Announcing: M.O.D.O.K.'s Lab

MAD SCIENTIST

The Grandmaster has been so focused on his grand machinations that M.O.D.O.K. has renovated his Laboratory right beneath The Grandmaster’s nose in order to test his new device: M.O.D.O.K.’s Randomizer! Enter M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab and see how the dice rolls as you face off against 6 random opponents with their own set of completely random Buffs! Use M.O.D.O.K.’s Randomizer to spin the wheel again and try to land your ideal set of Buffs! M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab opens for business on December 6th at 10:00 AM PST. You will need to update to Version 16.1 to be able to see or access M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab, which will be available December 6th. Please note, there is a chance that 16.1 will not be available until after 10 AM PST.

THAT’S SO RANDOM

In M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab, there are 4 difficulties. Each Difficulty has 1 path with 6 fights on it. Each fight is a random Champion from 1 of the 6 classes (i.e. the first is a random Mutant , the second is a random Mystic, etc.), and each fight has the same Rarity, Rank, Level, and Signature Level as all the other fights in the same difficulty. Here’s where things get interesting:

Each fight also has a number of random Buffs. The number of random Buffs is always the same on every fight in a given difficulty, but is different between difficulties (i.e. Easy has 1 random buff, Expert has 6). There are over 150 potential Buffs you can encounter, and several million possible combinations. While not every Buff in the game is included in this list of potential Buffs, it does include most of them.

ROLL THE DEFINITELY-NOT-DICE

We know it’s very possible that, especially on harder difficulties, you’ll run into a combo of Buffs that’s just ridiculous. That’s why we have The Randomizer. This item can be used in the pre-fight screen while viewing the Random Active Buffs on a fight to re-randomize all Buffs on that fight. This can be done as many times as you have Randomizers, and we will be including 12 Randomizers in a welcome message when M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab releases. You can also collect 1 from each completion of any difficulty of M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab, so you can collect another 4 every 8 hours (12 each Day). Randomizers will ALSO be purchasable for 2500 Gold up to 12 times per day.

THE WAY IS SHUT

There’s going to be LOTS of things to spend Energy on in December, so we’ve made the Energy requirement for M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab 0. That’s right, absolutely 0. This doesn’t mean you can infinitely farm for rewards, however (you’ll understand why when you see the rewards). Instead, M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab features something new called Entry Limits. Every 8 Hours, you will be able to ENTER each difficulty of M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab 1 time. When the timer on the quest hits 0, your entries will refresh, and you’ll be able to enter each difficulty another time.

Q&A

Why are you doing this?

Because we want there to be something fun, a little more out-there, but also more rewarding that a typical special quest like this. We’re also genuinely interested in observing some of the less-utilized combinations of Buffs to see how you guys handle them!

EDIT: 12/06/2017 @ 10:56 AM PST: Auto-Fight is intentionally NOT enabled in M.O.D.O.K.'s Lab. The main reason is that we want to see how PLAYERS handle the random Buffs, not how the AI does.

So, all the fights are Random?

Yes. This doesn’t work any different from, let’s say, Class Daily quests where there’s a range of potential enemies on a node that change every time you enter the quest. Here’s what it looks like in-game:

But when you re-enter, it might look like this:

As you can see, each node is always the same Class, just a different character from that Class.

So, how hard are the fights then?

This depends significantly on which Buffs appear on a given fight, and which character you’re fighting. As a general rule, any character that can be collected by players can appear as an opponent, so character like Weapon X Wolverine or Dark Phoenix aren’t there. Here’s how the fights are tuned:

Easy
- 2-Star Champions
- Rank 1
- Level 10
- Signature 0

Medium
- 3-Star Champions
- Rank 2
- Level 20
- Signature 10

Hard
- 4-Star Champions
- Rank 3
- Level 30
- Signature 50

Expert
- 5-Star Champions
- Rank 4
- Level 55
- Signature 200

What about the Buffs, are all the Buffs random too?

Yes. This is new, unlike random Champions. Essentially, each Node has a number of Buffs (the number is determined based on whichever difficulty you’re playing) applied to it. The specific Buff(s) are determined based on a Pool of Buffs, which for M.O.D.O.K.’s Lab contains over 150 Buffs. Here’s what that translates to in-game:

As you can see, this fight has a few Buffs on it, but nothing too outrageous, however once you re-enter the quest, these Buffs might look like this:

Comments

DNA3000

Crushtest wrote: »

There are over 150 potential Buffs you can encounter, and several million possible combinations. While not every Buff in the game is included in this list of potential Buffs, it does include most of them.

several millions?
formula to count amount of possible combinations is n!/((n−k)!⋅k!), where n is amount of buffs, k is amount of objects. so it's 14 297 000 725. little bit more than several millions :-)

Your calculations are correct, but your estimate is wrong. Two errors: first, you did 150! / (150-6)!6! but six is wrong: it should be five. In the expert tier one buff is permanent and not random: the special three activated buff. Second, the expert tier's five random buffs is one expert tier buff and four general pool buffs, not five equally random buffs.

Based on the info in the announcement I think it is likely that each of the medium and hard pools has six buffs, and the expert has five: the medium has HP/Attack +10%-50% in increments of 10, the hard has HP/Attack +50%-100% in increments of 10, and the expert pool has HP/Attack +100%-200% in increments of 25% (the randomizer shows a +125% buff).

Let's say that the total number of buffs is about 157, and there's 140 in the general pool (if it was significantly more they would have probably said "more than 160"). That would mean the total possible combinations in the expert tier is 140!/(140-4)!4! * 5 = 76,648,075. That's probably closer to the right number. The hard tier has about 2,685,480 possible combinations and so is tiny compared to the expert tier.

It looks like the total number of possible buff combinations in all tiers is about 70-80 million. The largest unknown factor is the chance to roll "failed experiment" which could alter these calculations if the chance to fail is higher than the chance to roll any particular random buff.

Probably still more than "several" million. Several dozen million perhaps.

Maryo_mario

Sounds great can't wait

DNA3000

Edit: I don't want to edit and land in moderator hell, but I should have said the number of combinations changes if the odds to roll failed experiment are independent or if the most you can get is one failure. I'm assuming the buffs don't duplicate, but I'm not sure if you can have multiple failures.

Fingfangfoomfanes

sorry for this question, but will there be a minimum participation? coz the downside of the bounty mission was that it takes minimum 15 participation to get the bonus reward. will there be such a mechanic for this one? I hope not...

Eaglehero2

I would have prefered once a day cooldown, but nice with the no engry. Better than Valor quests bu this is too frequent.

Eaglehero2

Fingfangfoomfanes wrote: »

sorry for this question, but will there be a minimum participation? coz the downside of the bounty mission was that it takes minimum 15 participation to get the bonus reward. will there be such a mechanic for this one? I hope not...

It dosen't work like that I think. Did they say anything about rewards for the person who started it? However i'm confused. I don't even think it's a allince event. I think it's more of a cooldown solo quest.

phillgreen

Looks like a good opportunity for everyone.

Fingfangfoomfanes

pardon me, but i have a bad

Eaglehero2 wrote: »

Fingfangfoomfanes wrote: »

sorry for this question, but will there be a minimum participation? coz the downside of the bounty mission was that it takes minimum 15 participation to get the bonus reward. will there be such a mechanic for this one? I hope not...

It dosen't work like that I think. Did they say anything about rewards for the person who started it? However i'm confused. I don't even think it's a allince event. I think it's more of a cooldown solo quest.

thanks, mate. I didnt read the full article, but after initial scan, looks good on paper.

doctordoom

Wait were both the champs for next month reveled in that 2nd picture?

IanMoone

doctordoom wrote: »

Wait were both the champs for next month reveled in that 2nd picture?

Yup

Bmf420

This looks awesome and origina!!!Excellent work game team. Between this and the rewards for act 5 I think you all have figured out exactly what we as players want.Keep the hits coming.

Nyale

Can you instead of resetting the counter every each 8hours grant 3 entries and reset after 24 h so we can sleep/work without missing out on rewards?

Phresh88

Will we be able to spectate and see all info before starting the quest?

Spaidercaca

Que bueno

phillgreen

Nyale wrote: »

Can you instead of resetting the counter every each 8hours grant 3 entries and reset after 24 h so we can sleep/work without missing out on rewards?

You should be able to pair up the inconvenient timing of one event with a more convenient.

You might need one hour from the 16 hr block to cover the badly timed event.

SupremeWarlord

YOU GUYS SEE TASKMASTER ON THAT MAP?!? YESSSSSSSSSSS!!

Wajmeister

I'm a noob, so hard and expert are out of the question for now, and easy & normal aren't worth the rewards. Thanks Kabam.

Dreadnought

This update is for 16.1... are you still fixing captain marvel’s L2 like you guys said you were going to for this specific release?

Lyingninja

Hey taskmaster is going to come in the game

rogueKlyntar

SCHNOOT wrote: »

I like the pictures and extra information provided here. Definitely helps to clarify some of the more intricate details. Well done.

About that: is Taskmaster gonna be a playable champ (that IS Taskmaster, isn't it?)

TIENQUANGVN

DNA3000

Wajmeister wrote: »

I'm a noob, so hard and expert are out of the question for now, and easy & normal aren't worth the rewards. Thanks Kabam.

If your roster isn't strong enough to do hard tier yet, you shouldn't be thinking the easy and medium tier rewards aren't worth it. They are worth it to anyone that can't complete hard mode yet. Hard tier has 4* 3/30s in it according to the announcement. 3* 4/40s should be able to take that tier. If you don't have a strong maxed team of 3* 4/40s, you should be trying to get all the 3* crystals you can. Doing medium tier 3x 28 is about 8 and a half 3* crystals.

If you can't do hard mode but you think the only rewards worth your time are 4* and 5* category rewards, you're going to be stuck at the bottom for a very long time while everyone else passes you by. Everyone has to start at the bottom and work their way up. Getting as many PHCs and 3* crystals is the key to working your way up to the higher tiers.

Heck, since the energy costs are zero I'm likely to do all four tiers myself. Most of my 2* and 3* champs are max sig, so I can always use more double dup sets of 3* and 4* fragments. Its likely to take only a couple minutes to complete those tiers, so that's actually a decent amount of rewards for almost zero time.

darkmh007

Cool...

2good4words

I want in

charaderdude2

Wow,This Event quest is actually too impressive,Well done Guys!

unknown

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BoRregards_420

Sounds like a helluva challenge.let's do this

Viper1987

This is fresh and different. Like the new additions, such as the randomizer and zero energy. This sounds like it will be challenging but fun. The rewards are definitely worth it, too. Keep up the great work!

The_Prankster16

But what's the ACTUAL event quest, because this looks like just another test of valor or stark assignment

Wajmeister

DNA3000 wrote: »

Wajmeister wrote: »

I'm a noob, so hard and expert are out of the question for now, and easy & normal aren't worth the rewards. Thanks Kabam.

If your roster isn't strong enough to do hard tier yet, you shouldn't be thinking the easy and medium tier rewards aren't worth it. They are worth it to anyone that can't complete hard mode yet. Hard tier has 4* 3/30s in it according to the announcement. 3* 4/40s should be able to take that tier. If you don't have a strong maxed team of 3* 4/40s, you should be trying to get all the 3* crystals you can. Doing medium tier 3x 28 is about 8 and a half 3* crystals.

If you can't do hard mode but you think the only rewards worth your time are 4* and 5* category rewards, you're going to be stuck at the bottom for a very long time while everyone else passes you by. Everyone has to start at the bottom and work their way up. Getting as many PHCs and 3* crystals is the key to working your way up to the higher tiers.

Heck, since the energy costs are zero I'm likely to do all four tiers myself. Most of my 2* and 3* champs are max sig, so I can always use more double dup sets of 3* and 4* fragments. Its likely to take only a couple minutes to complete those tiers, so that's actually a decent amount of rewards for almost zero time.

I have a team rating of 13k with about 20 different 4*, many are only 2/20, with about 10 that are 3/30 and 1 @ 4/40. Recommended team is 16k. So I dunno if it's doable, but we'll see