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Changedx

Merry Christmas, everyone! I've been playing for 40 days and spent $25 on HP for 23 slots but never health packs or heroic tokens. I've cleared the Prologue and can clear most events.

It seems to me there are 3 phases in the game, maybe corresponding to the * rating of the characters:
1) Play with anything, settle on something like IM35, BW, M.Storm, level them up to 30 or so.
2) Switch to Wolv and Thor, level them up to 85.
3) Switch to Spidey, Rag, Magneto.

I'm only in the middle of phase 2 (Thor and Wolv in the 60's), but have only drawn 2 Spidey covers and no Rag or Magneto(***). (I do have a few Doom and Hood covers.) I'm curious to hear from the more experienced players: to get the *** covers, do you just play for a long time and collect the low-percentage drops from heroic tokens, or do you spend money on the special event offers? For example, I see the Diabolical 5-pack gives me 1 of each of the ***, including a Rag and Mag. So one way to get to Phase 3 would be to spend $100 for 20k HP, and spend it on 4 sets of those 5-packs (@ 5k HP each). That would give me a strong chance of a Red Rag and a good Mag color. Then maybe another $50 of HP to increase the skills of each, and finally another $50 for 50k ISO (Xmas sale) to level from 15 to 59 for each of the 2 toons. That's $200 total outlay.

Or how many months of play would it take to get to that level, assuming 1-2 hours of daily play?

Unknown

If you are going to spend money, I would personally wait until you get a red Ragnarok cover, then use HP to increase it. You might make a run at the Ragnarok round that will start in 90 minutes. Because of the holiday, there are fewer people playing.

Unknown

Just keep grinding I'm at 50ish days and a rag cover is a login reward in two days I pulled two rags in standard tokens I saved 40 tokens got 2 rags 2 spider and a doom plus lots of other needed 1-2 star covers I'm not saying don't spend but if you play enough you don't have to play the tourneys at weird hours to make easy points

Unknown

Check out of the recent replies on this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1602

People share the jumps they experience from novice to intermediate, noting the thresholds of finishing in lightning rounds.

Spoiler: Ragnarok covers are the not so secret sauce.

Changedx

Re: Rag lightning round
I tried and was not even close. Maybe my MMR is too high (I did tank the last Loki round but won a GW from a previous tournament), but there are plenty of 85 Thor's playing in my bracket.

Re: Daily rewards
Looking at http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=544, I see Rag Green at day 60. That's nice, but no Red.

Re: The Role of Luck thread
Sounds like getting a Rag or Magneto are the way to break through. So the options are still the $200 spend or slowly keep playing until my Thor and Wolv are 85, by which time I might have drawn a Rag or Mag from heroic tokens.

Thanks all!

Unknown

Changedx wrote:

Re: Rag lightning round
I tried and was not even close. Maybe my MMR is too high (I did tank the last Loki round but won a GW from a previous tournament), but there are plenty of 85 Thor's playing in my bracket.

Re: Daily rewards
Looking at http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=544, I see Rag Green at day 60. That's nice, but no Red.

Re: The Role of Luck thread
Sounds like getting a Rag or Magneto are the way to break through. So the options are still the $200 spend or slowly keep playing until my Thor and Wolv are 85, by which time I might have drawn a Rag or Mag from heroic tokens.

Thanks all!

Play as many events as you can with the intention of farming Iso. Before The Hunt, I had a maxed Thor and Classic Storm and was able to farm close to 150k despite spending 400 Iso every 3rd fight.

That amount got me to max level Wolverine, bring Ragnarok to 31 (still useless with only one red cover), and Magneto to 102.

I'm in serious need of Iso again so I look to farm without spending on boosts.

Unknown

I spent money on HP ($50) to jump up to the big leagues and with a targeted spend it can be done pretty easily. There's a sharp dividing line between the power of players who have a 5-red Ragnarok/5-blue Spidey (and arguably 5-green Black Widow Grey Suit/5 Purple Magneto) and those who don't. So I saved up HP, bought another $50, and waited for the right oppoertunities. When my Grey Widow hit 3 green, I immediately spent HP to boost it to 5. When I got a red Ragnarok cover I immediately boosted red all the way to 5 with HP. When my Spiderman hit 3 blue, I boosted to 5 with HP. Ragnarok and Spiderman especially will let you win noticeably more matches than you otherwise would even if they aren't super high level, assuming the key skill is at 5. My Ragnarok has gone from level 60 to level 115 in like the last 10 days just because of all the event/lightning round ISO I've earned and dumped directly into him. So I wouldn't recommend buying ISO, but I am a proponent of spending $$ on HP to get key skills on key characters boosted. It makes a world of difference to your teams effectiveness.

Unknown

I had a pretty similiar progression to you. I spent $25 on some slot and heroics(not many and I didn't really get anything all that great from them) when I first started, but basically what you can do now is this:

Level your Doom up a bit so you can at least consistently get a diabolical token from his round along with your thor/wolv. I had leveled him when since his tournament was going on and I figured it would be worth it, it is.
See what you get, hopefully a couple rags and mags peppered in there. But even if you end up with Lokis, you can toss a bit of iso in to try to get diabolicals from his round as well.
Finally just reap as many standard/heroic tokens as you can and hopefully you'll get lucky eventually. I think over time the odds are pretty decent.

You probably want your thor/wolvie at around 70+, not that they'll dissuade most people from attacking.

Changedx

Thanks for the advice. I finished #3 in the last Avengers tournament to get 3 Punisher covers, unlocking Hulk sub-missions and enabling me to place top-200 for ISO and powered heroic tokens. Unfortunately I've just gotten Cap covers, similar to many other forum posts in: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1518.

I'm getting another Doom black cover from the daily rewards soon, so leveling him for the diabolical tournament may be worth trying out.

Or if there's a way to get a purple cover for my GW 1/1/0, I could level her to feed green to my Wolv.

I'd be ok spending $ for HP for either of those.

Unknown

Spent some money to increase slot covers to 30....pokemon syndrome. Must collect them all.

Spent some money to increase rag's red to 5.

wallet needs a break now.