Who am I?

My name is DeathsTalons, and I am an Evony addict.

This addiction began long ago when I was a weeeee middle schooler and I discovered Evony Age 1 via scandalous ads on the internet. Not knowing that there were not any actual "Ladies" waiting to be rescued I fell down the rabbit hole. I played very casually then as I did not have reliable access to a computer at home and by time I did, Evony Age 2 was out and the hot new thing. After spending countless nights over 2 years playing one Age 2 server, myself and several of my friends made the fateful hop back to Age 1 where we found the mechanics of the game to be far more favorable.

By this point in time Age 1 was overrun with bots and we had no choice but to embrace the same tactics to stay relevant and competitive. This went on for several years, with me never sticking to one server for too long as I really enjoyed the fresh beginnings of a new server. Eventually, Evony stopped releasing new servers and s199 was my final resting place in Age 1.

Eventually, as I was an adult by this point, rough financial situations left me without a computer or internet for some time. But every once and awhile I would take a look at the Evony website to see if that elusive s200 had been announced. One day by chance I checked while at the Library and lo and behold that day was the day. s200 had been released after years of radio silence. Pissed that I even checked, and even more pissed that it was finally happening when I was in no position to jump in with an army of Bots running my old custom scripts, I decided "they must have ported Age 1 to phone by now, or at least there has got to be a rip off clone of Age 1 on the app store right?" I punched "Evony" into google play and my life was forever changed yet again, my search was not in vain, I had found a home, one that I could carry in my pocket!

Excited for the new challenge and hoping that some of what I knew from Age 1 and 2 would transfer over, I started an account. I quickly learned that the game was vastly different from what I expected. People being truced 100% of the time, people afraid to let their troops do their job and die, a whole new system of Generals, you could only have one City and you maxed out at 5 marches. I was lost. Gone were the days of coordinating 100 hits coming from your 10 cities or coordinating 1000s of hits from across the server (we actually crashed our Age 2 server this way).

That day was about 5 years ago and I've been around for every update since. s57 was my first home. Learning was the goal. I quickly made friends with a guy called MechLovin. He was an old school Age 1 player who had some beastly hits posted and shared around the Evony forums. Him and I obsessed over the Mechanics of the Game and did our best to experiment and learn through trial and error even though neither one of us had the finances to really spend on the game.

Eventually we both hit k25 (yeah that was max level back then) right before they first announced SvS as a future update. We planned and plotted, using knowledge from past versions of the game to figure out that Layers were vital to your success and we spread that information around the server as best as we could. Shortly after SvS started the update for K30 was announced and we were back on the grind. It was at this point that we were able to really showcase the importance of layers especially in your defense as we would take hits from people 5x our size and who had t11s and t12s while we had measly t10s.

Just as I was finally getting t11s and starting the push to K30, life dragged me away. I had to give up the game for awhile and focus on some actual goals. This led to me quitting just before the K35 updated and I was gone for about a year.

After my extended break I reached a point in life where I had too much free time and decided to throw it down the drain and get back into the game. I hopped on and silently waited for the day a new server would open so that I could get in on the ground floor. That server was s116. s116 was home, and even some of my best online friends were from s116 (Hugh and Max 😘). We battled on, showing the kids how it was done I ranked top 5 in my first SvS in over a year (with just t11s none the less!) and proved that I still had what it takes to throw down with the big guys.

My time on s116 lasted for over a year, and eventually s116 merged with s70, leading to many of our top players becoming dwarfs in a sea of giants. One-by-one, my friends dropped, selling their accounts, or giving them away outright. I had spent 33 days in jail at one point during s116 so I was even further behind (but my bubble dropped not even once in those 33 days thanks to the support of my wonderful Girlfriend who understood how much the game meant to me... so no excuses are allowed for sloppy bubble drops). I really tried my hardest to stay interested in the new merged server but without the support of my friends, I started to slide. Jumping on once a day to do my daily activities and sending out the farmers, and maybe catching an SvS from time to time.

Then one fateful day, something happened that I had never seen before, or since. In world chat there was a message that a new server had just opened! I thought I would hop over and check it out as my old passion was jumping to new servers anyways and having a couple months of fun. That server was s162. After hopping over and spending less than $100, I was still the top ranked player when I woke up the next day. The alliance I had started on that first day (BOP) had bloomed into the rank 1 alliance overnight as the one person I recruited before bed was an absolute madlad and spent the entire time I was asleep recruiting. I decided that I could move some finances around and probably stay competitive on this new server. Little did I know that this decision would lead to me selling my account on s70+s116 and throwing 100% of my time and effort into s162. This all happened right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and I happened to be off of work for 6 weeks, this lead to me spending every ounce of my new found free time pushing s162 to be the best that it could be. Before long, I found myself as the first King of s162 (with the help of El Hefe).

Around the start of s162, Evony had started a new campaign of deceiving ads, you know the ones, with the puzzles, to draw in new players. It was massively successful, and I quickly realized that my new server was full of first time players. I had to call in backup. One quick text to Hugh, and both him and Max were their within a day. The (very) small group of experienced players we had on the server focused on helping and training people by jumping between all of the alliances. Forming bonds and friendships that have lead to a very peaceful server, definitely the most peaceful I have every been on. Due to this relationship, we were much more prepared for our first SvS than the server we faced. Racking over 1 Billion points myself, I earned my Conqueror Frame through the pure determination of my alliance mates to prove our worth and to show the world that we weren't to be fucked with.

It was around this time that I was holding classes for people to attend where we covered many of the topics found on this site and how they apply to general PvP. After a few of these classes and many requests for more, I decided that I needed an up to date depository for information that I could direct people to when they asked questions. Thus came the birth of EvonyTips. At first this site was very empty, and I lacked direction. Basically, someone would ask me a question and I would write up a guide real quick on that topic and move on, waiting for the universe to tell me what to do next. Eventually there was a small amount of basic guides and 2 well thought out guides (BoG and Gear Refining) and I was happy with the direction I was moving.

It was at this point that life got in the way once more. Working 60-70 hours a week in a hot, sweaty factory meant that I had little to no time to play my beloved game. I fell off the face of the Earth. Back to the routine of bubbling every 3 days and sending farmers out when I could. Gone for almost 3 months, I fell from my perch in the top 3 and lost my Archduke Ranking as well. Luckily I had a very capable leadership team who stepped up and kept the server running smoothly while I was away.

Eventually there was light at the end of the tunnel, salvation for the dammed. I found a good, well paying job, that allowed me to play Evony for 40 hours a week while getting paid! Since then, I have been back at it adding several new guides a week, while also redesigning the site for a better user experience. I was also delighted to find that while no new guides had been added in 3 months, this site was experiencing record traffic! I found this was due to the fact that I had written the most in depth and plain language BoG guide that could be found anywhere on the internet! This fueled me, pushed me even, to stop putting out shitty one off guides and to focus on putting out "Masterclass" quality guides to help those who need it most.

I've rambled on long enough, if you've read this far into my "Evony Memoir" I applaud you. You guys are the reason I am here. Knowing that someone is learning from my content is what keeps me motivated to keep improving and adding to this site. Thank you, sincerely, as building this site has become my newest obsession and almost a year in, it still lacks enough information to be anywhere near what I would consider "done" yet here we are with almost 3000 unique visitors per month! Keep an eye out for new and updated guides, check back often as I am striving to put out at least one quality guide a week with several smaller supporting guides alongside.