So then 87 coming out on schedule. I know I'm spoiling you today ;) Time to crank up the wholesomeness possibly beat the shit out of some random guy in the street and generally figuring out what the fuck to do next.
As per usual UnwaveringGrey and TwoFlower68 have done their level best to sanitize the chapter. If I managed to slip one past them do please report it to your nearest execution squad so it may be dealt with properly.
In other news, proper art is officially commissioned and likely due sometime later this month. I'm so excited! But without further ado let's get on with the story.
ko-fi For having a pretty picture commissioned.
Sapphire
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Chapter 87: Knight In Shining Armor
“Wait, she is your only healer?” Tom questioned.
“Yes, they are a rare breed, young man,” The lady replied very apologetically, almost bowing before him.
“No, don't do that,” Tom protested. “You people both suffered and survived, not to mention your son technically saved me and Jackalope. Hopefully, Unkai can lend a hand when he gets here then, ‘cause she is spent,” Tom glanced at the healer who was still sleeping up against the wall where she had been when he woke up.
The Lady looked like she was going to protest until he reached the last sentence. “You brought a healer with you? Out here?” The lady questioned, clearly not believing him entirely.
“We did, yes, in case we found wounded. And that we certainly did. I was just hoping we could have Jacky’s ears looked at, but I guess that will have to wait.”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have anything else that can help I’m afraid.”
“I hate not knowing what’s going on,” Jackalope exclaimed, crossing her arms looking at the two of them with a distinctly unimpressed expression.
“I guess I’ll be miming to you for a bit longer. Actually no, I brought the note block. I will be just a second,” Tom replied walking jogging over to his backpack, the confused Jackalope following along.
“You got something that can fix ears in there?” she questioned hopefully. She was getting a bit better at keeping the volume down, though she was still rather loud. Then again, that was pretty standard all things considered.
Tom got out the block to begin noting things down for her. ‘We can't fix your ears, not yet at least. Other people need to be looked at first. Maybe when we get home.’
She did seem a little annoyed after reading that, sighing a bit and looking back up at him.
“So what now, we help clean this place up? Take up watch? Or just sit back and relax?”
“You two sit back for now. I won’t have you risking your lives for our skins and then cleaning up the mess as well,” the old granny replied, trying to speak up enough to be heard across the room. Tom certainly didn’t have a problem with that. He did not really feel like hard work right now.
Jacky was clearly sore and her breathing still wasn’t quite right, so he guessed she could use the rest as well. “Do you have a place we can stay, or… ?”
“Infirmary is full I’m afraid. We do have some rooms,” the old lady replied.
“Actually I think we have a big friend in need of a bit of company when he wakes up,” Tom replied, looking towards Jarix. “We will keep our stuff with us if shit hits the fan.”
“If it does what?”
“Right, uhm… goes south. If bad things start happening,” the lady looked at him more than a little confused, but she relented eventually.
“Yes, we don’t have many people left who could fight. I will bring you something to eat, for the blood loss. I don’t know if it will help for your kind but it couldn’t hurt.”
They made their way to Jarix, who was sleeping like a rock. Tom began taking off the very uncomfortable holsters and belts. He looked like a fucking joke right now. Goddamn Florida Man running around with guns and ammo in his damn underpants. He put down the equipment in nice little piles, rechecking that everything was loaded if he needed it.
He could hear Jackalope getting out of her armor behind him. That stuff wasn't the most comfortable to sleep in after all.
“You okay?” Jacky asked in a rather worried tone after a bit. “After yesterday you’re… you’re not quite the same.” Tom turned around to look at her. She was looking at him with an expression of genuine worry.
‘That obvious, huh?’ Tom thought to himself, shoulders sagging even more. He couldn’t even blame her for catching it. His head just wasn’t in it right now, whether that was because of the fighting, the screaming, the blood loss, bodies flying everywhere last night, the fact they weren’t quite out of the woods yet, or that the ones back home would soon be getting worried. They were supposed to be back tonight after all. He didn't even know what time it was apart from rather early. He was also still tired as fuck despite just getting up. There was just too much to worry about right now.
“Look at me, would you?” Jackalope demanded, a hint of hurt in her voice. Tom snapped up to look her in the eyes, feeling more than a little ashamed of that. “Just like Sapphire said, you worry about everything. You can’t not worry… Well right now, just try not to, okay? It’s gonna be fine.”
Tom did crack a little smile before looking back down at the floor. That was very far from guaranteed, there were still many things which could go wrong. What if this wasn’t the only raiding party? What if Bizmati Keep was a ruin? What if something had found the kids in the forest? What if Jackalope's ears couldn't be fixed? what if…
Jackalope grabbed him by the shoulder, turning him around to face away from her. Then she folded her arms and wings around him, lifted him off his feet, and backed up against Jarix's side. She sat down in the nook of the dragon’s armpit and snuggled up against the dragon while clutching Tom tightly.
“I’m never gonna have a cold night again,” she let out, sounding very content. “And you are in the safest place in the world. Here you're not allowed to worry about everything. You are in a locked-down keep, sleeping with a dragon and if that doesn't do it, Then I will, so relax… please dude.”
“That might be the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me,” Tom replied, not that she could hear it of course. “Well, except for saving my life a few times… you people do that a lot don’t you?.. What did I do to deserve you?” He tried to snuggle up a bit closer to her, even if that was hard to achieve in her current grip. Jarix’s slow steady breathing almost rocking them to sleep.
__________________________________________________________________________________
“Now I just want to ask you some questions, nothing more, so don’t panic,” Maiko went as they turned the guy around. The guy looked scared shitless to Sapphire. He was a rather short spindly fellow as well, so looked really unintimidating right about now.
“And just in case you think running is smart. I’m possibly the fastest flyer you have met and I won’t be gentle with my prey,” Sapphire added, trying to look menacing and baring her teeth, while Maiko was clearly going for the more friendly approach. The guy just swallowed once, looking at the two of them.
“I was just told to find out what you’re doing, I swear nothing more.”
“So what did you learn?” Maiko asked, still sounding very friendly.
“You go to the inventor's place regularly, you are making something weird, you have been to the Hashaw’s place, and you are staying at the Sweet Dragon.”
“And who are you supposed to give all this lovely information?” Maiko continued.
“I was just paid by some woman, I didn’t know her, I swear. She just asked if I wanted to make a bit of easy money.”
Sapphire opened her mouth a bit, letting out a deep growl. The guy was fidgeting nervously at that as Dakota, Balethon, and Junior trooped up behind him.
“I’m guessing rather fine clothes and perhaps some rather nice jewelry?” Dakota asked, causing the guy to go stiff.
“I mean yeah… she did look rather rich.”
“How were you supposed to let her know?”
“I should meet her at the big plaza in front of the trading guild tomorrow after breakfast.”
“Right, well first off that’s not going to happen,” Dakota went from behind him. “Secondly, if we catch you following us again I’ll let Sapphire here demonstrate why she isn't even allowed to compete in archery competitions. Am I clear?” Her voice was cold and calculating, the guy nodding rapidly. “Out of curiosity, what did she pay you.”
“15 silver.” ‘Well, for tailing someone that was a rather good pay.’ The guy didn't exactly look well off either, so Sapphire could see him taking that offer without a second thought.
“Actually, I think I might have a better idea,” Sapphire Interruptet. “What would we like them to know?” Dakota looked to Sapphire, her face turning into an evil grin.
“What do you say, Maiko?”
“I mean, if this guy doesn’t want to go to jail for disturbing the peace and spying on military matters he might be useful.” Sapphire was pretty sure you could not go to jail for that. Nor was this military matter, in any capacity. “So what do you say, willing to lend the Royal Guard and a few people in high standing with the king a hand, or do I need to get some manacles?” Maiko questioned, looking down at the guy.
“Treworian at your service, sir,” The man responded, eyes wide as the situation he found himself in seemingly hit him like a battering ram.
“Come with us then. We have some things to discuss,” Dakota went, nodding to the others.
They took the guy back to the workshop where Tink was currently busy repairing the damage to the magnet.
“Back so soon?”
“Yeah, we found a nosey little bastard.”
“And you brought him here?” Tink questioned, clearly not happy with that.
“Yes, we did. Now Treworian, may I call you Trewor?” Dakota questioned, turning to the man.
“Yes ma’am, of course,” he responded, eagerly. ‘God damn he’s scared,’ Sapphire mused to herself. They weren’t gonna hurt the dude unless they had to, but it was probably best he didn’t know that.
“As you can see, we are making very dangerous new weapons here, under the authority of the king no less.” Tink looked ready to protest when Junior kicked him in the shin, shutting him up. “Have you heard of the attacks on the outlying keeps?”
Trewor nodded, looking around the room worriedly at all the strange bits and bobs.
“We are looking to put an end to that once and for all. Now the reason I’m showing you all this is because if you tell anyone that is treason, and you know what that means.” ‘Oh you evil genius,’ Sapphire thought to herself, doing a gesture of Trewor falling a very long way down, convincing sounds included. The guy went even paler than before.
“So what I want you to do, is tell the sweet lady who hired you that we are making some kind of invention as a present for the King himself and that it looks very expensive and very complicated. So you can’t possibly figure out what it is. But you did manage to sneak in while we were out and read a very official-looking document, stating who had hired us, and that the present is expected to be done in time for… Anyone know when there is some sort of big event coming up with the royal family?” Dakota questioned looking around.
“One of the princes is graduating from the academy this summer I think,” Maiko responded.
“That will do. A present for the prince in time for his graduation. Can you do that?”
“Sure can, don’t you worry. I ain’t no traitor”
“Very good. Now, remember, if you tell her the truth it’s a long way down okay?”
“A very long way indeed,” Sapphire added, with as much venom in her voice as she could manage. Trewor just nodded furiously.
“Good lad, now run along now, you have work to do,” Dakota continued, letting go of him. Trewor stormed out the door, Junior going over to close it after him.
They all stood there for a second before everyone except Tink broke out laughing.
“You’re all crazy” The inventor finally went in a disapproving tone, Which only caused Sapphire to laugh even harder.
__________________________________________________________________________________
When Tom woke up again, he was greeted by a dragon's head lying on the ground in front of him, staring at him with a sly smile.
“Someone got comfortable?” Jarix questioned, sounding very pleased with himself.
“You're just jealous; no one is big enough to wrap you up like this,” Tom replied from his prison of safety. “What time is it?”
“Hmmph, no clue, it’s getting late though. They brought you something because you decided to spray blood everywhere. Oh and your clothes. The girl tried to apologize for not being able to get them properly clean. That took a bit of explaining.”
Tom chuckled at that. “I’m sure it did... Wait did they use you as a washing line?”
“It looked wet, so why not?” Jarix responded. Tom cracked a proper smile at that.
“The world's most expensive washing assistant.”
“Yeah… Not exactly the world’s best night fighter, that’s for sure,” Jarix let out with a sigh. “I have never had my ass whopped that hard before.”
“Hey! You don’t get to feel sorry about that. You killed all three of those big bastards. And no one seems to know what they were... I never thought I would need to tell you this but be a little proud of that.” Jarix did perk up a bit at that, not much though.
“I only got two, and the last one would have gotten me I think... But I did tell you, you would be great at getting things off my back, hey. Even if that was not quite how I intended it”
“Can’t argue with that. By the way, have your decades of training to become a perfect killing machine told you what they might be?”
“No, I got nothing. Definitely a foul thing. It must have been able to see me approach to land that hit.”
“Yeah, if it sees like a bat then that thing sees using sound.”
“Wait, what?” Jarix questioned. “Can't they just see well in the dark?”
“Nope, they use their ears. That was no ordinary bat though, that is for damn sure.”
“No it was not… I’ve been thinking. My father said the darklings had a ride they kept falling back to when they attacked him… Do you think we just found what it was?”
Tom had to think about that for a bit. “Fuck, it might be… Is that bad?”
“Yes. Very! That means they have a new way of traveling long distances. That’s never good.” Tom felt Jackalope begin to stir as Jarix talking jostled the two of them around a bit.
“No Tom, you’re not leaving yet, this is nice,” she let out still half asleep, squeezing Tom tighter.
“I think for the Time being we need not worry, we just killed three of them there can’t be more around or they would be everywhere”
Jarix looked rather curiously at their arrangement. “Shouldn’t we worry? This could be very bad, we can't just sit here”
“Not much to do except let the people who can do something about it know. We were supposed to scout not fight. So let’s just worry about that and the kids for now. Besides, you aren't going anywhere in a hurry, right?” Jarix looked rather ashamed as he craned his head to look at this own back, expression turning pained.
“No, I am not.”
“Well then, neither am I and neither is Jacky. Unkai is needed here. And we aren’t sending Zarko alone. Even if Jacky or Unkai could find their way back to the keep… Actually, Jacky is deaf so that would be kinda hard… And Unkai might not even know… Well, that settles it then, we aren’t going anywhere 'till you can fly again.”
“Maybe we could get some of these nice people to fly the message. We were sent by the king remember”
“I mean maybe… perhaps at some point. Are my clothes dry yet?”
“They don’t feel cold anymore, so I guess so.”
Tom squirmed a bit to try and get free but Jackalope simply squeezed tighter. Jarix suppressed a snicker. “Uhh, I guess that’s nice to know. Jacky, I know you’re awake… goddammit.” Tom tried, Jarix starting to giggle properly.
“She’s got you now.”
“Well if you didn't want me to leave I don’t think I could either,” Tom retorted looking up at the dragon. “All joking aside, you did fucking amazing out there. I’m just sorry I couldn’t nail that bastard on your back sooner.”
“That hurt like hell. Also, don’t tell her, but I think Jackalope shot me.”
“Jarix, how bad is lead for a dragon?” Tom questioned.
“Don’t tell me they need to dig it out?”
“I mean they don't need to, but it’s in there now. And it’s made from copper and lead.”
Jarix looked over all the wounds strewn over him. The dragonettes had done a good job of patching most of them up, though several of the bandages were leaking fresh blood.
“I think it’ll stay in. Their healer would be done for 10 times over, trying to fix that mess I guess. So much for looking like a million gold.” Jarix seemed genuinely distraught at that.
“Hey think of it this way. You’re the first dragon ever to be shot with a gun. Have you ever heard the expression ‘Knight in shining armor’ by the way?”
“Yeah, like some young prince who everyone wants.”
“Well, would you look at that, a metaphor that transcends worlds? It actually means a man who has yet to be tested. That is why his armor is shiny. He hasn’t seen battle yet.”
“Couldn’t he just get it fixed and polished?”
“Maybe, but his armor would still carry scars of battle and most will leave them undisturbed as marks of experience. Just like you will now. Congratulations. You’ve been tested and you sure as fuck weren’t found wanting, you magnificent bastard.”
“Does that mean I passed a lesson?” Jarix questioned, seemingly very excited all of a sudden.
“With flying colors. Pun intended, not that I doubted you could fight” Tom joked cracking a smile “There are more to go through. And remember chicks dig scars.”
“Why do I want to impress a young chicken?”
“I guess that one doesn’t translate. Girls, Jarix. Girls love scars… Well some of them at least.”
“Ahhh that makes more sense, my back is gonna look wicked in that case… eventually.”
“Just think of Baron. He looked badass, didn’t he?”
“Sure, but most of those are from epic battles in the history books. He’s so freaking cool. I was told stories about him and the other veterans growing up.”
“You don’t think this one is going in there?”
“It’s just some battle for a keep. That happens all the time.”
‘Well, that is a rather depressing thought…' Tom hadn’t gotten that impression from the others though. “I don’t think you’re right, didn’t you say you had no clue what those bat things were? The first one is always remembered. You might be the first to ever kill one and the first to win a battle against them. First are always remembered.”
Jarix seemed to ponder that for a second before he lit up. “You mean I’m gonna be going in the history books for this?” he replied with genuine excitement in his voice.
“Well it’s possible, don’t you think? Besides if that doesn’t cut it, being the first dragon to carry a gun should damn well do the trick. You didn't even think of that?”
“I just wanted to win... “
“Bravo. That’s how it’s done,” Tom was actually genuinely surprised by that and really rather happy. It was clear this mattered to Jarix. Tom guessed he had been used to big battles with colorful depictions of heroes and their deeds. “You need to win no matter what, because history is written by the victor. I’m willing to bet that most of those stories you have heard aren’t really true. War is always a shit show, but if you win you can claim it wasn’t.”
“That is rather depressing,” Jarix responded.
“You remember what I said a while ago? Glory is your reward for doing terrible deeds, not to mention going through hell, hopefully for a good cause. We did that yesterday. That was all for a good cause, and that can’t be taken from you. So again, congratulations, big blue hero.”
“Well at what point are the two little ‘heroes’ gonna move? I haven't moved a muscle for an hour fearing I might squash you.”
“You are gonna have to take that one up with Jackalope,” Tom replied. He didn’t really want to get up, he was perfectly comfortable here, even if he was wondering how Jackalope wasn’t uncomfortable he was literally sitting in her lap and had been for hours by now. He should probably eat whatever was in that bowl too. It didn’t look particularly appetizing though.
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“Why haven't we heard anything yet?” Balethon questioned, between bites of dinner.
“Don’t know, might have stayed a little at Deriva? I would. It’s not often we get to see them, and the Lady there is very kind,” Sapphire replied in a hopeful tone. She was not sure she believed that though.
“They have Jarix with them. He could outrun almost anything,” Maiko replied. “If it was bad news, we would have heard from them by now. Likely this morning actually.”
“Unless they were dumb enough to try and help,” Dakota added in, sounding worried.
“I mean, Zarko follows orders, Unkai would likely be too scared, they won’t listen to Jacky. So that puts it down to Tom and Jarix,” Sapphire replied, thinking that over for a second. “Would Tom risk it?”
“I have no idea. Nunuk said he sounded troubled at the notion of even leaving the keep. But dammit if he is one to look the other way,” Dakota answered again before looking to Maiko. “What about Jarix?”
“Oh, he would for sure, but isn’t that what Tom had been trying to teach him not to do? Besides, I think he would listen to Zarko on that front. That and he has orders to follow, from the king no less.” Maiko certainly didn’t seem worried.
“Tom won’t give a shit about those orders though,” Sapphire stated plainly, scoring a double take from Maiko. “But he might decide to play hero, and with Jacky along… And Jarix possibly looking for an excuse...” ‘Fuck they might actually do it,’ Sapphire concluded to herself as she looked around at the others. “What would we do if they tried to help?”
“Not much we can do. We’re stuck here for the time being,” Dakota replied, looking like she had already arrived at Sapphire’s conclusion.
“Well if they don’t return… We would be launching an investigative force,” Maiko replied, clearly not pleased with that notion. “If they engaged, though, there is a good chance they are licking their wounds. I wouldn’t be concerned yet. As I said, Jarix is damn near the fastest flyer around these days. If you don’t need to go too far.”
“So they saw a keep in trouble, lent a hand, then ran away to lick their wounds. Or, they went in, won the battle, and are celebrating merrily with the people they saved. Sounds good to me. As long as too many didn't get hurt,” Balethon added, mouth half full of food. “How long until you send someone to mop up what’s left?”
“Oh, I don’t know. A few days... Maybe a week,” Maiko replied dismissively.
“I say we worry about it then, hey? Besides, as you said, we can’t do anything about it,” Balethon continued, while still eating. “I think we need to be more concerned with the people who might just be trying to kill us.”
Sapphire didn't really like this. In most of the situations they talked about, people would likely get hurt and it might well be someone she cared about. Tom was a good friend, sure. But she had known Jackalope for many years; she might be her closest friend in fact, despite their rivalry. “They better be fine. I've been doing too much praying as of late, and it doesn't seem to be working. I think it’s about time it does”
“Isn’t that something to do with only praying when you need something?” Balethon questioned.
“Well what should I pray for then? That someone got hurt or worse?” Sapphire replied in a rather annoyed tone.
“I think you need to give thanks for what you got. Not done much praying though,” he responded.
“Okay so. Dear Lotek, thank you for our safe journey here. Would you please ask Ishan not to take my friend from me?”
“Don’t say things like that, Everyone is fine. I’m sure.” Dakota demanded, sounding like she needed to convince herself just as much as the others. “Besides, even if they did decide to help a keep, they have both Tom and a damn dragon of the Royal Guard. What exactly survives that?” She didn’t sound entirely convinced of that statement either though. Even if it was one hell of an argument.
“Sorry. I’m just worried, okay?” Sapphire apologized.
“Let’s just give a prayer for everyone to get home safe tonight, and then worry about the things we can do something about.” Maiko interjected, clearly trying to ease things a bit.
When they had made it to bed, Dakota had a chat with Nunuk about what had happened. Even if there wasn’t much to report beyond Trewor. Crucially though, no news from the keep. Everything was as it should be apart from no Jarix and crew.
“Do you think this Trewor guy gonna stab us in the back?” Sapphire questioned after giving Dakota a second to catch her breath after the experience.
“I think he is too scared to try and double-cross us. He wants to live. That was damn clever of Maiko, I damn near believed it myself.”
“Yeah, the guy has a knack for this kind of thing it seems. I’m starting to see why Hashaw sent him. Besides just not wanting him around. And it was brilliant about the weapons. Even if Trewor does betray us, the bitch is gonna be scared shitless anyway.”
“She sure is,” Dakota replied with an evil grin.
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So then. The girls in the big city are hitting back, Jacky is doing her best to help her stressed to shit boyfriend and Jarix might have gotten a childhood wish fulfilled. Did you enjoy the chapter if so do let me know down below. Alternatively, let me know just how badly I fucked up.
Until next time Have an awesome day.
ko-fi For having a pretty picture commissioned.
Sapphire
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Greeting Theta Gang boys and girls,
I hope you're well and not bankrupt after last week. I'm just now recovering mentally myself. I saw a few WSB converts and some newbies asking for tips, so here you go. V2 of my Options guide. I hope it helps.
​
I spent a huge amount of time learning about options and tried to distill my knowledge down into a helpful guide. This should especially be useful for newbies and growing options traders.
While I feel I’m a successful trader, I'm not a guru and my advice is not meant to be gospel, but this will hopefully be a good starting point, teach you a lot, and make you a better trader. I plan to keep typing up more info from my notebook, expanding this guide, and posting it every couple months.
Any feedback or additions are appreciated
Per requests, I added details of good and bad trades I made. Some painful lessons learned are now included. I also tried to organize this better as it got longer.
Here's what I tell options beginners:
I would strongly recommend buying a beginner's options book and read it cover to cover. That helped me a lot.
I like this beginner book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GWSXX8U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_OxNDFb2GK9YW7
Helpful websites:

• Tasty Trade (TT) and Ally Invest have helpful articles and videos.
  • https://www.tastytrade.com/tt
  • https://www.youtube.com/c/tastytrade1/featured
• Ally training:
  • What is options trading? https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/trading-options-for-beginners/?CP=EM2012111
  • Top 10 options mistakes: https://www.ally.com/do-it-right/investing/top-10-option-trading-mistakes/?CP=EM2012111
• 3 common option mistakes: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/library/options/common-mistakes-options-traders-make
• Common options strategies: https://www.optionsbro.com/basic-options-strategies/
• Investopedia has tons of great investing info for stocks and options: https://www.investopedia.com/
• Kamikaze Cash Theta Gang Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOweupE79XXiBaeH_xBpkUcYUsrAaKQen
• 20 rules of professional traders: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/022715/20-rules-followed-professional-traders.asp

Don't trade until you understand:

• You can lose your entire contract value when buying.
• You can lose a lot of money when selling "naked", theoretically unlimited.
• How option expiration works.
• Theta (decay) and how it works. This is imperative since it's attrition when buying and a payout when selling. https://www.optionseducation.org/advancedconcepts/theta
• DTE: Days till expiration/expiry
• Options positions with respect to price:
  • ITM: In the money; strike is below stock value. Signif
  • ATM: At the money; strike is just at or above the stock value, often very highly traded. Can be very effective with moderate - long term expiry.
  • NTM: Near the money; strike is above the stock value, but fairly close. Slightly unofficial term.
  • OTM: Out of the money; price is at least a few strikes from the current stock price. I would say 10-30% over stock price.
  • Very OTM: Not a real definition, this is essentially a lottery ticket. Cheap, but almost certain to expire worthless unless there is explosive movement.
• Understand delta in general and how delta changes with ITM and OTM options.
• Understand all the greeks at a high level, as you get better understand them well. The greeks: https://www.optionsplaybook.com/options-introduction/option-greeks/
• IV, IV crush, and how IV affects pricing. In general, you want to sell when IV is high and buy when the IV is low. Increasing IV is good for held calls/puts. IV drop or crush is generally good for sellers.
• Selling options can be quite beneficial. Once you have a good general understanding, lookup thetagang . Kamikaze Cash has good youtube videos on most theta strategies (linked above). I personally believe selling options (especially cash secured) is much safer and can consistently make you profits. Θ Gang 4 life.
• FOMO and how to avoid chasing a dangerous trend. DO NOT CHASE FROM FOMO!
• What intrinsic and extrinsic value are. Know how they are affected by being exercised/assigned and how theta affects them.
• Understand that some of WSB recommendations are straight up high-risk gambling and factor in the information accordingly. Be careful with Meme stocks and the survivorship bias on YOLO plays. However, I love the sub and think it’s hilarious. It has a lot of valuable information / DD if you are comfortable with the “colorful” language. It’s also great if you like rocket ship emojis.

Basics / Mechanics

• Understand the 4 "main" option types. Buying or selling a call and buying or selling a put. Spreads and more complex multi-legged option strategies are based off these in some way (see below)
• You can sell calls with 100 shares of stock or if you own an underlying longer term option; see LEAPS and PMCCs later. Selling calls naked is incredibly risky and often requires Level 4 (very advanced) permissions and usually a lot of capital. I will literally never sell calls naked since I don't want to ruin my life and end up living in a dumpster eating saltine crackers.
• Puts can be sold/written cash covered (cash secured), which means you have the cash in your account to buy 100 shares. Your broker will put this money on hold until the trade is closed. Puts can be sold "naked" using Margin and Level 3 (with most brokers). Your broker will hold a percentage of cost of 100 shares (often 30-40%, 100% on meme stocks) allowing you to sell more puts. This increases your available capital/power as well as increasing risk.

General Tips and Ideas:

• Don't EVER leave (short) spreads open on expiration day, close them. (more details below)
• Start off trading very small. Slowly build up over weeks / months. You need to get accustomed to a fifty dollar swing a day, then a few hundred, then a few thousand. You need to ensure you don't get emotional (see below). I started trading options with 5k, then 25k, 50k, and later over 100k. I added my own funds over time and used my gains to build my account. Don’t go all in immediately, that’s dangerous and unwise.
• Especially as you build up the amount of money you have invested, keep it diversified among several stocks.
  • Don't go all in on one thing, ever. Be able to take a hit from one stock and not mortally wound your portfolio.
  • A company may be doing great, then there's a major product issue out of nowhere. If you are overexposed in one stock this can really hurt you.
  • I had to roll options I sold that were about to expire completely worthless because FDX's CEO changed and the stock took a hard dip.
• Don't trade emotionally. If you realize you are emotionally trading for vengeance, you should probably exit the trade and cool off for several days with that stock. Same if you get caught up in a wave of hysteria.
• Have a plan for every trade, ideally with entries / exits that are specific values, ranges, or a set condition. This helps remove emotions. This is super important for strong movements and high volatility (see later).
• Use an options profit calculator from your broker or an online one before entering a "new" trade, especially a complex multi legged trade: https://www.optionsprofitcalculator.com/
• “Rolling” an option: Closing your existing option and opening a similar one at different strike and/or expiration.
  • Rolling a call “Up” would be selling a call you own and buying a cheaper call at a higher strike.
  • Rolling a put “Down and out” closes your original one and buying or selling one at a lower strike at a longer expiry.
  • Better broker interfaces have a literal “Roll” button. I know E-trade does. You can manually do it by selecting relevant contract legs.
• If you have a losing trade, re-evaluate it. If your initial assumption is definitely incorrect, close it. Don't stay in losing trades forever and lose the entire value of the option over stubbornness. If you re-evaluate and you think your assumption was right, hold, potentially consider adding another cheaper option (or buy another call / put). Rolling out sold options can help here.
• Don't try to day trade, especially with options. It's statistically unlikely to be profitable. Day-trading with options introduces extra liquidity risks and is dangerous, especially with spreads.
• Try not to over-trade, you'll likely mis-time the market over time. When I get emotional I over trade, then lose additional money on wash sales. If you scale your entries into positions it should help alleviate your desire to exit positions when they turn badly against you. Whenever I buy calls I do it at larger increments after W almost made me loss my hair; luckily it eventually came back.
• NEVER enter a position on a stock you have no idea about, especially when you read about it online or heard about it from some rando.
• At market open options contracts are often volatile and inflated. Buying during this time can be more expensive. Options are usually cheaper mid-day, I read somewhere 2-3PM is cheapest. I’ve had success around 12-1PM EST after prices settle.
• Try wheeling on cheaper stocks once you get all fundamentals down.
• When selling puts if you are very bullish consider "doubling down"; note this is higher risk. Use the credit from your put sale to buy shares or a cheap call. This can be roughly inversed with puts, except I wouldn't ever recommend shorting shares.
• Learn from your mistakes. You can’t go back in time and beating yourself up (to a point) is useless. Make a physical &/or mental note of it so you don’t do it again. If you don’t learn from it, then beat yourself up so you won’t do it again.
• If you have friends that like to trade, I find it helpful to discuss strategies and planned plays. I talk openly with my close friends about my current holdings and planned trades, it helps keep me accountable. If I get a wide-eyed look, I might be doing something excessively risky or stupid. I’ve over-leveraged myself in calls twice and I knew I shouldn’t have done it both times. When I tell my friends what I did and I’m embarrassed, it exemplifies the face that I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. You will also get ideas for new strategies or plays from them. It’s good to stay versatile and use multiple strategies when appropriate. Beware of group think/echo chambers.
• I recommend NEVER telling someone what to buy/sell and when. I’ll tell people MY plays or what I like and why, but I will not encourage them to emulate what I do. Depending on the audience, I’ll tell them my exact positions along with my exit and entrance strategy. With closer friends I’ll offer my thoughts on their trades (if asked). If my friend is doing something really risky (one of my friends does some scary stuff) I may ask them if they want my advice, and provide it, especially if they overlooked a risk/event. I will not encourage someone to execute/enter a trade since it has a high potential for hurt feelings or animosity all around.
• Don’t fall in love with a stock. Just because something made you money before and you have high confidence in it doesn’t mean it will keep performing. I joke that FDX betrayed me when it started dipping and losing me money. I was over-confident of its bounce-back and sold too many puts too quickly. I’m in several losing trades because of it. However, I will keep good stocks in my rostetracking list or try different strategies or re-enter trades when they change their behavior.
• As you start to both buy and sell options and get more experience in general, you'll start seeing the two sides to every trade. You will likely start adjusting your strategies or trying new trades out because of this. Things will likely click one day. Most/all the greeks and options concepts will become almost second nature. For me this was when I could build an Iron Condor from scratch, which was a watershed moment involving a good understanding of many strategies.
• Understand Liquidity and volume.
  • Trading in low volume, low open interest contracts results in wide bid/ask spreads and difficulty having your contracts filled. Look at all the data for a contract, not just the strike and price.
  • Monthly Expiration dates typically have better liquidity.
  • Multi-legged trades (Common examples are 2-legged vertical spreads or 4-legged iron condors) have more difficulty being filled, especially on bad brokers like Robin Hood. Having very liquid options for all legs is extremely helpful in obtaining timely and well-priced fills, which maximize your potential profits.
• Time in market vs timing the market:
  • It is extremely difficult to time the market perfectly. If you wait for the perfect opportunity forever, history has proven you will miss out on gains. Keeping all your money out of the market has proven to be ineffective. Now if there is something serious happening with a stock/the market (like say a new pandemic), don’t go all in. I recommend entering incrementally at dips. If the stock has huge upside potential it may never go down, so it might make sense to partially enter at the current price.
  • IMIO selling puts is a great strategy to get into a stock you like, or at least make money off it. I think buying stock in lots of 100 is usually for suckers. Selling an ATM or ITM put (assuming the math works out) on a stock you were going to buy and hold is ALMOST free money.
  • I recommend keeping some cash available regardless. If you have a very large account or expect a downturn, hedging with indexes like QQQ, SPY, or VIX or calls/puts may be wise.
• Every trade can't be a winner. You will take some losses, you must get used to it. I don’t like having a realized loss of 1K or more on any trade. However, this will happen, especially with larger accounts.
  • As long as you win more often and beat the S&P that year I consider it okay. I’m kind of aggressive, so I consider 20%+ annually good. 30%+ annually is great. 40%+ and I’m dancing. After trading options I am almost baffled by my old belief that 5% annual returns (mostly from dividend ETFs) was “good”. That’s nothing to me now since I’m willing to take risks. Note: While lots of people danced in 2020, realize that’s an insane Bull Run year and is atypical.
  • Adhere to your own risk tolerance and never over-extend yourself, especially with margin use. Don’t make huge gambles leaving you uncomfortable. Only gamble with money you are willing to lose.
  • My personal strategy is to make safer gains for the year and then enter slightly riskier strategies using those gains. I can be slightly-moderately more aggressive and compound my gains. For me I often sell puts to make money, then when I see a big opportunity I’ll sell a put and buy an OTM or moderately ITM call.
• Understand it’s not safe to try and get rich overnight. However, once you hit big “steps” things may start to snowball. You can enter more positions and take more risks if you choose to.
  • For me this when I hit 50k, then 100k. I was able to balance low and moderate risk positions to more significantly grow my account. I’ll even do a high risk thing now and again because my gains can absorb it (assuming I have them).
  • I can’t wait to get to 250K, then 500K. I know it’ll take quite a long time, but I am confident I’ll eventually be able to have 500K and (hopefully) 1M in my non-401k trading account with gains and additions from my job. I can only imagine how “dangerous” I will be with that kind of capital.
• If you missed "the next big thing" like AAPL, TSLA, or the time machine I’m building in my basement. Don't get upset, learn from it. Adapt and become a better trader for next time.
  • Figure out why a company was so promising, before they mooned. Determine how you would have traded differently in hindsight. Apply those lessons to the next company you believe has long term growth prospects.
  • For me that's putting in 1-2.5k towards shares and/or buying LEAPS on it. Depending on my bullishness I may buy “cheap”, fairly far OTM calls. The far OTM options are sort of lottery tickets. If I'm right the (relatively) low cost will have explosive profits; if I'm wrong, they didn't cost that much so it's a calculated loss I’m willing to accept. For more serious bets I’ll buy ITM LEAPS to run PMCCs on. I also like to buy 1-2K in my 401k for very long-term plays.
• The stock market hates uncertainty, it seems to crave the status quo. A shakeup can potential tank a stock, even if it's nothing. With shares you can wait it out, but this can be problematic for options. If you see volatile/uncertain times ahead (politics, disease, manufacturing, earnings, etc.), you might want to reduce your overall portfolio risks or hedge.

Profit Retention / Loss Mitigation

• If selling options, it is a viable strategy to close early after a large gain with many DTE left until expiry. See TT videos / strategies on this.
• Don't hold options through earnings unless you literally want to gamble. I like playing on earnings run ups, but that can be risky.
• If you hold options through earnings, IV crush will happen immediately afterwards, devaluing the option. However, if the option is profitable enough, IV crush won’t matter, which will still make money for a call buyer. A sold put sufficiently far OTM will benefit from IV crush, even if the stock dips after slightly bad or lukewarm earnings.
• Don't throw good money after bad. Don't gamble on a recovery if your assumption appears to be wrong or the market is flat out tanking. If you are wrong and still believe in the company, wait twice as long as your original plan (wait for your 2nd entry point vs 1st) before adding to your position.
• Consider using stop losses to lock-in profits on rides up or sometimes use them to prevent losses. Note, stops can be easily triggered in volatile options. Now when I'm up a lot on calls (especially around earnings or large momentum run-ups) I always set stop losses. I have been burned too many times. In December 2020 I didn't set a SL on several thousand dollars of FDX calls I was already up on and I "lost" ~$5K of unrealized gains. If you're up big, don't get too greedy.
• A possible strategy if a stock is on a tear and you have multiple options open: Close some positions (I prefer to do this incrementally if the stock has momentum), but leave 1+ open in case the stock goes into outer space/the floor. Next, set a stop loss with a little buffer below its current movement / range so it doesn't get hit unless the stock falls hard. Finally, watch the stock closely and if it keeps rising, keep moving the stop loss up in little bits incrementally. This will let you keep more profits on a hot streak, but give some protection and secure more gains. It will also help eliminate FOMO if a stock exceeds your expectations.
• Have rules when to roll out, down & out, or up & out. I like TT’s roll at break even or at 1x loss and to always roll for a credit (or for me a very minor cost). Obviously these rules need some monitoring. Know your stocks, the news, and technicals so you don’t jump the gun.
  • If you roll early for a credit and you’re right, it’s not the end of the world. You’ll just need to hold longer, which will obviously tie up capital. Sometimes it’s better to tie up some money (especially if you aren’t paying interest) than eating a huge loss.
  • Rolling too late can be worse though. I currently have a very underwater FDX put I sold that is over 2x loss, rolling it does almost nothing unless you want to pay a debit or extend it extremely far out.
• On huge options gains, I strongly you recommend taking profits by rolling up/down or incrementally sell your contracts at several different prices (this is why having multiple contracts is nice).
  • Rolling up involves selling your initial call, then using a fraction of your proceeds to buy a cheaper, further OTM call with the same expiry; puts are inverse this. When rolling up I like to ensure the new option’s cost is 15-40% of my realized gains. I’ll buy a more or less expensive new optoin based on my convication to the stock and predicted movements. You can also roll up and out to get a further expiry and strike.
  • This is monumentally important if you are playing with incredibly high rising stocks or during a short squeeze.
  • Sad story time: I completely screwed up when I forgot to roll up, twice, during the GME gamma/short squeeze. I didn’t take my own advice; I didn’t have a real exit or transition plan and I got emotional. It all happened so fast and I was at work; the insanity of the run up and subsequent gamma squeeze caught me off guard. I should’ve clocked out and thought through the situation for 15-30 minutes to form an impromptu plan, then executed trade(s). My moderate risk tolerance coupled with my desire to take profits took over. When the stock partially cratered after a run up, I sold to retain gains. In the heat of the moment I thought the squeeze was squoze and it was going to plummet into the ground and I wasn’t being rational.
    • On 1x 4K call I would’ve made an additional 15-25K if I rolled up to a cheaper contract with some of my profits.
    • I know I missed out on significantly more with a 2nd call I had. Depending when I rolled it, it would likely have been an additional 25-50k in profits.
  • I talked about learning from your mistakes above. This mistake is branded into my brain due to the massive gains I missed out on by not rolling up. I’m furious with myself as I write this 1 week after the GME gamma squeeze, I’m a planner and I didn’t plan. If anything I own is significantly up ever again, I’m rolling up (or at least setting a stop loss). If necessary, I’ll roll up a trade multiple times to keep extracting profits.
  • Learn from my mistake so you don’t miss out on gains too. I strongly recommend rolling up when you are up big on a call / roll down when you are up big on a put. This enables you to take profits, stay in the game, and keep extracting more gains.
• If you trade a lot of options, talk to your broker about a discount. I was getting the standard $.50/contract with E-Trade, but I traded over 300 contracts a quarter and was able to get the fee reduced by over $.10 by just asking. I am now doing more spreads and condors, so once my volume gets very high, I’ll ask again.
• If you have a broker that isn’t great and you want to switch, leverage your current trading fees to the new broker. Tell them you’ll move over $### thousand if they beat your current options trading fee per contract.

Trade Planning & Position Management Tips

• As you gain experience, start monitoring what kind of Delta, OTM, DTE, etc. you are most profitable with. Use it in your future trades. You'll often see the tasty trade 30-45DTE .3 Delta strategy for selling.
• Before entering a trade, look at rough technicals like resistances and supports to consider your relevant strikes as well as entry/exit points. Look at upcoming earnings & dividend dates as well as stock/market news.
• Consider staggering strikes and expirations for safety and diversity; it’s nice to avoid assignment on 3 puts at once because you used the same strike for all 3.
• Incrementally enter positions on large rises/falls. One of my favor strategies is to buy dips after over reactions. By doing this slowly in large price "steps" it helps combat FOMO and helps you avoid getting slaughtered.
  • This will also help you avoid "chasing a falling knife". It also ties into having a plan.
  • I set alerts at several predetermined prices and I REALLY try not to enter new trades unless I hit my preset points. It makes me less emotional and usually more effective.
• Don't buy far expiration options with poor liquidity for shorter term plays. I bought 1x GME 1-year+ LEAPS call before the 2021 short squeeze. That was stupid, I should've bought 2-3x 60-120 day calls to have better liquidity. I also paper-handed it and missed out on my lambo.
• If selling options, consider rolling (for a credit) to avoid assignment when it makes sense / meets your plan. Rolling closer to expiration can be a valid strategy to get theta on your side. On the flip side, if the stock moons or plummets it could've been better to roll before it got crazy deep ITM. See rolling “rules” above.
• Covered Calls:
  • If a stock has a large movement range, I think it can be worthwhile to wait to open a CC after the last one is closed/expires. I have been more successful waiting for another opportunity vs. opening one immediately on the Monday after the second the last one expires.
  • Consider selling covered calls at all time highs/peaks. If you sell a CC and the stock dips significantly, and you think it’s temporary, you can buy to close your CC for a quick profit, then reopen it later.
  • If you own Meme stocks, selling covered calls runs the risk of missing out on large gains. On these stocks I typically only sell them further OTM than I normally would or not at all. If I do sell CC on a Meme stock I try to ensure I have 25-100 other shares that won’t be called away.

-Advanced Beginner-
Spreads

• Spreads (with 2 legs) are neat because they manipulate how delta and theta act. It caps your gains and losses, but you can profit with less stock movement. Try several spreads on a P/L calculator to see for yourself.
• Spreads usually require margin trading.
• Spreads allow you to define max losses (assuming you close before expiration day) and use less capital.
  • Experienced traders will open many spreads at identical/similar strikes to heavily profit off movement. Spreads can make you/lose you a lot of money if you are right.
  • For example. I could make a $200 premium off a $500 risk trade, max loss would be $300. This is much more effective capital utilization than a naked or cash secured put, however it does not have the same downside protection or “wheel” potential as a sold put. Higher risk, higher reward.
• Vertical Debit spreads: I think of these like mini calls/puts. I personally don’t use them unless calls are outrageously expensive or the break even is absurdly high, but there’s nothing wrong with them. A call debit spread will lower your breakeven and overall cost vs just a call. You can do clever things like making a positive theta call spread if you’re creative. I like doing this since I hate losing money to theta.
• Vertical Credit spreads:
  • Very good theta strategy to define downside/upside risks.
  • A put credit spread is bullish and allows you to bet on upward movement with less capital and defined losses.
  • A call credit spread is a bearish strategy that allows you to bet on downward movement. These are very cool since they allow you to sell calls without selling naked calls, which can ruin you financially. I see selling these as better than buying puts since it’s so much easier to be profitable; to be redundant, Θ rocks.
  • https://www.schwab.com/resource-centeinsights/content/reducing-risk-with-credit-spread-options-strategy-0
• I repeat this on purpose: Don't EVER leave short spreads open on expiration day, close them. If you don't close, they better be VERY far from the strike on a non-volatile stock. In after hours a stock can jump/dip below your strike and be exercised without the other leg to protect you. This can lead to massive, life ruining losses. This is not an exaggeration, google this and be scared. It happened to a fair number of people with TSLA. Video explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtVFj9nRRDo&t=315s
• Short Straddle:

Trading Mechanics, Taxes, Market Manipulation

• Learn about wash sale rules. They suck and are very easy to activate with options. This will eliminate your ability to write off losses. Over trading can easily cause wash sales. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/washsalerule.asp
• Short attacks:
  • Learn to recognize these sketchy attacks by hedges/firms. They manipulate the market, it’s been documented countless times. A common one is rapid short selling, which pushes the price down.
  • Short Ladder attacks:
    • https://www.google.com/amp/s/seekingalpha.com/amp/instablog/11442671-gerald-klein/3096735-anatomy-of-a-short-attack
    • Some people say short ladder attacks don't exist. I've seen some very strange stock nosedives off low volume, so I tend to think they do.
  • If you plan well enough and the market doesn’t give up on the stock you may be able to use it as a great opportunity to buy the dip.
• Cramer explains how he intentionally manipulated the market when he ran a hedge fund years ago. Multiple links to the video are below since this video gets pulled often, Cramer / The street never wanted this to go public.
  • Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/article/cramer-interview-idUKN2036292620070320
  • httpss://youtu.be/r07Gg92YjOI
  • https://youtu.be/VMuEis3byY4
  • https://youtu.be/JEzsfPmh894
  • https://youtu.be/QFfjX8dW-QQ
  • Due to this video I don’t fully trust Cramer. His show can give you stock ideas to buy (or inverse), but you never know where his true loyalties lie.
• Plan for taxes if you are up big. You may need to over withhold or contribute to taxes quarterly depending on your situation. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306

-Intermediate / Advanced Strategies (work in progress)-
You’ll notice many of these strategies inverse one another.
Options Strategy Finder
This website is great for learning about new strategies, you’ll see many links to it below.
https://www.theoptionsguide.com/option-trading-strategies.aspx
Short Strangle / Straddle

• Both of these strategies profit from little price movement. I recommend using a P/L calculator to determine BE, profit, etc.
• A straddle sells (or buys) two options at the same expiry and strike.
• A strangle sells (or buys) two options at same expiry with different strikes.
• Both these strategies involved selling a Call and a Put for a credit. Straddle uses ATM legs, strangle uses OTM legs.
• Limited max profits and unlimited risk. Due to the unlimited risk, I am not a fan. However, many people like these a lot.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-strangle.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-straddle.aspx

Iron Condor and Iron Butterflies

• These strategies profit from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. They receive a credit to open and benefit from theta decay. If your stock is range bound, these may be a good choice.
• These are both 4 "legged" trades, so you will have 4 trading fees to enter or exit the trade. A lower cost or zero cost broker shines here. However, “bad” free brokers will give you poor fills, which may not be worth the discount.
• Condors and butterflies have "wings" which are your purchased puts and calls. The wider the wing the higher the max profit/risk. The condor body can be riskier and skinny with a narrow high profit range or wider for a much greater chance of success with lower payout.
• An iron condor is built by combining a put credit spread and a call credit spread with the same expiry.
• An iron condor can be thought of as a modified short strangle with limited risk, and therefore a bit less profit. I prefer defined limited risk.
• The butterfly is similar except instead of a plateau it has a sharp peak. My personal mental note is that a condor looks more like a strangle with wings, while a butterfly looks like a straddle with wings.
• Pay attention to earnings dates when you open these, I have forgotten to check before and it led to bad trades.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-condor.aspx
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/iron-butterfly.aspx

Long Condor (Debit Call Condor)

• The debit version of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to stay inside your defined range. This strategy profits from neutral or mostly neutral stock movement. I’ve never tried this, Iron Condors make more sense to me.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/condor.aspx

Short Condor (Credit Call Condor)

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Credit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• Can be harder to set up. I want to try these, haven’t yet.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/short-condor.aspx

Reverse Iron Condor

• Inverse of an Iron Condor. You expect the price to go OUTSIDE your defined range. These are useful when you expect significant price movement. Debit to open.
• Limited risk / limited reward.
• https://www.theoptionsguide.com/reverse-iron-condor.aspx

LEAPs

• LEAP Options are options that are long term with many DTE, often over a year until expiration. LEAP calls are great for long term growth plays (downtrends with LEAP puts) or simply when you really like a company and can't afford 100 shares. LEAPs (or any "longer term" option) enables you to sell a PMCC or PMCP (below)

PMCC / PMCP

• PMCC or PMCP are poor man's covered call (or poor man's covered puts). They are diagonal options often used with purchased LEAPs. You sell a shorter DTE call/put with a further OTM strike than your purchased call/put. For PMCC/PMCPs it is often recommended to recoup your extrinsic value as soon as possible, some recommend with your first call CC or put sale, to ensure you are positive if the option is assigned early. These have a lot of moving parts and strategies. If you buy a barely ITM call/put and sell a nearby strike call/put you run the risk of the purchased option getting "blown by" on large stock movement and ending up with a very negative losing trade. Keeping your purchased LEAP deeper ITM should protect you. Check your initial PMCC using an options calculation to make sure you don't screw up.
• I'm currently tinkering with these myself. So far I like .7-.9 delta call LEAPS with 30-45 DTE calls on my CC. The goal is to hold the LEAP long term, potentially until expiration, and constantly sell calls/puts on it that expire worthless. Typically the call/put is rolled up and out or down and out if it's going to be assigned, unless you don't want your LEAP anymore.
• Some people look at these many sold CC or puts as profits, I look at them as lowering my cost basis until it's zero (or even negative). I have a page in my notebook I write each CC on my NIO LEAP (I Meme stock sometimes). I find it satisfying to slowly see the cost of the original option disappear. When I originally wrote this I had ~2 years left on it and it's 9-10% paid for; that doesn't even count the actual gains the LEAP has.
• TT states this is considered an IV play, which I partially agree with. You want to buy these during low IV times since an IV drop will hurt your LEAP value. I look at them more as a way to sell calls/puts on a high IV company with a lot of price movement and potential upside/downside.

Advanced Orders

• Guide to several order types: https://us.etrade.com/knowledge/events/webinars/order-types-from-basic-to-advanced-07162019
• One Triggers Other (OTO):
  • Good brokers will allow you to set these up, some will require a desktop to do it. This lets you link one action to another. In programming think of it like an if-then. You’ll tie a buy/sell to another buy/sell
  • Setting trailing stops on options is very chaotic since their price movement can be drastic due to volatility. I prefer to set my trailing stop to a stock.
  • What I like to do is set a trailing stop on a stock (or just link it to a stock price drop) and have it sell 1 share I own. Then it immediately executes a market order to sell my call. I’ve had good luck doing this with incredibly volatile plays were stop losses aren’t effective. I’ll often have an order saved and ready saved for when a strong run up starts. When my price alerts start blowing up my phone, I’ll immediately hit execute to turn it on.

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Disclaimer:
I’m not a financial adviser, I'm actually an engineer. I’m not telling you to invest in a specific stock/option or even use a specific strategy. I’ve outlined and more extensively elaborated on what I personally like. You should test several strategies and find what works best for you.
I'm just a guy who trades (mainly options) part-time for financial gain and fun. I don't claim to be some investing savant.

Happy 2nd anniversary, everyone! Now that we have our first global-first character in Melissa, AS Tiramisu has released on the JP version, and we're getting close to the final few banners that my last guide managed to cover, its time I come out of my winter hibernation to make another one of these.
I should mention that, while these guides were always inherently very opinionated, that might be even more the case this time, because the guides I used as a sort of second opinion to bounce my impressions off of have sadly yet to update past Mistrare. As such, my main sources this time are limited to the unofficial wiki as well as altema.
Also, like last time, I will omit the whole spiel on normal banners vs. AS banners, general summon behavior, etc. for the sake of keeping this guide short and concise. However, if you're new, and you wanna know what I'm talking about, here is a link to my 2.0 guide.
​
So, lets address how these ratings work.
The ratings work the same as always in that the banners are rated under the assumption that you're an F2P-player who has none of the featured units. They're also sorted in the expected chronological release order, but if the whole thing with Yipha has shown us anything, its that WFS can throw us a curve ball any time they want. Its also still true that, due to ever-increasing powercreep, modern review-culture does not apply here: Instead of a 7/10 being average like you often see with videogame or movie reviews, a 5/10 represents a banner of average quality in this guide. This is so that, with all these powerful new units, my ratings don't turn into nothing but 9.5 and 10/10s, which would make rating them in the first place pointless.
With all that out of the way, lets get to the actual ratings (aka from here, there be spoilers!):
EDIT: Thanks to u_sdw4527, it was brought to my attention that I have missed some banners. I have now added them at the end of the guide.
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• The anniversary banner: 7.5/10 - We're starting off with the big one. Counting AS and NS forms as seperate, we're looking at 30 different 5 star units available, with no unfeatured 5 stars. However, there really aren't a lot of duds in here: Both forms of Isuka, AS Felmina, Hozuki, Toova and Mighty are very underwhelming nowadays (although even those, except Isuka, can be sidegraded to become at least decent, and at most incredibly strong) but every other character on this banner is at least okay, with some real powerhouses thrown into the mix as well. Its also worth noting that units that only have one 5 star version have their summon chance further increased (0.24%) compared to units with two seperate 5 star forms (0.13% per form), which works in the favor of the player because a lot of the units you'd want out of this banner like Mistrare, Victor or Myunfa only have one 5 star form and hence have their summon chance boosted further. It is however a VERY diluted banner due to the sheer number of units, and a lot of them are only decent, so its 'only' a 7.5.
• Melissa/Premaya: 8.5/10 - I don't claim to be some sort of all-knowing god when it comes to this game, so when a character comes out that is new for EVERYONE, the banner gets a little harder to rate, but I truly think that Melissa is amazing. Not like, best character in the game, but I'm thinking top 20, MAYBE top 15 material. The 1TAF her new zone allows is gimmicky, but what makes her amazing is her insane utility: You can put her on ANY team and she will boost your damage and AF generation in the first turn, meaning you don't need to worry about switching your fastest character with your zone setter to get the zone active as soon as possible. And if that weren't enough already, her capable of inflicting break every second turn means you can just adjust the speed of your team with equipment so your strongest damage dealer goes after Melissa (and you put said damage dealer after her during AF), which essentially gives a 50% damage increase to that damage dealer (as their damage is being doubled every second turn) for free. Couple that with the absurd Nephrite Boost, and she is most likely optimal on wind zone. All in all, I think she is crazy good, and the only reason why this banner isn't rated higher is because Premaya drags it down a fair bit, being a good but definitely not great unit.
• AS Rosetta: 8/10 - Nothing has changed for this banner since last time, but I'm giving it a slightly higher rating compared to last time because I think I undersold the relevance of AS Rosetta being the only magic zone setter in the game, and what getting her means for the viability of a lot of older staff wielding characters, in my last guide.
• AS Hozuki/Biaka/Shannon: 8/10 - Despite u_xPalox' feedback left on my last guide, this would have still been an 8.5, but after a lot of consideration, its not the fact that both Biaka and Shannon are wind that made me rate the banner slightly lower, its that AS Hozuki is an AS unit whose OG is terrible to the point of basically being useless. And since a boatload of amazing AS units have released on the JP version since my last guide that can hang with or even surpass AS Hozuki, it became less likely that you'd make her your AS-upgrade goal over any of the other AS units that have come out on JP by now with limited chant scripts and the difficulty of getting treatises, assuming you land the 1.2% chance of pulling her 4.5 star version.
• AS Ilulu: 5/10 - Now that Cress made slash zone an F2P zone, this banner has lost the slight rating boost that AS Ilulu being a slash zone setter gave it. As I said in the last guide, if you have a banner that features both one of the worst and one of the best characters in the game, you get a perfectly average banner.
• AS Ewan/AS Laclair: 9.5/10 - AS Laclair becomes a beast after her manifest (guaranteed pain, int debuff, stacking water res debuff, wolf seal doesn't get consumed in AF, and a damage multiplier of up to 1300%), and AS Ewan is frankly insane. Like, in my opinion, 'best unit in the game' insane. This man is a jack of all trades done right: Team-wide priority phys and type res buff (which is a godsend with how mobs in more recent content have started becoming borderline impossible to outspeed and kill before they do damage) which also reduces MP consumption, an attack that is either really solid or straight-up absurd in terms of damage (I'm not sure if 'critical damage +100%' means 100% extra to the multiplier, or if the damage is doubled if he crits, would love input from the comments on that one), and that attack changes its damage type depending on in what attack type zone he is, which makes him a viable pick in 5/8 possible zones (not counting Melissa's), similar to Cynthia, only that AS Ewan is the WAY better unit. What is holding the banner back from being a straight-up 10 are Ewans only decent and Laclairs slightly underwhelming NS forms.
• The weapon zone banner: 10/10 - I hope y'all didn't expect me to not give this a 10 just because we now have an F2P slash zone setter. The thing is, Cress lacking the usual end of turn buff leaves his slash zone significantly weaker compared to Radias' and AS Ilulu's, so if you can get your hands on one of them, they're still MILES better, even ignoring their individual skills. Anyways, for this banner, same thing applies that applied to the elemental zone banner back in the day: Only the 5 weapon zone setters and AS Ewan are featured, meaning the value of the banner drastically decreases with every featured unit you already have. Purely mathematically, you're better off summoning on this banner over a banner with normal rates if you have 2 or less of the featured units. I didn't include my calculations, but if you wanna see the numbers behind that statement, check out the zone banner rating in my last guide.
• Mirusha/AS Nagi: 9/10 - I personally like this banner a LOT. If earth wasn't already pretty damn stacked in terms of F2P units, I'd give this a 9.5, because Mirusha is definitely top 15 characters in the game material (I mean, a shadow character who can offset the negative effects of her lunatic skill with a damage reduction ability? HELLO?), and AS Nagi has arguably aged like fine wine.
• AS Hismena: 8.5/10 - NS has aged very well to the point that both I and the tier list agree she isn't that much worse than her AS, and the AS is REALLY good. I was very tempted to give this a 9, but its an 8.5 because the AS form has one big problem: If your goal is damage optimization, you're not gonna have a fun time using AS Hismenas skills during AF, as there is a LOT of annoying move-switching mid-AF required to get the most out of her. For that reason, I personally even prefer her NS.
• Radica AS: 5/10 - Its the fire version of AS Ilulus conundrum: Her zone is already covered by an F2P unit, and while the AS is one of the best units in the game, the NS is one of the worst.
• AS Miyu / AS Toova: 9.5/10 - Now thats what I call a banner. AS Miyu has arguably the best offensive team-wide buff in the entire game (even if its only the best for units with the miglance castle personality), while being a potentially insane damage dealer, getting up to a 1600% modifier at 8 distinctive buffs (keep in mind, boosts from equipment and grasta count as buffs) and 0 MP (again, keep in mind that, during AF, you can stay on that 0 MP and still use your skills), and AS Toova becomes arguably the offensively second strongest staff wielder in the game, all while still buffing staff wielders, debuffing power and int of all enemies, and buffing her own speed with her skills.
• Ywera/AS Anabel: 9/10 - Of all the crystal characters, Ywera is probably the most offensively potent, being able to even outdamage AS Miyu during lunatic, potentially even by a lot (this is another character where it says '+xx% critical damage', in this case 50%, and I'm not sure if thats just extra percent to the damage multiplier if she crits, or if it means the move deals 1.5 damage when it crits), all while still coming with a crit rate and crit damage buff rolled into one skill. And well, AS Anabel is AS Anabel: Pretty wack outside of AF, a very strong beatstick in AF.
• Dunarith AS: 8/10 - I will admit that I very well might be biased here, but I don't see the appeal in AS Dunarith enough to give his banner anything higher than an 8. Yes, he is a solid support for magic zone, and he can inflict permanent poison, but thats kinda it. His damage is lackluster since he consumes his Taufe stacks (which he needs to power up his strongest skill) when they're fully stacked, and half his support won't be THAT good even on a magic zone team since the staff wielder damage buff will stack with diminishing returns with the end of turn buff of AS Rosetta. And NS Dunarith, while certainly still good, is far from unique in his ability to provide team-wide guaranteed crits by now.
• ES Melina: 8/10 - As hyped as I am for ES Melina, I'm hyped to upgrade her NS to her ES manually, I'm not hyped about trying to pull her. In a vacuum, this banner is alright: NS Melina has aged considerably but is still totally usable, and ES Melina is another unit I'd consider top 15 in the game. But when compared to some of the banners that will release shortly before and shortly after this one, it just isn't worth your stones unless you already pulled something from Yweras banner and you still want another usable addition to your water zone team.
• AS Shigure: 6.5/10 - AS Shigure is really good, being a potentially insane damage dealer (though you have to make sure you can do 7 (or at least 6) seperate attacks in one turn the turn before you AF with him, and... hell if I know how to do that on a water or a slash zone team), and being the first unit whose VC is both an attacking and zone-setting VC (and the zone is set BEFORE the attack triggers, meaning you get both the extra damage and extra AF building on that VC attack), but NS Shigure is just... like, not Ilulu or Radica bad, but still pretty damn bad.
• AS Tiramisu: 9.5/10 - We've reached the final banner currently released on the JP version, and its another banger. I think the gospel of NS Tiramisu has been sung enough on this sub that you all know how good she is, but sadly, we don't fully know how good her AS is yet because she only just released, and at least I wasn't able to find concrete damage multipliers for her new skills. However, we do know what her abilities do, and they're... good if a little specific (as she seems to be made to specifically support earth pierce units, even if she does also work for general earth units to a lesser degree). Regardless of that though, the fact alone that she FINALLY is the second earth zone setter in the game makes this a must pull for any F2P player that doesn't have Myunfa, because of how many really strong F2P earth units there are. And if you're in that boat but you don't wanna spend too many stones on her: As soon as you pull even just the 4.5 star version, you can call it a day and then make her your AS-upgrade goal.

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So, turns out I missed the new years banners that JP got. Last time JP got new years banners, we did eventually get them as well considerably later, but since we don't know when they'll come out for us, I'm gonna put their ratings down here at the bottom.
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• Blunt banner (ES Melina, AS Ewan, Yipha, Myunfa, Felmina): 10+/10 - Yeah I'm guessing its no suprise to anyone that these banners are REALLY good. And we're starting off with the best of the bunch: Except for Myunfa, these are literally the best characters for a blunt zone team in the game, and while putting Myunfa on a blunt team is redundant since her and Yipha cover basically the same ground, Myunfa is still the best earth zone setter even now that AS Tiramisu is a thing. And not to mention, AS Ewan can be put on any weapon zone team, making this banner shine even more compared to the other weapon zone-specific banners that follow. This is basically a perfect banner. However (and this goes for all 4 of these banners), while they have an increased featured rate at 5%, 1% for each featured unit, if the last new years banners are anything to go by, these banners work the same as the general weapon zone banner that comes out with AS Ewan: No other 5 star units are available on the banner, meaning the value quickly drops off the more units you already have on the banner.
• Slash banner (AS Ilulu, AS Miyu, Victor, AS Renri, AS Tsukiha): 9/10 - As you can probably tell, the main reason why this is 'only' a 9 is because slash is already an F2P zone, and also because there are a boatload of good F2P slash units already. Also, having either AS Renri or AS Tsukiha kind of disincentivises you to go for the other, since they have the same attack type and element, while filling the exact same role of a decent damage dealer that also guarantees crits for the team, the main difference being that Renri leans towards damage more while Tsukiha is a bit more of a support unit. So, pulling one of them makes pulling the other one not THAT great. Still obviously a fantastic banner though.
• Pierce banner (AS Foran, Ywera, Yukino, AS Hismena, AS Ciel): 10/10 - My only gripe with this banner is that I personally don't like AS Hismena a whole lot, but that doesn't mean this isn't easily a 10/10. Matter of fact, if this banner had featured another zone setter alongside AS Foran, like what the blunt and magic banners did, or if they had switched out AS Hismena for someone like Mistrare or Mirusha, this would have been another 10+, its that close.
• Magic banner (AS Rosetta, AS Dunarith, AS Radica, AS Myrus, AS Mighty): 9.5/10 - Sadly, WFS felt the need to put AS Mighty on this banner. don't get me wrong, he isn't terrible, but he just can't compete with all the other units featured on these 4 banners. Couple that with the fact that I think AS Dunarith is WAY overhyped by the tier list, and this would have been another 9. What made it a 9.5 is AS Radica: Yes, her zone is already covered by an F2P unit, but she is LEAGUES better as a zone setter compared to AS Gariyu (or Hardy, for that matter), her end of turn buff providing healing and MP recovery instead of just buffing her own fire attack and no one elses like Gariyu does, AND she is the first and so far only unit in the game that can provide guaranteed crits to both physical attacks and to magic, and I'm willing to bet my bottom dollar that that makes her one of the most future-proof units in the game.

Detective Axaxa wandered around the darkening streets before the lampposts turned on. Apparently, the fugitive was somewhere on this lazy back-water planet, hidden from any prying eyes. Except for all the eyes staring at her of course, off-worlders tended to stand out in a world like this. “Bloody fucking hellhole on a kebab-stick.” She told herself “Of all the planets in the galaxy the fucker had to choose the one run by criminals, smugglers and wannabe revolutionaries.” Moron probably thought she was one of them, maybe she’s just trying to play smart, but places like these would chew her up and spit her out unless she knew exactly what she was doing. Probably though, she picked the first unmarked planet and tried to escape to it on a rented starship because she forgot those things have tracking devices. The detective was told the planet to start investigating, but none of the background, someone wanted all this on the hush hush.
They only give Axaxa the vaguest of descriptions of the fugitive - only that a set of new implants had driven them insane. The only sure thing was that the person was greener than a baby on a roller coaster; the only reason they were alive was apparently the top-of-the-line tech implanted in her. When she heard the girl’s description, it sounded too good to be true, x10 speed, strength and x7 reflexes, insane augments, far better than her own. Though strangely, they never really said the girl’s species, only a description, which sounded iffy to the detective. Bipedal, tan skin, mammalian, all that, but no species name; that’s usually what any organisation start with, It’s almost as if they didn’t want her to find the girl… Whatever, she made sure she got paid a stupidly expensive rate by the hour. If they didn’t send her more info, she could just sit here a week and think nothing more of it… except for the fact that there was physically not enough money in the galaxy to get her to stay here for a single second longer than necessary – no, she would find the girl, even if she had to kidnap every 1.7 meter sentient female on the entire damned planet.
This planet itself was forgotten by every nation which gave a damn, run by small-town mobsters, a dangerous and faraway place for a psycho like this girl to get herself to. But if she truly had all those implants, at least they would not go fully to waste. Planet Torel was better left forgotten and unseen, a position she would gladly have left it as except that her fucking fugitive decided to squat here! The sooner she could find her, the sooner she would get paid, the sooner she got out. Win, win, win. The fucking hell-hole could throw itself into the Eccliarch’s anus for all she cared, and the girl could join it there for making her aware this place even existed.
The problem, as always, was finding this fugitive, she ditched the rented ship soon after landing, and then disappeared, there weren’t too many options for her to hide in, but this was still a planet. No central information network or internet either, just as a shithole of anarchy ought to be. She hacked the orbital defence platforms to kill any ship getting away from the place, that should keep the gangs and mafias occupied for a good few days. Good thing her patrons basically gave her a blank check to get the material she needed for this stuff. She would have to find the girl the old fashion way. The problem? She didn’t have a guide, she didn’t have a contact here, worse, she didn’t have any contacts who had contacts here, just goes to show how utterly bizarre the place was – it was like discovering a playboy who decided to become a priest, it just didn’t happen. She had one main advantage, apparently one of the implants had a tracker, which would signal to her when she got within 500 meters of this fugitive.
As the day turned to night, she decided she would do a basic search pattern of the town, just in case the simple-minded idiot decided to hide-out somewhere obvious. She had her sleep nullifiers on her, so she didn’t need to find a place to rest for at least a week. Most likely, she’d know just enough to not blindly believe that the mayor’s office was built on top of the local strip-club, though judging by the look of the place, that remained to be seen. But… to tell the truth, she wouldn’t mind beating a few small-time criminals for fun. Ohhh, maybe the relentless and amusing violence would make up for this whole mess in the first place.
It wasn’t long before she heard a noise behind her – about time. She turned around with augmented speed, ready to lash out at what was probably a petty thief figuring an off-worlder for easy pickings. A couple of kids screamed and ran away – just kids, probably planning to knife her and take whatever belongings she had, fucking morons. She turned around, and centimetres form her face, a dark figure stood. She immediately jumped back five meters with her augmented speed and drew her weapon, sweat dripping from her brow – no one. She scanned her surroundings – nothing. Must have been a trick of the light, it was impossible that anyone could sneak up on her like that, she had 360 degree infra-red, X-ray, ultra and infrasonic scanners. No one could simply just sneak up on her. She tentatively continued walking forwards, but with no other noise, she holstered her gun and started walking again.
“Hey ya, don’t point that at me, I get nervous with guns and stuff.” A voice from the shadows said. She froze again. What was he, a ghost? Ha! No! Obvious! A holographic emitter, someone decided to spook her using one, that’s why she didn’t read anything until right before the voice. Now, all the emissions existed, but those could all be faked. She turned around. The relatively short figure wore a fur-lined blue hoodie, which made it impossible to see his face, or even his species. Bipedal though, so that was something.
She almost rolled her eyes at her own jitteriness, but using holograms for a prank like this was new, would there be a couple of pickpockets around the corner waiting for their moment? “What?” she said impatiently.
The figure laughed, “That’s na way speak ta an old friend like me.” it extended its hand. Axaxa stared at it, what was it doing? “What, they don’t know what a hand-shake is on yar world?”
Axaxa stared at the figure. “You’re a hologram, don’t even try to deny it.”
The figure stared at her, then laughed “Ahhh almost had ya didn’t I... Detective Axaxa, right?” he retreated his hand twirled it around like a moron and grinned like an idiot, white square teeth shining from the shadow. “Well,” he shrugged and walked past her, both his hands tucked into his pockets. “Detective Axaxa right?” She tried to say something but the figure in the blue hoodie talked over her. “I know about ya, and I know about yar op. Ya were hired to track that crazy lady who came a couple of days ago, right? But I’m better at finding people than y’are…” he turned towards her with his smile, “whaddaya say, I take ya to her, ya bring her in, I take 25%, ya take the rest, ya get off this rock, I get off on whatever. Deal?”
She couldn’t quite believe the character of this guy “Let me see your face and know your name first.” Axaxa folded her arms and leaned against a wall.
“As ya wish milaidy.” The figure pulled down his hoodie, somehow without using his hands, his broad grin still plastered on his face. His face, almost white, tuft of pure white hair, blue eyes… obviously human. What was a backwater race from the other end of the galaxy doing here? “Call me Dante, ya don’t really wanna know more, and I know all about ya. Sa let’s just get to the girl before she decides to make the reactor go nuclear or some small thing like it, kapishe?”
She rolled her eyes, then followed the primitive. They didn’t walk for long before her questions started to pile up, finally, she indulged herself “What the hell is a human doing here? It’s not like anyone else could do the job just as well.”
Dante kept grinning then glanced at her, “Like ya?” She huffed, “Na offense ma’am, but some things require some… special… talons…” He stared at her legs, which were indeed… talons… She almost punched his stupid grin then and there, but she remembered that this was just a hologram, and he’d laugh at her for it. She’d rather open a strip-club under the Mayor’s palace on this planet than be subjected to that. “Anyways, I’m just here on some business, which ya don’t care about, with some people ya don’t care about, and they want ya ta get the lady, so I want ya ta get the lady. Simple nah?”
Axaxa looked back at him, what was the human even talking about now? “Are we getting close? Or are you only pretending not to waste my time.”
He kept talking through his grin. “Should be almost within range for ya ta detect her.” He hesitated, “Just sa ya know, I’m the guide, I’m not getting involved in your fight unless I absolutely have ta. Sa take care, na whoospies, else it gets a bit serious. Babe’s got some gear under her hood if ya know what I mean. Got it?”
If he was this useless, he should just wipe the grin off his face, plaster it on a billboard instead, maybe then other people could be as miserable as she felt, he’d probably become a billionaire from everyone who would pay him to get to wipe it off the billboards. She looked back at her readings, 500 meters. There it was, finally, one simple job and she could finally get off this stupid rock.
***
It didn’t take long to get to the empty warehouse, the ugly barely lit rectangular shape contrasted in front of the night sky. Axaxa entered without making any special effort to be discrete, confident that she was more than able to handle whatever was going to happen.
Whimpering, or was it sobbing, came out from the far wall of the mostly empty warehouse. It only had a few steel pillars and some piles of boxes with white sheets over them. The sounds came from behind one of them. She smiled and looked at her protocols again – capture, do not kill. Augmented and extremely dangerous. The detective smiled; this would be a good fight.
She oriented herself towards the noise, her implants giving her an almost pinpoint location. She unholstered her gun and telepathically commanded it to load an electric net, she aimed above the box, the net was guided towards its target and would likely cause a surge throughout the implants, immobilising it. Smash and grab, like she liked it.
She aimed and fired the single shot, the bullet arched over the boxes then fired thrusters and dove towards the target. The net expanded to cover the entire area in charged electrical wires. The figure who had just been crouched and crying a few minutes before instinctively jumped out of the boxes and stared at Axaxa with crazed eyes. Crazed human eyes, to be exact – what was it with her and these humans today?
The human let out a screech and sprinted towards her from 60 meters away, she was fast. Axaxa managed to shoot her in the head 12 times with her EMP bullets but it obviously had some sort of surge-protector or energy shield. Damn all this and their mother. She jumped out of the human’s path as she barrelled past her for another 20 meters as she broke through the back steel wall, making a hole in it as if it were made from jello. Axaxa creaked her arms, that would have hurt.
The human turned around, looking manically at the detective, she showed obvious signs of psychosis. Probably some runaway program that gradually took over parts of her psyche, always an issue with experimental tech. Likely her pain-receptors were malfunctioning, hence why she refused to stay down after EMP shots. Axaxa took out another gun she kept holstered on her left side, one filled with lethal ammunition, it would take more than non-lethal bullets to take this one down. The human stared at her, then jumped a dozen meters into the air towards her – perfect.
Axaxa calculated her trajectory and fired three high-explosive rounds towards her. Two shot wide as the human showed surprising manoeuvrability mid-air, but the third one hit true. Sending her flying back towards the ceiling. In a fluid movement, the human oriented her legs towards the ceiling and bounced off on another vector with enough strength to cause the whole structure to buckle. Axaxa wouldn’t let her escape. She jumped onto the crates and tracked the human and fired three homing HE rounds towards her. By some method the human grabbed a pillar with a single arm and swung back towards her like an acrobat, the missiles exploding harmlessly behind her, and the human flying not so harmlessly towards the detective. Axaxa had just the time to throw down one of her portable shields – that bounced the human off, sending it flying of towards some crates again. She only had one more of those, she had to be careful, this human wasn’t to be under-estimated, if she was completely honest, this could end very badly for her, feeling nervous for the first time in a long time. She could get into some very serious problems if that human caught her in grappling range.
The human’s face changed, from crazed – to almost dead. At least she got the human to recognise her as enough of a danger to active the combat mode of the implants, she thought. The human glanced towards her, then ran at her hap-hazardly, causing her targeting computer to go crazy. No matter, Axaxa jumped backwards onto a heap of crates, unloading two more nets in front of her to restrict the human’s movement.
The human somersaulted over them, just as expected, she unloaded a full clip of 12 HE missiles on her. The human evaded most of them, but two hit her left shoulder, causing visible damage. No… she had lured three missiles to her left side, she caught one of the missiles without it exploding and hurled it back towards Axaxa. The detective jumped out of the way of the explosion; she was blinded for 1.2 seconds. In that time, the human bounced off the ground where Axaxa had stood and barrelled towards her, her right fist connecting with the detective’s stomach, barrelling the detective four meters into the air with definite internal bleeding. Before she could get back onto the ground, the human jumped after her and punched her again mid-air. This time, Axaxa had the presence to lock her arms together and deflect the blow, it sent her flying towards a pillar, that would at least make some distance between them.
Axaxa’s medical implants were quickly healing her injuries, but they needed a minute; she probably couldn’t take too many more of those punches. Just how many implants did this girl receive damn it? The human girl sprinted towards her. No time to think, she lost her guns, time to get serious – they weren’t that effective anyways. Axaxa spread her arms and legs, she hated using this mode, but this moment called for it. Her shirt and trousers ripped as meter-long blades came out of her fore-arms, and jump-springs came out of her talons. As the human barrelled towards her again, Axaxa jumped away from the human with ease using her new-found agility and sliced open the human’s back, splashing red hot blood onto her blade.
She should be careful, though this mode had serious benefits to agility and attacking ability, it seriously weakened her arms and legs. One hit from the girl there could break them off. The human chuckled as she stretched her arms around their full range of motion, damn that range of motion, was the girl an acrobat or something? That cut barely seemed to phase her. No, if Axaxa was getting her bagged, she needed to go on the offensive. This time the detective took off at a sprint towards the human, almost as fast as the human herself. The human glanced in surprise as she saw her covering a dozen meters in less than two seconds. Axaxa swung her left blade towards the girl, she arched herself backwards almost 90 degrees then spun around and kicked the detective in the ribs, sending the detective flying towards the nearest wall.
Two more ribs broken. But there was no time to heal this time, no time to activate that shield either. The girl had followed the detective and used a single kick to crush the detective’s right arm. As Axaxa screamed in pain, the human grabbed the detective’s left shin and almost completely crushed it, the detective was just barely able to find a round of armor-piercing ammo in her pocket. She grabbed it with her remaining hand and slammed it against the human’s neck. The self-propelled uranium shell piercing her skin and pushing the human into the ground. Axaxa could now barely walk, she put her weight on her right leg and jumped towards the exit. She had only bounded twice when she saw the human get back up – what exactly was in that thing? Was it even biological at this point? Axaxa knew she couldn’t fight it, her only chance was to run, but the human took a rock, a simple rock, and threw it straight at the detective’s head, sending her crashing towards the ground.
The girl advanced towards her slowly. Axaxa closed her eyes, unless… unless she thought of a way out, this would be it, a cold fear froze her spine as she looked at the human slowly making her way towards her. The girl’s own medical implants repairing her damage, whereas the detectives’ were still struggling with the first fractures. She tried to crawl away, but the human threw a rod, impaling the detective through her stomach where she laid. Now, she started to tremble in fear, was this it? On a forgotten world in the middle of the ass end of space? Fuck.
“Hey ya.” A familiar voice resounded in her head. “looks like ya need a bit of help.” Dante! That damned fool.
“If you’re going to do something to distract her, you’d better do it NOW!” She screamed.
“Oh I will,” he said in a falsely jovial tone. “but don’t ya say I didn’t warn ya that this was a toughie.” Idiot, of course he didn’t. He appeared behind the human girl, “Oi, you!” He screamed out, his hands still in his hoodie’s pockets. The girl looked around towards him. “Why don’t ya pick on someone yar own species?”
The girl lunged towards him with even greater speed than she fought Axaxa, covering the 60 meters in less than two seconds. He disappeared into thin air, as he always did, and reappeared 20 meters away. She jumped towards him again, but he didn’t disappear this time, he somersaulted over her and landed perfectly on a single leg, facing the girl, on some crates behind her – releasing a cloud of dust as he lazily kicked up some dust. In that moment, Axaxa froze with a terror she had never felt before, not even a few moments ago. This was the moment when she realised – he wasn’t a hologram.
Dante smiled, but this wasn’t his innocent smile from before, this was a cruel smile, a manic smile. Gods did every human have one of those smiles? The girl swung at him again but he ducked under and over her several times, always faster – no not just faster; he made the girl look like an 200 year-old trying to fight with a professional soldier in their prime, he was making a game of it. Finally, he had enough and seemingly simply lifted his leg and sent the girl careening towards a pillar. He stretched his neck, then looked lazily back down at the girl.
The girl looked angry, but this time she didn’t charge him, she waited to see what he would do. He just laughed, “Ha! You’re finally afraid to fight someone from your own species now?” The girl sniffed like an animal. For an instant, Dante looked sad, “for what it’s worth I’m sorry… It shouldn’t have happened; you don’t deserve it.” The girl sniffed at him again, his evil smile returned, and he just shrugged. “But anyways, it’s always fun dancing with you, even like this.” His face grew pale, and serious, his eyes lost all their colour, colour seemingly draining from all around him as if he emitted darkness. “But now it’s time for you to come back home, Lara.” She lunged at him and he yet again teleported behind another pillar.
The girl charged him again – but his left hand was finally outside his pocket, his palm open, towards her. She ran towards him, and his left eye… shone blue. Blue smoke errupting from it… his toothy smile plastered on his face as his breath also released the brilliant smoke.
There a flash of light from his palm, the girl was pulled upwards by an immense force, crashing her towards the ceiling, almost collapsing the whole warehouse. He pulled his fist down and seemingly flung her to the ground almost instantly. Dante made a single flick of his wrist, glowing blue smoke broke out from the ground and formed as large metal chains around the girl’s arms and legs, completely immobilising her. He touched his hand to the ground and Axaxa saw the electricity arc through some unknown path through the ground and electrocuted the human. After a short scream, she fell unconscious. Just like that. Dante stared at Axaxa, with that one blue eye and that same toothy grin. The detective somehow felt more afraid now than when she thought she was about to die. “Sorry ‘bout that, weren’t exactly supposed ta see that but Lara here kinda went overboard. Sa I’ll say sorry for this too.” He snapped his fingers, light emanating from them, and she felt herself hurled into a deep sleep.
***
She woke up on her ship, in space, with a suitcase filled with money. What… just happened… her ribs felt fine, she even looked at her arms, they were both just fine, though apparently, her shirt did change.
She got out of her seat and looked through the ship’s logs – everything from the last three days were deleted, all except for one document, a video. She opened it.
“Hey ya!” the familiar voice of Dante spoke, with his infamous grin and his hoodie. “Well, I know you got back safe. For what it’s worth, sorry about the mess with Lara. There’s always a much greater chance of psychosis when you downgrade a person’s implants. You know how it is…” Axaxa sighed, what was it with these humans, did they all have implants like those? Those would have been top of the line, until she saw whatever Dante had of course “Anyways, ya know I can’t say much. But ya impressed me with yar skills anyways. So paid ya in full times two for ya trouble.” She glanced over at the suitcase, it was indeed very full. “Anyways, I’d much appreciate it if ya didn’t mention that humans were involved in any of this, otherwise it’s your next of kin who’s gonna be enjoying that cash.” She chuckled, fucking Dante. Only he could make a threat seem both serious and half-hearted at the same time. “Sa job’s done. We’ve written ya a cover story to put on yar resume if ya really want to talk about it.”
Just as she was about to click off, he continued “By the way. I was actually impressed by your fight, Lara wasn’t supposed to be able to use more than 10% of her cap, ya stood up to her right up until she went to 30. So, if you like the cash in that suitcase, we could make use of a few detectives like you. Once you wake up, just send a 136.7 Mega hertz microwave signal and I’ll know you’ll be up for more. Whatddaya say, ready for round 2 and a truckload more cash?”
Axaxa closed her eyes, grinning. Humans, they didn’t want humans involved in this. The resources, the breadth of the operation, the hush hush. This wasn’t a random corp, this didn’t feel like a corp. No… she was ready to bet her ship that these guys were somehow involved with the human government – somehow. And humans, that faraway backwater race on the other end of the galaxy, here, with powers beyond imagining. She actually laughed at the absurdity of it all. Yes she almost died, but anyone had to admit, it was rather interesting. She pressed the button to emit the microwave frequency.
An incoming transmission immediately played on her ship, Dante again, “Glad you decided to stay, ready for a small trip to a regional media office run by a corrupt politician?”
She shrugged, “It’s more fun with you guys around anyways. But ya’ll are paying me double.”
Dante looked off into the distance, “1.5, sounds good?”
“Deal,” Axaxa said, “where’re we heading?”

Firstly, just want to start off by saying a big thank you to everyone who submitted great questions, but most of all, the hugest thank you in the world to u/Darian_CoC (100% the best community manager ever) for sitting down and grinding through hundreds of your questions over about 3 hours.
Due to the sheer amount of questions, putting them all here exceeds reddit's character limit, so I have put the full compilation of questions in this document here. You'll probably find a few more of the fun, personal or quirky questions are in the document, with more Clash related stuff on this post.
A load of interesting stuff was discussed, including future updates and plans for Clash in the coming year, so lots of great stuff to have a read through! We have compiled all the questions and answers into this post here for your enjoyment, and we hope you come out of this post knowing a lot more than you did previously! So without further ado, here we go:
u/non-reddituser:

1. Is there plans to bring in a new recruitment system or is sc still trying to better it?
2. Any plans to reduce cost/upgrade time? For me at least 2-3 weeks for upgrades is getting slightly excessive and going further than that. I can’t imagine many players will be very excited to grind it out. Especially casual players.
3. Currently, Do you think the game is balanced ? I’ve heard quite a lot of complaints saying th13 is too easy.
4. Any plans to add family clans features ? Like a way to add other clans to chat, white list/ black list players etc.
5. Has a complete remake/ sequel to clash of clans ever been considered?
6. Is sc more focused on bringing more tasks, events and in general things to do during the game or are they more focused on bringing new content like troops ,spells ,defences etc?
7. Are you able to provide any details on what the priorities are/what is being worked on for 2021
8. How is the cost/ sell price of magic items determined?
9. Is there a reason as to why all the hammers cost 120 medals ,but the hero hammer is 165 and the opposite happens for books? All the books are 925 gems, but the hero book is set at 500 gems.

Answer:

1. Regarding the Recruitment Tool, I'll have to repeat something I said a while back .First, the tool isn't developed by the Clash team. I don't say that to try and wipe our hands of any obligation to it, but it genuinely is something the Clash team has little control over. However, with that said, regardless of who the tool is made by we have tried communicating with the community about its features, and even its shortcomings. But because of the nature of social media, online posts, etc. much of that gets lost hours after it's been posted. One of the things we've repeatedly stated is that the Recruitment Tool suffers not from a lack of functionality but from a lack of transparency. The Recruitment Tool actually does a lot of the things behind the scenes that players feel there is a lack of control over. And because they don't see how those work, it can feel like it doesn't work like they expect it to. I'm not saying it's perfect - far from it. We know it could use some improvement, but the biggest area it could be improved on is helping people understand exactly how it works so people are a bit more confident in the searches it pulls up, or at least understand why it gets those results.
2. As we add more content higher up (TH14, TH15, and beyond) we keep a very close watch on how long it takes for players to start from scratch and climb to max. We try to keep the ranges relatively similar so I would say it's a fair bet we'll adjust the upgrade times and costs in the future. In fact, that is a regular facet of the game that can be expected every so often. I can't say if it'll be once a year, or once every new TH level, but refactoring and rebalancing the costs and time are a regular part of that strategy.
3. The game will never be 100% perfectly balanced. It's just impossible. There are simply too many moving parts, too much randomness, and too many variables to consider. We try to balance the game the best we can, based on player data as well as feedback from the community. But adding more content will always shift the balance in one direction or another. Sometimes it may skew towards offense, and sometimes more towards defence. When we see the game shifting like that, we start looking at how we can balance the game to bring it back more towards the centre. With that said, we try to balance the game more towards being offense-friendly. Now, before you get out your pitchforks and protest we're making it too easy, what I mean by this is that we try to make the game as rewarding as possible while still keeping it challenging. If defence was always OP, then the win rates would plummet. If you're unable to win, this is incredibly frustrating as a player and would cause players to leave the game. That's not a good thing. Like any other asymmetrical multiplayer game, you almost always tend to win more often than you lose. We try to maintain a degree of balance slightly leaning towards offense.
4. A Clan Alliance/Family feature has been on our wish list for quite a few years. We simply haven't sat down to truly discuss what we want that feature to be. When we work on a new update, we have to prioritize what new features we're implementing and any additional content must thematically feel appropriate or can be fit in resource-wise (meaning time). Creating a Clan alliance feature should be more than just being able to cross chat and donate troops. That alone isn't worth reprogramming the multiplayer functionality of the game. An alliance system has to be meaningful in order to be something the players enjoy. But what that is, we still have yet to decide.
5. No. Why create a sequel when we can just keep adding new content to the current game without creating a brand new one? What would the goal of a sequel be? As long as Clash of Clans is live, creating a sequel would cannibalize players from one game to the other. That is not a viable way of game development. Additionally, let's say you've been playing Clash for 8 years now. Now let's say we release Clash of Clans 2. If all this game is is just a prettier version of Clash, you'll be less likely to invest the same amount of time as you did the first one. So you quit Clash 2 but the likelihood of you going back to Clash 1 will be reduced. Also, let's say not all of your friends are willing to play the new one. So now that your friends aren't playing, you're more likely to quit because of split loyalties between the games.The best thing we can do is keep improving Clash so you're not forced to choose between which ones you want to play,
6. I'd say it's all of the above, depending on the needs of the game. Content will always be the primary driver for Clash of Clans. It's where we see spikes in players returning, players being more active, etc. But in between content releases, it's good to give players more activities to do.
7. Lots and lots of new content for 2021. Lots. And it is badass.
8. I had an answer for this and I cannot for the life of me remember what it is. Unfortunately our Live Ops guy has left for the evening so I can't cross check with him. I'll try to ask him tomorrow and I'll post a reply here.
9. One big reason with the cost discrepancy is due to the resources you spend to upgrade those units. The cost to upgrade a Hero uses Dark Elixir which is a much more premium resource to farm/earn compared to Gold or Elixir. It's far easier to earn Gold and Elixir for upgrading Buildings/Troops. So the cost for the Book of Heroes is to help offset that. Whereas, because it's easier to earn Gold & Elixir, the other Books are more expensive. With the Hammers, the Hammer of Heroes is more expensive because you don't need to farm the DE for it.

u/ClashDotNinja:

• Are you able to share any details on ideas/concepts that were designed and/or tested within the team that were then scrapped?

Answer: The Elixir Monster was a troop concept we prototyped during the development of TH12. The Elixir Monster was a troop that gained strength and size as it destroyed things. Similar to the Lumberjack, it would drop a Rage Spell after it was killed. In the end, the mechanic was really cool but way too complex for the average player. Additionally, because the unit required to make the kill attack in order to earn it's level up, with so many other troops attacking it actually rarely made a kill so it didn't morph? Mutate? Evolve? as fast as we thought it would. So it's a troop we might save for a rainy day and tweak it a bit to see if we can get it to balance correctly.
u/Drin_CoC:

1. Is the maximum Experience level, which currently is level 500, gonna be increased any time soon?
2. If there'll be more than 100 buildings after TH14 update, how will % be calculated? What about bases that have the 6th builder compared to the bases that don't?

Answer:

1. We might address it in the future, but I wouldn't expect any changes to it in the next couple updates. Apart from vanity purposes it doesn't really do much else so it's not a major priority for us.
2. We won't hit the 100 building limit just yet so we still have some wiggle room left to go before we start needing to worry about it. But it is something we are worried about for when we finally do hit that limit. We haven't found a solution to how we want to address it, but it is something that comes up every time we start working on new content.

u/LordPeter212:

1. What is the status of World’s 2021? The entire competitive community has been eagerly waiting for news about this. We need time to plan and prepare, and if it’s not happening we deserve to know.
2. Are there any plans to include any in game e-sports tournaments other than ESL?

Answer:

1. We are still working on the Worlds stuff and we're inching closer to announcing the 2021 season. We've made a few changes so we're still putting the final polish on those details. But we will announce the 2021 Worlds when we're ready.
2. There are tons of community-run events around the globe. We simply can't add them all in-game.

u/LadyB_clash:

• Will we ever get a rewind button for replays? 😯 not sure if it’s possible but it would be a small but incredible QoL improvement for many. 😁

Answer: The challenge with this is that replays are not stored as videos. So you're not actually watching an actual "replay" of the match. The game stores your screen taps that you performed when you played your game. So when you watch a replay, you are actually watching a live version of the game where the AI is simply reproducing the same screen taps. Because the pathing algorithm and AI functions the exact same way, the system can recreate the same conclusion of the game every time.
So because you're watching the AI play the game using your screen taps, it can only go forward.
u/Soft-Decision5935:

• Hi Darian! I’ve started 3 mini accounts and I’ve made one big observation: the beginning is by far the worst, slowest section of the game. The rest of the game is fun and it’s a great grind, but those opening 3-or-so days would be very unappealing to newer players who don’t know much about the rest of the game yet. Even for me, I absolutely hate those first few days. While I understand CoC is a game meant for people to grind out, I think something needs to be done to attract newer players. Have you considered fixing this/ is there a reason you haven’t yet?

Answer: This is actually a topic of discussion we're looking at; how to make the lower TH's more engaging and less grindy to make the progression to higher levels more enticing. So we totally understand where you're coming from. It's something we hope we can address in an update this year.
u/OverSizedHamster:

• Hi Darian! Would you consider Clash of Clans a good representation of mobile gaming? Has its impact matched up to other notable titles on PC and console? Is it Smash Ultimate worthy?

Answer: Every so often, a game will become a cultural icon of the platform it's released on. For consoles that would be the Mario franchise. For MMORPG's, that would be World of Warcraft. For mobile, that's Clash of Clans. What I mean by cultural icon, is that it's a game that has lasted far longer than most others due to the sheer number of people that play it and the popular success it has had because of it.
Clash has been out for almost 9 years now. On any game platform that is almost unheard of apart from those other games that are cultural icons themselves.
I'm not sure what you mean by "good representation". But I will say this: The Clash community is possibly one of the best gaming communities. Period. It's one of the least toxic, most supportive, and fun communities I've ever had the privilege of working with.
u/301023459:

1. Would it be possible to have custom CC's for friendly challenges implemented into the game? To further explain what I mean, lets say I have my normal raid army set up with the cc troops I would usually take. However I want to practice new armies in friendly challenges but every time I do that, I have to dump old troops and request for new troops but those in my clan who have the troops I need for my friendly challenge army aren't always online. So a feature where I could customize my own cc troops for a friendly army is what I'm getting at.

Answer:

1. The Friendly Challenge is an interesting facet of the game that was introduced much later in the game's development history. So the functionality of it is wholly based on how the rest of the game functions with regards to troop donations, troop deployment, etc. Creating a unique set of functions for this feature is something the team sees as a priority at the moment. However, that priority could change when we start to look at what QoL changes we want to implement in future updates. Many of the changes implemented into the FC/FW features were based on QoL requests from the community so I wouldn't say it's a ruled out idea. Just not something on the production schedule at the moment.

u/purk8:

• When are we getting BH10. Lot of people who are more competitive on B-base, but aren’t playing much because it’s the same old thing every season. We’re all feeling kinda forgotten about ☹️

Answer: It's rather interesting that whenever we released new BH content, there was general disdain that we were allocating development resources to it. But now there is a lot of clamouring for when the next BH level will be. :-) We don't have any solid plans for BH10 yet, but we have discussed it on occasion. We're reluctant to simply just do a new level as we're still trying to decide where we want to take the Builder Base feature. We don't want to keep adding features that are already available to the Main Village; otherwise why not just keep developing the Main Village?
u/El3veN_:

• You said you had a meeting planned about the API, do we have any news regarding the API, your vision on it, whats your plans for it, etc?

Answer: I am not a programmer so I would hate to misrepresent something I know little about. You'll have to forgive my lack of correct vocabulary. There has been some API discussion recently to make certain data more accessible, though what those data are I can't say simply because I didn't understand how that process works. But I can say there has been some movement in the API discussion on the team.
u/Hellrazor:

1. Has an increase to the 30s scout time in legend league been considered along with viewable building radiuses? This was brought up partly last year in one of the TH hour videos where Eino admitted that as new TH levels were released the allotted 30s planning time becomes more & more restrictive the more there is to consider when planning an attack. IMO increasing the time to 45s / 1min in legend league would combat this whilst also separating it from lower leagues.
2. Are there any plans to restructure the Legend League system i.e rewards / ladder / ranks? The gems rewarded to the top 20 players in the top 3 clans is long outdated & legend trophies don’t have much use besides a visual standpoint. The day to day ladder system could also be taken further - something akin to a weekly system for example whereby your standings at the end of the week determine your placement for the next whilst still maintaining a monthly season would be less stale & more meaningful imo. Additionally ranks / badges could also be included within legend league to further develop the ranking system & possibly tie in to a rewards system somehow.
3. How does the Eagle Artilleries target prioritisation work? According to the wiki: The Eagle Artillery targets according to a "heat map" or "hitpoint map". In other words, it targets the area with the largest density of hitpoints. However this doesn’t seem to apply most noticeably during a queen charge / walk. 5 healers for example have a greater combined HP than a maxed queen yet 9/10 the eagle will target the queen so I suspect there’s more going on here. Whilst targeting the queen over your healers is far more favourable for the attacker it can be incredibly frustrating when the opposite occurs. As far as I can tell the logic currently appears to operate under RNG although I hope & suspect I’m wrong. Perhaps someone from the dev team could elaborate on this?

Answer:

1. While it had been discussed, at this time the team feels there's no need for it.
2. While the LL system could certainly use some new polishing and some shiny chrome, there hasn't been anything internally proposed that has made us say, "YES! That's what it needs!"
3. There is no RNG in how the AI targets units or paths towards a target. Every target is calculated based on the rules programmed into the algorithm. For the Eagle Artillery, yes population density does factor in. In your particular example, it could be that the Archer Queen had taken damage, where the collection of Healers now collectively had more HP resulting in a more desirable target before the AQ was fully healed again. I would need to see a specific replay of any instance before making a definitive call on what you're seeing.

u/non-reddituser:

1. In an interview with galadon around 11 months ago you said “ Part of it is as we see a lot of activity of a lot of players returning a lot of them are coming back to their old clans” In response to why sc hasn’t added a clan name change. Has this changed, Is there a still a high amount of players returning? If not is sc planning or at least considering adding it?
2. In the same interview with galadon he pitched you an separate section in the shop were you buy obstacles with legend league trophies. At the end of your answer you said” but, I think it’s an idea that does have some merit and all I can do is to present it to the team” did you present to the team and is there possibility we could see this any time soon?
3. As my final question I’d like to as you if you could explain the choice of sc censoring the whole clans chat when a kids account join?

Answer:

1. Clan name changes are still a ruled out idea for now, for the same reason. Additionally, changing your player name is one thing. That's personal to you. Changing a Clan name is something that affects the entire Clan. While sure, many Clans would be ok with the name change but what happens when members don't like the name that it's changed to? If that original Clan name had sentimental value, and someone changes it, that would feel really crappy for those who liked the original Clan name. So rather than try to come up with rules and edge cases for it, and introduce possibly more unnecessary complexity, it's simpler to prohibit for now.
2. Nothing has come out of that discussion apart from the idea being presented.
3. The rules for this only applies to new underage accounts created in the US. The reason for this is for compliance with new online regulations that are required for certain kinds of games. We have no control over those regulations.

u/thisisathrowawayCoC:

1. Does the barrel shaped building where you boost super troops have a name? If not, then what did the dev team call it?
2. Do you guys plan on adding more achievements?
3. Will there be more single player campaign levels as part of the next update or th14?
4. There has been an insane amount of rumours and ideas as to water based troops or gameplay. Is the dev team even considering something among those lines?

Answer:

1. It's called the Super Sauna. The image of the modern sauna is a Finnish invention, and since we're based out of Finland, it seemed like a nice cultural touch to the game.
2. Yes!
3. We really liked the Winter Challenge map and plan on doing more things like that in the future. However, we'd like players to remember that Clash is a multiplayer game and designed around that idea. Adding more single player content, while fun, minimizes that multiplayer aspect so it's not a primary focus of ours.
4. Water based troops? First time I've heard this rumour. Considering the map is based on land, a water troop would be a bit like...a fish out of water? In other words, I wouldn't listen to rumours.

u/HarrBathtub:

• What was the “big thing” that was meant to be released in the winter?

Answer: We have a super cool feature we're steadily working on. We're not ready to share what that is just yet, but we're hoping we can reveal and release it this year.
u/Quna_chan:

• Can we expect a goblin map maker where community can make goblin maps and clash team can check them and add it to the game.

Answer: This sounds like a good idea, but moderating all the entries that would come in would require it to be a full time job in itself. Checking to make sure the map isn't broken, or doesn't have inappropriate content, or doesn't cause any problems. It's not a matter of just pulling it up on the screen and say "ok there are no middle fingers hidden in the images so it's good to go." It would require playtesting, feedback, etc.
u/Pero_Plays:

1. Would you consider going to a 24-month instead of a proposed 18-month cycle of new TH levels to sync with World Championships better?
2. Could we get a double deployment bar on phones?

Answer:

1. 24 months of no new TH content is simply too long. We're really happy with the pace we've been releasing new TH levels. One of the things we have to look at when spacing out the content is how long before maxed players start to get bored and stop playing. New content is always the biggest driver of player activity, and the longer you draw out not having new content results in players becoming more likely to leave the game. The World Championship is an exciting and cool facet of Clash, but it's not the main one and only a very small number of players will ever compete in the Championships. That small percentage of players cannot dictate the pace of content progress.
2. We tried looking at this but the UI became so small that it was super inconvenient to use, even with a stylus.

u/feareddakota:

• Hey Darian, I’m not sure if this question was asked before but do you think it would pose a significant challenge for your team considering what a new a Town Hall would be due to the weaponization of Town Halls 12 and 13?

Answer: Coming up with new and unique content will always be the challenge as we create new features. It came up when we were working on TH13, and is in discussion as we work towards TH14. And it will likely come up again as we work on TH15 and beyond. Making sure something is cool and unique is always a fun challenge, but we shouldn't make something JUST because it's unique. It has to also be fun and exciting.
u/LowScrow_Tom:

1. Will we ever have a troop, or Super Troop, with the capability of switching from Ground to Air? (I think Ice Golem/ Ice Hound could've utilized this feature.)
2. Without the ability to add new buildings due to percent damages, could you have a "Gear Up" feature at TH14 which would combine all Builder Huts and /or Barracks to 1 main building, which must be upgraded FIRST before being able to purchase new TH14 Defences?. (Multiple problems solved)

Answer:

1. This is something that has been considered, like making a "Fallen Angel" Healer who is a ground troop but heals air units. This is just an idea and not something being worked on, before everyone starts saying it's confirmed. Changing a unit from air to ground or vice versa is actually pretty complicated because the pathing for ground units is different than air units as is the logic algorithm. So it's not just a matter of allowing it to swap places. But I wouldn't be surprised if we introduce a Super Troop that does do this.
2. We've contemplated the building fusion idea in the past and we're not convinced that is a good solution.

u/Alpii69:

• Hello Darian! Is there any Chance we can get second abilities for Heroes? You can either choose the first or the second for a attack? For example the Barbarian King gets stationary and is immune to all damage for 5 seconds. Queens shoots faster and her shots pierce through buildings for x amount of second. The Royal Champion deflects damage for x amount of seconds. Warden heals troops over time

Answer: We had considered this idea and while it's cool, it doesn't offer quite the flexibility and variability players are looking for in a feature like this. We would want a feature like this to feel like players are able to customize their experiences. A second ability doesn't really do that as players would just choose a favourite one, then set and forget. We think there is a better way to offer that kind of customization. Additionally, balancing new abilities would be super challenging compared to new troops or new spells.
u/Immabeloverof15june:

1. Any plans on player made maps as single player map?
2. Any plans on mega base type mode?
3. What are big features which aside from new troops, buildings, townhall levels?
4. What are your plans on bringing more social features to the game?

Answer:

1. Player made maps are never a good idea, though they sound neat on paper. We'd need some kind of moderation process to remove inappropriate submissions, and given there'd be thousands upon thousands of entries, it would require full time moderation.
2. We see this request a lot. Again, on paper it sounds really cool. But what would the overall goal be? What would the benefits be to the Clan? There are a ton of logistics you'd have to look at. Like who would be the caretaker of such a mega base? The leader? What if the leader left or stopped playing? Co-leaders? What if they disagree with how the mega base should be laid out? Would Elders and Members have access to editing the mega base?
3. We've got something pretty big planned this year (fingers crossed we can finish it in time). We'll announce it when it's ready. And it's a doozy.
4. It entirely depends on what social features players want (features that aren't Global Chat or similar function).

u/sportsguy3: Could you give us some examples of new charactetroops/heroes/ideas that were very close to making it into the game but eventually didn't make the cut?
Answer: When we work on new TH content, we try to prototype new troop ideas. When we were working on TH12, we had several troops we had tested out before we finally settled on the Yeti. One of the troop ideas was a Goblin Glider. It was basically Goblins that flew in on little gliders and dropped down to attack resource storages and collectors. If I remember correctly, the Goblin Glider eventually inspired the Builder Base Hog Glider unit since we liked the glider function. But the Goblin Glider felt a bit TOO spammy.
u/NikplaysgamesYT:

1. Do you guys have plans regarding banning accounts? I see so many times players are perma banned for “account sharing” or “account stealing” when nothing like that ever happened. Even someone in my clan was perma banned, and I see posts on Reddit all the time about this. Do you have plans to change the process of being banned or the criteria to avoid these situations?
2. What is your opinion regarding queen walks after indirectly nerfing them so hard? This year, you guys added headhunters and super minions, both of which destroy queen walks if your not careful. Did you guys think they were OP before this update, and do you think they’re still OP now?
3. Do you believe that the game has done a good job balancing progression? For townhall 10, IMO you guys did a perfect job, I finished my hero’s, walls, and defences at almost the same time (got screwed up since at that time there was the event where everything was half off. But for th11, I am currently almost max, just working on my last lab upgrades and walls, but I’ve been full on dark elixir for the past 3 months. Do you think progression overall is super balanced and any plans to change it?

Answer:

1. In the near-4 years I've been at Supercell, I've had hundreds of requests from players to investigate their account ban. Out of those hundreds, I can count on a single hand how many of them were incorrectly banned due to agent error. A single hand. Time and time again such threads rarely ever reveal any kind of loopholes or weaknesses in the support recovery process and more often than not highlight how players treat their account security by engaging in behaviour that violates our Terms of Service policies. Almost every single one of those players underestimate just how accurately we can investigate an account issue. Many of them start off with a friend who let another friend do their War attacks, but most of the banned accounts have shown very suspicious activity of account sharing, buying, etc.How do these accounts get phished? It's simply because most people don't realize just how manipulative scammers/phishers are. Also most people fail to realize exactly just how much identifiable information they put out for the public to be able to see.That's the thing about scammers/phishers. The good ones rarely make their intentions obvious until it's too late. There's a reason why scamming is a multi-billion dollar industry. Good scammers are charismatic, manipulative, and convincing. They are also relying on the fact you have no idea just how useful the information you gave them really is, especially when you think the information is banal or mundanely useless.The fact they leave you blaming a lax in security instead of blaming yourself shows A) just how manipulative they are and B) how willing you are to deflect blame in order to admit to falling for a scam.Admittedly, that second one is a tough pill to swallow. No one likes admitting they made a mistake, and that's especially so when you have to face severe consequences for those actions. But as I said before, we can tell the difference between someone's compromised account vs. someone who fell victim to a scam or gave/bought/sold their account. Usually if the account is compromised, Support is fairly quick at restoring access to those accounts. But because there's no reason to voice any complaints about it, you don't read about those thousands of success stories. What we do hear about on the forums are those examples where support was unable to restore the account because they can see suspicious or fraudulent activity on the account.
2. I still use Queen Walk at TH13 so you're asking the wrong person. I find the strategy still viable and very strong.
3. I do think we've done an overall good job of maintaining balance. It's not perfect, nor will it ever be perfect. This is especially true as we add more content in the future. There is no such thing as a perfectly balanced multiplayePVP game. All we can do is try to balance it to the best of our ability when we release a new troop or keep an eye on the data and balance it as we see the data coming in.

u/GroddTH12:

1. Do you intend to improve the time to update buildings and troop level TH11, TH12 and TH13?
2. Is there a possibility to create a new hero in a new update?

Answer:

1. Eventually, most likely.
2. We don't want to do a new Hero with each new TH level. The earliest we will likely add a new Hero would be TH15, but that's not a guarantee.

u/clashic94:

1. Clan War Leagues and Clan Games are monthly events that last a week. Are there any plans for introducing another monthly event that lasts a few days in between CWL and Clan Games? (Townhall Tournaments, etc.)
2. As the army camp size increases and the possibility for more troops in battle at any given time increases, will we be seeing troops with higher and higher housing space to avoid overcomplexity?
3. Will we be able to use two Siege Machines at the same time in the future? More than two Super Troops?

Answer:

1. Yes. Although what that is we're not ready to reveal yet.
2. It's unlikely we'll adjust the housing space for older troops like Barbs, however, how much housing space a troop takes up is actually an essential part of the design process as we design a new troop.
3. Two Siege Machines would be a bit weird since you only have a single Clan Castle. Being able to deploy two and divide up the CC troops between them would genuinely be way OP. As far as allowing more than 2 Super Troops at a time, I mean, we just started allowing 2 recently! We're keeping an eye on their usage to see if allowing 3 or more would be something positive for the game.

u/confipete:

1. Is it true that Supercell is going to remove builder base by June?
2. Why don't war donations account for donation count?
3. Why is builder base's attacking AI is different from Home village's?
4. Do you consider the ideas we post in this sub while adding new features to the game?

Answer:

1. Wait..what? Remove Builder Base? Where the heck do you guys find this stuff? We're not removing it.
2. Part of it is because you can remove and edit War donations, at least in the War Leagues. So it would be easy to abuse to edit/remove cc troops and keep redonating just to get your count up.
3. The AI isn't different, it uses the same logic engine as the main village. However, a big factor in what causes some issues is the Guard Post. The wandering units cause havoc with the pathing AI because the attacking units have to constantly recalculate their position and the targets it's tracking.
4. Absolutely.

u/EyalReddits:

1. Will we ever get a new gamemode like the builder base?
2. Why are super troops taking up so much space? This makes them almost unusable

Answer:

1. I'm sure there'll be new game features we'll introduce in the future. It won't be like Builder Base, but will be something completely new. In fact we're working on something that I think will be pretty enjoyable. No release dates yet, as it's a fairly complex system. But we're excited to announce it when it's ready.
2. The housing space for Super Troops is to balance out how much stronger they are than regular troops.

u/superman37891:

1. Can we donate super troops with gem donations, even if we don’t have them unlocked?
2. Can we have separate clans for home village and builder base (so I don’t get kicked out of my top clan for not having a good builder base)?
3. Add a clan search filter for CWL league (Champs 1, Champs 3, Master 2, etc.)
4. Can we cap the level of the CC troops donated to lower town halls / CC levels? (Ex: A level 9 loon donated to a TH3 caps at level 2)? I feel this will make it easier to balance lower THs and make it more fair for those who can’t get CCs

Answer:

1. No. Being able to donate them without spending the upgrade cost kinda defeats the purpose of spending the upgrade cost.
2. No. Programming the logistics behind this, having separate chat UI's, Clan logs, match logs, war logs, etc. would be an absolute data nightmare.
3. As a reflex response, my guess would be that it would lead to just those Clans at the top tiers being bombarded with invitation requests while lower clans would remain unfilled. And because they remain unfilled, it would make it harder for them to climb to those ranks, thus perpetuating a bit of a cycle.
4. No. The levels they are donated at is intentional.

u/Luke_theGreat:

• Hey Darian. Thanks for doing this. Right now, every month we have cwl in the first week and clan games towards the end. I personally feel like this is getting tedious. Are there any plans to mix this up more? Thanks. Luke

Answer: We planned out the calendar of events for a very specific reason and the timing is intentional. Having them set the same time allows players to more efficiently plan out how they upgrade and how they spend resources. Mixing up the schedule would make it more difficult for players to do so.
u/One-Decision-6110:

• Hello there, Darian, thanks for taking the time to answer my question if you do,one thing I'm recently annoyed about is botters, it seems like they are everywhere, is it possible if you could give me a percentage of how many players out of total players are botters?also, i use the same army, time and time again, I'm worried my account will get banned one day due to SuperCell suspecting me to bot, are there any other measures you take into account when banning botters?

Answer: We never publicly reveal numbers. With regards to bots, it's a constant game of cat and mouse. We improve our systems to detect them and they improve the botting software to avoid detection. So we then improve the system again to detect them and then they improve the botting software to avoid detection. You can see how this goes on. It's one of the reasons why we do mass bans of botters instead of just individual cases. If we banned players who bot on an individual basis, it allows the bot software creators to analyse what it was that allowed them to be detected and make changes even faster. So by banning in mass groups, it slows down their development a bit.
To answer your question about using the same attack, that's not how the detection system works so as long as you're not using a bot program we don't care how often you attack with the same army.
u/mystic_coc: Hi Darian, what do you think about a new game mode in clash. It can be solo or multi (like clan base or something). You could create multiples worlds with the clash universe like a goblin village etc were we can attack the king of goblin
Answer: I'm curious, but you don't really give any kind of idea what kind of feature you're suggesting. It's like saying "have you thought of a new multiplayer game?" Yes I have, but without knowing what kind of game you want, it's kind of an impossible question to answer.
If you've made it down here, well done! I hope everyone here has learnt something new, and after reading the sheer amount of answers I'm sure you can all thank Darian for the extraordinary effort he put in (he isn't being payed for this either, he's just that amazing).
If you don't see your question on the reddit post or the document it was most likely to avoid duplicates
Happy Clashing!