An Xmas Xarol Event Week 5: Robot Santa Claus vs Nebular Orbs!!!

Christmas Greetings Earthlings!

Welcome to the battle world of Robot Santa Claus vs Nebular Orbs. Yes it’s true TinyCo has thrown us a curve ball rather than a snowball in the final week of An Xmas Xarol event. The realisation that unlocking the character we’ve all been waiting for, Robot Santa Claus, will require a Santa sack load of Nebular Orbs has really made it feel like we’ve all been put on the naughty list. But are things really that grim? Join me as I look at whether any of us can beat the Orbs to recruit Robot Santa Claus freemium before the event ends.

Yes if we want to unlock the character we’ve all been wishing for, Robot Santa Claus, we’re going to have to collect 365 Nebular Orbs.  Yes that numbers right, I know because I checked it once then I checked it twice and the realisation of the task hit me and it certainly was more naughty than nice.  But let’s thank the stars it’s not a leap year or it might be 366 to collect.

So what should we do, should we huff and puff and blow our New New Yorks down or should we take a deep breath and look at just what is possible before the event ends and reach out to TinyCo support with facts and figures rather than anger to see if we can’t get a change made before the event ends. Me I prefer the latter, getting angry over a game just isn’t me, but fighting for fair play is, hence I’m here writing this when I’ve a ton of other things going on. And I’m hoping you’ll help me gather some stats that can be fed back to TinyCo.  So let’s get this show on the road…

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NEBULAR ORBS THE WHAT NOTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM!

Well these appeared in the Week 2 with the big PVP Universe update. And to be honest were initially met with much excitement, one because PVP was finally here, and secondly because the Nebular Orbs could buy you some new items in store.  So Nebular Orbs were suddenly on our collection radar but just where do we find them?

Nebular Orbs (Always): Win PVP Universe Battles, PVP Tier Rewards, Week 5 Neptune Missions, Defeating Snowmotron, Power Suit Lab

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WHY HAS 365 NEBULAR ORBS CAUSED OUTRAGE?

Okay there’s a number of reasons, 365 of them to be precise. Ok, ok maybe I exaggerate, firstly it’s the final week of the event so the clock is ticking down to the event being removed from our games on 10th January @ 3pm PST. So when Week 5 went live we already had less than 6 days, a very limited time, to hit that magic 365 number.

Secondly there’s  the fact that when Nebular Orbs were introduced in Week 2 so were items to spend them on, this has been the case with each subsequent weeks content, new items in store to buy with Nebular Orbs. And there was no hint looking back that I can see that we should hoard them as they might be essential later on. So players collected Nebular Orbs but also SPENT their Nebular Orbs, and are now sitting looking at decorations wishing they were returnable for a full Nebular Orb refund.

Lastly the other reason there’s outrage is this, Nebular Orbs just aren’t easy to come by, they are quite limited in drops and therefore that 365 is sitting looking like the nightmare after Xmas, instead of the peace and goodwill end of event I’d hoped for.

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NEBULAR ORBS – MY STORY

Okay get your hankies out, cause here’s my sad Santa sack of a winter tale, it’s all about a lonely player who spent her days and nights battling her way through An Xmas Xarol only to hit a Nebular wall at the last hurdle, okay in the last week.

Now I’m probably sitting in  better position than most as although I’ve been fully engaged in playing this event, real life has seen me distracted and I therefore didn’t spend any of my Nebular Orbs in previous weeks. That saw me start Week 5 with over 100 Nebular Orbs in the bank.

Now I should have more but I’m one of the players who despite enjoying PVP hasn’t been able to fully engage in it due to freezing and crashing issues, it’s saw me continually lose battles and more importantly battle energy.  And this is one of the reasons I’d like to see TinyCo support rethink the number 365. As many players have encountered this issue and worse, like me, are still freezing and crashing. So we can battle but get nothing a lot of the time leaving us unable to work the main source of Nebular Orbs.

But I’m not the only one with a sad story to tell, other players found themselves locked out their games after a PVP issue, and all credit to TinyCo that despite the holidays they found a fix but it’s still left those players at a disadvantage.

And of course as I previously mentioned other players spent their Nebular Orbs as they honestly believed Santa Medals were the main event currency. So there’s a lot of holiday blues going around as a result of Nebular Orbs suddenly becoming an essential event currency.

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WHAT ARE THE ODDS ON GETTING THE ORBS?

Well to give you an idea of how this will go down if you’re freemium I’m going try give you an idea how many Nebular Orbs you could expect to gather in Week 5, this is based on you starting the new round of PVP Battles when they dropped on Wednesday. If you didn’t start playing those you can expect less Nebular Orbs coming your way this week. This also assumes you’re not freezing and crashing, if you are you’ll get a lot less.

So Wednesday saw the new PVP Universe restart, and you start with 5 battle energy. Then if you play night and day you’ll get a further 84 Battle charges over the final week, giving you a total of 89 battle charges to use. So let’s say you manage to win those 89 battles with no freezing or issues, then you’ll pick up 178 Nebular Orbs from PVP.

Now I know you also get Nebular Orbs as a reward for your PVP tier at the end of the week but as these won’t be awarded until the event end time they won’t be of any use to you, so I’m not banking these.

So the maximum you can earn freemium from PVP in the final week is 178 Nebular Orbs.

Lets move on to our next freemium source of Nebular Orbs, Week 5 Space Missions. If you 100% complete Missions 5-1 through to 5-9 you’ll earn yourself 26 Nebular Orbs. You’ll then have the opportunity to earn a further 1 Nebular Orb every time you defeat the Robot Santa Claus Boss in combat. So how many Nebular Orbs can we get this way across the week? Well if you’re a max Level Player like me with 84 fuel, you’ll get approx 1008 fuel over the week, it will cost you around 200 to 100% missions 5-1 through to 5-9. Then the remaining fuel, approx 808, will allow you to run The Big Showdown mission 78 times, if you defeat the Robot Santa Claus Boss each time you’ll grab yourself 78 Nebular Orbs.

So that’s a total of 104 Nebular Orbs you can grab at no cost to anything apart from your sanity.

And that gives us a potential freemium total of Nebular Orbs for the week of 282 Nebular Orbs, way short of the 365 needed to unlock Robot Santa Claus.

So unless you already had at least 83 Nebular Orbs banked, are a Level 60 player with no crashing or freezing issues and willing to play day and night you cannot get Robot Santa Claus freemium.

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SO WHATS OUR ORBTIONS?

Well there’s a few options open to plug the gap in Nebular Orbs if you really want Robot Santa Claus that I DO NOT advise and here’s why.

Don’t buy the premium Power Suit Lab for 140 Pizza, ok this will give you 4 Nebular Orbs every 4 hours, so a potential maximum of 168 Nebular Orbs over the week but at 140 Pizza is too high a price to pay to unlock a character that should be freemium unlock able.

What about paying pizza to recharge your PVP energy faster to get those extra Nebular Orbs you ask, well you’d need to fully recharge at least 8 times, this would cost 640 Pizza, so forget it!!!

Ok I’m thinking about fuel, what if I pay for fuel refills and run The Big Showdown 83 more times, but not only would this be incredibly boring it would also be incredibly expensive at around 250 Pizza. So we’d be fuel fools to consider this.

This leads me to the only sensible option and that’s buying out the Nebular Orbs you require, this is the cheapest option as 1 Nebular Orb costs 1 Pizza, so if you need 83 Nebular Orbs it will cost 83 Pizza, it’s still a sting in this Xmas tail, but it’s cheaper than all the other options above.

But I’m hoping we won’t need to take the pizza payment route on an item that should be freemium to unlock, I’m hoping that TinyCo will hear our pleas and help us out with Nebular Orbs. I know Support are desperate for this event to end on a festive high, they want us to be having fun believe me, I see what they do behind the scenes for us all.  Therefore I’m  hoping they can work some magic and save our Xmas. But in order to encourage them to help us, they need to know we’re struggling so I’d like you to vote in the poll below, hopefully it will help TinyCo see they need to do a 365 degree turn on this and either reduce amount of Nebukar Orbs required, increase Nebular Orb payouts or let us trade excess other event materials for Nebular Orbs.

And finally I know some of you are feeling as prickly as a Xmas cactus just now, and saying there’s no point trying, but please keep gathering those Nebular Orbs, as if TinyCo do make a change and you gave up you’ll kick yourself.

~ Russian Tigger