Collect and battle cards, find adventure in Elemental Kingdoms

Last month PC MMO giant Perfect World Entertainment announced that it had entered the mobile gaming business, revealing four upcoming games in the process. Now the first of those games, Elemental Kingdoms is available to download exclusively on iOS. Elemental Kingdoms is a surprisingly deep and robust collectible card game from China-based iFree Studio. Read on to learn about the game’s card combat system, player versus player battles, maze exploration, and much more.

Save the kingdom

To start with, you’ll select a male or female Hero. Then your campaign begins in the kingdom of Tundra, part of the Northern Alliance. A former ally, the Scarlet Nation suddenly joins up with the Black Swamp Tribe to invade Tundra. Your Hero will need to seek help from another kingdom and investigate the cause of the Scarlet Nation’s aggression as the game unfolds.

The world of Elemental Kingdoms is divided into numerous maps, each with multiple stages (battles) to conquer. By simply winning a battle, you’ll gain one star for that stage. But battles have Medium and Hard goals too, such as eliminating all of the opponent’s cards or winning with a certain quantity of HP remaining. Revisit stages to complete these extra goals and win up to three stars for the stage.

The stars you’ve earned on a map contribute to your revenue for that area. Players receive their revenue in a treasure chest once a day. If you want to increase revenue you’ll need to unlock more stars. But conquered stages will occasionally be invaded, threatening a map’s daily income. Take care of the invasion before the end of the day in order to keep your people safe and the coins flowing.

Money to spend

Gold coins are the game’s soft (non-premium) currency. They can be spent on card packs and Runes. You can’t get the rare 4- or 5-star cards with gold, but you will find material cards that help enchant (level up) other cards. Enchanting cards and Runes costs gold as well.

Gems act as the game’s premium currency. They’re mostly acquired by In-App Purchase, but players can also get them as login rewards or for completing certain events in the game. You’ll want to use gems to buy premium booster card packs that contain 4- and 5-star cards. They can also be used to skip cool-down times, restore energy, reset tower mazes, and increase the number of daily ranked matches a player can participate in.

Players can also get rare cards with Fire tokens. These tokens are given out as login rewards and for participating in special events.

Collecting cards and Runes

There are many more ways to get cards than just buying them with coins and gems. Players can get them as loot from winning battles, receive them as login rewards, or by exploring mazes.

Those mazes help keep Elemental Kingdoms from being just a succession of battles. Clearing all of the stages on a map (other than the first map) unlocks a maze to explore. Guards and treasure chests are hidden throughout each maze.

Not only do mazes have higher card drop rates than standard stages, some 4- and 5-star cards can only be found within them. A maze can be reset once daily for free. You can spend gems to reset them sooner as well.

On top of the collecting, enchanting, and selecting cards for your deck, you can also outfit it with Runes. Each Rune has a condition that triggers its spell. Trigger it during battle and it begins casting its spell. Runes can be discovered through exploration or by meditating in the Temple. Sometimes meditation will also uncover Rune shards, which can collected and exchanged for new Runes.

Card Combat

All the windows dressing in the world wouldn’t matter if Elemental Kingdoms didn’t have a good card combat system. Thankfully, the combat is easy to learn while still offering plenty of strategic possibilities.

The card combat screen consists of the battlefield in the center (active cards), each player’s preparation zone above and below the battlefield, both Heroes’ HP and the current round number at left, and Attack and Auto options on the right.

Every round, players draw a random card from the deck, which is then moved to the preparation zone. Cards in the preparation zone have a wait timer. Once the timer counts down to zero, players can select the card and move it to the battlefield.

Cards have HP and Attack attributes. They automatically attack cards lying directly across from them. If there is no card across from the attacking card, it attacks the opponent’s Hero instead.

Cards with zero HP get sent to the Cemetery. If your Hero’s HP runs out or all cards get sent to the cemetery, you lose the battle. Winning the battle gets you coins, EXP, and possibly cards.

In addition to HP and Attack attributes, cards can also have special abilities. A card only starts with one ability, but it can gain new ones at levels 5 and 10.

In keeping with the game’s highly approachable combat system, these abilities activate automatically when the right conditions are met. Standard skills cast each round that the card is on the battlefield. Quick Strike skills cast only when the card first enters the battlefield. Desperation skills only cast when the card gets destroyed.

Speaking of streamlined combat, players have the option to switch individual battles to Auto and let the AI fight for them. Only do this when you’re assured of victory!

Player versus player

Collecting cards is half the fun of a card battling game. The rest comes from testing your deck against other players and seeing who comes out on top. Elemental Kingdoms lets players battle it out online in two types of matches: Friendly and Ranked. Both support matchmaking, so don’t worry if your friends haven’t downloaded the game just yet.

In Friendly matches, the matchmaking system suggests 6 players of similar level for you to challenge. The matchmaking page can be refreshed in order to find different players. You can also challenge players on your friends list or via global chat. Friendly matches don’t carry risks or rewards; they’re purely for fun.

The goal of Ranked matches is of course to climb your way up the global leaderboard. Ranked matchmaking suggests five opponents of higher level to battle. Win and you’ll take the rank of your opponent while he or she drops down to your previous rank. There’s no penalty for losing a challenge you initiated.

A promising kingdom

Elemental Kingdom has just about everything you could want in a collectible card game: a deep story, beautiful artwork, slick combat, online multiplayer, and even exploration. And being free to play, you can easily try it on for size without spending a dime.

The only element of a physical card battling game that this one lacks is the ability for players to trade cards with each other. Perfect World tells us they “have no immediate plans to create a trading system,” but it is a frequent request. Perfect World and iFree Studio do plan to support Elemental Kingdoms with updates and special events in the future, so maybe trading will come along eventually – if it’s in the cards.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/x734PC9DUqE/story01.htm
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Congress eyes milk prices, politics in farm talks

WASHINGTON (AP) — The fight over renewing the nation's farm bill has centered on cuts to the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program. But there could be unintended consequences if no agreement is reached: higher milk prices.

Members of the House and Senate are scheduled to begin long-awaited negotiations on the five-year, roughly $500 billion bill this week. If they don't finish it, dairy supports could expire at the end of the year and send the price of a gallon of milk skyward.

There could be political ramifications, too. The House and Senate are far apart on the sensitive issue of how much money to cut from food stamps, and lawmakers are hoping to resolve that debate before election-year politics set in.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who is one of the negotiators on the bill, says the legislation could also be a rare opportunity for the two chambers to show they can get along.

"In the middle of the chaos of the last month comes opportunity," Klobuchar says of the farm legislation. "This will really be a test of the House of whether they are willing to work with us."

The farm bill, which sets policy for farm subsidies, the food stamps and other rural development projects, has moved slowly through Congress in the last two years as lawmakers have focused on higher-profile priorities, like budget negotiations, health care and immigration legislation.

But farm-state lawmakers are appealing to their colleagues to harken back to more bipartisan times and do something Congress hasn't done very much lately — pass a major piece of legislation.

Even President Barack Obama, who has been largely silent on the farm bill as it has wound through Congress, said as the government reopened earlier this month that the farm bill "would make a huge difference in our economy right now."

"What are we waiting for?" Obama said. "Let's get this done."

The main challenge in getting the bill done will be the differences on food stamps, officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The House has passed legislation to cut around $4 billion annually, or around 5 percent, including changes in eligibility and work requirements. The Senate has proposed a cut of around a tenth of that amount.

"I think there are very different world views clashing on food stamps and those are always more difficult to resolve," says Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union.

Johnson says coming together on the farm issues, while there are differences, will be easier because the mostly farm-state lawmakers negotiating the bill have common goals.

Passing a farm bill could help farm-state lawmakers in both parties in next year's elections, though some Republicans are wary of debating domestic food aid in campaign season. Republican House leaders put the bill on hold during the 2012 election year.

One way to pass the bill quickly could be to wrap it into budget negotiations that will be going on at the same time. The farm bill is expected to save tens of billions of dollars through food stamp cuts and eliminating some subsidy programs, and "that savings has become more key as we go into budget negotiations," Klobuchar said.

If that doesn't work, lawmakers could extend current law, as they did at the end of last year when the dairy threat loomed. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said he wants to finish the bill and won't support another extension.

One of the reasons the bill's progress has moved slowly is that most of farm country is enjoying a good agricultural economy, and farmers have not clamored for changes in policy. But with deadlines looming, many say they need more government certainty to make planting decisions. Most of the current law expired in September, though effects largely won't be felt until next year when the dairy supports expire.

Some farmers are feeling the effects of the expired bill now, however. An early blizzard in South Dakota earlier this month killed thousands of cattle, and a federal disaster program that could have helped cover losses has expired.

Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., also a negotiator on the conference committee, says her constituents aren't concerned with the differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, but they just want to see a bill pass.

"Maybe the biggest question is can we put together a bill that can pass on the House and Senate floor," she said.

___

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-28-US-Farm-Bill/id-53b9777f6cf54b9e97ce28dc96532f26
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Report: US monitored 60 million calls in Spain

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish newspaper has published a document it says shows the U.S. National Security Agency spied on more than 60 million phone calls in Spain in one month alone.

The report in El Mundo newspapers comes a week after Le Monde reported similar allegations of U.S. spying in France, and German magazine Der Spiegel reported that a document shows that Washington tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.

El Mundo said that a document provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden shows that the NSA monitored the phone calls from Dec. 10, 2012, until Jan. 8, 2013, but not their content.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-28-Spain-US-Spying/id-a622a67973ac4139bcc2ccaf6da8e0e5
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Arcade Fire On Its Brand New Beat

Audio for this story from Morning Edition will be available at approximately 9:00 a.m. ET.

 

Arcade Fire's new album, Reflektor, comes out Tuesday.

JF Lalonde/Courtesy of the artist

Arcade Fire's new album, Reflektor, comes out Tuesday.

JF Lalonde/Courtesy of the artist

Fans of Arcade Fire might be feeling a bit of culture shock. The group has been called the world's most successful indie rock band — but its new album, Reflektor, explores the Haitian roots of band member Regine Chassagne.

She and her husband, frontman Win Butler, have worked with Haitian relief groups for years; the band has donated more than a million dollars to charities there. Speaking with NPR's David Greene, Chassagne and Butler say the seeds of the idea for Reflektor were planted on a trip they took to Haiti right after winning the 2011 Grammy for Album of the Year, in a total upset.

"And then there's people coming from the mountains to watch us play who've never heard The Beatles before," Butler says of the scene when the band arrived. "You realize, stripped of that context, what you're left with is rhythm and emotion and melody; it kind of gets back to these really of basic building blocks of music. So we kind of wanted to start from there and try and make something out of it."

Reflektor isn't a dance record through and through, but it does incorporate many specific dance rhythms — "Here Comes the Night Time," for example, evokes the Hatian street music known as rara in its faster moments. The title of that song, Butler says, refers to an uncanny sight that can often be seen at dusk on the streets of Port-au-Prince, large parts of which have no electricity.

"Everyone's kind of really hustling to get home because it can be kind of dangerous in a lot of neighborhoods; you have to get home before nightfall. And people have their bags of groceries and they're sprinting in the streets trying to get home," he says. "And then you see, like, three dudes in really sharp suits that are just stepping out to go out to a nightclub or something like that. You kind of have this duality where it's this really exciting atmosphere, but then also really dangerous at the same time.

Chassagne says that though the new album's themes are deeply meaningful to her, she hopes the band has created something that can be appreciated anywhere.

"I'm kind of stuck a little bit in both worlds, so I would like to make something that, basically, my mom could dance. She wouldn't dance to a New Order song, but she would dance to the Haitian beat," Chassagne says. "I want to kind of do something that everybody can lock into."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/28/240760218/arcade-fire-on-its-brand-new-beat?ft=1&f=3
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Banners reflect hard-line backlash in Iran

A poster depicting an American negotiator wearing a suit jacket and tie at a negotiating table and a dog to his side is displayed in Palestine square, Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has described his outreach to the U.S. as part of a "new era'' and a chance to put the nuclear standoff with the West to rest. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A poster depicting an American negotiator wearing a suit jacket and tie at a negotiating table and a dog to his side is displayed in Palestine square, Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has described his outreach to the U.S. as part of a "new era'' and a chance to put the nuclear standoff with the West to rest. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

A poster depicting an American negotiator wearing a suit jacket and tie at a negotiating table and a dog to his side is displayed in Palestine square, Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has described his outreach to the U.S. as part of a "new era'' and a chance to put the nuclear standoff with the West to rest. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Banners that suddenly cropped up around Tehran in the past week depict an American diplomat dressed in a jacket and tie, while under the negotiating table he is wearing military pants and pointing a shotgun at an Iranian envoy.

The anti-American images were ordered taken down Saturday by Tehran authorities. But they made their point.

It was another salvo by hard-liners who are opposed to President Hassan Rouhani's pursuit of better ties with Washington and worried that Iran could make unnecessary concessions in its nuclear program in exchange for relief from Western sanctions.

The banners and posters were something of a warm-up to the main event: Rouhani's critics are planning major anti-U.S. rallies — and amped-up "Death to America" chants — on the Nov. 4 anniversary of the U.S. Embassy takeover in 1979 following the Islamic Revolution.

Anti-American murals have long been part of the urban landscape in Iran, and include images of the Statue of Liberty transformed into a creepy skeleton and bombs raining down from the Stars and Stripes. The storming of the U.S. Embassy is marked every year with protests outside the compound's brick walls.

Now, however, the images reflect internal divisions in Iran and suggest more intrigue ahead.

Rouhani's groundbreaking overtures to the U.S. appear to have the backing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This means that — at least for the moment — he has the ultimate political cover to try to reach a nuclear deal and perhaps find other ways to cross the 34-year diplomatic no man's land between the countries.

However, the criticism and protests by hard-line resisters, led by the Revolutionary Guard, are as much directed at Rouhani's government as they are intended as a message for the supreme leader.

The Guard and others know that Khamenei does not want to risk an open confrontation that could sow further discord in Iran. The subtext of the posters and banners: More pressure could come if Rouhani's government is perceived as moving too fast toward concessions when nuclear talks resume next week in Geneva with the U.S. and other world powers.

The signs had an ad-agency quality that is rare compared with the usual anti-American fare of simple fliers and hand-lettered placards.

"American Honesty," read one in Farsi and slightly mangled English, showing the U.S. negotiator with the shotgun under the table.

Another depicted an American negotiator in a suit, a black attack dog by his side. The third one showed an open hand facing the open claws of what appeared to be an eagle, the symbol of the U.S.

On Sunday, with most of the images taken down, new posters popped up around Tehran. They contained just one sentence, in Farsi: "We don't oppress and don't allow to be oppressed."

The high production values of the banners and posters suggest possible connections to the powerful propaganda machinery of well-funded groups such as the Revolutionary Guard or its nationwide paramilitary network, known as the Basij.

Mohsen Pirhadi, head of Basij's Tehran branch, said he ordered the posters put up, but gave no further details on the designers or financial backers.

"These posters were in line with the interests of the (ruling) system," the Bahar newspaper quoted him as saying Saturday.

A day earlier, protesters trampled posters of Wendy Sherman, the chief U.S. nuclear negotiator with Iran, who said earlier this month that past experience suggests "deception is part of the DNA" of the nuclear talks. Iran's hard-line media, however, added "Iranian" to the quote and stirred outrage.

"Our people have seen nothing but dishonesty, deception of public opinion, betrayal and back-stabbing by Americans during the past years. ... Therefore, there is no way they can trust American promises and deceiving smiles," hard-line politician Hamid Reza Taraqi told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Israel and others suspicious of Iran have used similar language to question Rouhani's sincerity.

A conservative lawmaker, Hamid Rasaei, decried the order to take down the posters and banners. "Why is a group seeking to erase the 34-year-old honor of the Iranian nation?" he told Parliament on Sunday.

A moderate lawmaker, Mohammad Javad Kowlivand, demanded a probe into the U.S.-bashing campaign.

Political analyst Hamid Reza Shokouhi said opposition to Rouhani's outreach reflects the insecurities that come with any bold diplomatic gestures.

"Public opinion cannot easily digest that everything has suddenly changed," he said.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-27-Iran-Poster%20Pressure/id-1de680b8a359470cb07d2f21933d8291
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Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Season 4: Brandi Glanville, Kyle Richards Already Feuding With New Girls

Mo' Housewives, mo' problems. Thanks to the addition of new girls Carlton Gebbia and Joyce Giraud, season four of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is already steeped in drama. Us Weekly caught up with the cast at the RHOBH and Vanderpump Rules premiere party on Wednesday, Oct. 23, at L.A.'s Boulevard 3, where they dished to Us about who's already feuding with whom, what they think of the new Housewives, and what viewers can expect from the new season.

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Lisa Vanderpump, for one, was very...diplomatic when speaking about the recent additions to the show. Though she was quick to praise Gebbia, a British interior architectural designer she describes as "very supportive," she was less effusive about Giraud, a two-time winner of the Miss Puerto Rico pageant who's married to producer Michael Ohoven, with whom she has two kids. (Gebbia is married, too, to businessman David Gebbia, the father of her three children.)

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"She's very honest, that's for sure," the Vanderpump Rules star said of Giraud. "I didn't get off to a great start with her, but I like her very much. I think she is very straightforward and very direct, and I like that about her."

Giraud, for her part, makes no apologies for who she is. "I think it's always tough to be a new girl in a bunch," she noted. "I'm honest and I'm myself. Some people will like it, and some people will not."

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Costar Brandi Glanville is in the latter group. "I like Carlton and I don't like Joyce," Eddie Cibrian's ex told Us of her thoughts on the new girls. "Carlton is a real straight woman. She is a great woman, a great mom. She is the real deal and no BS, and the other one is the complete opposite."

The Drinking and Tweeting: And Other Brandi Blunders author also spoke with Us about the ups and downs in her relationships with Vanderpump and Kyle Richards. Of the former, she said: "We don't hate each other. We love each other a lot. There is a hiccup in our road, and I think some things were done and said, and I'm hurt and she is hurt. I hope that one day we can be friends again." 

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Her friendship with Richards, meanwhile, seems to have improved. "It was a gradual change," she explained. "We had so much other drama to get through. We had to go through stuff to get where we are now. I think at the end of the day we are both mothers of young children, and she gets it."

"We are in a good place," Richards added to Us. "We are in a much better place than we were, but obviously it couldn't get any worse than it was. We have gotten to know each other more, and we understand each other better."

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Not to worry, though -- there's still plenty of drama brewing this season. Richards may have patched things up with Glanville, but she clashed with Gebbia, a self-described "wild girl" and practicing pagan.

"It was very hard because I'm very quiet and protective of what I believe in just because there are ignorant people," Gebbia told Us of her Celtic ancestry and involvement with witchcraft. "When it did come out, for the most part it was received in a favorable way. Then you have the percentage...I don't judge people by their faith, but unfortunately some people are uncomfortable."

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That said, she's glad she signed on for the show. "It has been an enjoyable journey," she told Us. "There are certainly some ups and bloody downs, but I don't have any regrets."

Gebbia and Giraud joined Bravo's RHOBH to replace departing cast members Taylor Armstrong and Adrienne Maloof.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/real-housewives-of-beverly-hills-season-4-brandi-glanville-kyle-richards-already-feuding-with-new-girls-20132410
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Preparing For The Big One, Whisper Campaigns, 'Frankenstein'

Cars lie smashed by the collapsed Interstate 5 connector a few hours after the Northridge earthquake on Jan. 17, 1994, in California.

AFP/Getty Images

Cars lie smashed by the collapsed Interstate 5 connector a few hours after the Northridge earthquake on Jan. 17, 1994, in California.

AFP/Getty Images

In this weekend's podcast of All Things Considered, host Arun Rath explores the power of Hollywood whisper campaigns, learns what some people are doing to prepare for "the big one," and talks to first time composer Alexander Ebert.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/27/241238396/preparing-for-the-big-one-whisper-campaigns-frankenstein?ft=1&f=1039
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