Being King of the Hill

Let’s talk about King of the Hill. In this Warcodes Daily challenge, your monsters fight against other player’s monsters in real-time. As the fastest way to build your monster’s experience and make tokens, mastering King of the Hill is a must for savvy players. King of the Hill, or KOTH, increases in difficulty as the player increases experience points, so it pays to understand what it’s all about and stay ahead of the game. 

In case you missed it, Warcodes is a unique gaming app that brings monsters to life using everyday barcodes. Available on both Android and iOS, Warcodes turns your phone into a monster-creating AI machine, built to battle it out from anywhere. The game uses both strategy and luck, entertaining new and experienced players. Monsters aren’t entirely randomly generated, they take characteristics from their barcode. Players have to get creative with the barcodes they scan to build a monster deck to win challenges. 

What is King of the Hill? 

KOTH is the main battle ground in Warcodes. It’s a daily challenge where players vie for control over up to five strategic locations. KOTH is open for 16 hours per day and uses a leaderboard to reward players who scored the most points. Players can select a location, and try to win the location by beating the monster who already controls the location. Monster selection is key to winning and keeping locations throughout the day. New players are placed in entry level games where they can control 1 of the 5 locations at a time, which helps to build experience and prevents steamrolling by more experienced players. As experience builds, players will be invited to KOTH levels that allow 2,3 or all 5 locations to be controlled at once. Warcodes seems to match players based on their XP, giving just the right amount of challenge and glee. 

Each location has a level limit for monsters. Just like a weight limit in boxing, once your monster levels up, it grows out of lower levels and must compete in locations that allow higher levels. New monsters just spawned from a barcode, will be at level 1. Through battle experience monsters move through 5 levels, capping out at level 5. At this stage there is no further evolution for monsters, but as an update is coming soon, stay tuned to see if that changes. Level 5 monsters are only able to compete in one KOTH location, as only location 5 allows for level 5 monster participation. This game mechanic both gears players to continuously scan new barcodes as their once leading level 1 monster quickly becomes a stale level 3 monster, and encourages players to build out monsters with items and an additional attack. To take all 5 locations at once and hold them, players must hold multiple monsters at each level that can beat and defend other monsters. As there is such a wide variety of attack/ weakness/ resistance combinations, just like in rock paper scissors, no one monster can beat all others. 

Is your monster army lacking? Scan rare monsters here. 

Gaining Experience

The only way to game experience is through battle. KOTH allows you to battle in real-time, meaning that if you have enough tokens to keep playing, both you and your monsters will gain experience each time you battle. Do you HAVE to battle against other people or is there a single player option where you can fight against the computer? Simple answer? No you do not have to battle other people. BUT there are only two fights per day with non-player characters. The daily challenge has a gameplay scene against two monsters, Demon Cyclops, a Poison monster with Fire and Psychic resists, and a Water weakness, and The Mage, a Magic monster with Earth resists and Water weakness. Players can choose two monsters to compete against each NPC monster. These single-player games are great for new players as they breakdown how all battles happen in a visual way, making it easier to understand how to beat opponents, and how to choose and build strong monsters.  

How is the KOTH pot calculated?

The KOTH event features a communal reward system called the "Winning Pot." Every battle fought during the event contributes 6 tokens to this pot. Specifically, each battle adds 6 tokens to the event payout pool for that game room. 

At the end of the game, the Winning Pot tokens are distributed between participants based on their total leaderboard points. This means that the more active and successful you are in capturing and defending locations, the larger your share of the pot will be. Even if you don't rank in the top positions, participating and earning points ensures you receive a portion of the rewards. 

You can check your spot in the leaderboard throughout the day by clicking the “LEADERBOARD” button located at the top left of the screen, below the countdown timer for the game. Your place on the board can change quickly and it’s advantageous to have a hot battle raging throughout the day. The more times you take and keep the hill, the more points you win.

You will be king of all five hills in no time.