This is a story about a custom build mish for a custom built toon as a solo test. Its not meant to be a farm (or a guide to farming) because I think farming is boring BUT if thats what rocks your boat then thats your business.
Also I have since writing this experiment up I have changed the map to a longer outdoor map. I could change it back to the ship map for this experiment if requested.
What I did was:
1, Created a toon that can be optimised to one mission/critter - this will be a fire/ice tanker called Vandar (magic ...with the new Magic Booster of course).
2, Created a critter that was simple enough to take on and had the worst attack possible for a fire tanker - this would be a (standard/standard) fire/regen scrapper lt.
3. Set a mission with an easy map (the ship map - short) and only the above critters - lets call them Fire Drones and call the mission Fire Drone Walkover.
What I wanted to know was:
a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?
b) How quickly could you level?
c) How fast could you complete the mission?
d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?
e) Can you earn enough influence?
f) Facts, figures and observations.
For me this really was an experiment. It should go without saying the with an MMOG with tens of thousands of story arc's to spend you time soloing in only one mission is kind of stupid & not recommended. So that is actually my executive summary - its kinda dull but I really wanted to make the observations for myself having read a lot about the game over the years.
So on with the observations:
a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?
An obvious answer: it starts of a bit hard but gets much easier quite quickly.
Levels 1-7 were a bit tough because the critters were all Lt's and you effectively only have 1 defense (fire shield) and limited offence (blazing aura, frozen fists & ice sword) and lastly a small self heal (Healing flames). Of course I do have the 2 vet reward attacks which are the only things that made this doable. Without Sands of Mu & Blackwand (is that what its called?) this would just be too tedious to do.
Levels 8-11 were better because of Temperature Protection which effectively doubled my fire resistance without added endurance issues (I think that Fire Shield & Temperature Protection each give a base of 30% resistance). Another attack in Frost (cone) was a very welcome addition at lvl 10 but to be honest my endurance was an issue at this point. BA was keeping my blue bar low and TO enhancements were not really helping.
Levels 12-21 a significant improvement with DO's now kicking in to give real protection & some offence. A few things to note here, the first of which was I chose to skip a travel power. No need if you are just hanging around in AE eh? I based myself in KR at this point & had the odd jog to Blue Steel & WCH but that was pretty manageable. I did pick up Swift Health over this period to help (& set me up for Stamina) and then Burn at lvl 18 and then Ice Patch at lvl 20. Yes endurance is an issue - you had enough resistance now to start to herd but not always enough endurance to finish the fight - but Burn & Ice Patch is such a good combo I could not wait.
Levels 22-32 were very much easier. SO's obviously make a big difference & are very affordable thx to all the tickets. With a solid resistance to Fire & some to smashing/lethal damage as well as a consistent supply of purple's Vandar could complete the mish in 6-7 herds (sorry I know thats a bad word but this is an experiment). I did take the fighting pool to get Tough for added S/L resistance which helped but not incredibly. I also took build up which was very useful on the Ice Patch - Build Up - Burn combo. Taunt was also handy for keeping the mobs in tow.
So I hope that gives you an idea of the solo game - its a grind but very do-able.
b) How quickly could you level?
Again an obvious answer: Not as quickly as being PL'd on a farm but for a solo act I thought it was pretty good. In real terms thats 1-32 in 27 hours. For me, soloing a tank in the lower levels is a really horrible barrier to getting tanks up and running. They dont even start to get good until the mid-20's so I was pleased to see how quickly this went. Obviously the progression is weighted to the early lvls - I hit lvl 24 at around 20 hours. In the early levels you would lvl twice per run and then it slowly got less frequent. By lvl 15-20 you would need to do 2 runs per lvl and from about lvl 28 you needed 3 runs per lvl. So about 50 mins per level on average. Not bad.
c) How fast could you complete the mission?
In the early levels it takes a solid 40mins to get through it and expect to die a lot. Interestingly you do not earn inspirations at all until lvl 12 which did not help. However once you get SO's you can expect to get throught the mish in around 15-20mins depending on difficulty & spawn sizes. Also after lvl 22 you now sometimes get medium inspirations drop which help a lot in getting through this. It might be interesting to set this as a time trial for later levels.
I have tried this mish with a lvl 50 fire rad controller and a lvl 50 invunl fire tanker. The controller had no problems with the mish set on invincable and did it in much the same time or maybe even a touch faster. The Invuln tanker was much slower given his lack of resistance. No surprises in that but I was surprised at just how squishy Invuln. is in this mish. Ouchies!
lastly on the time issue was about mission difficulty settings. When Vandar was over lvl 22 & well slotted with SO's it was definately the best mix of time spent vs reward to have it set on Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Better mob sizes & more consistent. For the solo player in general this seems to be the best setting. Wont comment for teams as this is not the purpose here.
d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?
Anywhere from 450 to 900 per run but an average of around 600. For the best return on time spent vs rewards as mentioned above the best setting was Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Turning it up to Invince (threat lvl 5) was not only slower but resulted in less tickets on average.
The other thing to mention here is the spawn sizes. In the 1st & last room where they spawn as orange Lt's they would always spawn the same number of enemy groups but they varies in size from mish to mish. Sometimes it was 3 drones per mob, sometimes it was 4 or 5 drones per mob. I think on average that makes it 4 but it was random & that had a big imapct on tickets awarded.
e) Can you earn enough influence?
Short answer here is no but the long answer is hell yes. Yes you can earn some Inf. but as per normal in CoX its not enough to cover your cost of enhancements in the sub 32 levels. The key thing is that you earn tickets that can in turn buy you enhancements at your level +3 which is really handy because you always seem to have enough tickets. Alternatively you can trade the tickets for other items which can in turn be sold at wentworths/black market. This is even more lucrative depending on the item and its often more efficient to do this and use inf to buy enhancements.
So no reall issues about inf. for enhancements. You earn enough tickets to cover this one way or another. Its not enough to buy IO sets so you will need to get that inf. elsewhere!
f) Facts, figures and observations.
Levels: 1-32
Time: 27 hours
Mission completed: 50 times (I got the 50 mission badge on the same run I hit lvl 32)
Average tickets: 600 (ish)
Optimum herd per mish: 6 herds (there are 4 sections to the ship map so 2 herds in sections 1 & 4 respectively and 1 herd in sections 2 & 3 respectively)
I noted that there were no insperation drops until lvl 12. You only got medium sized insperation drops after lvl 22. Interesting it was tied to your level and not the mob difficulty.
Lt. mobs spawn orange in the 1st & 4th sections and red in the 2nd & 3rd sections of the ship.
Orange mobs spwan at 3-5 critters (random) while red mobs spawn at 1-3 critters.
So.............
Thats this experiment done. I still like playing the mish with a lot of my toons as a bit of a trial to see how they stack up but this one really belongs to toon Vandar. He owns it big time. Now Vandar is free of this mish I have put a more balanced alternative build on him & he is a free magic tank in the big wide world. Of course in the wide world he is a very average Fire/Ice tank but at least in this mission he was king.
Cheers & please forgive the typo's and grammar.
Will try to keep this insightful.
This is a story about a custom build mish for a custom built toon as a solo test. Its not meant to be a farm (or a guide to farming) because I think farming is boring BUT if thats what rocks your boat then thats your business.
Also I have since writing this experiment up I have changed the map to a longer outdoor map. I could change it back to the ship map for this experiment if requested.
What I did was:
1, Created a toon that can be optimised to one mission/critter - this will be a fire/ice tanker called Vandar (magic ...with the new Magic Booster of course).
2, Created a critter that was simple enough to take on and had the worst attack possible for a fire tanker - this would be a (standard/standard) fire/regen scrapper lt.
3. Set a mission with an easy map (the ship map - short) and only the above critters - lets call them Fire Drones and call the mission Fire Drone Walkover.
What I wanted to know was:
a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?
b) How quickly could you level?
c) How fast could you complete the mission?
d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?
e) Can you earn enough influence?
f) Facts, figures and observations.
For me this really was an experiment. It should go without saying the with an MMOG with tens of thousands of story arc's to spend you time soloing in only one mission is kind of stupid & not recommended. So that is actually my executive summary - its kinda dull but I really wanted to make the observations for myself having read a lot about the game over the years.
So on with the observations:
a) How easy would it be to solo missions given the optimised setup?
An obvious answer: it starts of a bit hard but gets much easier quite quickly.
Levels 1-7 were a bit tough because the critters were all Lt's and you effectively only have 1 defense (fire shield) and limited offence (blazing aura, frozen fists & ice sword) and lastly a small self heal (Healing flames). Of course I do have the 2 vet reward attacks which are the only things that made this doable. Without Sands of Mu & Blackwand (is that what its called?) this would just be too tedious to do.
Levels 8-11 were better because of Temperature Protection which effectively doubled my fire resistance without added endurance issues (I think that Fire Shield & Temperature Protection each give a base of 30% resistance). Another attack in Frost (cone) was a very welcome addition at lvl 10 but to be honest my endurance was an issue at this point. BA was keeping my blue bar low and TO enhancements were not really helping.
Levels 12-21 a significant improvement with DO's now kicking in to give real protection & some offence. A few things to note here, the first of which was I chose to skip a travel power. No need if you are just hanging around in AE eh? I based myself in KR at this point & had the odd jog to Blue Steel & WCH but that was pretty manageable. I did pick up Swift Health over this period to help (& set me up for Stamina) and then Burn at lvl 18 and then Ice Patch at lvl 20. Yes endurance is an issue - you had enough resistance now to start to herd but not always enough endurance to finish the fight - but Burn & Ice Patch is such a good combo I could not wait.
Levels 22-32 were very much easier. SO's obviously make a big difference & are very affordable thx to all the tickets. With a solid resistance to Fire & some to smashing/lethal damage as well as a consistent supply of purple's Vandar could complete the mish in 6-7 herds (sorry I know thats a bad word but this is an experiment). I did take the fighting pool to get Tough for added S/L resistance which helped but not incredibly. I also took build up which was very useful on the Ice Patch - Build Up - Burn combo. Taunt was also handy for keeping the mobs in tow.
So I hope that gives you an idea of the solo game - its a grind but very do-able.
b) How quickly could you level?
Again an obvious answer: Not as quickly as being PL'd on a farm but for a solo act I thought it was pretty good. In real terms thats 1-32 in 27 hours. For me, soloing a tank in the lower levels is a really horrible barrier to getting tanks up and running. They dont even start to get good until the mid-20's so I was pleased to see how quickly this went. Obviously the progression is weighted to the early lvls - I hit lvl 24 at around 20 hours. In the early levels you would lvl twice per run and then it slowly got less frequent. By lvl 15-20 you would need to do 2 runs per lvl and from about lvl 28 you needed 3 runs per lvl. So about 50 mins per level on average. Not bad.
c) How fast could you complete the mission?
In the early levels it takes a solid 40mins to get through it and expect to die a lot. Interestingly you do not earn inspirations at all until lvl 12 which did not help. However once you get SO's you can expect to get throught the mish in around 15-20mins depending on difficulty & spawn sizes. Also after lvl 22 you now sometimes get medium inspirations drop which help a lot in getting through this. It might be interesting to set this as a time trial for later levels.
I have tried this mish with a lvl 50 fire rad controller and a lvl 50 invunl fire tanker. The controller had no problems with the mish set on invincable and did it in much the same time or maybe even a touch faster. The Invuln tanker was much slower given his lack of resistance. No surprises in that but I was surprised at just how squishy Invuln. is in this mish. Ouchies!
lastly on the time issue was about mission difficulty settings. When Vandar was over lvl 22 & well slotted with SO's it was definately the best mix of time spent vs reward to have it set on Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Better mob sizes & more consistent. For the solo player in general this seems to be the best setting. Wont comment for teams as this is not the purpose here.
d) What kind of tickets could you earn on a solo basis?
Anywhere from 450 to 900 per run but an average of around 600. For the best return on time spent vs rewards as mentioned above the best setting was Unyeilding (threat lvl 4). Turning it up to Invince (threat lvl 5) was not only slower but resulted in less tickets on average.
The other thing to mention here is the spawn sizes. In the 1st & last room where they spawn as orange Lt's they would always spawn the same number of enemy groups but they varies in size from mish to mish. Sometimes it was 3 drones per mob, sometimes it was 4 or 5 drones per mob. I think on average that makes it 4 but it was random & that had a big imapct on tickets awarded.
e) Can you earn enough influence?
Short answer here is no but the long answer is hell yes. Yes you can earn some Inf. but as per normal in CoX its not enough to cover your cost of enhancements in the sub 32 levels. The key thing is that you earn tickets that can in turn buy you enhancements at your level +3 which is really handy because you always seem to have enough tickets. Alternatively you can trade the tickets for other items which can in turn be sold at wentworths/black market. This is even more lucrative depending on the item and its often more efficient to do this and use inf to buy enhancements.
So no reall issues about inf. for enhancements. You earn enough tickets to cover this one way or another. Its not enough to buy IO sets so you will need to get that inf. elsewhere!
f) Facts, figures and observations.
Levels: 1-32
Time: 27 hours
Mission completed: 50 times (I got the 50 mission badge on the same run I hit lvl 32)
Average tickets: 600 (ish)
Optimum herd per mish: 6 herds (there are 4 sections to the ship map so 2 herds in sections 1 & 4 respectively and 1 herd in sections 2 & 3 respectively)
I noted that there were no insperation drops until lvl 12. You only got medium sized insperation drops after lvl 22. Interesting it was tied to your level and not the mob difficulty.
Lt. mobs spawn orange in the 1st & 4th sections and red in the 2nd & 3rd sections of the ship.
Orange mobs spwan at 3-5 critters (random) while red mobs spawn at 1-3 critters.
So.............
Thats this experiment done. I still like playing the mish with a lot of my toons as a bit of a trial to see how they stack up but this one really belongs to toon Vandar. He owns it big time. Now Vandar is free of this mish I have put a more balanced alternative build on him & he is a free magic tank in the big wide world. Of course in the wide world he is a very average Fire/Ice tank but at least in this mission he was king.
Cheers & please forgive the typo's and grammar.
LordSparky