This semi casual player blew his hoard after 9 months...
Staals
Posts: 18 Just Dropped In
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?
Comments
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
Enjoy playing with your new characters!
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.
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.
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.
I've rostered all characters except Storm champed all 3* and have only five 4* unchamped. Champed 5 Thanos.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.