Delve Adventures

[TimeKnight]

I want to share my adventure as well!

It’s All Seeing eye, Level 60. I want to get the point for fraction team only troops, but I’m only lucky enough to get Ocularen Leech and Watch Mother. I think Ocularen Leech might be strong enough to beat it, with Watch Mother healing it and bringing backup, so I try it with the team of Ocularen Leech/Ocularen Leech/Watch Mother/Watch Mother.

Things is going better than expected in most room, then Night Hag room happened. She quickly transfrom both my Watch Mothers to Giants toads, leaving Ocularen Leech completely defenseless. I still manage to beat it, but losing one Ocularen Leech in the process. (Those 2 Giant Toad is still alive…)

There is still a boss room to beat, but my remaining troop is clearly unsuitable for it. I tried it anyway and losing as expected. Completely wasted my level progress potential. T^T

Stubborn me want to try again but more careful this time. Luckily Night Hag room is not there anymore, so I managed to beat all rooms with all troops alive, except Webspinner one which would give the boss Snare trait (doing web on skull damage), so I skip that. Manage to beat the boss this time with all original troop survived, getting 240 total renown point for All Seeing Eye fraction in the end! ^^

[back]

The troop persistence from room to room is going to teach me to look more carefully at enemy troop cards.

Like the 5% devour chance I didn’t notice until I was… nutrition.

[Ozball]

While we are reading this thread and collecting the feedback, I just wanted to say, I LOVE THESE STORIES @Sheba!

[Sheba]

@TimeKnight

Things is going better than expected in most room, then Night Hag room happened. She quickly transfrom both my Watch Mothers to Giants toads, leaving Ocularen Leech completely defenseless. I still manage to beat it, but losing one Ocularen Leech in the process. (Those 2 Giant Toad is still alive…)

@back

The troop persistence from room to room is going to teach me to look more carefully at enemy troop cards.

Like the 5% devour chance I didn’t notice until I was… nutrition.

My gosh. I never even knew NIght Hag did that and totally never checked. Also 5% devour… I didn’t notice anything with Devour in there yet, which tells me I again didn’t read well enough! Is everything down there totally lethal and I just am blissfully dumbly stumbling my way down there? Well, I really barely managed to clear the level 60 delve today, so I don’t even know what I will do tomorrow…

Thank you for sharing your adventures, though! I definitely enjoy hearing that I am not alone in my struggles! I also don’t have enough troops for a faction delve yet, but something tells me I won’t like it.

@Ozball

While we are reading this thread and collecting the feedback, I just wanted to say, I LOVE THESE STORIES @Sheba!

I’m really happy to hear that this thread provides both feedback and entertainment! I really enjoy writing the stories, though of course I don’t know how long I can run these teams or I have ideas for more. I might have to switch stuff up sooner or later, depending on how the delves go, too. The longer the battles take, the more dangerous stuff like transform gets, after all.

[Sheba]

DELVE ADVENTURES 4 (because things just suck)

Team ‘All-Seeing Eye’: Forest Troll/Loyalty/Yasmine’s Chosen/Queen Aurora
Team ‘Hall of Guardians’: Gorgotha/Infernus/Worldbreaker/Ubastet

---

All-Seeing Eye, Level 70, just ended. Elsewhere:
Infernus: Man, when is it finally our turn?
Yasmine: -yelling in the distance- I want to go home!
Ubastet: Now, obviously. Gosh, she used to be so chill and now I just want to eat her to shut her up.
Worldbreaker: What are you yelling for again, Yasmine?
Loyalty: -carries Level 4 chest- That’s why she’s yelling.

Everyone: …
Gorgotha: Okay, that’s a good reason.
Yasmine: We were in there for what, 20 minutes? For 14 shards? And don’t tell me the gold is nice or whatever, I could have made five times as much in 20 minutes in PVP!
Infernus: Yeah, we all could have. This sucks. Okay, off we go, then.
-One Level 70 Delve later-
Infernus: …
Troll: You lose?
Ubastet: -carries Level 5 chest - Of course not! I had again no Mana, but–
Worldbreaker: You know, Yasmine isn’t the only one who’s not chill anymore…
Ubastet: Shut up! Also here.

Everyone: …
Aurora: Why are we even doing this?
Loyalty: You know, I don’t dare to say it, but maybe we really need to up–
Luther: YOU NEED TO UPGRADE YOUR HOARD!
Worldbreaker: Argh! Where do you even always come from, you creep?!
Yasmine: Well, creepy old man, then tell us how to upgrade the hoard when you have not many treasures to choose from and in what way? Because someone needs to write a darn guide about that! We got one of the mythic treasures from our first delve, but I don’t want to waste it!
Luther: I WON’T TELL YOU! I WILL JUST TELL YOU TO UPGRADE YOUR HOARD UNTIL YOU DO!
Troll: We upgrade, man go away?
Gorgotha: Compelling point…
Ubastet: Or I just eat him for real.
Gorgotha: Even more compelling point… I mean, we need to upgrade, but we can’t make the few combinations we know are good.
Infernus: But it’s just getting harder with little reward.
Yasmine: Well, I’m not wasting any gold before I know what I’m doing.
Luther: BUT YOU NEED TO UPGRADE! AND YOU JUST GOT GOLD FROM THAT LEVEL 4 CHEST OF YOURS!
Yasmine: -twitching angrily- …Going home until someone writes a guide and before I murder someone! Bye!
Gorgotha: Yep, let’s try again tomorrow. So much time wasted…
Luther: NOOOOOOOOOOOO! UPGRADE! PLEASE! I want to go home, too…

---

Seriously, this is such a waste of time. I need over an hour for three delves, clearing all rooms… for this.
My first delve gave 68 shards or so and from all the chests I could open, I got one mythic treasure and the rest were troops.
I have no idea how to upgrade my hoard in the best way because I can’t make any of the really good combinations so I end up doing nothing at all (hi, OCD), which is dumb but I am so scared of a gold sink.
Someone please write a guide with really all combinations deemed good because I am obviously too dumb to figure this out by myself.
Also GDI chests, you suck.

[Slypenslyde]

Ugh. The story so far makes me realize how much RNG plays into this. You can be King of Delve, wasting every room at a high level, and have 0 ingots at the end of the week. Bad form.

But what’s missing: we don’t know how later hoard upgrades interact. I can see you get +chest level bonuses and multipliers for prizes. If some chest level guarantees 1 ingot, you’ll eventually know you can’t get less than 2, etc. That also means the theoretical cap becomes like, 20+ ingots from a "good’ chest.

So maybe the early rewards suck because the late rewards are stupid plentiful?

I think that raises a question though: by the time I have enough treasure to have something like a 4x ingot multiplier, how many ingots do I need? It won’t take many days of a 20-ingot yield before I’ve maxed all my weapons and twiddling my thumbs.

So I feel bad because rewards have to suck or else I get too many things and get bored?

[Sheba]

Yeah, I really wish I would know how to upgrade my hoard well just to test exactly that. But I just don’t know how to. Don’t get me wrong, there’s several combinations that can get me to a quality upgrade, but I am just too freaked out to do any of them because apparently only 5x the mythic one is the really good one. Also I wonder if waiting for the next Faction is worth it since it seems super-OP and I am scared I might need the upgrade there really badly really quickly.

I really hope sooner or later someone makes a list with good hoard upgrades. The three good combinations I know about…I cannot make.

[back]

Treasure Hoard

The Gold cost is calculated as follows: 600 + (200 x current Hoard level) per Treasure.

So if our hoard level grows very high, then the cost to add more treasure will become very high. To upgrade the chest without increasing our hoard level very much, it seems we should be adding junk treasures to the hoard.

Adding 5 common Coin Purses to the hoard will give a 25% chance of upgrading “quality” which with several upgrades can upgrade the chest. It also increases the hoard “level” by adding 50 xp. The way the level increases seems to be the same as with hero class “champion” xp.

Adding one King’s Crown to the hoard will also give a 25% chance of a quality upgrade. But it increases the level with 100 xp.

So if you are afraid of spending too much gold over time, then the uncommon treasure seems worse. If you mainly want to increase hoard level so you get skill bonuses in the faction (and renown) then uncommon treasure might be a sensible choice.

Or maybe I just misunderstand everything. If someone smarter than me or someone who was in the beta feels like correcting the above, thanks in advance.

[TimeKnight]

The reason hoard upgrading is so complicated is due to many factors in play.

• Maximizing Hoard Quailty - for better Delve chest reward.
• Maximizing Hoard level - for extra stats assisting Delve battle.
• Maximizing Renown points - for 2 extra chaos shards every 10 points.
• Minimizing Gold Spend - for wasting less gold to reach Hoard level 100.

It’s impossible to do all 4 at once, you have to make a choice and ignore the rest to reach your goal. My goal right now is the first one (Maximizing Hoard level), so I can’t donate any Treasures I have until I reach 100% quality upgrade chance (Slow Hoard Level progress), which in turn earn me less renown points from Hoard Level x5, and I waste more gold in each upgrade (in first 10 times).

But I can live with it though, it’s the best choice for me at the moment. If you have different goal, you can choose different path, but be aware that you will have to sacrifice something whichever way you choose.

[Sheba]

Honestly for me minimizing gold costs is most important since I have already issues meeting my guild’s requirements. At the same time, though, waiting for five mythic treasures - which seems to be the cheapest way - is ridiculous, so I guess I need to find out the second cheapest way or something, but I would have to use my brain for that and I’m not very good at that.

[Lissandra]

Considering how stupidly little you get of Chaos Shards, I doubt they are going to make it easy at all and to get more rewards, you need to level up the treasure hoard but you need to open up portals which requires Chaos Shards. You get not even one portal opening… I hate delves.

[TimeKnight]

Another round of Delve adventure from me! (I wish I could write it as entertaining as Sheba…)

I’m lucky enough to get Hall of Guardian’s Legendary - Silent Sentinel, from chaos shard opening. As I could make a full unique fraction team now, I try to push it with them, Silent Sentinel/Ethereal Sentry/Gargoyle/Arcane Golem, at level 90!

There is a Tangled Path room again, which would make all enemies gain Tangle; inflicting entangled on skull damage. My team is heavily relied on attack stats, so I can’t risk that (already lost the boss once fight because of it) and decided to skip this room. Faery Ring room with Giant Toadstool also seems quite dangerous, so I should skip that as well.

Things are going quiet well, with only 4 normal rooms left, including the boss one. My next fight is Dragon Hatchery room. So many harmless Dragon’s Babies and Egg, with only powerful The Dragon Soul. What could go wrong?

Well… after I beat The Dragon Soul, this happened.

Its Rebirth trait got triggered, so with new summon rule, I have to fight with level 72 Baby-no-longer Dragon. The second Baby Dragon get to cast, and turn itself into Lord Ember. I’m glad it’s not Elemaugrim, Krystenax or something powerful. I manage to beat this room with no death.

I should head to the boss next now, but greedy me still want to try beating that Faery Ring room. Giant Toadstool only got 20% chance to transfrom my troops. If I could get rid of it first, nothing bad would happened, right? Well… you should know now where will this going by now. I still manage to beat this room, but THIS is what I have to fight the boss.

Freaking Toadstool turned my Legendary into mushroom! At least she is not the main attacker, so I still manage to beat it. Barely.

Time to check my renown points now.

Turned out getting your troop transfrom is still count as dead, as it’s still not matched with original team. So I lost 10 renown points because of my greed. T^T Oh well, I will try to gain it back at level 100 with my Fraction team tomorrow!

[Grundulum]

@TimeKnight

Turned out getting your troop transfrom is still count as dead

Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame. Your troop didn’t die. If they meant “Best Delve with all troops the same”, that’s what they should have said.

[TimeKnight]

Yeah, it suck so much. I thought beating the boss with no troops dead will be enough. Nope!!

All the more reason to avoid those transfrom rooms if possible. Also, now I hate the word “Toad”.

[back]

@TimeKnight

My goal right now is the first one (Maximizing Hoard level), so I can’t donate any Treasures I have until I reach 100% quality upgrade chance

If your hoard level is still low, what harm would it cause to add 5 coin purses?

If your hoard level were 900, then it would be expensive to add any treasure. So adding coin purses might be wasteful.

But if your hoard level is 50, then I don’t understand why you wouldn’t add coin purses to increase your hoard level and maybe the hoard quality.

[TheIdleOne]

@TimeKnight

The reason hoard upgrading is so complicated is due to many factors in play.

• Maximizing Hoard Quailty - for better Delve chest reward.
• Maximizing Hoard level - for extra stats assisting Delve battle.
• Maximizing Renown points - for 2 extra chaos shards every 10 points.
• Minimizing Gold Spend - for wasting less gold to reach Hoard level 100.

It’s impossible to do all 4 at once, you have to make a choice and ignore the rest to reach your goal. My goal right now is the first one (Maximizing Hoard level), so I can’t donate any Treasures I have until I reach 100% quality upgrade chance (Slow Hoard Level progress), which in turn earn me less renown points from Hoard Level x5, and I waste more gold in each upgrade (in first 10 times).

But I can live with it though, it’s the best choice for me at the moment. If you have different goal, you can choose different path, but be aware that you will have to sacrifice something whichever way you choose.

So I did the incredibly stupid thing of throwing in a rare treasure or a common treasure into the hoard one at a time. Managed to upgrade the quality 3 times in 6 donations. (then I did 2 more and those failed). So that paid off, somehow. My quality level is now 6 (Hoard level 39) and its probably higher than I deserve at this time.

I’m holding my Ultra Rare and higher treasures for 100% chance though, don’t need another 70/80% failure.

[TimeKnight]

@TheIdleOne

Managed to upgrade the quality 3 times in 6 donations. (then I did 2 more and those failed). So that paid off, somehow. My quality level is now 6 (Hoard level 39)

It’s not stupid, just risky. Although I see the 100% success as the best, 2 of 3 attempts are not at that level, just 85% and 95%. All of them are successful though. Treasures are so rare, that it’s very tempting to try your luck sometimes.

---

@back

If your hoard level is still low, what harm would it cause to add 5 coin purses?

The main reason I see here is I don’t have 5 Coin Purses. According to supposed drop rate, all 3 lower-tier Treasures are just as rare. So I rather wait for 5 Priest’s Chalice instead.

Treasures are hard to come by, I rather hoard them to use with other higher-tier Treasures instead. Even Coin Purse could work for 100% combining with Sacred Treasure. Donating higher than 100%, or least than 5 items, seem like a waste of Treasure for me.

@back

But if your hoard level is 50, then I don’t understand why you wouldn’t add coin purses to increase your hoard level and maybe the hoard quality.

My problem is your “maybe”. I’m scared to play with RNGsus. And I don’t really need help from Hoard Level’s bonus stats, I would only do it to Level 100 for max renown points. I think I have a strategy to beat Delve level 500 without reaching max stats from Hoard Level 1K.

I don’t really consider about gold efficiently. If I don’t have enough, I could just play more to earn it. Opposed to Treasures, all I could have are from playing daily 3 Delves. With Delves addition, I can earn 2M gold a week without farming it, just collecting tributes, so I’m not worried about wasting so much on Hoard donation yet.

So in conclusion, I don’t see anything wrong with your strategy. It’s just difference preferences. It might work even better than mine, but I just like stuffs to be certain without random luck deciding my progress, even if it means faster.

[Sheba]

@TimeKnight Wow that really sucks a lot! D: Like, really a lot. I don’t know how I managed so far to never get devoured, transformed or whatever, but knowing that this doesn’t even count as a full win makes it even more crippling. Also thank you for sharing the whole adventure, I love reading these things!

Also I decided to simply not do anything with my hoard at all and just hoard (lol) all the treasure until someone writes a walkthrough for this. I’m just too dumb to understand enough of it to feel comfortable. I’ll also stay at my current delve level (70 for both) since level doesn’t seem to affect shard gain at all.

With that said, gonna write today’s adventure now because I was a derp and have things to share again.

[Sheba]

DELVE ADVENTURES 5 (because I am such a big derp)

Team ‘All-Seeing Eye’: Forest Troll/Loyalty/Yasmine’s Chosen/Queen Aurora
Team ‘Hall of Guardians’: Gorgotha/Infernus/Worldbreaker/Ubastet

---

All-Seeing Eye, Level 70. Outside:
Infernus: Where are they?
Worldbreaker: Hey girls and troll? You alive or just liking the eyeballs staring at you?
Loyalty: -from inside- SHUT UP! I WISH I WOULD BE DEAD!
Gorgotha: What are you doing?
Yasmine: -from inside- We might have made a slight miscalculation! You know how we all wanted to remember that Leviathan shuffles?
Infernus: Yeah, so?
Yasmine: -from inside- Well, we wanted to make it quick and totally forgot…kinda the whole rest about Leviathan!

Everyone outside: …
Ubastet: Wow, you are dumb! Of course you can’t hit him!
Aurora: -from inside- We just want out of here! But we’re not dying! Just trapped in infinity! …At least the Coral Golem is finally down.
Gorgotha: Well, you have fun down there. Especially Loyalty, being a tank now, heh.
Loyalty: -from inside- SHUT UP!
-A long time later-
Infernus: Well, look who it finally is.
Yasmine: -drops a level 3 chest- Over an hour. And this is the reward.

Worldbreaker: Wow that’s bad. Really bad.
Loyalty: And the boss fight was really close! I only had 171 life at the end! I hate being a tank!
Gorgotha: -had barely survived his boss fight- …
Troll: Troll sorry! Troll could not stay at top! Troll bad pet!
Worldbreaker: …Pet?
Gorgotha: What the heck, Troll? You’re not their pet! I know you’re not bright, but don’t let them put that stuff in your head! You should come to us and become cool and popular!
Troll: No, Troll is popular with girls as long as Troll takes baths! Then Yasmine puts flowers in Troll’s beard and all hug Troll and tell Troll that Troll smells like the forest! That good! Yasmine and Aurora also smell like forest! Loyalty also say Troll smell good and not like sulfur or lizard poop or cat pee! So Troll really happy pet… just not like baths much.
Worldbreaker: …I do not smell like cat pee?! -glances at Ubastet-
Ubastet: I think you totally missed the point, man.
Infernus: And what’s wrong with sulfur?!
Luther: AND WHAT’S WRONG WITH UPGRADING YOUR HOARD!
Infernus: …What the actual heck!? Don’t switch topics, creepy dude! Also where did you come from?
Yasmine: -totally switching topics- We have decided to not upgrade our hoard. Go away.
Luther: BUT THAT IS THE POINT OF DELVE! WHY?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Aurora: Actually I am not even sure what the point of this all is…surely not the “great rewards”…
Troll: Creepy man write guide. Then maybe girls upgrade hoard. Troll not like thinking about hoard things.
Luther: BUT…! JUST TOSS SOMETHING IN THERE!?
Yasmine: No thank you. Let us leave. -just leaves with her team-
Ubastet: …Hey, creepy dude. Honest opinion: Do I smell of cat pee?
Luther: …
Gorgotha: …Heh.

---

Why am I even doing these delves? Anyway, chest is from staying at level 70, but besides less souls and other crap, I don’t see less shards…mainly because it can hardly be less, lol. (The other chests had three legendary ingots each and a small amount of shards.)

Also I play like a total moron, obviously. Srsly. Going into a submerge team like that… whoops… The screenshot is obviously from the end of the battle, but I had all Coral Golem, Merlion and Sea Troll submerged most of the time and needed to skull my way through there… obviously getting shuffled over and over and over since it took foreverrrrrr.

[Lissandra]

16 shards for a delve. About the average since it ranges from 8-16 normally. Not even one portal opening and they expect us all to max out each factions individual treasure hoards to beat the later fights? How? With only 3 delves a day…

Also, I feel sorry for you but at least there was no causalities.