A (long format) scrub enters the Necropolis

I'm not a literal scrub. I'd say I'm a decent player. I've done all the Variants, I've completed all the Acts, I got Cavalier in the first month of release, Thronebreaker day one and Paragon not that long after release. I've competed in tier 5 war, I get to the Gladiator Circuit regularly, and the last time I failed to complete time limited challenge content was the Maze.

But long form content and I have a strained relationship. I never actually did a full Labyrinth run, and while I've done some test runs I have yet to do the Abyss either. I keep putting it off, because they aren't going anywhere and frankly content that takes hours and hours is not my cup of tea. And then there was the Grandmaster's Gauntlet which I did fully explore, but I still think the content gets the W there.

But given the progression implications of Necropolis, I decided it was time to face my demons. And I figured since most of the Necropolis content out there is being made by the quick, the sharp, the awesome, and whatever MSD is, I thought I would share how a regular human being approaches the content. Note: I haven't completed it yet, more on that in a bit. This is going to be my own journal of success, failure, more failure, even more failure, and hopefully eventual tea bag of the Grandmaster over however long it takes me.

The reason I don't do well with long form challenge content is two-fold. First: I'm old. Not Crypt-Keeper old, but I'm probably more than double the age of the average MCOC player. I have to squint to look at the itty bitty text on the screen (how many charges do I have left? Is that a 3?) and my fingers get tired. I'm actually a pretty decent player five minutes into the fight, but fifty minutes in and I'm less so. However, second: I tend to get locked into content. Once I get going, I don't like to give up. I get caught up on pushing, which means the longer I play, the worse I get, and the more I try to push even harder. This is a recipe for a dumpster fire of memes. If I don't want to spend a fortune on Necropolis, I have to pace myself. This means I'm probably about to embark on the slowest Necropolis run anyone's heard of. This is not going to be an action packed thread.

I'm hoping that in all seriousness, maybe this gets people who think the content is too hard, too long, or too costly to reconsider. For many players, it probably is: it is after all the top tier end game content in the game right now. But maybe there are people out there who are good enough, but just don't know it. I hope I'm one of them.

For everyone else, enjoy seeing (or at least reading) someone get his tail kicked over and over and over again.

Comments

DNA3000

Day zero: Launch Day.

11/15 7:00am

Woke up early to watch launch stream, then see who's streaming the content. I see Seatin has decided to attempt an Aegon face roll bash everything until it dies run. This is my kind of run, as it uses the strategy I thought would have saved me a lot of pain during Grandmaster's Gauntlet. Seatin is a pretty good player, but maybe I could, with a ton of prep and study, approach Seatin's performance going in completely blind. Also, Aegon would be doing most of the work.

10:30am

Seatin completes Necropolis with no drop dead roadblocks and only a moderate amount of pain. This seems like a real possibility for me, unlike some of the other runs going on with Shuri that actually require skill. I do have a R4 sig 200 Aegon, but is it worth going now, or waiting until I can rank him up and ascend him?

5:00pm.

After thinking it over, decide to go with what I have. Lower Aegon will deal less damage, but will ramp up to higher combo before running into harder fights. Plus, I might chicken out later. Red light, green light. Time to go.

Plus, there's all those Necropolis milestones. I might as well do my part.

Sean_Who

Sounds a lot similar to myself, except I don't have the excuse of that old of age. Look forward to seeing what you think of it.

Who are you going in with, if you have already decided?

DNA3000

Day one, 11/16: Go time

I put together a team that mirrors the Seatin/Kam easy path easy life strategy.

Aegon 6* R4 sig 200 with Black Panther 5* relic
Nick (who has the easiest job, just die while I'm playing him)
Heimdall (who has the second easiest job, just watch me die and save me as many times as possible)
Wiccan (specifically for reverse control final phase of GM, and maybe other fights?)
Proxima (for the combo shield and fury synergies).

And I'm doing Seatin's easy path recommendation: Titania, Aarkus, Omega, Air Walker, Capt Britain, Wiccan, Psycho Man, Guardian, Valkyre, Red Guardian, Sam Wilson, Dragon Man, CapIW, Nova, and then the Grandmaster.

Also, I decide to pick up two of the Necropolis potion bundles, because yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm going to need them.

5:50pm Begin practicing ramping up Aegon on Titania. This goes surprisingly well. I can regularly get to 80+ combo before dying. This is the game goading me into starting sooner than later, it turns out.

9:03pm Starting my run. After lots of really good practice, I promptly trip over my own socks when playing for real, and end up taking 22 revives to bring down Titania over 35 minutes. However, Aegon is now ramped up to 814. I should take a break, but of course I do not.

9:42pm Aarkus goes down after nine revives and 14 minutes. I probably could have done it in half that many, but grandpa forgot to take his nap first. Definitely time to take a break.

10:01pm For exactly four minutes, because I'm still hyped up on Necro juice. 14 minutes and 6 revives later, Omega Sentinel goes down. Definitely could have done it with less, but I kept getting antsy and making dumb mistakes. One of the passes I took half her health off. Because if you want your game to kill your players over and over again, the AI has to give them hope. Now I'm definitely taking a break and starting again tomorrow, because Air Walker is next and no way am I going to try to push through him.

10:49pm. Wasn't I supposed to do something with Nick Fury? Dammit, I was supposed to kill him off, wasn't I? Forget about mental notes, I'm definitely writing that one down for tomorrow, because I am clearly too dumb to properly operate the Necropolis dumb damage team.

Current Necropolis milestone count: +15 (Titania doesn't count)

DNA3000

Day two: 11/17: The real right begins

9:15am The siren song of Necropolis is calling me. I hate it, but I can't not play it. I take a break from work and fire up MCOC. But first I check my notes from yesterday. In big bold letters it says KILL NICK FURY. Which I seriously completely forgot about. So I go in and let Air Walker bash nick fury to death. Embarrassingly, Nick Fury standing still and doing absolutely nothing stays alive significantly longer than some of my Titania ramp up rights. Somewhere the Necropolis designer giggles to himself, then wonders why.

9:40am. Air Walker sucks, and so do I. 24 minutes, 25 revives, and Air Walker is a traumatic memory. The timing for this is really tight, and if you miss you really have to quit out quickly, because if you stare at those green numbers long enough to curse them, he'll heal five hundred kajillion health points in a few milliseconds and then laugh at you. At least, I think he's laughing at me. It is hard to tell with all the other voices in my head.

The key seems to be to heavy him to build power and try to push him to just about two bars then bait out SP2, then immediately go back and knock him down. The heavies are a better way to knock him down than specials most of the time, and baiting SP2 is a good way to control his power. It only took me about twelve revives to figure this out. I now regret not buying all three of those Necro potion bundles.

9:54am News Flash

Of course.

Well, at least the worst is over, right? Who's next? Captain Britain? How hard can she ...

Oh. Yeah: time for another break. Seatin tells me that once I get past her, I'm sailing. I tug really hard on his face just to make sure he isn't Karatemike wearing a Seatin mask.

Current Necropolis milestone count: +39. And counting.

Clyneva

I love this. Looking forward to reading the whole journey.

Something I notice you didn't mention is masteries. If your plan is to brute force through with only Aegon, I'd heavily recommend warping your entire mastery setup around him. Once Aegon is ramped, he doesn't need or really benefit from willpower, because everything just gets shrugged off immediately. So might as well put those points into damage. If you go zero points into defensive, you have enough points to fully max out all the recoil masteries, the fury masteries, courage, assassin, and deep wounds.

Shamir51

Day two: 11/17: The real right begins

9:15am The siren song of Necropolis is calling me. I hate it, but I can't not play it. I take a break from work and fire up MCOC. But first I check my notes from yesterday. In big bold letters it says KILL NICK FURY. Which I seriously completely forgot about. So I go in and let Air Walker bash nick fury to death. Embarrassingly, Nick Fury standing still and doing absolutely nothing stays alive significantly longer than some of my Titania ramp up rights. Somewhere the Necropolis designer giggles to himself, then wonders why.

9:40am. Air Walker sucks, and so do I. 24 minutes, 25 revives, and Air Walker is a traumatic memory. The timing for this is really tight, and if you miss you really have to quit out quickly, because if you stare at those green numbers long enough to curse them, he'll heal five hundred kajillion health points in a few milliseconds and then laugh at you. At least, I think he's laughing at me. It is hard to tell with all the other voices in my head.

The key seems to be to heavy him to build power and try to push him to just about two bars then bait out SP2, then immediately go back and knock him down. The heavies are a better way to knock him down than specials most of the time, and baiting SP2 is a good way to control his power. It only took me about twelve revives to figure this out. I now regret not buying all three of those Necro potion bundles.

9:54am News Flash

Of course.

Well, at least the worst is over, right? Who's next? Captain Britain? How hard can she ...

Oh. Yeah: time for another break. Seatin tells me that once I get past her, I'm sailing. I tug really hard on his face just to make sure he isn't Karatemike wearing a Seatin mask.

Current Necropolis milestone count: +39. And counting.

This is the post I didn’t I know I needed!

I’m doing something similar for very similar reasons to your own- decent enough player, at similar levels to you but never tackled long form content. Doing Necro to prove something to myself. Trying to take it slow too. Started earlier this evening with my goal being finish Psycho Man before sleep time and go again tomorrow. Not too shabby so far. Had similar nightmare on Captain Britain as I messed up and brought Juggernaut for GM final phase and wish I’d bought Wiccan instead. Oh well, too late to back out now. In terms of goal, I’m well on track- only Pyscho Man remains left standing.

Keep up the great work. Really looking forwards to reading further updates!

SpideyFunko

You’ve got this word master

DNA3000

11:00am:

The next quest I am going to complete (hopefully) is Necropolis. Which means technically speaking I might get the most rewards for first time completion of any other player.

Necropolis juice is going full Four Loko. There's definitely no backing out now.

DNA3000

I love this. Looking forward to reading the whole journey.

Something I notice you didn't mention is masteries. If your plan is to brute force through with only Aegon, I'd heavily recommend warping your entire mastery setup around him. Once Aegon is ramped, he doesn't need or really benefit from willpower, because everything just gets shrugged off immediately. So might as well put those points into damage. If you go zero points into defensive, you have enough points to fully max out all the recoil masteries, the fury masteries, courage, assassin, and deep wounds.

I hate swapping masteries around. I really do. However, I've been seriously considering doing it for this, because if ever, then now. 50/50 I do that before I attempt Captain B later this afternoon.

Crcrcrc

You and I have a similar approach to Everest content, good luck! Necropolis is definitely a test of endurance

2StarKing

You are doing great. I'm learning for my run. Thanks for sharing!!!

DrZola

I expect you to have it all worked out for me @DNA3000 by the time I find a day I can make my own run.

Dr. Zola

Fit_Fun9329

I completed my first run (seatin path) and aegon shredded everything. It really wasnt bad, good luck mate

edric

This is an awesome read. I'm hooked lol. Please keep going!

Dirty_Dozz

See, I also have an R4 Sig 200 Aegon, and could easily do this same strat. But I keep telling myself one of the other champs would be better: watching KarateMike get like 25k bleed damage per second with Zemo has me eyeing him, while hearing a bunch of people say that Shuri can solo a decent amount of fights has me wanting to use my 7R2, but I don't have the patience to keep hoping for the magic run (not that I'm expecting to solo ANYONE but still).

Great write-up so far, can't wait for the rest!

DNA3000

1:58pm

Captain Britain goes down. 4 single revives, 3 team revives, 15 total deaths. Not too bad really. If there's one thing that I'm weirdly above average in dealing with, it is reverse controls. I'm not saying I'm the best at it by any stretch, but I've developed a strategy for dealing with it that seems to work for me. It is a mental trick that is difficult to explain, but instead of thinking "swipe left to go right" I think "normal control is outward, reverse controls is inward." When I'm in a reverse controls fight, I don't think left and right. I think swipe outward (left hand goes left, right hand goes right) and inward (left hand goes right, right hand goes left). So dash forward to attack becomes "squeeze" and evade away becomes "open."

Okay, maybe that's just some brain damaged thing that only works for me. But in my head "go left to go right" is a mess, because just thinking "right" makes my hands do the wrong thing. But thinking "squeeze, open, squeeze, open" is unburdened by left/right distinctions, and I make fewer mistakes

This fight is still not easy. I'm not good enough to solo her, but I am good enough to not get trapped by her. Also, I decided to swap masteries and thus on top of keeping track of reverse controls, I also had to remember "don't throw specials" because three of my fifteen deaths were recoil based dumb dumbs.

I actually tried to see if Aegon could just smash her down, but I wasn't doing enough damage fast enough. So five deaths and four revives later I changed strategy to using team revives and using Aegon, Wiccan, and Nick as attackers on every cycle. On one cycle I also tossed in Proxima, I thought maybe I could build up charges and do some damage that way. But as good as I am dealing with reverse controls, I'm not quite that good.

Still, if this is peak ugliness in the path, then things are looking up.

Current Necropolis milestone count: +54. Five fights down. Averaging about 13 deaths per fight not counting Titania. At this rate that projects 117 more deaths to the Grandmaster. Kinda hoping it is less than that since Air Walker and Britain are higher than average difficulty defenders, but even that is way, way lower than my Grandmasters Gauntlet run. 170 deaths just to get to the Grandmaster is indeed scrub territory, but it is also a small price to pay for my first Valiant prerequisite R3.

Next up: Wiccan. He has that equal energy thing, I'm not sure what exactly I'm going to do about that, but we'll see.

DNA3000

See, I also have an R4 Sig 200 Aegon, and could easily do this same strat. But I keep telling myself one of the other champs would be better: watching KarateMike get like 25k bleed damage per second with Zemo has me eyeing him, while hearing a bunch of people say that Shuri can solo a decent amount of fights has me wanting to use my 7R2, but I don't have the patience to keep hoping for the magic run (not that I'm expecting to solo ANYONE but still).

Great write-up so far, can't wait for the rest!

My thought process here was get the straight forward win, and see if the rewards open up some other opportunities for exploration. *IF* I decide to go for exploration. Before launch, I would have assumed exploration was a very low probability thing. But five fights in, that possibility seems a lot less crazy than it did before I started. One or two fights at a time, and so far no horrible show stoppers, and it seems less scary.

Of course, I haven't tackled the Grandmaster yet.

Malreck04

Damn, all these runs are really making me consider ranking my aegon, but I just want to do Kate bishop, and I don’t know how good she is for the easy path. Issue is both of them are r1 so it’s going to take time(and a hell lot of iso) to rank up the second one

DNA3000

Damn, all these runs are really making me consider ranking my aegon, but I just want to do Kate bishop, and I don’t know how good she is for the easy path. Issue is both of them are r1 so it’s going to take time(and a hell lot of iso) to rank up the second one

I hear Kate is a really good option for players that can drive her very well. Aegon is the face roll option: even when the fight is bad, it isn't too bad. I don't know if the subtleties of Kate or Shuri make some fights have higher skill hurdles than others, and if that ultimately matters to those attackers.

Buttehrs

I myself still haven't done LoL or Abyss. However, I did randomly take a full team of 6r4 into LoL just to see what happens, and I made it through about half a path before needing to revive. Long story short, I'll wait till my 9* aegon is ready for necropolis. I do have a 6* awakened aegon but he's sig1 and rank 1. Lol.

DNA3000

5:00pm

Whoosh. That was Brian sailing right past me and on to the Grandmaster. Good luck Brian. Going to be shuffling my walker over to Wiccan probably right after Mr. Grant takes down the Grandmaster.

Malreck04

I myself still haven't done LoL or Abyss. However, I did randomly take a full team of 6r4 into LoL just to see what happens, and I made it through about half a path before needing to revive. Long story short, I'll wait till my 9* aegon is ready for necropolis. I do have a 6* awakened aegon but he's sig1 and rank 1. Lol.

Sig 1 suggests you were expecting to use him somewhere, maybe this is the perfect opportunity

DNA3000

5:39pm Let's dance.

Wiccan goes down in 9 minutes and five revives. The most important thing really is try to push him to SP2 so he doesn't get his SP1 heal. Also, somewhere between Titania and Wiccan I completely forgot that I should be letting defenders punch me in the face to get the furies. Of course I would mess up actually getting hit. I didn't play perfect, but I did remember to start doing that again, and suddenly he goes down in five revives.

5:54pm I'm on a roll so I go for Psycho Man. Psycho Man has that funky call out mechanic that you have to do or get wrecked, and somehow I only miss like one of them. Not sure how, but not going to question it. 10 minutes and four revives, and he's toast.

6:15pm I really shouldn't be pushing my luck but I can't help it. Guardian is a can of spam to Aegon. HIs mechanics are things Aegon ignores, things Aegon counters, things Aegon doesn't notice, and things Aegon works around. 10 minutes 30 seconds and three revives. Three. I would move on to Valkyrie but I can't because I cannot parry very well while I'm dancing around the living room.

Thirty minutes, 12 revives, and three Necropolis defenders down. I'm taking my money off the table and heading for the buffet.

Current Necropolis milestone count: +66. Now averaging 9.4 deaths per defender (not counting Titania ramp up). Projected deaths to the Grandmaster now 57. If the next six are like the last three, maybe 24 revives? Right now I have 19 solo revives and 39 team revives. Plus a ton of four hour crystals I could theoretically pop open rather than buying revives with units (last I checked, 1762 Paragon greenies and 1532 Thronebreaker ones).

I might try to knock off Valkyrie later tonight. If the pattern continues Valk will take two revives, Red Guardian will take one, I will solo Sam Wilson, and then Dragon Man will start shooting revives out of his butt. But I suspect the pattern will not continue indefinitely.

Snizzbar

Wait are you on NZT? I can't think of anywhere in the same time zone except maybe Siberia
Nvm I remember you said a while back you are in Japan I think. Good luck for the rest of the fights👍

DNA3000

Wait are you on NZT? I can't think of anywhere in the same time zone except maybe Siberia
Nvm I remember you said a while back you are in Japan I think. Good luck for the rest of the fights👍

Only two places are GMT-10 as far as I recall, and I live in the warmer one.

DNA3000

9:20pm

Valkyrie did not continue the pattern. Valkyrie was actually a tough nut for me to crack. She's tricky with Aegom because unblockable hits do not count for hits into block, and even though my brain knew that, my hands kept forgetting.

I have quite a few team revives in overflow from those Necro bundles so I decided to start burning some. I used two before I decided to sstop and just open four hour crystals because I was running low on solo revives. Each time I used a team revive I remembered to kill off Nick immediately, so those two team revives actually account for four deaths. I then opened 500 Paragon four hour crystals and got 11 L2 and 12 L3 revives, plus a gigaton of L4 health potions (like over three hundred). It took an additional 15 solo revives to finish off Valk. It really should have taken less, but remember this is the scrub run, not the super awesome run.

9:33pm

Red Guardian, on the other hand, did follow the pattern as he is a literal cake walk for Aegon. It took only one revive, and this is the fight I think I have the highest chance to solo, if I had an ascended R5 Aegon. Even when the timer dropped below half and I was being rooted on every special, I could keep going because his SP2 is easy to evade even rooted, and it isn't hard to push him to it. I even evaded an SP1. But with an extended timer, on a good day (or, based on Valkyrie, even a bad one) he's very likely going to be a solo for many max rank Aegon users.

Although I did have two deaths on this fight, because for some reason I accidentally entered with Heimdall at the start of the fight. I immediately realized my mistake but then figured might as well see how far I could get. A minute later I couldn't see Red Guardian's health bar move at all, and at one point the AI literally just stopped fighting and stood there, as if he was saying "what are we doing here, huh? Don't we both have better things to do?" So far though, Red Guardian has been the easiest fight on this path by a mile. I don't even know what exploding his shield even does. I almost thought it was bugged. You can literally fight this fight as if it is some weird practice fight with occasional roots, ignore everything else, and just kill him.

9:58pm

Last fight of the night. Sam Wilson was also a mostly conventional fight, the goal here seems to be to just keep baiting SP1 if you can, or take the blocked damage from SP2 if you must, and chip him down. For some reason I had a lot more trouble timing those face-smashing fury hits, and so it was slower going. 11 minutes and five revives total.

Overall, 23 revives for those three fights, 21 solo and 2 team, and 26 total deaths. Current Necropolis milestone count: +92. Three fights to go before Grandmaster. Best guestimate for revive count to reach GM: probably around 20. I'm hoping Cap and Nova won't be too bad, but I'm not sure about Dragon Man. It can be easy to lose control of a Dragon Man fight. I have 16 L2 and L3 solo revives left, plus 16 higher tier ones I don't want to use unless I have to, plus 37 team revives. I can always open more 7hr crystals, but I'm going to try to get to GM with what I have left and then maybe burn the team revives in overflow at the GM.

Magrailothos

Keep going, DNA 😀.

As someone also well above the average age of players, I have a fairly similar feel about long-form content. Although add in the obstacle "keep getting interrupted by children demanding my attention.."

I'm going to bring this thread to the attention of my old friend @Moosetiptronic ; a man of a similar age and skill level 😉. We're both planning (i.e. actually planning by grinding resources and watching other people's attempts, to learn from them!) Necropolis attempts in the next month or two.

I love this. Looking forward to reading the whole journey.

Something I notice you didn't mention is masteries. If your plan is to brute force through with only Aegon, I'd heavily recommend warping your entire mastery setup around him. Once Aegon is ramped, he doesn't need or really benefit from willpower, because everything just gets shrugged off immediately. So might as well put those points into damage. If you go zero points into defensive, you have enough points to fully max out all the recoil masteries, the fury masteries, courage, assassin, and deep wounds.

This is definitely something I'm planning. Remove Willpower was a definite - hasn't considered going for zero defensive Masteries. I don't usually run Recoil Masteries, but unlocked them using Mastery Cores in the very last Gifting event.

IvarTheBoneless

Damn, all these runs are really making me consider ranking my aegon, but I just want to do Kate bishop, and I don’t know how good she is for the easy path. Issue is both of them are r1 so it’s going to take time(and a hell lot of iso) to rank up the second one

Watch nick136's completion run to see how kate does

Moosetiptronic

Yup, reading it with interest 😁

I was the one who based my first gauntlet run, literally, around @DNA3000 's suggestion... I ramped up my 5* aegon on doom (🫣 https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/270326/gauntlet-lessons-another-average-joe-story#latest)

But I have 6* R4 sig 200 aegon and seriously considering r5-ing and ascending him, plus 7* wiccan (may R2 him), Heimdall, Prox, fury and full attack masteries.

So, I'll be using this as a template, bar the potion packs.

Us older chaps need an approach that's Homer friendly; mashing the phone controls with your palm...

Moosetiptronic

@DNA3000 have you seen this thread on the viability of wiccan for some of the fights? Could be worth some experimentation with him on nova and dragon man?

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/352098/necropolis-wiccan-usage