The Black Hole Challenge! Real Survival Mode

atomzed

I challenge all to a REAL survival mode!

See how many runs you can survive in the black hole node (or until the dev fix this node).

There's no prize, only bragging rights!

To participate, note down the following-
1) number of runs before you quit or die (each run is 5 waves)
2) your team
3) your scaling (the levels of the enemies,can be found before you start the node)

For those who are not aware, in the third sub of the Enemy of the State pve, there is a bug node. This last node , called the Black Hole will put you in an endless loop. So you fight through 5 waves of enemies, bug hits, and you repeat again.

Note: Beware! this is likely to screw your pve challenge, because you will be grinding the points down to zero if you managed more than 4 runs. It may also affect your scaling, so if you participate, it's at your own risk.

atomzed

My first attempt (before I even hit upon the challenge, so I'm a bit I'll prepared).

- 3 runs (second run my bp died, so third run was only with Lcap and ldaken)
- ldaken, lcap and Bp
- level range 91 - 129

Unknown

Don't know what my level range was honestly, but it's currently 82-125 and I haven't played it since.

Used 94 2* 5/5/3 storm, 94 2* 3/5/5 magneto and 140 4/4/3 Black Panther. Made it through 3 full runs and 2 waves of the next. The attack tiles eventually killed me, lol.

Unknown

1) Reached 4th wave of 3rd run
2) 166 5/5/3 Falcon, 166 5/3/5 BP, 85 3/5/5 Falcon
3 Enemies are lvl 101-139

Unknown

Enemies 139-191

Started 3rd run before I decided this was crazy talk and quit instead (I encountered the bug and figure if I beat it twice I get my tokens!). Team was LCap, Hulk, and Loki and they still all have about half health. Probably could've done another run but wave 4 would get iffy, depending on how quickly the Kishus are handled and whether I fell asleep and forgot when Wolverine's coming in.

By the way, survival nodes have more than 4 stacks of points. At first I thought I stumbled upon some kind of super secret points method when I started my 5th grind and it was still giving much more points than expected until I noticed the timer said '14H 23M' and then it all made sense. I think they have 6 stacks of points (18H) and scale accordingly.

atomzed

Second attempt

- 5 runs and 1 wave; died on the second wave of 6th run
- punisher, ldaken and lcap
- level range 91-129

I have to admit, the challenge is punishing. It took me about an hour to complete it. And my punisher died on the 3rd run so I was with 2 characters for 2 runs. But well placed shields help a lot.

I realised that I have to exploit all AI habits to survive. For example, I had to "make" the AI expend their red AP so that wolverine will not jump in and adamantium slash. Another thing I learnt is that caltrops was the most dangerous skill as it deals AOE, so I have to kill kishus quickly. That involves deciding whether I should use chem reaction to kill kishu quickly or to save it for peacemaker. And that TU tiles have no traps, so I can avoid traps by just matching TU

I can see why D3 decided against the survival mode because it's challenging and if they don't give good rewards, I can foresee a lot of complaints.

Another problem is that the games last so long... it is atypical of mpq games. So if d3 do want to implement a survival mode, there needs to be some way of "saving"the progress.

Phantron wrote:

Enemies 139-191

Started 3rd run before I decided this was crazy talk and quit instead (I encountered the bug and figure if I beat it twice I get my tokens!). Team was LCap, Hulk, and Loki and they still all have about half health. Probably could've done another run but wave 4 would get iffy, depending on how quickly the Kishus are handled and whether I fell asleep and forgot when Wolverine's coming in.

Your enemies are much tougher than mine! In any case, I think i will step back and see whether there are more crazy ppl like me...

atomzed

Gongz wrote:

1) Reached 4th wave of 3rd run
2) 166 5/5/3 Falcon, 166 5/3/5 BP, 85 3/5/5 Falcon
3 Enemies are lvl 101-139

2 falcons?

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

Gongz wrote:

1) Reached 4th wave of 3rd run
2) 166 5/5/3 Falcon, 166 5/3/5 BP, 85 3/5/5 Falcon
3 Enemies are lvl 101-139

2 falcons?

lol the 1st should be HT

Unknown

I think I just finished an entire run without taking any damage. Of course got lucky on the Kishu since if you get Caltrops early there's nothing you can do about it, but as long as you remember (or maybe write down) when Wolverine jumps in, Captain America can pretty much win against an arbitary large number of those same mix guys. I think I'll sub in Blade for Loki instead since in my games Wolverine is too high to take an Adamantium Slash so there's no point to try to steal AP from him from his matches. You have to be very methodical on the Taisatsus to ensure you stun them first before killing them unless you already put down a lot of Peacemakers ahead of time. I imagine with Blade you can just pop out 3 or 8 Nightstalkers and your opponent will never have red AP until Wolverine comes (changing the highest match to green) and you can just throw out 5 Star Spangled Avengers at once from all the red AP you're stealing.

I'm thinking I'll have to keep Blade as 5/3/5 for survival mode if this is going to be a persistent thing, because 5 in black really matters fighting against goons as it is indeed relevent to drain all their AP, not because goons are dangerous by themselves but that you can't have goons sit on 30 red AP and then have Wolverine jump in.

over_clocked

I didn't realize that between resets the game wipes not only regular AP but chosen team-ups as well (not cool, buggy node, not cool)...

1) 3 runs + 1 wave
2) maxed Spidey 3/5/5, maxed HT 5/4/4, lvl 140 Blade 4/5/4
3) 125 - 172. The last enemies I can see from wave 2, run 4 are lvl 158.

Blade, ready to die.



I didn't bother trying to guess when Wolverine would appear and thus predictably lost Spidey to Slash somewhere during run 3. I could have tried with Blade/Spidey, HT/Spidey or just Spidey alone, but he was crucial thanks to stuns, healing and protect tiles.

atomzed

Phantron wrote:

I think I just finished an entire run without taking any damage. Of course got lucky on the Kishu since if you get Caltrops early there's nothing you can do about it, but as long as you remember (or maybe write down) when Wolverine jumps in, Captain America can pretty much win against an arbitary large number of those same mix guys. I think I'll sub in Blade for Loki instead since in my games Wolverine is too high to take an Adamantium Slash so there's no point to try to steal AP from him from his matches. You have to be very methodical on the Taisatsus to ensure you stun them first before killing them unless you already put down a lot of Peacemakers ahead of time. I imagine with Blade you can just pop out 3 or 8 Nightstalkers and your opponent will never have red AP until Wolverine comes (changing the highest match to green) and you can just throw out 5 Star Spangled Avengers at once from all the red AP you're stealing.

I'm thinking I'll have to keep Blade as 5/3/5 for survival mode if this is going to be a persistent thing, because 5 in black really matters fighting against goons as it is indeed relevent to drain all their AP, not because goons are dangerous by themselves but that you can't have goons sit on 30 red AP and then have Wolverine jump in.

Yes it is possible to take minimal or nil dmg with lcap.That is how I manage to clear 2 runs with only Lcap and ldaken.

The challenge is the first wave which you need to do get 11 red and 12 blue for lcap shield set up. And you have to do it with the threat of kishu caltrop damaging the whole team.

Once i get 2 blue protect tiles out, I take minimal damage even from the attack tiles. As I don't have a functional blade, I have to bait the AI to using their red. Before wolvie comes in, I will leave some red tiles for the Hand minions to "waste" their red Ap. Best way is to leave only one ha be ninja, cos their ap gain is greater when they have 2 or 3 ninjas.

over_clocked

Tried a true stamina run but sadly the sub ended already. Same levels as before.
Got 5 runs out of GSBW/LC/Hood, all maxed. Used both Twin Pistols and Sentinel of Liberty, since Pistols were overkill more often than not. Lost GSBW to Slash somewhere on the 5th run, doubt I could have kept going anyway since 6th run started with a truly **** board.



5th run, 5th wave. LC shined in that goons never placed their attack tiles and even if they did, one of the three could usually take those out immedaitely.

wymtime

I just did one clear with LDaken, spiderman, falcon team. It is slow but I get a ton of protect tiles and strike tiles out. I got hit with a couple Wolvie slashes but was able to heal with spiderman. I was only losing 1 point from the attack tiles and Daken would self heal from that. I would save enough blue to stun Wolvie when he showed up, as well. It worked great but was slow and boring. I did get a gamora cover for a reward though.

Unknown

I unknowingly ground it down to zero and then some. MMags, Mystique, Lcap. I only took damage during the first wave of the first run. Smooth sailing after that and the AI made a bunch of attack tiles, but they never went off. Purple Black Attack.

Unknown

I got 3 runs then went to the 4th wave. Then got bored. The other thing that annoys me is there was no way to read the last portion of story dialogue.
But I heard someone didn't have this bug, lucky tinykitters.

Unknown

Hey All,

Glad to see you're having fun with this challenge! Obviously, this is a bug with the mission and we're working on a fix. Hopefully this won't disrupt anyone's PVE playthrough, but it will mean that you won't be able to do this challenge after we fix the mission. So if you want to get a challenge run in, I suggest you do it quickly

And happy holidays!

turul

Merry Chrstmass D3P! Awaiting 3x healtpack compensation / node completion!

Afrocigar

KEEP IT!!!

I like this mode. I didn't think it was a bug.

You guys may have stumbled on something really good. Maybe you could add progression rewards tied to how many waves you can complete before you die?

I say good job on this. It's more of a EUREKA moment than an OH SH!T

Unknown

Afrocigar wrote:

KEEP IT!!!

I like this mode. I didn't think it was a bug.

You guys may have stumbled on something really good. Maybe you could add progression rewards tied to how many waves you can complete before you die?

I say good job on this. It's more of a EUREKA moment than an OH SH!T

It's a little too late to add something like that, so we are going to fix this bug. But I'm glad you like this kind of challenge and I'll definitely be taking that into consideration when building new content

squirrel1120

<insert> 'ain't nobody got time for dat' meme.

Getting the caltrop dropper down as quick as possible is the only dicey part for my team. I didn't run the challenge, as I didn't see this until now, well after the sub ended. Still, considering how well lcap/falcon/im40 were clearing these, caltrops were the only problem when you are first getting rolling. I started this node as the last thing in a full clear first thing this morning. I had healthpacks full still, and while the team was beat up from one of the other nodes, I decided to start it anyway. IM40 was low enough that I lost him to the first/only caltrop proc, after which a red frisbee took the kishu down. At that point, falcon had exactly 300 health left, with Lcap at 1514. When I finished the node, falcon was down to 297 and Lcap was at 1504. 13 points of damage. Since I had no IM40 to use the yellow, they all went to protect tiles also, so I think I have over 6k in shields protecting me on the board, not including random bird strike tiles. If I had something to record my phones screen I'd have wanted to capture wolvie adamantium slashing me for 1hp, but since I didn't I shut him down from acting at all as usual.

It is a really fun way to beat the node... but time consuming. Sitting there stunning opponents several times to build up the right AP for the next wave, matching a lot of junk meanwhile (green/black/TU are wasted moves).

I wish I could have actually done this challenge tho.

fmftint

Not exactly the Christmas gift we were hoping for...


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