I have gotten to level 10 on all the Hard dungeons except FK. Tried only stage 1 and it took me 3 and a half minutes and it wasn't a 100% either. I've seen a video from Scratch where one super endgame whale made a team with godlike gear and it still took him over 2 minutes. Now, it I were to use the absolute best gear on my account, I could probably do it too, by ruining the CB and arena teams in the process. But then, the question arises is it really worth it?

Yes, you will get better overall gear, leggo included, but if it takes 3+ minutes, and factoring in that the more advanced your gear is the more difficult it is to get a piece that you might actually use - I would say it's not worth the effort. Stage 25 is still better for tournaments, events, CVC, simply because it's faster. They will have to do something about this dungeon. What, i don't know, either drop the shield counter or buff some of the popular Freeze champions like Yakarl to make the Freeze more consistent or make Freeze do a bigger TM drop, because 15% is nothing, it's almost insignificant.

Maybe we have all been spoiled by Alure? 😁

As i wrote too, my sample size yet too small. But no matter when see why can drop 5star rare items  a hard 10 dungeon which is "allegedly" end game content, but the still can drop rare 5star items.

I haven't tried anything other than dragon, but the time to complete a run is insignificant to me. If there is a 5 minute team with my crappy gear and late game roster that's fine.  I'll run hard 10 on pc occasionally, and solo farm 20 otherwise... won't do 24/25  at all.

Focusing on the rare drops is the wrong mindset. Hard mode 10 stages give you something like 80% more top-end gear than stage 25. from 13% legendary to 18% + 5% mythic.

6 star epic pieces are meh. Everything below that is unusable. If you want good pieces, mean is more important than variance. I could post a whole rant about that. People who actively prefer stage 20 over hard (or even 25) are shooting themselves in the foot.

I'm struggling with FK hard mode right now, but I went from farming stage 25 in 2:30 to farming 4h in 4:00. A definite improvement! It's all about the long-term mindset!

Who's your FK Hard team?

You'll laugh, but it works:

i

This is an understatement, the 5star / rare drops are completely irrelavant to the discussion.  The Hard mode EV is higher for the same energey as 25.  You sell 95% (at least) for silver regardless.  I'll disagree with you about running 20 solo farming though and/or for tournament event points.

But the correct answer is normal 20 or Hard 10 only IMnsHO.

IMnsHO

Trips out here just making things up. LHOoF though, I agree. lol

If you're literally unable to complete a fusion otherwise, stage 20 is the way to go. But you're throwing away so much energy.

I just did the math, on stage 20 it takes on average 790 energy to get a 6* legendary. On stage 10h it's 272 energy (counting mythic as "only" legendary, so in reality it's even better).

Here's the shocking part: if you solo stage 20, then you can think of it as costing 10 energy instead of 16*. But multiplying by the drop rates, that's still 494 energy per 6* legendary item! It's a false economy! You're literally better off farming 10h, then go do a few 12-3 runs. Solo farming is way overrated.

Now, soloing dragon 25 vs full team 10h, that might be an actual debate!

* If you're running dungeons with food, you're saving something like 1.5 energy per food champ: 12-3 costs 8, let's say 2+2+2 for the xp, and 2 for the shards/silver/chickens. So 2 energy gives you 8.8k xp, while dungeon 20 gives you around 5k? I'd say 1.5 energy/champ is fair.

Oh no. I may have to change my entire "food farming" strat for fusions.  

I mean, I guess that's assuming you're not earning double points for a Dungeon Tourney + a parallel running Champ Training. Or triple for Divers + Tourney + Training. Or quadruple for Divers + Tourney + Training + Earning Silver for Artifact.

And no, I'm not trying to be flippant. I WOULD like to do all of those things the most efficient way possible. That is what enables me to complete fusions every month without needing packs to do it. Before the Hard Dungeons it was as easy as just "Dragon 25 solo + Training" or "IG 20 + Training" and it is no longer so simple, it seems.

Well, since this struck a chord, let me give the full solo farming stats:

stage 24 solo: 322 energy / 6* legendary

stage 25 solo: 336 energy / 6* legendary

So 10h still wins! (again, you get mythic drops on top of this. I'm not including this in the calculation because it's very hard to determine their exact value, and it will vary with player level).

@harleQuinn the double-dipping is a red herring. Unless you're really bad at resource management, you'll end up at 2750 tournament points anyways, regardless of the stage you're doing. Therefore, double-dipping doesn't increase your efficiency, it merely makes it easier to finish the fusion within time constraints.

This is a bit of a subtle point. In strategy games, there's the concept of "compression" of resources. Another familiar term might be "concentration of force". How do you beat someone who has enough resources (on average) to defend against all your attacks? You compress as much attacking power into a small time window, so they can't deal with it all at that moment. MOBAs: wave manipulation. Starcraft: dropping the mineral line while attacking the front. Chess: forking. CCGs: tempo overwhelms card advantage. etc etc.

Another example in raid is guaranteed champs: Elva for 20 sacreds is a good deal. You give up roughly 20*.06 = 1.2 random legendaries, to get a top-tier legendary. Why do people complain? because while everyone has 20 sacreds regularly flowing through their accounts, we never have a stockpile of 20 just sitting around. If the guaranteed event gave you 2 months notice instead of 2 days, it would be trivial to finish.

Sorry if this is getting too deep into the weeds. I have a phd in computer science and economics, so doing this kind of modeling is my bread and butter.

Saving resources is what I am looking for though, both time AND overall expenditure. If running four things at once, in effect, allows me to spend more energy on Sand Devil, I'm a happy girl.

Please get as deep into the weeds as necessary. I'm all for it. My graduate degrees are only in Molecular Bio, so I am here for the more complex modeling if someone can do it. Mostly I play with column chromatography and peptide synthesis. lol

While I don't subscribe to the "Do 20 for efficiency" camp, since I want 6 star legendary gear and think you're just wasting energy in 20 with that lost opportunity cost at better gear you're gonna actually keep. I consider getting more gear I want to roll well worth the slight drop in fusion efficiency, cause my overall acct efficiency goes way up.

But, I am unsure how farming food champions partially up, and completing 25% of a champ training during a dungeon divers doesn't put me ahead in a fusion. Ahead on my account overall, actually.

The value in farming 20 solo, is not just increased XP (and eventually an "unlimited" supply of chickens as f2p) is also silver.  I rarely fall below 100M these days, usually well over 150 at start of a fusion.

I also don't value the dungeon gear as highly as others, even if mythical.  I need zero gear improvements for PvE (well except for hard dungeons maybe, haven't tried them yet lol).  For PvP, I see 90% of my gear being sourced elsewhere...

I have no advanced degrees, but years of complex modeling experience.  That said, for Raid I do all the math in my head and guestimate what is best/most efficient.  Remember I've never used a speed calculator or looked at champ multipliers, so my approach certainly isn't considered meta...

I also am vehemently against partial leveling of chickens.  Early/mid game it may be necessary to barely finish an event.  Late game it is short-sided with LTV implications that are significant.  My approach results in slightly higher resource costs to complete short term objectives, but reduces my future resource needs significantly.

Yeah absolutely no reason for this.

But another major problem I'm facing with champ training in general - I'm running out of space for food. I simply have nothing to actually use food on, so it just accumulates endlessly :/

I value the dungeon gear fairly highly, but that's because I know the chances of getting gear improvements are so small at this point that I have to maximize the amount of gear I'm bringing in. Try to force improvements through volume, both in dungeon farming and forging. Forging is way better, I wouldn't ever argue with that, and collecting those materials is the first thing I try and make sure gets done each day.

And meta? Right now, with the new H10s, it's just about figuring out some rules for my monthly fusions and daily farming to get generally the most bang for my buck. :)

I partially level chickens when time is my greatest factor, my most limited resource, rather than game resources. Mostly I don't like doing this cause it's both a waste AND it's brutally boring. 😂

The math I'm doing already incorporates all the factors you're worried about, and considers general account development.

Let me give an example: fusions are a bit complicated, so let's say there's a 2x speed event on. You want to farm until you get 50 6* legendary or higher pieces.

Method 1: Dungeon 25 solo

It takes 50 * 20 / .13 / .32 = 24'038 energy. The factors are #items * energy / legendary rate / 6* rate.

This takes you 1202 runs, at 4*5780 xp per run, you've farmed up 27'788'462 xp "for free".

Method 2: Dungeon 10h

It takes 50 * 20 / (.18+.05) / .32 = 13'587 energy.

This takes 679 runs.

Now you spend the remaining 10'451 energy on 12-3, that's 1306 runs. At 3*8650 xp per run, you've farmed up 33'900'431 xp. You're ahead 6M xp, using the exact same amount of energy, and getting the exact same amount of good gear (actually, 22% or 11 of your farmed items will be mythical instead of legendary).

I haven't even accounted for the thousands of mystery shards, millions of silver, and dozens of 3* chickens you'll get out of those 12-3 runs. I also haven't accounted for the higher sale price of the gear you're selling (you'll get more 5* leggo and less 5* rare, etc).

There's no ambiguity here. Method 2 is just better! You even get the additional upside that you don't have to do those 12-3 runs right now, or at all! HarleQuinn, you can spend the energy in sand devil instead! Trips, if you want silver, just use some of the extra energy on spider 20 (actually, 10h might beat it now in terms of pure silver acquisition).

The typical mistake that people without economic training make is to account for one type of resource, and neglect others. The trick is to convert everything into a common currency. Then you'll never make that mistake. I haven't done this completely here, as it's kind of hard to answer how much energy you'd be willing to pay for one mystery shard. But we can do a quick and dirty calculation. Let's assume the non-xp rewards in 12-3 are worth about 2 energy. Then we're only paying 6 energy for 12-3 runs, resulting in 45M xp. In other words, the silver, chickens and mystery shards from method 2 are worth roughly an extra 11M xp. With the 6M advantage in actual xp, that brings us up to a 17M profit. I'm still missing the extra silver from selling better gear, but it's probably negligible.

I did this same calculation comparing 20 solo against 10 hard. It was even more lop-sided. Around 80M xp advantage for 10h. Sorry folks, the math doesn't lie. Hard mode dungeons change everything.

QED

(like seriously, if I don't get like 10 thumbs up for this post, there's something wrong with the world)

I stopped reading at farming speed gear in 2x.... I don't use much of that set... it is not in top 10 of desired artifacts, maybe not top 20.... I will read more for further invalid assumptions later :)

That's just silly. The calculation carries over to solo strats in any dungeon. Speed gear was just an example. Feel free to substitute reflex. Not sure if viable solo strats for spider exist.

Or to put it more succinctly: whooooosh