~thriving in a gear-centric, disposable-team game~ (in General)

this is not a for sale thread, but i wanted to get some community opinions on what i am thinking of doing. please do not message me with offers until i decide and post a fs thread.

with the way cb2 seems to be centered, why should i not do the following:

sell my single-minion team for the best price i can get.
invest profits in gear, not battle allocation during an ncb run.
use one run or many, to pump my tattoo up more, as well as a base or near base one that i start with until i switch to my larger one (when it will benefit) and sell off the other and put profit into gear as well.

i will reach a point of diminishing returns on my gear, but i think it is a ways off.

basically i will run a series of ncb's just to get my tat higher as my main focus and invest in gear along the way until i want to try a top run again. at this point i am slipping in the mpr ranks to n*b's anyway and should probably sell igot while he is the largest single mpr in game? what have i not thought of? i do realize that at some point i may need to pick up a low-level set of gear to start off with, or at least certain pieces.

Becoz 'DUDE' you are the last stand of the single minion strategy. People look up to you when they want to find a true example of Perseverence and Obstinacy. Every single minion team dreams of achieving what you have throughout your stint in CB. Your single minion strategy is the ultimate-cheapest-higher level startegy that has stood the test of time. No changemonth could affect you or your decision to stay SINGLE. You have shown people that there is a way to enter the top flight without splurging on costly gear. Pretenders may come and go but there is only 1 Legend. I feel a lot of single minion N*Bs who would cry themselves to sleep if they realized that you sold out, because it would indicate the death of a legacy.... the legacy of D-U-D-E-M-U-S.

Without buying BA you're unlikely to make a char as big.

How big's your tattoo? I'm using Flamey's tatt and it was sitting around 2.9 million at the beginning of my NCB. I didn't get to the point where I could grow it for nearly 2/3 of the way through this char's run. So if it's bigger than that then you're going to be sitting on it without growth for several months at a time.

I know you're prepared for that, but you might want to consider seeing if somebody is prepared to level it for you. Don't know how realistic an option that is.

What you should be thinking of too is making strats that don't need a lot of cash input: you want to be making some money, not just pumping it into gears.

What sorts of gear would you invest in?

I would consider BA more valuable than gear, especially when it's cheap. For the first month of my NCB, BA cost less than about 2.5k apiece. If I had not spent that money, my character, with 2 minions, would probably be about the same MPR as yours about now, rather than having surpassed it. Sure, I invested a lot in my SoD, and it really helped me coming up through the ranks... but if I had had 20% less ST and DX and HP because I didn't buy as much BA, it would have taken me a lot longer to move up. And now, at this point, I kill some of my opponents in ranged, and the others I miss for all of ranged. My 100m NW weapon has already failed me vs Evasion minions, so I'm wondering what kind of gear you plan on upping to give you benefits that outweigh that of MPR?

Just to illustrate further the point about buying or not buying ba: I fight a lot. I barely miss a BA. For this char during the bonus period I bought BA for the first couple of weeks, then only at crazy xp times for another then none at all for the last three months of the bonus.


2 million MPR. Not bad for very little outlay sure, but not what you'd get much cash for at the end of it.

And a max tattoo of 4,572,693.

Here's an example with some numbers:

When my NCB BA cost 2.5k apiece, I was getting about 2.5k XP per battle, so it cost me about $1 for each XP I got. Basically, I could buy a point in a stat for $12. If I could do that now, I could spend 1mil CB and either get 1 point of UC out of it plus a little extra ST and DX, or I could get one extra + on my SoD and have 30k to spare. Considering how much higher my UC PTH is already, one extra point on that would be much more useful. Or I could put it all into HP and be able to sustain 83k more damage.

Soon NCBs will be unable to run for the top. As BA cost (to stay at equivalent effort to the top spot and get to 95% of it) will be too much for anyone to buy a full set of.

Therefore no equivalent effort, no run to the top.

All a NCB is useful for really is to continually rerun to build Tattoo's and gear.

The sooner you decide to run to the top with one, the better. If you don't think you'll be able to outperform the BA effort you've put in with a previous NCB, don't ever ditch it.

I'm pretty much using disposable characters myself but people are less and less interested in buying chars and you have to invest alot of time when running a non-ba buying NCB.

I have to admit my first char got my tattoo to almost 2.8m before it's ncb ran out which isn't too bad but it takes about 1-2 months for your next char to get it under MTL and with the NCB bonus reduced and extended it may take even longer now.

It's all dependant on what you want to do in game and with your characters. If you have all the gears you could possibly want for your favourite type of character and have the determination to try reaching the higher mpr ranks go for it but if you want a change of pace to build up some revenue/try different character builds it can't really hurt.

It's not a bad idea anyway. It won't be as bad as everyone think it is now with the new score system. The so-called dead zone is diminishing, as long as there are active chars that you can beat along each score range, you probably will never meet dead zones anymore.

Even if you sell any char at dirt cheap price, they are disposable anyway as long as you don't lose transfer cost, it's still a win-win.

well after forktoad's post, how could i even consider it! ; )

to answer the questions, i would pump the gear i have now with money from character sales as well as the base tattoo sales from levelling one up until i could start improving my main one.

my current tat is just under 4m.

i would focus on tat growth for one or possibly two ncb runs. then i would make a run for character growth, depending on what max mpr is at that time.

i will never put usd into the game on any kind of grand scale, nor will i borrow to fund a run, i only spend money on supporter items and namings.

i am interested in seeing what a single minion team can do, either robf or mage, with a number much closer to encumbrance level than i am now. that is my main motivation for this idea and the main goal behind it. i really don't have to be at or near the top.

while it may get harder for ncb's to make a run and go higher than me, remmeber that the max mpr is also growing, so what i am not sure of yet is where is the line that you can cross cheaply with an ncb, and is that line getting closer to me now or am i pulling ahead of it.

Having thought about it some I will add to my earlier comments about only hitting around 2 million MPR: if you're running single, you're running focused, which can mean your 2 million MPR single minion can be more powerful than a multi minion team of 3 million, so long as the strat you're using is good.

/me grins you sure? =x

The only benefit you really get from 4 minions as opposed to 3 minions is kill slots. Unless you're going for really focused enchantments much of that is icing that you don't really need.

Boost a ranged weapon to your limit, and evasion aside you can find people much larger that you can take on. Actually evasion included, that enables much smaller single minion teams to take on much larger tank teams. Focus can swing the game by quite a lot.

So yes, I am sure!

*player of many single minion teams!*

does anyone have a pretty solid idea of the kind of tat growth boost you get from a ncb run as opposed to six months of regular, no-missed-ba fighting?

Without buying BA you're looking at around 2-2.5 million MPR at the end of an NCB run, so you're looking at a max tattoo level of about 4.5-5 million levels.

There must be some kind of formula that would give you an approx real tattoo level from that. But I'd suspect 3-3.5 million level.

About the "MTL vs MPR" thing:

MTL = (MPR^1.2501)*1.4307/24
MPR = (MTL*24/1.4307)^(1/1.2501)


About the top level one can hope to reach in MPR/MTL:

I started this NCB run after a pretty much stalled NUB run (stopped actively playing after a month or so, mostly idled), didn't have much cash to begin with, and was pretty low on gear too : I started the NCB run with maybe 20 mil CB$ worth of stuff plus in my pocket... or thereabouts (most of it was tied up in a HoC, a RoE, a pair of DB and a pair of AG, a ToE of around 1 mil level and maybe around 5 mil CB$ of actual cash).
I DIDN'T save up for the hard-cap of 1600 BA, I DIDN'T purchase BA on a regular basis past the first week, I didn't even buy all BA during crazy XP time either.
Last but not least, I also missed a good chunk of BA every now and then, especially in the past 3 weeks.
My NCB run is almost over, my ToE is now a ToA of almost 3 mil level, and I'm getting close to 2.1 mil MPR, and I actually retrained a couple of times even BEFORE the "free retrain week"... and now I switched from mage to archer, losing a lot of NW in the process because I didn't feel like micro-managing my funds.


About the unfeasability of a NCB run:

This is probably the best time to start a NCB, with the score rebalance filling up a good portion of the "dead zone", and the extension of the NCB duration (with a proportional reduction in bonus level) allowing you to earn more cash during a NCB run (so you have to save up less).

Personally, when I think I will have a good amount of free time available, I'll definetely start a fresh NCB.
This time, I'll use the RoE even longer (up to 3 mil MTL instead of 1 mil MTL like I did before) and plan to at least try to sink less cash into gear and more into BA.
Reaching the 3 mil MTL mark (a bit under 1.5 mil MPR) using the RoE shouldn't take longer than 2 months or so... after that, the MPR growth rate will most likely suffer an abrupt fall, but still, 6.5 mil MTL (around 2.7 mil MPR) should be well within reach without any serious trouble (with a tattoo of around 5 mil level or so).

After that, a second NCB run with a RoE up to 5 mil MTL (2.2 mil MPR) should take maybe 3 and a half months, and yield an eventual 7 to 7.5 mil MTL (2.8 to 3 mil MPR) in the end, with a tattoo slightly above 6 mil level.


Yeah, it will take the better part of a whole year, and mean a lot of wasted CB$ on BA, and a lot of dedication... but now it's certainly doable.
Assuming, that is, that the new score system remains in place, and that people high up don't all start NCBs themselves retiring their current characters in the process.

P.S.

M.T.L. is exactly equal to total character XP / 24
(or total raw levels / 2 if you prefer).

Tattoo growth rate (the "regular" kind) is 2/3 of M.T.L. growth.
The "lesser" kind is 1/3 of M.T.L. growth.


P.P.S.

Could somebody already add "MTL" to the spell-checker list ?

P.P.P.S.

You could also employ an expensive, but efective "trick" : level up as single minion close to 75% of your tattoo's level in MTL, then buy three new minions to jump right to your MTL.
With this, you could probably shunt a decent portion of your tattoo growth cycle and end up with a 7 mil tattoo by the end of your second NCB run... which means in one year, you could potentially get a tattoo on par with the best tattoos up there.

Still, it looks pretty sad to me that tattoo levels are so much more important than MPR.
Oh well... don't fight the system, exploit it :P

Ha.
Good luck selling it, but don't get your hopes up. BS has been on sale for quite some time now with ZERO offers.

Dear god. Please. Sell me your char.

Single Minion is a beautiful thing :) wouldn't it be the most awesome thing to have a top single minion character?