The long trudge: create a how to for the top 5 (in Contests)

I'd like to see the the master plans of the strat minds on CB.

If you were starting from zero today with an NCB what would your path to the top five be?

Best answer gets 500k

nub or ncb?

NUB:

Start with a mage team for the cheaps
Buy BA every day
Start with a non-lesser tattoo
Find someone to buy me supportership
Find someone to gimp a char or two to ensure 100% challenge bonus
Stay single minion until the end
Buy minions
Profit

NCB:

All of the above, but start with pre-accrued BA and already have supportership.

Tadaaaaa

Are you assuming we have inf money or do we need to include that? And the top 5 as score wise? MPR wise? or how few people can beat you?

A few things that are important. Buying BA everyday, keeping at or near your encumbrance, keeping at or near your max tattoo lvl. I know this cuz I have been in the top 5 so many times.

I also think that 1 single strategy from the start may not get you there in the most efficient way. A happy medium of retraining and not losing precious xp to retraining.

I would have to disagree with almost all your points mandos :)

I have never been near the top >_>

and yet you've failed to make a single point yourself...

Still waiting on your clarification :).

all your questions are answered in the post at the top, I even added the word NCB and bolded the word zero for you...

if you don't know what "top five" means I don't know if I can really help that

Marry ImmortalAA (important: no pre-nup), divorce him, take The Immortals when splitting up the assets. Probably a lot less time and effort than actually creating a character. ;)

4 minion team from the get go. Set up to neutralize everyone else, while utlising NW to the Max.

Something like;

Minion 1: 20HP RoBF, with AP. (Decay killer) BoF.
Minion 2: Massive AC PL Wall, talking about beating Dudes, 500 AC here, with a TSA.
Minion 3: Your 'other' damage Dealer. Tank with a massive SoD / BL, and a Massive Morg.
Minion 3: EH/MGS wall. (MM killer). STR enough to use an EXBow. Use Novices EXBow on him.

SS and VA somewhere on your team. AMF not required, add DM if GA is causing you troubles, which it shouldn't.

There you go. A counter to everyone you'll ever face, with enough damage output to kill everyone.

Job done.

500K to Killnet please. ;)

Basically go with my Strat... very cheap and easy to maintain strat...

First minion can be Corn SB's and Boe NsC AoI and up them as much as your money allows... trains Decay and Amf and GA I will explain the GA part later

Minion two is your Robf tat holder... uses Corn SB AoI and Trains Amf And SS (SS and GA are interchangeable between the two whichever you prefer)

Third minion is your wall... Uses all Heavy AC gear while training some HP Evasion and Dex to keep up with your evasion this is where training a DD like SG or MM comes in handy... but make sure you train it higher than your Decay on the first minion to draw the msk fire to your high ac wall :P ... this is your evasion wall, with the evasion trained will help reduce Elb/Tank hits by a whole hit a round with around 1mil stats into each

And lastly your PL minion training PL and Massive HP.... best to start this minion first as a single FB mage till you have a nice Stat distribution... Will use Medium AC gear mostly Str boosting gear for a mini tank for some extra damage use Exbow and MoD when and if you can afford it... make sure you use MgS on this minion to destroy the MM from the back... with MgS and Amf your strat will totally take care of most MM out there.

This strat is a very solid strat and very few things can beat it... some of which is huge SG, Huge Elb unless you have like 500ac, large MoD... Very solid and cheap strat... I run this with less than 60 mil in gear most of my nw is in the tat... but your tat can grow from the get go and be very solid in this strat.

any questions just hit me up... can even be a solid strat with a 4 minion team running roe for a month or so to give the right exp distribution.

Starting from nothing. moderately focused strat that can fight up very well. Fight at the highest possible MPR while getting 100% CB and once you reach that point fairly regularly retrain to maintain that MPR. Grow your tat to the MTL. From there you can either continue growing up your tat or continue gathering money. Obtain a fair distribution of equipment to equip a highly variable strat with multiple equipment possibilities.

When doing the actual run I would do a build that can pull off 100% challenge bonus clearly and easily throughout the lower levels and one which will be adjusted into a highly adaptable strat in the middle regions. The key is to be able to fight up in at least 1 way to make your fight list and be able to fight defensively as well. An example of a strat like that is my hydra one. It was a 5 tank strat. It had a clear weakness to DM but was able to fight up fairly well and had high adaptability. Often if I lost to a similar sized character in 1 setup rearranging equipment and/or minions would be enough to at least pull off draws. The goal is to be pulling in over 100 defensive wins a day. On top of this you need to be buying daily ba and a good idea is to maximize exp times. That means exactly 160 ba + bought ba going in, 0 ba going out and keeping an eye on farmers who you can shift to pull in those defensive draws and wins. Also minimizing the use of money time as much as possible.

Nat is way out in front so far... only missing a really clear strat path in my opinion.

With a NCB you don't want ot be growing your Tat to MTL, you want a Tat above your MTL for the entirety of your NCB time ot make sure you're fighting at your best for maximum Challenge Bonus.

Oh, also to start, save up 1600 BA, and get a mate to gimp a high level charcater for you to beat on. Plus don't start until a Wacky XP time.

In terms of actual strats there are a few possible paths that differ in difficulty. 4 minion is the easiest and the cheapest way to go. I think a good way to go with that one is with tattoo spamming. You setup for the AS/GA and then use a combination of all the familiars and RoS to shift your way around. Also SoC and a Mace (regular one being the cheapest or MH/MoD for the special qualities) This should be able to take you all the way through your ncb.

Another option is for single minion. This one is much harder but it leaves the ability for hiring after your ncb ends. For the early stages I would go with a cannon build. Either pure EC and a JKF or Robf, or pure DM and a FF. You use this from 0 until around 2 mil mpr when you will be picking up too many farmers and your challenge bonus will be dropping down. If possible persevere out to 2.5 mil or a little higher hitting some of the highest targets possible like heroes and Incompetent Misfits for example. Then shift into a tank strat with multiple equipments setup. Include a good arsenal of weapons to salvage around and all of the shields, SoC, BoM, and MS. Try to pull off the same defensive maneuvering to through farmers off your tracks and pull in the defensive wins. Depending on whether you focus on ranged or melee would determine whether you want BL Archery or evasion. The main point is to be able to adjust without the exp penalties.

i think that people who try to make it that high by running an ncb will end up spending way more than is necessary to get there.

find the highest ranking single minion you can buy and start adding minions to it and you will be better off any day! ; )

Step 1) Be TheHatchetfellow
Step 2) ???
Step 3) profit


But on a more serious note, find something ya like, and spend years making it work. I for one, used to love evasion tanks (even before people knew evasion was OP :P), but that got old when I realized the trick was not in avoiding shots, but taking a million of em to the face and laughing about it. I now love the idea of a heavy tank, and eventually plan to switch to one soon as the setup Ranger left me starts falling behind. But take something, think it through all the way, and whether it will work or not, make it work. At no point was a heavy tank considered "powerful" and many wouldn't even give it credit as "viable"... Now nerfed as far as it possibly could be, it will still own if done properly. The real key to CB lies not in net worth, and only partly in strategy. It's ALL about tenacity :)

I think some key equipment would be an RoE, a BIG pair of DB and a nice sized MgS.

4 minions. Slap the RoE on your dmg dealer and train only HP and a DD spell, CoC should work nicely (most dmg for your exp trained). Every once in awhile put your RoE on another minion to train some natural HP and PL to help with FB teams. The DB can go on your front minion and the big MgS on the back minion (both of these minions will have 0 exp!). Offensively you could hunt tank teams that will have a tough time punching through your DB and out-damaging your CoC. Defensively you could really put a number of different tattoos on...a familiar for more dmg, an RoS on a base AS for more team HP, or even a ToA with a massive weapon for some added protection.

Start working on training DM if pure tank targets are dwindling and your CoC starts getting worked by GA dmg. Once you get pretty big you should have a very large dmg dealing minion, a good sized PL wall and 2 0 exp kill slots that you can rearrange for your teams benefit.

3 Easy Steps

1) Acquire 1 Billion CBD( Sell yourself to the highest bidder if necessary)
2) Make an insanely complicated yet comprehensive and profitable Deal with a large group of people for leveling your Char and Tat.
3) Map out everything from Strat to Ba Burn Times and Rotation Schedules for Char and Tat.

End result Top 5 (or 1st Place) although you may be someones love slave for life!

novice (Construct) 75.140.152.122 Natasha' (Team Rocket) $500000 12:26 AM EDT