From Soda to Strategy: Nyx's Quest for Health & Love of War Dragons

0:00 all right everybody welcome back to another episode of the space tomatoes podcast we're your hosts i'm havoc and i am lx and today we have a special guest on nix from the war dragons community welcome to the show nix hi guys thanks for having me awesome glad you're here yeah so how's your day been so far so far it's been a fun blend of experimentation in my kitchen I was making some strawberry lemonade and I'm trying to stop with the soda I told Havoc earlier that corn syrup is not my friend so I'm trying to cut it out of my diet so I'm on this juicing journey.

1:15 And my mother has a rather large lemon tree in her backyard that needs pruning on the regular. So the perfect plan just kind of materialized before me when I needed to go over there and help pick lemons. I was like, well, you know, what am I going to do with 50 lemons? I'll make juice. Nice. Lemon juice is good for you. Yeah. And, you know, it surprises me how much sugar is in things. And so when you're making something yourself and you're like, well, how much sugar can I put in and not overdo it? So I started, I started off with like three tablespoons and today it was up to like a cup.

2:01 I'm like, okay, I could do a cup of sugar. I mean, that's still significantly less than what's going to be in a, in a two liter of soda. but it's interesting to me how a sugary beverage that you just pop open the top and the ingredients are kind of a mystery uh how bad that could actually be for you it's absolutely horrible that was one of the first things i had to i had to kick and uh i was very much i would say addicted to it that the uh the one that comes in the red can i don't even want to mention it but yeah That rhymes with smoke. Yeah, that one. There are other alternatives to the sugar if you were looking to cook that bag.

2:44 Well, actually, some of the sugar alternatives are also not my friend. So I've been doing the research on the gut health, right? That's like the theme of today. Have you tried the monk fruit? Oh, sorry, Havoc. Go ahead. I was going to say you need to watch out for what's called sugar alcohols. And that's all those, you know, fake sweeteners. Monk fruit, stevia, those are better alternatives. Natural, both plants. And really pretty good, but they do kind of have a little bit of an aftertaste. Yeah, my mother is on the monk fruit kick.

3:24 And I recently sent her an article about somehow it contributed to some, it was either Alzheimer's or bad gut health. And so I'm over on the other side of the fence. I'm like, you know, if I'm going to do, if I want a sweetener, I'm just going to do regular sugar and I'm going to monitor how much I use, right? I mean, sugar cane's been around for centuries. And we only recently in this country really started to have like an obesity and kind of a health crisis issue that's from processed foods.

4:05 So, I mean, like, I'll still eat bacon, you know. I haven't gone crazy with it, but I am trying to limit processed stuff as much as possible. So, I'll go for the, you know, the raw sugar cane, unprocessed sugar before I go for the substitute route. And then also you can use like grape juice and apple juice and strawberries to kind of naturally sweeten it a little bit. And I found that works pretty good, too. But that's my adventure for this Saturday is I'm making juice in my kitchen. I know everyone must be captivated by that news.

4:48 I think that's good stuff. It fits very much into this program. And we've talked about it before, about the journey to healthier eating. And it is a long journey. And anything made quickly and abruptly will probably not pan out in the end. So small, small little changes over time. And you have a plan that you want to work towards. And it's definitely doable. 100%. Well, I was actually kind of surprised. I thought I would have, like, more withdrawal symptoms. because, you know, I mean, I only have like a two soda a day habit, but, you know, mine was the green brand, right, with tons of caffeine.

5:32 And I had a particular affinity for the citrus kind of flavor, which is why when the lemons fell into my lap, I decided to make lemonade. That's a good idea when life gives you lemons. And it did. Well, you know. awesome what can i say i went for it it's a good thing definitely a better alternative to to the soda yeah any progress towards a better you know a better input or intake of of foodstuffs is a good thing in my eyes uh-huh yeah i mean and i haven't changed anything aside from the soda but i've already started to drop like a few pounds like my pants are just slightly looser and i'm like oh well you know this could work out for me heck yeah heck yeah the the biggest and hardest one for for me personally i think it was even harder than the the soda was the the bread and it was for it was for a different reason um i i have an autoimmune condition too with the the psoriasis which it manifests as a skin condition but the the the bread was a big one that was contributing to that and that that was hard like i i still crave bread i talk about it probably every episode but yes i crave bread quite a bit yeah my mother is actually on this journey um for sourdough breads right um instead of you know store-bought stuff because again it's highly processed and you know usually if i'm if

7:07 i'm experimenting with health stuff you know other members of the family are going their own way on different things like my daughter's doing her garden um and my mother's doing the sourdough bread and I'm over here messing around with the juices um but she started her own uh starter kit a few months ago and she said the only ingredients in it are flour water and salt that's it and I was like oh um so she made me a loaf maybe uh two weeks ago now oh my god it was so good you guys she got those you know cast iron pans where you make the rounds and everything i couldn't believe how delicious it was and i don't know how you gave up bread i could never do it i love carbs right like if it has carbs and then i that's what i want to eat more than anything else in the world yeah carbs are definitely uh addictive and the more you eat the more you want it's It's a double edged sword. And my wife makes the most amazing bread ever. And we thought we could get around, you know, the sensitivity to the gluten part by using a different kind of flour.

8:16 We tried an einkorn flour, which is, I guess, a simpler grain or an older grain without so much gluten in it. And we tried that. And unfortunately, it did not work out. But it was delicious. It was awesome. But like you said, you can make bread at home and the only four ingredients, you have water, flour, yeast, and a little bit of salt. And you look at even like a nice bakery bread from, I don't know if you have like Publix where you're at, you know, they're a nice grocery store and they make in-store bread. But you look at the ingredient list and there's like 30 ingredients in it. And you're like, why do you need all these things to make bread? It's kind of crazy.

8:57 Yeah. Well, and most of them I can't even pronounce. Exactly. And if I can't pronounce it and don't know what it is, it's probably not very good for me. Yeah, most of them will contain corn syrup too. Mm-hmm. I didn't even know that. Oh, yeah. It's sneaky when they put sugar under other names because the stuff like maltodextrin, that's one of the worst ones that metabolizes straight into sugar. um cornstarch a lot of the times there's uh several names for for different things that just metabolize right down to sugar especially uh and we we didn't find that out until my wife got that that glucose monitor and that you know when she would eat and we're like there's nothing in there and then you start to dissect the ingredient list more carefully and you're like that's what it was yep it's an interesting world we live in we literally had this discussion the other day it's it's odd to me that something that has you know minimal ingredients and just simple it costs two three times what something with you know 30 40 ingredients that are all you know, chemical inputs, you know, cause, it's just weird.

10:20 I wish your mom well on the, uh, the sourdough journey. I know for my wife, it was, it was not easy. It's like raising a, a living being. You have to, you have to feed it and nourish it and take care of it and keep the, uh, the temperature and the proper aspects. And then you're like changing different things out every day. And it's, she was, she was quite disappointed when I, you know tried it and then you know she cared for it for like over a month maybe a month and a half and until it was ready to go and then you know she was really excited and it was like i said it was great it tasted wonderful and you know i felt kind of bad about it but my mother has ocd she will be just fine and she's recently retired so like that can be her baby for a while nice and you know when she's preoccupied with that baby she's not worried about what i'm doing you know and because i i don't need a mother but you know the sour the sour to starter i think that's a good focus for her did she did she get a starter from somebody else to work off of or did she start from scratch completely she made her own okay good that's I was like, wow, I know.

11:36 I wasn't expecting the first batch of bread to be so good. She gifted it to my daughter. My daughter was telling me how wonderful it was. And I was like, well, if that one's going to be good, then wait until she makes a few more loaves. It's going to only improve. Oh, yeah. Amazing stuff. Now my mouth is watering. loves ringing the bell somewhere right now the uh the people that make that resell it they get quite a it's like 15 bucks for a loaf of bread and people buy it too yeah yeah well you know we could we could set up a little uh art fair for my mother she has her little art studio that is like overflowing with paintings right now and we could do fresh bread and paintings there you go offer it as i mean it could be my career after i retire which you know probably isn't going to be for another decade but still it's good to have goals yeah offer it up as like a snack with some olive oil and some balsamic vinegar whatever you know extra charge for a little snack while you're painting i don't know I don know I can see a cafe in my mind That would be fun Well that would be fun I mean like a little art cafe in Arizona I mean it kind of like the perfect blend of all the things Yeah, for sure.

13:07 Then she's going to have to move to Sedona. Oh, God, no. We can't do Sedona. I mean, it's beautiful. Do not get me wrong. Sedona is a beautiful place. But you know what? Everybody there is like snobbish. And they're super spiritual. Like the first few times I went to Sedona, I thought I was like moving to the twilight zone because everybody's very spiritual and grounded and they want to do your aura reading. And and it's a little overwhelming. I mean, I'm I'm kind of a I'm kind of a type A personality realist. You know, I believe in God. You know, I'll go down the spiritual path a little bit. But, you know, I don't read my horoscope every day and wear crystals.

13:49 You know, I just don't subscribe to all of it. And if you go to Sedona, that whole community is very into it. And they have this bookstore. And in the bookstore, they have this little back room. And they tell you that it's an energy point for the earth. And you're supposed to go in there and meditate. And when I was much, much younger, 18 to 20, and I was kind of on that path, I went up there and spent some time in that room and had my soulmate drawing done. and all kinds of stuff, but it was very touristy. Yeah, probably not every day.

14:29 Yeah, it's a bit kitschy. It's kind of like Taos, New Mexico. I don't think I've ever been there. Yeah, it is Taos. Yeah, it's a, you know, artsy, it's the same thing, or Asheville, North Carolina, same thing. Very, very hippie-influenced, I guess, be a good way to put it. I don't know. I like me some hippies. I don't like pretentious spiritualists. I can dig on hippies. They're usually pretty cool people, you know? Right? They are. They're salt of the earth. It's like, I have, let me share with you and let's get high together. Let's hang out. Let's listen to some good music.

15:14 I can get on board with that. Yeah, for sure. For sure. definitely so you're in the word ad dragons community when did you start playing uh i think i started playing in august of 2017 wow yeah i know right early starter well i saw the ad on facebook right okay at the time i was watching game of thrones It was all the rage. I mean, 2017 was a good time for all. Oh, yeah. So we were all captivated with the dragons on the Game of Thrones.

15:58 My daughter, especially, is kind of like an artistic, creative video game girl. She was always into some video game that she was downloading. So I downloaded it. I played it for a day and a half and I was hooked. I was just hooked. I was like, oh my god, this is so fun. I get my own dragons, I get to hatch them, I get to attack other people's bases, and I can steal their stuff. Oh my god, this is fantastic. And I was like late, late 30s at the time? Yeah, maybe early 40s. I don't know. We don't have to talk about my age. You can cut that part out later.

16:41 you just kind of put it out you know i can believe it if you want i downloaded it i played it for a day and a half and i absolutely had to tell her about it so i sent her a link and she downloaded it and we for the longest time just played and never joined a team because we're just like we're we're not exactly outgoing personality types we're not xo personalities we're intro very intro people and so you know we just played you know by ourselves loose hanging wild you know attacking people and then we figured out that there were events that you could do if you joined a team so then we had to figure out and find a team to join well i just said you know found some random team in gold league with you know well it wasn't even gold league at that time because you had to like work to get get into gold league then i think we were like in silver or something bronze silver i don't know we didn't make our own we picked one and joined um and i i remember we'd get on and and nobody talked it was just her and me we would talk all the time in in chat and um so we did a couple of pvps and one of the pvps that we did was like gauntlet or something we just went crazy and racked up a ton of points and we couldn't even do the higher islands we could only do like the first three islands that was it but we just did them over and over again and we

18:13 were in such a low league with such low activity that we ranked pretty well the two of us on a team with 30 other players that never logged in probably maybe once during the event and did something so that was the beginning of my war dragons journey what was the first memorable team you were on first memorable team i was on i would say was four horsemen um and there were a couple before that but i don't remember the names of them anymore it's just been so long and they were so unmemorable to begin with but uh i went to four horsemen and um a friend a friend that i had met in game um had talked me into going to this team where she was an officer she's like yeah yeah come over here play over here i'm like okay so i joined this team that is mostly that is mostly inactive sitting in gold league 32 players uh nice guy uh the leader was famine who lived I think overseas so we hardly saw each other and Baby Cakes was the officer's name that brought me over and so she got me on the team and spotted me for the true addict that I was made me an officer on the team and from there the rest was kind of history I decided that if I hadn't been successful

19:45 on other teams I had been around and I had seen enough to know that you could recruit You know, so I decided I was going to join the Facebook page and be the recruiter. And I built the team and we had a great time. So I filled that team out and we played for, oh, I don't know, like one, two years on that team and took it from gold all the way up to like platinum or just just below sapphire. And, you know, that was back in the day when when everybody had to show up and do their part or you were just going to, you know, flounder in lower league. So I felt like we did pretty good. But after a while, you know, you get so invested into something and there's so much management that has to happen.

20:27 And, you know, the team got Atlas. And then there was a whole component of Atlas and alliances and allies and, you know, the mega alliances. Because it was back, you know, when the mega alliances were in full swing. And so trying to understand and dissect all that and then maintain a roster and run events, you know. And I thought I had to do everything. And for a long time, I did. And we had a really great time. We had a really good group. And some of the folks that I played with then, I still actually play with today, which is kind of cool. So we've done, like, the entire journey together.

21:07 Of course, we're a little more relaxed about it today than we were then. But we all used to get the team on the phone and do the calls and strategize about how we were going to do stuff. I remember when they did the land grab for the Platinum League and War Dragons. And that was so much fun. And, you know, we we had talked for weeks with teams before that about, you know, we were going to go after the specific area and everybody was going to go after these castles. And this is the place to be because there's no entries. And I was just like, I didn't know much about anything about anything at that point. I was just like, OK, well, sounds good. Sign me up. And then, you know, the day comes and they launched like I think they launched early.

21:54 And so we didn't have everybody online or maybe they loaded late. I can't remember. It didn't start when it was supposed to start. It started off schedule and that kind of put us at a disadvantage. And then by the time I was able to join in, that whole area was just a pit of teams fighting over castles. And I was just like, oh, this is a total shit show. Oh, sorry. I don't know if I can curse. It's fine. As long as it is impactful, that's fine. We just try and stay away from like long strings of curse words, you know? No problem. Anyway, so I show up to the disaster area that we're supposed to be working on and collaborating with others.

22:38 And I'm just like, oh, this is preposterous. I'm just going to do something different. And so I scan around the map and I look and I'm like, okay, there's no way that we're going to hold anything more than the T2. I knew that much. I was just like, we don't want to mess with that. we just want to stay T2, low profile, we need enough castles that, you know, are in a good area that we could claim, that don't have, you know, easy to get to passage, and, you know, I kind of knew what we wanted without really knowing, and I looked out and ended up on this little parcel of land where there were three T2 castles all together, and I started with those, and then I think over the next few days we traded and you know grabbed a couple more and at the end of the day we ended up with you know eight castles of various elements and then I talked some friends of mine into taking the t3s next door that were on like some big sapphire team who I thought were gods at the time and kind of and kind of like boxed us in you know so they like so they like you know, protected the flank. Um, so anyway, I did that for a couple of years. And then, uh, after that we went to, uh, we ended up merging into T-Sun when I decided I needed to do stuff in my real life and not, you know, war dragons 24 seven. And I think that happens to everybody, right? What team are you on now? Yeah, it sure does. Absolutely. Oh, right now. I don't know

24:10 I should say How about we How about we talk Where I ended my career That works Where you end your career War enforcers Okay Odin and I had We had kind of danced on opposite sides Of the Mega alliances for a long time And we were friendly But never friends You know, I mean, you all have you all have people, you know, and they're on the other side. And, you know, I had a little compassion for the kid because I kind of felt like he was a really good player, you know, and.

24:53 I felt like he got the short end of the stick because there was, you know, with the mega alliances, there's like 45 teams chasing them around the map. And I always felt bad about that. And I was on that side. But I didn't want to participate in what I thought was the crucifixion of a team. And it was unfair. You know, I mean, if you want to fight, fight, you know, do that. But, you know, there should be a limit to people's aggression. And I think that, you know, a lot of that toxicity still lives on today. And it's a shame because it should be fun for everybody. I mean, that's why we do it, because it's supposed to be an entertainment and a pastime.

25:37 But when you take it to such a level that it can impact another person in a negative way, I don't think that's healthy for anybody. So I just don't, I don't subscribe to doing that. So, but I'll get off my soapbox now. So, yeah, I ended my career on war enforcers. I finally joined the dark side and it happened And I tell you what it was the most fun I ever had in War Dragons ever Like I mean I thought that I was on good teams before that But when I joined that team I was just like wow I a crappy player yeah yeah yeah i mean you know hey yeah we were um you know my team was on the other side so was lx's but uh you know yeah at the end of the day it's all pixels it's a you know at the at the base level it's not the people it's the pixels so well yeah well you know for me it's like a community too right i mean war dragons is something we all have in common you know that's how that's how everything started you know whether it's you know this podcast you guys met in war dragons and you built a friendship a relationship in real life and you know sometimes those pixels can lead to bigger connections if we allow it you know and i've i've made some great friends in this game yeah and i've made some great enemies too yeah i don't know that i've

27:10 made any enemies so much uh you know i mean odin and i definitely had our our moments uh you know but that being said this game you know and no no ill will or or animosity towards towards the guy and he helped me out greatly when i was beginning you know he was probably the most prolific content producer at the time on showing new dragons and how to fly them and spell combos and things like that so you know big kudos to him maybe we'll try and get him on the show if we can he did oh absolutely he would be i was i was gonna say he took a lot of heat for i don't even remember why but i i did remember he was very uh polarizing figure figure around that time for for one reason or another whether you either liked them or you didn't like them but yeah i liked them all the way up until you know we had the full force of war enforcers across every single castle and here i am in sapphire too you know it was like you know just give us the castle or we're going to take all your castles so the bullying works kind of both ways and it always seems like it's a lot of fun for the team doing it and not a lot of fun for the team not doing it it is what it is you know yeah i don't know i think um i think war enforcers was you know they tried to be responsible about things i mean i was on pukas and i don't know if you guys were around to to

28:41 watch the fall of pukas that was horrible and it was all because we took a war enforcer castle um and they had been fighting on that castle for a hot minute and i guess it was promised to somebody or who knows there was a bunch of drama but i was just like okay you want him out of there Fine, I'll trade in. No problem. But then everybody got bent out of shape about it. And next thing you know, Pukas was being targeted on every castle we owned. And I was just like, wow, okay. But I didn't realize how good we had it at the time either. We had like 22 T4 castles. And that was before the introduction of New Lands. And there were a lot of other Dreadaline teams that didn't have that kind of real estate.

29:24 But Kitty was kind of a real estate wizard. She would trade us in and out of castles. And she always seemed to stumble upon the most choice land by accident. And then we would trade in and out of stuff. And next thing you know, we were sitting on 22 T4s. And it was probably more than we deserved. I don't know about that. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, though, right, it is a conquest game. And I got to say, you know, out of all the conquest games I've played, it is the it is the least lossy, I guess.

30:07 Right. Like I played a game of war for a very long time. You could wake up and literally have nothing. You know, I mean, zero like you're you're you've just been decimated. your you know hero is gone all of your troops are gone like there's no storage for troops really you know like billions of troops gone yeah it's a big problem you know at least at least in war dragons you didn't didn't suffer that fate you know yeah i've never played any other video games like war dragons is my lone adventure um and i think it's because i'm the personality type that whatever I do, I want to be fully invested in it. I don't want to have to split my time between this game and another game and try and do all of the real life stuff that I, that I want to do too. It's like, I just want to be able to do this thing in my spare time with my friends and, you know, just enjoy the journey instead of being worried about getting to the destination and i think you know in my reboot um i've been more about fitting war dragons into my life instead of fitting my life around war dragons which is where i was before yeah that is nice yeah i was playing game of war for probably six years before I even heard about War Dragons.

31:37 So, yeah. I'm the same way. I can't play more than one game. There's no way. My attention span won't let it happen. What level did you get to in the game? Well, when you say level, you mean like my base level? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I was endgame from Pookas on. So I played end game all the way through war enforcers. And, you know, when Odin retired from the game and and VIP took over the team, I volunteered to help out with officer.

32:17 There was a big, you know, kerfuffle on the team and people argued that we had, you know, 15 plus players just up and bounce one day. And we decided we were just going to carry on and it was going to be what it was. So, and that was like, you know, the reboot of War Enforcers. I mean, because they weren't really ever the original War Enforcers anymore. It was a different, it was a different game from that point on. And, you know, I actually enjoyed the challenge of it a lot because we would, you know, take a castle in an area and then we would work that area, you know. And then, you know, when we were done with that area, we'd, you know, bounce and take a castle in another area.

33:00 We'd work that area. And then we'd bounce out of there. You know, and half the time we were getting rid of the castles. We weren't keeping anything. And we were playing mostly pirate for a while. But then, you know, suddenly things started to shift in the game. And, you know, there was kind of like a breakdown on the mega alliances a little bit. and people were less grouped together and there was more independence. And at that time, we kind of reformed our TA a little bit. And we ended up partnered up with Sandslingers, which they had been running together forever and ever.

33:40 But like 7-Eleven joined, World Risen joined. We had Pyro Empire. I'm trying to remember. I think Sandslingers bounced and went and joined A&T's TA, and then Mythic Dragons came in, and we just went ballistic on the map. It was the only time there were no mega alliances to stand against the TA, and I pretty quickly realized that we were way overpowered. and if we continued on the path that we were on we were just going to decimate teams and it wasn't going to be fun for everybody um so then you know we're trying to keep this way overpowered ta entertained for a minute while we figure out what to do i mean you know and uh it was it was quite the adventure but it was so much fun i mean i can't lie you know because being You needed dread around.

34:46 That's what you needed. We needed a healthy competition, right? That's the one thing that's missing. Yeah. I think somebody told me at the height of the AMD ward that they had reached out to former dreadnought players and tried to bring them back. And I remember we were gossiping about it one night on the phone. and I was just like, can you imagine being retired from this game for like five years and somebody rings you up and says, hey, we need you to come back. It's urgent. You must come back right now. The Atlas is at stake. Yeah, I think the answer would be a reason to think no.

35:29 I mean, since I'm on with LX, LX, did they call you and ask you to come back? I'm just curious. Got to know. No. He flew. No. I think I made that abundantly clear. I was not interested. I have not logged in since that day in July or so. That was my last time. I deleted the game, and that was it. I haven't been back. Yep, same. Well, I actually went through my base and changed every— I, what is it, transformed all my towers to, like, cannons, ballista, you know, trebuchet, etc.

36:10 Oh my gosh, you tanked it. I made it so that there's no way I would ever even want to come back. You wouldn't be tempted. It's too much pain. I did that. Got all my troops off my base. A little glory party. I didn't get an invite to the party. I don't know if I was around by then. Yeah, it was a team-only event. Fair enough. I don't even know what it would take to get an accountant back to competing shape after that much time anyway.

36:51 I mean, probably down 30 levels or 40 levels. I don't even have any idea. Yeah, it's taken me a full season just to catch up. When I actually stopped logging in, because I didn't decide to retire one day, I just stopped logging in. And I was like, I'm on a team where I don't have to log in and play, you know, after almost a decade of doing this. You know, just take a minute and enjoy life and put the tablet down and focus on, you know, the things that are being neglected in real life. And forget about War Dragons for a minute and just take a break from it. And so I did. I took like two and a half seasons off. I had like level 192 towers when I decided to like break.

37:33 And today they're at 205s. hmm so i came back maximum is now 205 yeah yeah well today but you know there's new fork coming and i think we're zero levels this for it thank god because i i don't think i could i don't think i could catch but they did new levels anyway when i start when i started playing sorry you first i was gonna say especially with all the every time they come out with something new it's new currencies. Hmm. One of my biggest gripes about that game was the constant addition of a new currency for the next thing. You know what I mean?

38:13 It's like, why are you doing this? You know, at one time, I think I listed them all on the forums. That was pre-ban, but you know, I think that's requisite for, for any company running these kinds of things to, to keep you, uh, keep your wallet open. I think. Yeah. If you, Well, they're going to need a better tower to do it. Yeah, you have to. This latest one they introduced is kind of like a... Yeah, we'll just call it what it is. It's a turd. All right? They introduced a new currency, and they made a tower that will slow down your dragon. And I'm like, okay. That's like everybody's enemy in this game.

38:55 You don't want people to slow down their dragon, because then they can build rage I mean the whole whole point is you know to speed the fucker up Pardon my language Yeah. You can't even complain about it anymore. They have discord, but now they have discord and it's just as toxic as the forums. I mean, they really just need to, you know, get on there and do some management, you know, break out your people skills. Right. And, you know, when people are being nasty and just mean spirited and calling each other names, I mean, they just need to shut it down. Well, we can all operate with a little bit more decorum in our lives.

39:39 It would not kill us. I always thought that was a feature of the game, right? Well, you know, that might be the draw for some. And to be fair, it's kind of hard to get the three developers on the game to actually do more than just development and you know well do they still do development because i was under the impression that was being outsourced yeah i'm sure it is i i really don't have any idea of the internal structure whatsoever you just know it seems like a lot of the people uh are no longer there right they they started sloughing off, you know, the managers and everything else.

40:22 And, you know. I mean, they did sell it to a Chinese-owned company, so I'm sure that they probably have some kind of hand in the something there instead of being all in-house at this point. Yeah, probably. Pocket gems got sold to a Chinese company? Yeah, a long time ago. Tencent bought a huge share of pocket gems. Really? If not the whole thing, yeah. I have no idea. I mean, I don't keep up on all that. I just like the game. I kind of live in my bubble. I mean, I work in technology. You'd think I'd pay attention. But no, don't care. I just want to play the game.

41:03 And I don't want to manage teams. Don't want to plan stuff. I just want to get on and play with the dragons. Make some cool gear. Train my rider. Get some PvP points. Maybe get a seasonal... mythic you know that's it i have no grand plans i do miss the the days pre-atlas to be honest with you i had a lot of fun although you know what is it two left turns two right turns in your home i guess so it gets a little boring but i i liked it because new dragons and you know i was kind of the Pokemon breeding guide, you know, I think I had every single dragon except like flimp and, you know, a couple that were, you know, recruit people or do other stuff like that.

41:54 I'm like, I don't even know 30 people, much less 30 people. I can get to join war dragons. I like the early days too, because people would send me a screenshots of their dragon den and I'd be like, all right, this is what you need to breed together. You know, people would just do it randomly and just waste so many egg tokens. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, come on. And I'd draw them up, you know, like a breeding plan and, you know, take a screenshot and send it to them. And they're like, oh, this is great, you know. But, you know, then it just got way too complicated. I'm like, I'm kind of out. Well, but back in the day, there was some strategy to it. Like, you had to understand how to progress in the game or you're going to be stuck in the sapphire forever.

42:40 you know and some of us choose that by the way on purpose because we don't want to set alarms for three in the morning for events and stuff like that just saying no i'm not talking about league placement i'm talking about you know breeding dragons because remember when apophet came out he was 500 000 tokens and that was like a you know a century ago now it feels like um but you can breed him today for like 11 000 okay i want a refund where's my tokens dude you know because i need 620 000 for reverend it's like you know and there is and there's no i mean there's no artistry that's all gone right they stripped that out there's only four dragons every every tier now you get one invoker one sorcerer one hunter and one warrior and that's it that you know and you have to breed them all you can't progress and level up your towers and do the things so you have all of the dragons um but there's no there's no having to figure anything out anymore at this point right all that's been stripped out of the game so it's like all the things that brought you joy when you started playing are no longer there yeah and some of the except for the people the people are still there and some of the really good people are gone especially some like you know red you know the the breeding guide now it's not useful useful right once you get to end here but then you had uh who was it that did the uh the drops for

44:16 for chests um was that mort or yeah that sounds about right yeah yeah i think mortemus ominous did that and and put out drops for chests or it was someone maybe i've got that wrong but You can comment and correct me if you care to. Some of that all kind of went away, the charts and, you know, all that stuff, which was kind of cool. I enjoyed that stuff. That was interesting to me because I had no idea. Like, I'm probably one of those dummies that thinking like, wow, this is, you know, like this stuff is random. There's no randomness to it whatsoever. And I think probably a lot of people thought that way, too.

44:58 but it's actually through a set sequence of events that everything comes out. Well, if they made it truly random, then it would definitely be unfair for the players, you know? Because the pool of smaller drops is just so much larger. So it would really suck a lot. Well, nice. Yeah, I think the last event, they didn't even have one of the chest sequencers. that they posted like for assault they didn't have the gold chess sequencer which surprised me you know the community is shrinking you know and that's you know i think a natural consequence of you know people just getting tired of doing the same thing over and over again yeah but there there are i keep seeing new players in in certain chats and stuff like that i keep seeing people are like yeah i'm you know progressing i'm doing really well i'm at like level 120 and i'm like what are you doing level 120 oh wow what does that take you a day yeah overachiever here i guess i remember when that was high though you know like it was a level oh that guy's level 100 holy cow i remember when being 250 was was a big deal you know and hitting

46:30 level 300 and oh wow i was i was on top of the world now i'm like one of my like 726 yeah oh and the the xp scaling oh my gosh that was a nightmare but yeah i think i quit at like 690, 680, 689 or 692 or right around there. I've been playing for far too long, but I'm not ready to give it up. I decided that I would be a retirement failure and come back this season. And I'm not sorry. I don't know how long it'll stick, though. We'll see. How would you feel if they had decided to stop supporting the game one day and they just pulled the plug on it?

47:15 I mean I don't feel like that day is that far off honestly I thought it's been coming for years but it just seems to never happen for some reason well everybody says that day is coming that day is coming but you know I mean they're still charging $100 for PAX and I still get quite a few of those you know free six tokens for a repurchase on your team I still get quite a few of those so like You know, I mean, and some teams more than others, you know, so maybe it's still profitable. I mean, you know, but with with cloud server space being what it is and, you know, other cost increases that I'm sure are coming, we will see.

48:03 You know, it might it might be in a situation where it's just not, you know, profitable enough to bother with anymore, which would be a terrible shame. yeah i kind of but i don't see them you know reinvesting into you know content creators and artists and you know changing up the game and you know doing something different i just see you know the same teams running around with a pirate team conquering castles off of other teams that could you know add stuff and be part of the ecosystem you know so yeah i think i think they're on kind of a you know at this point i think they're on a pretty sustainable mode just to continue running with pretty minimal inputs you know i mean and there's not a whole lot of new things coming so the the wire frames for the dragons you know they just they need you know an artist probably now you got four dragons per season you know just one guy sitting there you know could probably you know drum up some artwork for a dragon put that to a modeler then you know throws a skin on it with the right colors and you know probably i mean they are kind of recycling the spell sets i have noticed that like um what was that what was that season for gax or whatever It was like maybe 60 cents ago now.

49:31 I don't know. Spitball. And when that came out, it reminded me a lot of like, what was that green dragon? I think it was called Gnarleth. I don't know. Alex, you may have been retired by then. Probably. I've tried to wipe it out of my brain. But I tell you what, if they come along and they come up with a good plan and make war dragons too. maybe i'll you know no no you know like 49 people i can come we're gonna bring them back 49 people yeah then you'll send them a message i see how it is but we're gonna start over because i have this huge spotlight in the backyard that has like the the grim reaper uh sickle on it and i'll just i'll send that up there hey guys come on back it's like the bats Oh, my God, that would be great.

50:23 Yeah, I don't think they ever will. They actually, when I went to the summit, that was one of the discussion topics that kept coming up was, you know, make it different. Do something a little bit different, you know. And remember, every time they would skin a base or try and change some features, you'd end up with dragons under the ground. And, you know, just the towers are gone. which is a flat land but they're still shooting at you you know and stuff like that and um it was just coded on a very old ui and uh they couldn't they couldn't really figure out how to unravel that code to get it ported into a newer ui and really probably that was cost right well i mean if you have to rewrite the whole thing it's not it's not cost effective to make that kind of a change, right?

51:18 I mean, you sound like you work in technology. You're talking about wireframes and stuff over there. I hear you. But, you know, I mean, we're kind of in an AI industrial revolution right now. So it will be interesting to see what the next generation of content looks like. Because, I mean, like in the future, I see more of a three-dimensional situation like, Tony Stark has on, what's it called? Iron Man. Well, yeah, Iron Man, but it wasn't so much an Iron Man as it was in the Avengers trilogy, right? Where he had that little thing that he could set up and then it would broadcast like a holographic image and he could reach in and touch and move things like that.

52:05 Like, I kind of see a future of video gaming going in that direction. And I think that would be very, very cool. And I hope they come up with a version of War Dragons that you can play like that, because I think it would just be so much fun. I mean, can you imagine if you could set up a little thing in the middle of your living room and you could actually design your base and touch and feel things? or have an image of a dragon that you could control with a glove or something. I mean, I'm spitballing ideas, but I think it would be so cool. And then you're not talking about 2D artistry anymore.

52:45 That would be like full 3D or maybe 4D. I don't know. I read about 4D the other day. We had the power glove for Nintendo back in the day. Kind of sucked. It did. Really did. So, Nix, if you had to give some advice, right, just a couple minutes of advice to someone that it was brand new starting out with War Dragons, what would be the things you would say? Remember that it's a video game. Shut it off and go to bed at night. That's a good one. you know I mean there were many many times when I then I would leave my tablet on because I didn't want people to know when I slept or um I would leave um my line app turned up at night because if anything went went down I didn't want to feel like I was letting 50 other people down right and then you get stuck in that cycle um you know but at the end of the day war dragons is a game and it's fun um but don't let it consume your life because you know it and i think we've all been there i mean for sure i know you guys have just a little bit a little bit let's just a little bit let's so me again right platinum or platinum sapphire but at the same time yeah there were

54:15 definitely you know cds were a big one right anytime cool down on a castle happened it was It kind of like okay well in 12 hours I stuck right Oh yeah That's the other thing is PG really needs to fix the cool down times. That stuff is just retarded. You know, nobody wants to spend 12 hours guarding a castle and trying to prevent, you know, somebody from conquering us. These are just a dump it. Yeah. so it's like when you're talking about that level of investment on your time it's just like yeah not worth it good luck with that yep yeah i've always said they should offer like a excuse me they should offer like a consumable shield or something so you could just like okay i'm overriding this and here's my bubble you know i don't know some way to offset that retardedness It's just too much investment of time.

55:16 I mean, you know, when they started to tweak Atlas to make it easier to conquer castles, I mean, I think everybody in the community groaned internally and just kind of went, well, I mean, you know, it takes you forever to get enough guards, to get enough gold, to get enough stuff to upgrade that castle so that it's profitable for the team, right? and then when you finally get there somebody can come along and bubble it and then you're going to spend 12 hours waiting for the cooldown to happen and nobody wants to do that right i mean can you imagine trying to get 50 people today in war dragons to support you know a 12-hour cooldown i mean heck anymore it's tough enough just to fill a team from what i've right that is very true and you know it's often advantageous for teams to not run at full roster because you can control like I don't know the technical terms for it so I'm just going to wing it but you can control how much glory your team is worth by controlling how many players are on your team I don't know if it's APR or dead level I never I never unpacked at all APR thank you does anybody do the war thing anymore because i know like in time i know when somebody was down a down a person like when they you know get banned

56:50 occasionally like everybody would declare on them like immediately dog pile yeah you know there used to be some activity no nobody wars anymore not even in diamond and in fact it's more of like how many wars do I need to throw to get out of diamond I mean LC is so toxic up there you know thank god they created the mute feature for those of us that just can't deal with it you know but at the same time it's just like when an environment is so toxic that people don't want to be in it and they would rather war down for less prizes well I think I think we need to take another look at her behavior yeah but honestly though when was when was diamond one lc not toxic i think it kind of always i don't know no you're right it has always been toxic but it's gotten way worse i like you know i like a little bit of drama you know i like to go out there and watch and see what goes on you know i'm not not very often am i getting out there and say something once in a while i might if i'm feeling particularly snarky but that's kind of rare you know you know what That game needs another panda.

58:03 It needs another panda. You're currently in Diamond still? Who, me? Oh, no. Oh, you don't play there anymore? Oh, no, no, no. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You see me? I sleep at night. Okay. Remember we talked about, you know, putting war dragons inside of my life instead of building my life around it. So you for sure did the three hour timers on your device and stuff to get up for these events, I'm sure, right? Oh, like, oh, yes. But this was, that was, yeah, that was the first round. I'm not going to lie. There were alarms in the middle of the night.

58:45 Get up, it's PvP time. And group the team and shepherd everybody. Heard the kittens. It's time to do the things. Right Yeah I remember Get up for like three minutes I like that it over go back to bed but yeah i did the thing i did subscribe for a while to that but no these days i do not i sleep you know i have a life nice you know i get in i do my evening things you know if something goes Haywire, I don't get too excited about it. Okay, so let's go on one more thing.

59:27 Who's one War Dragons player that you would give a big shout out to and why? I have to pick one? Yes, just one. Alright, I'm going to pick my girl that's been with me since I started this journey. Miss Jimmy Changa. we've split ways a couple times and gone on different teams for the most part uh that chick's been my ride or die day in and day out and we spend a fair amount of time on the phone together she's been out to visit me a couple of times so i feel like you know what started as a war dragon acquaintance situation turned into uh a real friendship you know and so for for for my one shout out she's got to be good awesome that is awesome all right well um anything else you'd like to say before we wrap it up oh i i can't think of anything i i trolled on long enough about my more dragons history that's why we had john yeah well it was fun to kind of reminisce you know It was interesting.

1:00:43 Absolutely. We'll see what others say. Thanks for showing up. Appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks for having me, you guys. It was so fun. Our pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you, everybody, for allowing us to take up some of your time today. Hopefully you enjoyed it. If you didn't, leave a thumbs down. If you did, thumbs up, subscribe, do whatever the stuff, the thing. I don't care. Leave a comment. It'll be great. We'll all have fun. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day.