**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
LOL
Yeah. This event is just awful. You get lucky, yay. Or you get in an impossible situation. No scouting, no preparation. Just awful. But the rest of the game is following suit. My semi-retirement is about to be permanent.
Opened 14 crystals with 12 giving 250 shards .. and rest 1k t2a
While some other players opened 2500 shards in one crystal plus t5b shards
I don't understand this argument. There are multiple difficulties. If Epic is too much, drop down a level. If that's too much, drop down a level. Keep doing that until you find a level you're comfortable with.
If everyone could just breeze by Epic difficulty, what's the point in even having the variable difficulties?
Then this is probably not the game for you. Random chance is pretty obviously fundamental to the reward systems of this game. Why play a game where 90% of the rewards have some element of random chance when you appear to be opposed on principle to random rewards. That seems illogical.
A significant chunk of the monthly quests rewards are PHC, 3*, 4* and 5* crystals or shards, and fundamentally speaking all of those are essentially random rewards, no different than the Occult Labs awarding a crystal, but the crystal itself having random drops. T4CC fragment crystals and signature stone crystals are also random drop.
Reroll
Unhappy with reroll but Need to buy more rerolls
Go buy more rerolls in the store
Come back into the occult lab to see that Nodes have reverted back to their original.
However, what I would tweak about them is the overall value proposition: for the difficulty and time investment (I occasionally run into multiple 300-400 hit KOs), I would either (a) increase the rerolls available daily or (b) remove the lowest possible prizes. I’m fine with getting 250 5* shards for what turns out to be a half hour of effort if I have a little more control over swapping the nodes I face; alternatively, I’m fine with getting stuck with crummy nodes and 8 rerolls/day if there’s a promise of more than 250 5* shards at stake. But the balance feels a little off right now.
This isn’t a gripe about difficulty: I actually enjoy a lot of the strange interactions of the nodes even if they don’t work in my favor. And maybe I’ve just been dusted by the downside of RNG every time while someone else is raking in T5b—that’s always a possibility. But the basic mix of difficulty, time commitment, control and rewards could be tweaked a little for a better, more consistent experience in my opinion.
Dr. Zola
But if you wanted to reroll anyway then it doesnt matter what the nodes are. Its only a problem if you quit out of the lab for another reason
I took 4 4* rank 5. Depending on RNG, manageable (first attempt at this event).
To be candid, this past weekend I decided to downshift from Epic to Expert (or whatever its called). Although I was getting slightly better, I was simply burning too many potions and rerolls to try to get through Epic twice, especially when my top champs were in AQ and AW.
For me personally, the value proposition isn't worth it after about ten days of Epic (i.e. twenty runs). My net haul was 5 pulls of 1000 T2A, one pull of 1000 5* shards, and the rest 250 5* shards.
Thing is, buffing the rewards wouldn't make it any less difficult, it would just put more pressure on me to do them anyway. And no matter what the rewards are, for any player less skilled than me it won't matter, and for any player significantly stronger than me they are already getting a pretty good deal on those rewards since they are completing it without any significant expenditure of any resources. I don't think there's any way to set that value in such a way that anything more than a tiny sliver of the player population would concur the value proposition was appropriate.
I agree with you about buffing the rewards—it would make the labs more compulsory for veterans who want the materials for resource hungry champs. And that’s a recipe for burnout/rage quit.
I have adapted my approach yet again—running Epic every couple of days and punting if I see a ridiculous lineup of champs whose main counter is stuck in AQ or AW. Not worth it. I “reroll” the map and don’t sweat it.
Neither map is good? Run until I die and never waste a pot. Keep getting the same nodes over and over even after you randomize? Don’t sweat it—not worth it. Phone call interrupts and when you go back the nodes you re-randomized are reset? Roll again and don’t sweat it.
To date, I’ve gotten all 250 5* shards and one 1000 T2a. That’s over about a dozen finishes of Epic, and my entries are that limited partly because of vacation and partly because of disinterest. Again, my issue as much as anything is time—I value the half hour or so it takes me to knock a pass out. With everything else in game and life going on, labs are relegated to an afterthought.
The irony is that Expert, which one would expect to yield a steady stream of small 5* shards prizes, has given me nothing but T4b/c shards—something I’ve been swimming in for a while. Go figure.
Is the event a bust? Not exactly, but it’s underwhelming at best. Something needs to be tweaked, or maybe the overall format needs to be rethought. Shorten the map, give more randomizers, allow champ swaps, allow players to place opponents on the nodes, or something. As is, it only seems to work for the players who have access to that kind of rewards already or who enjoy self-abuse.
Dr. Zola
Bane
Rage
Explosive Personality
Explosive Personality
Aspect of Chaos
Not unbeatable; and (theoretically) opportunities to use the Bane to my advantage.
But so much to keep track of! Two types of Fury, Armour, Bane, PF charges and an effect that switches our health with an invisible timer!
Didn't realise the Aspect of Chaos effect could be used to heal: it kicked in just before I won - so I lost - and so Phoenix started the next fight on 85% health. Grrr.
Next time: send in low-health champ; wait for the switch, then take her out with free healing. Much better.
I almost had that happen to me. First or second fight, in with Blade. Aspect of Chaos kicks in, I go down to 1% health. Blade prevents them from gaining life, they bleed out and die. Meanwhile I'm stuck with an almost dead Blade.
Ow! Sympathies.
I am not someone who religiously hates random rewards. However, for an event like this where you're doing two possibly very difficult runs a day for a month, I would have probably designed the rewards around currency. Maybe the different tiers would have different currency, or maybe the higher tiers would just give more currency (which is much more difficult to balance). But the notion that an expert tier player should be able to decide to shift their rewards in the direction of T4B or T4CC or 5* shards depending on what they need the most seems to make more sense when it comes to a marathon event which this is.
Especially since our entries are limited, so it is not like everyone is just scooping up the easier tier rewards. Everyone is pushing themselves to the highest tier they feel they can complete comfortably (or otherwise). So unlike an event where everyone gets to do both easy and hard tasks, this is much more of an intensive grind (or could be).
That’s totally fair, and honestly something I thought about the first couple of runs through labs. Make them Symbiotic shards or something that can be combined or used as currency to buy items like Infinity Dust was.
Makes more sense than what we have—just an odd combination of features and restrictions.
Dr. Zola
It matters because you will have just wasted rerolls. Its retty silly that this issue hasn’t been fixed. It was a problem back during Modoks Lab many months ago.
He's saying if you leave the map specifically to buy rerolls, then because you were going to reroll the nodes anyway it doesn't matter if they stay the same or revert to the initial state, because you're going to reroll them anyway.
This only hurts if you reroll into a combination you *like* but then leave for some reason. It has no effect whatsoever on someone intending to reroll a combination they don't want.
I’m sorry you was gonna reroll(wow thre times autowrong) you went to buy more tokens to reroll so it doesn’t matter if they was reset, seeing as you was gonna reroll anyway(the reroll failed before you left)
There’s RNG, and then there’s...whatever this is. What’s often a fun and challenging event is marred by some of the stingiest prize rewards this game has ever seen.
If Labs come back again, fix the value proposition so it’s more commensurate with the effort.
Dr. Zola
Guaranteed 300 shards
Lesser time to complete
Lower difficulty