There are often posts on the forum where people say CH is pay to win, you can't do end game without buying Plat etc etc. Myself and many others have proven that to be false and I felt like it was worth telling my story.
I started my Celtic Heroes in June of 2016. I do not remember the exact date but it has not been a full year yet. I play what I would consider casually for an MMORPG. Maybe an hour or two a night, maybe a bit more on weekends. I have a full time job, a wife and two kids under 6. So I am not some kid living with my parents and playing 12 hours a day.
Whenever I play an MMO, especially a freemium game I do a couple of things. First I always play a class that can heal themselves. Typically I do not play the main healer type (Druid) I try to play more of a hybrid character. I typically choose a Paladin type class if it is available but in this case the ranger was closest choice. I choose to play a hybrid who can do DPS and heal because I know it allows me to solo more content then most other classes, and in games where heal potions are used a lot it means I wont have to spend my gold on said items. This is pretty universally true in all MMORPG's.
So I choose my ranger and started to play. As I was leveling my character and understanding my stats I liked how Dex gave multiple benefits. Skills Damage increase, Attack, and Defense. So contrary to all of the forum posts I was reading I poured all my points into Dex, with a little in Vitality at the start but none in Str and non in Focus. In the early days and even months I of course had no gold for Lixes so I leveled up, went through quests and followed the path the game lead me through by sending me to new zones to complete quests.
Around level 60 I was invited to join the clan Forsaken on Arawn, which was a great group of people who helped each other out. Most of the clan was 175 to 190ish at the time so I had a lot of catching up to do. This brings me to the first thing you need to do to be successful in this game regardless if you want to buy Plat or not.
1. Link up with a good clan willing to help each other out.
The people in The Forsaken helped me with Warden Quests, then Medioric quests as I leveled. I in turn helped other members kill bosses and overall did as much as I could to help the clan while leveling. This brings us to point number 2.
2. Help your clan and they will help you. Do not expect to get without giving.
I mentioned earlier that I choose a ranger and I went the Dexterity route instead of Strength. This helped me in a few ways. First I always kept light heal maxed, so very early on i was healing over 1k. This meant two things for me. First I never had to spend a dime on heal pots. To this day I have never bought a heal pot. I got a crate of 50 from fishing once and used them but other then that I have healed myself. All of that saved gold could then be used for Lux, and Experience Lixes later on. It also meant I could solo pretty efficiently without spending gold. The second thing light heal helped me with is being able to help the much higher level players in the clan with boss fights. If I was level 70 and they were fighting lets say a 150 boss, then damage wise I could do nothing. But my 1k heals being spammed sure beat them spamming potions.
So from about 70 until 140 or so I followed the same pattern. I would save gold to buy a Quiver, and bow when I got to the appropriate level. When I sold my old gear I would be patient and not sell it for to much of a loss. When a bought new gear i would be patient and buy it from another player as often as possible. I bought a few lux items as I was able to save gold , such as a haste ring. During those levels I spent a fair amount of time farming Pirates and then Hawkhurst. This allowed me to save enough money to buy some lixes and some lux items as I leveled. Literally Exp Lixes and the occasional lux item was all I ever spent gold on.
Bounties
I used to always make sure I did bounties every day. I spent a few tokens on Alt books but other then that I did not find anything worth while to spend them on so I just banked them. Eventually I found out about pets and got myself a bunny. I liked the idea of the Energy Regen, the Free Heal every 15 to 20 seconds, and the stats complimented what I needed. I had enough tokens to go right to a level 2. Back then bounties did not give a token each time. When they did start to give a token for every bounty I started to buy pledges for 1k and do max bounties each day. I now have a Level 6 Brown Pet that was all purchased through token besides one pet token I bought along the way. Point 3.
3. You can get very nice pets without spending money on Plat. You do not need the highest tier pet. Work on leveling up a brown with Tokens as you level and you will be fine. Now my pet regens something like 123 a tic and does a 796 heal with 1500 crits. On most bosses including Base, Prime and Gele the Rabbit keeps me alive the entire time while I use my heal on others. Once in a while I will have to cast a light heal on myself during a boss, but no more then 3 or 4 times a fight on a gele for instance. And i use no restos and typically only die once if at all on Gele.
Leveling and Lixes
Around level 140 the clan Forsaken started to break up. Some members left the game, which caused other members to leave and join other clans. I decided to stick in the clan until the leader decided to move on. This allowed me to focus 100 percent on leveling because there was no-one left to help. Around this level I started to realize that I did not need to farm gold anymore. If I leveled it gave me enough gold to buy experience lixes, pet food, and also bank enough gold for my next level bow, and quiver. During this time I also started to spend gold on buying Orbs for Frozen armor. Camping Frozen was a very hard thing to do with competing clans even at that level. Luckily Forsaken had very few rangers so the bank had the Crests I needed so as I got orbs the clan leader was able to provide most of the crests I needed. I did have to buy a few. Again with gold that was saved just by leveling.
Now that I was focused on leveling only and always on a lix I quickly jumped up to 170. During that time I started to help some clans with Dragon lord fights such as King and Priest. I found I was able to solo King 4 and Priest 4 and was lucky enough to pick up some parts for the DL quest from that. Once again the clan leader of Forsaken SK8r, had not moved onto another clan and he was kind enough to help me out with other pieces of DL that Forsaken had banked before everyone left the clan. This brought me up to about level 180 and I had DL Gloves, Boots, Helm and Legs, and Frozen Chest and Bow.
At this time the leader of Forsaken Sk8r decided to join the clan Braves which is a feeder clan for the top tier guild Resurgence. I decided to join him and also applied to braves and got in. Once I joined braves I spent my time helping to kill Frozen, as well as DL bosses included Sreng and Troll now. Even though I had full frozen and all of DL besides Chest already. That is what is expected of Braves members and again the entire idea is if you give then you will get. What I liked about this clan is that their entire system was built on that premise. So I put in the time. When there was not bosses to kill I leveled. I did nothing else besides these two things. Got on killed bosses, on breaks I leveled on exp lixes.
After my 30 days in Braves I was about 190 maybe higher and I applied to Resurgence. The clan accepted me and joining them came with a change of priorities. I was now to be focused on killing DL bosses, Hrung, Necro and Mordris as well as EDL bosses as I reached those floors. So here during my 30 day probation I started to get my experience with end games fights. Sometimes waking up in the early morning hours to kill a Hrung or Mordris. Necro was always planned and I made as many as I could. When there were not DL, EDL or EG bosses to fight I was still leveling. Always on a Lix. I was also doing max bounties and arena kill everyday. During this time mounts came out and I started to use my saved bounty tokens for a brown wolf battle mount. Just this week I finished my level 6 wolf. Once again I only bought one Mount token and the other's all came from bounties.
To start to wrap this up. I am now level 221. Due to being in an incredible clan full of amazing people my character now has the following
Several Drops from Necro
Several Drops from Hrung
Several Drops from Mordris
Two Proteus Bracelets
Two Gele Heal Rings
Full EDL Armor and Weapon
DL Quiver
Nice Lux items
Couple of Legacy Boss drops
I have 1.3 Million Gold in the bank, because honestly other than a few lixes such as energy , and pet food I have nothing I need to spend it on so it just keeps piling up.
In general here were my rules as I leveled up and tried to compete in this came with people who had the ability to spend great sums of money
1. I never spent gold on anything that did not make my character more power full, or leveling more efficient. Meaning until I was level 220 I did not own a single piece of fashion. I know own a charm that I paid 60k for and that's it.
2. I was as helpful as I could be when people I played the game with needed my help. This created a great give and take relationship that has allowed me to succeed in the game
3. I lived within my means. Would a level 6 Golden Rabbit and a Level 6 Silver Wolf be nice. Sure, but by going with the lowest level and getting up to level 6 I was able to do both with only spending 100k gold, all the while earning experience as I went with bounties.
4. Keep some gold in reserve so you can look for deals. Once in a while you will see someone selling Experience Lixes for 3k because they have a ton and want to get rid of them. I would keep some gold in reserve so I could jump on those deals. (May not be as common now with AH)
5. Don't wait until the last minute to buy something. If I knew I would be at a level for a new bow or quiver in a week I would save my gold so that I could start trying to find one from a player and not pay the premium vendor price. The same goes with lixes. Do not wait until you are out of Experience Lixes to start looking for them. Now you are in desperation mode and will have to pay whatever the standard going rate is, or maybe more.
6. Choose the right class. Some classes are more expensive to play then others. Rangers I have to think is one of the cheapest depending on how you play.
7. If you want to do well and not have to buy Plat then think about how you play your character. I played mine with High Defense and Heals. Am I the highest DPS ranger or even close? No, but I can solo things that DPS rangers could only dream about. There is no bounty I couldn't do by myself leveling up including elites. I can now even solo 5* Heli's on the last floor of the tower. Yes it takes me 35 to 45 minutes, but how many classes can solo those and not use a single lix, or restoration pot.
8. Use the free way's to earn platinum in the game for some of the things you can only get with Platinum. While watching TV I would do some of the Free Plat offers and watch videos. I used that to buy things like Item Slots. Bank and Bag slots I bought with gold as I needed them.
9. I have no alts, zero none. I may eventually level an alt to 190 as a lock alt so I can continue to help my clan, however I have not had time to do so. Also I am still working on making my main as good as it can be. I have evasions still to max. If alts are your thing then great. But do not complain when you have no gold, and its taking you a long time to get to end game. You are dividing all of your resources and time between characters and that a choice.
Bottom line is this game can be played without spending a great deal of money on it or even any money. I do not post this because I do not value OTM's work and I expect to play the game for free. I can afford to spend money on the game if I choose. However I find it a game in itself to play premium games without spending money to see how well I can do. Buying Plat does not provide me with anything I need. Sure I could buy chests but I don't care about fashion, and everything I can get from a chest I can buy with gold if I save. If OTM added actual content to the game such as more end game bosses, dungeon zones, or pvp areas and I had to pay a little bit to unlock them to support the game and the developers I would. My point here is that we need the player base to grow. Not everyone can afford to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a mobile game, or any game for that matter. So when new people come to CH I think they should know that this is not strictly a Pay to Win game.
Thank you to all the great players in Both Braves and Resurrection, and all others on Arawn that make CH a game worth logging into each day.
Nylak
Level 221 Rangadin
You may be asking, WTF is a Rangadin. Well as I mentioned above I typically like to play Paladins in MMO's. Basically classes that are a hybrid warrior and healer. Well this game does not have that so the best I could do is create a Ranger with High Defense, High armor, Decent HPs and one hell of a light heal.
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