After exploring variant 3, I got a little bored because AQ week was over, and war season hasn't started yet. There wasn't really much to do, because I had also achieved all the arena milestones that I usually go for. I had also explored uncollected and master mode (don't really care about heroic). And I still remain at a dead end at the Champion boss in act 6.
I'm addition to the above, I had done my first clear of cavalier difficulty (4* challenge), and I told myself I wasn't going to explore it because of how demoralizing and unit-diminishing it was! Nevertheless, in the spirit of boredom, I decided to go against my resolve and continue with cavalier difficulty! Fast forward to the present (about 3 days from when I started exploring), and I've already finished it!
It all started because I wanted tier 2 alpha frags to rank 5 my Claire, and also wanted somewhere with reasonable healthpools to test out my Guilly. Decided to go in the power technician quest to open her up. Before I knew it, I had the whole quest 100%! After that, I decided to continue on with the journey.
Here's the breakdown (not necessarily the order I explored). Also, I'm not going to talk about my completion run because it was all 4*s, and extremely stressful:
Chapter 1Quest 1- polka dot power:
I didn't have a champ that could benefit from the class node, so I decided to wing it with Guilly and Ghost. Turns out that ghost's awakened ability allows her to gain power due to her phasing notwithstanding the node. I would ramp up Guilly on a path fight, and use her for the boss. No items spent in this one. By the way, I used my 4* Doom for the Aarkus fight because my Claire was in AQ at the time, and I was a little bit impatient, lol. The warlock boss was an easy solo for Guilly every time.
Quest 2- diss track:
I decided to cheese the whole quest with my 4* Torch. Used Claire for the boss. The Hyperion and mephisto fights I used my 5* Void to handle. A few potions spent here, no revives. Nick fury synergy involved
Chapter 2Quest 1- kinetic transference (I think):
G2099 for the whole thing including the boss! She didn't benefit from the node because her prefight causes power burn not power drain. Wasn't remotely a problem as she demolished the whole thing without any revives! (Maybe 1?) Easy peasy. I believe I used Nick synergy here as well.
Quest 2- Buffed up:
Angela destroyed this quest! Used her for the paths toward the bottom, no items. For the upper paths that had spiked armor and turtling, I brought my CMM and my 4* hype. Spent revives on those 2 unfortunately (Mysterio and yondu were problematic). Throughout the whole quest, I used my 4* torch for the prof X boss. Easy solo everytime. Nick Fury synergy was utilised.
Chapter 3 Quest 1- Biohazard:
Team used was: Ghost, Claire, Guilly, 5* archangel and 4* archangel (yes, 2 AA's).
Didn't need to benefit from the global, Guilly ridiculed the whole thing! Ghost handled the evaders, and can't remember if I used Claire for any fight. The big, bad Magik boss was handled by AA, solo half of the time! When the 5* was unable, the 4* would finish up. No revives spent here.
Quest 2- Personal space:
Yup, the final quest. Claire decimated it! Used Guilly for the minibosses to ramp her up, then fought the final boss with her and soloed half of the time. Whenever she was unable due to my scrubbiness. My synergised ghost was there on backup to finish up.
The most problematic fight was Terrax, simply because I suck at fighting him. Died with Claire because I stupidly tried to counter his SP 1 with my heavy. Also stupidly went in with ghost and died again. Used a revive to beat him with Claire, then got to apocalypse and died with my Guilly (scrubbiness as I said). Had to revive Ghost to finish him up.
That was the only hitch, the other attempts were itemless. The last path I took was the power sting path, where I brought my archangel because I overestimated the damage (not too bad, just about 10% health for each sting). Soloed big boy apocalypse with Guilly to end the sweet run in a high note!
Thoughts: I feel the rewards are good overall. I know a lot have complained about them, but I feel they're worthwhile for the level of challenge it provides. Maybe I feel like this because of my relatively "low level" cavalier status, but I still like them.
Disclaimer: Full Suicides were used throughout. Every mention of Nick refers to my 3* (the only one I had at the time) and I paired him with xforce and my 4* quake for the evade charges (didn't use her).
Overall, I spent about 10 revives or less. The potions were the ones from farming RoL, and no energy refills were used (because I had literally none, and decided to take it slow).
The extra stuff will be posted below:
