Mythbuster: Farming Costs

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

Farming has been for me an essential component of progress in this game, yet I so often read the idea that Farming “costs” but is worth it for the HP acceleration. But does it actually lose ISO? Is it worth it?

The investment:
1 roster slot = 1000HP
63 covers @ 250 iso = 15,750 iso
level 15 - 94 = 69,530 iso
Champ = 5,000 iso
Total = 90,280 + 1000 hp

If you were to purchase those resources directly it would run about 128$(Motherlode+Hidden Stash+{average of Loonies or Agency Expenses+2xBugle Pittance). I think shows how poor those purchases actually are.

In order to record exactly what I gained I kept one maxchamp 2* Cap’n Marvel and rostered another one and banked up all of the necessary covers to reap all the benefits and track the various cover yields at once

What I got:
+5 cp
+250 HP(champreward) + 125 HP (Sell back) = 375HP
+EXP: (10recruit + 195training +40 champ + 500lvling = 745) + (95 from tokens) = 840 exp - at SCL138. That represents 13% of my next SCL which awards 70k so worth = 9296 iso
+17,500 iso from champ rewards
+lvl99 - 3Captain Marvel - Red = lvl 176 champ reward = 500iso +15exp
+lvl115 - 3 Captain Marvel - Black =lvl177 champ reward = 500iso +15exp
+lvl127 - 3* Captain Marvel - Yellow = lvl178 champ reward = 1,000iso +15exp
+lvl95 - Heroic Token = 2Storm Yellow = champ lvl114 = 1,000iso +10exp
+lvl111 - Heroic Token = 2 Magneto Purple = champ lvl 113 = 250 iso +10exp
+lvl123 - Heroic Token = 3* Storm Black = saved cover = 0iso
+lvl131 - Heroic Token = 2* Wolverine Red = champ lvl124 = 500iso +15exp
+lvl143 - Heroic Token = 2* BW Blue = train = 0iso +15exp
Rewards Total: 30,546 iso
Sell back = 65,000
Total Iso gain: 95,546

ISO:
Cost = 90,280 iso
Gain = 95,546 iso
Net = +5,266 iso
HP:
Cost = 1,000 HP
Gain = 375 HP
Net = -625 HP
CP:
Cost = 0 CP
Gain = 5 CP
Net = +5 CP

It would take 3 “seasons” or cycles of farming one plot to truly pay for itself.
Without having tracked how long it took me(casual player) to accrue the 63 covers, I don’t feel I can put that in perspective. My next planting I will have to pay attention to my seeding rate. I would estimate it took me less than a month. Going on that assumption for now:
One farm plot would yield 4,500 HP per year but I do have to pay off the initial 1k so only 3new roster slots a year.
13 farmable characters = approx. 40 new roster slots. They release every two weeks or 26 new characters a year, I will be netting 14 new slots but that would be only 7% of the number of playable characters. (assuming 205 {179 + 26}). That’s not nothing but it is not a radical change to my resources.

Some other maths to consider:
-Would you pay 125HP for 1CP? Would you pay 1HP for 8iso?
-Year worth of farming 2* would give enough CP to buy a 5* cover of choice

  • If not roster slots; could buy 5x Heroic 40packs or buy out 3 event vaults or stay shielded for 195 days!
  • I had just flipped BW/storm/3Cap’nM so the champ rewards were low. I have had a couple chains where the 2->3*->4* so the rewards could be considered on the low end.
  • How much time does it take to press all the buttons to work your farm?

Please, Share your own results from flipping a fully banked 2*. If you track these things; how long does it take you?
Do you think it’s worth it or is it too much hassle and it’s better to simply sell all from the roster screen.

Please point out any errors or faulty assumptions I may have made.

2

Since you get the roster slot back after you sell the ripe 2*, it’s not really fair to count the full 1k against each farm character. There is an initial investment in roster slots, but it can be amortized over many cycles of farming.

3

You’ve made this more complicated than it needs to be. Farming 2*s is as simple as this:

You don’t need to buy more roster slots; you could hold 2 weeks worth of 2* covers in your rewards queue and then sell and re-champ the character in 1 shot. It would cost 10K ISO. Because of champ rewards and XP gains, you end up ISO positive when they max out again (about 20K net gain) which is more than selling 63 x 2* covers for 15K ISO. In addition, you get HP, CP, heroic tokens and 3* covers. The tokens may get you 3* or 4* covers too. So, it should be obvious that farming is a net gain overall.

Farming 3s is even more beneficial because of the better champ rewards. I’m not sure if the ISO net is positive or negative, but it’s certainly worth it regardless. The difference here is that you should buy an extra roster slot for 3 dupes, but again, it’s worth it. That cycle time could be a year or more.

Farming 4*s is also a good idea, but the cycle time is so long that some players may quit the game before getting there.

4

Farming has long since proven itself as the best supplemental way to mine resources like HP, CP, tokens, and covers. As @bbigler stated above, it doesn’t need to cost any additional HP to roster dupes (especially at the 2-star tier) so the only thing it costs to farm 2-stars is a negligible amount of ISO. That cost is likely off-set by the XP gained towards additional SHIELD Levels (which the OP included in his calculations).

A player who isn’t farming is, quite simply, a player holding themselves back.

5

Why do you count roster cost? You will need those roster slots for new charaters anyway so they are not dead investments anyway. Actually at this opoint i have ~3 extra charater slots and have all 3* duped and half duped 2* because I sell maxed 2* imidiately once I can champ duped 2* (i did the same thing for 3* when i actually needed ISO, but right now I don’t need ISO at all and can hold selling 266 3*).
All 5* and 4* are also in my roster (well except magik). I have 6k HP and 200k ISO.

And i also have some 1* dupes also rostered by mistake(for example 2 venoms and 2 natasha belova).
So again…Why do you count roster cost? Once you champ your 2* you can sell the maxed one and this free up the roster slot (give you those 1k HP back)

So the real cost for 2* is just 90,280 ISO.

6

The other thing to realize is that as you advance the value of resources changes dramatically. An active SCL 9 player can pretty easily make more HP than they spend, even with spending on shields and some 100 HP daily deals. Many 5* players these days are ISO positive. Once you are there, the only resources that really matter are CP and high level covers that are generated by champ rewards.

The sooner you can invest and get your farm rolling the more return on investment you will get and hopefully the faster you can reach the point where you are no longer constrained by ISO and HP.

7

Caveat: eventually you’ll be setting up a 4* farm.
That’s A LOT of HP to invest.

8

There is more cost for 4* farms, but its worth keeping in mind 2 things.

  1. The 370 4* cover drops 1000hp which pays for the next slot.
  2. Most players at that stage are end game players with a lot of resources.

I’m 1/2 way through maxchamping the 4* tier, so 20-30 4* dupes done, and the only real drawback is how infrequently 4* covers drop to rebuild up the dupes.

The HP side more or less takes care of its self.

9

I’m a 5* player who is “post Iso.” That is to say, I have hit the point where I quite literally cannot spend Iso on my active characters, I take in much more than I need. I hit that point at around June of last year, I think. Right now I’m sitting on a bit over 5 million Iso - my roster is completely soft-capped. Even the amount to hard-cap my roster is less than that total (.85 million.) I just want to let you all know that’s a thing - you will hit it eventually depending on how long you’ve played.

For my 2s I keep 3 extra roster slots just to keep things moving at a decent pace. When a 2 hits 139 I stop leveling them until one of those slots free up, make a dupe, finish the dupe, then finish leveling the main and sell them. This way the cover distribution matters less - if I get more than 5 covers on the dupe I can apply them to the main. This has become far less necessary with the advent of saved covers, but I like having all my 2*s properly covered and leveled for when they’re featured in PVE and DDQ.

I used to do something similar for my 3s at 261, but since Saved covers came into play I haven’t bothered. I do keep duplicates for many of my 3s, just in case they come up in PVP (it gives you a slight edge to have them higher level,) but I don’t really sweat it too much. I usually sell off the main when the dupe gets to 240 or so, particularly if they’ve been featured in PVP within the last few months. I actually keep track of the PVP schedule for this purpose, and have posted it on the boards.

I have, at this point, one duplicate 4* - Captain Marvel. Her dupe even hit 280 because of the recent spate of covers in PVE. Peggy is getting close - she’s 365. I will add to this that I BH’ed both of them pretty heavily - I got 25 for Carol and 26 for Peggy before switching the BH to someone else. They’re probably outliers. The highest level 4* for whom I did not BH for more than a cover or two (I sometimes BH them to get a particular reward like a 5* cover or a LT) is Medusa at 361. I don’t anticipate the game lasting long enough for me to sell off my main 4*s, it will probably take years.

I hope that gives a sense of perspective to the eventual costs of farming - the biggest cost is Iso, the resource which you get in the most abundance. Roster slots can be added here and there, and the rewards for farming is well worth it, since it all funnels to those resources that are most valuable - CP and LTs. It also gives you the ability to “bank” Roster slots, Iso, and HP for when you need them. Oh heck, I overspent on shields and need 500 HP quickly - I’ll just sell one of my main 3*s with a high level dupe right now…

10

So you’re saying every time I harvest my farm organically (pun only slightly intended) I’m really “earning” $128?

Don’t tell my wife…
… or the IRS, for that matter…

11

I’m not sure the game will still exist by the tim I max out a 4*.
That said, you get 4*s slowly enough that you can still trickle feed new roster slots to get dupes.

Until you hit that 2000HP cost though…whenever that is.

12

Don’t know if you meant when they will hit that threshold, or what the threshold is… if it’s the latter, I read in another thread that once you hit 300 slots it’s 2000 a pop…

13

The main point of farming is that it costs lesser resources (iso) and gets you better resources (covers, tokens, cp). Tracking what those resources turn into doesn’t really mean anything.

Your 3* Captain Marvel just happened to line up with the 500, 500, 1000 iso pattern, mine would get me 1000, 4 cp, 500 iso. If I did a different 2* farm, Wolverine, well my Patch is 264 so his next 3 covers are 4* Xforce, LT, dupe. Is my farm way better because it included a Legendary Token? But my next Wolverine farm would start my dupe patch (round 4 maybe) and would likely yield no champ rewards.

Interesting experiment tho.

14

No, we’re saying that Demi/d3 value your labor at $128 for the work of organically farming 63 2* covers for a particular character (maybe a few dozen hours of play time).

15

I’ll take it! And I expect their check to be in the mail.
Not the greatest hourly wage, but I can’t still buy a lot of Skittles with that $$.

16

As a 5* player that just reached post-iso, outside of DDQ, 2* characters mean absolutely nothing. I keep a max champed 2* Widow, Storm and Thor for DDQ. Other than that, I have all the 2*s rostered, save up 50 covers, wait for the next cover, then level, champ, sell and re-roster in one fell swoop. No juggling roster slots. No juggling covers. Just farm-reward-reaping.

17

2* = 69,530 ISO to level +5,000 to champ
Sell value = 65,000 ISO, 125 HP
Obtained while leveling: 17,500 ISO, 250 HP, 5 CP, 5 Heroic Tokens, 3x 3* covers

3* = 119,919 ISO to level +7,500 to champ
Sell value = 105,000 ISO, 500 HP
Obtained while leveling: 57,500 ISO, 1,000 HP, 50 CP, 2 Heroic Tokens, 5 Latest Legends Tokens, 3x 4* covers

4* = 365,821 ISO to level +12,500 to champ
Sell value = 320,000 ISO, 1,000 HP
Obtained while leveling: 112,500 ISO, 4,000 HP, 250 CP, 10 Latest Legends Tokens (or 4 + 6x 5* covers)

5* = 553,929 ISO to level +20,000 to champ
Sell value = 500,000 ISO, 2,000 HP
Obtained while leveling: 220,000 ISO, 20,000 HP, 625 CP, 25 Latest Legends Tokens

On average:
Standard Token = 139.2 ISO, 1.46 HP, .12 CP
Elite Token = 364.6 ISO, 9.9 HP, .64 CP
Heroic Token = 388.6 ISO, 11.8 HP, .72 CP
Legendary Token = 1058 ISO, 74 HP, 3 CP
*Tokens do not include bonus hero pulls. Rewards are weighted toward the later levels so your expected average will be shifted depending on how close you are to max champs

18

I keep my 2 star inventory as low as possible. I use three daily in DDQ (Ares, Magneto, Hawkeye). Those three are kept at 144 and I have a dupe for each one of them.

Everyone else chills out, gaining champ levels until they hit 144, then are sold the moment that next duplicate cover rolls in. I have never relied on a 2* saving the day in any essential node, so as long as I have one cover, I’m good.

Same principle for my 3* farm. With saved covers, its super easy. Keep one max champed, work on the dupe until max champed, then sell when the next dupe cover arrives.

Any farm slot is a single 1k HP investment that will eventually pay for itself.

I have not gotten to the dreaded 2k slot advancement and only have one max champ 4* (though there are several getting close).

19

I don’t have 2 slots for each 2*. I let the 2s sit on the vine until they are about to expire then add them. I do watch the forum for upcoming events. So I won’t sell a 144 if they are going to be essential. I usually sell a 144 right after they are essential. But then again, I don’t see how 2* speeds or slows your PVE run anyway.

As @pheregas said, he keeps dupes for his DDQ team. I don’t even do that, but it does make a ton of sense.

I’m a 4* player so my extra slots have gone to dupes of Strang3, IM40 and a couple other 3s. Other 3s I am going to flip once they hit max and I have a new champ ready to go.

20

I have started rostering dupes of the two-stars, mostly because I want to avoid using Health packs on them after using Thanos in their PvE node…