Updated 21st April 2017, with updated values for node minimums, and minor tweaking in the FAQ.
Introduction
There appears to be some confusion about how PvE (Player versus Environment) point structures work amongst newer players to the game, so this is in the way of a rough guide to those players as to how to play a PvE event, and how they are structured. This definitely isn’t intended to be useful to veteran players. A PvE event is a Story Event (as opposed to Versus).
The Basics
Subs
A PvE event is divided into Subs. Usually, there is a Main Sub, and then Sub-Events linked to that Main Sub. The Main Sub is the first event that appears on your Story tab. Usually, you need to play the Main Sub in order to unlock the first Sub-Event, which will appear next to the Main Sub. Depending on the event, you may need to go back to the Main Sub every time a Sub-Event finishes, in order to unlock the next Sub-Event in that overall Story. In some events, each Sub-Event unlocks automatically.
Story events are generally 3, 4, or 7 days long. Sub lengths are either 24 hours, or 48 hours.
Nodes
Each sub is comprised of a series of nodes. There are five types of nodes.
Team up nodes – this is often the first node in a sub, where you get a loaner of the featured character (and is the only node in a PvE event where you will get a loaner). The Team Up node is usually set at a Trivial Difficulty.
Easy nodes – there are always 3 easy nodes (the Easy Node Track), where the difficulty is set to Trivial or Easy. These nodes are worth the lowest points.
Hard nodes – there are also always 3 hard nodes (the Hard Node Track), where the difficulty is set from Normal to Impossible. These nodes are worth a high number of points.
Essential nodes – there are also always 3 essential nodes. These nodes require a specific 2*, 3*, and 4* character. Essential characters rotate with each Story, but not Sub-Event. If you don’t have an essential character, you cannot play that node. These nodes are worth the highest number of points.
Non-repeatable nodes – these tend to exist in older events with lots of nodes, or with a significant node reward, where, once you finish that node, you cannot play it again.
Points, refreshes, and node stacks
Each node is worth a fixed number of points. When you beat that node, you get those points. The value of that node remains the same for your first four clears. This is for non-survival wave nodes only. After the fourth clear, the node goes on a 24 hour cooldown timer, at which point the value of the node decreases by 33%. The node will then start to regenerate points at a rate of 1.375% per hour, until by the end of the 24 hour timer, it is worth the full number of points. If you clear the node three times while it is on the cooldown timer, the node will be worth 0 to 3 points only, depending on the node type.
- Join Forces missions will be worth a minimum of 0 points.
- The first three easiest missions will be worth a minimum of 0 points.
- The 3 harder missions will be worth 1, 2, and 3 points respectively.
- The 2-Star, 3-Star, and 4-Star missions will be worth 1, 2, and 3 points respectively.
For survival wave nodes, it takes only two clears before the node goes on a 24 hour cooldown timer.
The first four times you beat a node, the difficulty of that node will increase up to a maximum difficulty. Note that the 2* essential node has a lower maximum difficulty than the 4* essential node. Commensurate with that, the 2* essential node is worth fewer points than the 4* essential node.
The total number of points available within a PvE event are fixed. In other words, it’s not dependent on how others are doing in your bracket, it’s solely dependent on how you play. The total points available per sub tend to increase as the event progresses (ie – Sub 2 will be worth more than Sub 1, Sub 3 more than Sub 2, etc).
Every time you beat a node, it adds another 24 hours onto the time required for that node to regenerate back to its maximum point value (ie – if you beat a node twice consecutively, the timer will show 48 hours to maximum point value).
Optimal PvE timing and play
The optimal way to clear a PvE sub now is to do a full clear four times (for standard nodes, two clears for survival wave nodes) as soon as you enter the sub. You should try and delay any further clears until close to the end of that sub. By “full clear”, I mean a clear of every node available to you once. So a full clear four times is clearing very node available to you four times (which sets your 24 hour timers going).
Don’t forget, for 48 hour subs, there is a single cycle of clears available at the 24 hour mark.
You won’t have enough time for the timer to refresh fully by the end of a 24 hour sub. If we assume that you start your clear of a sub as soon as it begins, and it takes you 2 hours to get all the timers going, that’s 22 hours remaining before the sub flips. The longer you leave it before you hit the nodes for the final clears, the more points will have refreshed. You need to balance this with how long you think it’s going to take you clear all the nodes several times.
The end of sub grind down
Once a sub is finished, its points are no longer available to you, obviously. The node refresh timer therefore becomes irrelevant towards the end of a sub, and any points you can obtain in addition to your initial full point clears are valuable as a consequence. Playing a sub’s nodes repeatedly in the last few hours before a sub ends is called the end of sub grind down. How far you grind down the nodes in a sub at the end depends on how much free time you have, your ability to repeatedly beat a node without sustaining too much damage, and your number of free health packs. Also bear in mind that you’re going to need to have enough characters standing (or health packs) to play a new set of nodes when the sub flips and you get a new sub-event to play.
Remember that it takes an additional three clears to reduce a node to a value of 1, with a decrease in value of 1/3rd for each time you beat it. You may have a residual small value fourth clear available to you, depending on how long you have allowed a node to regenerate its points before the grind down. A node that is worth 700 points on the initial clear, will be worth 462 points on the second clear, and 231 on the third clear, and 1 point (or close to it) on every subsequent clear. In other words, that’s approximately 1300 points left in the node for your end of sub grind down. Players tend to leave a lot of points on the table in the end of sub grind down, and not realise just how many points are potentially available to them. You can easily get 7k+ points in the end of sub grind down.
Progression vs Placement
Admitted this sounds difficult and time consuming, hitting each node 7 times over at each sub flip. When you start playing MPQ, you’re usually placed in a newbie bracket, which means overall event scores are lower, and consequently, you don’t need to post as many points to place well. In other words, you don’t need to grind all the node stacks down to 1. Secondly, you don’t need to get your four clears in immediately as for each new sub flip. If you hit a node within a couple of hours of a sub flip, you’re not leaving many points on the table (remembering they refresh 1.375% per hour of their maximum value). It’s a different story if you’re playing in veteran bracket.
If you’re playing for progression rewards, don’t worry too much about optimal clears. The devs appear to have calibrated progression such that getting four clears in at any time per sub will reach or exceed progression.
It’s also always better to hit a node early, rather than late, in terms of 48 hour subs. A node doesn’t accrue any more points after it hits its maximum value, so if you have a balanced life, and other things to do, it’s generally better not to leave points on the table and hit the node early rather than late.
That Legendary Token
We tend to see a lot of threads on the forums complaining how it’s impossible to reach the Legendary Token in some events. For any given PvE event, there’s a maximum number of points available (assuming completely optimal play), and the progression targets are set accordingly. The LT progression for the new PvE format appears to be set for 3-4 clears per sub, without any grinding required.
Other miscellaneous odds and ends
What is scaling?
Scaling refers to how difficult a node is compared to your roster. There are three sorts of scaling, personal, community, and repeated node clear scaling. Community scaling was turned off some time ago. Personal scaling appears to be calculated based on your individual roster level at the start of an event. More specifically, the initial starting level of your nodes are based on the top 3 highest leveled characters in your roster, including boosts for that event. Trivial/Easy nodes are capped. Nodes scale up by a set amount per victory up to 4 node clears.
Okay, so I understand scaling. What’s the best way to level my characters for PvE?
Initially, you’re going to be playing PvE events with your 1*, then 2* characters, so at this early stage, your aim is to max out a good stable of 2* characters.
Things start to get a bit tricky with 3s. At first, you want your 3 characters to stay relatively close to your 2* characters, since you won’t have all that many of them, and you don’t want to make your 2* characters irrelevant by pushing a few 3* characters well above the 2s, so that the 2s get scaled out of the nodes. The new Championing mechanic helps with this a bit, as you can level your 3* just ahead of your championed 2s. Eventually, you’ll have a broad enough stable of 3s that you can outlevel your 2*s and it won’t matter that you make them irrelevant.
What is softcapping?
Softcapping is the practice of deliberately keeping your characters underlevelled in order to keep your scaling low. It can be a very successful way of ensuring that you don’t face overscaled nodes. The downside of softcapping is that it may limit your ability to participate in Versus events (since scaling doesn’t come into play there), and it also means that you lose the ability to Champion your 3* characters.
What is rubber-banding?
Rubber-banding refers to an increase in the point value of a node above its maximum value, based on how far you are behind the leader in an event. From what we can tell, any rubber-banding effect is very weak (ie – it doesn’t add all that many points), and it only applies if you’re substantially behind the leader. It also tends to really only apply late in an event. In other words, rubber-banding doesn’t make more overall points for the event available, it just helps late starters get some earlier progression rewards.
When should I start my end of sub grind down?
This depends on several things: how long it takes you complete each match, how far you want to grind the nodes down to, and whether there are any survival nodes in the set (since they take longer to play). If you’re intending to grind to 1 point, I’d suggest at least 2 hours out from the end of sub. Otherwise less than that is fine.
Hey, I’m playing optimally, how come these guys have so many more points than I?
There are a couple of different answers to this question, depending on the circumstances.
If you’ve joined an event late, and are in a relatively full bracket, it may be because the leaders have had more opportunities to clear the nodes than you. It may be that your current bracket opened before a sub flip, and the leaders have had the end of sub grind down, and you joined after the new sub started, which places you at a significant disadvantage.
If you’ve joined a fresh bracket, and you’re halfway through the sub, but you notice a few guys or gals with way more points than you, it’s likely that they’ve “overground” the nodes (possibly because real life is getting in the way, and they just want to get the points up, or because they’re just playing for Command Points). Overgrinding means that they’ve cleared to activate the timers, and kept on clearing down to 1, without leaving the points to refresh a little over time. Or, they’ve done their final clears earlier than you. In this instance, don’t sweat it, by clearing early, those guys are taking an early lead, but they’re losing a substantial amount from the points available by hitting the nodes early. If you stick to four early-ish clears, plus a reasonable grind at the end of the sub, maths will win out, and you’ll overtake them comfortably.
If it’s the end of a sub, or the sub has just flipped to a fresh sub, and some guys are way ahead of you, it’s probably because you haven’t ground down the nodes at the end of the last sub enough. To reiterate (from above), most typical players will do 3 clears per sub, plus an extra run or two through the nodes in the last couple of hours. You’re leaving a boatload of points on the table if you do that. If you’re in a newbie bracket, and that’s enough to keep you in your desired position, keep doing that. If you’re in a vet bracket, and you’re being hammered, you need to grind down your nodes more.
What different sorts of PvE events are there?
Standard PvE events
These are events with an open roster. In other words, you can play with anyone at all from your roster. Most events are this type.
Heroic PvE events
Heroic PvE events used to be roster restricted, which made them more difficult. You are now allowed to use your entire roster in Heroic events, so they’re essentially an expanded, competitive version of the Prologue now.
The Gauntlet
The Gauntlet is a special type of PvE event, consisting of three subs, one of easy difficulty, one of medium difficulty, one of hard difficulty. The easy sub needs to be completed to unlock the medium, and medium to unlock hard. The essential nodes do not need to be completed to unlock the subsequent sub. The Gauntlet is progression reward only, there are no placement rewards. Final progression rewards cannot be reached without the essential characters (with a 4* essential near the end of the hard sub). Point values from each node in the Gauntlet are one time only; in other words, replaying a node in the Gauntlet will not give you additional points. The Gauntlet is probably the most difficult PvE event in MPQ, and is a good way of measuring your roster development – the better your roster gets, the further you will get through it.
Alliance locked PvE events
These are cooperative events against a supervillain (Ultron, Galactus, Civil War to date). When you enter this event, you will be locked into the Alliance leaderboard of whatever Alliance you are currently with, even if you switch Alliances during the event. There are personal progression rewards, and Alliance progression rewards for Alliance locked PvE events. There are no placement rewards. The Alliance progression rewards are generally set for full alliances of 20 players, so smaller Alliances will generally not get all (if many at all) of the Alliance progression rewards.
There is a main node in these events, where you play against the boss villain. Regardless of whether you win or lose against this boss villain, any damage that you do to him accrues towards your personal and Alliance progression score, and the main node then locks for 8 hours. There are five nodes associated with the main node. When you beat one of those nodes, it unlocks the main boss node for another attempt. These nodes lock after you beat them too, and unlock on a fixed timer, separate from the boss node. Generally, it’s best to wait for the main boss node to unlock on its own timer, after beating all five surrounding nodes, as it gives you six attempts at the main boss. The surrounding nodes unlock sooner than the main boss node, but you only get five attempts if you use them earlier than the main node unlock.
