new legendary potions, str//click bud increase?

[JC]

i'm curious if anyone has tried these yet. I'm wondering if anyone has played with them with a group between 350-450 bud. i was thinking they might be useful to get over the hump when your close to finishing a variant but coming up just short. A sometimes i come up 5-10 areas shy, a couple literally on the last boss and not being able to make it through armor.

I know when i max out on the regular potions i can get a good 20+ areas sometimes, it makes me think these should help for that. Has anyone given them a try or use them in that situation?

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by JC:

sometimes i come up 5-10 areas shy

In such cases, BUD spikes and overkill will get you farther than strength potions.

[Hecate]

The legendary strength potion is +1500% so a ×16 or ~4 areas.

The +15% basic effect can be obtained 5 times with the 5 different legendary potions active at the same time. That's then a ×2.01 multiplier to each base potion (1.15^5). As there is 4 base potions of strength, the gain can be 2^4 or ×16 or ~4 areas.

So together those two things can get you a +8 areas. That can indeed make a difference if you miss 5-10 areas to complete a variant.

But there is a lot of other ways to get that 5-10 areas that are effectively far cheaper than that, and kab_reg pointed some of them - using sticky debuffs, aiming for event buffs or using a full legendary dismantle are others (as increasing modron overcharge, buying missing perks, increasing (especially pre-stack) gear, increasing legendaries, etc.). So apart you're a quite rich whale, going that way is probably one of the worst possible ones.

[JC]

It's more about when i've done the other stuff, swapped team members, done manual ulitmate's, maxed out perks, my core is only missing one node for overcharge, just waiting on a single cross. I also use the trick were you fall back a lvl and boost bud and then click continue and fire off unlimate's that boost it further, but eventually you get stuck and it really sucks when it's on the final area lol.

It can be madding to get so close only to stop because some dude has armor you can't break. You can get a potion a week if you want. I don't get stuck that often, and i typically just come back and try again later, but it's just an option to think about, especially when i'm so close. Besides it lasts a day, so theoretically i could knock out a few of those that are just so close.

I got one potion made so far, i guess i'll save it till it happens and i'll let ya know if it works. :)

[Hecate]

Best use of (free) legendary potions is probably through gem farm & speed potions as it'll convert to more long-term benefits. ie. Trashing 23h58min of a 24h potion to finish a variant can arguably be a not so wise option if you think about it.

Just as a reminder 70 plats (which is less than a legendary potion as it is just the vessel "value") is equivalent to $0.52. Is finishing a variant a fifty cents value? The answer is up to each and has no absolute truth. That said, I still have my opinion about it.

[JC]

Or you could say, Was the time you spent getting that close, only to have to do it again worth it? Typically those times i get stuck, i already ran the game for an hour or so, then spent 20-30 mins trying to get the thing complete so i'm already out a bunch of time right there. Like they say time is money! it's happened a handful of times. typically i just go back to doing some easier stuff, but sometimes those variants are a real bugger over all, and if one of those gets stuck that close i think it would be more than worth it. I know one of the ones in witchlight did that and it really annoyed me i think i spent 2 hours trying to finish the thing and i got stuck on the final area. I guess i'll see what happens next time i get stuck. I had a free potion made, so i'll use it eventually.

Your probably right about using speed to farm, but i don't do that. I either play doing variants, or i run off line.

[kab_reg]

Originally posted by JC:

I don't do that. I either play doing variants, or i run off line.

And that's probably one of the main reasons you have problems with variants. In three years I played IC, there were less than 10 variants in total I could not finish when I tried them, and all of them were successfully cleared later (in some cases 6-7 months later). The only variant in which I had to resort to cheating was one of Elminster variants with champion elimination. It had (and still has) barely enough champions eligible for it, and I wasn't in the mood for pumping favor there to e150-200 to use Thellora's jump to circumvent the problem without cheating.

[Hecate]

Time is not money, only similitude between money and time is they don't really exist. So concluding time is money is only a syllogism.

[Hecate]

That said, currently the only real """hard""" variants are those where a part of your squad is periodically kicked out and unavailbale for the remain of the variant and for those, the issue is not the BUD but only micro-management and chill-afk-yawning too long before pausing your progression. For those variant, having a ×16 or ×256 multiplier won't help in most case (but that still may make the deal once every few hundreds of occurrences).

I mean, it's really not the optimal way to go, but it's absolutely not a critic about it. If you want to use them that way, just do it. But the forum is a public space, and telling it's really not optimal or a wasted way to do sounds important for me. My answer here is general & not personal (and that's quite a close to absolute truth about my answers here on the forum).

[JC]

My point about time is money, it costs .33 cents a KW hour to run my comp. The potion costs about .50 cents. Either way it costs me money to play which was the point i was trying to make.

The few variants I've had issues are higher lvl patrons stuff and typically when all my heroes with scales are locked. Though i guess one could argue if it's better to offline variants and then spend online time gem grinding. verse background gem groups and actively running variants while i make dinner or watch a game. But that was not my question and a topic for another thread.

[Hecate]

I see the point, but note that you usually do something else on your computer when IC is running (I do), so the bill cost may not really be a burden here and the potion cost will be added to it anyway. For 7/7 24h scripters it may be a burden, but it's their business/issue — you really don't need that to do everything in the game.

edit: that's kind of an answer to your edit ^^

[rdkehoe]

Don't know about potions but you should def have a foreground gem farm party running as often as possible. Even with a basic gem farm I'm getting a lot of ilvls for my guys.

[JC]

Originally posted by rdkehoe:

Don't know about potions but you should def have a foreground gem farm party running as often as possible. Even with a basic gem farm I'm getting a lot of ilvls for my guys.

Yea, i've been thinking about doing the patron stuff in the background now that they take well over an hour. the shorter ones i could do 10+ while i was making dinner or watching a game or something using speed potions. Set up the party, click a few potions and in 15 mins i'd set up another. Now unless i watch a couple movies or something i only get a couple in. I stopped doing the background parties for variants because i was getting more gems letting them run verse not for 12+ hours stalled out just past completion.

I've nearly finished all the ones under 1k outside of a few of the most recent additions. I did start adding lvls to a couple speed guys recently as my main party now gets to like 1700+, i added fillers to help with restrictions, and those are nearly done too. I guess at end game there is getting a lot less to do other than pump lvls. I've nearly completed all 4 patrons up to the witchlight, just the newest stuff and elemister left.

The grind continues, this game added 25 bucks a month to my electric bill, so maybe i need to rethink how i'm playing now that i'm so far along that it doesn't need anywhere near the tending it once did. If i can drop it to 10-20 hours a week and get further that would be nice. :)

[kab_reg]

IIRC, it took me about 4 months clear all Elminster variants by doing 4-6 variants a day.

[rdkehoe]

Eventually you will run out of things to do altogether so slowing down by using 1 of 4 formations as a gem farm won't really slow you down. Plus all those shiny chests haha. My Evergreens are 100% silver gear, and 8K ilvls just from chests. That's with being a newb and having a sucky gem farm. People like Kab, Hecate, etc probably blow my numbers out of the water and into outer space.

[kab_reg]

Not much actually. My evergreens have ilvl only around 20k because I used Briv for gem farming only for a few months.