Fire Deckathalon Event, thru May 17th

[Bailey Jade]

Don't know if it has been fixed, but in the past events HH had a bug where it would use ghost pips from previous rounds. So you'd be seeing them casting a 5 pips trap or a brimstone, for example, and have one pip left next round, and then they'd cast a 3x 400 hound right after (which would be around 7 pips with their boost).

Same bug happened on most Xpip spells, and it may have been related to those bugs where the Xpip would not use all available pips.

Bailey: if you have 2 PP and 2 normal pips, then you are on round 2 or 3 (because at most you start with 1 pp+1 or 2 variable pips, depending on deck). To avoid such issues, use weakness/plague and the damamge will be reduced to close to 0 with the right deck (at least need some 120 fire def in total although anything around 90+ can work if you are a good planner).

Simple strategy on those floors is, the more they accumulate pips, the more you stack debuffs; but once you have a virulent plague and a weakness on them, they need a lot of pips to even do any damage.

Oh, it might have been second round for one of them. I just know that I got hit with two of them with more damage then what my health was.

@KingNothing
On bright side of things, I did get pass that and 7.2 not too bad. Here is one tip, don't worry about the one pip h.hounds, specially if you have a deck 6 or 7, they tend to do zero in damage.

[lynchjw]

My Level 131 Pyromancer just finished the tower and received the Falmea's Foe badge using a non-healing pet. It took 10 runs that were spent mostly on Stages 7-10. He started with a Level 8 deck and upgraded to a Level 9 deck along the way. The decks had close to maximum value jewels in all slots.

He noticed that the starting Health for at least some of the NPC's differs from what is shown in the Wiki. Also, in the second room of Stage 8 there is a 1200 HP Pyre Beetle rather than a ​Deer Mouse Firefighter as shown in the Wiki. He thinks that has been that way for a while because his notes from last time show the same.

[sparkyflamefire]

On bright side of things, I did get pass that and 7.2 not too bad. Here is one tip, don't worry about the one pip h.hounds, specially if you have a deck 6 or 7, they tend to do zero in damage.

The problem I have with those 1- or 2-pip heck hounds is that they tend to chew through whatever shields I have down. The question I end up asking myself is - Do I put down a shield now in case the one mob casts a phoenix, knowing that if he doesn't cast it, it will be wasted on that DOT that wouldn't have done any damage anyway. But if I don't cast the shield and the mob does cast the phoenix I will be in a world of hurt. Or, do I cast a shield to block that DOT that is hitting me for 200 or 300 points a pop, knowing that if the mob follows up his last heck hound with another 1-pip heck hound that the 1-pip (0 damage) hound will trigger the shield leaving me shieldless for the big one?

[Bailey Jade]

The problem I have with those 1- or 2-pip heck hounds is that they tend to chew through whatever shields I have down. The question I end up asking myself is - Do I put down a shield now in case the one mob casts a phoenix, knowing that if he doesn't cast it, it will be wasted on that DOT that wouldn't have done any damage anyway. But if I don't cast the shield and the mob does cast the phoenix I will be in a world of hurt. Or, do I cast a shield to block that DOT that is hitting me for 200 or 300 points a pop, knowing that if the mob follows up his last heck hound with another 1-pip heck hound that the 1-pip (0 damage) hound will trigger the shield leaving me shieldless for the big one?

I was able to make it to the end. However, this event, I had to take a slightly different approach in doing things then in other deck events. I had a lot of good advice from one dear friend, which it helped a lot. The one or 2 pip h.hounds I would not worry about, its the bigger ones that I did and I would remove them as fast as I could.

[lynchjw]

The problem I have with those 1- or 2-pip heck hounds is that they tend to chew through whatever shields I have down. The question I end up asking myself is - Do I put down a shield now in case the one mob casts a phoenix, knowing that if he doesn't cast it, it will be wasted on that DOT that wouldn't have done any damage anyway. But if I don't cast the shield and the mob does cast the phoenix I will be in a world of hurt. Or, do I cast a shield to block that DOT that is hitting me for 200 or 300 points a pop, knowing that if the mob follows up his last heck hound with another 1-pip heck hound that the 1-pip (0 damage) hound will trigger the shield leaving me shieldless for the big one?

I found that using a combination of Plague, Virulent Plague, and Availing Hands was a pretty good tactic. I generally did not try to shield except on first turn if I could not get a Virulent Plague up; just limit damage and heal when needed to keep ahead. If you can survive the early rounds the NPCs tend to cast a lot of low pip DOTs rather than building pips for a big hit. That's not to say that you don't have to keep an eye on things and selectively sacrifice a shield to prevent a nasty surprise now and again.

[KingNothing]

Thanks to @richardDkht and @Bailey Jade. My first Fire Deckathalon was a successful one. I ended up stalling at 8.2, but I'm fairly certain it was only because I had a low level deck. I just didn't have enough ice runes to craft a higher deck. All good though. Between now and the next Fire Deckathalon I should be able to. Thank you

[sparkyflamefire]

I found that using a combination of Plague, Virulent Plague, and Availing Hands was a pretty good tactic. I generally did not try to shield except on first turn if I could not get a Virulent Plague up; just limit damage and heal when needed to keep ahead. If you can survive the early rounds the NPCs tend to cast a lot of low pip DOTs rather than building pips for a big hit. That's not to say that you don't have to keep an eye on things and selectively sacrifice a shield to prevent a nasty surprise now and again.

Oh, I already made it through the tower. Now I'm just farming stages 6-8 for superior runes. I was just identifying a concern for players just getting to those stages for the first time. You're right though. My wizard, with his stage 10 deck, just laughs at all those 1 or 2 pip hounds and elves. But he lost one battle when he decided to wait a turn to put a shield down because it would just be wasted on a 1-pip hound. Only to be killed by a bladed, trapped phoenix. Point on plagues well taken.

On another matter, they really need to adjust the drop rates when gardening moon seeds. For one thing, less thread and more stones. What can you use thread for other than crafting equipment that doesn't provide any benefit? And that uses up scarce lunari?

I've been keeping track of harvest results. It takes 3 spirit or elemental blades to craft 1 corresponding seed. (And just why did they raise it from 2 to 3 anyway?) Let's say I want to collect enough idols to upgrade the life colossus. 27 spirit moon stones to make 9 spirit seeds, which when harvested will produce 2 school specific stones, in a mix of life, death, and myth. If you are lucky, you MIGHT get another spirit stone (My experience has been about a third of the time). So those 9 spirit seeds will give you around 6 each of the school specific stones, and a few spirit stones, from which you can craft 2 life moon seeds. So you plant those 2 life seeds and get 2 or 3 idols each. Let's be generous and say 6 total. Except, for some schools you have as many as 4 different forms to chose from, so maybe 1-2 life colossus. Or you may not even get a life colossus idol. It seems like the older forms have a higher drop rate than the newer forms. When the life fairy and life colossus first came out, I would sometimes get twice as many draconians as fairy and colossus combined. So just how long to accumulate the 18 idols needed to upgrade to tier 3 (6+12)?

27 spirit stones yield, on average, 6 life moonstones. From which you craft 2 life moon seeds, which will produce 0-2 of the desired idol. If you are really lucky and get one of the desired idol per plant, 27 spirit stones just yielded 2 of your desired idol, plus a lot of thread and a few moonstones of other schools. 81 spirit stones MIGHT produce 6 of your desired idol. And where do you get those 81 spirit stones? By harvesting Beastmoon Seeds, which you get by crafting 3 Hunter Moonstones for each seed. (Okay, you will get a few as drops from doing a match, or as a event reward)

It won't affect me too much, not for a while. I have a huge inventory because I've been gardening for a long time. But I pity new players facing such a daunting task. It will take a long time for them to catch up to existing players. Even for me, when they keep coming out with new forms all the time, it will chew up my inventory rather quickly trying to get the idols to upgrade them. I've gone through at least 600 balance stones in just the past month because that was what I had the most of. And got around 100 balance krokomummy idols to show for it.