Is there enough ISO-8 in the game? F2P
WarBros23
Member Posts: 73 ★
Hold on, this isn't your regular old post complaining about the lack of ISO-8 in the game, but I would certainly like to understand where I might be going wrong as far as progression goes. At this point in my account, I'm on act 6.2 and finally getting around to developing a strong enough roster to complete and explore variants, which are providing me with such an influx of rank-up materials, which are simply sitting in my inventory. For example, I have expiring T4CC of classes which I don't even have a champion to rank up, so I feel forced into ranking up someone that I don't like or that might not help my progression later on just to make sure I don't waste materials. As a result, I have to fuel ISO into those champs, and then it almost becomes a repeating cycle. I feel like the consistency with which we get ISO-8 has to improve. Since a lot of ISO is associated with duping champions, that mostly comes from monthly content, which lots of summoners, including myself, finish in the initial weeks of the month. This limits my rank-ups all throughout the course of month, and my inventory stacks up later on within the month. This compromises the rank-ups I want to make, if you understand. All I can think of particularly is maybe offer more opportunities to get 4-stars or spread them out throughout the month, so I always look forward to trying out someone new and there's something enjoyable to look forward, as far as new champs go. If there's anything I said that you all have a different point of view on, please let me know, so I can shift my perspective as well because I think there's enough ISO-8, but maybe it's distributed unevenly. That's my take, let me know. I'm F2P by the way, and yes that matters, so take that into account.
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The long answer is twofold. First, the response that comes up in every "I can't get enough of x resource" post is that you'll hit some bottleneck at any progression level. I am surprised that for you it's ISO-8, because I feel like most people at our progression level are just dying for T1A and T2A. But I can remember when it was T4B and T4CC and before that it was T3CC and at some point before that it was just ISO. There's always something you just need a huge amount of and can never get enough of.
The other part of my answer is I suspect you aren't managing your resources properly. If you have so much T4CC expiring that you're forced to do rank ups and burn through all your ISO, I'm guessing that you actually open all of your T4CC crystals and fragment crystals. I have hundreds of T4CC fragment crystals, a few dozen full T4CC crystals, and a bunch of map crystals, glory crystals, etc. But my actual catalyst inventory isn't full or overflowing, because I never open those crystals unless I actually need to. So it takes, you know, 4 T4CC to bring someone from Rank 3 to 4, and if I don't have that many I just carefully open crystals until I have exactly enough and then I stop so I don't fill up my inventory.
Similarly, I'm sitting on about 10 4* crystals because I don't want the ISO to go to waste so I just open specific dual crystals when I need specific ISO and then stop when I have enough.
Now that I’m done with the sarcastic comment, let me say that also as a free to play player a bit farther on than you (working through exploration of 7.1, explored all variants except for 1) it does get better, but iso is always a concern. If you run into trouble with expiring catalysts and not the right champs to rank up, my suggestion is just to save up as many crystals as you can that give catalysts until you have someone you want to use them on. I know that you just get fully formed catalysts from some things, but this definitely helped me in terms of t4cc for instance. If I’m understanding you that finishing monthly content early in the month is hurting you in terms of expiring iso/other resources, try to space out when you finish the content with a couple of days where you do mainly act content, or Variant, or something that is still beneficial, but doesn’t provide as much resources now as when you eventually explore it.
That was essentially a long-winded way of saying that getting more iso is definitely doable, it is still a choke point for some people, but your answer might be in self-control when it comes to completing monthly content and opening crystals for the greater good of your account, if that is really an issue.
Hope that helped.
I'd also say this brings up the problem that duping 5* and 6* still gives 24 tier-5 ISO, and that should be buffed
I also never use my ISO unless I want to rank up someone, and never open T4, T3, even YT CC crystals or fragment crystals.
Pretty much the game has come to a point where if you're stuck at a point you can get more ISO, but once you start speed-progressing everything gets depleted
A big sign of this is you mentioning that you have T4cc in overflow and being forced to constantly use them to rank up champions you don't want to. This should actually rarely happen, because the main sources of T4CC is through crystals, which you have full control of for when to open. The only time T4CC should go into overflow is if you're hard targeting a specific class you're missing for a champion you really want to rank up. At that point you're making a cost/benefit analysis (E.g. is ranking up this awesome champion worth potentially wasting T4CC in other classes).
Likewise, now that we can target 4* dual classes, it is really beneficial to save up 4* shards and start thinking of them as reserve sources of class iso that don't expire. Personally I always keep 15-25k 4* crystals in reserve that I don't open unless I have a 5*/6* I absolutely need to level right now and I am entirely out of class ISO of that class. This allows you to always get the 1.5x iso bonus for matching classes, which both stretches out your iso reserve, and save you quite a bit of gold.
I haven’t really touched arena since about October, and while I do have no iso in some classes, that’s mainly because it’s taken many months of spamming the mutant/skill 5* crystals looking for Aegon.
I do make an active effort to do things like UC-EQ completion runs to get the 4* shards available there, as well as trying to collect them from the side quests when possible.
Personally I find T1a, T2a and T4b are far more limiting factors when it comes to rank ups.
A lot of the problems from your post could be solved by itself. You decide to do all content in the first week(s) and are not forced to. Another difference between your situation and that of a lot of others is the completion of variants as you have mentioned. For other people those pieces of content came out one at a time, and thus they did not get all the rank up items all at ones. So it was spread out more evenly.
The biggest thing is still arena. You do not have to do every single arena for all milestones. You could also start by choosing 1 arena. Make that choice based on your roster. If you have a lot of ranked up 4* champs, but not a lot of 5* champs I would opt for the 4* basic. Which is also the easiest to complete all milestones on. If you can do this, and you still have time. You could always do the 4* featered up to 2m points. Which will give you 900 4* shards and 400 5* shards per round and a bunch of PHC.
There always will be a resource that is most needed for players. But ISO-8 only has to become a problem if you do not play all modes in the game (arena in this case) or if you level up a lot of 6* champs. They cost a ton of Iso.
Story mode: Title progression and a mix of other rewards
Montly mode: Mix of all resources
Arena: Gold, units and ISO
AQ: Upgrade materials.
Incursions and War are totally optional and do not provide a resource not gotten from the other modes.
Good luck!
One of the biggest issues at the moment is that so many of the side quests don't allow you to do more than one difficulty level which severely impacts the amount of 4* accessibility. With 4* having been phased out of high level content there's a real shortage of ISO. This is compounded by the sheer amount of ISO required to level up 6* and the increased access to high tier rank up materials like T5B and T2A - you'll find that most Thronebreakers have more T5B than they can actually use.