My First NCB (in General)

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Well, there you go. That's my first NCB character. It ends in about an hour tonight. I fought moderately heavily, buying BA only during Wacky XP times, and fighting at least a couple sets of 160 each day. I was only in a clan towards the very end (once I hit around 450k or so MPR). I can't break the 1.6M score mark for more than an hour or so at a clip, but all in all I'm fairly satisfied with the result. Interesting trivia -- it ended on a Crazy XP day, which I thought was nice -- one last run down the final stretch.

So now I have to decide what to do next. Does anyone think it's possible for this character to break the top 10? I've come close to breaking the Top 10 of 2-minion chars (I got to 11), but there's no bonus for that. I think I never got past the Top 40. Do you think it's a pipe dream? Honestly. If that's the case, I will start a new one on July 15th, next week (happens to be a special day.. take a guess at what).

I've definitely learned a few things, most notably: Everyone must use a strat that incorporates the RoE until they hit the MPR wall at wherever it happens to be in the life of CB. That makes the RoE the best supporter item ever -- it has limited usefulness to help out in the beginning. This is in contrast to the Mage Shield and TSA, which are always required.

Further, I've learned that while the NUB fluctuates during the 4 months that a new user has it, the NCB is static. Mine was 151% for the entire duration. This is not what I expected, which means that fighting is going to get harder as my 4 months tick away.

In terms of money, I've learned that _ALL_ NCB strats must be insanely cheap, since they are VERY expensive. Single minion, veyr little gear. Otherwise, you can't keep up. Also on that note, buy BA every single day until it starts to get really expensive (like, $800 / BA). Then scale back. I did the reverse (oops).

I've learned that an amulet of some type is a necessity. Most likely, the Amulet of AC for mages, since the PR weight is low. That can suck up the PR that a maxed tattoo normally would give if you're using a named RoE.

I've learned that clans need to be changed. Not that being in them is bad, but that when you're in them, people DESTROY you. Now, that's good and bad. It's good because you get an extra 50k XP every day, but it's bad because you can't keep CPs up and you look like a schmuck to the rest of the team (Picasso, you rock!).

I have to leave to play pool now, but I'll post more thoughts later. Any other thoughts are welcome, as well. Take care.

Awww Nightstrike.....

Even when you were losing us CP's, you still contributed more to the clan than most people. You gave personality, facilitated a community within the clan and offered help and support to people. That more than makes up for -1000 CP's a day =D (which, btw, i completely understand. most days i lose over 2200 clan fights a day. how is that possible?! losing 2200 clan fights!)

I think part of your being farmed problem is that your character is fairly weak (offensively at least). You have like 75% of your xp towards hitpoints, and the rest of the chunk mostly in AMF. Your tank damage might as well be nonexistant with only 80k str. So basically you've got a decent anti-mage strategy in which you cause them to suicide- unless they have extra minions with large hp in which case you probably stalemate. And every other non-mage team I imagine you probably lose or stalemate to.

Actually, I can beat both mages and tanks alike. Also, I don't have a tank, I have a wall that cleans up enchanters. The only thing that really stops me is GA, b/c it's the only way to really take out my SF, the main damage dealer. GA causes serious pain, even moreso than most AMFs I go up against.

The reason I get farmed a lot is that I made it to a very high score very quickly, so my MPR is low in comparison. I fought up very highly (after a train, I'd keep hitting "higher" until I found people I could fight). This inflated my score significantly. As a result, I am fighting people with my same score but twice or three times my MPR. Also, there are very few people above me (less than 60). So, those people need to fight someone. A lot of them can beat me, so they do. Also, their options are limited, so they spend most of their BA on just a few people.

hehe, thanks, Picasso. I try to help out when I can. I learned most of what I know from Sefton, and one of the first things he did was give me a big ol' Katana that I could pay him for whenever I wanted, even if it was 6 months later (and he said he'd most likely forget, so if I forgot, too, no worries). I wound up paying him for it eventually, and sure enough, it took a little bit to jog his memory =).

Anyway, he taught me that it's cool to help out. It keeps people coming back. Like, chrisonacup, for instance. He's got good potential, just needs a little guidance. Really, the one you want in your clan for that sort of thing (helping others) is Sefton. He's a master strategist, and is always willing to help.

Can someone help me understand what's considered good XP rewards without a bonus? When I was in the bonus earning period, I used 200XP total as my minimum threshold (ie, if a fight resulted in less than 100XP per minion in a 2-minion group (3-minion total), I deleted the person from my fight list. I saw normal fights hitting upwards of 600XP total (300 per minion). During Wacky XP time, I'd peak at a little over 1000XP total (500 and change per minion) and average in the 600-800 range total (300-400 per minion).

Without the bonus, what's considered a lower end tolerance for rewards, and what's considered average? Also, what's the ceiling, the most you can earn in a single fight?

well just an example. I have 300k MPR, 400k PR. 1.1 mil score.

on my good fights with over a 10% bonus i get a total of 200 xp (50 xp each) this is fighting opponents with a score of over 1 mil while i was at the 900k - 1mil score mark, but that doesn't matter as rewards are given by PR :-)

so basically fighting about 600k up i was getting 200 xp and this is on 8/10 refresh rate.

and i get as little as maybe 80 xp a fight when fighting my lowest opponent, which is just over my PR.


i hardly get to play in xp time, because of where i am in the world.

i think i was maybe getting 350 xp max altogether i know i didn't reach the 100 xp each mark.


hope that helps, at least some example :)

"Further, I've learned that while the NUB fluctuates during the 4 months that a new user has it, the NCB is static. Mine was 151% for the entire duration. This is not what I expected, which means that fighting is going to get harder as my 4 months tick away."

I'm sure the NUB is static like the NUB. Both bonuses are calculated in the same way. If you saw one change, Jon probably re scalled something.

"In terms of money, I've learned that _ALL_ NCB strats must be insanely cheap, since they are VERY expensive. Single minion, veyr little gear. Otherwise, you can't keep up. Also on that note, buy BA every single day until it starts to get really expensive (like, $800 / BA). Then scale back. I did the reverse (oops)."

I made this point ages ago. The NCB gets the increased cost of buyng BA that the NUB gets, but not the increased rewards.

Jon wants it this way, you could call it a tax to allow you to re start.

One thing to note, the increased BA cost is based on your bonus amount. So as the life of CB progresses, and bonus amounts increase, the amount BA will cost for the NCB will increase as well.

"I've learned that an amulet of some type is a necessity. Most likely, the Amulet of AC for mages, since the PR weight is low. That can suck up the PR that a maxed tattoo normally would give if you're using a named RoE."

Yup. New slot, no drawback, there is no reason not to have an amulet on each minion.

"I've learned that clans need to be changed. Not that being in them is bad, but that when you're in them, people DESTROY you. Now, that's good and bad. It's good because you get an extra 50k XP every day, but it's bad because you can't keep CPs up and you look like a schmuck to the rest of the team (Picasso, you rock!)."

You can keep up with CPs, it's harder if the rest of your clan are buying BA daily, but it's totally possible to earn a nice amount of CPs a day.

Correct GL, NUB is static.

GL, your clanmates performance has nothing to do with your own (in)ability to stay positive. It has to do with the number of other people attacking you and the frequency of those attacks.

well it all depends on how powerful your strat is, single mages get farmed the most because we all know we can smash them until they get over 100k of your MPR, so they get farmed a lot.

but really its your strat you can ask everyone at your level of MPR in clan and ask how much CPs they lose each day, and look at their strats i will guarantee you the stronger strats will have lose less points.

Flamey, that's a little like saying "Well of course 2+2=4. I mean, if I had two apples, and I buy two more apples, then I have four apples. See? Get it?" You simply stated the obvious -- that people with good strategies do well.

My comments stemmed from the fact that with a decent strat and the NCB, it's insanely easy to surge into the high-score range with a low MPR relative to your score. Heck, I wasn't even trying very hard, and I made it into 1.5M/500k. However, this makes your net CP score quite low, as everyone from you on up will be fighting you heavily. If I didn't have a good strat, I wouldn't have been in that position in the first place.

If there's someone near you in score that has an MPR half of yours, yes, you're probably going to be able to beat that person. And if the person is in a clan, you will most assuredly have that person on your fight list and you will be farming the character for all it's worth.

I suppose this is part of the idea of having the system converge scores towards PR. But then, why make it so incredibly easy to inflate your score? Obviously, I was in a position where my score really did not reflect the real status of my character. With a score of twice my PR and three times my MPR, that doesn't agree entirely with the idea of score/PR convergeance. It seems to me to be a byproduct of having a large pool of people to fight and being able to focus on a select few. Is that really the goal?

just saying this, i don't know if its completely off.

but if you're in a clan from the start your never going to really have that score surge, it will be closer to your PR as you will be constantly farmed leaving your score lower. and without it you can fight higher up against those dead/crap character raising your score, and really nothing to decrease it.

maybe thats why your score raised so much.

i'm pretty sure being in a bonus receiving clan outweighs the slightly higher rewards of not being in a clan and fighting up.


just so you know after the set of BA i burned today without any bonus. i got 16 - 49 xp per minion, 64 - 196 xp total .

As you say, NS, the problem with fighting up is you do place yourself in a vulnerable position. You can only beat the people you can beat and everyone else is huge in comparison. Even more so around the gateway to the top 40. But that's less to do with you fighting up and more to do with the fact that there are a lot of teams up there who have been there a long time. Unless you fight every single ba you can - through being online all the time AND buying BA everyday - you will not be able to compete with a team who have been fighting for over a year. The NCB gives you a fighting chance but only if you use it.

Not being in a clan means that your score is more stable. But you will not grow as fast without a clan bonus. It's a fact. It's worth being in a clan early on if you are doing an NCB. Especially as so many other people will be doing the same. There's a fairly broad selection of clan opponents at lower levels right now.

And if you are fighting up a lot but gettting farmed a lot what you are actually seeing is your character falling back to it's natural level, ie where you would be if you didn't fight up so much....but I would advise fighting up wherever possible. Your MPR growth probably isn't in proportion to your score but through fighting up you are getting the best rewards you can.

If you want an idea of how much more you need to fight to MORE successful - your char has about 85k battles challenged - that is the amount of fighting you have done. Crisis - the number one char at the moment - was an NCB char and battles challenged equals approx 210k. That's nearly three times the amount of fighting you have done. And that's with maybe a month difference between that char's start point and yours.....

Ah that explains it, I thought your tattoo was a ToE

Are you saying that I need to make up a difference of over 100k battles? That's some serious catching up, especially since I don't buy all my BA each day. Hrm. Well, at least that's one benefit of being farmed -- you get a lot of XP from fights that you don't need to spend BA on.

Do you think it's possible at this point? Honestly, you make a good point. I'm up against some seriously huge teams. I just added Camelot Reborn to my fightlist, but everyone else is giant-sized. Sure, I made it to #11 for 2-minion chars, but I'm curious if I really can go higher. What will it take? Will I honestly have to log on every 3 hours and burn all my BA? And even at that, just get lucky?

Cost to buy BA every day throughout the NCB (and NUB I guess):

Around 25 million. (that's net cash put in on a team getting 18-20 hours BA worth every day).

Be prepared. Be very prepared.

now you're scaring me out of a NCB, i can't make 20 hours a day, let alone have 25 mil.

if hiring minions that sum would be much larger......

scary....

What is the cost to move from #50 to the top ten?

Actually, JW, it's interesting to note that if you look at Crisis' graph, he was really far from perfect in the MPR arena. There's numerous retraining and even one flatline. That's extremely scary, as that means the theoretical max for the NUB is... astounding.

At the same time, the NCB is far more difficult to use.

Just to break the top ten, I need to close a score gap of 600k based on a current snapshot (which has a large variance). In a given day, I need to gain more score than the #10 player. How much more I gain will determine the time required.

Running some very rough numbers, I'm looking at another 4 months of playing max BA (hoping that I stay at the 8 BA regen rate) where max is playing every 3 hours and buying 576 / day.

Can someone assist with a more accurate estimation? Also, is BA regen based on VPB or MPR? I might be able to gain more BA by training only when I have to. See, my concern here is not MPR or PR. It's score. I'm in an interesting position right now where my MPR is much lower than that of those near my score. Well, it's not as drastic as it was before I trained the 2.5m XP I had sitting around, but it's still a large gap. I can use that to my advantage if I can still find people I can fight. For instance, I'm fighting people with a score of 1.7M.

See, I want the score so I can break the top ten and expound my cash horde once PR doesn't matter. I'll ramp up to the max AC and be able to accel fairly well (I hope).

That brings up an interesting question. What if I just did that now? If I had the max AC, I could beat larger people. My rewards would blow, but that won't matter as long as my score goes up. If I can bump the score above the Top Ten threshold, I can gain MPR again. It's a matter of figuring out which aspect of this entendre is the cart and which is the horse, as it were.

Comments on all of the above are very welcome.

Who dares to imply that Crisis isn't perfect? In the words of novice, "Don't poke the badger."

I got the CML's installed. AC went up to 187 or so. I still need TSA and an amulet, though I don't know how to gauge PR impact. Suggestions?

Well, with the new CMLs and a new weapon from Barzoo, I now had the pleasure of seeing this message:

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