All the tips and tricks about Ancient Power Resets.

Recently we are having an influx of new players, and many questions regarding Ancient Power system. I've spent so time putting together all the tips, gathered from experiences of many many vet players, who have gone through many AP resets. 

 

1. hit floor 80-100 before AP, preferably floor 100, so that u can get to min asc 1000, with which u can climb to f80 w/o much trouble, with pickup relics / tradable relics

 

2. After step 1, prior to c7, use wtv u pick up. The power from 1000 asc is 3~7 times of your asc power when u first progressed through expedition. That high ascension will allow u to blast thru everything under C7 with according tier relics.

 

3. Prepare a set of tradable relics with proper mods on. Keep in mind mod level and relic stat don't matter as much as the mods themselves, so don't stress yourself out trying to get 1% extra more on the stat. Suggestions are to prepare 5 relics: magic AOE; physical AOE; magic single; physical single; frost-mobs, so u have all mutators in onslaught covered, to eliminate re-rolling and achieve max AP efficiency.

 

4. Sell the set of relics used prior to next AP, since campaign gears worth much less than C7 once u reset( 100-200k per piece for red-tier MODs are good price to sell ). Utilize look-for-trade in Discord, and/or forum, and/or market place, to ensure that - by the time u reach c7, or f60 (if u start w/ f50) again, u have seller(s) to buy some good relics from, for your reset push (150-250k per piece for red-tier MODs are good price to buy). Ofc, this step is not needed at all if u can progress using wtv u pick up already. 

 

5. To maximize efficiency on gold, except for defense rate, many shards do not need to be max-upgrade to be effective, such as deadly strike, destruction, etc. If u have gilded campaign shards like critical damage etc, u can swap those in place of destruction, in early floors 60-, to save gold. When u do many AP, small gold add up

 

6. Prepare enough gold for each reset. Do a rough calculation before u AP. A good rule of thumb number is to have 10-20m available before u AP. When u start, u will need 2m for shard upgrades (assume u have no gilded rate etc), later on when approaching AP30, u will need 3 to 4 sets, which is 3-4m per AP. Although the more u AP, the more gold u get from maps and from bonus. To avoid too much math, just prepare 10-20m if u plan to go for 20AP+  【if u have gilded shards, just take the corresponding amount of gold off from the recommended gold per AP; after 15 ish AP, u will start gaining gold. 】Once u go past 15 ish AP (forgot exact number), u will start gaining gold instead of losing, so no point to prepare more gold than the recommended amount. 

 

7. If u r a new/unlucky player, this won't apply to u, since u won't have anything to upgrade back up if u done ur first round of AP. For people who have relics with at least 3 9/10s, make sure u prepare enough gold and material to bring those relics back up, if u plan to do so after u done AP. If u have anything under 9/10, 90% the time it's more cost-effective to just buy new ones and re-tinker. Considering the cost to up a single relic from campaign to c7 is 2m + motes, which normally turn out to be 4-5m. MODs lower than 9/10 mostly not worth the price. 

 

8. Ancient Power system is only powerful when they are done multiple times. IMHO, 15-20+. it's not worth the trouble if u don't plan to play the game for long, and don't plan to go for more than 15 APs at a time. So make sure u willing to spend at least 30-40 hours on AP to get at least 15 APs in. If u are not efficient at building maps, calculate in a factor of safety, and decide whether u willing to spend 50-60 hrs on AP to get the benefit of 15+ AP. 

 

9. It's a great time to try out different things while u AP if u relatively new, and learn as much as possible about the game. Since the difficulty will stay low, gradually increase, then stay the same throughout all AP resets, it provides great opportunity to experiment with diff defenses, diff combo, diff strat, and find out what u like the best. (This can only apply when u have done step 1 ~ 4 properly)

 

10. At the end of the day, the game is for fun. Doing it the efficient way, may or may not always be the way u enjoy it. So if u find any of above suggestions doesn't suit your play style, and have found a way that u enjoy AP more, by all means, go for it.

 

Hope this can help players with questions regarding Ancient Power

Enjoy the game.

 

(if u think I missed something, feel free to DM me, and I will update the post)

Edited June 14, 2019 by hailminion
Step 4 adjusted, per comments.

Step 4 is pretty shady... Cheating the system really shouldn't be part of the "directions". To me this is just a great example of why resets need to stop resetting all gear. 

Rest is great info. 

4 hours ago, Jaws_420 said:

Step 4 is pretty shady

tbh I don't consider that cheating, although I did think abt that before. AP resetting gear is so that when we progress again, we still feel the challenge, otherwise we'd be one shotting everything. Tradable relics are still from natural drops w/o tinker, at a power level matching difficulty, fitting game design's intention. 

For ppl who don't wanna "cheat", they of course are welcome to find buyers to sell relics for a fair price before AP again ( say 1m total ). After c7 when they need new relics, they can spend some money ( maybe total 1.5m ), and buy some good relics from other players who don't need those or wanna make money off of. 

Admittedly, there are economical benefits for the latter, for the community as far as currency/loot flow. At the great scheme of thing though, I didn't think doing the latter would contribute noticeable significance, (in other words don't really do whole lots more good than the former, for both community and players), and hence the suggestion.  

There's a stupidly simple fix:

• Remove the Expedition Climb from AP.
  From AP#1 make the starting floor Onslaught 27-30 (can't recall which one is C7).
• Remove the Gear & Shard Reset from AP.
  If needed, add a Gold + Mats cost for every AP reset.

You still get the challenge from Climbing Onslaught Floors.
You get to keep the Gold & Mats sink.
You remove the massively negative connotation of invalidating all the gear collected so far.

The only downside to this is that it removes the influx of people in lower Onslaught floors / Expedition Tiers (IMHO good riddance).

I honestly have no idea why this hasn't been executed.

1 hour ago, malf said:

starting floor Onslaught 27-30

Removing 1-27 doesn't do anything.... not like we lose anything doing 1-27. Only difference between doing 5-35 and 30-60 is u start with diff relics, and diff but matching difficulty, they just cancel each other out. 

1 hour ago, malf said:

Remove the Gear & Shard Reset from AP

I spawn kill almost everything under floor 400 if u let me keep my gear, just saying. I know plenty can apply the same for floor 200-. That's a very unfair advantage against average players. Regardless whether u wanna keep AP floor range at 50-80, or raise it to 150-180. 

1 hour ago, malf said:

You get to keep the Gold & Mats sink.

I agree to this, by adding "gold & mat cost" like u suggested. Many end game people at c8 max refuse to reset for this very reason for the absurd amount of mat grind behind. 

1 hour ago, malf said:

I honestly have no idea why this hasn't been executed

Speaking fairly, it sounds like u are a high end player since everything u propose here will benefit us, but not the majority, and that's what the systems mainly balanced on, average players. 

Average players have an easier time doing 1-30 than 50-80, becuz after 30, difficulty scales up while relics stay at a set level. (that's why I suggested up to AP20, since higher implies higher difficulty)

Average players may have just a slightly easier time w/o gear resetting; while we can just spawn kill everything, and increase the gap between us and them further more, instead of everyone standing at same level for the system. 

Average players don't have a bunch 10/10 gears to level back on after AP grind, or a bunch max C8 to worry about, only top players do. 【Average players are lucky when they have 5 pieces of 9/10+ worthy to level back up, which take 8 stack motes, with mat-exchange-system, u get those mat to level back up 5+ gears in just 5 AP, if u do more than 10 AP, u r in a huge surplus more than double. People with more pieces than tht are mostly very very end-game】

Now I'm not saying we don't deserve to be cared about. I'd be thrilled if they do those changes and do take care of us loyal players who've been with DD2 for a long time, but only if they can keep the balance they currently have, instead of slanting a one-for-all system towards end-game players only. After all, CG wants to attract and keep new players. 

Anyway, let's keep AP discussion in another thread, and please leave this thread for its original purpose --- Giving suggestions to new-coming players for Ancient Power. 

Edited June 13, 2019 by hailminion

I don't trade anything i just use what i find as drops and maybe the odd tinker of a relic. You can also do floor 30-40 in campaign gear after reset with starting asc at 1k + I believe there is a video out there of floor 80 in campaign gear no upgrades just ascension based. 

19 hours ago, Jaws_420 said:

Step 4 is pretty shady... Cheating the system really shouldn't be part of the "directions". To me this is just a great example of why resets need to stop resetting all gear. 

Rest is great info. 

I pretty much solo right now, so step 4 won't really apply to me either even if I wanted to.

Got an idea, while I know that some doesn't like gear being locked when AP-ing and it's understandable but what if it's an option presented?

Like a new vault(s) that's designed to protect your gear from resets but locks them until you reached your AP target floor. Or you can keep the gear if you want to utilize your perfect M.O.D.S. but as usual, your gear will downgrade back to Campaign. 

On the other hand, the cost of re-upgrading makes the vault an easy choice for many. Maybe adding to the target floor, some materials is also needed as payment to remove the gear from the vaults? But hey you're gear's still protected right?

Edited June 13, 2019 by Paloverde zfogshooterz

All that explanation but really all you need is lots of gold like 1b ready for expend then you have no trouble otherwise just farm 

12 minutes ago, Neoneo said:

All that explanation but really all you need is lots of gold like 1b ready for expend then you have no trouble otherwise just farm 

The suggestions are so that u don't need to farm for anything :) all mat/gold needed can be gained while progressing normally, by following the "correct" tips and achieve higher efficiency by eliminating farming at all. 

This is a lot of over-thinking.  Just use items that drop. You only need 2-3 mil gold per reset and no mats. Do a bunch of resets, then when ready to climb, you should have enough gold mats to level your good gear. 

And yeah, sending items to a buddy to avoid the reset penalties is shady. 

13 hours ago, Paloverde zfogshooterz said:

I pretty much solo right now, so step 4 won't really apply to me either even if I wanted to.

Got an idea, while I know that some doesn't like gear being locked when AP-ing and it's understandable but what if it's an option presented?

Like a new vault(s) that's designed to protect your gear from resets but locks them until you reached your AP target floor. Or you can keep the gear if you want to utilize your perfect M.O.D.S. but as usual, your gear will downgrade back to Campaign. 

On the other hand, the cost of re-upgrading makes the vault an easy choice for many. Maybe adding to the target floor, some materials is also needed as payment to remove the gear from the vaults? But hey you're gear's still protected right?

The funny thing is that i actually don't mind having to relevel the gear you have on....as much as my pages and pages of vault gear. Even though I'm not even really using it. It's just that...i farmed all thar gear to be at c7. Swapping out, exchanging, farming...lots of time. Just heartbreaking to think of all of it reverting to campaign. Makes me 😥

16 hours ago, hailminion said:

The suggestions are so that u don't need to farm for anything :) all mat/gold needed can be gained while progressing normally, by following the "correct" tips and achieve higher efficiency by eliminating farming at all. 

No farming on gold either, like I said if you have minimum of at least 1B it’s just smoother ride

@Jaws_420 @Rentard step 4 adjusted per comments

1 hour ago, Neoneo said:

No farming on gold either, like I said if you have minimum of at least 1B it’s just smoother ride

normally it takes players average 1~1.5 month to reach floor 100, due to huge learning curve and lack of knowledge at the beginning. It's generally very hard for players, one month in the game, to earn 1 billion gold w/o specific farming or extreme lucks. I can see where u are coming from if everyone around u has pretty good luck and get 1 billion gold shortly after entering the game. I still hold the believe however, that majority of players don't cap their gold in DD2 with just couple months in the game. Besides, having more than 10-20m b4 resetting won't really benefit u much at all. 1 bil will just sit there, and u still end up spending 10-20m top following steps. 

Edited June 14, 2019 by hailminion

I start resets with about 15mil I have 60mil now. Again just use drops and the most important step get the highest start Asc possible before starting.

Nice. I didn't mean it as a complaint against the thread btw...more of a commentary on how the process is broken by design. The fact there is an exploit to avoid gear resetting, yet reset process still wipes gear is a contradiction to me. I think it's very lame that a mule buddy for resets is so beneficial...

Great thread. If i ever reset, saving this as my guide.

Edited June 14, 2019 by Jaws_420

1 hour ago, hailminion said:

@Jaws_420 @Rentard step 4 adjusted per comments

normally it takes players average 1~1.5 month to reach floor 100, due to huge learning curve and lack of knowledge at the beginning. It's generally very hard for players, one month in the game, to earn 1 billion gold w/o specific farming or extreme lucks. I can see where u are coming from if everyone around u has pretty good luck and get 1 billion gold shortly after entering the game. I still hold the believe however, that majority of players don't cap their gold in DD2 with just couple months in the game. Besides, having more than 10-20m b4 resetting won't really benefit u much at all. 1 bil will just sit there, and u still end up spending 10-20m top following steps. 

I’m not sure how you get your statistics # of hours of play time and achieve goals, but if it’s base on personal experience then everyone is different since some of us play different # of hours plus personal experience is significantly different from statistics, which a series of test factors. All I mentioned was if some individuals had that amount of gp then it has a significant advantage compare to some players that has limited. 

I just did my first reset, and got to floor 30. I am just wondering how far past 30 I need to go to improve my minimum ascendancy level.

I am gaining about 20ish levels each reset so ideally if I can up my minimum ascendancy by 20-30 each reset I would be saving quite a few lost ascendancy levels.

22 hours ago, Zimmermann said:

I am just wondering how far past 30 I need to go to improve my minimum ascendancy level

Min asc is affected ONLY by highest floor and highest asc achieved EVER. so u don't wanna waste your time pushing for min asc every time u AP. U wanna limit ur push as few as possible (min asc is your focus on push, not on AP), preferably once or twice. While doing AP, u wanna get to only the minimum requirement needed to AP, and do not look at your min asc or talent cap gain, turning AP spam into a push. 

Edited June 16, 2019 by hailminion

I’m at ascension 342, floor 63. I’m tempted to reset at around floor 70. Most maps I have to reroll a lot of times and struggle getting through.

That would reset me 160 ascension over my current for approx 2000 Defense Power. So 10 resets should be easy before pushing again.

I’m not sure it makes sense to upgrade my gear to C8 and use lots of resources on that to push towards floor 100.

 

6 hours ago, Duane01 said:

I’m at ascension 342, floor 63. I’m tempted to reset at around floor 70.

You don't need C8 for floor 100 many people i know are well past 250 with no AP and a few c8 on some key relics. At a certain point you have to go to Floor 80 every time for reset. I would suggest going to at least floor 100 the  First reset as the first 20 AP are pretty easy. After that it would be rebuild and push higher to at least 265 at which point you should have 3k min asc on next reset. 

OR just do all the resets at once but its to floor 80 every time. I actually did 55 to 76 yesterday in 7 casual hours with just c7 drop relics. Currently at Ap 35 with min asc of 3100 i went to floor 263 for reset. 

Here's an alternative if you're really into the game and want an alt account for farming anyway.

 

Create a secondary account. (Easier on console, but doable on PC without that much more work as well.)

Spend the couple of bucks to max bags, and if you're feeling lazy, EV2.

Use your primary account to carry your secondary account up to C7. (Play 3-4 of each Chaos tier, auto equip the gear on one character until you have the gear score to do the next, or upgrade gear with gold, until C7).

Farm the ever-loving crap out of C7 until your alt account has reasonable relics for just enough builds to handle floor 80 and under. (This isn't too bad since you're getting double the drops and can throw all those 7/10's or so on them).

Personally I use canon's (spellbreaker, high roller), PDT (some fliers and long range lanes), Weapon Mans (just about anything that's not headstrong), Earthshatter (headstong lanes or or other tough lanes, often with PDT's), and of course pretty much all the monk defenses... 90%+ of the content can be handled with weapon mans, FA's, LSA's. Try to get the normal shards for these, but a few non-ideal ones won't hurt. Mods can be just okay ones.

Once your alt can carry you as high as you'd like to go for the number of resets you want to do, reset.

Once you do your first reset, run the highest Onslaught you can launch with your alt account (limited by your main), which will let you skip some of the Chaos X floors, then complete a C7 to bump up your minimum Onslaught floor, then grind up in Onslaught until you can reset again. (Eventually you can skip chaos as your minimum floor will be higher than the base floor from clearing a C7).

If you start with your alt account before you have a ton of accession levels on your main, you can actually gain quite a few accession levels by getting your minimum accession levels up with resets as a nice bonus.

This method will take a lot of farming to get your alt up, but will save you from having to farm/re-gear/transfer gear/upgrade gear every reset. I wouldn't say it's better or worse, just an alternative.

 

On 7/21/2019 at 5:47 PM, uzar said:

You don't need C8 for floor 100 many people i know are well past 250 with no AP and a few c8 on some key relics. At a certain point you have to go to Floor 80 every time for reset. I would suggest going to at least floor 100 the  First reset as the first 20 AP are pretty easy. After that it would be rebuild and push higher to at least 265 at which point you should have 3k min asc on next reset. 

OR just do all the resets at once but its to floor 80 every time. I actually did 55 to 76 yesterday in 7 casual hours with just c7 drop relics. Currently at Ap 35 with min asc of 3100 i went to floor 263 for reset. 

Decided to reset at floor 74, couldn’t be bothered repeatedly failing lost temple anymore.

Almost ready for the 2nd reset now. Got a gilded crit damage and destruction. Spent 1 mil gold roughly. Upgrading burning strikes out of laziness, upgrading 1 relic, frostfire weapon, and maxing out a defense rate. Will avoid the burning strikes next reset and keep a huntress in my deck, that will halve the cost already. Been easy enough without grinding to floor 100.

Just now, Duane01 said:

Almost ready for the 2nd reset now. Got a gilded crit damage and destruction. Spent 1 mil gold roughly. Upgrading burning strikes out of laziness, upgrading 1 relic, frostfire weapon, and maxing out a defense rate. Will avoid the burning strikes next reset and keep a huntress in my deck, that will halve the cost already. Been easy enough without grinding to floor 100.

( Just providing some suggestions, final choice is yours )

Upgrading 1 relic and a weapon equates to 10 mil each reset, that's a very huge sink, 10 AP = 100M? (excluding shard upgrades that is). I suggest go through my OG post tip 1~4

It's generally recommended to do a bunch of AP in a row, and as soon as u hit targeted floor, instead of push beyond needed. U wanna do push (for min asc), rounds of AP, push (for min asc), rounds of AP, final push (ultimate end game, test your potential). Instead of many pushes, which equates to many wasted floors, times, resources, effort. U can sort of refer to tip 8 & tip 1

2 hours ago, hailminion said:

( Just providing some suggestions, final choice is yours )

Upgrading 1 relic and a weapon equates to 10 mil each reset, that's a very huge sink, 10 AP = 100M? (excluding shard upgrades that is). I suggest go through my OG post tip 1~4

It's generally recommended to do a bunch of AP in a row, and as soon as u hit targeted floor, instead of push beyond needed. U wanna do push (for min asc), rounds of AP, push (for min asc), rounds of AP, final push (ultimate end game, test your potential). Instead of many pushes, which equates to many wasted floors, times, resources, effort. U can sort of refer to tip 8 & tip 1

Sorry if I was unclear, I only upgraded the relic and weapon to C4 so it cost 30k roughly, I didn’t look at the exact figure. I only upgraded them to make the run from floor 5-30 comfortable. The weapon for ok damage frostfire procs and the relic had 10/10 rate, 9/10 range and 4/10 shocking rev, mostly I wanted it for the CC but I will be storing it until a later push.

My plan is to do 10-16 resets before I push again, depending on how comfortably I can do it and how long my gold lasts. If I avoid upgrading burning strikes my gold should last around 13-14 resets.

Min Asc 557 and next reset at floor 30 will be around 580. My first reset was at 350 asc so I’m getting another 20 min asc next time because I gained over 200 asc resetting.

This is wildly different than my experience. To be honest, this is way overthinking it. To put it simply:

• Before your first reset:
  • Push as far in onslaught as you possibly can. Don't be afraid to c8 a couple relics to aid in your push. I pushed to floor 230 before resetting for the first time, and only needed one c8 relic. Everything else was c7.
  • I'd highly recommend completing mastery. I couldn't have pushed as far as I did without destructive pylon, mass destruction, and automation.
  • Have at least 1-2 gilded defense rate, 1-2 gilded destruction, and 1-2 gilded deadly strikes. Destruction is in c1, deadly strikes is in c3, and defense rate is in c4. Purchasing these shards with medals is probably the best use of defender medals once you have all heroes. Being patient for a few weeks to save up DM's for gilding these shards will absolutely pay off.
• Once you gain your first ancient power:
  • Stash all your good gear in your vault. You won't be needing it until after you're finished going through resets.
  • Allocate your ascension to focus on a single tower. Don't be afraid to create multiple heroes to use multiple towers.
  • As long as you have gilded shards, you do not need to spend any gold or materials whatsoever.
  • After every map, look at any mythical or legendary medallions that you picked up, and use them on your preferred defenses. Between your ascension points and relics that you pick up, you should be able to blaze through onslaught with little to no issue.
  • Once you hit floor 30, you can reset again. If you were well-prepared, you should be able to blaze through your first reset in about 3-5 hours.
  • Do NOT bother upgrading any hyper shards. They are super expensive and are not worth upgrading until after you're done resetting. Stash hyper shards in your vault until after you're done resetting.
• During subsequent ancient powers:
  • Keep in mind that as you put points into ancient power, you get less of a boost per point. Your first point in ancient defense power goes from 0% > 4%, while your fifth point is merely 9% > 10%. 
  • Keep any 9 or 10 mods that you find, either to sell or to use.
  • Keep any duplicate shards you use so you can gild them later. You get lots of shards in onslaught. Dust any shards that you don't intend to use, unless you've maxed out both your bags and your vault. If that's the case, feel free to hoard as many shards as you'd like.
    • Speed boost, worm scarf, bulwark, and hero critical strike are all excellent shards that can reasonably be used on all heroes. Don't be afraid to gild multiples of these.
• Once you feel like you're done resetting:
  • This can be after your first reset or your 70th reset. I would recommend at least achieving 999 ascension talent caps before being done. A 10% boost in stats is pretty overrated.
  • Pull your gear out of your vault. Hopefully you'll have accumulated enough 9 or 10 mods to give yourself the absolute best gear you could hope for. Tinker to your heart's content. You might need to grind c3 for plain motes.
  • Combine all mods on your gear before upgrading them.
  • Once you have ideal mods on ideal gear, upgrade as much as you can to c7.
  • Push onslaught as far as you can. If you feel like you're on top of the world and absolutely certain you never plan to reset again, you can upgrade your gear to c8.
  • If you're pushing floors, you might reach a point where your min ascension is drastically higher than your current ascension. If you reach that point, it might be in your best interest to reset again. Getting a boost of 1000+ ascension is WAY more advantageous than any ancient powers offer.