Infinity Blade II

I was one of the people who purchased Infinity Blade II as soon as it was released on the App Store. You wouldn’t believe me if I said that I only started playing it a few weeks ago – but that’s the truth… really.

What an amazing coincidence – that I “started” on it so close to the Sky-cages update which was just released earlier today… right when everything was almost getting monotonous.

You see, I’ve figured out an “equipment configuration” to maximize gold earnings very efficiently. How efficiently you ask? I can get more than 2 million in gold on each run/rebirth.Granted, I’m on rebirth 68 as of this posting – so the gold drops (that’s what they call rewards) at that level are considerably higher now.

But easy millions on each run means I can pretty much buy the most expensive item 1 As of this posting it’s the solar weapons included in the update pack – which cost about 1M each. after one run.

Also, the beauty of my “setup” is that it’s so easy to do a run – pretty much guaranteed. No need to stress on grinding away worrying about losing a battle and wasting time by redoing it, etc. It’s pretty much foolproof at this point… which is why I’m posting: to share the theory behind my setup.

Quick Primer

Before I let you in on my “(non) secret”, let’s just have a quick overview on the types of fighters/attacks in the game (for those who aren’t familiar – so they don’t end up dumbfounded with the terms)

The light fighter uses a shield and a weapon. He has all defensive movements available to him (dodge, block, parry) and has decent a damage range on the weapons available to him.

The dual fighter wields “dual weapons” that don’t do a lot of damage on their own, but can put in much more hits on a break. 2 “Break” is when the opponent’s attack literally “breaks” – allowing you a window of opportunity to attack. A dual fighter cannot block, but he can parry, and has more “dodging options.” I haven’t used this class that much, but I’m inclined to think it’s “quicker” – that is to say it’s easier to parry/dodge with this class than if you were on the other two classes.

The “heavy” fighter can only block – but his weapons deal insanely huge damage; on the order of 1000+ per hit 3 That’s raw attack power, no magic enhancements if you have the good weapons.

Dual or Light? Parry or Block

A parry is a very popular move since you don’t take any damage (unlike a block which has a limited number of hits it can take before breaking, etc). While it’s similar to dodging (you don’t get damaged) – you don’t have to remember pressing either the left or right button to do a parry – you just swipe in the direction you’re seeing the attack – which I guess makes it easier to accomplish than a dodge even if the timing is a bit similar.

It’s not as easy as blocking, though 4 Though admittedly, blocking with a heavy warrior can be a pain in the ass – since it’s pretty much has the same required reflexes as dodging but you will never run out of “parries” – unlike the limited amount of hits your shield can take.

The “Dual Parry All” gem is considered to be the best gem to have – since it allows you to literally parry every move the enemy makes. Obviously since it’s a parry, it still requires timing – and you make one slip, on a really high level, and your an take on insane damage in a few seconds. Right now, my opponents can easily deal 2k damages consecutively – so once you break your concentration, and they happen to fire a combo on you – you can die quite quickly.

I have to admit my reflexes aren’t as quick as a kid playing video games – so I really wanted a strategy which didn’t require so much focus, concentration, reflexes, and split-second timing. That said, the “block” of the “light” warrior is the easiest defence IMHO – because there’s no swiping, nor is there any need to decide if I press the left or right one, just one button right smack in the middle.

Limitations of blocking – and the solution

For the amount of “hits” your shield can take, you can easily compensate by prioritising shield stats when you level up, or getting shield enhancement gems on your gear (or getting gear that has innate shield enhancements). Many ways to skin a cat 🙂

However there are moves that cannot be blocked – and that’s where you have to either dodge or parry in those instances. Also, if you don’t have any elemental protection – your block will likely be broken if an enemy has a magically enhanced attack. Luckily, I found a way to deal with both – which I’ll discuss in a while.

Time is Money – and Vise Versa

Naturally the lower your level, the harder the higher level bosses are. I think the algorithm they put is the “speed” of the titans you battle is calculated through your level discrepancy 5 that’s why say a level 10 character is difficult to play against a level 200 titan, etc. but its much easier to fight a 200 titan if you’re at level 60, etc. and in each rebirth, the titans’ levels increment a bit. If you “finish” the game and rebirth again, then the levels jump drastically. So one of the things people do (including myself) to build up their gold and gear and experience is to just rebirth and rebirth without “finishing” the game too often. The harder they get, the more health they have, the longer the battles will be – I imagine at a really high level the fights may be too long to even be worth it.

A lot of people try to use gems that act as XP level multipliers – which are effective if you’re the type who likes the challenge of a fight. I on the other hand, am very lazy – and I like to get my toys quick. But how can I do that if I’m not focusing on levelling up my XP? Simple, GOLD. You earn enough gold, you can “pay” to master items you get and that seems to level up my character quicker than if I had focused on XP-related strategies.

I’m level 96 now just because I kept on paying to master every item I got. Also you cannot sell an item which you haven’t mastered – so that’s another reason to try to master stuff fast (even if it meant paying for it)

So the trick really is to generate money fast enough to be able to pay or buy whatever you need in the game – be it gems, paying for expedited forgings, or paying to master items.

Solution

To deal with the gold, here’s the setup I’ve come up with. You’ll be needing:

2 Hexagon gem slots

2 hex slots so you can put in TWO gold+. The hex gold+ gem is different from the diamond gold perk drop gem (apart from its shape) in the sense that it multiplies whatever gold you get. The perk drop gem just increases your likelihood off getting a gold drop instead of an item, weapon, or gem.

Unfortunately, hex slots can only be found in armor – and to this day, if ever an armor would have a hex slot – it would have only one.

The only other single item in the game that has another hex gem slot is the Paga Circle ring.

The trouble with the ring is in exchange for that nifty hex slot is that it’s a passive ring: it doesn’t do magic (so you can’t use the ring to heal or attack) – but we’ll make up for that in other aspects.

The max value of a hex gold multiplier is about 37% so having two of those on you boosts your gold to 74%! So if a gold reward was normally 1k – you get 1.74k instead. When you start using that multiplier on medium or large chest gold rewards – you can easily justify those insanely expensive keys – since you know the gold reward would easily be more than the the cost of the key.

Now, having one hex gem is already fine – you’re already guaranteed to earn more than you paid on this keyed chests – but it takes a bit longer to save up [obviously].

Now that we’ve solved the part of putting a good amount of “interest” on the gold, the only thing left to figure out is how to make sure most if not all the drops/rewards are in gold – and not some stupid rare item that sells for much less than the key you spent on. And that’s where we get to the next part…

A shield with 3 diamond gem slots

So this is where you put in two gold drop gems (which max values are 400%) to give you an 800% likelihood of getting gold instead of any other thing during a drop/reward.

Of course, even if the math should speak for itself, it still sometimes gives you random items – but you can literally count the times it does that. Besides, it only matters if you get it from a keyed chest because those things cost money to open. It doesn’t really matter if you get a random item on a random chest. But with 800% worth of probability, trust me, you’re golden (pun intended)

The last diamond you put in a full-spectrum defence gem (otherwise known as the Rainbow Defence gem) – this is to ensure that your block won’t break even if your enemy has elemental damage capabilities.

As an aside, I have 3 shields each with 3 diamonds slots, each have rainbow defence gems, and the other two are two of whatever “thing” I want to get: items, gems, or gold. So let’s say I’m on a run and I decided that I have enough money for now, and I just want to focus on collecting gems. Then I slip on the shield that’s got the gem multipliers then most of my rewards will be in gems… if I want gold, I use the gold-loaded shield, etc. It’s pretty effective 🙂

So now, we’ve essentially dealt with the prospect of guaranteeing gold rewards/drops, as well as guaranteeing a 74% increase in gold every time. So that’s how you generate gold quick!

Beefing up the Blocks

So now you have your gold figured out – now you want to you have an easy time playing the game – so you can blaze through all those monsters and reap the rewards in gold.

Your helmet, weapon (and possibly your ring) should have some other gem slots there – this is where I usually load on either shield or attack stat gems. I think once your shild stat hits about 300 – you’re pretty safe – because the damage to a shield tops out at 5 per hit. So that would take 60 hits before the shield gives – and by then I’m sure you’ve already been able to go through a couple of breaks and deal enough damage to defeat the enemy. And there are other gems you could use (to deal more damage, to heal, etc.) to give you an advantage.

Lockjaw

My Infinity Blade has got a 200+ attack gem, and another 400+ light attack apart from it’s raw attack power of 500. So that’s a whopping 1100 attack power on the sword alone (what more if you put attack stat gems on different parts of your gear) – already at the level of a top-notch heavy weapon.

Yet my sword of choice is this rusted and ugly thing called Lockjaw – because it’s the only weapon that’s got two 3-sided star gem slots which host two of the most important gems that keep me practically invulnerable: The On 4Combo Block All and the On 5Combo Get Health

The block all gem engages once you do a four hit combo – and it allows you to block ALL types of enemy attacks henceforth for the duration of the battle – which deals with that “certain attacks can’t be blocked” issue I mentioned early on. I only have to struggle on the first few seconds so I can get the 4-combo in without getting killed. Once I’ve successfully done that, all I have to do [worst case] is to hold down the block button, and just wait for the next break – do my thing, then block again… rinse and repeat. No need to time anything, just press… wait… then kill on every break.

The Get Health, as of the moment (since I’m still haven’t gotten it up to its highest possible value) gives me 2358 health points whenever I do the 5-hit combo. So going back to my previous strategy:

  1. Do a 4 hit
  2. Block until a break
  3. Do a 5 hit cuz that has maximum damage – and also has the perk of giving a heal if ever I need it

I could just keep on blocking – since I have another gem that’s giving 625 damage on block… and another one that heals 102 points on every block. So If I keep on blocking, I’m killing him slowly and slowly healing myself. And If I need to kill/heal quicker, I just have to take advantage of the breaks.

There’s only one attack that’s not covered by the “block all”: 6 And this is probably why Parry All is considered the best, since it literally can parry EVERYTHING when a giant monster tries to bite me. But I think looking out for that single move is far easier than timing every single parry/dodge.

Conclusion

As long as you have the gold-related stuff, you can pretty much rely on your skill and weaponry. If you go further and use my Lockjaw gem suggestion – you’re bulletproof as well as idiot proof (parry all just makes you bullet proof assuming you have the skill to do it) feel free to mix-and match configuration.

I personally right now opted to weaken my attack strength because it kills opponents too quickly… sometimes I want to draw the battle out more so I can do more 5-combos in one fight (like if I’m not able to get a 4 combo in and paying dearly for it with a massive hit in health)

So to give you an idea right now, I’m on level 94, rebirth 68, the very first titan I fight is already on about 300 or more. And I’m far from having quick reflexes – yet I’m having such an easy time 😉 And like I said earlier, I can get gold so fast it’s ridiculous.

Here are the specifics:

Helmet: Helio Crown

  • +20 health
  • +40 attack
  • +20 Shield
  • Gem: Shield Stat +60

Armor: Helio Plate

  • +90 health
  • +8 movement
  • Gem: Shield Stat +60
  • Gem: Gold +37%

Shield: Kerrak

  • 100 shield
  • Gem: Rainbow defence
  • Gem: Drop Gold +400
  • Gem: Drop Gold +351 (yeah, haven’t topped that last gem out yet)

Weapon: Lockjaw

  • +400 attack
  • Gem: On 4 hit combo block all
  • Gem: On 5 hit combo get 2358 health
  • Gem: On block get 102 health

Ring: Paga Circle

  • +10 health
  • Gem: Gold +37%
  • Gem: On Block Damage Titan 625

I used to use Aran as a helmet and the Aegis armor, both of which are far better than what I’m wearing now – but like I said, as long as you have those gems, you’re pretty much invincible… and I get to look like Radirar which is very cool. I just wish the Epslion shield and the Inifinity blade had the slots I needed, but alas, you can’t have it all.

Notes

Notes
1 As of this posting it’s the solar weapons included in the update pack – which cost about 1M each.
2 “Break” is when the opponent’s attack literally “breaks” – allowing you a window of opportunity to attack.
3 That’s raw attack power, no magic enhancements
4 Though admittedly, blocking with a heavy warrior can be a pain in the ass – since it’s pretty much has the same required reflexes as dodging
5 that’s why say a level 10 character is difficult to play against a level 200 titan, etc. but its much easier to fight a 200 titan if you’re at level 60, etc.
6 And this is probably why Parry All is considered the best, since it literally can parry EVERYTHING

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