Chest Hero - Part 1

When I first tested Chest Hero, it felt like there wasn't much to do.  You just click on the big chest and get a piece of equipment and either it's better than what you've got (equip it) or worse (sell it).  Then there is the usual Adventure section, where you get really really REALLY dull combats where one guy zooms over to hit the other guy and they go back and forth, AND by level 1-5, I lost every battle.  So there wasn't much going on.

   

 
Then I bought the $0.99 "special gear", because it was a cute cat helmet, and the little boost made a huge difference.  It turns out that better gear can add little powers, so now in the battles my guy might hit twice or stop to heal, making it start to feel like a contest.  I could clear a few more adventure levels and it felt like it was going somewhere.  An important driver of the game is the little quest box right above and to the left of that big chest.  It tells you what your next objective is.  Maybe you need to get to level 4, or sell 10 more items, or beat adventure level 2-5.  Each "level" takes about 20 chest clicks to reach.  And the quest number is important, because other features unlock when you reach certain numbers.  For example, the Dungeons button unlocks at quest 68.  I'm on quest 65 now, which is to to reach level 22, so that should give you an idea of when that will unlock.  Fishing unlocks at quest 124, so that's a few hours away.

Just as I was about to uninstall it, the developers posted a BIG update with kingdom wars, a treasure puzzle, wing crystals and a set of little mini games.

When you get arena tickets, click Arena and click Challenge and try to find someone around your own level.  Wins in the Arena give a lot of coins (2500 or more), and you use those to upgrade the big chest.  Upgrading the chest increases the odds of getting better gear.  You need to make a few purchases to level up the chest, and they do get expensive fast, so the Arena is your best bet for getting there.  From level 5 to 6, you will need to buy 5 steps (called "permits") at 5000 coins each.  There is also a Peak Arena that unlocks at quest 144.

I see that some equipment can be upgraded, like the blood bad wing, but it takes 100 steps costing 500 coins and one gem each time.  Yikes.

There is also a Territory area where you start with one worker who can very slowly bring one resource down the screen to bank it for you.  And you spend things to get another worker and get more resources.  You can refresh the screen with new resources 5 times per day by watching videos, or by spending gems.  There are a lot of other things to do on that page: Conquest, Training, Plunder, and viewing your base.

More icons appear at the top under the main nav bar: Fishing (goes to a screen called Fishing Week with a bunch of quests listed, but I can't access the actual Fishing area yet), an icon with a countdown that takes me to the mini-games screen, Kingdom, Gift, and Starter.  Gift pops up a modal with 5 categories of things.  Like usual, little red dots point out which UI elements have options ready to use.  The first two groups -- Daily Deals and Growth Fund -- seem to have a Free item every few hours.

At bottom left is an icon called Other which pops up Knights Handbook, Marketplace, Assistant (unlocks with task 109) and Treasure Puzzle.  Knights Handbook is a list of training tasks to level up from Trainee Knight to whatever the next title is.  The initial tasks are to reach Treasure Chest Level 5, Player Level 40 and complete Adventure Level 2-10.  The Treasure Puzzle is a simple 3x3 puzzle where you get pieces while doing other things and can theoretically trade with other players in the chat window to get the pieces you need.  A completed puzzle gets 40 chests and 20 gems (diamonds).

There is also a Guild area, but I'm not sure the point of joining a Guild.  I usually don't get onto teams, since it just lets other players guilt you into spending more time in these kinds of games.

Anyway, there was a lot more here that first meets the eye.  The brand new mini games are really interesting and I will cover them separately.