How long to 200 Level Artifact?

Discussion in 'War Room (Powers, Artifacts, & Builds)' started by Cerulean Osprey, Jun 21, 2021.

  1. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    Couldn't find it, but curious... how long does it take to grind a 200 level artifact, without spending any money? Has anyone crunched the numbers?

    Generally speaking, I assume that if you modestly grind... 3 hours a day, 6 days a week, that's probably all of your current episode content and maybe a few other things? I assume the average, active player plays about 15-20 hours a week? Obviously, the grind is faster if you play more, but I did keep that in mind...

    I'm not sure exactly how much Nth metal you can earn in your regular play... and I didn't factor in that there are Bonus XP weeks, and then I think critical XP gains when fortifying?

    I don't have precise numbers, but it doesn't look good?:
    At first, it seems like the Source Marks for Catalysts seems kind of reasonable, but then the chances of breaking through are ridiculous at the higher levels. And then the amount of XP needed is really high?

    Realistically, I don't see someone earning a 200 Artifact for free unless do something like... play 30+ hours a week for like a year?
  2. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    Whoops... Sorry, didn't realize you could only link images. Think this should be easy to follow?:

    ARTIFACT XP Weekly Notes
    Vault-Normal Nth 3,500 Assumes 500 XP daily vault drop
    Vault-Augmented Nth 3,000
    In-Game Drops 1,800 Assumes 100 nth metal per hour, 3 hours a day, 6 days a week
    Weekly Total 8,300

    Needed XP: 1,678,722
    Weeks Needed?: 202.26
    Year Needed?: 3.89

    CATALYSTS NEEDED Weekly Notes
    Dailies, Open-World 24 Assumed 4 open-world missions in One Episode, 6 days a week
    Dailies, Duos 12 Assume 1 Duo in One Episode. 6 days a week
    Dailies, Alerts 24 Assume 1 Alert in One Episode, 6 days a week
    Weekly, Raids 16 Assume 2 Raids in One Episode, 6 days a week
    Weekly, Other 14 6 Vaults, One Weekly Open World Mission
    90
    Weekly Total, Round Up 100

    Needed Source Marks: 1382
    Weeks Needed?: 13.82 Assumes you're lucky and have 100% Breakthrough each time
    Years Needed?: 0.27
  3. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    You need 1,678,722 XP to get an artifact from 0 to 200. Unfortunately you're going to have to spend money and/or use your monthly stipend of Loyalty Points/MC for seals.
    • Like x 2
  4. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    I’ve gotten multiple 200 arts without spending any money. It does take a while but there are things you can do to mitigate all the grinding.

    There are 2 types of nth. The ones that drop in the vault and stabilizer are locked to your character you got it ok. But anything else that drops, either from adds or getting exo material. Will all he account bound. If you do dailies on a few toons than you will end up getting a bit of account bound nth metal. Send all nth metal to a bank toon so that you can have all the nth in one spot without wasting space on your main.

    Don’t use any nth metal you have at all. Save every last bit and only use it when there is a double nth metal week. This way your nth you use has increased value. Currently on my bank I have enough nth to take 2 artifacts up to 160 but only during double nth metal week. If I use it now than I only get one artifact to 160. Double nth metal xp week tends to happen a few weeks before a new episode drops. So most people are expecting a double nth week about a month away. But that’s just a guess.

    Now, for your break through. Another benefit to alts is that they end up getting source marks which end being more marks to buy catalyst for break throughs. There is another 2 bonuses the devs tend to do which is also more common than double nth xp. That’s double source marks and double catalyst week. During double source marks you get what the name suggest. Extra source marks that can be turned to catalyst so take advantage. The other one, bonus catalyst, gives a chance for catalyst to drop. It’s nice but the main benefit is that the bonus comes with a free unstable seal of completion.

    If you have a membership you will receive 500 points each month (might change with membership update). With the points you go to any safe house and there is a vendor that uses that currency. There are a few items you really want to use it on.

    Perfect nth metal (75,000) cost 1000
    Seals if completion cost 500
    Seals of preservation cost 200

    You mainly want to get the perfected nth metal. But if you have the points and you need a break through you can get a seal.

    Typically for low rank artifacts that have about an 80% or over breakthrough chance you shouldn’t even bother using a deal since the catalyst are rather easy to get. For under 80% chance you should start using seals of preservation. These seals will give you back the catalyst if the breakthrough fails. But if it succeeds than the catalyst are consumed and the seal is returned. However for higher rank stuff you do want to use a seal of completion. I personally start using seals of completions for 20% other times I use the completions on 10%. It’s your choice. But I wouldn’t even bother using a preservation with 10% or lower. The seal of completion is always consumed but it guarantees that your breakthrough goes through.

    If you change your mind and spend money than there are also ways to better spend your money. Only buy nth/seals during a sale. And save them to use during a double nth week. This way you really get the most for your bucks.
  5. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    Aaah! That's really encouraging that you've gotten a couple 200's without spending money. If you had to take an item from 0 to 200 now, how long do you think it'd take you? Assuming there's going to be a Double Nth Metal Week sometime in the next few months?
  6. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    It will take more than just a few months. That’s the unfortunate part. The exact time frame is also not know since sometimes you may get higher value nth other times you may get more. If you want an estimate run your daily stuff including your vault and stabilizer. See how much nth you got that’s useable by your main and round it down. Than multiply by 7 to get your weekly estimate. Remember that once a week the vault will give you one nth metal that’s worth 3000. It’s guaranteed but it’s also only weekly so don’t accidentally multiply that. Once you get your weekly estimate multiply by 4 again to get your monthly estimate. Than divide the total amount needed by your monthly estimate and you will get a rough estimate of how long it would take without double nth xp week.

    Every 2 months you can subtract a 75000 chunk if you have membership. It’s a lot of math. But hey that’s what calculators are for lol. If your patient than it’s very doable. But if you aren’t than it will feel like forever.

    There is also a sudo way to farm nth but it’s annoying. Nth metal has an internal clock that dictates how long before you are able to get another piece of nth. I believe that the internal cooldown is somewhere around 2-3 minutes. However if you are in combat than the timer is raised to 8-9 minutes. That’s a guess since it’s been a while since I measured the timers. So the system punishes you for being active which I’m very annoyed by. The internal cooldown is also shared across your different toons so you can’t even switch toons and rotate timer. So if you want to farm nth than the way to do it is to go somewhere that has lvl3 adds (basically out in front of the 3 starting safe houses) and kill someone every 3 minutes. That can increase how much nth you get. But like I said, annoying.

    There is also one more bonus I didn’t mention early. There is bonus nth metal week. That is different than double nth xp week. During the xp week any nth you feed is counted for double the worth. However, during bonus nth week, when you get a piece of nth you reroll the table and get a second nth piece. However it’s not always the same. So if you got an nth that’s 200 you could get a 200 or you could get a 10 nth. But the same can be said the other way.

    So there are 4 events that affect artifacts.
  7. Illumin411 Loyal Player

    Between my two toons I have ten 200 arts, two 180's, one 160 and two 140's. Not counting seals, I'd say about 90%-95% of that has been slow grind. That being said, It's hard to say how much time it takes to level a single art from 0-200. A lot of those sat at 160 when that was the max. The auto-jump from 160-200 for the VWD when it was nerfed was a factor. I've also fused arts in to others (both during and not during 2X xp week). Sometimes I've dumped a lot of DC cash in to metal detectors off the broker and other times I don't feel like I have enough to be doing that or the broker prices of detectors are too high. Then there's the stockpiling of nth metal and waiting for 2X xp weeks. I wish I could give you a better answer, but the best I can say is that it's not as hard as people make it out to be.
    • Like x 2
  8. ALB Dedicated Player

    It's no way to get Artifacts to 200 without spending money. You can get enough experience in a year, but you will need to buy seals. If you're rich in game, you can get enough experience for a 200 artifact in 6 months with nth metal detectors.
  9. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    How can you say there’s no way to get artifacts to 200 without spending money. I’ve done it. Multiple times. I know others who also did it. You don’t need to spend to get them. You only need to spend to get them right away. I’m willing to wait. Especially since there’s no guarantee they won’t need buff artifacts at any given time.
  10. Lexelot New Player

    How many seals did you go through and how did you get them? You figure at 160 -> 180 breakthrough is 5% and 180 -> 200 it’s 3%.

    Without using a Seal of Completion at 180 -> 200, you’re looking at using 23 seals for a 50.37% combined chance of breakthrough. That’s a lot of failures. I’m genuinely curious.
  11. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    I didn't say that I didn't use seals. In a previous post in this thread I explained how you can get the seals without buying them.
    • Like x 1
  12. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    Yeah, sounds doable to use Loyalty Points to buy Seals of Preservation/Completion.
    I can't wait for the Bonus Artifacts/XP weeks when they come. Just saving all my stuff in my inventory for that week to come.
  13. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    I would say that after you do your dailies if you have nothing left to do you could farm nth but doing what I said above. Just to get a little extra xp for when it comes. If the event for bonus nth metal (drops) does happen if even say buy an nth metal detector from the broker if you have money.

    If you have a toon that’s 322 you can also sell some of the op item components on the broker to have a few nth metal detectors going on in the background while you do your dailies. Basically turning op item components into nth. There is a lot you can do to cut down the grind time to prepare for nth metal xp week. I’d personally treat it like a personal goal. See how much nth you can gain before it comes. I’m personally a competitive person so turning the nth to a game for myself helps me gain more
    • Like x 1
  14. FlawlessTime Dedicated Player

    Probably a while I think.
  15. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    If you are throwing in breakthroughs as part of the 'no money' factor, it will take a lot longer than .27 years, I'd go on record that you will not accumulate enough source to buy the cats you will lose along the way in the 100s of fails between 180 and 200. If counting on unstable SOC, we don't get them often enough to do the 160, 180 and 200 breakthroughs in 3 months, but yeah, assuming no breakthrough issues or seals 3 months to farm 1400 source seems about right. This is also assuming you don't trade your way to some of these. Many people who don't have cash access will trade arti cats for expensive items....you can farm some expensive items and accumulate some cats via trade.

    If you take the Seals out of the mix and just look at the XP part, I can tell you have several 200s on premium accounts who have never purchased XP (yes seals...no XP). 3 others have 1 180 artifact each and have NEVER spent a nickle on seals and all 3 were created about 18 months ago...so on pace to get to 200 before the next USOC comes out. And these 3 accounts are not daily runners...they are farming accounts mainly.

    A), you should always spend the XP on 2x weeks....so that 1.68m should be more like 840K. If you do not use 2x weeks, it's on you.
    B) your 100Nth per hour is way...WAY off. You get small drops every 5 min, and a larger drop every 10. So in an hour you should rack up more like 1000 if you are active the full time, not decorating, chatting or otherwise not 'farming' metals. So off by probably 10x
    C) you are not considering the possible 'critical' application of Nth metals. Not sure the bonus, but I think it's 25 or 35%....depending on the stack you hit, that can be a substantial number.
    D) we've gotten gifts of XP (not always, but we have), via the annual free CR skip (comes with XP and cats you can use), a few of the episode augment boxes came with some 12.5 Ks (WV and Legion), and if you are a member, we've had a few 'gift' boxes...although there are no guarantees of this in the future....so this one isn't set in stone....but likely.

    Now....does any of that help your alts? No, your best bet is to consolidate Nth on whatever toon you really want the 200 arti first.

    You aren't entirely wrong though...its a grind, especially if you want something noooooow, however I can tell you that we get a lot more drop Nth than we had when 160 was the top. We didn't have 3K vault drops and the 'big' ones of 500 were a lot more scarce...and honestly 160 is really as far as you should need to get them to make them useful. Of course 200 is 'better' but if you are doing the 'free' method, I'd concentrate on getting more 140s or 160s than pouring it all into 1 200.
  16. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    I agree you can do it without spending money, but I'd guess you are referring to spending Loyalty. Unless loyalty is given out to everyone regardless of a paying membership, yes.....you are still buying them by using loyalty. Loyalty you are paying for via sub.

    The only other non-paying alternative would be unstable SOC....which is possible....but it's pretty slow as those drop infrequently. If this is what you are referring to (not loyalty), I'm 100% in agreement with you. I'd honestly be there on some toons, but I did the bottled City soder level 8 first so am still 1 rank behind on some toons.
  17. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    I've done 160s with SOP (maybe 5 or 6 times), and gotten lucky with less than ten wipes, but also had at least 1 go to 20+. While there is always a possibility of getting a 180 or 200 done quickly with either SOP or going 'commando' and no seals, to do so is basically a suckers bet. 10 SOP = 1 SOC in value and you will likely hit at least 10. 10 fails at 180 would cost well over 1000 Source...200 even more and you'd likely fail even more times than 10 (I'd guess more like 100x...not 23). Impossible? No. Dopey to try? Indeed. Seals of one form or another are pretty much required at 180 and 200...if not 160.

    For the record one of the 160s I leveled with SOP was on a premium I do NOT spend money on. I had gotten 3 of the CR skips and consolidated the SOPs from those grant boxes on the 'main' for that account. Those 12 SOPs were enough (with 3 to spare, still in the bank) to level all the way to 160, 180 was a USOC we were granted about 3 months ago. I'm hoping I have enough buildup of XP to get that 1 arti to 200 for the next USOC and will have really gotten at least one 200 for 100% 'free'. Sucks too because that 1 arti is one I'd rather not use, but at this point I'm committed.

    And I'm no fan of spending money. Honestly If you want to spend 0 dollars, I'm down, but I'd say you need to forget about getting 200s for a while, and if you get one, a 2nd one is going to be a long ways away.
  18. L T Devoted Player

    You're ignoring that Nth metal drops in the Stabilizer daily. Combine that with Double xp drop weeks, along with double xp leveling weeks, and I think you can get to 160 in about 2-3 months and 200 in about 2.5x that.

    Yeah--- still a long time for 1 artifact.

    You can get there even faster if you use the broker. Nth Metal detectors increase your drops and give those cache boxes (which you can also buy from the broker). We're due for a booster bundle soon, and the last one came with a detector and a large amount of nth metal-- much of which wound up on the broker.

    On the other hand, I suspect you're grossly underestimating the number of source marks needed without using seals. That's tended to be the barrier for me, at least.
    • Like x 1
  19. Mr.W Committed Player



    This is why I feel the older nth metal values should be removed & replaced with 10k, 20k, & 25k respectively. Why are we still getting 10s, 20s, & 50s when the value is almost 2mil
  20. Cerulean Osprey Well-Known Player

    Oh definitely, I straight-up underestimate the amount of SM's needed without using seals. I was just too lazy to factor in probability in those calculations, and it's still about three months in an incredibly lucky situation. When the breakthrough chance is 3% for 200 level, it's entirely possible you have to have to have 280 SM's, times 97, just at that breakthrough point.

    280 SM are needed for the 27 catalysts. That's like... what, a week worth of grinding all the relevant content, and it could go down the drain every time there's a failed breakthrough.
    • Like x 1