Most merits per hour?

[Glacier Peak]

Yeah, forgive me. I'm going to be that poster who asks a question that is likely found on the Wiki or by searching the forums. I promise I read those, but I wasn't satisfied with what I read. For those in the know:

 

What is the content that grants the most merit rewards per hour? Is it a static amount?

 

I know Hami gives a nice fat amount, what 80 then 80, 40, then continues to diminish, right? But what I'm talking about is a consistent merit reward every time, all the time. The closest I've found is via Ouroboros. 

 

And can someone please explain the wacky formula the Homecoming team uses for calculating what should be the amount of merits rewarded?

 

Are Giant Monsters separated from this formula?

 

Okay that's all my questions, thanks!

 

Edit: So far I am reading the following:

 

Hamidon Raids - Outlier

Apex/Tin Mage - Outlier

 

Edited March 24 by Glacier Peak

[ZorkNemesis]

I recall hearing that you could speedrun Twilight's Son's arc to get a lot of merits quickly.  I don't know how true that is though.

[Glacier Peak]

27 minutes ago, ZorkNemesis said:

I recall hearing that you could speedrun Twilight's Son's arc to get a lot of merits quickly.  I don't know how true that is though.

Ah, so looking at the wiki, it's saying Twilight Son's Task/Strike Force grants 7 Merit Rewards and takes less than an hour. 

 

That might be an easy one, but it's not what I think is top of the merit reward list if Hami is the benchmark for gains.

[Lunar Ronin]

50 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Ah, so looking at the wiki, it's saying Twilight Son's Task/Strike Force grants 7 Merit Rewards and takes less than an hour. 

 

That might be an easy one, but it's not what I think is top of the merit reward list if Hami is the benchmark for gains.

 

Hamidon raid is an extreme outlier and honestly needs to be either made significantly more difficult to account for how much more powerful Homecoming characters are compared to live, or have its rewards nerfed.

 

Outside of Hamidon raids, the next highest would be Apemage, (or Tinpex as some call it).  That's an outlier as well, but not as egregious as a Hamidon raid.

[Glacier Peak]

32 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Hamidon raid is an extreme outlier and honestly needs to be either made significantly more difficult to account for how much more powerful Homecoming characters are compared to live, or have its rewards nerfed.

 

Outside of Hamidon raids, the next highest would be Apemage, (or Tinpex as some call it).  That's an outlier as well, but not as egregious as a Hamidon raid.

Tinpex looks to be about 80 total Merit Rewards. Not sure how long a run would take, maybe an hour, but I'm imagining having a solid team is needed, or at the least more than one person since they are Incarnate Trials, correct?

[Lunar Ronin]

3 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Tinpex looks to be about 80 total Merit Rewards. Not sure how long a run would take, maybe an hour, but I'm imagining having a solid team is needed, or at the least more than one person since they are Incarnate Trials, correct?

 

They're not Incarnate trials, just regular co-op Task Forces.  I'd say an average speed run would take about 35-40 minutes.  Half that for a very good speed run team.  I've done it with only four people several times, which averaged about a hour IIRC.  But it wasn't a PUG group and the other three were all really good players, better than I am.

[Glacier Peak]

2 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

They're not Incarnate trials, just regular co-op Task Forces.  I'd say an average speed run would take about 35-40 minutes.  Half that for a very good speed run team.  I've done it with only four people several times, which averaged about a hour IIRC.  But it wasn't a PUG group and the other three were all really good players, better than I am.

Ah, thanks for the baseline. So 80 Merit Rewards for 40 minutes of effort with a team of 4 would be near the outlier with Hami then? 

[Magical]

I run these often on excel, a speed tinpex is 24-27 mins with another 3-7 mins needed for recruitment. You need to include the recruiting time to compare group TF's with solo ones, it's time you can't use productively.

 

Each TF of tinpex should be 12-13 mins with an average pug team, if they're bad it goes up to 15+ mins, if they're really good it can be <10 mins, the fastest I've seen is a 9:08 apex. These are all pugs, I don't do dedicated speed teams with premades, I'm sure those can push it even lower.

[SuperPlyx]

So it has been awhile but I seem to remember used to do SSA Who will Die? episode 1,contact Theoden , it about 20 minutes -ish and it will give 20merits. But can only be done once a week for that much. Of course you can repeat for the normal 5 merits and other reward

[Glacier Peak]

3 minutes ago, SuperPlyx said:

So it has been awhile but I seem to remember used to do SSA Who will Die? episode 1,contact Theoden , it about 20 minutes -ish and it will give 20merits. But can only be done once a week for that much. Of course you can repeat for the normal 5 merits and other reward

Ah I remember that one too. Pretty fast, decent merit rewards and a player can run it solo. 

[SuperPlyx]

Yeah I should have mentioned it's best run solo if you want to run it fast

[Ukase]

For me, I look at the SSA out of Skyway, Who Will Die part 1 as a fairly simple - across all characters that are over level 10, assuming your 50 is using attuned sets or heck, even if not. 
The problem with the SSA #1 is, there's a limit to the rewards, right? 

I do think Ouro is the path for consistent, speedy merits. 
Which arc will vary with your level and playstyle. 
The Unlucky Artifact, if you have stealth and can clobber Tavaris fairly quickly, before the aggro from the surrounding CoT gets to you - it's literally a 90 second mission, if that - for 2 merits. If you use your SG base with a pillar, rather than using Ouro, and assuming your base is designed with speed in mind, I think it would be faster than using an ouro portal, completing, resetting, and teleporting to the mission. With the temp sg portal, you'd come out at the same spot as the mission, I'm pretty sure. I haven't been after merits/minute since the first year HC opened up. Still, for most higher dps characters, that's 2 merits every 2 minutes, roughly. 

I learned something going for Loop Hero badge. It's a 20 merit arc. And it took me about 20-25 minutes the first time because I'd never run it before. But by the time I got to the last run to get the badge, it was only 12 minutes. Now, that's not as fast as some of my faster times with the SSA#1, but it's close. And it doesn't diminish - at least, it didn't after the last run. (need 4 or 5 runs to get the badge, depending on whether or not you knew you needed to do things differently. I hadn't read about the badge, I thought it was a run and done type deal. ) 

Still, that's not too shabby. There is a lot more need for mission transports, and the lrtp is certainly useful, because there's one mission in it that requires you to go to Striga to talk to M1dway.  But - it doesn't allow for a lower level character to take advantage of the rep scheme. 

I don't know that there's a universally accepted merits/minute winner across all levels. 
But for a level 50, solo,  I kind of like the Noble Intentions arc - 20 merits for 12 minutes - if you exclude the Hami runs in the abyss- which still take time because you have to enter the zone early to ensure you get a spot. It's still worth it, but I don't think those wait times are a part of most peoples merit/minute calculation. And Apex/Tin Mage combo - some might think these are guaranteed simple, both done in less than 30 minutes. That's not always true. Some teams just don't have the juice, believe it or not. Most will, but certainly not all are efficient at speeding them. A lot of players avoid the speedy stuff for reasons of their own. So, again, there's sometimes longer recruiting times than you might think. 





 

Edited March 24 by Ukase

[Bionic_Flea]

Dr Q when it's the weekly, on a team that each has all the TPs.  244 merits in about an hour yielding approximately four merits per minute (MPM).  It can be done solo as there is no AV at the end, but that adds a little bit of time as your various TPs will have some cooldowns.   General rule of thumb:  always run the weekly!

 

In comparison, a very fast TinPex will get you about 2 MPM

 

Aeon, ITF, Recluse, and Ms Liberty can all be sped in 30 minutes or less to average a merit per minute.  But you can also get HOs with LRSF and MLTF, and run a one star for Aeon and ITF for extra Aether but adding a little more time.

 

My friend used to solo run The Freakshow War in 10-15 for 57 merits.  Eight missions but only one three kill-alls.  I think once you learn it anyone can match those times solo and low settings.  So that could be 3.8 -5.7 MPM solo.  Not too shabby!

 

Edited March 25 by Bionic_Flea

[Glacier Peak]

5 minutes ago, Ukase said:

For me, I look at the SSA out of Skyway, Who Will Die part 1 as a fairly simple - across all characters that are over level 10, assuming your 50 is using attuned sets or heck, even if not. 
The problem with the SSA #1 is, there's a limit to the rewards, right? 

I do think Ouro is the path for consistent, speedy merits. 
Which arc will vary with your level and playstyle. 
The Unlucky Artifact, if you have stealth and can clobber Tavaris fairly quickly, before the aggro from the surrounding CoT gets to you - it's literally a 90 second mission, if that - for 2 merits. If you use your SG base with a pillar, rather than using Ouro, and assuming your base is designed with speed in mind, I think it would be faster than using an ouro portal, completing, resetting, and teleporting to the mission. With the temp sg portal, you'd come out at the same spot as the mission, I'm pretty sure. I haven't been after merits/minute since the first year HC opened up. Still, for most higher dps characters, that's 2 merits every 2 minutes, roughly. 

I learned something going for Loop Hero badge. It's a 20 merit arc. And it took me about 20-25 minutes the first time because I'd never run it before. But by the time I got to the last run to get the badge, it was only 12 minutes. Now, that's not as fast as some of my faster times with the SSA#1, but it's close. And it doesn't diminish - at least, it didn't after the last run. (need 4 or 5 runs to get the badge, depending on whether or not you knew you needed to do things differently. I hadn't read about the badge, I thought it was a run and done type deal. ) 

Still, that's not too shabby. There is a lot more need for mission transports, and the lrtp is certainly useful, because there's one mission in it that requires you to go to Striga to talk to M1dway.  But - it doesn't allow for a lower level character to take advantage of the rep scheme. 

I don't know that there's a universally accepted merits/minute winner across all levels. 
But for a level 50, solo,  I kind of like the Noble Intentions arc - 20 merits for 12 minutes - if you exclude the Hami runs in the abyss- which still take time because you have to enter the zone early to ensure you get a spot. It's still worth it, but I don't think those wait times are a part of most peoples merit/minute calculation. And Apex/Tin Mage combo - some might think these are guaranteed simple, both done in less than 30 minutes. That's not always true. Some teams just don't have the juice, believe it or not. Most will, but certainly not all are efficient at speeding them. A lot of players avoid the speedy stuff for reasons of their own. So, again, there's sometimes longer recruiting times than you might think. 
 

Loop Hero has been my go to as well. I've managed to get it down to 7 minutes a run for 20 Merit Rewards. That's a sustainable amount too, all solo, and aside from having to travel to Brickstown and Port Oakes, it's an easy story arc. 

[lemming]

Placeholder for SSAs.

 

I don't think the restriction is in place as it was in live, but I did run into a bit of it on the red side version of Pandora.  I have a couple tests to run later today

 

Alright, at least if you  run Pandora 1-4 Blue, then Red 1-5.  Blue 1-4, 20 merits each, but when you do the red, the 4x option is not available.  Going back to Blue 1, you don't.

 

Mext test will be running Blue 1 twice in a row.  (about 15 min each)

Edited March 24 by lemming
more data

[lemming]

Ok, Pandora's Box first Arc, you can just keep repeating the blue side version for 20 merits.   15 min if you are efficient, but not rushing.

Heck, I think most of it is waiting on cut scenes...

 

Off to a bug report...

 

Another merit farm that is available during Halloween is the GM hunt since the GMs spawn right after one is taken down and with Incan, it can be pretty lucrative.

[Hedgefund]

If I were to be a merit hunter, I'd probably do Shauna Braun's arc.  It's easily over 2MPM (20 merits, <10 minutes).  Most importantly, I'd bring another account(s) along.  Generally I find each account adds, let's say 5-10% more time for double (or triple) the rewards.

[RCU7115]

Learn to triple box and watch those merits come flowing in.

150-165 merits an hour through the Ouroboros.

[Jiro Ito]

Four Star Aeon, has many more AVs for the bonus merits than ITF or LGTF.

90 minutes on a good team

60 merits + emp merit + 20 aether + 10 aether for vanguard + 9 merits per AV (25 including optional = 225) + 15 merits for Ripplesurge* + the DSync enhancement

*I counted the number of AVs on my fingers so margin for error

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Tinpex is great, at 40 merits per 15 minutes or 120 an hour if you alternate characters, plus the incarnate salvage.  WST Dr. Q at 244 is great.  Hami is 80 per 20 minutes on Torchbearer if you alternate characters, estimated, or 240 per hour, accounting for setup and clear time.

 

All of which require good teams and planning.  If you just want to blaze through some stuff solo, Ouro is the way to go.

[Oklahoman]

On 3/23/2024 at 9:25 PM, Glacier Peak said:

I know Hami gives a nice fat amount, what 80 then 80, 40, then continues to diminish, right?

 

80 for your first run (18 hr CD I believe) then 40 for each additional run - per character. So, if you dare alt between runs you could theoretically get 80 per run. On Excelsior, at least, I wouldn't recommend that because the zone tends to stay full and you might not be able to get back in.

 

The most I have run in a row so far is 7 and that took about an hour. Had you stuck with the same character all 7 runs you should have got 320 reward merits. If you managed to successfully alt between each run and get back in zone, you could have theoretically got 560 merits.

 

Realistically, I can say it is hard to keep my core group together for more than 4 runs usually - we all got stuff to do. So most times our group tends to do 3-5 runs each time.

 

PSA: According to the Multiboxing Policy: "An exception to this rule is Hamidon raid zones (The Hive, The Abyss) which have a limited population cap. No multiboxing is allowed in these zones. Breaking this rule may result in all of your characters being removed from the zone and short-term suspensions being issued for repeat offenders"

[Glacier Peak]

7 minutes ago, Jiro Ito said:

Four Star Aeon, has many more AVs for the bonus merits than ITF or LGTF.

90 minutes on a good team

60 merits + emp merit + 20 aether + 10 aether for vanguard + 9 merits per AV (25 including optional = 225) + 15 merits for Ripplesurge* + the DSync enhancement

*I counted the number of AVs on my fingers so margin for error

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Tinpex is great, at 40 merits per 15 minutes or 120 an hour if you alternate characters, plus the incarnate salvage.  WST Dr. Q at 244 is great.  Hami is 80 per 20 minutes on Torchbearer if you alternate characters, estimated, or 240 per hour, accounting for setup and clear time.

 

All of which require good teams and planning.  If you just want to blaze through some stuff solo, Ouro is the way to go.

Thanks for pointing this out, I forgot about the added merits for defeating the AVs!

[RCU7115]

14 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

 

80 for your first run (18 hr CD I believe) then 40 for each additional run - per character. So, if you dare alt between runs you could theoretically get 80 per run. On Excelsior, at least, I wouldn't recommend that because the zone tends to stay full and you might not be able to get back in.

 

The most I have run in a row so far is 7 and that took about an hour. Had you stuck with the same character all 7 runs you should have got 320 reward merits. If you managed to successfully alt between each run and get back in zone, you could have theoretically got 560 merits.

 

Realistically, I can say it is hard to keep my core group together for more than 4 runs usually - we all got stuff to do. So most times our group tends to do 3-5 runs each time.

 

PSA: According to the Multiboxing Policy: "An exception to this rule is Hamidon raid zones (The Hive, The Abyss) which have a limited population cap. No multiboxing is allowed in these zones. Breaking this rule may result in all of your characters being removed from the zone and short-term suspensions being issued for repeat offenders"

If your are multiboxing in a raid zone you are doing it wrong even if the policy  was allowed by the dev team, which it is not.

[Oklahoman]

1 hour ago, RCU7115 said:

Learn to triple box and watch those merits come flowing in.

 

I wasn't recommending multiboxing in a raid zone, to be clear. I was writing my reply when I saw yours above and thought I should clarify that you should NOT multibox in a raid zone. I know your reply was in reference to multiboxing through Ouro, which is different. Just didn't want to confuse others in my reply.

Edited March 25 by Oklahoman

[Zect]

For the best rewards in this game, you often have to multibox, which throws off a lot of the calculations and makes some options less good than they seem. You usually don’t multibox tinpex for example (the above numbers all seem to be for a team of 8 active players). You can’t multibox hami though I recall back when I last did it that was all the rage - maybe that’s why they changed the policy. You usually don’t multibox a 4* aeon and in a pug there is a small chance of it not completing or the team being unable to kill the 8 vanguard heroes. I personally prefer 4* ITF though, it’s shorter, easier, more reliably completed (no optional encounter) and you can speed it in 30 mins if you know what you’re doing. 
 

But you can triplebox a Dr Q when it’s the WST. What does me logging in my trio of accounts on a server with 3 red dots add to the game experience or the community? I don’t know, but Homecoming team generously encourages me with this reward structure so I’m glad to play along. 

[tidge]

Open-world multi-boxing is, IMO, kind of a jerk move. There is no need to multi-box MMs through Giant Monster hunts IMO, when a solo MM can finish off any  Giant Monster in 5-minutes or less (with or without using Incarnate powers). I see why players do it, but it strikes me as the height of laziness... especially when I see triple-box MMs  leaving behind level-less spawns in places like the Grim Vale. Multi-Box behind instanced missions... if there are some specific open-world rewards a player wants, just team up!

 

As for my best guess at what the "design goal" is for Merits-per-unit-time, I'd say the goal appears to be roughly: no better than 1 Merit for 90 seconds of (solo) repeatable (i.e. no timed gates) play. There are obvious outliers(*1)... and different ATs can do certain content at different speeds, with or without exemplaring. We've seen changes to the way the conversions work (Vanguard, Empyrian) when it has appeared that the conversions were making merits "too easy" to get, per the (unwritten) rules of Merit acquisition.

 

I am of the opinion that it is a good thing to have repeatable content for useful, fungible rewards... and that the HC team has done a pretty good job of keeping rewards for time-played mostly level.

 

(*1) Weekly targets are obviously a special case, as are other league/team-inspired content.