This semi casual player blew his hoard after 9 months...

Staals

Hello all,

After what felt like a lifetime of saving tokens & command points, which in fact lasted around 9 months, I’ve finally made the courageous decision to spend it on the latest (Hela, Rescue & Storm) vault. Curious to find out how I did? Well, sit back and keep reading.

Since I’ve been a silent member of this community and forum for most of my days, a few words about my situation and style of playing. I’m at day 1732, I have a championed Phoenix and championed 5trange, no other 5* over 10 covers all sitting at lvl 255, around 2/3 of the 4* championed, and a slow but steady 3* and 2* farm (ánd 1* actually since an alliance member figured out the gained xp outweighs the lost iso).

I consistently play DDQ, generally reach 4000 points in the season, play Shield until completion, and get the occasional full progression in story events. Since I mostly stumble across Kitty & Grocket or Thorkoye, PVP has become a tedious activity in which the 575 10 CP reward is my only reasonable goal. I am aware that this in part can be blamed on unfavorable scaling due to the fact that I championed two 5* characters.

Nonetheless, with playing roughly 10hrs per week (sometimes less, sometimes a lot more) I have never been able, nor had the inclination, to really play competitively. This is also the reason why it took so long to build up a hoard large enough to even dare blowing it on the latest selection of characters.

I saved exactly 200 Legendary Tokens, 3778 CP (151 pulls), and ~5 million iso. I figured with a perfect distribution and 1/7 odds I’d need 273 pulls, my hoard allowing me a 30% ‘bad luck-margin’ (without taking possible bonus covers or additional earned CP and LT during the opening process into account). The simulations shared by kbmartin would suggest I’d have less than 50% chance of actually covering all three latest characters. But I was willing to accept that risk. This is how I did:

Hela: 4/4/5

Rescue: 4/4/1

Storm: 7/7/5

I received 9 4* bonus covers, and unfortunately zero 5* bonus covers.

I stopped pulling as soon as I opened my 13th Hela, which was at 279. The risk of blowing my hoard on additional duplicates didn’t outweigh the possibility of fully covering a character like Rescue. 

This put me at a 14.69% 5* pullrate versus the 14.28% projection.

Let me share a couple of final thoughts about the whole process. Overall, I feel reasonably lucky. I’m very happy I was able to completely cover Hela and Storm, who have both (especially Hela) proven a delight to use in the past few days. Beforehand I considered the worst-case scenario of fully covering Rescue and not the others and I was very content to experience the opposite. I’d hoped for a bonus Daredevil or two, but I suppose I have 80 pulls left to invest in a future 5* introductory vault.

Although it took a long time to get here, I feel like my anticipation was met. I’ll start saving LT’s and CP again, but less rigidly than before. I am still missing a lot of 5* characters (for instance Okoye & Kitty) that were introduced in my period of drought, because of that strictness in saving everything. I’ll be opening a token here and there just to make sure I can add every character to my roster. In the end, collecting them all is one of the enjoyments I find in this game even after all these years. 

Thanks for those that endured till the end. Would you have done something differently? How do you feel about 5torm so far? 

wymtime

First congrats on your pulls and covering the 2 stronger 5*

i have Hela champed and really enjoy her as well.  She has 3 solid powers and her buffing tiles is under rated

for Storm I was also able to get her champed and she is interesting.  I feel she synergies well with Black Bolt and is better as a 3rd 5* rather than a 2nd or primary.  You really want her to go yellow into black.  If you can bring BLack Bolt with her you can easily get 10 charge tiles out to fire her black and use BB green.  I like her but put her below Hela as a preference.

for and interesting combo you can go 4thor and IM40 in PVE as well to generate 10 charge tiles fairly easily.  The big thing is you need someone who can also generate charge tiles to get her up to 10 to max damage her black

AndiTi

Great story, thanks for sharing. I run Hela in every single PvE wave node...she gets out of control with her damage very, very quickly. Having her champed for a month I really think she's one really good future partner away from being meta.

Enjoy playing with your new characters!

ThaRoadWarrior

3/4ths of a year, a measurable fraction of a human lifespan, seems like an awfully long time to save up to cover 2/3 characters. Do you feel like it was worth it in the end?

jp1

I think it’s a pretty admirable showing of restraint to be able to hoard in this game. I don’t do it for two reasons.

1) I’m not patient enough. The game/grind is not fun for me if I’m not pulling rewards.

2) Resources are constantly losing their value. Each character release diminishes the value of the hoard incrementally. 

3) See reason 1.

Seriously, if it was a fun goal, you had a good time...that’s all that matters. I would love to be able to pull a hoard, even though I will never have one. Thanks for sharing the story.

Staals

ThaRoadWarrior said:

3/4ths of a year, a measurable fraction of a human lifespan, seems like an awfully long time to save up to cover 2/3 characters. Do you feel like it was worth it in the end?

I absolutely believe it was worth it. Otherwise I would've had 8 different unusable characters with 5 covers each.

But it's true that this is a crazy amount of time for just two championed 5*. I suppose it underwrites one of the issues with this game: if you're not willing to spend money, and don't want to play more than an hour per day, getting into 5*-land takes way too long.

Sm0keyJ0e

wymtime said:

<snip> If you can bring BLack Bolt with her you can easily get 10 charge tiles out to fire her black and use BB green... for and interesting combo you can go 4thor and IM40 in PVE as well to generate 10 charge tiles fairly easily.  The big thing is you need someone who can also generate charge tiles to get her up to 10 to max damage her black

Pretty sure the max for her damage is 8 charged tiles. Anything more and she's destroying them for no reason.

wymtime

Sm0keyJ0e said:

wymtime said:

<snip> If you can bring BLack Bolt with her you can easily get 10 charge tiles out to fire her black and use BB green... for and interesting combo you can go 4thor and IM40 in PVE as well to generate 10 charge tiles fairly easily.  The big thing is you need someone who can also generate charge tiles to get her up to 10 to max damage her black

Pretty sure the max for her damage is 8 charged tiles. Anything more and she's destroying them for no reason.

Your correct it is 8 and for 8 you get 20K damage.  I have only had her for a couple of days.  With BB I have always gotten max damage but with 1/2 health Thor sometimes it is only 6-7 tiles so occasionally less.  Also you get BB passive going a lot faster with storm.

MTP

Pulled my hoard as well, and got everyone covered.  Started with 313 pulls and probably pulled 360 total or so before i ran out.  Its wild to think i spent 8 months saving tokens/cp to blow them all in an hour.  Happy it worked out, sad to see it gone.

Staals

MTP said:

Pulled my hoard as well, and got everyone covered.  Started with 313 pulls and probably pulled 360 total or so before i ran out.  Its wild to think i spent 8 months saving tokens/cp to blow them all in an hour.  Happy it worked out, sad to see it gone.

I hope you find enough joy in playing with these characters to balance your sadness. 

ThaRoadWarrior

But it's true that this is a crazy amount of time for just two championed 5*. I suppose it underwrites one of the issues with this game: if you're not willing to spend money, and don't want to play more than an hour per day, getting into 5*-land takes way too long. 

I'm glad you got what you were hoping for. I've been just pulling as I go out of latest exclusively since January (as opposed to using CP for classics), trying to stay current as I go. I was able to champ Doom like that, and the others around at that time were all in the 7-11 cover range. 

JSP869

I LOVE that clickbaity title "This semi-casual blew his hoard after 9 months...and you'll never believe what he got!"

Congratz on the Champion Storm and Hela. I have a couple of covers for both, and just my 2-cents but they're definitely better 5s than Rescue. You definitely left the runt of the litter behind there

If you're playing Story/PvE very casually and with more of a focus on PvP, you may want to consider trying to get into a T100 PvP Alliance.

Using Line, you can easily hit 900+ in as little as 20 wins, and hit 1200+ in 25-30 wins. It does require coordination with others, but it's ridiculously easy.  And if you can hit 900+ in each event, any T100 PvP Alliance would be happy to have you.

tchipley

JSP869 said:

I LOVE that clickbaity title "This semi-casual blew his hoard after 9 months...and you'll never believe what he got!"

Congratz on the Champion Storm and Hela. I have a couple of covers for both, and just my 2-cents but they're definitely better 5s than Rescue. You definitely left the runt of the litter behind there

If you're playing Story/PvE very casually and with more of a focus on PvP, you may want to consider trying to get into a T100 PvP Alliance.

Using Line, you can easily hit 900+ in as little as 20 wins, and hit 1200+ in 25-30 wins. It does require coordination with others, but it's ridiculously easy.  And if you can hit 900+ in each event, any T100 PvP Alliance would be happy to have you.

Can you explain how it is easy to reach those numbers using Line? I have a hard time getting to 900 and have never reached anything beyond that.

I've rostered all characters except Storm champed all 3* and have only five 4* unchamped. Champed 5 Thanos.

DAZ0273

I think anybody who can hoard is properly awesome, I don't know how you guys do it.

I can sort'a hoard CP because it comes in dribs and drabs and I like getting to "landmark" numbers.

But not LT's. They are so purple and shiny. I once "hoarded" to 22 LT's and thought I was the proper geezer then I read one of these threads where somebody has hoarded eleventry trillion of the things and I'm like

peterdark

I hoarded 3.5k CP and 50LT's ready for my 4 * transition. Was trying to roster all the 4 *'s first then open up CP until I got a 5 *, save HP for roster slot and repeat. 

The problem is, I got to the stage where I had some 'spare' hp for a couple of slots so I thought I'd use some CP. Then it's like Pringles, once you start you can't stop. Got to the point where I needed 10k HP to cover the roster slots (2 x 4 *'s, the rest 5 *), then I thought one more would hurt. Out pops another 5 * then I get a BH of thor whom I didn't have a slot for. Lucky or unlucky :S

JSP869

tchipley said:

JSP869 said:

I LOVE that clickbaity title "This semi-casual blew his hoard after 9 months...and you'll never believe what he got!"

Congratz on the Champion Storm and Hela. I have a couple of covers for both, and just my 2-cents but they're definitely better 5s than Rescue. You definitely left the runt of the litter behind there

If you're playing Story/PvE very casually and with more of a focus on PvP, you may want to consider trying to get into a T100 PvP Alliance.

Using Line, you can easily hit 900+ in as little as 20 wins, and hit 1200+ in 25-30 wins. It does require coordination with others, but it's ridiculously easy.  And if you can hit 900+ in each event, any T100 PvP Alliance would be happy to have you.

Can you explain how it is easy to reach those numbers using Line? I have a hard time getting to 900 and have never reached anything beyond that.

I've rostered all characters except Storm champed all 3* and have only five 4* unchamped. Champed 5 Thanos.

You join a Line room for PvP players, optimally, it's a room dedicated to the slice (time slot) you play in. In my case, it's all players who play in the 4th slice. 

We don't hit each other unless we're Shielded, so we're not taking points from one another, but everyone announces (or is supposed to) when they're Shield hopping. This gives you the opportunity to queue up players high above you worth 60+ points who are typically only fighting and unshielded for a minute or two. When you're ready to hit them, you announce that in the Line room, other players below you queue you as you play your matches, you reshield, announce in the Line room that you've reshielded, and those players that queued you now know they can hit you without taking points away from you. 

Typically, in the first part of an event, I'll play matches and float around 500-600 or so. If I drop too low, I'll retaliate against anyone who hits me, and when I'm ready to hop up to 900, I'll climb to 700-750 or so (usually a somewhat safe score midway through an event), queue up three of my Line mates who by now are typically worth 60-75 points each, hit all three quickly, then Shield at 900+. While Shielded, I use Line to queue up three more big targets, but at 900+ I'll typically only hit 2 at a time to avoid getting sniped. So I break, hit those two targets, then immediately reshield, and two 150-point hops is enough to hit 1200+

Right now in War of the Realms I'm at 27 wins with 1018 points. While I could hit 1200+ with a 3x75 hit, it's dangerous to be out too long, so I'll probably do 1200 in two hops, being 30 wins.

It requires coordination and playing nicely with others, but it is easy.

ThaRoadWarrior

How much hp are you spending on shields per event? Are you spending $$ on that, or are you earning what you need by playing this way? Just curious what the competitive PVP ecosystem looks like, since it feels like it would be pretty resource intensive to "shield hop"

jp1

JSP869 said:

tchipley said:

JSP869 said:

I LOVE that clickbaity title "This semi-casual blew his hoard after 9 months...and you'll never believe what he got!"

Congratz on the Champion Storm and Hela. I have a couple of covers for both, and just my 2-cents but they're definitely better 5s than Rescue. You definitely left the runt of the litter behind there

If you're playing Story/PvE very casually and with more of a focus on PvP, you may want to consider trying to get into a T100 PvP Alliance.

Using Line, you can easily hit 900+ in as little as 20 wins, and hit 1200+ in 25-30 wins. It does require coordination with others, but it's ridiculously easy.  And if you can hit 900+ in each event, any T100 PvP Alliance would be happy to have you.

Can you explain how it is easy to reach those numbers using Line? I have a hard time getting to 900 and have never reached anything beyond that.

I've rostered all characters except Storm champed all 3* and have only five 4* unchamped. Champed 5 Thanos.

You join a Line room for PvP players, optimally, it's a room dedicated to the slice (time slot) you play in. In my case, it's all players who play in the 4th slice. 

We don't hit each other unless we're Shielded, so we're not taking points from one another, but everyone announces (or is supposed to) when they're Shield hopping. This gives you the opportunity to queue up players high above you worth 60+ points who are typically only fighting and unshielded for a minute or two. When you're ready to hit them, you announce that in the Line room, other players below you queue you as you play your matches, you reshield, announce in the Line room that you've reshielded, and those players that queued you now know they can hit you without taking points away from you. 

Typically, in the first part of an event, I'll play matches and float around 500-600 or so. If I drop too low, I'll retaliate against anyone who hits me, and when I'm ready to hop up to 900, I'll climb to 700-750 or so (usually a somewhat safe score midway through an event), queue up three of my Line mates who by now are typically worth 60-75 points each, hit all three quickly, then Shield at 900+. While Shielded, I use Line to queue up three more big targets, but at 900+ I'll typically only hit 2 at a time to avoid getting sniped. So I break, hit those two targets, then immediately reshield, and two 150-point hops is enough to hit 1200+

Right now in War of the Realms I'm at 27 wins with 1018 points. While I could hit 1200+ with a 3x75 hit, it's dangerous to be out too long, so I'll probably do 1200 in two hops, being 30 wins.

It requires coordination and playing nicely with others, but it is easy.

Doesn’t sound like much fun. To each their own, but I can’t imagine having to coordinate each and every match I play with the entire player base in my slice. Sounds like a real PITA. 

I’ll just have to settle for my usual 575 I guess. Thanks for taking the time to explain the process though, for those interested in trying it out.

JSP869

It's not the entire player base. There's only currently 171 people in my Line room and you're really not even coordinating with all of them all the time. If you need a queue/high point target and have some downtime IRL you check the Line room while you're still Shielded, and when someone announces they're going out (everyone posts their score when they go out, so you know who the high value targets are) you load the game, skip a node until you find that player's team, then you resume doing whatever you were doing IRL.

Later, when it's time for you to shield hop, you do a quick check in the room to make sure the players you're about to hit are still shielded, announce in the Line room that you're hitting them, hit them, reshield, and you're done until next time.

It takes a lot less effort than it may sound like, and I honestly think it's a lot less effort than playing PvE/Story. Problem is, I'm hooked on the rewards of PvE, and my Alliance is PvE-focused, and I like the players in my Alliance, so now I'm "stuck" playing both PvE and PvP to full progression on both sides

But because I'm hitting full progression in both sides of the game, I'm now swimming in CP, and it doesn't seem like the scarce resource it once used to be, and oddly enough that's greatly reduced my constant desire to use my CP to buy Latest or Classic tokens. I can have 300-400 CP saved up and not be thinking "Must spend it!!!"

That said, I did spend my recent stash of CP (& Tokens) going after Storm this week while also trying to cover Sabretooth, who I finally finished last night from a Heroic Token + bonus cover, of all things

JSP869

ThaRoadWarrior said:

How much hp are you spending on shields per event? Are you spending $$ on that, or are you earning what you need by playing this way? Just curious what the competitive PVP ecosystem looks like, since it feels like it would be pretty resource intensive to "shield hop"

I honestly don't know, but we can probably figure it out, at least on average. I typically don't Shield until I've hit 900+ Then the shield I buy is dependent on what time it is (whether I can play again at short notice, or need to shield overnight) and how long is left in the game.

I'd probably say it's not uncommon for me to buy 1-2 3-hour shields, 1-2 8-hour shields, and 1 24-hour shield.

In War of the Realms I hit 900+ on the ride home from work, bought a 3-hour shield, hopped to 1K last night then bought an 24-hour shield, which will expire 2 hours before the event ends. I could maybe hit 1200+ in one hop, and I do have three targets queued up worth 215 points, but a 3-match hop is a lot more dangerous than a 2x hop. So to play it safe I'll probably break around the 10-hour mark, hit two targets, buy a 3-hour shield, and around the 7-hour mark will hop to 1200+ (IF things go well ) then buy an 8-hour shield and I'll be done. So, two 3s, one 8, and one 24. On par with what I figured above. That's 2 x 75 + 150 + 300 or 600 HP per event.

I recently bought three 10-packs from the Far from Home vault, and a roster slot for dupe 3* Captain America, and was kicking myself after buying the Far from Home packs because I was down to 1,000HP, and I don't like seeing my HP dip that low, but sometimes I can't help myself. But I just checked just now and I'm back up to 3K+ again.  Phew! Playing at CL9 on both PvP and PvE, and being in a T50 PvE Alliance makes a HUGE difference to your in-game income.

I've been playing for 5+ years (Day 1970), and have probably spent $150-$200 in that time. When I first started playing I was buying $20 HP every couple of months (using my own money. See below.) until my roster was developed enough that I didn't need HP quite so desperately to roster new characters. I bought VIP a few times when it was introduced, but for the past 3 years or so I've only been buying $2 of HP once a month just to ensure Iron Man keeps popping up to give me a gift for supporting the game. Damn Skinner box I play on Android and installed the Google Survey App shortly after I started playing, and that pretty much funds my MPQ habit now. I currently have ~$10 in Google Play credits and that amount never seems to vary by too much, although I did just buy the Minecraft game for my daughter to play on my tablet, and yet I still have $10+ in credits.

EDIT And that did go well. 31 wins & 1,317 points for the event, and I currently have 10,100 points for the Season with one event still to go.

Daredevil217

jp1 said:

JSP869 said:

tchipley said:

JSP869 said:

I LOVE that clickbaity title "This semi-casual blew his hoard after 9 months...and you'll never believe what he got!"

Congratz on the Champion Storm and Hela. I have a couple of covers for both, and just my 2-cents but they're definitely better 5s than Rescue. You definitely left the runt of the litter behind there

If you're playing Story/PvE very casually and with more of a focus on PvP, you may want to consider trying to get into a T100 PvP Alliance.

Using Line, you can easily hit 900+ in as little as 20 wins, and hit 1200+ in 25-30 wins. It does require coordination with others, but it's ridiculously easy.  And if you can hit 900+ in each event, any T100 PvP Alliance would be happy to have you.

Can you explain how it is easy to reach those numbers using Line? I have a hard time getting to 900 and have never reached anything beyond that.

I've rostered all characters except Storm champed all 3* and have only five 4* unchamped. Champed 5 Thanos.

You join a Line room for PvP players, optimally, it's a room dedicated to the slice (time slot) you play in. In my case, it's all players who play in the 4th slice. 

We don't hit each other unless we're Shielded, so we're not taking points from one another, but everyone announces (or is supposed to) when they're Shield hopping. This gives you the opportunity to queue up players high above you worth 60+ points who are typically only fighting and unshielded for a minute or two. When you're ready to hit them, you announce that in the Line room, other players below you queue you as you play your matches, you reshield, announce in the Line room that you've reshielded, and those players that queued you now know they can hit you without taking points away from you. 

Typically, in the first part of an event, I'll play matches and float around 500-600 or so. If I drop too low, I'll retaliate against anyone who hits me, and when I'm ready to hop up to 900, I'll climb to 700-750 or so (usually a somewhat safe score midway through an event), queue up three of my Line mates who by now are typically worth 60-75 points each, hit all three quickly, then Shield at 900+. While Shielded, I use Line to queue up three more big targets, but at 900+ I'll typically only hit 2 at a time to avoid getting sniped. So I break, hit those two targets, then immediately reshield, and two 150-point hops is enough to hit 1200+

Right now in War of the Realms I'm at 27 wins with 1018 points. While I could hit 1200+ with a 3x75 hit, it's dangerous to be out too long, so I'll probably do 1200 in two hops, being 30 wins.

It requires coordination and playing nicely with others, but it is easy.

Doesn’t sound like much fun. To each their own, but I can’t imagine having to coordinate each and every match I play with the entire player base in my slice. Sounds like a real PITA. 

I’ll just have to settle for my usual 575 I guess. Thanks for taking the time to explain the process though, for those interested in trying it out.

I’m in the same boat. I’ve never coordinated before but was recruited by an alliance that loves to cooperate. They tend to play in the same slice, so I just go elsewhere and hit everyone who are high points. I don’t check names/alliances so every once in awhile I’ll accidentally hit one of my own who also went to a different slice, and will get a tag reminding me or asking me not to hit them. 600 HP per event seems a bit high to me. I usually can climb to 1200 without any coordination and 0-1 shields plus 0-1 to lock in my score.  But I also know that’s a privilege due to the champs I have.