Puzzle quest purple?

Tanglefoot

Just tried another “create black” match. 24 pink AP. And even though I started maxing 2 boosts for 4 blue AP, I died at a total of 8 blue AP and 1 blue tile on the board...

KGB

@Tanglefoot - I thought you meant Blue was suppressed in the 'Make Purple' node (the one you need Mystique to win). It's very likely suppressed in the 'Make Black' one.

If you are easily collecting 30 purple for IF then maybe the problem is IF it making too much black per cast causing too many cascades. Try lowering the amount of Black he makes when you cast his Purple power so there is less chance for a cascade.

I won this one easily on the first time using IF/Dr Doom/2*Magneto. You can use 2* Mags purple (since you are swimming in Purple) to create 3 Blues where you want them so you can guarantee match 3/4 Blue for Doom.

Also, once you have 12 Black I assume you know IF can't make any more Black with his power so you need Doom's black to lower your own Black so IF can make more with his Purple.

KGB

Captain_Trips88

Have you got cloak and dagger for the create black one? They will create black until there are 9 on the board and then follow up with 3* iron fist/dr doom 

Those cascades are a nightmare though, swore a lot throughout puzzle gauntlet where I'd removed/added the required number of colours only to get caught out on the drops/matches 

Siv75

I think this round of puzzles are a fail. Waste of health packs. Beyond the first 2 nodes... it's just ridiculous and too frustrating. I need the health packs for other things. Will give it a miss. Interesting how the last puzzles were fun and this one is a total fail. Too much luck needed even if there is a solution. 

fractalvisions

Siv75 said:

I think this round of puzzles are a fail. Waste of health packs. Beyond the first 2 nodes... it's just ridiculous and too frustrating. I need the health packs for other things. Will give it a miss. Interesting how the last puzzles were fun and this one is a total fail. Too much luck needed even if there is a solution. 

It lasts all week. You can always come back to it whenever your characters have healed or you have some spare health packs.

NemoAbernnigan

It was probably the hardest puzzle gauntlet yet, but it's all pretty easily doable at my level- early stage 4* land. The hardest one for me was probably clear all green tiles since my Quake isn't finished and Hulk and Widow kept aggravatingly adding green. I know it's a slog, but if you're low level don't feel bad. You'll get there. I missed out on a lot of stuff before I started to work my way into 4* Land too, and there were less things to be missing back then too. Once you have a strong reliable team or two things will pick up some. Karnak/Chavez was my first solid team, with a lucky BRB kicker, and once I got that going the 2nd team was soon to follow. Focus on champing a meta 4* duo you can Sharget well enough and it won't be long before you get to the point where you can take on most PVE stuff well enough to climb quickly without needing your heals too badly. Good Luck!

KGB

Siv75 said:

I think this round of puzzles are a fail. Waste of health packs. Beyond the first 2 nodes... it's just ridiculous and too frustrating. I need the health packs for other things. Will give it a miss. Interesting how the last puzzles were fun and this one is a total fail. Too much luck needed even if there is a solution. 

If your doing CL10 PvP and hitting 1200+ then you most definitely have well developed roster and you should be able to finish all the nodes in Puzzle Gauntlet quite easily.

Which ones are you actually having real issues with? Most can be completed with 3* characters and when you add in some 4* ones as well it makes most nodes trivial to finish beyond the 2 that you can only use 1 character on.

KGB

HoundofShadow

All the nodes can be completed with 3* characters. Depending on the nodes and your 3* levels, the one that I used for all non-essentials are:

IM40, Kamala Khan, Captain America, Dr Doom, Iron Fist, Scarlet Witch, Magneto, Wolverine, Hulk, Ragnarok, Cyclops.

Some nodes require you to save up as many as 30 aps of that colour. Sometimes, you need to think out of the box.

Siv75

KGB said:

Siv75 said:

I think this round of puzzles are a fail. Waste of health packs. Beyond the first 2 nodes... it's just ridiculous and too frustrating. I need the health packs for other things. Will give it a miss. Interesting how the last puzzles were fun and this one is a total fail. Too much luck needed even if there is a solution. 

If your doing CL10 PvP and hitting 1200+ then you most definitely have well developed roster and you should be able to finish all the nodes in Puzzle Gauntlet quite easily.

Which ones are you actually having real issues with? Most can be completed with 3* characters and when you add in some 4* ones as well it makes most nodes trivial to finish beyond the 2 that you can only use 1 character on.

KGB

Yes. I have a roster with 2 champed 5*s and fully covered and mostly champed 4 stars. I am aware of the solutions to the puzzles ... and they do work. The difficulty I was facing is with the luck factor... in many rounds the AI got so lucky it still thrashed characters out easily. Some of these still need 2-4* characters to serve a purpose in the team to solve the puzzle. And it was eating away at health packs...which I required for PvE and PvP. The quantity of health packs needed for the day just didnt balance out - that was the issue I was highlighting. I didnt face that issue with the last puzzles.

In any case...as some of you pointed out... the matches are available for a week... I probably just need to pace it out... which is something I'm not used to but I guess that's the way it has to be. I still think it's a fail. 1 day has gone by... 9 attempts on puzzle it over round 3 and not once could Kamala khan get enough purple to fire off her power before at least 2 characters die off. That's not just bad luck...something they did with the AI or puzzle design makes the.new tile colours balance.to.the AI's advantage. 

Michael1957

qandols said:

I have problems with 14 blue. Any suggestions?

SWitch feeds Iceman it takes less than 10 turns every time using his purple 2 to 3 times 

KGB

Michael1957 said:

qandols said:

I have problems with 14 blue. Any suggestions?

SWitch feeds Iceman it takes less than 10 turns every time using his purple 2 to 3 times 

And if your getting back luck on not enough Red for IceMan to convert to Blue you could switch to using Namor (converts 5 of any color to Blue) or 2* Mags (converts 3 of your choice so you can guarantee no cascades).

KGB

KGB

@Siv75 - You must be getting exceptionally bad luck. I finished the entire thing (1 win on every node) in an hour or so using zero health packs with a 4* roster and champed (but latest 2) and all 5* rostered, many fully covered by none above L300.

KGB

PiMacleod

Just finished my last run of the Puzzle Gauntlet.  Here's my first day's run - aka, the first 5 nodes  (with a few extra distractions I did... feel free to fast forward of course)
https://youtu.be/xeN2VvFpJNY

Beyond that, I'm currently uploaded my 2nd one, which is the last 5 nodes -- aka the harder ones.  It's uploading as I type this, so it won't be ready as I post this, but soon after, it will be.  I also had a couple of extra things to do during this stream, so feel free to fast forward by my PvE stuff in the beginning.
https://youtu.be/RfzSYXJCFj0

In that 14 blue one, I was quite proud of my solution, which included the nerfed duo -- Bishop and Hammercap, with Magik helping them out.  Of course, that wasn't my first shot at it... I fought through to a loss with a different team, and came up with this solution while looking through the roster.

Those last two nodes in the Puzzle Gauntlet were quite tedious, I'll admit.  It reminded me of trying to set up Gamora's instakill, but without the tools we usually get to use to do it.  I audibly cheered when I cleared each of them. 

Tanglefoot

The 15 purple is essentially impossible as far as I can tell. Favorited Mystique, now have her at 3/4/3. I can regularly get to 12 or 13 purple. But fire another blue and suddenly after the cascades I am at 7 purple and I die before I can repeat. Then throw away a health pack to try again.

8 tries. 0 wins. Too frustrating to play- it just isn’t fun.

Siv75

KGB said:

@Siv75 - You must be getting exceptionally bad luck. I finished the entire thing (1 win on every node) in an hour or so using zero health packs with a 4* roster and champed (but latest 2) and all 5* rostered, many fully covered by none above L300.

KGB

You my friend have the luck of the Irish! You need to share your secret to that. I was actually quite happy for you when I read that. 

As for the puzzles...as you can see from some of the others here... I'm not the only one stuck with bad luck. Nevertheless...with some of the inputs from here ... and my inability to give up on a puzzle... I persevered and got the 1 each to the end.

It did take a lot of tries... the solutions were good enough, but from my experience, too much luck to play a role in a puzzle game. Which is why I felt it was and still is a fail. A puzzle should be a mind twister ... and less snakes and ladders to be fun in the puzzles category. The final purple node took 8 tries ... and I did nothing different to eventually get it in the end but to be blessed with luck. And I was playing with a championed maxed Mystique so it should have been easier for me compared to others. Twice I was literally short by 1 before getting clobbered. Anyways... thanks for the inputs. They were helpful. Cheers. And do clue me in on your lucky charm. 

HoundofShadow

I think with all tools being equal, it's all down to skills, instead of luck, for most of the nodes. For example, knowing when to let the opponents match certain colours so that they can fire their powers to help you clear the nodes more easily.

Also, the starting board is always the same, so you can decide which is the best first move to make.

KGB

Siv75 said:

KGB said:

@Siv75 - You must be getting exceptionally bad luck. I finished the entire thing (1 win on every node) in an hour or so using zero health packs with a 4* roster and champed (but latest 2) and all 5* rostered, many fully covered by none above L300.

KGB

You my friend have the luck of the Irish! You need to share your secret to that. I was actually quite happy for you when I read that. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing. I retreated on a couple of them when I realized I had the wrong team or the AI got a lot of cascades and I just re-started (in fact I did that on the Mystique node).

I think a lot of players don't match any purple since they are trying to get 15 on the board. That is a mistake since it will be virtually impossible to get 15 naturally because the AI characters both want purple. Instead you want to get it all for yourself (so you can stun an AI if needed) and to prevent them from using it whenever there is no Blue for you to match. When I fired her Blue twice to win I had only about 4-5 on the board so it meant there wasn't much chance of a cascade.

I wish the 2 solo nodes were repeatable even for no rewards just to see how lucky I actually got.

KGB

Sekilicious

Beating the rng is part of the puzzle in my opinion. That is harder without a developed 4* roster (as is my case with 10 champed) and even more difficult without a fully champed 3* roster. 

Tanglefoot

While some of the puzzles can be achieved with simple strategies, some are absolutely 100% luck, and skewed by unfavorable drop rates.

I have tried the “clear all green” and my only hero option is a 3/4/3 Mystique.

I killed the enemy black widow with pink then black powers before I got my first 10 blue tiles. So that is what, 40+ pink and 50+ black before 10 blue? Don’t even try to tell me blue is not suppressed.

What skill is involved when I have like 23 blue, there is only 1 green tile, and NO special tiles on the board. I fire blue and transform tiles, but the 1 green stays. Fire blue, and transform tiles, but the 1 green stays. I get a small cascade, and now have 10+ blue and 8 pink, but the one green tile sits there in the bottom row, mocking me - so I fire pink to stun the hulk then fire blue, and suddenly there are 2 MORE green charged tiles near the middle of the board (like 3 rows from the top, so they didn’t FALL into the field), with no visible cascade. The enemy black widow is dead, and the enemy hulk is stunned, and there were no countdown or any other special tiles on the board.

As mystique, i have no power to create green tiles, so where did the 2 new ones come from? And how can I fire blue 3x and not transform a single stinking green tile?

Siv75

HoundofShadow said:

I think with all tools being equal, it's all down to skills, instead of luck, for most of the nodes. For example, knowing when to let the opponents match certain colours so that they can fire their powers to help you clear the nodes more easily.

Also, the starting board is always the same, so you can decide which is the best first move to make.

That's a whole other level of skill altogether. I did notice the starting board was similar but never realised the following AI action was scripted as well. Admire the level of cognition you have if you can actually remember the moves etc. I'm not as young and my 20 year old self from decades ago was quite the competitive gamer who used to do things like that too, so I can relate to what you're saying here. 😁 but alas... age does catch up. Which is why I like MPQ ... it is engaging enough mostly...without requiring too much. Hope it stays that way.