Phearos's search for rare loot: A Marvel Heroes blog: By reason of Insanity

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

Boy was he ever right about that.

I'm a Marvel Heroes player. Some of you might have seen me around in game by the name of Phearos. Its a very entertaining game for me and I'm not afraid to say that I love it. Like every game it has its ups and downs but Gazillion, the company that makes Marvel Heroes, is doing a fantastic job of minimizing the downs and consistently handing out the ups. In that regard its becoming a fantastic game all around and I encourage anyone reading this who hasn't tried it to check it out.

Marvel Heroes is an Action Role Playing Game or ARPG for short. Part of the ARPG game design is to constantly strive for the best equipment you can slap onto your character to make them the deadliest, tankiest, or fastest character you can. This involves doing what is known in the gaming community as farming. Farming is a weird slang term in this context. You as the player are not actually growing anything. You as the player are doing the same content over and over again and hoping what you want falls out of the boss' or specific mob's pockets and into yours. Its repetitive, its tedious, its doing the same thing over and over again and expecting diffe. . . .yep. . . you as the player are insane.

As a Marvel Heroes player, now referred to as "MH", I want the best I can get for my character or characters. MH has a 30 character roster but I only really play two or three. How does one go about finding the best equipment, now referred to as "loot", for one's character of choice? Why you kill/defeat/knockout enemies in the game for a chance to drop loot. The best loot drops of specific enemies or a least it can. MH has a tendency to drop loot off of everything. Looked at a pigeon wrong, drops loot. Kicked over that trash can, drops loot. Another player two screens over kills a pack of enemies, drops loot for you.

Specific loot comes from specific enemies. Say you're looking for a sweet, sweet item called Gem of the Kursed. Where does it drop? Simple research leads us to Odin's Palace and a boss called Kurse. Or as all the other people in MH farming him for his loot, Kurse You Because You'll Never Get It. He's a jerk. More research tells us that there's a .5% drop rate on Gem of the Kursed. That's per defeat. Always half of a percent. That's ridiculous. No one in their right mind would keep trying you might say to yourself and you would be right. Farming for loot is insanity. Keeping track of that effort is insane too. Hi. I'm insane apparently.

This blog is about the journey and time it takes to get such a rare item. Times defeated will be tracked, items gained while besting Kurse will be tracked, actual time spent not so much because only so much info needs to be tracked that removes motivation from the end goal.

That my friends is what I'm looking for. Now I could probably cheat and trade for one but that's not really earning it. Its a shortcut and this blog would be done by the time I hit publish for the first time. I will put in the hopefully not depressingly long time to earn my own and then we're done. . . .just kidding. Then we're off to another abysmally small drop rate on another piece of equipment! Wooo!

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein