Ancient Power Reset Guide

Most Efficient way to Ancient Power Reset

Introduction

Hi everyone! Last month I asked the community for help regarding ancient power resets and since then I got really nice tips both on forums & in game. I know how confusing AP can be as a new/returning player so I figured I would write a guide to give back on all the help I received. (:

Now before I dive into the details I want to specify that there in no 'canonical' way to AP reset; it's a long process and it's driven by personal preference and the time commitment you choose to allocate to it. This guide is math-driven and concentrated on efficiency (it does present an objectively efficient solution) but it has of course some assumptions that reflect my playstyle (e.g. resetting 'only' 20 times, more on this later).

The natural question going into this guide is probably: 'what do you mean by most efficient?'
When I speak about efficiency I intend the fastest way to reach a certain goal that I set up for myself.

Why should you Ancient Power Reset?

One important thing to decide before committing into AP resetting is understanding if it's worth it or not for you.


AP resetting gives these relevant advantages:

• Ancient Power passives: These passives are mostly for min-maxing, while nice to have they are not game changing in any way.
  To put it in perspective I'll illustrate the dps increase on a 100k atkdmg tower (like a flame aura).
  DPS = atkdmg * (1 + critchance * critdamage) / rate
  DPS = 100k * (1 + 0.3 * 0.5) / 0.31 = 370k dps
  After 20 resets if we would spend all points on defense passives:
  DPS = 110k * (1 + 0.35 * 0.6) / 0.31 = 429k dps
  [Credit on the math goes to Exglint for talking this with me on the dd2 Discord]
  
  As you can see the dps increased by around 16% (one anti mod will increase your dps by 35%+ depending on the quality, so as you can easily understand AP resetting will probably not make you clear content you were unable to do before).
  
  
• Increasing Ascention caps: Getting to 999 ascention caps, is again for min-maxing purposes with the addition that you would need ~3k+ ascention levels to fully take advantage of this (extreme grind required)
  
• Gold and Experience bonuses: Experience could be useful to grind ascention levels and gold bonus is of course, a very nice addition
  
• Misc: Prestigious weapons drop every 10 floors & also defenders packs (cosmetics) have a chance to drop on each floor

Although every time we AP reset:

• All Gear from equipment/bags/shop/bank goes back to campaign level
  
• All non gilded shards go to 0 upgrades
  
• All onslaught progress is resetted

If you decide that AP reset is worth for you now we need to decide how many times would we want to reset and how far we want to climb each time.
Theoretically you would need 70 resets to get all 14 ancient power passives to 5/5 which would be an insane grind & time commitment; if you are gonna play 6/8h for the next year maybe that's achievable but for everyone else we would need to set a goal for ourselves (not to mention getting burned out after a while performing the same repetitive tasks).
The most efficient way to deal with this is finding a compromise e.g. stopping at a certain AP reset. Looking through all the passives we can easily understand that the ones concerning our defenses are:

• Defense power (10% dps increase at 5/5, most important among all)
  
• Defense range
  
• Defense crit chance (around 2.5% dps increase at 5/5)
  
• Defense crit damage (around 2.5% dps increase at 5/5)

One could argue that hero ability/health/damage are needed and do impact dps; while true this would mean adding 10-15 more resets which would increase the grind considerably since the further we go into resetting the more difficult it becomes to be eligible for reset (meaning you need to climb a lot more) and especially after 20 resets where you would probably need a good amount of gold/time invested to make it through omega waves (needing a lot of different defenses/shards/mods or even hypershards).
So it seemed logical to me compromising for resetting a total of 20 times (for the four passives shown above).
During this journey I had two major goals: getting to 999 caps and getting my defenses passives to 5/5. Gold and experience boneses will get to 100% which is also nice.

Concerning how far we want to climb each reset, it depends If getting to 999 caps is important for you and how high you climbed before resetting.
If you climb around floor 90+ before starting AP reset you can reset asap each time and by the time you are done with the 20 resets you will be at 999 caps.
Example if you get to floor 93 before resetting:
AP reset n 0 : cap = 140 / /
AP reset n 1 : cap = 414.0 (+274.0) resetted at 93 min floor 30
AP reset n 2 : cap = 431.0 (+16.0) resetted at 30 min floor 30
AP reset n 3 : cap = 451.0 (+21.0) resetted at 31 min floor 31
AP reset n 4 : cap = 472.0 (+21.0) resetted at 31 min floor 31
AP reset n 5 : cap = 496.0 (+25.0) resetted at 32 min floor 32
AP reset n 6 : cap = 521.0 (+25.0) resetted at 32 min floor 32
AP reset n 7 : cap = 550.0 (+29.0) resetted at 33 min floor 33
AP reset n 8 : cap = 583.0 (+33.0) resetted at 34 min floor 34
AP reset n 9 : cap = 621.0 (+37.0) resetted at 35 min floor 35
AP reset n 10 : cap = 662.0 (+41.0) resetted at 36 min floor 36
AP reset n 11 : cap = 707.0 (+46.0) resetted at 37 min floor 37
AP reset n 12 : cap = 757.0 (+50.0) resetted at 38 min floor 38
AP reset n 13 : cap = 811.0 (+54.0) resetted at 39 min floor 39
AP reset n 14 : cap = 869.0 (+58.0) resetted at 40 min floor 40
AP reset n 15 : cap = 936.0 (+66.0) resetted at 42 min floor 42
AP reset n 16 : cap = 999.0 (+79.0) resetted at 45 min floor 45
AP reset n 17 : cap = 999.0 (+100.0) resetted at 50 min floor 50
AP reset n 18 : cap = 999.0 (+108.0) resetted at 52 min floor 52
AP reset n 19 : cap = 999.0 (+116.0) resetted at 54 min floor 54
AP reset n 20 : cap = 999.0 (+125.0) resetted at 56 min floor 56

Of course if you reset early (~floor 50) you might need to climb a bit more to get to 999.

Preparing for Ancient Power Reset

This is the most important part of the journey, preparing well to resets can cut down the amount of time you'll spend grinding considerably.
Before resetting I'd advice:

• Building a dps hero, usually people opt for monk/barbarian/gunwitch/dryad. I'd advise building a nuke monk since most of the time you'll want to be able to kill bosses very fast if they leaked from your defenses, although any of those heroes are great choices.
  
  
• Try to climb as high as you can before resetting for the first time. The minimum requirement is 250 ascention levels after reset which means reaching around floor 50, although I'd advise going further, not only to get familiar with omega waves, but also because the increased ascention upon reset will really help during the journey.
  
  
• Gilding shards. It would be very helpful money-wise to gild as much shards as you can for your dps hero and maybe one set of destruction / deadly strikes / rate. Of course it's not required but this will cut down a lot of costs each reset.
  
  
• Resetting efficiently will cost money so I'd advise to at least have 20 mil before doing so. That amount of money will ensure you stability and the possibility to skip a good part of the grind.

Process of Ancient Power resetting

Resetting will be a repetitive process, this is the fastest way to do it:

Upgrade one medallion to C7, usually people choose weapon manufacturer / bees / earthshatters this is purely personal preference. This will cost around 1.9mil + all the mats. Also upgrading rate shard on 2-3 of your best defenses. I usually do so with weapon manufacturer and earthshatter, sometimes AntiAir. Never use hypershards unless you are rich. For all the other defenses use medallions that you find while climbing floors. Personally I have half of my dps hero shards gilded but if you decided to reset without doing so, probably upgrading the vital shards for your dps build to allow you to dps reliably will be important.

If starting floor < 28:
Grind to floor 22+, until you have 5300 gear score
C7 expedition x1 (this will put you at floor 28)

If starting floor >= 28:
You can either try to clear the highest floor on reset with your defenses or go back to floor 22 to gear up.

Grind till your floor goal
Reset and Repeat.

Hope the guide was helpful, if you have any comments/feedback don't hesitate to let me know (:

[the.tism.prism]

uhh im lost, but gg on ur success. :)

[zero]

If you have an alt account that has atleast onslaught 30/40 cleared and the gear to build up to that floor, technically you could carry yourself which will make the process pretty painless and you won't need to spend any money. The only caveat is that steam ToS don't allow concurrent play with alts accounts so it would be at your risk.

[Bullhorns [NOR]]

Good guide. Question: Any tips on how to use an alt account to carry. Can you ignore gear score value this way, or do you still need to upgrade your armor to increase gearscore and unlock floors?

[bulld0gx87]

Very good guide. Well written Keep up the good work

[Artorias]

good guide mr zeroday :)

[zero]

Hi, if you could point out where do you think the math is off I'll happily double check and in case correct it (:

[Evilchimp1982]

Guide looks good but the math is off.