Developer Chair Entertainment’s iOS adventure Infinity Blade II has been crowned the most profitable title publisher Epic Games has ever produced (with some caveats). Since the sequel’s release last December, Infinity Blade II has received two major expansions featuring new items, enemies, and locations. This week, it receives its third and presumably final free expansion: Skycages.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":501743,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"D"}']“The most action-packed Infinity Blade II expansion to date,” claims a press release from the developer, “Skycages invites players to delve more deeply into the story of the Deathless, as new areas are unlocked and relics from the past come to light. While battling all-new enemies such as the Headsman, Petrified Noc, Xyloto, Ryth, and others, players can now harness the power of the sun with the Solar Transport Energy Blades, a completely new weapon type to be mastered.”
The new weapon type in question is essentially a Star Wars lightsaber (pictured above), available in normal, dual, and heavy flavors. Each Solar Transport weapon costs $1,000,000 gold (equivalent to 25-50 real-world dollars depending on which in-app purchase you’re looking at) and may seem overpriced at first, especially given the hefty price tag, but any socketed elemental attack gem will have its power magnified 10-fold.
Other new items include a chainsaw and a set of scuba equipment from Chair Entertainment’s first Xbox Live Arcade title, Undertow. While not overly expensive if purchased outright, I was able to get the entire Undertow collection consecutively by using the special prize wheel items.
The 1GB+ update also seems to have patched the infinite gold trick where players could exploit a specific cutscene to sell an endless supply of free Infinity Blade weapons. Now the weapon can no longer be sold during that sequence.
For those looking to get the most of their time with Infinity Blade II, the makers of the game recently shared a few tips and tricks for the ClashMob mode:
- On treasure challenges, try to pick up tightly grouped bags as quickly as possible and leave the others alone. New gold bags will spawn a few seconds after you stop picking up bags. Picking up that one extra bag resets the timer and could cost you even more bags!
- With parry challenges it is best to use dual or light weapons as they have a better reaction time. Don’t waste time attacking the enemy during a break, hit him once, wait for him to recover, then start parrying again (same with dodge challenges).
- During “kill the titan” challenges, learn to sneak a ‘scratch’ attack in after every parry to increase the overall amount of damage, while still being able to obtain a parry break. Also, always go with a heavy weapon so you can deal as much damage as possible.
- Due to the time limit on some ClashMobs, try to get as many parry breaks as possible to get stab points that will do extra damage, and then continue on when they get dizzy with slashes and combos.
- When doing any Parry challenge and the enemy becomes dizzy, attack him to bring him out of the dizzy state faster so you can get more parries. If you wait without attacking, more time will come off the timer and you’ll lose potential parries.
- Be sure to have one of each class of weapon in your inventory (sword and shield, two hand, and heavy) to be ready for any type of challenge.
- Use Dual weapons for the Stab challenge. Damage doesn’t matter and you will be able to get 40+ stabs with dual weapons rather than 18 stabs with light sword.
- Don’t worry about your health, exhausted dodges, or broken blocks. Achieve the objective at all costs, since the costs go away once you’re back in SP.
- Dodge/block/parry/stab/survival challenges are more friendly to low-level players than boss-killing challenges.
- Set reminders for future ClashMobs and the game will send a push notify when the event is about to start. If you didn’t allow Infinity Blade II to access push notifies, you can go into the iOS settings to enable them.
So why is this likely to be the last major update for Infinity Blade II? While the game is undoubtedly a well-reviewed cash cow, Chair is already setting its sights on the upcoming Infinity Blade: Dungeons, a prequel to the original game. And for those of us who have seen the true ending of Infinity Blade II, I’m sure we’re more than ready to get our hands on Infinity Blade III….
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To celebrate the release of Skycages, Infinity Blade II is available at the discounted price of $2.99 on the iTunes App Store for a limited time.