Should I Do It?? [open stockpiled taco tokens]

cooperbigdaddy

Moderator edit: please use meaningful thread subject lines. Vague questions don't tel anyone what the thread is about. -DayvBang

So my Savory Taco Vault (4 days left) has a yellow AND a blue Professor X cover in it. I currently have 193 Savory Tacos and will get 8 more before the vault resets.

IS NOW THE TIME TO OPEN MY TOKENS??

I'm patient, but I feel Professor X is one of the best 4*s in the game and I have no covers for him. Shall I keep opening tacos until I get both of those covers and the 4000 HP? I need HP because I'm a collector and I always need slots.

The only other factor is I'm sitting at only 37000 ISO. I currently have Colossus, Cyclops, Doc Ock, and Thor for the rest of my main 3*s in the vault and none of them are currently championed. Any Hood covers (my other main 3*) would be beneficial because he is championed. Though I'm thinking since 4* covers that you can choose are so sparse, it would be worth wasting a few 3* covers that I'll get later for these precious PX ones.

What do you think? I have 4 days to make this decision. Are 193 tokens good enough odds to get me those two PX covers? I can always get the HP later when I get to 300 again. Let me know!

halirin

PX isn't game changing. Since you are already hoarding, I would wait for a week when more of the 3*s are already championed and you already have some covers for the 4*s.

That said, I think that championing has reduced the benefit of hoarding for most players. Immediate ISO > better future covers in most situations.

Cascad

It is absolutely random。 So it means you will not gain professor 100%.
And you already have 160 tokens and want to risk.
I have the same situation, 160 in 2 vaults.
All you need is waiting.
then you will championed 2* i think not once. Be patient.

Tryke

I pull tokens pretty much whenever the 4* covers are something I can use. Means I have 0 tacos most of the time, but that's what they're there for!

Vhailorx

I would say keep stockpiling TC.

My reasoning is as follows:

(1) prof x isn't game changing. Winfinite is useful, but outside of that you will barely use him at all once you get to 4* land. He is only mid tier now, and very squishy.
(2) you are still a long way from 4* play. Adding a 1/0/1 prof. X will not change your performance at all (you will barely use him). It will take months for you to build any usable 4*s unless you whale, and there's no guarantee it will be prof. X, even with those tokens.
(3) you have done awesome work saving almost 200 tokens. And the opportunity cost of spending them is high (that's months worth of work). IMO, the best way to spend is when the marginal value of your target covers is high. But the first couple of covers for any 4* offer little marginal value. The first unlocks essentials, but then nothing until 8-10 covers or so.
(4) there is a substantial risk that you get nothing, which would suck.

So overall i would say wait until you are further along in your transition. When you get a very good 4* up to 10+ covers, and then see a couple more in your deadpool vault, that's when i would think about spending.

(note: this advice is designed to maximize game performance in light of the current meta. So if a particular character is really important to you, then you should definitely feel free to crack open those tokens!)

san

at this point, stockpile to 300. Just wait it out.

Tarheelmax

I feel like I need to call out some mis-information.

If you want to be a PVE player then PX is ABSOLUTELY game changing, unless you already have a working OML (or you are nowhere close to having maxed SW/GSBW).

PX is nothing but an afterthought in PVP.

cooperbigdaddy

Thanks for everyone's response!

I think I am going to wait till i get to at least 300 in each and then have an amazing day of opening tokens, maxing champions, selling them, re-championing them, etc.

I will definitely post a grand opening of things when I do. Very much looking forward to this day! i think it'll be in October.

It is VERY hard to wait to open all the tokens I have! In general, I mean.

Vhailorx

cooperbigdaddy wrote:

Thanks for everyone's response!

I think I am going to wait till i get to at least 300 in each and then have an amazing day of opening tokens, maxing champions, selling them, re-championing them, etc.

I will definitely post a grand opening of things when I do. Very much looking forward to this day! i think it'll be in October.

It is VERY hard to wait to open all the tokens I have! In general, I mean.

I am still up in the air about the relative value of svaing up 30I tokens and then burning them all to empty the vault v. Saving up 300 tokens, waiting for a good vault and then pulling until you get your most desired rewards.

The first (and only) time I seriously dipped into my tacos reserves I took the latter path, burning 90ish tokens chasing my 5th 4* cyclops red cover. i got the 1k HP, and LT rewards too, and some of the 5k iso pulls, but in left the 10k iso And another 4* cover (i.e. champion level) in the vault. Don't know if I made the right choice. I could have chased more rewards and gotten better value per taco, but on the other hand, will recharge back up to 300ish tokens much faster now.

Anyway, good luck stockpiling cooper! Looking forward to seeing your pull results this fall!

Dayv

Vhailorx wrote:

I am still up in the air about the relative value of svaing up 300 tokens and then burning them all to empty the vault v. Saving up 300 tokens, waiting for a good vault and then pulling until you get your most desired rewards.

In theory, I lean towards the second option. I've seen some advice that what you really want to do is pull until you get the first really good reward, tracking how many tokens you spent to get it. If you used less tokens than you would, on average, need to to get a reward of that level, you are ahead of the curve and just made the odds less attractive for that vault, so you should go back to stockpiling. This involves some math. Possibly a lot of math.

Or just be like me and burn every token the same day you get it. We could all die tomorrow!

TxMoose

I'd love to be in a position to do this. been using my tacos as a healthpack resource. completely drained all of my tacos during the stretch run of CW1 and they've been building since. still need packs once in a while, so if I ever get over 200, then i'll have some decisions to make. otherwise they continue to be healthpack tokens for me and I get a little boost of covers/iso/hp whenever I need healthpacks.

cooperbigdaddy

Vhailorx wrote:

I am still up in the air about the relative value of svaing up 30I tokens and then burning them all to empty the vault v. Saving up 300 tokens, waiting for a good vault and then pulling until you get your most desired rewards.

Anyway, good luck stockpiling cooper! Looking forward to seeing your pull results this fall!

Well, I think I will definitely do the latter and pull when there are most desired awards because I have a stockpile of other tokens:
2446 Standard
162 Heroic, 2 10-packs
12 Legendary (latest)
1 Civil War LT
15 Enemy of the State
11 Prodigal Sun
7 Galactus Hungers, Prodigal Sun vault, Team Cap vault, Team Iron Man vault
6 Unstable ISO-8, ISO-8 Brotherhood vault, Enemy of the State vault
5 ISO-8 Brotherhood, Unstable ISo-8 vault
4 Juggernaut: Heroic, Venom: Heroic, Dark Avengers: Heroic, Deadpool vs. MPQ, Hearts of Darkness, Thick as Thieves vault, Dark Avengers: Heroic vault
3 The Hulk
2 The Hunt, Thick As Thieves, Venom Bomb, Coversquirrel, Balance of Power, Unholy Outlaw, Red Shift, Oscorp: Heroic vault, Juggernaut: Heroic vault, Webbed Wonder vault
1 Blue Shift, Simulator, Oscorp: Heroic, Meet Rocket & Groot, Nefarious Foes, Most Wanted, Magnetic Mayhem, Black Vortex, Sharp Dressed, Eye for an Eye, Hotshot, God of Lies, Doctor's Orders,Blind Justice, Army of One, Smash Hit, Identity Theft, Predator and Prey, Trial by Combat, Vicious Cycle, Rock Me Amadeus, Jet Set Go, Dance of Death, Let's Be Frank, PVP Matchmaking vault, Venom Bomb vault

So that's 159 total event tokens, 13 LTs, (essentially) 182 heroics, 2446 standards, 331 CP, and 325 HP to date. Which means I will open tacos until I get 4000 HP and a 4* or two in each vault. This gives me 8000 HP, or 8+ slots so I can go through and open other tokens until I champion every 2* to max and keep recycling till I'm done. Then i can work on doing the same with 3*s. And then save the other tacos until I get back past 300 and keep doing this ad nauseum.

Vhailorx

TxMoose wrote:

I'd love to be in a position to do this. been using my tacos as a healthpack resource. completely drained all of my tacos during the stretch run of CW1 and they've been building since. still need packs once in a while, so if I ever get over 200, then i'll have some decisions to make. otherwise they continue to be healthpack tokens for me and I get a little boost of covers/iso/hp whenever I need healthpacks.

That's a great point moose. I say that I am saving up to 300, but I to be more precise I should add that I am still using them for health packs when necessary. I probably end up spending 5-15 tacos a month mining for health, which slows me down a bit, but is generally a good trade-off imo.

Additional sidenote: my sweet vault is currently at 306! So fingers crossed for a good vault sometime soon (especially JG in July or iceman in August. Really could use some covers for them. Only 2 more to champ ice!)

Bowgentle

I stopped hoarding Tacos when championing started.

Champ level on any character >>>> one random 4* cover 6 months down the line.
I get more 4*s than I ever wanted from my rotten LT pulls.

BlackSheep101

I pull all my tacos immediately. The extra income makes leveling take a lot less time.

cooperbigdaddy

Haha, it is OCD for me because I eventually want to get to a point where whenever i do earn a token, I can open it and it absolutely won't go to waste, no matter what it is. Which is crazy.

Vhailorx

aesthetocyst wrote:

My thoughts on hoarding tacos ... never understood it really.

It's a daily drip feed of resources. And it takes so long to save them. It takes 120 tacos to have a 50/50 shot at a particular reward from a 300-item vault. It takes 120 days to save 120 of a particular taco. 300 days to have the option to completely empty a vault.

If you're a competitive player, there isn't anything in the vault that you won't have a shot at elsewhere in the game faster than 120 days, much less 300 days.

If you're a casual player, you're just starving your roster.

The only time it makes sense to me to hoard tacos is if/when you're hoarding all tokens, until you have certain characters champed, etc.

Like cooper. Ye gods, that's a hoard!

Other than that hoarding tacos seems to me to be an attempt to control what you pull on a certain day. OCD attempt to ward off RNG. I hoard the legendary stuff, so I get that too, but esp since championing, there is nothing in the vault that is useless, assuming you have your 3s champed and are open to cycling 2s.

I find this post a bit odd from someone who's signature proudly declared that he/she was hoarding LTs for many months!

As for my reasoning:

(1) while the resources from tacos are nice, I don't *need* them to survive day to day. I can scrounge up enough HP for the most part (though I am a bit low after civil war), and certainly don't need a couple of extra 2 or 3* covers a day (though it wouldn't hurt). Iso is more of a problem in a post champion world. But even pulling all iso from every vault wouldn't solve my problems.

(2) there are VERY few fixed 4* covers available in this game. The 1k covers rotate around every 3+ months now and the cycles only get longer. Top 10 in PvP and top 1 in pve are not reasonable pathways for me (too much time/hassle imo, but others may feel differently). Champion rewards are fixed, but slow. So vaults are the only other way.

I have spent the last 12 months hoarding tacos (using them Only when I needed healthpacks). About 3 weeks ago my vault rolled with a cyclops red cover. Not only did I need more cyclops covers in general, I especially needed red to beat his 4* ddq (imhb is virtually impossible if you can only do 3k with 20ap). So I dropped 90 tokens and got my cover. Cyclops red was also the 1k cover around the same time. And my 3* Cyclops is at 182. So I will soon have 5 red cyclops covers, which IMO is substantially more valuable to me than a random selection of rewards drip-fed over the prior 6 months. I suppose I might have gotten some very lucky pulls and been better off, but the much more likely outcome is that I would have pulled a few mid-tier 4* covers or LTs, and a ton of moonstones.

I guess my underlying thinking is that my hoarding for a bit I can spend my resources trying to acquire critical rewards that are especially useful to me, rather than trusting to RNGesus. I also feel like the mentality of hoarding and careful use of resources to maximize their value is a the best available counter to the Skinner box mechanics of the game (and really, I can stop any time I want . . .)

I concede that there are many, perfectly resonable arguments against my philosophy.

PuceMoose

I did the deed and opened my 240 savory tokens, because there were two covers in it I wanted - Prof X yellow (I have had a 5/2/0 Prof X for about a year now), and iceman green (definitely a boon for my 1/4/2 iceman). I ended up having to buy four 10 packs (bringing my total haul to 280 tokens redeemed, and my HP stash down to about 1000), but I finally got him, as well as iceman and the legendary token. I acquired enough two star covers to recycle three of two star champions and replace them with nearly fully-covered & leveled seedlings.

action711

I have 280 in each vault as of right now!

Tomorrow is T-Day round 1, been waiting for Iceman.

Not sure what I'll do when I get him, see how many it took and who the other 4* is. I'm thinking to pop them but let's see.

I also have all 2* champd at about 115ish, so hoping to cycle a few of them too.

And then after 5 days I'll pop the others if there's a yellow or blue Cyclops, or wait for X-23 in 15 days...

If I pop them all and sell my maxed 2* I should be near 1 million ISO, so can finish off the Rhulk and 4Cyc with maybe enough to max 2 more 4s.

But I wouldn't do it again. Next I'll save them until a useful 4* is on offer, then pop em

Polares

Vhailorx wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

My thoughts on hoarding tacos ... never understood it really.

It's a daily drip feed of resources. And it takes so long to save them. It takes 120 tacos to have a 50/50 shot at a particular reward from a 300-item vault. It takes 120 days to save 120 of a particular taco. 300 days to have the option to completely empty a vault.

If you're a competitive player, there isn't anything in the vault that you won't have a shot at elsewhere in the game faster than 120 days, much less 300 days.

If you're a casual player, you're just starving your roster.

The only time it makes sense to me to hoard tacos is if/when you're hoarding all tokens, until you have certain characters champed, etc.

Like cooper. Ye gods, that's a hoard!

Other than that hoarding tacos seems to me to be an attempt to control what you pull on a certain day. OCD attempt to ward off RNG. I hoard the legendary stuff, so I get that too, but esp since championing, there is nothing in the vault that is useless, assuming you have your 3s champed and are open to cycling 2s.

I find this post a bit odd from someone who's signature proudly declared that he/she was hoarding LTs for many months!

As for my reasoning:

(1) while the resources from tacos are nice, I don't *need* them to survive day to day. I can scrounge up enough HP for the most part (though I am a bit low after civil war), and certainly don't need a couple of extra 2 or 3* covers a day (though it wouldn't hurt). Iso is more of a problem in a post champion world. But even pulling all iso from every vault wouldn't solve my problems.

(2) there are VERY few fixed 4* covers available in this game. The 1k covers rotate around every 3+ months now and the cycles only get longer. Top 10 in PvP and top 1 in pve are not reasonable pathways for me (too much time/hassle imo, but others may feel differently). Champion rewards are fixed, but slow. So vaults are the only other way.

I have spent the last 12 months hoarding tacos (using them Only when I needed healthpacks). About 3 weeks ago my vault rolled with a cyclops red cover. Not only did I need more cyclops covers in general, I especially needed red to beat his 4* ddq (imhb is virtually impossible if you can only do 3k with 20ap). So I dropped 90 tokens and got my cover. Cyclops red was also the 1k cover around the same time. And my 3* Cyclops is at 182. So I will soon have 5 red cyclops covers, which IMO is substantially more valuable to me than a random selection of rewards drip-fed over the prior 6 months. I suppose I might have gotten some very lucky pulls and been better off, but the much more likely outcome is that I would have pulled a few mid-tier 4* covers or LTs, and a ton of moonstones.

I guess my underlying thinking is that my hoarding for a bit I can spend my resources trying to acquire critical rewards that are especially useful to me, rather than trusting to RNGesus. I also feel like the mentality of hoarding and careful use of resources to maximize their value is a the best available counter to the Skinner box mechanics of the game (and really, I can stop any time I want . . .)

I concede that there are many, perfectly resonable arguments against my philosophy.

I think hoarding in general doesn't help at all, and for hoarding I mean saving tokens for more than a season.

For tacos I don't think it makes sense to have more than 20 or 30, the limit is, having enough tokens so you can pull a health pack when needed (a vault of 300 is too big to wait for anything else).

I agree with aesthetocyst statement that when you hoard you are limiting the amount of resources you would normally get, and basically, slowing you down. It is true that by not hoarding LTs and other tokens you need to sell a lot of covers, so it looks like a lot of potential future champion levels are wasted, but it is also true that the iso you get helps level some chars now, so some of them can be champed faster, so others dont need to be sold. AND those chars help to get better rewards also faster.

This way of thinking has helped champ the best 4s as fast as possible and now the OML+PH combo I could level faster because I had those 4s. Again, Iso is the most valuable resource right now (well, with 5 covers of course), so until that changes I will play accordingly.

Considerations: One of the things I have discovered is that covers are not hard to come by if you play a lot, at least if you are in 4 land. I always get progression CPs rewards in both PvP and PVE, and the 1000 PvP progression, so basically, I get at least one 4 cover every day (also DDQ4 and resupply day 1000+). So I think it is very important to get to 4 land (max two/three of the old top5 4s) as fast as possible, so you can start getting to 1000+ in PvP, and then to 1300, because THIS is a BIG DEAL. So selling some covers now to get there faster helps you more in the long run, than just waiting until you champ all your chars so no cover is wasted and then getting there.

It is hard, because we want to be able to use all covers we won, this is how our brains work, but it is important to not be afraid to sell covers for iso, there is always more covers coming.