Day 100 of A N00b's life

dr tinykittylove

Previous post on starting MPQ from scratch:
viewtopic.php?style=1&f=7&t=31838

A N00b hits a milestone today, collecting 100hp for Day 100 of daily resupply.

http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/A-N00b/

This is completely f2p, based on casually dedicated play over the past 100 days. As I was unwilling (read: too greedy) to give up being an annoying tinykitty for the sake of MPQ Science, A N00b had to make do with me making an occasional clear in pve when I felt like it and tinykitty wasn't grinding a 4* pve ( thus rarely getting placement), settling for last hour rushes in pvp (also infrequent placement depending on luck), and thus not qualifying to be retained by top100 pve and pvp alliances for both pvp and pve, which are traditionally accepted means to help advance progression.*

* in the interests of full disclosure, I merced once with friendly alliances for a Carnage pve cover and once for a Hood pvp cover, then decided that was too much hard work while maintaining my real account and quit.

The only rules I set for A N00b was to log in daily for ddq, play each pvp to at least 400 for the token and hp, and make a quick run in shield sim every season up to 1700 to get all the 3* covers.

I think A N00b has done pretty well, considering.

This is not to say that everyone should be able to do better, because I have to be honest - A N00b has been ridiculously lucky, pulling HP and good covers regularly from tokens and tacos. But there are a number of things that players trying to build their rosters and transition to 3* play can do.

Tricks of the Trade

1. Alliances
They hate you. Yes, you with the im35 and modern storm and half a dozen 1 cover 3*s. You suck! Begone! And if they don't mind you being there they probably suck also, ranking in top 30000 and with a chat that has just one "hello!" that is 10 days old from someone who is no longer there.

Well, who cares, there are 10s of thousands of alliances out there. If you find yourself homeless (again!), just drop in a nearly full public alliance and play one match to get your daily alliance iso. Skip around to find someplace where your event score looks respectable and keep your fingers crossed, and if the meanies kick you, skip around some more. Don't be shy. ;)

If you're lucky, you find some nice place that suits your play style. Hug them. Cherish them. :)

Question: To join a Top 100 alliance or not to join?
Benefits: more covers = faster growth. More hp/iso/teamups, tips.
Cons: PVE takes a lot of time. PVP typically requires shields, therefore HP, which slows the rate of roster slot progression.
Decide what is best for yourself, try it out. You can always change your mind later.

2. Your Roster & You
Let's face it. Your roster sucks. You would kill to get any 3* cover at all. You're saving all your tokens and tacos for a rainy day and also because you have no hp for roster slots.

No, open your tokens please. If you're developing your 2* team, every chance to get covers for the top 2*s is a good thing. You want a team that can reliably clear ddq for tacos and covers, and everything else is iso/health packs to feed them.

Got lucky and pulled a 3*/4* you don't have? Don't panic. You have 14 days in which you can play pvp/pve/sim/pray to the taco vault gods for hp. No need to grab it right away.

If you really can't get the hp together, time for Difficult Roster DecisionsTM! Who can you afford to let go? Make sure it's not one of your core ddq/pvp/pve teams. Otherwise, do you really need a Ragnarok? Will you use Ock if you have all his covers? Use them to pick up their taco and extra cover if they turn up in ddq, leave the extra in your queue for an additonal 14 days and drop them for something else after.

In case of something like Unexpected Black Panther/Iron Fist/other top 3* you can even drop Juggs to keep the cover and just use your next slot for a new Juggs. A few days of less iso and the lost iso spent on Juggs is not significant in the long run, while a top-tier 3* is worth making sacrifices to keep since you can't tell when you will have another chance. Eventually ddq/tokens/placement will get you more covers.

3. Levelling your characters
No. You do not need to level ALL your characters evenly. The catch is, you need to level all your CORE characters that you use most often evenly. Feel free to ignore Ragnarok and Quicksilver, or Yelena and Bagman. But don't take Stupid Sexy Cyclops to 166 while all your other 3*s are stuck at 78/102/114. It's not just for PVE , the levels affect your MMR kn PVP too.

That's all for A N00b now. When I can fully cover a couple of 3*s, I will try out 3* transition.

Please feel free to discuss your own strategies for progression/ask **** I was thinking.

TxMoose

ok, 49 slots at day 100 - how much have you spent on hp?

dr tinykittylove

TxMoose wrote:

ok, 49 slots at day 100 - how much have you spent on hp?

F2P - have not spent anything. However, like I said, A N00b is very lucky with tacos. Haven't kept track, but it's probably collected close to 5k hp from tacos to date. Bearing in mind that I was picking up a taco every day from day 11 on the 2 wave node - more chances at getting useful things.

TxMoose

that is impressive to have that many slots that soon f2p. good job - and congrats on the luck. 5K from tacos is probably well beyond what I've gotten from tacos and I've only missed 2-3 days since the beginning I think. all that is from memory and it is sometimes unreliable but pretty sure I haven't totaled 5K yet.

RWTDBurn

I'm glad to see A N00b is still alive, well, and floating around out there. It's an interesting read to see what it's like to be a new player in the game through the eyes of a veteran. The new player experience has drastically changed since many of us experienced it for ourselves. Keep the stories of his exploits coming!

Lemminkäinen

I'm F2P and on day 120. I have 47 roster slots. The one thing where N00b has a very clear edge over me is the number of four-stars - that's a huge number of four-star covers compared to mine!
http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/Lemminkinen/

dr tinykittylove

Lemminkäinen wrote:

I'm F2P and on day 120. I have 47 roster slots. The one thing where N00b has a very clear edge over me is the number of four-stars - that's a huge number of four-star covers compared to mine!
http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/Lemminkinen/

That's a pretty cool roster with lots of usable 3*s. N00b's collection is a bit more scattershot for the most part, relying on chance and whether I have both time and interest in going after covers - I don't even manage to hit final progressions most of the time.

In real numbers, we actually have about the same number of covers - you have 10, I have 11. What makes it look like I have more is just that I have more covers in fewer characters.

How are you picking up your 4*s? I'm guessing some of the newer ones are from pve?

I have 1 carnage red from alliance cover in the 2nd carnagr pve, 1 xf green for topping a noob bracket in pve, 1 antman purple from growth industry. The rest are token draws. HB just likes me in general and Antman likes to stand up for the little people.

I had an IW yellow from the Independence Vault. I kept her for a while and sold her to make room for Cyclops, if I remember correctly. Classic Difficult Roster Decision there.

Lemminkäinen

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Lemminkäinen wrote:

I'm F2P and on day 120. I have 47 roster slots. The one thing where N00b has a very clear edge over me is the number of four-stars - that's a huge number of four-star covers compared to mine!
http://mpq.gamependium.com/rosters/Lemminkinen/

That's a pretty cool roster with lots of usable 3*s. N00b's collection is a bit more scattershot for the most part, relying on chance and whether I have both time and interest in going after covers - I don't even manage to hit final progressions most of the time.

In real numbers, we actually have about the same number of covers - you have 10, I have 11. What makes it look like I have more is just that I have more covers in fewer characters.

Ah, interesting - I didn't really notice that.

I've been getting quite a lot of 3-stars from PVP by joining in the last hour and hoping for a lucky t100 placement. It works more often than not netting quite a few covers for pretty little effort.

How are you picking up your 4*s? I'm guessing some of the newer ones are from pve?

Randomly The only one I've earned is Ant-Man (one cover from his release PvE, the other from his own event) - all the rest I have pulled from random Tokens.

I have 1 carnage red from alliance cover in the 2nd carnagr pve, 1 xf green for topping a noob bracket in pve, 1 antman purple from growth industry. The rest are token draws. HB just likes me in general and Antman likes to stand up for the little people.

Fair enough - that's nice luck getting them so clustered but naturally less than desirable from a PVE essential point of view.

I had an IW yellow from the Independence Vault. I kept her for a while and sold her to make room for Cyclops, if I remember correctly. Classic Difficult Roster Decision there.

Haha, yeah! It's actually sort of interesting to not be able to slot characters though of course ditching a four-star makes your heart bleed.

Also thank you for doing the experiment - it's very interesting to see how a veteran makes do in the noob environment.

Lemminkäinen

aesthetocyst wrote:

Thanks for doing this Dr!

I recently started an account and considered diary-ing it on the forum. It is a completely different experience.

Please do, these are a lot of fun to read.

Right off the bat, the new account has 3*s and 4*s. 1-cover 4*s on a new account are like little gods.

Haha, I remember getting my first 3-star (Squirrel Girl Green) and all the matches devolved into a race for the Green after which everything died

Was able to dive into PVE and PVP very quickly, thanks to loaners and buffs. Noob brackets allow the account to place decently and build roster pretty quickly, even earn some HP .... all long before completing the Prologue.

Speaking of the Prologue, it is quickly forgotten. No wonder so few complete it. I'll get back to it ... someday.

There's a lot of HP to be had in the Prologue. Might help with your roster problems to grind it out.

Iso flows pretty steadily, but slots. Holy poo puddles the slots. As I expected, if a new account opens tokens, with nearly 80 characters in-game, they will run out of slots (meaning outstrip their ability to afford more with Hp earned in-game) FAST. I am already selling less desirable 2*s and 3*s ... and still have 14 covers sitting in queue, some about to expire.

.... and i'm not even playing this account aggressively. Very sporadically, passively.

I think that those decision are a very important part of the game. Very frustrating at times but very interesting, too. Perhaps in the Chinese proverb sense

dr tinykittylove

aesthetocyst wrote:

Thanks for doing this Dr!

I recently started an account and considered diary-ing it on the forum. It is a completely different experience.

I would love to read your account too! The featured buffs are really wonderful for a new player, i agree. I think I spent the first pve after I won 2 beast covers marvelling at how amazing he is.

And the only things I bothered to get from prologue were the initial 1* covers, hp, and the cstorm/thor covers. 20iso is terribly off-putting even when your roster is developed enough to crush the nodes.

I typically kept 20-30 covers in my queue, mostly 2*s, theoretically in case I wanted to play a pve and didn't have the featured. Also the perpetual 3*s needing slots

The roster slot crunch is hard... prologue only has enough hp for the first couple of bundles, I think. But it does add an interesting dimension to the game halfway between gambling which you can get more covers for and judging which characters have more value between the short and long-term.

Unknown

I'm really sorry to jump in on your topic but this is kinda exactly the sort of thing that i wanted to post, having just hit my 100 day reward I figured i would post my progress so i joined today but i can;t find anywhere to create a topic so i had the feeling i might not be allowed to until i've posted somewhere so here i am Congrats on your progress

Lemminkäinen

aesthetocyst wrote:

This makes me wonder what new, inexperienced players do. I have 450 days of experience informing my roster decisions. I would guess that new players either ante up the cash to buy slots, or do what seems obvious, keep the guys with the most s, not knowing how badly that's going to crimp their progress. Ouch.

I dumped single covers of Scarlet Witch, Cyclops (this was stupid), Spider-Man, Doc Ock, GSBW, Hulk, Quicksilver as well as several IM40s (I got to test drive him in a PvP and didn't like him) and Rags (the same). I basically kept all the guys I really liked in the comics and of the rest I considered which seemed good and which didn't and dumped to duds. Which didn't always work correctly but surprisingly well as I still don't have roster space for or QS, Rags, IM40, Spider-Man (nor for Sentry but him I ended up dumping way later after I had found these forums and all in all understood a bit more about this game).

Oh, I also asked my Alliance for help on some ("I have no roster space: should I dump GSBW or Blade? - I have one cover each").

Two-stars were trickier and I have built Hawkeye, Moonstone (twice!), Human Torch, and Captain America complete cover-wise and leveling them up some until ending up dumping them.

dr tinykittylove

aesthetocyst wrote:

So how is your noob doing doctor?

On day 27, this poor account has 200hp. Picking Hp out of the prologue is a slow process. It already isn't placing high enough to win HP. The next slot is 275 coin. Hmmmm.

In queue it has:

IW x1 ... 2days
Ragnarok x2 ... 4days
Dr Doom x1 ... 6days
2* Bullseye x1 ... 5days
2* Bullseye x2 ... 9days
Punisher x1 ... 9days
2* Wolverine x1 ... 7days
2* Wolverine x1 ... 7days
2* Wolverine x1 ... 10days
Vision x1 ... 11days

I think the obvious thing to do is to get the HP out of the Prologue and roster the 2* Wolverine, and slag the rest. None of them are top tier. Sorry to see Puns and Doom go, but 1 cover on each....to sit around for how long

So the interesting thing that happened on this account, that developed this situation, was that it was very easy after 1 week of play to do well in PvE and PvP because it was placed in beginner brackets ... therefore able to win 3* and 4* covers, and event and heroic tokens, practically right off the bat. Not wanting to pass up great characters, they end up taking roster slots prematurely.

This makes me wonder what new, inexperienced players do. I have 450 days of experience informing my roster decisions. I would guess that new players either ante up the cash to buy slots, or do what seems obvious, keep the guys with the most s, not knowing how badly that's going to crimp their progress. Ouch.

Agree, I suspect a lot of new players are getting hobbled at this hump and finding it impossible to progress except by luck. I had a major advantage in knowing about the value of covers over star rating and having experimented some with mmr.

I focused on getting the easy 1*s up and running before I started adding 2*s, then collected a stable of all the two stars to see which covers I could get more of first while taking advantage of their essential buffs to farm pve, then finally trimming them as I picked up 3*s. Wish I'd kept a record, especially of the early days. It's terribly annoying to see vets keep claiming things that are blatantly wrong in my experience - the landscape has changed so much.

dr tinykittylove

Lemminkäinen wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

This makes me wonder what new, inexperienced players do. I have 450 days of experience informing my roster decisions. I would guess that new players either ante up the cash to buy slots, or do what seems obvious, keep the guys with the most s, not knowing how badly that's going to crimp their progress. Ouch.

I dumped single covers of Scarlet Witch, Cyclops (this was stupid), Spider-Man, Doc Ock, GSBW, Hulk, Quicksilver as well as several IM40s (I got to test drive him in a PvP and didn't like him) and Rags (the same). I basically kept all the guys I really liked in the comics and of the rest I considered which seemed good and which didn't and dumped to duds. Which didn't always work correctly but surprisingly well as I still don't have roster space for or QS, Rags, IM40, Spider-Man (nor for Sentry but him I ended up dumping way later after I had found these forums and all in all understood a bit more about this game).

Oh, I also asked my Alliance for help on some ("I have no roster space: should I dump GSBW or Blade? - I have one cover each").

Two-stars were trickier and I have built Hawkeye, Moonstone (twice!), Human Torch, and Captain America complete cover-wise and leveling them up some until ending up dumping them.

The roster space musical chairs is both funny and sad... I've also dumped multiple Doc Ock, QS, Daredevil, Rags, Punisher and Mystique covers.

Early on I collected nearly the entire set of 2*s, fully covered, with little to no iso, and used that mad roster depth to surprising effect in pvp. Was sad to let them go eventuallyt, but they had served their purpose and I considered the iso loss worth it..

atomzed

dr tinykittylove wrote:

I focused on getting the easy 1*s up and running before I started adding 2*s, then collected a stable of all the two stars to see which covers I could get more of first while taking advantage of their essential buffs to farm pve, then finally trimming them as I picked up 3*s. Wish I'd kept a record, especially of the early days. It's terribly annoying to see vets keep claiming things that are blatantly wrong in my experience - the landscape has changed so much.

Any example of things that have changed? It would be an interesting story.

And please keep this account (both game and story) going! It is very unique and interesting.

dr tinykittylove

atomzed wrote:

dr tinykittylove wrote:

I focused on getting the easy 1*s up and running before I started adding 2*s, then collected a stable of all the two stars to see which covers I could get more of first while taking advantage of their essential buffs to farm pve, then finally trimming them as I picked up 3*s. Wish I'd kept a record, especially of the early days. It's terribly annoying to see vets keep claiming things that are blatantly wrong in my experience - the landscape has changed so much.

Any example of things that have changed? It would be an interesting story.

And please keep this account (both game and story) going! It is very unique and interesting.

I think the most obvious example would be pvp. Vets always tell noobs to stay away until they've built their roster, but that was actually almost the easiest part of the noob experience. You had the loaner to tank for your pitiful 1*s and were assured of meeting enemies of a similar level, plus guaranteed 70iso or better (1* or 2* covers) instead of battling juggs/daken/goons for 20 iso. At one point I was running up to 500 in pvp nearly uncontested with level 15 1*s. That's a regular income of iso, hp, tokens and covers.

This changes immediately once you have usable 2*s, and 1 3* or better cover will screw your mmr good - getting a million attacks down to 200-300 is jarring after being sheltered at the start. But you can still run up the progression to 500 once your 2*s are operational if you wait to make a final push at the end.

There's also the iso-question - people struggling to level their 3* -4*s think you need to save all the iso you can. They shouldn't. It costs very little to level 1*s, and they make the game so much easier, especially if you want to collect hp and specific covers from the prologue. You can easily get a season score of 4000+ with 1*s if you know what you're doing.

Classic hawkeye also gets very short shrift from most vets for his low health and damage. In fact, he was my mvp up to until I had my 2*s mostly complete. 1 classic hawkeye and a couple of others to tank for him can take down a level 200 tetris ultron comfortably. I paired him with a 2 cover beast and 1 cover doom initially as a joke, and was shocked when it worked. later I switched his partners to im35/mstorm and it was even more effective. My alliance at the time only got up to the round with lvl 250 ultron, but this team handled that too.

Can't really keep up with 2 accounts now with the game changes and work, but if I did continue, he'd be next on my collect list once I have all the 3*s.

Lemminkäinen

dr tinykittylove wrote:

But you can still run up the progression to 500 once your 2*s are operational if you wait to make a final push at the end.

I use mostly 2*s and can get to about 600 points in all PvPs.

Classic hawkeye also gets very short shrift from most vets for his low health and damage. In fact, he was my mvp up to until I had my 2*s mostly complete. 1 classic hawkeye and a couple of others to tank for him can take down a level 200 tetris ultron comfortably. I paired him with a 2 cover beast and 1 cover doom initially as a joke, and was shocked when it worked. later I switched his partners to im35/mstorm and it was even more effective. My alliance at the time only got up to the round with lvl 250 ultron, but this team handled that too.

I agree that *Hawkeyes rep is absolutely bizarre. I actually think that he is the best one-star in that he has a niche that isn't filled by anyone else in the whole game. He is super good in Tetris and nice against goons as well. Of course Juggs is actually the one-star I have for DDQ and I don't have roster space for *Hawkeye but if I had I would choose him over other one-stars (the new Spider-man is very nice, as well, though - his TUs are amazing).