Zero Gem Challenge - Sort Of

[Tin Man]

Have no reason to suspect that Two Thumbs, the player that ran zero gems back in Silver #13, spend any gems other to unlock anything other than possibly inventory.

He only had CL 1592 compared to your CL 1600. Definitely does not look like used any gems to purchase any experience boosters.

Did 76 crafts for the two 77s. No idea if he gem purchased any crates or not. Can not ask him presently as he is offline for a period of three weeks.

He did say this in a post during that event, "1hour and 30 minutes left and 0 Gems challenge is quite going well". That message was posted with a screenshot of his TL 154 completion time.

The discord link is:

https://discord.com/channels/359895503422619649/359895504148103168/935194369533820988

Managed TL147 on in this challenge, still had 50 minutes of time left on the clock, ran out of real world time. Think I would have got to TL151, that is allowing for a failure or two on TL149. As @Tinman an has mentioned before, the highest we have seen is TL154 with only one slot of everything. Unsure of thr gem spend there, may have bought boosters and crates. My XP grind was done with 6 Havoc and HS as the ability. Then did push with 4H/2D, with Mag Trap. Tracer Ammo always.

Should I do this again, I would attempt it with Warrior, however, I think that will be way more difficult, especially having to wait for abilities to cook. Mage would be even more difficult.

[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.

[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...

[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]

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.

[Tin Man]

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

[Ozymandius]

What trial level were you able to complete?

[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.

[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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.