Zero Gem Challenge - Sort Of

[Tin Man]

Here is the scoop ...

The Zero Gem Challenge - Sort Of

No spending gems on anything other than to unlock hero inventory rows.

No spending gems on:

- Ability Slots for Attack, Abilities or Passives
- Upgrading Abilities
- Ability Upgrade Slots
- Companion Slots
- Booster of any kinds
- Unlocking gear
- Offers from the Store or Gornathan or anywhere else
- Just flat out not spending any gems at all

You are literally only allowed to spend gems on unlocking your hero's inventory rows.

Think it will be easy? Think again at what you are not allowed to do. Have to be very strategic in how you go about this.

Optimally? Should be run with no medals but will not exclude those that have medals as participation is encouraged. This is for fun after all and not about hitting the Top 100 or is it?

Think very carefully how to approach this one. Having your crafting Mastery Level to 50 is encouraged because you will want all your crafts to be as good as possible.

Milk all the resources available to you for all they are worth.

You really can do much better than I initially thought. There are four of us currently on board.

Come join us for the fun.

You can not say that you do not have the gems to participate after all!

[Ozymandius]

I am in. I went with a BH, though still deciding on which gear to make for farming/push. Remembering now how challenging it is to play when you can't even buy crafting materials. Sort of like how drops are meaningful at least in the early going...

[Tin Man]

I am confused. You can buy all the Basic Resource Crates that you want.

[Ozymandius]

That is $25k to craft one XP item. I'd rather rely on drops and salvage gear instead of paying that price...

[Tin Man]

Not disagreeing with you but also reminding you that not all crates of crafting materials are off limits. Plus, a Basic Crafting Crate like you get from the Ingrid quests, if you are lucky enough to get them, is sufficient to craft a Fire Lily and a Vial of the Wind Spirit with just one crate.

Also, not all experience boosters are off-limits to buy. You just can not spend gems or real money on them.

[jay clarke]

For gold and I have stopped spending gems as there is no incentive to do so, rewards are not worth it. Last gold I got to tl88 . best result tl90. Frustrating and dependent on luck for equipment, but a lot of fun too. An experience everyone should do just so you appreciate the other anb's.

[OldFartAtPlay]

Count me in. I'm going bounty hunter also, my toon's name is "Whatgems".

[Ozymandius]

One hour into the event, and as expected, it has been fairly slow going with no XP boosters and limited crafting materials. I did not anticipate all of the things that I typically spend gems to collect (e.g., the three gemstone packs and the extra XP and XG boosters for only 300 gems). Mostly got by with drops and a couple of gold for gear purchases from Gornathan, however, once I was able to craft XP gear those early sources pretty much dried up. Surprisingly, most of my gear is not too far behind my current level, and I got a lucky ToS inside the chest that I got for reaching level 50. I completed Trial 6, but I was not able to survive Trial 7, so I switched back to running story mode. Story mode also provides more salvage material, though I am constantly running out of lesser fire essence.

[Tin Man]

I am running a hunter. My running numbers will be here.

Time to 70 --- 1h32m
Complete Normal with CL CL 402 --- 2h23m
CL 448 --- 2h43m --- XP and AR Champion Points are at max, mostly, and just cleared TL 80 in 1:16. Time to start my first experience booster and start farming TL 85+
CL 600 --- 2h59m --- Ended up still not running my experience boosters yet. Going to start it now.
CL 908 --- 3h49m
CL 1200 --- 4h49m
CL 1237 --- 4h58m

I was unable to complete this hero and ended up never running any of the available Greater Experience Boosters though I used all but 08:17 of every other experience booster that was available without using gems.

Bounty hunters are very capable of being competitive without spending a single gem. One player cleared TL 154 while spending zero gems though not as part of this challenge.

[Ozymandius]

What trial level were you able to complete?

[Tin Man]

Ozymandius I never pushed. I was still farming TL 95.

[Ozymandius]

Too bad. It is sort of a bummer to build your set up and then not really being able to see how far you can push it. I may have to try again sometime when things are slower at work...

[Bali_Lenni]

please let me know if\when you plan another ZGC in the future....would love to join in the fun...

[RockDoc]

Guess I'm too slow to run with this group, it took me almost 3 hours to get to level 70.
I am also running hunter and have made some progress since level 70.

[Tin Man]

Buddy, did you forget that you can craft a level 1 Fire Lily and Vial of the Wind Spirit for next to nothing once you get the Basic Resource Crate from the Crafting Quest or, if you do not get that quest, once you get 25k gold to buy a Basic Resource Crate?

Three hours is fine. You still have a full Gold ahead of you.

[Ozymandius]

Made it to level 70 in 1:38:54 with no XP boosters and random luck jewelry. The challenge now will be having to continue to use 52-68 level gear until I can gradually craft better gear. The epic boxes will be most helpful, since I only have a few MoTs and no greater essences. And only 4.4k gold to work with. The good news is that once I went back to trials, I have been able to clear 7-14 in 2-3 minutes, so maybe I won't have to go back to story mode...

[Ozymandius]

Three hours into the event and still running without any XP boosters. Feels like a slow grind, but I completed Trial 70. Sadly, I wasted a lot of gold trying to craft jewelry instead of just using the ephemeral boxes, which are all just sitting in my stash for now [in case I get a chance to push]. I do have one legendary ring now with XP, CR, & CD, but the other two are still my level 55 rares. I have the full Epic Havoc gear set now and crafted an Ordnance belt and Carnival cape, so with good timing, I can level even elite mobs. Probably should have just crafted a Fire Lily instead, since it takes a long time before CR/CD are high enough to make much of a difference. I did get a lucky drop of a Legendary Pulse gun with XP on it, so running Tesla armaments set until I can salvage enough resources to craft Igniters pistols. Gold is still a big bottleneck. I can always go back and run story maps if I need more gold, but it comes with a big loss of experience.

[Tin Man]

So, for my mage.

Time to 70 --- 1h41m
Complete Normal with CL 365 --- 2h54m --- Did multiple runs of TL 80 for experience farming before returning to complete Normal.

Was unable to return this hero to finish the event. I was side-tracked and failed to finish leveling up my abilities. Never got around to using any of my experience boosters.

Has me curious. I am going to have to try this again.

[RockDoc]

Two hours and 20 minutes left on my event timer. I was able to beat TL110 in about 5 min, and passed CL1000, and almost made it into top 250. Not bad for not spending any gems except initial five inventory rows. Don't know if I'll go much further as I've got both CTs and don't really need the extra Glory.

[Ozymandius]

Nice, I have only been able to craft 3 legendary pieces so far.

[RockDoc]

Ran storyline through Act III to get small resource and gold stockpile for start of crafting. Then crafted one piece at a time as I could afford it. I was able to craft most of legendary pieces because I collected boosters from TL100. Without those doubt if I'd have had gold or resources for crafting more than 2 or 3 pieces. This has not been an easy journey compared to spending gems to upgrade, socket, and reforge stats to reach goals. Here you have to work with what you get. I imagine it was similar to the live off the land competition. Kudos to the competitors.

[Ozymandius]

Collected the XP boosters from TL100 but only had a little bit of "real life" time to play this weekend due to vacation activities. I managed to finish TL111 in the waiting room at the Athleta store in Burlington, Vermont while my wife was shopping. So, I earned the second CT but ended up out of the medals at position 517. I could have moved up into the medals, since I had a lot more crafting materials and over an hour and a half left on the play clock, but I just never got the time to play. I went with a 6 Havoc CR/CD gear set, but if I had to play the event over again I would have opted for a Fire Lily build instead, since you need a lot of CLs before the CR/CD build finally outshines the Fire Lily. Other lessons learned include not using the ephemeral jewelry until the push, which led to a lot of resources to craft an XP set that was inferior to the ephemeral stats. Since I ended up not really being able to push, that turned out to be a big mistake. I played Live off the Land during Bronze 13 and completed TL120 with only 902 CLs, but that event had another three hours of play. The ability to craft meant more XP on gear during the early going, so faster CL building. However, I felt like I spent most of this event playing a hero that was underpowered for what I wanted it to do.

[OldFartAtPlay]

You did a little better than me. I went to TL 109 using 6 Demo and mag trap. If I ever do one again I'll try 6 Havoc. This was the first time I've done one of the challenges, it was pretty fun, maybe I''ll do a LOTL next time one comes up.

[Ozymandius]

I went all in on Havoc including the Heatseeker BoM and Ordnance belt, but having only one healer for managing mobs was harder than I expected. I probably should have added in more Ability Rate to reduce my cooldown time. You don't need much AR with traps and extra healers, but it would have come in handy when spending a lot of time herding mobs and dodging counter attacks.

[OldFartAtPlay]

The 6 demo/MT build is great for clearing mobs but makes for slower boss fights so it's probably a six of one half dozen of the other situation.