hitting the ISO8 wall

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Tldr,: i spent all my ISO8 and cannot see a way forward

A bit if background first: I’ve been playing this game for 850 days, and I’m now fully in 4* territory. I have every 4* character, and about half of them championed.
In all that time, I always had trouble to get enough CP and HP, but I always had (much) more ISO8 than I could spend. In November, I still had more than a million ISO8. This means that I never looked at my ISO8 spending because it was basically an infinite source .
But last week, I was suddenly down to 0…
I first thought of a bug, and I contacted the helpdesk. The answer was basically: championing 4* is expensive and you spent a lot:

From 12/02/21 to 12/11/21, you spent a total of 341,305 Iso-8 to level up and Champion Blob (Modern).
From 11/26/21 to 12/03/21 you spent a total of 165,764 Iso-8 to level up and Champion Kate Bishop (Hawkeye).
From 11/26/21 to 12/08/21 you spent a total of 228,376 Iso-8 to level up and Champion Peggy Carter (Captain America).

So, right now , I’ve got 9 characters I should level up, but cannot because I don’t have the ISO8, which is a first since I began playing. And while I do get a few thousands ISO8 a day, it will never be enough to get back to what I was used to. And while I do spend some money (VIP + some offers) , buying ISO8 is not an option, considering the prices they ask. Honestly, 79€ for 79000 ISO8 is simply ridiculous.

So, the conclusion is that going forward will be much more painful , and as I don’t see any solution, I’m thinking of stopping the game altogether. I’m playing for fun, not to be frustrated every day…

I’m sure that I’m not the first player to hit this wall, and I was wondering how the other players are managing it.

Am I missing something? Or does it really become an ISO8 management game from now on?

2

  1. Double Iso at present - take advantage!

  2. 4* are super expensive to champ but you don’t have to champ them immediately that you can thanks to saved covers.

  3. The 4* tier is vast so it might be worth considering skipping some, especially if they will just sit on the bench.

  4. It is actually possible to be Post Iso-8 in this game.

  5. Nobody buys iso-8 - even the Devs wouldn’t!

Hang in there, Iso debt is just part of the long haul. I am way over 2000 days and if I was to bring up my characters to the highest level I could I would still need iso.

3

It’s not compulsory to champ every 4*. Prioritise! I have champed all 4* and I use only 10-20% of them.

If you have dupe of 3* and 2*, sell those max champed away.

Play Lightning Rounds. That place is equivalent to double iso-8 week.

It took me slightly less than 4 years to champ all 4* and about 30 5* as a f2p player.

This game is 8 years old and you’ve played for only 2.33 years. The night is still long.

If you are still thinking of quitting, on the other side of the game, there are players sitting on over 20 millions iso-8 which they have literally nothing to spend on.

4

I am currently also in the iso-8 abyss in that I have 50 4s and 1 5 (a bunch of cycled 2 and 3*s as well) I could champ right now if I could. I deal with it by:

  1. soft capping my 4*s at lvl209 so they are useable in the DDQ and when boosted. I leave them at lvl70 if they have less than 10 covers.
  2. I prioritize champing the 4s that are feeders to aid my overarching quest to collect every 5 character for PvE.
  3. If I have enough iso I champ one with the highest number of saved covers for the rewards.

I do not champ my 2s until they have 50 covers. I keep Magneto, Storm, and Hawkeye for the DDQ. I raided my champed 3 farm recently (to champ Shang-Chi and some 4* feeders) so right now I am prioritizing getting that back on track by covering and champing the cycled 3*s.
All in all, as I’m sure others have said, it is a marathon. It can be daunting but I like where I’m at so the daily grind for incremental gain isn’t that big of a deal.

5

There was a time when I first started when I would have to roster and then sell off characters just to finish the DDQ.
Now I have 31mil iso and every character.

Sometimes we have to be strategic until we reach a certain threshold.

6

Hang in there.
You have now hit the wall that all of us have before. Frankly, you hit it far sooner in your gameplay than I did, so congrats on that!
I second all of the advice given above.
Now you are in the “next level” of the puzzle - Prioritizing Your Roster Needs. Now is when you reflect on what your next goals are and what characters/teams/levels will get you there. We are here to gladly help you with the “HOW”, but only you can determine the “WHAT” is next.

7

Once you get to the other side of the “ISO hole” the game is exactly the same.

It’s the same PvEs, the same PvP experience, and a different roster management “hole” that’s basically exactly the same (this time it’s the rarity of 5* covers).

If you don’t like the game now, you’re not going to like it then. If you’re frustrated now, you’ll be just as frustrated then.

8

It takes a looong time to get over the 4* ISO8 wall. I can only reinforce what other people already said: it’s not mandatory to champ everyone, and even if you do want to champ everyone you should probably make a priority list for yourself about who to focus on (based on what’s important to you, e.g. how meta they are, or how fun to play, or on how much you like the comic character)

Eventually you can scale that wall… and get hit in the nards by the double mountain top “5* ISO” & “5* cover rarity” that’s waiting for you :mrgreen:

9

Yeah, my post sounds quite a bit more doom-and-gloom than I intended.

Let’s try it this way: if what you like about the game is playing PvP and PvE, finding fun character combinations, or using Marvel characters to match-3, good news – you get to do that at every tier!

If what you like about the game is making super fast roster progress, levelling up characters and quickly moving up to new tiers…bad news – from now until the day you stop playing or the game closes down, you’re not going to be doing that anymore.

More bad news: if you stick around long enough, eventually you’ll reach the top tier, where you literally can’t move up because there is no tier above you to move up to. At that point, if you don’t really love the core gameplay you’re going to be very frustrated.

10

Your iso is dead. Long live the iso.

You can still gain iso, but you just have to prioritize where you spend it, if you choose to spend it at all. If getting back to your previous amount is your goal, then you’re more than capable of achieving that goal. Just as long as you know your roster will be sitting there waiting for you to use it while you build it up.

Iso debt is a main component of this game, as entrail said in another thread, because the devs want it that way. they give you enough to make you keep chasing it, but not enough to make you stop chasing it.

And as others have said, champing 4s is an expensive iso venture. So you have to prioritize who you want to champ, if at all. Lately I’ve been just focusing on the ones that are either 5 feeders or I have lots of covers and shards for. But your goals may vary.

11

If they change it to move the wall further back, won’t these newer players just quit when they hit that new wall?

12

If you think champing 4s sucks for eating all of your iso wait until you start champing 5s. I currently have ten 5s to level up and three 4s to champ and then I can just focus on leveling up the newest characters and flipping my 2s and 3s and becoming more and more post iso. Anyway, definitely take advantage of all of the double iso events and for your 4s I would only focus on characters that have a lot of saved covers or shards, or those characters that are meta.

13

Don’t get me wrong the ISO wall is real. But if your smart in how you prioritize you don’t actually need to stall your rate of progression. In the past, the vets would level up all chars in a tier before progressing. Now I think a hybrid strategy would be appropriate and fairly successful.

You basically need to identify and focus your efforts on a core cast of 4* and 5* to focus your efforts. Once you get those 10-20 chars champed, you can go back and split your efforts between the 4*/5* tiers. Don’t get me wrong it will still take 4-5 years to fully champion all characters, but you should have no issues with competing and playing with other rosters in scl9/10.

At the end of the day, it took most vets 4-5 years of dedicated play to get to post iso and all characters champed. But not all of those characters were needed to maintain their rosters, and you should not feel that you need ALL characters champed to be able to participate in end game content.

From a personal perspective, the only content I don’t have are the stones and to be honest. I feel no need to put the effort into acquiring those stones. In that same vein, it really doesn’t matter if you ever champ X-force Wolverine now or in 5 years. Definitely keep up to date with what people say are meta characters and who to invest in, but don’t feel stressed if takes a long time to champ EVERY single character. For the most part, the game is setup so that no covers are wasted and you don’t really suffer a penalty if you stop progressing a character to focus on someone more important.

14

Thanks everyone, for the support and the hints :grin:
I’ll prioritise my 2 and 3 * farms and most recent 4*, which are needed for events.
I’m trying to champ Colo55us (currently 9 covers). Shang Chi will be next, but that’s something for mid next year.

15

Not whishing to turn the knife in the wound but after having played nearly 2000 days I have a ISO surplus of just under 14.000.000 and not much to spend it on. So hold out, the ISO will be there in time.

16

worth noting that 2000 days is 5.48 years

17

That’s OK, I’ll spend the long winter nights looking at all my non-levelled heroes, dreaming of two years in the future when I’ll spend those same night watching my unspendable ISO :grin:

18

Hang in there, you’re just in the most frustrating part of the game: once you’ve champed the 4* you want, it’ll get better.
Been playing for 6 years, champed my first 5* after 3 years (with 6 non-champed 4* left) and was ISO-positive 6 months later. Of course there are more 4* now, but also more ways to chase the ones you actually want.
Keep your 2* and 3* farms going to get a steady stream of ISO, tokens, HP and CP.
Go all in on Lightning rounds to get ISO, I used to set my alarm every 2 hours so I could hit the easy teams every time: I then got smashed by the better teams so never got a high placement, however I’d earned at least 1K ISO in 5 minutes, so it was worth it!

19

A question I had for you guys who might keep up with it is how much ISO do you earn a day/week/month on average?

20

Back when I was tracking my Iso-8 gains (start to mid 2018), I made around 50k per day. I was farming 2-Stars and 3-Stars, had most of the 4-Stars champed (there were around 60 back then) and had no Iso-8 invested in any 5-Star. I played all PVE events to progression, PVPs to 40 wins and all Lightning Rounds that were easily availaible.