Serious Progression Problems - Game over?

[sandbagr]

The story so far...
I have been playing since November in Open Mode (don't ask, Trendy should STILL make it mroe obvious what the difference is for new players.). I play Solo or Duo with a friend I know. I have no interest in buying or selling or trading my way to better gear, even if I were in Ranked. I want to earn all my gear the hard way.

A few weeks ago, I ran ES HC Campaign over and over and geared up most of my characters to around 600/900/xxx/xxx. some a bit higher, some lower.

Then I hit a wall.
For weeks now I have been running Misty HC til the spider comes, Alch Labs HC Survival to wave 18-19, even some ES HC MM Survival to about wave 10 or 11...

With the gear I get from these wasted weeks of play I can not improve my stats. The gear may have higher levels than what I am wearing, but hee stats are often in the tens, teens, or negative.

I have read many posts on progression, stats you should be able to achieve by running certain maps. I have spent weeks trying to better my gear and stats to no avail. I have pretty much had my fill of this nonsense.

Did they break the game or am I just the most unlucky SOB who ever lived?

[Tastic]

Your doing it wrong.

The only maps you'll find upgrades on to that is Misty HC Campaign. Alchemy Labs is to low level of a map in comparison. Same with Endless Spires.

Best loot is always from Misty Campaign Hard Core.

Leave the 4 chests that don't re-spawn until wave 12. Open chests, hope for 140 base stats + 130 upgrade armors. Rinse repeat.

You can break 1700 tower easily with a 200^ tower sword, 134 +125^ robot from alchemy and 140 base 100-130^ from HC Misty Campaign.

Other than that it's just about making sure you or one of your friends plays a Barbarian so you can beat queenie. TBH, you could probably beat her at that stat level with a good build using traps and 2-3 people with guardians.

[radosinec]

There are guides on how to do misty survival with stats like that. Check the forums. You can even solo UMF NM with that... But you need to ask yourself - why? I dont bother getting anything better than something like 1300/1300/1300/1300 because You can get all the achievements in game with those stats so why exactly would I need something better?

[sandbagr]

Your doing it wrong.

The only maps you'll find upgrades on to that is Misty HC Campaign. Alchemy Labs is to low level of a map in comparison. Same with Endless Spires.

Best loot is always from Misty Campaign Hard Core.

Leave the 4 chests that don't re-spawn until wave 12. Open chests, hope for 140 base stats + 130 upgrade armors. Rinse repeat.

You can break 1700 tower easily with a 200^ tower sword, 134 +125^ robot from alchemy and 140 base 100-130^ from HC Misty Campaign.

Other than that it's just about making sure you or one of your friends plays a Barbarian so you can beat queenie. TBH, you could probably beat her at that stat level with a good build using traps and 2-3 people with guardians.

I have run Misty Campaign HC a dozen or more times. I have left the 4 extra chests until the last wave. I still get gear that will not improve my stats because it has too many extremely low numbers and negatives.

FYI, Alch Lab NM HC Survival waves 17+ has gear that high and weapons in the 200s, but stats still blow dead monkeys. If you read all the posts on progression you will see an awful lot of people recommend Alch Labs at the point I am at, as well as Misty.

I will try Misty some more before i totally freak and delete this silliness, thanks for the advice.

[Tastic]

For the same reason you collect achievements, some people collect better gear. Just preference in style of play.

[Alhanalem]

You'll have more options as the next shards missions come out.

[Soma2035]

You're using a set of equipment right? It's not hard to get 800+ all stats with 1k tower attack off of Endless Spires. I collected a 900/1100/700/1000 set there which was good enough to solo Misty on hardcore up to wave 12.

I think you might've just hit a bad string of luck if you can't find improvements in misty. Generally, having a few negatives is okay. You only really need 99 speed for instance, so if you have 1 piece with +150 having another with -50 is perfectly acceptable. Negative skills is basically always okay on a builder, as is negative attack. Focus on the chests on wave 12, you can get some really nice pieces out of those.

Also, you don't need a barbarian to beat the queen. I did it trio with my brother and a friend. I was on my DPS Hunter wearing tower gear (700/1000/700/700) instead of my normal gear. My brother was on a tower squire (800/1500/700/900) and my friend was on a DPS squire (600/800). Auras were placed by my average aura monk (I think he had 900/900/900/900 at the time but it doesn't really matter much). 2 Gas Traps, 2 Enrage auras, one of each Apprentice, Huntress, and Squire guardians is really all it took. Play around with the build to get as much DU as possible invested in harpoons pointed at the Queen and you're good to go. We killed her pretty cleanly, monsters never even got close to causing us problems.

[Addicted]

just wondering, what setup do you use for your alch runs?

[sandbagr]

This is gonna sound really dumb, just dumb enough to possibly be true?
I keep seeing all these folks mention their stats from ES and Misty Gear. I ran ES for weeks and I got to 900 in tower damage, but thats the high one.
Is it remotely possible that playing solo gets me lousy drops cause the mobs are not as hard?
Dumb Q, i know..

[Soma2035]

This is gonna sound really dumb, just dumb enough to possibly be true?
I keep seeing all these folks mention their stats from ES and Misty Gear. I ran ES for weeks and I got to 900 in tower damage, but thats the high one.
Is it remotely possible that playing solo gets me lousy drops cause the mobs are not as hard?
Dumb Q, i know..

That's not a dumb question at all. Other games often reward players for playing cooperatively with better rewards.

However, as far as I'm aware, having more players just increases the amount of monsters, hence the amount of monster dropped loot. The quality of the loot seems to remain unchanged. Most of my good items from Misty were found solo, since I found that my build was good enough to carry myself through but not quite good enough for a team unless it was my brother/friend who would actually cooperate.

Oh, and I guess when I say that was my Endless Spires gear I didn't count that I also did a few runs of Ramparts Survival up to wave 18 or 19. The loot is not significantly better though.

I think you're just having a bad run of luck. It seems like items with negative stats have better positive stats, so really what you're looking for is an item with non-critical negatives. DPS gear with -tower stats, or tower gear with -skills and attack.