Skeleton Key Teams without Cedric Sparklesack

I am at Lv300 and just got Skeleton Key. All the guides I read have teams like this.

Cedric Sparklesack
Egg Thief
Hero (Skeleton Key)
Greed

I do not have Cedric Sparklesack yet. Who should I use instead of Cedric?
Please help.
Thanks

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Merchant Prince was the best substitute I could find when theorycrafting just that a while ago. Since troops with the Merchant trait only offer a 25% bonus and Cedric offers a +100%, the team works better with two merchant troops, with Egg Thief as unblocked as possible. merchant prince/merchant prince/egg thief/skeleton key is one way, merchant prince/apothecary/egg thief/skeleton key is another but blocks egg thief more. You should hit your gold cap of 150 in a couple cycles merchant prince > egg thief, after which point its fine if both princes die (don’t cast them after filling gold, they block skeleton key’s mana) but it takes a couple turns longer to hit the cap than Cedric/Greed and has a lower cap. You can slap an underworld treasure in front if you want instead of a second prince for a chump blocker that you never plan on casting, but thats a lot of traitstone investment for a not very good setup.

Edit: There is very likely a vault event next weekend (subject to change), which would be a good time to try and farm and get vault keys to attempt to get Cedric.

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I will try your suggestions.
Thanks a million for your input. I really appreciate it.

2 Likes

I would say to prepare for the next vault event by making sure you have a really fast team ready to go and do as many hours of low level explore as you can during the weekend. Get Leprechaun and get him fully traited. Pair him with Rowanne or Sunbird or Tesla for super quick battles. You will get several vault keys now thanks to the pity timer on treasure gnomes and fingers crossed you will get Cedric.

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I’ve used Merchant Prince, Egg Thief, Key and Apothecary before while hunting Cedric, or in low level delves wih green/brown restrictions. Apothecary can help cleanse and set up 4/5 matches.

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