About myself: Currently lvl 96, top ranking in offense, raiding and battlegrounds, playing for over 2 years, captain in [BIA] Brothers in Arms league.

Introduction: Saphires are a very valuable ressource in Stormfall: Rise of Balur. They can be used for almost everything, from buying troops, to reviving them, to speed up contructions, researches, training of units... Basically everything you can do ingame can be sped up with Saphires. There are so many possibilities to use them, that new players can often find themselves overwhelmed and lost. So this guide aims to clear up confusion and explains the best way to use saphires if you only have a limited amount of them.

How can I get saphires?

- Saphire hamlets ( high risk - high reward. People can hit your hamlets and kill your troops)

- Amelia's Gifts sometimes contain them.

- Some Special Quests give saphires as reward for completing them.

- Tournaments are a good way to get saphires. There is almost always some kind of tournament going on and you get saphires for participating.

note: If you or your league have scored a particularly high score, you will be placed in TOP Placements of the server, which gives you additional saphires as reward. The higher your score, the better your prize.

- When you click on the Amelia icon on the top left corner of your castle screen (the face floating around lol), you will see quests you can do. There are hundreds of them, and some give you saphires as well.

- Being active in the forums outside the game can, from time to time, reward you with some saphires.

- Sometimes, during special occasions (anniversary, christmas, halloween etc.) Plarium will send gifts to their players that can contain Saphires. You usually have 2 or 3 days to claim those.

And finally, the easiest method: Buying packs and chests (top right corner of the casle screen) in exchange for real life money. If you do that, i would recommend to wait for big discounts (up to -90%). The best offers can give you over 1,5k saphires per dollar spent.

Where do I best spend saphires?

In order of priority, from the moment you start playing the game:

*) Buy some immortals (castle defense in front of your castle) to get your castle defense to at least 1500+. This will make your neighbors regret it if they decide to raid you. So you can start growing peacefully.

*) Try to get all 4 craftsmen, those are extremely important and absolutely worth it.

*) Get some more castle defense (catapults, sentries, additional immortals)... By that point you will start to have a good gold/iron production and enough troops to protect yourself. Getting raided will become more and more rare.

*) Which makes the Altar of Weor a good investment (don't buy it too early, it gives % instead of brute metal production and can be destroyed if someone raids you successfully. Rebuilding it back up to max lvl takes one week. You only need to buy it once.)

*) Buy some thieves when they are 50% discounted, allows a much faster raiding experience.

*) Try to get to 10'000+ castle defense ( no need to go further than 13000, people will know your castle is very strong and will almost never attack you)

note: Upgrade the immortals to red dragons first, then buy the castle skin. Upgrade the sentries and catapults last, since they are very expensive.

*) By that moment, you will slowly get close to lvl 35 on your townhouses and mines. Save all your saphires to buy sketches when there is a discount at -30% (7k saphires for 1000 sketches).

*) What most people forget: There is a house of unity in your castle, that gives bonus % to your ressource production. Upgrade it to lvl 5 with timber packs (which can be bought with saphires)

*) If you expect to go all in with your power, buying a 20% boost with saphires can be an option. Definitely not a must tough.

Hero gear: Class 3 purple tier is the best for most players (unless you have hundreds of dollars to spend on the game, then i would recommend tier 4 purple). If you DO NOT discover griffins and undead dragons, your Bgs will only drop class 3 hero items, which makes it much easier to dress your hero in purple gear. So there is no need to buy the hero gear from the black market.

Otherwise, i would do the investment of the 26k saphires to buy the purple hero items. Those are worth it.

Where not to spend saphires:

Unless you can afford to buy lots of saphires, i would not recommend using them on these features:

x) instant lvl up (useless the lvl itself gives no advantages in a fight)

x) Instant building contruction/research (with 4 craftsmen you can afford to wait a few days)

x) Reviving troops (excepted thieves, since those can be very useful) 

Reviving troops is expensive. I prefer spending those saphires on sketches to upgrade my metal production, so i can train back the troops i lost, so i have something in the long run from my investment. Reviving them right away just gives you some troops back and nothing that upgrades your castle permanently.

Thanks for your attention,

420Blaze BIA