The Colognoisseur Semi-Accurate Guide to ISO Mining LR's

Colognoisseur

I keep saying this but the LR's are where you make your iso. Any 2*->3* transitioner should be able to do this.
Over 48 hours there are 24 lightning rounds. If you open them right when they start. That means right when they start on the dot. Here is the opportunity you have. A lot of this is from memory and the numbers might not be bang on exact but the principles are what I do every week to fuel my iso.

Seed teams: Pyromantic, Wanna B Skrull, freerangec@ge, kicksthatkick. all of these consist of single digit one stars at level 1 or 2 and the featured character at level 25 (usually around 2500 health, except for Sentry and Hulk) These can be beaten by anybody who knows how to play the game.

Second level seedteams: B@conMagic, HAIGUYZDOOM, frownyjonah32, HIPDUDEGLASSES. Now the 1* are higher level with around 720 health and the featured character is a little higher. These should not be challenge to top-level 2* team it can be if you don't have that.

Top level seed team: Battle Angel This has cstorm at a decent level the featured character at a decent level and 1* widow at 1500 health. This can be problematic for any transitioning team. That is why once it shows up in a node you do not skip it so it doesn't show up on the remaining two nodes and the easier teams keep rotating through.

The point totals for matches won go: 25-48-70-90-109-126-142-157-171-185-198-210-221-231

Prog awards at 25: std token, 50: 140 iso, 100: 250 iso, and 250: std token

If you get in at the beginning and hit each one of the easy seed teams until you get 109: you get assuming average of 100iso per match won 500iso plus assuming 100iso1* cover from token plus 390 iso from prog awards plus at worst 70k from final placement prize= 1060iso worst case scenario. you have to finish top 100 in pvp to get that assuming you will sell the cover. At a base level with 24 lightning rounds there is 25,000 iso available. Yes I know only the hardcore do that much but even if you do 5 out of 24 you reap 5,000iso. That is equivalent to the iso reward minus covers for a top5 pvp finish. all for at worst fifteen minutes work and being there at the right time.

Let's up the ante a bit for those who have the roster to push to 250. for those players add at least 8 more seed team wins at another 800iso. you generally have to play one or two non-seeds to get to 250 for another 200iso. 1,000 more iso for ten wins. Another token for likely 100iso. That takes you to a total of 2160 plus a better placement prize of 500iso which makes a grand total of 2600iso in the worst case. Do that five times and you have 13,000 iso a week. Better than first place finish in pvp even if you sell off the covers and for a lot of you reading this finishing first would be difficult. five lightning rounds are not. Play fifteen at this level which is hardcore and you have 39,000 iso in a week. Just that can turn a 3* from a benchwarmer into a player.

The scenarios laid out above are worst case lowest reward returns. With a kind RNG sometimes there are a lot of 2* covers won from matches. These numbers can only go higher. i have had single lightning rounds net me almost 5000iso, not often but sometimes everything comes together.

The constant complaint I hear is I can't be bothered to be there on time when it opens to get the seed teams. I am surprised to hear this from a player base that does 2h 24m refreshes in PvE and will time out shields and other things. Every week for 48 hours there is a huge pot of iso out there to be harvested and it is up to each player how much they want to reap. It takes some timing and some effort but not as much as it takes for PvE of PvP.

How effective is this? The last iso I purchased was almost a year ago I would say 75% of iso since has mostly come on the back of farming lightning rounds. The more you do this the faster your roster gets leveled the more competitive you become across the board.

Anyway this is how I see the iso problem the devs have supplied a weekly motherlode that is up to each player how much they want to mine it.

GothicKratos

First of all, thank you for sharing all that information. I can definitely say this is my experience with Lightning Rounds when I get the chance to do them.

Colognoisseur wrote:

Anyway this is how I see the iso problem the devs have supplied a weekly motherlode that is up to each player how much they want to mine it.

Not to turn this thread into another debate, but, as you said, with most of the player base already doing PvE refreshes every 2.5 hours, it is really "fair"/"right" that we have to schedule out more allotted time to grind specifically for ISO? The ultimate goal should be to allow players to progress in a timely fashion in whatever what they enjoy playing. That said, in my humble opinion, MPQ does a pretty okay job at, but only if you know how the systems and mechanics work already. This is, of course, barring the gain of ISO, which I do okay with as a 2* player, but I can only imagine how grueling getting the ISO for 3*s is going to be. That being said, there are more options for a solid 3* team, since you can try for high placements, which mores more playing and more ISO.

wymtime

I am able to mine ISO in LR but the big challenge is how many LR I can do. I know Colognisseur is awsome at it, but when PVE runs in the middle of the week you do have a choice to make. With LR you have to be at the LR right at the start to get the sead teams. In PVE you need to hit the nodes every 2.5ish hours. If you start 5 min early or 5 min late it is really no big deal and you generally don't loose placement. If I miss the start I just go for 2 matches and go for the 50 token. The reality is if you are just hitting up to 100 and taking the 1000 total ISO that is not that much. to max out my characters with 13 covers I currently need 1.1 million ISO. I have 7 characters already max leveled and 13 more max covered. I have a spreadsheet to keep track of how much ISO I need for each character and how much I need to get my priority characters leveled. I feel I play this game a lot. I regularly score top 10-25 in PVP and top 10 in PVE. I can only imagine how much you play this game to get the ISO you get. Colognosseur you are a special player and have mastered this game so thank you for this guide

mohio

The problem with the comment about 3* trying for higher placement meaning more matches and more iso, is that you start to see a much much lower return on investment. You can see it already in the numbers from colog. If you're a 3* player and enter right when an LR starts, you can usually hit 9-10 seed teams before they run out (sometimes more and sometimes less). With progress rewards this is somewhere around 1500 iso, and this is done in maybe 10-15 minutes. You could continue to play the rest of the LR and win around 5k iso, which is a great number, but you basically only won 3x as much iso in at least 6x as much time. Not only that but you eschewed playing the current pvp or the current pve. This is not meant to disparage anyone who does this - if I have the time to do it I often will do it too - just saying that after those seed teams are gone the iso earning rate decreases quite a bit and you're really only fighting for placement, which for the most part is just more iso. Again, nothing wrong with that, so go for it!

GothicKratos

I actually just meant globally but yeah, that is very true. Skip Tax can be a tinykitty.

Unknown

I do LRs to heal up my true healing guys if a significant PvP/PvE event is going on, and sometimes just to take a break too.

Daken + Falcon is overwhelmingly the fastest team for cleaning up seed teams. Even Daken 2* is pretty good at cleaning out the weak seed teams especially if you have Chemical Reaction at level 5. A lot of fights basically go match green, match yellow, match blue, match blue, Chemical Reaction, game over.

Unknown

ISO is easy to get. It's the complete lack of 3* covers to actually build a team in this phase. All I get are the current spoon fed 3*'s being featured (3-4 covers), and barely any good 3* covers like LDaken etc.

This transition will take forever. Top 100 PVP is a stretch without buying gold, token draws are ****, spoon fed 3*'s easily obtainable in PVE are weak.

That being said, good info OP thanks. It helps for the vets to share as much as possible.

Quebbster

Switchman wrote:

ISO is easy to get. It's the complete lack of 3* covers to actually build a team in this phase.

I take it you are in the **-*** transition phase? ISO is definitely not easy to get once you have a high level team in place, you get covers much faster than you get the ISO to level them. In the endgame, ISO is most definitely the limiting factor.

wymtime

via Imgflip Meme Maker
I am accepting the LR challenge that Colognoisseur has placed here. I will track how much ISO I earn this week and my goal is to hit as many LR as possible. I already keep a spread sheet of how much ISO I need to soft cap my 3 and 4* characters so I will take what I earn this week and see how long it will take me to earn enough ISO to soft cap my current roster. My belief is ISO is still an issue in this game with all the new characters being released even at 2 a month. I will post the results here next week!!!

Unknown

For those people who say they can't play a lightning round right at the start while also doing 2.25 refreshes, here's something.

You don't actually even have to play the lightning round right away to get some seed teams! All you have to do is open it. Simply click on the round right as it begins and all your nodes will fill with seed teams. Then back out, finish your refreshes and go back to the lr before it ends and you can still play at least some seeds. Probably enough to get you close to the 100 progression reward.

That's still good ISO.

Unknown

I don't understand this. I've opened up a LR right as it started, played all the seed teams, but invariably I'm placed with actual players after the first three are done. Are you saying that there's a way to hit multiple (more than three) seed teams per LR? I have no way of doing that.

wymtime

RefinedBean wrote:

I don't understand this. I've opened up a LR right as it started, played all the seed teams, but invariably I'm placed with actual players after the first three are done. Are you saying that there's a way to hit multiple (more than three) seed teams per LR? I have no way of doing that.

Yes you should have more than 3 seed teams. What you do is you open the LR right away and view all 3 seed teams. Then you start. My preference is to just grind the same (for all intensive purposes) node. You should be able to get 3-7 seed teams if you keep opening the same spot. Once you start seeing real people then you go to the saved seed teams and beat them. Last LR i got to about 125 points before I got to real teams and still had 2 seed teams lined up.

Unknown

wymtime wrote:

Yes you should have more than 3 seed teams. What you do is you open the LR right away and view all 3 seed teams. Then you start. My preference is to just grind the same (for all intensive purposes) node. You should be able to get 3-7 seed teams if you keep opening the same spot. Once you start seeing real people then you go to the saved seed teams and beat them. Last LR i got to about 125 points before I got to real teams and still had 2 seed teams lined up.

Okay. I'll try it, though I'm not convinced - I swear I see actual people after the first seed teams are taken down.

Quebbster

wymtime wrote:

RefinedBean wrote:

I don't understand this. I've opened up a LR right as it started, played all the seed teams, but invariably I'm placed with actual players after the first three are done. Are you saying that there's a way to hit multiple (more than three) seed teams per LR? I have no way of doing that.

Yes you should have more than 3 seed teams. What you do is you open the LR right away and view all 3 seed teams. Then you start. My preference is to just grind the same (for all intensive purposes) node. You should be able to get 3-7 seed teams if you keep opening the same spot. Once you start seeing real people then you go to the saved seed teams and beat them. Last LR i got to about 125 points before I got to real teams and still had 2 seed teams lined up.

I prefer rotating between the nodes as the impression I have is that once a non-seed team shows up in one node, they will soon turn up in the other two nodes as well. I could easily be wrong though. It's really just a matter of personal preference.

Unknown

I think the target brackets change every 20-30 mins or so. So if you just keep skipping nodes, you'll see the same 20 or so teams, (less if some are shielded). If it takes you a long time to win your seed battles, they might get replaced by other people in the round.

Unknown

This is the kind of thing I wish I had learned when I first ventured beyond the prologue. My first LR experience was pretty brutal so I stayed away for awhile. If I had understood seed teams better I would have a much more robust roster. Not that I'm hurting with my 12 166s, mind you.

Great write up. I hope it benefits many newcomers.

GothicKratos

Just throwing my two cents in and saying that I always play the same physical node repeatedly until I get a "real" team and go to the next one and repeat (thought returns of amount of seed teams are diminishing in the second and third node). I generally see somewhere between 9-12 seed teams. I usually use 2* Wolverine, 2* Daken, and 2* Black Widow to maximize damage output (this is of course roster dependent though).

VonMatterhorn

I'll add one additional note for personal experience. Sometimes when I exit out of the game completely or it has to reload all the way (see the loading screen with groot, gamora, and rocket), I'll see normal teams in my node right after beating the seed team I had queued up, even though I joined the LR immediately when it opened and just to do it later.

While this wasn't a problem once I became aware of it, ever since the Lollipop update for Android, the game seems to have to reload every other time I play, so now I more or less do LRs right as they open to make sure I get the full guantlet of seed teams.

Quebbster

GothicKratos wrote:

Just throwing my two cents in and saying that I always play the same physical node repeatedly until I get a "real" team and go to the next one and repeat (thought returns of amount of seed teams are diminishing in the second and third node). I generally see somewhere between 9-12 seed teams. I usually use 2* Wolverine, 2* Daken, and 2* Black Widow to maximize damage output (this is of course roster dependent though).

I think I have gotten similar numbers circling the nodes, so I guess it doesn't matter much how you do it...

FaustianDeal

After realizing that Lightning Rounds were the way to grow I started trying to really hit them. Beyond mining ISO from the LR - they can be so much more if you are willing to reinvest some of the ISO they pay out back into the hunt.

One thing that has paid real dividends for me:
Every week during the window that lightning rounds are running: I make myself invest 5-levels worth of ISO into 1 character that participates in lightning rounds. I have done this for months. It might seem like a waste of ISO (~12k as they near completion), but it is an investment that has paid off handsomely as time has gone on.
* These characters earn me a huge pile of ISO every week (easily 2-5x what I put into them).
* I am now able to compete in the lightning rounds using only the 'featured-5' - meaning less interference in PVE (I don't need my A-team for LR any more)
* I am able to get farther into the rounds much faster - at least 1 round / week I make a top-100 finish with a score earned only hitting seed teams
* My LR teams are great scarecrows now - in many rounds I have a very quiet climb to a score (there are much softer targets to be found)

Because I have been grooming my LR characters with some of the ISO they win me my placements in LR have steadily improved. I finished top-50 in 4 rounds this week - and have 8 heroics to open when new characters land in the token drops next week.

(Top-50 might not sound like much, but 2-heroics are, in my opinion, a better prize than a single LR token.)

wymtime

wymtime wrote:

via Imgflip Meme Maker
I am accepting the LR challenge that Colognoisseur has placed here. I will track how much ISO I earn this week and my goal is to hit as many LR as possible. I already keep a spread sheet of how much ISO I need to soft cap my 3 and 4* characters so I will take what I earn this week and see how long it will take me to earn enough ISO to soft cap my current roster. My belief is ISO is still an issue in this game with all the new characters being released even at 2 a month. I will post the results here next week!!!

I was orignally going to post on Monday but with the Gauntlet PVE I thought it would dramaticly alter my numbers for what an average week of ISO would look like especially since I will probably be done playing the gauntlet today. Here are some of my results.
Mon-Tuesday ISO earned 46420
Wed Iso Earned- 17470
Thursday ISO earned- 7720
Total ISO earned 71610 this week. I did 12 LR averaging around 150 points. I averaged around 1760 iso per LR for a total of 21120. So LR was about 1/3 of the ISO I earned. I also earned 44 standard tokens for the week and 6 Heroic. The interesting thing about what I see with ISO is this. Monday and Tuesday I played a lot of ISO 8 Brotherhood. I had all trivial nodes 4 subs and end. Wed I played some gauntlet, mainly LR and some PVP. Thursday I was in the 2nd stage of the gauntlet and some PVP. In the 2nd stage of the gauntlet I started boosting to win some matches. I was trying to save some Health Packs. If I am able to get an additional 20k iso this week that will be around 91k. To soft cap my entire roster I need an additional 1798542. This would take me 20 weeks to soft cap my roster. I still have 15 characters not at 13 covers and 2 new characters per month. It would take me 3 weeks to max a 3* from 40-166, so unless I find a way to play more in PVE, play more in LR to average over 250 instead of 150 my ISO gap will consistantly grow. LR will keep the gap smaller, but there is still a growing gap. If the release was 1 new character a month, the ISO gap would be a very different story as most people would be able to be ISO ahead.