Question about Fateweaver settings

Hi,

I've been gone a long time from the game and recently returned. One of the (many) things I'm having to learn about is the Fateweaver's ability to change my difficulty settings. I'm not very clear on how it works, so if anyone can point me to a guide or detailed explanation of how to use it, that would be great. I've done some searching and apparently my Search Fu is weak.

As I understand it, if I adjust the level of opponents I want to fight, the spawns in a mission will be higher (more lieutenants, bosses, etc instead of minions?). If I adjust the 'number of heroes/villains I am equivalent to' then it increases the sheer quantity of bad guys I will see spawned?

I'm not sure what effect the last two settings have ('Does/Does not prefer to fight bosses when alone', and 'I want to fight Heroes/Villains at their full strength instead of as Elite Bosses')

I keep seeing people referring to these settings (+1/x8, +2/x4, etc) especially when talking about farming missions (AE missions, I think) but I'm not sure what/why they have their settings that way.

If it makes a difference, I am currently playing a Brute in my 20s.

Basically, the first setting is "How high relative to your level do you want the bad guys to be?"

So, if you're, say, 25, and you set it to -1, missions will tend to spawn level 24 enemies (subject to some variation, usually +/-1 level). On the other hand, if you set it to +4, it would spawn enemies at level 29 (again, subject to small variation).

The second difficulty is what size team do YOU want the game to think you are? It will spawn enemies based on the greater of: what you've set this as or the ACTUAL number of members in the team. This tends to increase spawn sizes, as well as increase the number of bosses and lieutenants you will encounter.

The third and fourth options determine how certain specific enemies will spawn if you are solo (regardless of all other settings). Bosses and Arch Villains (AVs) are generally tougher than other enemies, some archetypes can't take on bosses effectively, and it's quite rare to find a solo character that can take on AVs solo. These settings, then, allow you to make bosses spawn as lieutenants, and AVs spawn as EBs, respectively.

Edit: So, my L50 blaster solos at +0/x3/No/No, meaning that enemies spawn at L50, in mobs sized for a team of three, with no bosses and no AVs (yeah, I'm a wuss). Most of the time I would abbreviate this to "0/x3", or "0/x3/No", because most people would expect me to avoid AVs like the plague.

Now, since you mention that you're playing a Brute, you should find yourself in a position to crank up your difficulty a bit, if you want to. Your brute is probably a lot more survivable than my blaster.

If you primarily have single target damage, you might want to crank up the level of enemies a bit, to make each one a bit tougher, and worth a bit more XP and inf. If you're AoE heavy, increasing your "effective team size" gives you more targets to mow through.

Outstanding replies, thank you! That answers all of my questions, and did it before I made it to work to check my email!

Hi Guys,

just by coincidence I ran a lvl 25 mish in Skyway last night "Investigate the Troll Rave" from Mercedes Sheldon arc and on the mish loading screen I got the usual game tip. This one read something along these lines -

Visit your helpful Fateweaver and have your foes change difficulty and hang out in bigger mobs - of course all this comes at a price!

Obviously a throw back to when we had to pay inf to get all that stuff changed under the old system and not removed by the Dev's when the new sytem came in. Just thought it was funny that I had read this thread and then got that message. Those were the days - no such thing as a freebie service! Bah, you kids don't know how................

Also, to put it in terms you might remember:
Old Solo = New Solo
heroic/villainous = +0/x1
tenacious/malicious = +0/x2
rugged/vicious = +1/x1
unyielding/ruthless = +1/x2
invincible/relentless = +2/x1

As you can see, with the new way, you have much more control over what kind of fights you will be getting into.

The only thing about the new system is that you can't actually get as many mobs to spawn as you used to be able to get. Tenacious and Unyielding would spawn mobs as if you had an additional person on your team, so when you had a full team of 8, the spawning equation would count your team size as 9. Now, since the spawning equation uses either your setting or your actual team size, whichever is higher (both of which cap at 8), you get slightly fewer mobs than you would using Tenacious or Unyielding before.