Impackt: Christmas Mega Pack

It’s night night for Nightwing.

Blueprints

It’s cheap to craft, gives extra health and allows for Rogue Hats to be fully ascended. It’s going to look a little bit silly on your heroes once we’re out of the holiday season but don’t let that deter you.

From a crafting perspective: this is a solid choice for your wood slot. It has reasonable material costs (ascensions can lower it to 13 jewels) and no weird resource pairings. The component requirement is a bit on the steep side but it’s not unreasonable.

From a meta perspective: this is the new best-in-slot option for Green type heroes that can wear it (so Thief/Ninja/Dancer¹.) Like how the Dawnflower Ring defeated the new Blizzard Ring due to the health it gives, the same applies in this scenario – the extra health is way more useful than the defence from Nightwing for those classes.

Although Nightwing offers 30 more ATK, it’s not large enough to create a reason to bring it over the Jolly Ranger. Crossbows in general have always been kinda iffy because as premium lines go they really don’t have anything to offer – whilst wands and guns tend to smoke all other contenders in damage output, crossbows don’t even get that luxury. The introduction of pack premium items has really allowed guns and wands to express that damage difference in even greater amounts (see: Grimar’s Grand Wand, Handcask ’65) but crossbows are, sadly, still lacking there.

This is also a pretty fast turnover again for a pack item dying – not quite as fast as Swan’s Edge (24 days) but a strong contender for sure. We could use that as a unit of measurement (this item lasted X Swan’s Edge,) in which case Nightwing lasted 1.9 Swan’s Edges.

Cosmetics/Furniture

There is an indoor and an outdoor item this time.

Deerest log looks cute,though the eye looks like something Snype would photoshop on.

You too can have your own discount Azetc temple.

For your merchant we have a new hat and a top

On the hat you can change one set of the stripes colour

On the top you can change the colour of the baubles

Superior Pack

Blueprints

It’s a tier 5 item which uses 3 resources, has a precraft and isn’t very exciting on the stat front. The precraft fortunately can be removed by just crafting the item, no ascending required. Makes fully ascending the wand line a bit cheaper but that’s all it has going for it.

From a crafting perspective: okay so let’s just put aside for a moment the way better wood crafting option in the mega pack, and the weird pairing of resources as that’s normal for staves. To remove the precraft from this you need to use 135 ascension shards, which would cost you just under $40 from the store, having just paid $17.99 for the mega pack, and $12.99 for this superior pack.

Even if you were to do that, this is still a pretty poor craft. Its only purpose really is going to be as a caprice option when the king is demanding a lot of jewel lines.

From a meta perspective:

So back in May we had the Zesty Scepter, which was a pretty cool staff at the time due to the mastery bug. When 4.3 happened and the bug was fixed, it was still a solid choice as it was a dual-stat weapon for casters, given wands were only single stat items.

Then the Fall superior pack arrived with Equinox Rod, the first dual-stat wand and it pretty much smoked Zesty. Since then we’ve also had Grimmar’s Grand Wand which is just flat out a better version of this item (I mean to be fair to Grimmar’s it’s a premium line but still.) I mention this wand/staff comparsion because of the 5 classes that can equip staves, 4 of them can also equip wands. The only staff wielding class that can’t equip wands is Spellblade, and they have access to better weapons (like the bow which just came out yesterday.)

I cannot in good faith recommend buying this pack to anyone outside of just blueprint collecting. Neither of the items are good, nor are they needed to complete ascension lines.

Flooring/Wallpaper

This is Holiday Spirit and Gold Mistletoe in action

Conclusion

• Santa’s Elf Hat adds a bit of festive cheer to your heroes
• Jolly Ranger is a phenomenal item for both crafting and equipping.
• Peppermint Cane is an expensive T5 and not great
• Staff of Merriment is beyond saving in its current state.
• Fitting seasonal furniture, not animated
• Massive hat for your merchant and you can disguise yourself in a forest now

Final Score

Mega Pack: 9/10
Superior Pack: 0/10

1. if your dancer lacks bow master/marksman, consider Equinox Rod instead