Time gate question

[Guxxigamer]

Which champions should I unlock, when starting out in the game?

[Hecate]

Rule of thumb: almost always favor unowned champions over owned ones (you get really few gear from a TG in fact).

Your first priority is to obtain two champions per seat, then three, so you unlock modest modron core then speed core as soon as possible. Favoring speed champions is a good strategy, other options are supports that work well with your damage dealer, like covering 2 bonds of Asharra. Finally, during a season (like now), favoring seasons champion because of cost reduction and their quest is a smart pathway.

Also, unless a champion is a key to your team or incredibly useful, favoring a retired champion over one still in an event is advisable (especially don't use TG over a champion that'll be unlockable in an handful of events*).

*eg: Unlocking Hew Maan through time gate is definitely not advisable right now, as you'll have him from event in 3 weeks.

[Daggot]

Actually, I'd be tempted to say open Hew Maan now and grab the 3 gold chests. If you're new, it's really hard to get many gold chests from the event. Until you can run a solid gem farm team, getting a champion to Full Epic (FE) is pretty hard.

@Guxxigamer, You're definitely going to want to dump as many tokens for chests into Hew Maan during event in Feb. His quest drop ability is key to helping you go faster in the game. This is his last event before being retired; meaning the only way to get gear for him for free will be through Time Gates. Farm as many gams as you can. Get as many Gold Chests as you can, and use the bounty contracts during his event to get as many tokens as possible to do as many runs through his adventure to collect as many chests as possible.

[Hecate]

Kind of disagree, unlocking speed core (and covering more variant restrictions with more champions) is more important than gearing hew maan in the beginning, I'ld say, plus you can start to dump blacksmith contracts into him after event, even if he's not yet epic. You'll still be able to catch gear for him after event through patron chest too in a long term pespective.

Don't forget that main income for gems with a new account don't come from boss but for basic adventure & variants completion. Also as a beginner; 6 time gate pieces are far longer to gather than for a veteran, you don't have all patrons unlocked, etc.

Note finally that if you unlock him through a time gate, you'll have one variant less to do in the event with him and variants for year+1 & year+2 champions are discounted, so you'll have to compensate it with 2-3 more free plays, and so virtually lose 5000-7500 event tokens.

So I can't agree with you, it's smarter to wait for the event to unlock him in my opinion.

[tdb]

Originally posted by Daggot:

Actually, I'd be tempted to say open Hew Maan now and grab the 3 gold chests. If you're new, it's really hard to get many gold chests from the event.

Three gold chests won't do that much though. At the very least it requires a great deal of luck to get the epic speed item from those chests. On the other hand, unlocking Shandie is a guaranteed 50% speed increase, which is much better than playing the item lottery on Hew a couple of times.

Definitely focus on Hew in the event though.

Originally posted by Daggot:

Until you can run a solid gem farm team, getting a champion to Full Epic (FE) is pretty hard.

A solid gem farm team will only help with core and evergreen champions anyway. I've understood that patron chests are the thing for event champions.

[kab_reg]

No, over time you will be getting enough resources to FE all three champions in an event. Even having a basic farming team is enough to FE at least one chosen champion per event, or to get close to it. The first four event champions I tried to FE when I started playing the game were Avren, Sentry, Krull, and Artemis. They got 5, 6, 4, and 4 epic items, respectively. In all later events I successfully FE'ed at least one chosen champions, and everybody was FE'ed by the middle of the next September (and by the middle of August I was only one item short of the full collection).

[SotF]

If you're using pieces, I'd suggest that you start with making sure you have the Heroes of Baldurs Gate ones due to the discount from season 2. Shandie is a good choice of those to start with if you don't have her

[AlexDL]

Here you can track events and heroes. https://ic.byteglow.com/events

[Catastrophe]

Egbert and Rust are great for gold/favor, and so is Dungeon Master. I've really enjoyed those three a lot, and I only started playing back in November. Egbert is also a pretty good tank, and if you're trying to push the levels his smoke bomb ability in place of a gold find skill is very good. Dungeon Master has great gold boosts, but he also has the ability to let you choose to use a champion that isn't allowed by the rules of the mission you are doing, and that can also be helpful.

Deekin is also pretty good. At level 90 and 200 he increases the spawn speed of enemies, and that makes the runs go quicker. Shandie also has a speed boost that works well with Deekin.

The trade-offs here are: Deekin is slot 1, so you lose the gold find from the dwarf (but you can swap characters during combat, so not too big a deal). Shandie takes the place of Dungeon master.

Each of these characters were a great boost for me. However, you can unlock Drizzt in the Sword Coast campaign (not too far into it), and Azaka in Tomb of Annihilation (quite a ways into it). Drizzt boosts gold find in addition to boosting Bruenor's gold find, and he allows you to get another gold boost with Bruenor at level 2400.

If I had to choose one between Egbert, Rust, Dungeon Master, Deekin, and Shandie I would probably choose them in this order: Deekin, Egbert, Rust, Shandie, Dungeon Master. And I would be working my way toward unlocking Drizzt as fast as I could.

I hope that helps. I don't think you could go wrong with any of these.

[kab_reg]

Outside of his gold find role, Rust is a rather mediocre buffer, therefore don't bother with him until you get Azaka. Especially since he shares the seat with Avren, who is an excellent buffer.

[Hecate]

Also Rust will be available today in event so he's not an option for a TG choice right now. ^^

[Catastrophe]

Originally posted by Hecate:

Also Rust will be available today in event so he's not an option for a TG choice right now. ^^

That's cool. Where did you see that? I'm still learning stuff. Just sharing the champs that I've enjoyed the most :)

[Hecate]

The link was already given in the topic: ^^

Originally posted by AlexDL:

Here you can track events and heroes. https://ic.byteglow.com/events

Byteglow has a lot of useful tools for the game.

[SotF]

Nordom is good, but best to leave for after unlocking a modron core

[Syrrah]

My suggestion, in order:

Hew Maan*
Melf
Briv
Shandie
Nahara
Deekin
Optional: Virgil
Optional: Widdle

Since you probably are short on time gate pieces as new player, I suggest to skip Hew Maan and wait until he shows up in the event in February. You could do the same from Nahara if you're willing to wait 5 months, but then again I find her really good to zoom through areas in combination with Hew Maan/Melf.

Those are all speed champions. I only started playing in June 2022, relatively recently, and for me gathering a speed team was a bigger improvement than anything else. As a matter of fact those are also the heroes I still use most.

Your goal will be to unlock a second, 3rd team and 4th team, which requires 2 respectively 3 champions in each bench. That will take a while because you not only have to unlock 12 and then 24 champions, but also gain favour so you're strong enough to beat the related quests. Therefore I suggest not to make this your top priority at the start. But once you can, go for unlocking the extra teams asap.

Having speed champions allows you to complete quests faster, gain gems faster, gain favour faster. You can then easily unlock the 4 patrons, which will allow you to buy time-gate pieces with favour. 4 patron timegate pieces on top of the ones you're gaining now = at least 1 timegate a week with liittle effort. That will give you the necessary tools for unlocking extra champions for the modron cubes.

Once in a while, also consider getting some champions to increase your damage if you find you're reaching your wall too early. Zorbu and Arven for example will be great helps.

Finally, you do want to grab all Heroes Of Waterdeep champions to profit from the current season. Their time-gates are discounted (including Shandie's!)

[Hecate]

*Heroes of Baldur's Gate, wrong city ^^