Torch Battles

Torch battles are a new mode where players can attack other guilds to compete for torches (like capture the flag). One of your heroes will face off against one of the other guild’s heroes and the winner waltzes away with a torch. At the end of the event, guilds with higher rankings win HBs and shards. Every guild member gets a share (even those who did not battle); right now we are earning about 600 shards and 7000 HBs per event. The better participation we get, the better the rewards…!

It is very important that you do NOT haul torches until you get the guild signal in in-game chat or in LINE. We do NOT want to have more than 60 torches until the Torch Battle is almost over. If we have too many torches, it makes our guild a target for other guilds.

Please see the Castle Clash page for our TB schedule.

How Do Torch Battles Play?

Torch battles are basically dozens of one-on-one Arena battles going on at the same time. Frankly it’s confusing and not that visually exciting, but the rewards are great, and you can see the one-on-one fight in defend mode. The key thing to remember is that the battle lasts for hours, but the only time that really matters is the last 15 minutes. During that time we need everybody on duty to defend our torches. Before then, feel free to experiment with torch battles so you can see what happens.

Like dungeon chances and HBM chances, you can only participate a limited number of times, represented by swords. Swords regenerate over time, so make sure you have a full load of swords when the torch battle starts to wrap up.

This video from Dirty Guild is really helpful for getting a general idea of what happens:

Torch Percentages

The percentage shown by a guild is how close that guild is to reaching 100 torches. Example: If the Guild shows 75% that essentially means they have 75 torches. It is good to watch this and pay attention to how many the guild has, because we realized the other day that players can still target a guild with NO torches and that is a wasted chance. “There is a slight delay in the updating.”

If a guild only has 1 torch, and Player A attacks that guild, Player B can also still attack the same guild but if Player A finishes first, Player B will not receive anything.

Strategy and Communication

Our plan (and it works) is to use the free LINE app to coordinate our Torch Battling. We’ll pick one top guild to swarm and we’ll work them over until we achieve victory! We keep out of the top 10 by holding about 60 torches. With 13 minutes left, lower might players attack one top-5o guild we choose. We all attack together, which means they won’t have enough defenders to hold all their flags. They won’t be able to stop the strength of our attackers and time won’t allow them to reclaim their torches.

Please install LINE and set your username to be the same as your Castle Clash handle. Add a few letters and numbers if you can’t get your handle. Your phone number will NOT be visible. Add pepsicolla as a friend and he’ll send you a GrayThieves invite.

The Full Strategy – Please Read!

Ok so we’ve had some questions about the strategy for torch battles so I’m going to briefly outline it. If you have any questions or suggestions to improve it I’d love to hear them.
Each guild is ranked during the course of the event based on the number of flags (torches) “owned” when it refreshes (I think every hour). The guilds on page one of the rankings get raided the most, and so we do NOT want to find ourselves on page one. That’s why we’re constantly begging people to stop hauling early on.

We really want to maintain about 60 flags in inventory. Besides that there’s nothing to do until the last 10-15 minutes. At 12 or 13 minutes to the end (8:47-8:48) we send slow moving units like atlanticore or grizzly reaper (if you’re using one) to haul. Then at 10 minutes before the end, everyone else is sent to haul. As soon as you’ve sent out your units to haul, click the Defend tab to begin defending with any other heroes you have left. As your top heroes finish hauling, they will become available to defend.

Keep in mind that units that are hauling are not available to defend so it’s a balance between hauling and defending. However, we have some very strong players so in general send your strongest heroes to haul. When defending try to leave the raiders that are much weaker for a player with weaker heroes, or use one of your B-team heroes to stop them. Try to get the raiders you can stop but that are CLOSE to your strength so our weaker players have someone to stop and so we don’t waste a strong hero that might be needed later.

Also, VERY important: just like HBM or dungeons, you get a limited number of chances or “swords” per day. Each hero/attempt you send to haul OR defend uses a chance and it takes 30 minutes to regenerate. BUT the wait is sequential so if you send out 10 heroes to haul at 8:00, and the heroes take twenty minutes to haul, you will have ONE haul attempt available to haul at 8:50 when we sound the charge. Defending works the same way. So be VERY careful with ANY activity in the last five hours of the event.

Also most if not all the flags we hold at say 8:30 will be taken from us before 9. So we don’t really care too much about having flags; we just need to stay low on the rankings so we don’t get targeted as much during the last 10 minutes. We have enough people to get our 120 flags. We’ll get them during our blitz.

Anything that’s not clear, or seems like it’s wrong please speak up! No one’s perfect and Pepsi and I could have overlooked something, but we’ve proved this basic strategy to be sound. This game mode DEPENDS on 3 things: participation, timing and coordination. We have to ALL show up at the right time and work as a team.