It's been fun checking in and hearing how the run was going. And to get some idea of the commitment of resources/time that will be required. I'm thinking I'll take even longer (in days), as I don't get a huge amount of play time around work + family.
If it took over 64 hours, I'd be surprised if I can commit that much time in the space of less than a fortnight - yikes!
I’m pretty sure he meant time from Necro start to completion. In that. It started at X time and he finished 64 hours later.
He gave times for each fight. It was far far short of 64 hours to actually do the thing. Probably closer to 6-8 in actual real time.
Five and a half to six I believe. I will post final tallies later today, it’s a busy Monday morning but I will try to get to it this afternoon my time.
The Zola Necrotrain is I believe pulling into Grandmaster station. Blasting through the fights like he’s chasing them off his lawn. With a shotgun.
Since you had mentioned that BP isn't a viable choice of relic for Aegon, would you recommend Valk or BW as the better option? It doesn't seem like you spent a lot of time hitting into block, and Aegon does have DAA reduction once his combo is high enough, would think BW would be the obvious choice. But I could be missing something that would tilt the scales the other way.
Since you had mentioned that BP isn't a viable choice of relic for Aegon, would you recommend Valk or BW as the better option? It doesn't seem like you spent a lot of time hitting into block, and Aegon does have DAA reduction once his combo is high enough, would think BW would be the obvious choice. But I could be missing something that would tilt the scales the other way.
I would recommend literally anything but that. If you're bashing away with Aegon, the more important thing is just to have a relic that works than anything the relic actually does in my opinion. Using strikers helps with the Necro timer, and it provides openings for Aegon, and it can extend combos when you've lost control of the fight and want to get one more combo in. But the BP relic is singularly counter-productive: it would literally be better to not have any relic than have that one.
@DNA3000 you wouldn’t say that if you saw me against reversed controls…the second half today (post-Psycho Man) cost me all of 20 revives, 5 of those to an annoying Nova whose “lag buff” kept causing me to get clipped.
The GM, however, took his pound of flesh. We go way back.
Prior to GM, 70 revives by my count, and 29 of those to Titania, Aarkus and Air-Walker.
At the end of Necro, GM was a peach until he hit 30% health. Need to recount my revives but it got a little ugly and likely cost me 20. Word to the wise—don’t get rushed or frustrated. It’s not a good idea for this kind of content.
But it’s done. And I offer my thanks to @DNA3000 , @Grootman1294 and @BrianGrant for their advice and the ability to pace myself against other folks.
Dr. Zola
Note: I took a pretty typical Aegon team. Aegon (R5+), Shuri R2 (40), Heimdall, Proxima, Wiccan R3 (80).
I enjoyed reading this. This was fun read. I am in the same boat as you @DNA3000 . Never did any long form content but have explored all acts. But I would consider myself a scrub compared to you lol. I don't think I am in the top 10% of the game. Going to wait until after cyber weekend but my estimate with a similar team but an R5 ascended Aegon would be the same number of revives as you lol. Congrats on getting that 6 star Maestro!
First off, congrats on your completed journey. That said, thank you for this write-up. The similarities between myself & thevway you describe your game skill seem almost uncanny. I went back & 100% act 7, basically for the generic stones(for aegon) & post cyber weekend have decided that I will taking him to r5, rather than staying @r4. Again, really appreciate you documenting your journey & also, giving me the final push I needed to jump in to what seems a rewarding, yet mightily daunting trip...
You recommended not doing the bp relic bc of the physical vulnerability problem, what if you just slot something else into that slot so you can keep the rest of the relic benefits?
You recommended not doing the bp relic bc of the physical vulnerability problem, what if you just slot something else into that slot so you can keep the rest of the relic benefits?
That seemed to work for some fights for me, while for others I felt like the callout didn’t appear. I changed the rune to Adaptive Targeting, but I seemed to miss a couple of GM callouts and in one other fight (Psycho) some of the callouts didn’t show up.
Was it game-breaking? Ummm, sure. Especially in the GM reverse controls phase—Kabam should totally give me my revives back 😏
Titania: 35 minutes, 22 solo revives to ramp up Aegon (Aegon ramped to 814) Vision Aarkus: 14 minutes, 9 solo revives Omega Sentinel: 14 minutes, 6 solo revives Air Walker: 24 minutes, 25 solo revives Captain Britain: 20 minutes, 4 solo revives, 3 team revives Wiccan: 9 minutes, 5 solo revives Psycho Man: 10 minutes, 4 solo revives Guardian: 10 minutes, 3 solo revives Valkyrie: 18 minutes, 15 solo revives, 2 team revives Red Guardian: 11 minutes, 1 solo revive Sam Wilson: 11 minutes, 5 solo revives Dragon Man: 20 minutes, 6 solo revives Captain America Infinity War: 11 minutes, 3 solo revives Nova: 13 minutes, 6 solo revives
Path totals: 220 minutes (three hours 40 minutes), 114 solo revives, 8 team revives
GM: Phase One: 2 solo, 6 team revives GM: Phase Two: 6 team revives GM: Phase Three: 5 solo, 3 team revives GM Phase Four: 2 solo revives
GM totals: 1 hour, 12 minute total fight time. 9 solo, 17 team revives. Note: for all intents and purposes, most of those team revives were really just reviving Aegon most of the time, because everyone else was just cannon fodder while recoil masteries were still up. The rest were rubbish. I was using them because they were expiring.
Grand Totals: Total accumulated fight time: Four hours fifty two minutes. 123 solo, 25 team revives used.
Total Necropolis Road to the Crypt milestone deaths: +134 if I counted correctly.
Current potion inventory count remaining: 8 solo revives, 19 team revives.
I received a total of 30 solo and 30 team revives from the two Necropolis potion bundles I bought. Without those purchases I would have been short 22 solo and 11 team revives, which is an amount I could have gotten an equivalent amount from opening Paragon crystals. Which I was originally calling four hour crystals, then corrected myself and started calling seven hour crystals, but are in fact four hour crystals, because halfway through my Necropolis run time ceased to have any meaning. It is not an F2P run, but it could have been.
My guesstimate from reviewing the footage is had I waited and ranked up my Aegon to R5 and ascended him, I could have reduced the count by about 30-40 revives. And had I not used the BP relic, I would have shaved an additional three or four. And with more experience on the best ways to do three fights - Air Walker, Captain Britian, and Valkyrie - I could have shaved an additional dozen revives off. But all things being equal, for a week one run that started on day two, not terrible.
According to Kabam, the current Road to the Crypt death counter stands at 1,011,420 deaths and counting. So you are all welcome.
It's going to be a long while before I can reach paragon or Valiant.. hope platinum track has another 7* champion as a bonus.. not really into long form content.. but I guess I will push for paragon.. 😆 🤣 😂 😹
I'm old too so playing longer is harder for me..
Hope everyone pulls awesome 7* champions from their 7* champion crystal.
I guess the reward is for Paragon or Valiant players only.. it would be awesome if everyone gets something.. since only Paragon can do the Necropolis.
Yes, and no. Sure, it’s always nice when everyone can get in on the action, but if everyone can always get in on the action there’s nothing special about end game content. Part of the special nature of end game content is its exclusivity, not in terms of being restricted to only a small amount of players but rather having a high hurdle for everyone to overcome.
Anyone can do Necropolis. Someone joining the game today can do it, they are just extremely unlikely to be doing it now.
Road to the Crypt is a special thing specifically targeting those making Necropolis runs. If everyone got the rewards, those rewards would not be providing any incentive to attempt the content.
1. Someone said we learn more from our failures than our mistakes. This person was probably extremely error prone, but he did have a point. While reviewing my recording of the GM fight I just noticed that the bans have icons. This is something I did not notice after watching over a dozen GM fights, nor did I notice this during my actual run. Jeez I’m stupid.
2. We’re still learning how the fights work and what the optimal strategies are. I think a few weeks from now, much less a month from now, there will be better guides on the easy path that would probably cut the revive count by as much as half. Just talking about my run with other players also doing runs turned up many things I could have done differently, especially that Valkyrie fight. If people are thinking about doing runs soon, but just not right now, I think the information quality about strategy and tactics are improving all the time. Even if you think you can’t do it now, the community is continuing to learn and refine the best approaches, not just for the strongest players but also for the more average players.
3. I think my experience with the completion run has convinced me that exploration is within the realm of reasonable possibility. But I’m probably going to take my time with it. I’m not quite good enough I think to do a full exploration with reasonable resources, and I kinda don’t want to spend my way through the other paths. I’d like to see if I can learn to do it with lower spend options that require a bit more skill. In the same way that I wanted to challenge myself to bite the bullet and do long form end game content like this, I now want to challenge myself to learn how to do it better.
4. This was fun, as stressful as it was. When you decide to do your own runs, don’t be afraid to share with others. Your friends, your alliance, maybe here on the forums. Part of the fun of this game is sharing your experiences with the community. Victories are sweeter, and failures are more tolerable, when you put yourself out there honestly.
5. Knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time and redo the easy path, assuming I wanted to do it more or less right at launch I would:
- Not buy the potion bundle. That was not necessary. - Farm a bit more revives into overflow to compensate. I could have stashed a lot more away, and I could have burned a lot of energy doing it especially if I knew I was going to open four hour crystals for extra revives. There’s a ton of energy in there. - The team was fine. But I definitely would have swapped the BP relic out, and I think I would have swapped Nick for some other champ, as his extra damage boost was almost unnoticeable. Maybe a Thor for the regen synergy. - I really have to get over swapping masteries when advantageous. It would have been advantageous to swap out the recoil masteries at the Grandmaster, but I stubbornly refused to do so, making Aegon the only viable attacker there (it was touch and go using Wiccan for phase four). - Practice ramping up at Titania. I think it would be a good idea to be able to consistently get 80+ combo every time to ramp up Aegon, but I got a few good runs of practice and assumed I was fine. I was not fine. I could have cut those 22 revives almost in half with more practice. - Settling on the heavy-heavy strategy for Air Walker sooner than later would have also saved a ton of revives.
I recorded every fight I did so I can go back and look at what I did wrong, to try to find ways to improve. I’m guessing there’s a lot of lessons in there. Well worth it, I think, for anyone thinking of doing multiple runs eventually.
I’m not sure what else there is to say about this Necropolis run. If anyone has questions I’ll try to answer, and if anyone else wants to share the results of their own runs please do. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who gave me encouragement during these past few days. It was meaningful and helpful to know people were out there watching/reading, and getting some benefit from my run. Tactical benefit, or at least entertainment value. Either way, it all helped keep me engaged and having fun, even when the fights were not always a ton of fun. I appreciated all the feedback, here and off the forums.
We should do this again sometime. Maybe not right away, though.
One thing I learned is not to be too scared of Airwalker healing. I used R1 Wiccan and ended up taking 30-40% even when he healed 2 times. I'm assuming despair had a part to play though. But I do know for sure he healed around 5% omce
I think my take on things and like you never done this end game content as that is what it is, 3 to 4 hrs a run from those I have spoken too. Considering the rewards which are good these are progression rewards not end game. As kabam mike said it will be too hard for many etc. Maestro was a good reward, the rank up gems probably should be included in end game content. Many will disagree with me, that's ok
I think my take on things and like you never done this end game content as that is what it is, 3 to 4 hrs a run from those I have spoken too. Considering the rewards which are good these are progression rewards not end game. As kabam mike said it will be too hard for many etc. Maestro was a good reward, the rank up gems probably should be included in end game content. Many will disagree with me, that's ok
Personally, I think it makes perfect sense that the prerequisite materials for the next progression tier are in Everest content like Necropolis. It is an attempt to balance monetization requirements and game accomplishment requirements.
There are a lot of people who believe that content completion should drive the game. That players should be able to achieve progress without spending money without lagging too far behind the spenders. But if that is always achievable without spending, why spend? There has to be a significant value to spending, or no one will spend and then there will be no game. Placing the R3 materials in Necropolis means any player with sufficiently strong roster and sufficiently high skill can achieve Valiant without spending. Of course, most players will have neither the roster nor the skill to do so, but that’s besides the point. Most players will not be at the top of the game by definition. But Valiant is theoretically achievable through high end game play, and *before* the spenders get to it. But that high end game play is pretty high in absolute terms.
Most players won’t be able to get there via content, and so spending still has value. You can get there through Necropolis exploration, or Necropolis completion and spending, at least in the near term. Initially, according to Kabam there will be no path that involves only spending in the short term. That’s a reasonable balance in my opinion.
Over time, R3 materials will become more prevalent, and as they do the importance of Necropolis will fade as a progression gate. The balance will shift from Necropolis to more mundane and time consuming ways to get to Valiant that become open to a wider audience of players. This happens with every progression tier. Eventually, everyone who wants to become Valiant and plays long enough will get there. The players who put in the time, effort, and/or money will just get there earlier.
Everything in this game starts off hard to get, then becomes easier over time. Progression tiers are no exception. They will always start highly constrained, and become less so over time. This allows the players who can do the most to get there first, and for those players willing to spend money to support the game to get there soon after. And players unable or unwilling to do Necropolis or spend on offers to support the game or both will simply have to wait for more avenues to open up over time. I think that’s perfectly fair.
As we’ve discussed before, I tend to hate long form content if for no other reason than that I find it boring and I get distracted. I haven’t Abyssed or Labyrinthed and don’t plan to ever do so. Heck, I haven’t even done RoL with 3* Aegon.
Necropolis was actually enjoyable. Part of that was mental prep—I studied your notes and @Grootman1294 notes, watched @BrianGrant and @Seatin and others, so I had built up a level of expectation and had “pacers” so to speak for my performance.
It also helped to break down the path into digestible pieces. My only *bad* fight would have been GM, and a lot of that is a result of not studying up and reminding myself of his moveset and the icons and callouts. Impatience…
New tactics will emerge, but so will new champs. One mate did the same path yesterday with Kate, Knull and Shuri, soloing or one-reviving 8 of the defenders on the path. I lucked into a 6* Kushala, and I wonder whether she would work as an ascended R5. Who knows? But I’m sure other solitions will soon exist, even if for only a couple of defenders, and I can wait for the CCs to figure that out for me.
Last note: if I could give 5 simple suggestions to someone wanting to start, I’d say this:
1) Build your stash—pots and boosts. Seriously, no matter how good you think you are. 2) Know your main attacker very well, whether it’s Shuri, Aegon or Kate. This is not the place to learn a champ. If you use Aegon, don’t get started until you can reliably bank 100-hit combos on Titania. If Kate, master the dialed-in timing very very well. If Shuri, know her mechanics backwards and forwards. Don’t get going until you’re able to nail the first fight. 3) Learn the lane and watch a few videos. That minimizes unpleasant surprises. Don’t assume you can figure it out. 4) Restart your game and/or phone every fight or two. Fighting tough content and frame stutter and lag can be difficult. 5) Relax and take your time. Make liberal use of restarts. Don’t be afraid to take a half-health penalty if you get started the worst possible way. Go outside and look at trees and clouds to rest your eyes.
Since you had mentioned that BP isn't a viable choice of relic for Aegon, would you recommend Valk or BW as the better option? It doesn't seem like you spent a lot of time hitting into block, and Aegon does have DAA reduction once his combo is high enough, would think BW would be the obvious choice. But I could be missing something that would tilt the scales the other way.
BW relic helps - that's what I used aegon. One of the runes is to reduce defensive AAR when it ativates.
For everyone wondering just how odd this kind of run is, I asked Kabam if they could tell me if I was the slowest completion of Necropolis so far.
Nope. I wasn't even close. Apparently in terms of total run time, which means total time elapsed from the moment I entered Necropolis until the GM went down, which for me was about 64 hours, puts me currently in 152nd place. In other words, 151 players have already taken longer than I have. There's probably people in there now with longer run times that just haven't finished yet. They are probably orbiting near an event horizon like in Interstellar, but they are doing it.
So this is not a common thing, but this is also not an unheard of thing either. If you're out there and thinking you want to give Necropolis a try, but you don't think you can do it all in one go, but you also feel a little weird about spreading out the Necropolis over a week or more, don't feel bad. There's a bunch of people who simultaneously were crazy enough to tackle Necropolis in the first week, but also were willing to pace themselves across a period of several days. And I wasn't even close to being the slowest of them.
You can be excited about the content and want to do it, but also have time, physicality, or other constraints that compel you to actually do the content a piece at a time. Necropolis is not just for the absolute strongest players, although you do have to legitimately be an end game caliber player (it is end game content after all), and you don't have to be the kind of player that can blitz the content out in a couple hours. You just need to want to rise up to the challenge, manage resources carefully, study the fights, assemble the right team for your skill level, and then just bite the bullet and go for it.
Failure is an option, but it is not the only option for people like us. If you can take down things like Eternity of Pain, but things like Labyrinth and Abyss just seemed too daunting due to length, you're not alone, and you're also not locked out of Necropolis. Pace yourself, and it can be done, and there are more players doing it this way than you might think.
Also, we need about four million more deaths in there, so if you think you're not MSD-caliber, that's also fine. We need more like you in there. Get started.
One thing I learned is not to be too scared of Airwalker healing. I used R1 Wiccan and ended up taking 30-40% even when he healed 2 times. I'm assuming despair had a part to play though. But I do know for sure he healed around 5% omce
Looking at the node, does Neutralize do anything here? Did you have a particular rotation with Wiccan?
@DNA3000 sorry for the dumb question, but how did you build so many revives in your stash? I do the apothecary and daily challenges every day but that's only a max of 14 each in stash (1/day each).
Did you farm revives somewhere? Or just get them from oodles of free crystals?
Comments
The Zola Necrotrain is I believe pulling into Grandmaster station. Blasting through the fights like he’s chasing them off his lawn. With a shotgun.
@DNA3000 you wouldn’t say that if you saw me against reversed controls…the second half today (post-Psycho Man) cost me all of 20 revives, 5 of those to an annoying Nova whose “lag buff” kept causing me to get clipped.
The GM, however, took his pound of flesh. We go way back.
Prior to GM, 70 revives by my count, and 29 of those to Titania, Aarkus and Air-Walker.
At the end of Necro, GM was a peach until he hit 30% health. Need to recount my revives but it got a little ugly and likely cost me 20. Word to the wise—don’t get rushed or frustrated. It’s not a good idea for this kind of content.
But it’s done. And I offer my thanks to @DNA3000 , @Grootman1294 and @BrianGrant for their advice and the ability to pace myself against other folks.
Dr. Zola
Note: I took a pretty typical Aegon team. Aegon (R5+), Shuri R2 (40), Heimdall, Proxima, Wiccan R3 (80).
Very happy.
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
Appreciate the encouragement and the call-out in your thread. Nice to be on the other side of Completion with you.
Dr. Zola
First off, congrats on your completed journey. That said, thank you for this write-up. The similarities between myself & thevway you describe your game skill seem almost uncanny. I went back & 100% act 7, basically for the generic stones(for aegon) & post cyber weekend have decided that I will taking him to r5, rather than staying @r4. Again, really appreciate you documenting your journey & also, giving me the final push I needed to jump in to what seems a rewarding, yet mightily daunting trip...
Was it game-breaking? Ummm, sure. Especially in the GM reverse controls phase—Kabam should totally give me my revives back 😏
Dr. Zola
Titania: 35 minutes, 22 solo revives to ramp up Aegon (Aegon ramped to 814)
Vision Aarkus: 14 minutes, 9 solo revives
Omega Sentinel: 14 minutes, 6 solo revives
Air Walker: 24 minutes, 25 solo revives
Captain Britain: 20 minutes, 4 solo revives, 3 team revives
Wiccan: 9 minutes, 5 solo revives
Psycho Man: 10 minutes, 4 solo revives
Guardian: 10 minutes, 3 solo revives
Valkyrie: 18 minutes, 15 solo revives, 2 team revives
Red Guardian: 11 minutes, 1 solo revive
Sam Wilson: 11 minutes, 5 solo revives
Dragon Man: 20 minutes, 6 solo revives
Captain America Infinity War: 11 minutes, 3 solo revives
Nova: 13 minutes, 6 solo revives
Path totals: 220 minutes (three hours 40 minutes), 114 solo revives, 8 team revives
GM: Phase One: 2 solo, 6 team revives
GM: Phase Two: 6 team revives
GM: Phase Three: 5 solo, 3 team revives
GM Phase Four: 2 solo revives
GM totals: 1 hour, 12 minute total fight time. 9 solo, 17 team revives.
Note: for all intents and purposes, most of those team revives were really just reviving Aegon most of the time, because everyone else was just cannon fodder while recoil masteries were still up. The rest were rubbish. I was using them because they were expiring.
Grand Totals: Total accumulated fight time: Four hours fifty two minutes. 123 solo, 25 team revives used.
Total Necropolis Road to the Crypt milestone deaths: +134 if I counted correctly.
Current potion inventory count remaining: 8 solo revives, 19 team revives.
I received a total of 30 solo and 30 team revives from the two Necropolis potion bundles I bought. Without those purchases I would have been short 22 solo and 11 team revives, which is an amount I could have gotten an equivalent amount from opening Paragon crystals. Which I was originally calling four hour crystals, then corrected myself and started calling seven hour crystals, but are in fact four hour crystals, because halfway through my Necropolis run time ceased to have any meaning. It is not an F2P run, but it could have been.
My guesstimate from reviewing the footage is had I waited and ranked up my Aegon to R5 and ascended him, I could have reduced the count by about 30-40 revives. And had I not used the BP relic, I would have shaved an additional three or four. And with more experience on the best ways to do three fights - Air Walker, Captain Britian, and Valkyrie - I could have shaved an additional dozen revives off. But all things being equal, for a week one run that started on day two, not terrible.
According to Kabam, the current Road to the Crypt death counter stands at 1,011,420 deaths and counting. So you are all welcome.
But why would other players get rewards for something that they are ineligible to complete?
I'm old too so playing longer is harder for me..
Hope everyone pulls awesome 7* champions from their 7* champion crystal.
Anyone can do Necropolis. Someone joining the game today can do it, they are just extremely unlikely to be doing it now.
Road to the Crypt is a special thing specifically targeting those making Necropolis runs. If everyone got the rewards, those rewards would not be providing any incentive to attempt the content.
1. Someone said we learn more from our failures than our mistakes. This person was probably extremely error prone, but he did have a point. While reviewing my recording of the GM fight I just noticed that the bans have icons. This is something I did not notice after watching over a dozen GM fights, nor did I notice this during my actual run. Jeez I’m stupid.
2. We’re still learning how the fights work and what the optimal strategies are. I think a few weeks from now, much less a month from now, there will be better guides on the easy path that would probably cut the revive count by as much as half. Just talking about my run with other players also doing runs turned up many things I could have done differently, especially that Valkyrie fight. If people are thinking about doing runs soon, but just not right now, I think the information quality about strategy and tactics are improving all the time. Even if you think you can’t do it now, the community is continuing to learn and refine the best approaches, not just for the strongest players but also for the more average players.
3. I think my experience with the completion run has convinced me that exploration is within the realm of reasonable possibility. But I’m probably going to take my time with it. I’m not quite good enough I think to do a full exploration with reasonable resources, and I kinda don’t want to spend my way through the other paths. I’d like to see if I can learn to do it with lower spend options that require a bit more skill. In the same way that I wanted to challenge myself to bite the bullet and do long form end game content like this, I now want to challenge myself to learn how to do it better.
4. This was fun, as stressful as it was. When you decide to do your own runs, don’t be afraid to share with others. Your friends, your alliance, maybe here on the forums. Part of the fun of this game is sharing your experiences with the community. Victories are sweeter, and failures are more tolerable, when you put yourself out there honestly.
5. Knowing what I know now, if I could go back in time and redo the easy path, assuming I wanted to do it more or less right at launch I would:
- Not buy the potion bundle. That was not necessary.
- Farm a bit more revives into overflow to compensate. I could have stashed a lot more away, and I could have burned a lot of energy doing it especially if I knew I was going to open four hour crystals for extra revives. There’s a ton of energy in there.
- The team was fine. But I definitely would have swapped the BP relic out, and I think I would have swapped Nick for some other champ, as his extra damage boost was almost unnoticeable. Maybe a Thor for the regen synergy.
- I really have to get over swapping masteries when advantageous. It would have been advantageous to swap out the recoil masteries at the Grandmaster, but I stubbornly refused to do so, making Aegon the only viable attacker there (it was touch and go using Wiccan for phase four).
- Practice ramping up at Titania. I think it would be a good idea to be able to consistently get 80+ combo every time to ramp up Aegon, but I got a few good runs of practice and assumed I was fine. I was not fine. I could have cut those 22 revives almost in half with more practice.
- Settling on the heavy-heavy strategy for Air Walker sooner than later would have also saved a ton of revives.
I recorded every fight I did so I can go back and look at what I did wrong, to try to find ways to improve. I’m guessing there’s a lot of lessons in there. Well worth it, I think, for anyone thinking of doing multiple runs eventually.
I’m not sure what else there is to say about this Necropolis run. If anyone has questions I’ll try to answer, and if anyone else wants to share the results of their own runs please do. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who gave me encouragement during these past few days. It was meaningful and helpful to know people were out there watching/reading, and getting some benefit from my run. Tactical benefit, or at least entertainment value. Either way, it all helped keep me engaged and having fun, even when the fights were not always a ton of fun. I appreciated all the feedback, here and off the forums.
We should do this again sometime. Maybe not right away, though.
Considering the rewards which are good these are progression rewards not end game. As kabam mike said it will be too hard for many etc. Maestro was a good reward, the rank up gems probably should be included in end game content.
Many will disagree with me, that's ok
There are a lot of people who believe that content completion should drive the game. That players should be able to achieve progress without spending money without lagging too far behind the spenders. But if that is always achievable without spending, why spend? There has to be a significant value to spending, or no one will spend and then there will be no game. Placing the R3 materials in Necropolis means any player with sufficiently strong roster and sufficiently high skill can achieve Valiant without spending. Of course, most players will have neither the roster nor the skill to do so, but that’s besides the point. Most players will not be at the top of the game by definition. But Valiant is theoretically achievable through high end game play, and *before* the spenders get to it. But that high end game play is pretty high in absolute terms.
Most players won’t be able to get there via content, and so spending still has value. You can get there through Necropolis exploration, or Necropolis completion and spending, at least in the near term. Initially, according to Kabam there will be no path that involves only spending in the short term. That’s a reasonable balance in my opinion.
Over time, R3 materials will become more prevalent, and as they do the importance of Necropolis will fade as a progression gate. The balance will shift from Necropolis to more mundane and time consuming ways to get to Valiant that become open to a wider audience of players. This happens with every progression tier. Eventually, everyone who wants to become Valiant and plays long enough will get there. The players who put in the time, effort, and/or money will just get there earlier.
Everything in this game starts off hard to get, then becomes easier over time. Progression tiers are no exception. They will always start highly constrained, and become less so over time. This allows the players who can do the most to get there first, and for those players willing to spend money to support the game to get there soon after. And players unable or unwilling to do Necropolis or spend on offers to support the game or both will simply have to wait for more avenues to open up over time. I think that’s perfectly fair.
As we’ve discussed before, I tend to hate long form content if for no other reason than that I find it boring and I get distracted. I haven’t Abyssed or Labyrinthed and don’t plan to ever do so. Heck, I haven’t even done RoL with 3* Aegon.
Necropolis was actually enjoyable. Part of that was mental prep—I studied your notes and @Grootman1294 notes, watched @BrianGrant and @Seatin and others, so I had built up a level of expectation and had “pacers” so to speak for my performance.
It also helped to break down the path into digestible pieces. My only *bad* fight would have been GM, and a lot of that is a result of not studying up and reminding myself of his moveset and the icons and callouts. Impatience…
New tactics will emerge, but so will new champs. One mate did the same path yesterday with Kate, Knull and Shuri, soloing or one-reviving 8 of the defenders on the path. I lucked into a 6* Kushala, and I wonder whether she would work as an ascended R5. Who knows? But I’m sure other solitions will soon exist, even if for only a couple of defenders, and I can wait for the CCs to figure that out for me.
Last note: if I could give 5 simple suggestions to someone wanting to start, I’d say this:
1) Build your stash—pots and boosts. Seriously, no matter how good you think you are.
2) Know your main attacker very well, whether it’s Shuri, Aegon or Kate. This is not the place to learn a champ. If you use Aegon, don’t get started until you can reliably bank 100-hit combos on Titania. If Kate, master the dialed-in timing very very well. If Shuri, know her mechanics backwards and forwards. Don’t get going until you’re able to nail the first fight.
3) Learn the lane and watch a few videos. That minimizes unpleasant surprises. Don’t assume you can figure it out.
4) Restart your game and/or phone every fight or two. Fighting tough content and frame stutter and lag can be difficult.
5) Relax and take your time. Make liberal use of restarts. Don’t be afraid to take a half-health penalty if you get started the worst possible way. Go outside and look at trees and clouds to rest your eyes.
Dr. Zola
Nope. I wasn't even close. Apparently in terms of total run time, which means total time elapsed from the moment I entered Necropolis until the GM went down, which for me was about 64 hours, puts me currently in 152nd place. In other words, 151 players have already taken longer than I have. There's probably people in there now with longer run times that just haven't finished yet. They are probably orbiting near an event horizon like in Interstellar, but they are doing it.
So this is not a common thing, but this is also not an unheard of thing either. If you're out there and thinking you want to give Necropolis a try, but you don't think you can do it all in one go, but you also feel a little weird about spreading out the Necropolis over a week or more, don't feel bad. There's a bunch of people who simultaneously were crazy enough to tackle Necropolis in the first week, but also were willing to pace themselves across a period of several days. And I wasn't even close to being the slowest of them.
You can be excited about the content and want to do it, but also have time, physicality, or other constraints that compel you to actually do the content a piece at a time. Necropolis is not just for the absolute strongest players, although you do have to legitimately be an end game caliber player (it is end game content after all), and you don't have to be the kind of player that can blitz the content out in a couple hours. You just need to want to rise up to the challenge, manage resources carefully, study the fights, assemble the right team for your skill level, and then just bite the bullet and go for it.
Failure is an option, but it is not the only option for people like us. If you can take down things like Eternity of Pain, but things like Labyrinth and Abyss just seemed too daunting due to length, you're not alone, and you're also not locked out of Necropolis. Pace yourself, and it can be done, and there are more players doing it this way than you might think.
Also, we need about four million more deaths in there, so if you think you're not MSD-caliber, that's also fine. We need more like you in there. Get started.
Did you farm revives somewhere? Or just get them from oodles of free crystals?