ANB event planning

[Keaven]

With the awesome addition of cheaper ephemeral crafting, it's now even more important to plan ahead and save gems for the next ANB.

The only differences to bronze, silver, and gold events is; the reducing play timer (12, 9, and 6 hours respectively) making Celsestial Transforms (CTs) harder to obtain without exorbitant gem expenditure; and the cuttoffs for medal rewards. Check out the ANB FAQ for more details.

We currently have a schedule to plan around:

There isn't a set schedule yet. The current flow is as follows:

• Bronze
• Week off
• Silver
• Week off
• Gold
• Week off
• Casual (War Supplies)
• Week off
• Bronze

The schedule may change, depending on how the metrics look and player feedback.

It is important to establish goals for each event based on availability to exhaust the event timer over the duration, and gem budget.

Knowing how many gems you intend to use gives you a goal to accumulate. The event timing is not consistent, so best to save according to your goals and only use elsewhere in surplus.

For unfamiliar players, or anyone with a schedule that may prevent them from reaching trial 80, there are several possible goals for any event in order of priority as follows:

1. Craft a level 77 item for each CT obtained and transform these. They will be reverted to a non ephemeral item retaining it's celestial attribute buffs and CT when ending the event.
2. Complete trial 80 for first CT
3. Complete trial 100 for second CT
4. Utilise the additional 50% XP bonus (incorrectly shown as 100% in the event description) to farm XP. This buff can be increased further using the improved XP buffs only ephemeral jewellery can provide. It is possible to reach over 2000 CP in a single bronze ANB!
5. Push trials in the final hour or so of gameplay to maximise medal rewards.
6. Take advantage of greatly discounted hero expansion gem costs to develop a main hero for each class. If unfamiliar with any class, best to do this during bronze events to make sure you can still attempt goals 1, 2, and 3, and/or have some practise.

If you are new to the game consider whether or not you are ready before committing to the first 3 goals. You might be better off using your first ANB for practise and focusing on goals 4 and/or 6, preserving gems for the next event when play experience can prevail.

1. Have you maxed Crafting Mastery?
2. Do you have crafting recipes for build?
3. Are you confident?

ANB events are most essential for end-game, so if already hooked on Eternium expidite planning.

All the participation goals can be simplified to the first step.

Unlock trial 80 with as little timer used as possible.

If you can get to trial 80 within 1-3 hours of gameplay you're set.

The longer you can utilise idle ability research without using play time the more efficient a run will be.

Given that celestial items keep near perfectly improved attributes when ending the event, there is more value in crafting two level 77 items than additional medals gained by pushing the leaderboard, unless you don't need anymore.

Weapons have the greatest impact on seasonal leaderboard pushing, so it's best to try crafting these if not yet acquired.

If crafting a lvl 77 weapon already possessed in main account, consider keeping it anyway and repurposing for a gold/XP farming gear set. Reforging a celestial attribute will become near perfect when the game is restarted.

The way to maximise your time and efficiency is to earn XP improving your CL as quickly as possible.

If you want to work out precisely which trial will award more XP as a factor of time check out discussion on this reply below.

The most efficient method of gaining XP is to farm the highest trial you can spawn the boss after 30 seconds and abandon. This sacrifices loot, so more gems need to be spent on materials and ability researching.

When killing bosses the most time you can spend farming trial 80 or above the better, as all loot will be legendary and at least 1 GBoL will be gained.

Considering your goal is XP, depending on your build and ability to do so, do not forget to continue to draw mobs after you spawn the boss to kill them during the final fight.

Getting at least one legendary crafting crate is highly recommended when reaching lvl 70 providing you have the recipes needed.

This accelerates growth immensly, as it allows you to craft a significant amount of gear that can gain you CP much quicker, and begin farming trial 90 for more MoTs sooner as the odds for set gear increases the most at this point of trials.

Gold for gems is not very efficient, so during Bronze and Silver events there is enough time to do 1 or 2 gold boosted runs for crafting and transmutting essences.

Once the event period expires consider the benefits of not ending too soon - perhaps you don't yet have suitable level 77 items for your main account to best utilise CT(s), or could not attain them by circumstance.

1. Spending remaining gold crafting jewellery utilises additional temporary stash until acquiring needed stones in your main account for fusing.
2. Although gear is no longer ephemeral and cheap, material crates purchased with gems (in the indefinate future) can be used to achieve the primary goal.
3. If doing speed runs to earn gems faster more character slots for ability upgrading idle characters can be utilised by keeping a main hero in the event until needed.
4. Discounted character gems costs continue until the event is ended manually, so gems can be prioritised on things that help the run initially if keeping the hero.
5. It's just cool having more than 5 heroes . Your friends list will be jealous.

There is only a certain number of event heroes you can keep before getting issues with menus due to overlapping icons.

The toughest part of planning is working out a gem budget and how to reach it. Check out the resource guide on how to earn and spend gems efficiently.

Below are some pointers where you can save gems during ANB if on a limited budget:

• Adding sockets to ephemeral gear is inefficient. Update before ANB gold 4 should rectify this.
• A third research slot is effective but not neccissary.
• If highly available during the event period there's no need to boost ability researching as Books of Learning can max your primary abilities.
• Don't overlook 200% XP boosters. They are cumulative with gear XP.
• The default companions are acceptable.
• All bets off for gold ANB. Every second is precious.

Bare in mind with enough practise it's possible to reach trial 100 without gems in Bronze and Silver events.

So gems can either perform 3 functions at that point; save you time; enable you to compete for more medals; or purely to take advantage of the additional XP gains.

If competing for medals consider their worth before blowing your gem stack.

Feel free to discuss your plans for the next ANB event or ask an expert in this topic.

[Keaven]

From the first two ANBs of the new format I've developed the following universal strategy:

1. Create hero with boring name.
2. Unlock at least 1 research slot.
3. Upgrade primary abilities before synergy bonuses.
4. Boost researching if surplus to budget.
5. Purchase budgeted mercenaries.
6. If budget allows, use 200% XP boosters for entire event (except during gold runs).
7. If budget allows, use 200% Gold boosters for entire event (except when/If farming trials for XP without killing boss).
8. Unlock ability slots when available.
9. Craft XP gear with lessor essences every 10 levels without jewellery using Apprentice Crate(s) if needed.
10. Speed run to the end of Act 1.
11. Farm XP from trials until level 70.
12. Purchase at least 1 legendary crate.
13. Farm/exchange for enough gold to craft a few items for build starting with weapons.
14. Include XP on all gear.
15. A 200% gold booster and half kit should grant enough income to craft the rest and fill in gaps temporarily with ephemeral crates while pushing trials.
16. Improve gear till nothing less than lvl 73, then focus on two lvl 77 items.
17. Switch to XP farming trials when taking 5 mins or more to clear.
18. Use ephemeral jewellery with XP and DPS stats.
19. Only use CTs on lvl 77 items desired to keep, or best options if none attained before manually ending event.
20. When all limited CPs attained, 200% gold boost run The Severed Mountain if needed.
21. Push to trial 100 around CL1,200-1,500.
22. Farm trial 90 for MoTs until crafting desired lvl 77 items or timer expires.
23. If lvl 77 items obtained, XP farm trials without killing bosses leaving 60-90 minutes.
24. Reforge XP off gear.
25. Craft perfect DPS jewellery if able.
26. Push to glory!
27. Reforge celestial gear before ending event if another attribute desired.

There are also other key points depending on chosen class and build, based on when primary abilities unlock.

[Montresor]

so i see most people do as you show here - craft xp / dps jewelry with the ephemeral jewelry. i've always wondered though if you're better off in the final trials push having the ephemeral jewelry be non-exp.

i guess the question is which is greater - the value of the additional CLs gained from having better XP farming jewelry, or the additional damage from having pure DPS ephemeral rings?

[Keaven]

Without crunching numbers I chose this route because the ephemeral jewellery isn't as much of an improvement on DPS jewellery I can make if I want.

I prioritise the first 4 goals much higher than the 5th. If the 5th goal was my primary I would use the ephemeral jewellery for DPS, and craft DPSXP jewellery at level 70.

[Rayn]

In bronze I did exp jewelry but in silver I did dps. I think in gold it makes sense to do dps so you don’t need to use your event timer to farm as much for crafting. I think it’s possible to get by with just a single 30min gold farming stint. Especially with BH. I crafter blue assault gear and green everything else and had around 2300% MG, was able to push out 5 mill in 30 mins.

[Keaven]

I did an ELR Mage in the first bronze, and a Stalker BH for Silver to practise for gold since I've not played much with Stalker.

Had a much lower budget for silver, but got to trial 80 with less than 6 hours remaining.

I'll need to save more gems to have any chance of 2 CTs for gold lol.

What builds are y'all using and planning for gold?

[Rayn]

I’m planning on using a stalker BH for gold - I got to TL100 this time around with more than 3 hours left. I only used gems for unlocking skills and companions, as well as a second upgrade slot so I’m hoping I can do it again!

[Keaven]

Good luck Rayn. I'll see you on that leaderboard .

It will be tough to make trial 100 in gold without many gems so preserve what you can.

[Montresor]

i did arcanist for bronze and dual wield warlord for silver. going back to arcanist for gold. my prime toon is arcanist, so hoping to get at least one more useful piece of gear out of gold. i think if done right TL 100 should be achievable for me with arcanist. finished just outside of top 25 in bronze- didn't spend any gems on crafting crates but got extremely lucky crafting a lvl 77 weapon early on.

planning on going in to gold with enough gems for two legendary crates just in case, and a much better timeline planned for skills development. fingers crossed to crack the top 25 this time.

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

Votes for sticking this thread?

[MtDoom]

Yes. Sticky.

[Asad Butt]

Yes, do it. At least until Gold ends.

[lmcelhiney]

Well... OK.

[Montresor]

Not sure if this is helpful for anyone, but due to 1. my horrific current performance in silver, and 2. not having anything to do in eternium while waiting time for my skills to cook - I started pulling together the costs, level unlocks etc, and a similar list to your second post, for mage in a google doc. The list is still a work in progress as i'll probably amend my exp farming approach to start as ELR mage, leveraging 's work on shatter effects before switching to arcanist at a certain point.

[Keaven]

It seems prohibitively costly to try and switch builds, having too many abilities to upgrade and sets to craft, etc.

I like the ELR build for simplicity and farming, but I just wouldn't be too worried about very high ranking for any event using that build.

[Nhat]

Depending on what you're targeting with this planning thread, it might be worth mentioning doing some research into the class that players want to use, to know what gear and abilities is needed...

With all the mentions of "event time is precious" the one note that is consistently missed by new players is => do NOT push trials too soon, get your levels up to unlock abilities you're going to use, and then level them up BEFORE doing your Trial runs... up to 10 if you can wait, otherwise at least hit a few of the "special boosts" along the way, roughly at level 7 or so...

Don't move up trials too soon as well, if you can clear trials quicker, you'll get more XP and gear for salvage to help with mats for crafting... 2-4 minutes clear time seems to be around the current mark, although I'm leaning more towards less than 2 minutes before moving up now. There's potential consideration for hitting the reward milestones as you unlock them... but don't forget to move back down again afterwards. This obviously change when you do the final push near the end of the event...

Edit:
Just want to clarify that I'm doing the "5 trials jump", and only doing Kara-trials - too lazy to fight the other bosses... therefore minimum "move up" is when I've unlocked the next 5 trials, to get the reward... then drop back and wait for under 2 minutes clear and doing the "5 jump" again...
(end edit)


More experienced and better players than me can add specifics if needed, I've only ever reached TL 100 once or twice, and am happy settling for TL 80 milestone... so, yeah, probably not the best source of gameplay advice...

[Ozymandius]

Nhat - thanks for the tip on why faster complete time in trials is important. In the past, I have lost XP by pushing harder trials not realizing that it is better to complete trials faster.

FYI, for a BH with movement speed on pants and boots and Time Warp, I find Garm to be the preferred boss. He tends to stay in one place, so it is easier to move around him. Plus, he telegraphs his every move with arrows and red circles that can easily be avoided.

[Asad Butt]

That's a good point. With a Stalker BH, I initially farmed at TL 60, which gives at least 1BoL and sometimes a lucky GBoL. Then I moved to 65, 70, and then briefly 75. I even opened up 85 while farming 75 in around 2 mins. I was able to get to a decent CL and had enough mats to craft a push set, and when I was confident I was going to be able to clear TL 100 in my push gear, that is when I went for it. I had just over 2 hours left and from previous experience, I knew it would take me around 40 or so mins to clear TL 100. I put on 40 mins of boosters from the Tavern but it took me only 17 mins to clear TL 100 starting from 85.

Then I took Keaven's advice above and farmed some more so I could get a couple of good pieces of gear out of Silver to my main. Wasn't lucky enough to get a lvl77 item but I got a couple of 76's but I think I'll call that a win for now

[lmcelhiney]

Kara is my choice as well, though I am really glad she does not have the same attributes inTrials that she does while her three Minions are still alive in The Underground.

[Keaven]

Depending on what you're targeting with this planning thread, it might be worth mentioning doing some research into the class that players want to use, to know what gear and abilities is needed...

The main goal of the topic is to be one place where anyone can discuss strategy/planning for ANB.

This will help newer players to read discussion and advice/answers so most questions they have will already be answered.

...With all the mentions of "event time is precious" the one note that is consistently missed by new players is => do NOT push trials too soon, get your levels up to unlock abilities you're going to use, and then level them up BEFORE doing your Trial runs... up to 10 if you can wait, otherwise at least hit a few of the "special boosts" along the way, roughly at level 7 or so...

Don't move up trials too soon as well, if you can clear trials quicker, you'll get more XP and gear for salvage to help with mats for crafting... 2-4 minutes clear time seems to be around the current mark, although I'm leaning more towards less than 2 minutes before moving up now. There's potential consideration for hitting the reward milestones as you unlock them... but don't forget to move back down again afterwards. This obviously change when you do the final push near the end of the event...

More experienced and better players than me can add specifics if needed, I've only ever reached TL 100 once or twice, and am happy settling for TL 80 milestone... so, yeah, probably not the best source of gameplay advice...

Good advice for sure.

I have found the last two ANBs (Mage and now BH) that I haven't needed to really stop pushing on the way to trial 100 till getting to trial 80/90 to farm as improving gear and CLs can closely match the difficulty curve with efficient gem spending.

[Nhat]

Rayn +5% (from the 1.2.65 release notes) was the value before they changed the Trials difficulties in Nov 2019 - as far as I am aware, we don't know the new scaling values...

[Keaven]

During bronze ANB with around 3,000% XP I raised about 7 CL in trial 80. Did trial 90 after and raised around 14 CL.

[LodWig]

I did test the XP scaling, and published my findings on Discord, during the first quarter of 2020... Summary:
- The XP scaling per kill is still 5% per level;
- The scaling applies only after level 8 (i.e. TL7 and TL8 give the same XP per kill);
- The scaling applies up to TL102 (i.e. TL102 and TL103 gives the same XP per kill).

[Rayn]

I suppose it depends on a lot of factors. Maybe the best thing to do to test would be to run a few trials with 0% xp on your main and record how much experience you gain. I’ll do it today if I have time and let you guys know!

[Rayn]

So I ran a few trials and here’s what I recorded:

I was running with 0 +exp gear and removed my CLs from it as well so 100% EXP

TL 80: before boss -1.388M

Total: 1.571M

TL 85: before boss-1.779M

Total: 2.019M

TL 90:before boss- 2.29M

Total: 2.59M

TL 95:before boss- 2.82M

Total: 3.21M

TL 100:before boss- 3.71M

Total: 4.21M

Based on this it seems to scale linearly from 80-95, with 95-100 being a big jump. You can see that from 80-85 it’s an increase of 450k, 85-90 571k, 90-95 620k, and 95-100 is +1M

I know it’s a small sample size and there may be fluctuations, but you should be able to work out a rough formula based on time required to complete.

For example: if TL 80 takes you 120 seconds, that’s around 13k XP per second. If TL 85 takes 180 seconds, that’s only 11.2k XP per second, so you should run TL 80.

[Nhat]

Keaven yeah, TL90 have 1.628... times the xp as TL80, so 160% or less in term of completion time to make it worth it...

[MetalMan]

Many thanks for the info. The biggest surprise for me is that you get better XP/minute when you DON'T kill the boss. Apparently farming XP in trials with killing a boss was my biggest mistake in Bronze and Silver (combined with some other mistakes, of course), so I barely made it into top500 both times o_O

[LodWig]

Based on previous data tracking, mobs and bosses give a fixed amount of XP, scaled to the Trial level, it's not dependent on the Hero's level...

I guess you mean it does not depend on the toon's champion level. It does depend on the toon's hero level (the level that starts at 1 for a new toon and max at 70).

More precisely, it depends on the difference between the hero level and the foe level.

When both are equal, the base XP per kill is three times the level (for common foes, elites give five times the XP from commons, and bosses five times the XP from elites). When the foe level is 7 more than the hero level, the XP per kill is doubled. It is not increased beyond that. When the foe level is below the hero level, the XP given diminishes quickly (about halved for a difference of four levels).

(Caveat: roundings are done at various steps, so some ratios given above are approximate. For example, a level 70 hero earn 1 XP per kill of level 10 commons and 9 XP per kill of level 10 elites.)

[Montresor]

Keaven - agreed in principle about being costly to switch builds.

but i wonder if, given the two primary constraints - play time, and calendar time, does the clock time gained from increasing shatter power early outweigh the calendar time cost of the leveling? (resources can be bought if you've got gems or money)

on the east coast, silver started at 2:00 pm saturday. So, does committing Saturday afternoon, or even Saturday overnight, to level a couple of extra skills up to 6 or 7 provide enough power to gain enough savings in playtime to be worthwhile, and at what level is the cutoff?

i created a new mage to test out how powerful level 6 & 7 shatter skills are for trial running to level up to character level 70. cooking the skills right now.

[Keaven]

I'm sure it could be done, my point is that it's not worth the extra cost for a few medals. Better to just push with ELR gear after maximising XP farming. Decent rank will still be made.

[Rayn]

So I’m stuck on TL109, only tried it once with my BH, Egwene, couldn’t beat the boss. I am only at CL1100 ish, been running XP gear the whole event (except jewelry). I’m staring at the leaderboards with 30 mins left on my timer trying to figure out how all of these guys in the top 25 got to 18-1900 CL. They don’t have any XP on their pushing gear. Did they farm with full xp gear and then recraft a dmg set? I feel like they had to. Is that even possible without spending an insane amount of gems?
I’m trying to make a plan for gold, I think it’s reasonable for me to hit TL100 for the celestials, but want to make sure I’m doing it right.

Here’s what I’m thinking on a 4K gem budget:
1. get to town, unlock second upgrade slot, start upgrading skills in real time for a couple days without leveling at all.
2. unlock companion slots, a few rows of inventory
3. buy XP booster and gold booster, play story to level 10
4. Craft full green/blue XP gear, using gems for jewelry.
5. farm trials to level 70, crafting new XP gear every 10 levels. Wait until I can clear each trial in under 2.5 mins before moving up.
6. hopefully I can get to level 70 in under 60 mins. Save all +gold gear along the way.
7. Craft blue assault gold farming gear, buy another gold booster and spend 30 mins farming severed mountain. Should get around 4-5 million gold
8. craft legendary weapons, integralas mantle. Xp, ability, CR, CD.
9. Finish act 1 to get robin
10. at this point I should have 4hours + remaining. Go back to trials, farm to TL60, still 2.5 min rule but now jumping 5 levels when I move up to stay on Kara. Use epic boxes to complete a stalker set. Xp, ability, haste/power(whatever is best based on other stats). Craft legendary stalker pieces as able to fill open slots/upgrade worst items.
11. as I get legendary ephemeral jewelry, make it XP, CR, CD, and ability/power/vit
12. wait for all skills to be level 7+
13. Farm to TL80, using XP boosters the entire time, then farm 80 for a long time to maximize crafting mats
14. when all skills are level 9 with rapid fire, lethal shot and snipe all at 10, push to TL 100.
15. drop back to whatever level I can do in 2 mins, try to craft 2 77s.

what do you guys think? Any tweaks needed for efficiency?

[Stusmith50]

Point to consider - during ANB the mobs in story level with you, so you get more XP from them, and the story boss (eg TBD, Defiler) will be tougher than normal IF you have levelled up. This is where the trials Vs story discussion comes from during ANB.

[Coldet]

Other than the movement bonus, I’m not sure I understand why you would waste MoT’s on assault gold farming gear.

[Rayn]

Blue assault gear is only 1 MoT each, and I will only need 4 pieces for move speed. I think it really helps with the first 20 runs of SM. With ANB gold having only 6 hours on the event timer, every minute is precious!

[Keaven]

Needs crafting materials earlier I suspect. Gear is going to be the limiting factor.

I think it's going to be tough to make TL 100 in 6 hrs without good weapons from the get go at least.

So far it seems to me that the most significant impact on scaling up is being able to craft good gear as soon level 70 hits.

For gold my focus is going to be unlocking all research slots, and at least 2 legendary crafting crates at 70. And gems for gold to save time.

[Montresor]

My plan includes buying the $9.99 bundle with a few crafting crates, a little gold, and some exp boosters. I play this game more than my PlayStation anymore so I don't mind supporting them a little bit, and that's a big boost early on.

Everything in there could be done with around 1500 gems though too - 3*200 for exp, 5*100 for the crates and some for the gold and skill leveling

[Ozymandius]

Keaven - The lower costs of crafting makes it possible to craft decent gear as soon as you hit level 70, which sort of makes the EE gear boxes useless for anything other than building an XP/XG farming set. I was fully stacked with a full set of Legendary gear before I ever got the first EE box reward.

I ended up spending gems on the Legendary crafting box in my elusive quest for a weapon worthy of the CT. My best weapon was a level 76, but I still had to run a lot of TL80+ runs to the end to get enough gear drops for crafting (which is less efficient for XP farming).

[Keaven]

Which is why I recommend getting at least 1 legendary crate as soon as hitting level 70 Ozymandius . Rather than doing it at the end, you get maximum benefit from the gear crafted before grinding and improved odds of crafting elusive lvl 77 items.

[Rayn]

I might do a legendary crafting crate, but in silver I did not buy one and was still able to clear TL100 in under 6 hours, using level 75 and 74 weapons. We shall see!

[Keaven]

I've updated the OP for any new players joining the discussion.

[NoSuchReality]

Caveat to step #1, level up the starting attack and starting utility to level 4. That's 55 minutes if I remember correctly. Then do a run to unlock more things to level up. There's a sweet spot there somewhere depending on class and play style for having the two attacks and the two core abilities you want to use early to then take the pause to level those up with time to say level 7.

[Keaven]

When and how to upgrade abilities depends largely on class and build so I've been petty general about that.

Leveling to unlock abilities to research doesn't burn much time so it's not overly important so long as leveling is efficient.