ISO in the no-covers-wasted age

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I wonder what are the fellow players doing with iso now that the no-covers-wated age is rocking the MPQ. There is no longer rush to champion the 4* before the cover expires, no rush to champion 3* dupe, etc.

I struggle a bit (it might be a good issue to have - I love the saved covered feature as this takes away most of the stress from the game) to find goals.

Currently I spend ISO on 2* farm as they come and rotate. I add levels to 4* when I need them for DDQ or the complete the new release event. But I just don’t know who to champion next.

Should I add to the library of 5* champions (already have 10, including all top ones - I could champion Black Widow and add levels to a plethora of others)? This helps a bit with PvE when they are boosted but does nothing for PvP.

Should I continue my quest to champion all 4*? As it stands I only have 2 with full 13 covers left (and 12 to go overall).

Should I champion some 3* dupes?

What are you doing with ISO when you have the meta characters championed for both PvE and PvP?

2

My situation isn’t what yours is; my best covered 5* has 9 covers and I have about half the 4s champed. I’ve been letting Shield Training drive which 4s I bring to 209, then once that is done (or can’t be done if I just don’t have the covers) I’ll use the 230k iso to take one of my 209s to champ. So far it’s been working out okay. I have about 10 4*s left below 10 covers not including Nebula and Dazzler (though I’m about to have to start including them I suppose). After I get them all to 10, I’ll shift to getting new ones up to 10 as they release and champing the ones at 13 I guess.

3

I have one goal for my ISO, and one goal only. That goal is to champ them. Champ them all.

4

My dupe 3s and my 4s get champed ASAP. They are so few and far between that its an easy decision. Aside from that I dunno, go from best overall to best covered 5*s and start leveling them up until they’re a little useful.

5

I’m mostly letting the required characters for events drive my choices at this point. If there’s a 5* that crops up as an essential that I still have at lvl255, I might bump it up to however high I can get it (although not always - I left Wasp at 255 because she’s not worth the iso). If my current version of any of the other essentials are unchamped then I’ll probably take that opportunity to champ them.
In PvP a maxed essential makes you sightly less vulnerable on defense (opponents can’t just Thanos you quite so easily) and in PvE gives you a little more room for error (and to avoid using health packs). But I generally have some iso in reserve in case something comes up, like a Shield Training with a recent character that needs to be pushed to 209.

6

I’ve been maintaining a nice reserve of 300-400k iso since the change. I don’t champ 2 farm characters until I feel like it. Only have 2 three star dupes that will eventually need champing, Pun and QS. With Ghost, I’m just slowly investing levels into her each day. Besides her, Emma is my only non-champed 4 currently in the token pool.

Mostly just pulling up all my highly covered level 255s up for pve purposes. Working on BB right and next will probably be GG.

I really enjoy the no rush aspect of it all now.

7

Having the stress removed really helps. I’d be sat on a handful of Wiccan covers right now, plus some Ghost covers from the boss fight right after champing Emma Frost after getting spares for her.

Plus I have covers pending for 3* Starlord as well and some 2*s.

But now it doesn’t matter. I just chill and fill them up as I go. I can prioritise who I’ll need now rather than who’s cover is running out fastest.

8

It’s the same as always for me. The only thing that has changed is that I now choose which 4* to Champion and do it at my own pace.

9

I feel like I’ve wasted my ISO all these years. So glad they changed it

10

I’m in a similar situation to Roadwarrior but the cover saving has just really enabled iso use to now be strategised instead of panic-induced scrambling.

Following the Antman & Wasp celebrations I was left with a fully covered Antman with 5 covers on the vine - I’m in no rush to champ him and now thanks to being able to sit on those covers I can choose when I want to do so rather than the game forcing me into that choice.

At present, although I have plenty of 4’s I can champ I now don’t have to right away and so for the first time ever playing this game I am now trying to hoard iso! I’ll let the covers and iso pile up until I decide who I want to spend on next.

Happy days.

11

Without the pressure of expiring covers (I have 44 4* champs at the moment):

  • started a buffer again to be able to level 2 characters to 209 instantly for SHIELD training
  • changed my 4* bonus hero choices to all the characters I don’t have enough covers for to be able to raise them to level 209
  • 4*s are leveled to 160 when I can
  • sometimes I bump characters to 210 or champ them based on boosted list
  • started leveling some of my better covered 5s to 300
    I will probably also have start recycling some 3    s soon, but as long as I have enough HP for some extra roster spots I won’t have to invest any ISO into selling/rechamping them yet.
12

Here’s what I’ve decided to do.
1. My dup strategy for both 2* and 3* is keep the max level, start a new one, and start collecting saved covers past 13.
1a. For 2s saving all the way to 50 covers before selling the max level and immediately re-champing to max level.
1b. For 3s I haven’t determined when I’ll be champing the dups. It probably won’t be for some time, but I doubt I’ll take it anywhere near 100. Highest is 7 right now.

2. I’ll use the dups as break glass in case of emergency for extra covers, tokens, HP, & CP. If I come up with a pressing need for something and I think I can get it by champing some dups I’ll do that. Having those in my back pocket for unexpected changes/emergencies should allow for greater flexibility to jump on new features and unexpected changes/deals.

3. I’m not champing new 4*s unless I have some compelling reason to. As a 5* player new 4s are just champ resource pools and ISO drains. I level them to whatever level is needed for SHIELD Training when they come out, then they sit and collect 13 + saved covers until I decide to champ them. Most likely with these I will champ when they hit 10 saved covers since that will either net 2 LTs or 1 LT and 1 5. Only other things I can think of that might make champ them sooner than 10 saved would be: They come up in CotT and I can’t beat it without champing, some new reason comes out, possibly if they got another 4* PvP, but even then since I’m win based I probably wouldn’t. If they come up as needed for SHIELD Training again I would level them to 209 if not there already.

My currently unchamped 4*s are:

BW L245 13 + 7
Iron Spider L209 13 + 4
Wiccan L111 13 + 1
Emma Frost L111 10 + 1
Nebula L111 6 + 0
Dazzler L168 7 + 0

4. With the newly found surplus ISO (currently 1.2 million) from not champing the 4* characters above (and growing) I plan to start soft capping 5*s as they’re far more useful to me. I haven’t started yet though. The intention is that as an unchamped 5* gets the 5E treatment I will evaluate if the 5* has enough covers to soft cap. If so I’ll soft cap them at the start of their event hopefully enabling me to do more SCL 9 PvEs with them. I haven’t determined what the optimal level to soft cap them is yet, this will likely be trial and error unless someone on the forums has a number already.

13

@broll

Good stuff. I think your 2nd point is the tough one. I probably don’t have the dupe depth you have, but I usually have several 2* at any given time and it is very tempting to sell and use them to champ 4s (I now have 16 champed with 14x at 13 covers and several at 12). Good news is I focused on the top tier 4s and pretty much got the consensus top 10 champed. So like you, if someone is going to be boosted and i’d like to use them, I can “break glass” but then I owe that ISO back to the 2* farm.

As someone who is almost at the year mark, I got to experience the pain of selling off 4s because of the lack of roster spots and/or dupes. I think this was wise move by D3. Since I could save covers, I ended up buying HP to create roster spots. Knowing I could just let a bunch of cover sit while I gained ISO made it feel worth it.

14

I was able to stop the 4* race and focus on my 5* for a while. I brought everyone with at least one in each color up to 305 and have been adding 5 to them each day the ( it seems like that is how much you can gain a day and I like to keep the “round” numbers). They are now at 355 and doing well. I’m now going back a bit and doing a little maintenance on the farm (2/3/4), but will then continueadd 5 levels a day to the 5*. The 5* are now more effective than the 4* (around level 330?)

hope that helps.

15

That does help, around 350 was going to be my first attempt at a soft cap. Now I just need to figure out how much ISO it is to go from 255 to around that level. It’s somewhere between 301,930 (to go to 375) and 210,740 (to go to 345). Probably 220K - 250K. Pretty reasonable to do to all most.

16

Gotta champ em aaaallllll, Poke- oh…right.

I’m using iso on pretty much anything that’s not a 5-star, with the current goal being to champ the new 4s and once again try to get ahead of the release schedule.

2* - I keep all 13 champed at any given time, and 2-3 extra roster slots to build dupes when they reach 144. As long as they have at least 1 cover for the first champ level, I go ahead and sell the max champ to champ the dupe. Whether the character is at Lv. 95 or Lv. 144 is inconsequential to my success in PVE or DDQ.

3* - All are champed as well, and there’s only about 10 that aren’t at 266, because I sold the 266 version when I was finishing up that last few 4s I had ready (there’s been like 10 new 4s since then lol). All the rest have a 266 version plus a champed dupe. The influx of LTs, Iso, and CP from champed 3s was pretty frickin awesome, and I wanted to recreate that stream again when they all reached their max champ levels. Yes it was costly for roster slots and iso, but constantly champing a new 3 basically every 3-4 days was bringing me a boatload of LTs, which got Gambit fully covered, and so many others at just 1-2 covers away without busting a hoard on the Latest store even once. Unfortunately Angel hit 266 the other day and I already started his dupe, and Elektra and Gambit are at Lv. 258 and 259 respectively.

4* - Dino I’ll be champing for Anniversary, Howard I’ll be champing next time Webbed Wonder is run. Jubilee I’m just waiting on a champ level. Spidey, Ghost, Emma, Nebula, and Dazzler still need to be fully covered (Spidey is just one away, and Ghost will be finished with the next PVE, assuming she is the 4E). In either case, I’ve saved up 1000 CP and SHOULD be able to finish these guys off over the next couple of months. I know I’ll never be able to have them “ALL” champed at any given time, but the goal is to get to a point where the newest character or 2 for that season are the only ones I don’t have champed.

5* - I don’t like my selection of the guys I do have fully covered, all of them way behind the meta. Gambit isn’t even at a fraction of his former glory, and Hawkeye is too slow for PVP. Bringing Goblin, IM46, Surfer, or Black Suit Spidey will get me straight up laughed at. I’m not interested in affecting that PVP experience just yet until I have better ones that can actually compete. Since it feels like a crapshoot otherwise trying to pull specific folks from classics, feels safer to invest in BH’ing a feeder. Needless to say, not softcapping, let alone champing any of these guys soon, so they don’t get any iso quite yet.

17

There is a google sheet someone made that has all the iso values for every level …

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19WTGnjZWctTwzHeF44XAR7ULkfKcHQOfufmG4z_OHR8

Not mine… kudos to the creator.

18

I’m spending it as soon as I can and only on 3s and 4s.

2* - This tier is completely done and is a self-sustaining farm. I have two maxed champs of everyone and a third level 15 copy that I use to collect 13 + 50 saved covers over and over to cycle rewards.

3* - Everyone is at 266 with a dupe rostered (all but 9 of the dupes are champed). The unchamped 9 are my bonus heroes and all are at their soft-capped limit. As soon as I pull a cover that allows me to dump more iso into them, I do.

4* - Everyone (including limited characters) with the exception of Emma, Nebula and Dazzler are champed. Emma is my BH (it will change to Dazzler when she enters tokens). Similar to the 3* all are at their iso max and as soon as I pull a cover that allows me to dump more iso into them, I do.

5* - All are at 255. I have DD, GG, JJ, Okoye and Thor cover-maxed with over 350 Latest pulls (CP + LT) hoarded. Will one day bring them up to level 300 after I champ the 9 dupe 3s and unchamped 4s that I’ll acquire whenever I decide to bust that hoard.

19

Since saved covers started I built up my iso to 450k so that if Shield Training hits me with three under-leveled, but with 10+ covers, characters then I just have to throw all of that 450k to level them up to 209. With the excess iso over 450k I put that into farming my 2s and slowly bringing my 4s up to 209 between Shield Trainings. When Shield Training starts if I don’t need to waste much iso to level characters to 209 then I splurge and will champ a 4* that I really want to play with like Ghost.

As for my 3s, well, my poor 3s are in limbo right now. Seems like two or three max out every week so it’s a royal pain in the Daken to throw a thousand hp at making a dupe every time I turn around and as if that’s not bad enough with Anniversary right around the corner, and me trying to hoard as much hp for that as I can, I can’t even champ my fully covered 3s because that iso is going into leveling up my 4s. And for some reason my 3* Cap dupe is up to like 18 saved covers already. Apparently this game thinks that I really need more 3* Cap covers. Sorry, Bucky, you’re not getting champed anytime soon.

Bring on the double or triple iso Anniversary events, D3, I’m ready for them.

20

Yeah literally can’t spend iso as fast as I accumulate it any more. I don’t have champed dupes for 2s (what’s the point?), I just sell and rechamp 2s as I get the dupe to 14+ covers.

3s all champed and will sell each 266 when dupe is at decent level if I need to (not very llikely)

All 4s champed, have a few dupes champed too. All 5s champed bar Gambit (sold) and Loki who is soft-capped to 435.

Having lived through a hateful 4.5 year iso crunch, it makes me a bit less committed to playing for the sake of iso (no more LRs) which is a blessed relief tbh.