O.o To this day, I still have never understood how people have had issues with the XDK. I've used it on MANY computers with no issue at all.
Well my last 2 builds took a few attempts before I could even get an actual APK but then when I tested the on a real device no ads were being being displayed either for Admob or Appodeal.
Was able to contact the Appodeal team and apparently they stopped support of the original working Appodeal plugin for a new one which I can not get to work I don't know why.
Building APK is easy enough but when you're trying to put ads of IAP it becomes a shtstorm.
By the way if you've been able to successfully build a working APK as of Feb 25, 2017 8 pm I'd really appreciate it if you could share the details with me. Which plugins work is subject to change every hour.
EDIT: 2 build attempts were successful. We're not even counting the 11 or so failed ones.