Is there a reason to do Explore other than 1, 2 or 12?

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I frequently see people mentioning that they farm Explore 5/6 (usually with a Phoenecia team) and I’m wondering if there’s something I’m missing. There are obvious reasons to do it on difficulties 1, 2, and 12, since:

  • 1 usually means one-move games and gives you the least mythstones, allowing you to speed through the most battles before switching out for an explore 12 team (if you switch at all).
  • 2 follows the same logic as 1, except it’s the fastest way to collect seals since you get 11 seals for each explore battle on difficulty 2 or higher (if you care about collecting all 2000 seals on day 1).
  • 12 for medal and or gold farming.

Is the reason to do explore 5/6 with a fast team (assuming you have one-shot troops) the extra gold/mythstones you gain compared to explore 1/2 and the speed of completion compared to explore 12? Wondering if it’s as simple as that.

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Explore 5/6 will give you 2 trophies and a bit more gold. I believe it also has a better chance for arcane stones and “higher grade” tokens.

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5/6 is the maximum one shot range for the Phoenicia team (Leprec and Pho casts or only Pho), meaning you maximise your gold and get to Explore 12 much faster to try farm higher rarirty medals.

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ShimmeringPhysicalDoctorfish-size_restricted

Hmmm gif isn’t showing on my end but that’s not the max. And the max changes depending on the artifact level.

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Assumed as much but still trying to wrap my head around it. On a non-bonused kingdom, you get 71-75 mythstones per D12 run (85-90 for bonus). This means that even if you had 0 mythstones, your next 2-3 runs would include mythic bosses, (5-6 if you go for kingdoms with bonuses).

At D5, you get 14-17 per run, or and average of 6 runs (30 battles). At D6, you get 18-21, or 4-5 runs (20-25 battles). While it’s probably true (not going to argue this since I have no way of testing since I don’t have Phoenecia), it seems strange to me that 4+ runs and their 20+ battles, with all the loading time and extra clicking would be faster than a single D12 run with a speed-medal-farming team. I agree that you’ll get more traistones, gold and class xp as you collect mythstones, but I don’t see it as necessarily faster than the D12 alternative.

However, that does answer my question as to why people would farm explore for difficulties other than 1, 2 and 12.

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Yeah i can’t argue if you want to maximise mythstones per explore with a fast E12 team but my point was that 1 and 2 is substituted by 5/6 (or max allowed for one shot) for end gamers till you get to 100 mythstones. So i’d assume most do 5/6 and 12 or just 12

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As others have stated it’s because of Pho. The speed of the Pho team is comparable to a rowanne/sunbird team in explore 1/2 so if you were going for speed explore, a Pho team in 5(or 6 if you have the medals and magic stat) is more bang for the buck by a longshot. But if you are looking purely for tokens than explore 12 is still the way to go. It really just depends on what you are going for.

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Makes sense.

Would you say this also applies to vault weekends, where the goal would be to get the most battles possible? By that I mean, speed-wise you’ve already explained that Phoenecia run is just as fast as standard explore 1/2 speed teams, but that depends on whether you switch out to E12 when nearing 100 mythstones? For shooting through the mythic boss, 5/6 makes the most sense, since for the same time commitment, you’d get more and better medals as well as more gold than 1/2. But if you switch out when near to 100 mythstones, then wouldn’t 1 make the most sense to get the most battles in before having to do 2-3 slow ones?

I realize I’m expanding on the original the point of this thread, which might be frowned upon.

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There are some players who can’t easily handle Explore 12 with their teams. Not everyone’s collection is equal.

Also, it’s kind of artificial, but we have Campaign tasks that require you to do Explore runs at various levels, and while I could do the runs at Explore 12, if they’re only requiring Explore 5, then I’m only doing Explore 5. I might feel differently if I was just playing the game for fun, while simultaneously completing tasks (which may have been the intent), but when I’m doing campaign tasks, I feel like I’m completing a list of chores instead.

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I don’t think so. I think it’s a flow situation. The player that is playing on vault weekend, or even just to cruise control in explore, is going to prefer to stay right in 5 the entire time. So for me when I was hunting nysha medals I just stuck with 12. But most players who play explore 5 are doing it purely for speed and the token gain is an added bonus.

I’m sure if you want to optimize runs you could but running 5 is almost always going be better than 1 when the speed of both exactly the same. I think I understand your argument about doing the 1 to 12 optimizing but I fail to see the benefit outside of breaking out of the flow less. Like I said, the players going in explore 5 are staying there, there isn’t any switching to 12 for mythic boss battles. But even in that circumstance, 5 is still better in my opinion but If you have hard data to show it being different I’m all for it lol. Love me some data!(I’ve got a lot of data on explore runs/gold/trophies/times for my personal teams lol)

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As a hater of explore, I use the vault weekend (when possible) to max tokens. At the same time I use E5/6 to go for VK.

I used to stay in 5 and that was that. I changed 4 vault weekends ago and don’t regret it all.

Tokens are worth more to me than VK. I will still get them this way, usually around 5/45 or greater, depends.

I upped Pridelands to 16, I’m in there all the time, almost never swap, only come out occasionally or if I’d had a good break and see a Lantern. I sometimes hammer Glacial Peaks as well.

Pridelands 90 Mythstones start, E12 x 4, possibly 5 if I started at over 95. I can do E12 in 3-5 minutes / run on average, depends on teams, sometimes sub 2 mins. In that 4 goes, maybe 5, call it 4.5 I will get about 13 tokens.

When sub 20 tokens, E5/6 with Phoenicia and Pharoh Ra in team. I’ll get 50ish souls without casting it if I use Slayer. I won’t be much slower than optimum, if I want some speed runs, I just put TMQ back in.

4 or 5 runs of that, then back to 12. Teams side by side in slots, with 2 other options side by side that do same thing.

Rinse repeat.

At the end of the weekend, I usually benefit from about 4 million gold and a lot of souls plus 30 VK.

Every other time I hit explore, it’s 12 at all times, except when low and then I use a pure soul team.

Have both Enraged Kurandara and ZG, so VK are not as important to me. If the campaign Mythic this time did AE damage, I’d have reverted back to 5 a couple of goes ago to get more VK for extra chances at orbs.

Just checked last two events;

Previous event was
233 gnomes
9 pity
20 Vault keys
1 Epic VK

Incidentals

48 less tokens than last time

More Nysha

3,999,482 Gold
9 Nysha Tokens
247k souls
306 Arcane Rage Traitstones
36k glory
1101 gems (a few more than last time)

Only got 19 VK last time, 29 time before, but 9 Nysha vs 4 . :slight_smile:

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For those who aren’t familiar with it, please can you give details of the Phoenecia Team :+1:

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Core is Phoenicia/Maraji Queen/Leprechaun; remaining spot is something that gives red storm - it’s up to you to decide what do you like the best for this role.
It’s possible to go with Tink Steamwhistle and use no hero; another option is Phoenicia on top and Hierophant with Dawnbringer for little magic bonus; for a while I used Slayer instead of Sunspear…depends on your preferences.

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This is the version I use with 3 Nysha medals. Allows me to do explore 6.

I use it in cpvp to lvl classes as well, tink is great for that for his storm.

Edit: current class was only there to lvl. It can be anything. If you have tink for the storm.

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I’m doing level 5 with a Phoenicia team because I’m grinding class exp points. When they’re all done, I’ll start grinding level 12.

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Any blue weapon, works with any class.

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Does electrostorm count as a firestorm for Phoenicia purposes? I still don’t have her, but that would come as an interesting (and welcome!) surprise to me.

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It does as far as storm dependent spell effects are concerned - sort of two storms active at the same time.

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Also, classes that have storms as part of their traits, like Stormcaller, don’t overwrite Electrostorm.

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Not entirely precise - it all depends.
Storms activate top to bottom, so if you have Tink in 3 and Stormcaller in 4 it will be yellow storm active whereas Stormcaller in 3 and Tink in 4 will result in electrostorm active.

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I see your point. In the above team, I have Stormcaller 1st and Tink in 3rd. Hadn’t tried it in any other order.