Blade
- Alex NightFlame

Congratulations winners! Hero up and Getdown! I'll be sending you your codes for Super Hero Squad Online silver shortly.

Happy dueling!

Super Hero Squad Online Raffle!

It appears The Friendly Necromancer's recent posts about Super Hero Squad Online have caught the eye of their community, welcome! We love family games here. Although this blog is 95% about Wizard101, I'm a firm believer in players reaching out and trying new games. Super Hero Squad Online is definitely one of those games.

To those ends, I've been offered a few pieces of in game silver to give away as I please. So, LET'S MAKE THIS HAPPEN!


If you'd like to be entered into a raffle to win a couple of 250 silver code prizes and save yourself 30 spins or so of the lottery wheel, please e-mail me at thefriendlynecromancer@gmail.com with the subject line "SHSO Raffle Entry".

Here's a "mailto" link to help you get that e-mail started: Click Here.

Entries must be received by 11:59 pm on 21 December 2011. Raffle winners will be selected randomly through www.random.org, and announced on 22 December.

If you haven't yet tried out Super Hero Squad Online, there's no time like the present. Go make your squad today!

Best of luck! Hero up! and Happy Dueling!

Friendly vs. Super Hero Squad Online's Paywall II

On my previous post about SHSO I was corrected by Alric Griffintamer when I didn't realize that max heroes added a couple extra points to your Squad level nor did I realize that each hero has a Marvel rating that adds a little to your squad level naturally either.

My math was off.

Because of Alric's response though, I felt ok about leveling my squad up to max. And I did! And it wasn't too bad! And it was fun! But as I got closer to the goal, I started to realize that I still wouldn't make the required 110 Squad level with my squad. I would still be one level off.

So, here I am a little later and my squad level is 109 with all max level squad members, just one point out of reach from my 110 squad level goal. It's pretty awesome though, as you level to max you unlock power emotes, and that third tier of power emotes is pretty awesome. Especially Stealth Armor Iron Man. DANG I LOVE THAT.

Here . . . here's a little video of my squad's power emotes so you can see 'em.



ACHOO!

The real problem here is that I let my 2-year-old play on my account for a while and he spent all my gold in my early days of SHSO on random stuff for my housing. LOL. I learned my lesson and made Diapermancer his own account to play on. What little gold I've been earning, has been finally building up.

So, now I'm just in the process of building gold so I can purchase one of four superheroes. At 350 gold I have the options of purchasing Nova, The Scarlet Witch, Mr. Fantastic, or Valkyrie. I'm thinking of purchasing The Scarlet Witch just because I hardly ever see anyone running around with that character.

I figure I just have to log in and spin the gift wheel at most 7 days in a row. If I'm lucky with the gift wheel, it could be less. Remembering to hop on SHSO and spin the prize wheel daily shouldn't be too bad of a time commitment. The amount of real money I've paid on this game is still $0.00 to this point. Eventually though the the temptation to pay up will become harder and harder to resist when the goal of raising my squad level to 200 appears. Even worse, the ultimate and final quest (so far) is to raise my squad level to 300. *gulp*

I really don't think reaching a 300 squad level would be too hard to do with just a one month subscription. Without paying though? That could take a really long time to do.

If I did decide to go with a one-month subscription, the worst case scenario is that I could maybe end up with a bunch of "Agent-only", silver-purchased unplayable heroes once my subscription expired (if that's how that works). I'm not sure though. The best case scenario is that you get a ton of awesome heroes added to your squad for the small price of $10. Once I hit the next wall, I'll have to decide if that's the way to go or not.

Happy dueling!

Super Hero Squad Online's Paywall vs. Friendly

I’ve been playing the free-to-play Super Hero Squad Online game with my kids, and I think I’ve finally found the first big pay wall in content.

**UPDATE** If you read down in the comments, Alric Griffintamer showed me the error of my ways!! Apparently I had over looked a couple of things, and I HAVEN'T hit the pay wall after all . . . but that's ok . . . read on . . . you might find something interesting in this post. Thanks, Alric! **UPDATE**

The game is pretty fun actually. So far, the whole purpose of the game is to build a squad of Marvel's awesome, super-deformed-style superheros and level up your squad. You basically start off the game with four superheros, then by completing challenges, running missions, finding tokens, and doing other random stuff around the four zones of the world, you eventually earn silver and gold (which can be used to buy superheros) and unlock superheros by progressing through the game's main quest line, aka challenges.

Here's my current challenge progression screen.


And here's my current challenge progression screen with an explanation of what I need to do next.


Here's a picture of my current squad.


The problem there is the math. 8 heroes at max level of 11 each equals a total squad level of 88 when I need to get to 110. THEREFORE, I need at least 2 more heroes to reach my challenge objective.

**UPDATE** This is where I was wrong. Heroes have an innate Marvel Lore number that adds to your squad level and you receive +2 squad points when a character hits max level **UPDATE**

Now, I could play every day for a few months until I earned enough gold and silver to buy two more heroes. It would be perfectly possible to do this, but if I either purchased gold or joined with a membership, things would suddenly happen a ton faster. Why? Because members earn 500 gold off the bat and everyday their prize wheel repopulates with gold, thus making it extremely easy to pick off those low gold cost super heroes (like Plastic Man for 350 gold.)

Let’s review my options.

1- Buy only the 500 gold I need. Cost = $5
2- Subscribe for a month and buy as many low gold amount characters as possible. Cost = $10
3- Spend a lot of time earning tickets and spinning the pay wheel, logging in every day until I can finally earn around 700 gold to buy the two lowest costing characters and raise them to max level. (Time = priceless)

You can see where I'm going with this. The main problem here for me is that I can’t feel good about myself getting any of these things for "my" account without shelling out the same for my son’s account . . . that just wouldn’t be right . . . like at all. So, double the cost of all the above.

The next question for me would have to be, is it worth it?

At this point, it’s simply an easy, but fun, fighting and card game (love the card game) with a little running around in the four available zones thrown in (although necessary--collecting those hero tokens daily is the fastest way to level your squad with the least amount of effort). Social interaction is minimal with menu chat. I like the game! There's something carefree and fun about it that's got me and my kids hooked.

Now, if you're looking to build your own superhero instead of play a pre-made one, DC Universe Online’s free to play seems vastly vastly superior in just about every aspect . . . for an adult or teen . . . because after watching my son’s reaction as Superman was killed in the opening credits of DC Universe Online told me that we probably ain’t going there. Nah, we ain't going there, at least just yet. I felt really bad about that. It was pretty graphic and he had to cover his eyes and look away from the screen when it happend. :( Super Hero Squad Online is vastly vastly more kid and family friendly. :) In fact, comparing DC Universe Online to Super Hero Squad Online is no more than comparing ye' old apples and oranges cliche. dig?

Sooooo, this is the IRIDESCENT TIME HOUND, blasting my way to squad level 88 free-to-play style! I think we'll most likely subscribe for a month and unsubscribe the same month. /shrug

Any of you playing this game and have some advice? If you see me there, gimme a wave!

Happy Dueling!