F2P Valiant Speedrun Round 2 (Crucible Edition)

Hello everyone!
Due to some changes in my irl schedule, the F2P Valiant Speedrun will begin tonight! Over the last few days I’ve done some planning and testing, and learned a lot of new info which I plan to share with everyone throughout the course of the challenge when the info is relevant.
The goal for this run is to become Valiant in 2 weeks or less … yeah I’m feeling crazy.
But I do think it’s possible, some Crystal rng will be needed but with the addition of new content, cheaper deals 😉, and the current saga having magnetron crystals as the chase item, it opens up a new set of possibilities.

I’ll be doing streams for a decent amount of the challenge, but I hope people can understand I can’t stream the entire thing. I just can’t sit down for 10-12hrs straight like Brian Grant did and hard focus on the account, my approach is a more consistent continual play throughout my day when I have time (eg: travelling somewhere and I have an hour to play etc). Kabam devs have been informed so the account will be monitored so rest easy knowing nothing is going on behind the scenes breaking the rules.

The account will be created tonight, so lookout for the first recap post and vid tomorrow!

If anyone has any additional questions about the run, the methods I use, or any other stuff, feel free to drop it in this thread and I’ll try to answer when possible.

I’ll post a quick YT link here so that people know which my channel is for streams and vids.

https://m.youtube.com/@cant0na119

Let’s get this done!

Comments

Cantona59

Time to hit paragon!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d8s_MIMKuY

Cantona59

Day 8 Recap!

8.4 is down, and paragon has been achieved. Overall it was a pretty easy chapter, lots of cheesy nodes to exploit if you play well and have decently strong champions. Glykhan only cost me 1 team revive as well so I still have 90 revives and 60 team revives going into the crucible and necropolis.

Overall my rewards were kinda meh, but the main resources was the rankup gems that got me to paragon, with cgr, scorp and Chavez now all r4.

So now it’s all about the crucible and the necropolis to wrap this up. I’m currently planning both my crucible lanes, and plan to tackle one off stream throughout the day and then one tonight on stream, where we will get our first r3 champion. I’m thinking of taking rocket to r3 half because of the memes but half because he has very good damage with near guaranteed crits, and could be good in necropolis.

It’s going to be insanely tough and long, that’s why I’m not doing both paths on stream as I’m expecting approx 3-4 hours per path, but I’m hoping to do them both today so that necropolis can be done tomorrow.

No vid for today as everything I did was on stream, but I’ll be uploading a mega video of all the path 1 crucible fights hopefully tomorrow, tho I’m not sure how long it will take to put together and upload.

See you all tonight for the crucible 👀

The_beast123

Bro gon be valiant sooner than I have completed 1 chapter of anything. Congratulations man! Good luck!

Cantona59

Day 9 Recap!

To put it short, an absolute disaster 😢. The crucible has proven to be way more challenging and long than expected, due to a mix of using 6 star r1s, a lack of immunities, game lag/freeze issues, and having the most minimal roster that has probably ever attempted crucible. So far, I’m around 60 revives in with 9 fights to go, and I plan to finish the path off tonight on stream. My worry is there is still another path to go, and my revives are draining fast.

I’ll do a short little talk about each fight like I do for story quests, but on some of the fights I was essentially revive spamming so I don’t know the exact numbers:

Yondu - solo with heimdall, long but fine

BWDO - 2 revives with psylocke, got her power locked and then it’s just spamming hits

BWCV - 5 revives with red guardian, she loved throwing sp1 whilst I was blocking to bleed me, great fun

Venom - 3 revives with sorcerer supreme, damage was good but was having so horrible freezes/game lag (pls fix Kabam)

Green goblin - 2 revives with Ronan, you can stun lock here, but you have to be very on the ball to keep it up.

Rhino - 2 revives with kraven, surprisingly pretty good, heavy gives disorient to counter tantrum node

Red hulk - lost count on this one lol, civil warrior counters the buffet but if I even got hit in the block more than once I was dead

Hulkbuster - solo with Venompool. He was GOATED for this fight

Vision aarkus - 2 revives with destroyer, very close to just 1 revive

Hela - 2 revives with captain Britain, another long but relatively easy fight

Juggernaut - ok here’s where I majorly screwed up 😂. I used ant man (if u already know the problem here pls don’t laugh), and it took me a lot of revives and nearly 3000 total hits to kill. Why you might wonder? Well he’s BUFF IMMUNE 😭😭😭. So because of caustic temper I was dealing -90% damage the whole fight cause I couldn’t get a fury. Big dumb moment

Weapon x - solo with Guilly 99, nice way to hit back

Electro Luke - solo with Kate, just play it slow

Punishing angel - 4 revives with Stryfe, after I ramped him this fight wasn’t too horrendous

Night carnage - solo with moleman, if you can change his mode successfully this fight is easy, just don’t throw sp1

Spider Witch - ok this one annoyed me. I used Ihulk and even with 1 spidey charge, she was evading like crazy. Spent a lot of revives when runs were just about getting spicy

Ice Phoenix - solo with cmm, good stuff

Gwenperion - solo with scorp, same as 7.1.6

Moleman - 2 revives with wolverine, if you get a bleed and foresight at the same time the damage is really good, 6 star r1 critting for 10k+

Magneto - 3 revives with juggy, unblockable specials kept catching me

Modok, 1 revive with daredevil HK, he was so good for this fight because above 15 combo you have -65% defensive ability accuracy, so modok struggles to auto block

Guardian - solo with cgr

Wags - 4 revives with Havok, same again unblockable specials kept catching me

Tigra - 2 revives with photon, should have been 1

Venom the duck - solo with rocket

So that’s where I’m up to. It’s taken me nearly 6 hours to get to this point, and probably another 2hrs to finish it up, which is way longer than I expected. I was hoping to wrap this challenge up in approx 10-11 days, but now it’s looking closer to the original 14 days due to probably having to quickly grind some revives/units out using my spare energy refills

At least path 1 is nearly done though, tonight gwenmaster will go down and we will be halfway to the first r3 champion

See you all later!

captain_rogers

Holy the antman vs juggs is a very costly mistake lmao.

Cantona59

Holy the antman vs juggs is a very costly mistake lmao.

Yeah 😂
As soon as I went in and did the first hit I was like oh no. If I hadn’t have used so many revives to get there I would have quit out and replanned, but I was too far in at that point

Cantona59

Day 10 Recap!

Basically, nightmare part 2 😢. I’ve ran out of my single revives already, and the first path isn’t completed yet.

So let’s talk about how the remaining bosses went:

Hit monkey - solo with prof X, vigilance shuts him down

Punisher 99 - 2 revives with idoom, better than I expected tbh

Nova - solo with Chavez

Ibom - Major problem. My kingpin just straight up would not shrug his poison, and with no willpower it cost a lot of revives to get through here. Really annoying

Man thing - 2 revives with 4 star scorp, I’ll take it

Void - ok now I’m incredibly angry with Kabam for this as there is zero way I got this wrong. I selected blade to drag in and he was in the slot, then I double and triple checked I wanted blade, so locked it in. Then on the next screen, DOC OC APPEARS. I was absolutely speechless, and just sat there for a few minutes in shock. Obviously doc oc is not good for this void, and so that’s where I ran out of my single revives.

So I had to stop and really think about how I’m gonna get this challenge over the line, cause I’m in a really bad position now. I’ve still got essentially a full path of crucible and necropolis with only my team revives left. But then a new plan hit me:

Day 11 - grind as many units, revives, iso etc as possible from the new events dropping later today. The Crystal event will give me 300 units and 8 revives, I can complete other events like road to the labyrinth and unit paths in act 7/8. Essentially stock up on as much as humanly possible

Day 12 - the necropolis.

Ok I know what you’re thinking, necropolis was meant to be the last thing why do it now. In the necropolis I’ll be able to maximise my team revives as I will be using cgr, scorp + synergy, Chavez, and rocket. Given that I have 60 team revives, I can spend 3/4 team revives on each boss to “break even” which means I need to do about 25-30% per team. I did a test with cgr and he was able to wipe 20% of Titania by himself, and it’s a horrible matchup really.

So if I can get through the necropolis with the team revives, that’s 2 more 7 stars for crucible, a r3 gem, a r2 gem etc. And I think I can do it with some team revives to spare, as they can then be used as single revives in crucible.

Day 13 - Finish crucible path 1 and prep for path 2, only 3 fights left so should be easy

Day 14 - Crucible path 2, and hopefully I can get it over the line

It’s not ideal, but I think it can be done. This challenge has been different to the last one in the sense the crucible is a way bigger challenge, but I think I can get through it. I need a smooth necro run on day 12 and then I’m back on track.

I very easily could item out, and essentially fail the challenge, but at least it makes it exciting to watch as it’s not just a matter of time this Speedrun, there’s danger creeping up to me.

Tomorrow the recap will likely be short, just showcasing the things I did to get more units and revives to prepare.

Badah

Keep going, you can still do it! We are cheering for you!

Giantwalrus56

That Doc OC/Blade situation sounds absolutely terrible. Really sorry that happened. Personally, after something like that, I probably would have abandoned ship & said F it! Your perseverance is commendable. Hope the plan works out & things get back on track. Good Luck & looking forward to following along

Cantona59

That Doc OC/Blade situation sounds absolutely terrible. Really sorry that happened. Personally, after something like that, I probably would have abandoned ship & said F it! Your perseverance is commendable. Hope the plan works out & things get back on track. Good Luck & looking forward to following along

Tbh, I very nearly said nah it’s not worth it and quit out, but I’m so close now that I may as well give the other plan a try.
Hopefully it works out in the next few days

DNA3000

Void - ok now I’m incredibly angry with Kabam for this as there is zero way I got this wrong. I selected blade to drag in and he was in the slot, then I double and triple checked I wanted blade, so locked it in. Then on the next screen, DOC OC APPEARS. I was absolutely speechless, and just sat there for a few minutes in shock. Obviously doc oc is not good for this void, and so that’s where I ran out of my single revives.

Do you have video evidence of this? If this kind of bug is possible in the Crucible, that's a critical show stopper bug I would like to report to Kabam.

HaverTime

Void - ok now I’m incredibly angry with Kabam for this as there is zero way I got this wrong. I selected blade to drag in and he was in the slot, then I double and triple checked I wanted blade, so locked it in. Then on the next screen, DOC OC APPEARS. I was absolutely speechless, and just sat there for a few minutes in shock. Obviously doc oc is not good for this void, and so that’s where I ran out of my single revives.
Do you have video evidence of this? If this kind of bug is possible in the Crucible, that's a critical show stopper bug I would like to report to Kabam.

I don't have video proof of this. But a similar thing happen to me in war a couple weeks back. I had my team selected and when I hit to proceed into the war the game crashed. When I reloaded the game it had my previous team of 3 selected (not the new 3 I had selected prior to the crash) and I was in the war with no chance to back out and change my team. Very strange.

Cantona59

Void - ok now I’m incredibly angry with Kabam for this as there is zero way I got this wrong. I selected blade to drag in and he was in the slot, then I double and triple checked I wanted blade, so locked it in. Then on the next screen, DOC OC APPEARS. I was absolutely speechless, and just sat there for a few minutes in shock. Obviously doc oc is not good for this void, and so that’s where I ran out of my single revives.
Do you have video evidence of this? If this kind of bug is possible in the Crucible, that's a critical show stopper bug I would like to report to Kabam.

Sadly no, I was just trying to “quickly” get through the last fights for the day and then it came out of nowhere.
Wish I was streaming it

Cantona59

Day 11 Recap!

Prep is going well. Lots of different areas available atm to grab iso and revives for the necropolis, not all prep is done yet but it will be ready for the necropolis stream later today.

I’ve been/plan to go to a few different areas for stuff so I’ll list them here and the rewards they gave me:

Thronebreaker eq - iso and eq deal (not bought yet)

8.3.6 exploration - tech iso for rocket

8.4 exploration (ongoing) - 4-5 gem for scorp, ascension for Chavez, lots of iso

Shooting stars final quest - mystic iso for Chavez

Crystal cleanup event - opened 400 crystals, just gotta wait for community to catch up

Road to the labyrinth - 360 units

Apothecary - 2 revives

Incursions - more iso

Some still to do before tonight, but I’m on track to be ready with this team for the necropolis:

R5 ascended cgr
R5 ascended Chavez
R5 scorpion
R2 rocket
Agent venom synergy

Planning to do Titania path into apoc path for necro, as it will be the easiest for this set of champs

See you all tonight!

Cantona59

1300 free units from this event you say Kabam.
Thank you kindly 😁

Cantona59

Its time. Necropolis stream inbound!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy2Ap7AeGqg

Cantona59

Day 12 Recap!

Necropolis is going insanely well. 8/15 bosses down and I’m at 16 team revives used with around 50 still to play with.

The new whale event that dropped has been a massive help as well, it has lots of iso and units so my team for necro was stronger than expected.

With exploring 8.4, which only cost me 1 team revive and 1 single revive, my team for the necropolis was the following:

R5a CGR
R5a Chavez
R5 scorpion
R2 Rocket
(Agent venom synergy)

I bought the eq bundle for a set of 30% boosts, and in I went:

Titania - 1 team revive, better than expected, got some good rotations going with cgr and scorpion

Vision aarkus - 2 team revives, cgr and Chavez was tag teaming him very well, taking around 25% off each fight

Omega sentinel - 2 team revives, honestly this was one of the scariest fights, but even with her necro nodes, cgr can still smash through her using sp3 fury to compensate for lack of sp2 crits

Air walker - 4 team revives, this guy is just annoying, loves throwing specials into your block, and when he does so inflicts a 4k dot due to his dark tide. Great fun! Cgr and Chavez did the best as I could keep his specials to a minimum

Captain Britain - 1 team revive, pretty simple, just gotta watch that reverse controls on specials

Wiccan - 2 team revives, scorpion was mvp here, the poison stings keep his healing close to 0 even without despair and he has a low health pool compared to most of necropolis

Psycho man - 2 team revives, not bad again, cgr rotations were popping off against this guy as his concussion is not 100%

Apoc - 2 team revives, rocket was taking big chunks off this guy, 20-25% a time, but the other champs were struggling for different reasons

Now to take out the other half! I plan to do most of it off stream throughout the day but I will save the grandmaster for an on stream takedown. Then I’ll finish off path 1 of crucible also on stream so it’s a double content day!

Then there will be just 1 path left…

Kingering_King

Wow!! Amazing job!!

Cantona59

Hey everyone

Yesterday (day 13) I woke up and was feeling absolutely dreadful, so pretty much didn’t play the entire day. Today is a similar story but I’m going to try and play a bit later.

Sadly it means I’m not gonna be able to finish within 2 weeks, looking more like 15-16 days now. Obviously I’m still gonna finish the challenge out though as it will slash the previous 21 days challenge.

Just updating so that people don’t think I disappeared 😅

Cantona59

Day 15 Recap!

I’m feeling good again! So it was time to get this challenge finally finished. First order of business for the day was to finish up the necropolis, starting with tigra:

Tigra - 1 team revive, scorp was goated here due to rupture immunity

Hercules - 2 team revives, pretty annoying fight, cgr and Chavez did some good work but it was very long cause of the protection spamming

Cap Sam - 1 team revive, rocket was actually insanely good here as his crits bypassed all the armour

Dragon man - 1 team revive, scorp did some good damage here, only champ who wasn’t good was cgr

Cap IW - 1 team revive, one of the easiest necro fights, every champ was good here

Nova - 1 team revive, Chavez ripped through this guy cause of all the buffs

Grandmaster - 2 team revives, reverse controls phase was annoying me, but eventually got him down. Finally done!

Onto the rewards! First order of business, open the 2-3 gem incase I don’t have a champ of that class. I got tech, so no issue there, the goat rocket straight up to rank 3 😂. I then used my class crystals to pick and mutant and skill, as I had no 7 stars in these classes. Got Stryfe and crossbones, very nice pulls for crucible path 2. I also had a Titan Crystal formed, which was leader, an interesting champ that I haven’t played, so he will be fun to use even if it’s only for 2 fights.

So necropolis took me 27 team revives in total, which tbh is very very good. I now essentially have 40 revives for crucible path 2, as well as the units and actual single revives. Overall it was a very good move to switch to necropolis cause now I know what I’m working with.

Then I moved to quickly finish path 1 of crucible (6 days after starting it 😅). There was only 3.5 fights left so here we go:

Half of void - quite a few revives cause of the doc oc moment, but was taking 10-15% chunks which I was happy with

Platpool - easy solo with silk

Dragon man - 1 revive with leader, he seems fun but a bit mid on the damage side

Gwenmaster - 1 revive with crossbones cause I messed up, should have soloed tbh

Grabbed my 5 revives and got out of there, happy that path is finally over! From the reunion Crystal I got Venompool, another nice champ for path 2 so happy with that.

Now it’s onto path 2, I’m going to plan it out today, and then tonight to celebrate the end of the challenge I’m gonna do a mega stream of the entire second path! Hopefully nothing goes wrong, and I can finish this challenge in 16 days and get that second 2-3 gem (it’s gonna be silk btw, I had science iso so started putting it into her)

Video upload from today, grandmaster takedown and the rewards opening after it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w1G7VXlzzMs

See you all tonight for the final push!

Kingering_King

Day 15 Recap!

I’m feeling good again! So it was time to get this challenge finally finished. First order of business for the day was to finish up the necropolis, starting with tigra:

Tigra - 1 team revive, scorp was goated here due to rupture immunity

Hercules - 2 team revives, pretty annoying fight, cgr and Chavez did some good work but it was very long cause of the protection spamming

Cap Sam - 1 team revive, rocket was actually insanely good here as his crits bypassed all the armour

Dragon man - 1 team revive, scorp did some good damage here, only champ who wasn’t good was cgr

Cap IW - 1 team revive, one of the easiest necro fights, every champ was good here

Nova - 1 team revive, Chavez ripped through this guy cause of all the buffs

Grandmaster - 2 team revives, reverse controls phase was annoying me, but eventually got him down. Finally done!

Onto the rewards! First order of business, open the 2-3 gem incase I don’t have a champ of that class. I got tech, so no issue there, the goat rocket straight up to rank 3 😂. I then used my class crystals to pick and mutant and skill, as I had no 7 stars in these classes. Got Stryfe and crossbones, very nice pulls for crucible path 2. I also had a Titan Crystal formed, which was leader, an interesting champ that I haven’t played, so he will be fun to use even if it’s only for 2 fights.

So necropolis took me 27 team revives in total, which tbh is very very good. I now essentially have 40 revives for crucible path 2, as well as the units and actual single revives. Overall it was a very good move to switch to necropolis cause now I know what I’m working with.

Then I moved to quickly finish path 1 of crucible (6 days after starting it 😅). There was only 3.5 fights left so here we go:

Half of void - quite a few revives cause of the doc oc moment, but was taking 10-15% chunks which I was happy with

Platpool - easy solo with silk

Dragon man - 1 revive with leader, he seems fun but a bit mid on the damage side

Gwenmaster - 1 revive with crossbones cause I messed up, should have soloed tbh

Grabbed my 5 revives and got out of there, happy that path is finally over! From the reunion Crystal I got Venompool, another nice champ for path 2 so happy with that.

Now it’s onto path 2, I’m going to plan it out today, and then tonight to celebrate the end of the challenge I’m gonna do a mega stream of the entire second path! Hopefully nothing goes wrong, and I can finish this challenge in 16 days and get that second 2-3 gem (it’s gonna be silk btw, I had science iso so started putting it into her)

Video upload from today, grandmaster takedown and the rewards opening after it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w1G7VXlzzMs

See you all tonight for the final push!

Wow man congrats

Cantona59

Time to Finish this Up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSauhDkMVYU

Cantona59

Gotta love horrible internet connection 😢.

Due to the stream keep crashing and not being able to come back stable, I’m going to record the remaining fights and upload it to YouTube.

Sorry everyone 😢

Riptide

Great job mate! These are always so fun to read through!

Cantona59

Hey everyone

By the calendar timer, there’s around 3hrs 20 left of day 16, so I’m going to try and stream the last bit of path 2 in about 1hr 20 from now. If the stream crashes, then rip, but I’d rather the final moments be captured on stream instead of reuploaded later.

Hope to see as many of you there as possible!

Cantona59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpLGqGHLCnM

Cantona59

Valiant achieved in 16 days (just 😅)!

Full write up and final thoughts coming tomorrow, thanks again everyone for supporting the challenge, wouldn’t happen without you all.

Cantona59

Hey everyone! Time to write the concluding post for the challenge. Get your reading glasses on cause this might be a long one!

So, Valiant achieved in 16 days, shaving 5 days off of the previous challenge record. Makes it sound like a clean and good performance with some nice cuts to the previous run, right?

Absolutely not, in my opinion this Speedrun was actually harder and more challenging than the last one. Stamina is one thing, but stamina as well as having to do outrageously long and tricky fights is wayyyy more brutal than the 100% act 8 that I did last time. The crucible nearly broke me tbh, constant 6 star r1 fights against 700-900k health bosses with crazy attack values and nodes that can one shot me created a different challenge to last time.
In the run where I 100% act 8, it was borderline simple and a case of when I will finish, not if I will finish. This was mostly because I got to use my best champions, Kate and Chavez is a combo that can wipe 90% of act 8 very easily if you know how to play them. Act 8 exploration was just a time gate, not a skill gate that I had to pass.

So let’s start with going through the account MVPs, from start to late game.

4* Kate - pretty obvious she was gonna be broken for act 4 and 5, introduction of ascension dust gives those 4 stars a bit of extra reach for new accounts compared to back in the day.

6* cmm - the act 6 goat! The magnetron crystals saga was an insane help for any new account, because even if you got very unlucky with your crystals, you still get a guaranteed 6 star cmm from the milestone of opening 10 crystals. She destroyed everything when paired with the Nick fury synergy, but started to run out of steam into act 7 and 8 due to increasing health pools and other pulls.

6* scorp - paired with agent venom synergy, this guy is an absolute monster in every area of the game. Act 8 mvp, one of the necro MVPs, just an absolute god with that synergy as it lets him punch up so easily.

6* cgr - everyone knows why this guy is good, so I’m not gonna go into detail lol. Soloed superior Kang for the final fight of the challenge and was one of the necro MVPs.

6* Chavez - the true necro mvp. Even against champs with no buffs, she was still taking out 25-30% chunks which was incredible for my revive stash. Challenge would have 100% failed without her.

7* rocket - kinda surprising tbh! When he was my first 7 star pull, I doubted how good he would be for act 8 and necro, but he was crushing both. His buff is incredibly solid and underrated, makes him a great quest clearer and the insane crit rate gives him good damage right from the start of the fight.

Apart from those 6 champs, I barely used anyone (apart from crucible obviously), showing that the right team can pretty much crush the entire game.
Is this a good thing? Debatable. On the one hand, story quests aren’t the main focus of most people nowadays, so having a solid team that can take you all the way from act 1 to act 8 (and soon to be act 9), isn’t damaging for the game. On the other hand some would argue it’s made the game to easy, but I disagree mostly because skill is still needed, and learning the champs. If you gave a complete newbie this set of champs, they wouldn’t get very far as you still need to know how to use them, and have good general game skills to survive with low health pools in long fights.
The game has progressed so much even since my last Speedrun. One notable thing being that act 6 completion now gives thronebreaker straight away, no more need for a r3 6 star. This is very good as it unlocks shooting stars (lots of iso) and the better trader outpost store to get resources that better suit a player going into act 7.

Now that’s complete, time to look at what I thought was good about this challenge and also what went wrong, because as stated this was not a smooth ride:

THE GOOD

1. Necropolis completion

This completely saved the challenge tbh. I was in a very bad spot after the first path of crucible, and I needed to be very careful with my stash. The necro completion went about as well as I could have hoped for, 27 team revives is very respectable for my mashup team, and it meant I could return to the crucible with an extra 40 revives basically.

2. Adaptability

Pretty much, the fact that I didn’t panic and throw in the towel/nuke myself and fail the challenge. Everything could have gone sideways after that first crucible path, I could have kept going with the original plan and in the end not completed the challenge at all. Choosing to take a day to replan everything was the right move, even if it felt like I was sacrificing time without much progress.

3. No OP champ for necropolis

This might sound like a bad, but hear me out (or read me out, it’s a bit weird cause I’m typing and not talking 😂).
The necropolis last time was a complete breeze because of Kate, there was no real struggle and I knew it was completely in the bag due to a lucky pull. The point of these speedruns is to show that theoretically, anyone with enough SKILL can do this type of thing, not luck. By not having an OP necro champ this time, it showed that even mash up teams can work if they are crafted well to cover all areas. Like is anyone in their right mind using cgr, Chavez, rocket, scorp+synergy as their necro team? Absolutely not, but it was the options I had in front of me. It wasn’t just Kate and done.
I enjoyed doing the content with a team that kinda wasn’t meant to be there, made it much more rewarding when I was destroying bosses pretty well and quickly, and hopefully showed people that it doesn’t depend on getting a lucky pull.

THE BAD (UH OH)

1. The Crucible.

We knew this was coming. The crucible is not for the weak of mind especially with a minimal roster. Even I thought it would be easier than it was, but constant 6 star r1 fights is way more brutal than doing a couple here or there.
In total, the crucible probably cost me about 160-180 revives total … yeah. Combination of factors lead to this, bad play, bad planning, low level champs getting one shotted, inputs dropping (cause that is still happening), game freezes (the new issue) and the doc oc incident.
With the introduction of 9.1, it thankfully means anyone else who does this challenge does not have to experience the crucible, making the challenge easier for the future.

2. Illness

Not really my fault, but still worth a mention. Day 13 and 14 essentially got wiped due to illness, putting everything 2 days behind. Unfortunate timing

3. Iso issues

Kabam has still not updated iso gain/farming for mid game players, making it a bit of a struggle. The taking away of the r3 requirement for thronebreaker is nice, but a general increase in the amount of iso available is what’s needed as people are getting 6 stars earlier now. This will be even more of an issue for lower skill players, as they won’t be able to punch up as much as I can, so more iso is definitely needed in the mid game.

4. Game freezes/lag/bugs/ai

Ok I have to talk about it. The number of bugs, freezes and lag experienced during this challenge was way higher compared to the previous one. The current game freezing issue is known about so I won’t go in depth with it, but in fights where one combo could kill me it’s even more brutal. Could some of this have been due to me streaming more of the challenge? Well that is one argument, and I can’t outright say no, but freezing and lagging was still prevalent during non streamed content at a similar rate. I know they are working on this, but just to reiterate that it is costing players resources, and also causing anger.

The doc oc bug in crucible was a one off, didn’t happen before and hasn’t happened since, so may have been a rare bug that needs a little looking at. Sadly I didn’t record, but if Kabam is able to look into the account at one happened that’s completely ok with me.

Game ai is the issue that is annoying me the most at the moment. I’ll say this very simply. The game ai has changed. There is no doubt in my mind. Compared to footage from the previous challenge, I was experiencing way more light intercepts, defenders essentially phasing my attacks and combo me, and ai deciding to hold their special until sp3. It’s very concerning when a taunted opponent waits all the way from their sp2 to sp3 while I’m constantly dexing, and then instantly remembers they are taunted at sp3.

Overall, there’s lots of game issues atm, Kabam knows already but had to mention them for clarity.

So, what now?
There will be no more valiant Speedruns from me I’m afraid, unless one thing happens. If somebody breaks the 16 day record, I will come back for round 3, as there will be a goal to beat that time. Until then, I’ll likely be doing occasional streams on my channel of the main account, mostly bgs based as that’s one of the areas I focus on the most.

If anyone has any further questions about the challenge or how I did anything, don’t hesitate to ask in this thread and I’ll reply as soon as I see it.

Thanks everyone for supporting the challenge again and tuning in on YouTube for recaps and livestreams! You are all the reason I do stupid stuff like this 😂.

See you all later!

(perhaps for the next progression title whenever that may be 👀)