Which Solo Instance reaps the best rewards for a levelling up player?

I'm trying to raise the CR for my alts. I know raids give out the best Source Marks rewards. But getting a team takes time and it is especially hard in villain side.

Even for duos, I queue up and wait for a while before someone comes in. Quite time consuming.

I was wondering if someone knows what's the best solo instance that gives the rewards. Not just source marks but gear that can help rank up quickly. I know Gotham Warehouse has 5 rewards per run. But it takes quite a bit of time and I can't skip the adds either (they follow me all the way to the boss).

So anyone have an advice on which solo instance is worth running regularly?

It depends on what you want in terms of either wanting to complete instances the quickest or if you want as much loot drops of gear and marks. Chinese Theater is definitely the quickest with only one boss loot drop but there's a bunch of Solos like that with only one boss. I think Gotham Museum is the longest Solo but you get like five lootboxes? Obviously if you keep spamming the same instances you'll get better at it and might be able to finish them quicker but you'll also get very bored too so that's why I myself tend to not over que Omnibus content a ton.

I have an alt which I think was around 250 cr. I did the Dark Knights open world stuff, including weekly bosses, and got enough currency to buy the chest(?). This one piece of gear gave me +9 cr. I was kinda shocked it was that much.

So I'd suggest doing the last two or three open worlds and getting gear that way. Keep track so you're not buying the same piece three times. For instance...(and the choices are just a suggestion)

Dark Knights - Chest
Legion of Doom - Head
Flashpoint - Legs

This way you have three separate income sources going at once.

It might sound tedious until you realize all of this can easily be done while you're waiting to cue up for something. Even if you don't finish all of one open world's missions, just make sure what you do have done is registered as completed with the vendor you got the mission from. This way you can do the mission again the next day when you have time.

And sooner or later you'll be able to convert the currency to Source Marks so it's not like you're losing out on anything.

Yeah, I love doing that for a quick run. I also like Gotham Hospital, Riverfront Center, and Riverside Hotel duos. They're all in one small location. No extensive ground to cover and no teleporting to other spots. Just kill the adds as quickly as you want and only one short cut scene before the boss comes out.

I think the Starro duos are the same way. You show up, kill a few adds, quick boss, kill more adds, kill final boss. Nothing major at all.

Like I mentioned, whatever gets the CR progressed. I was thinking Source Marks will give a good quick boost of the CR. If I run a duo like Shady Nightclub (heroes) / Police Station (villains), I get like 5 gears and 2 Source Marks. But I need to queue and find a partner for it to do. Heroes may be easier but Villains is difficult. But if I run that 9 times, I can get a Chest piece for the next tier plus whatever gear I was able to get during the runs. If I keep repeating that, I can get higher tiers.

Solo seems to be the convenient without having to rely on someone. But time consuming in the Gotham Warehouse/Museum mission. If there's another quicker one, I just wanted to know which one that could be. Chinese Theater I will give a go. I recall one blocked door in that where I need to take out the adds before I face Faust / Zatanna. Will have to see if the adds can be avoided on the way.

Is there another Solo that lets you get to the boss without stopping anywhere?

Only Death Metal one is accessible for lower tiers. And even then, I can't buy the gear since I don't have the CR. Flashpoint and others are not unlocked yet for low tiers.

The solo of the Penguin and Two face is easy and give you 3 loot´s. Is a nice option.

Do the Old Map World ! The Staff is very generous with new player.^^ It is a Joke...

I'm a fan of the Test Subject #1 solo. It lets me play as Bizarro and I get 3 drops in about 5 or 6 min.

Bizarro moves are slow. I'd rather do The Hunt as Huntress moves are quick and mission is pretty easy to do. Only the cutscenes are long in both.

There's really no content that gives the best reward. As others have stated, you're better off looking for the Solos that can be finished quickly. All content will give about the same Item Level reward, styles will indeed differ, and hopefully the item you open will be an IL increase.

Pr-tip. Dont always open all the gear you get as rewards. Always start with replacing the Current Equipped Gear that has the lowest Item Level. Example is if your Neck is IL 54, Head is 65, and the rest of your gear is 100. You'll replace the Neck first, and then the Head. This way you can be sure you're climbing the CRs much faster.

For my money...if I were at level 30 and wanting to do the grind (never again!!), I'd run funhouse. Have a shield on and the run is around 2-2.5 min and nets you 2 gear drops. If you were high enough level and had the Adaptive augs for WV, the WV solo also has 2 drops and would net +2 more source marks as well in around 3 min....but Funhouse is available to anyone, so I'd say it's universally 'the best' solo to run. Manhiems is the fastest but only drops 1 loot. Funhouse wins by the 2nd drop. Plus you get Waynetech renown, which is harder to come by than Star Labs or Sentinels of Magic as you'll probably knock those 2 out doing CC bounties later (assuming you are looking to be a completionist at some point).

If you are branching out to Duos, Shady Nightclub/Police Station is probably the best. Quick, easy and drops 4 or 5 loot drops (don't remember) in about 5 min.

Stay away from Gotham Warehouse. The 9 'Show them your might' dialogs on last boss and several pauses for boss animations are longer than the full Funhouse run....even if you could skip the adds and annoying gas part. You can do 3-4 funhouse in the same amount of time and net 6 or 8 gear vs the 5 in the warehouse.

EDIT: Random Mind mentioned Bizzaro solo. That one is also pretty good as it's fast and gives 3 drops. Funhouse is still better once you get it down pat, but Bizzaro might be nice as a pallet cleanser and counts toward the 100 count feat as a bonus. The major drawback to Bizzaro I'd say is due to a segmented map and the iconic powers, it's hard to find things to make it 'faster' as you do it more. Can't mix up your powers and options on an iconic to speed things up.

While that pro tip is good for the current 3 DLC drops(still un-attuned boxes), EEG drops 'opened' boxes now (because no one knew how to put the style name on the outside of the box I'd reckon), so you no longer have a choice to sit on things other than Weapons...which are still boxed as you need to choose your weapon make. Yes, the 'OLD' drops are sometimes un-attuned still, but the max 305 boxes are NOT.

If you don’t mind a slightly “harder” solo I’d recommend the wonderverse solo. I generally run it in 2 minutes. I also use the head augments, which you may not have, to get more source marks. This gives 2 pieces of gear every 2 minutes with 3 sources per 2 minutes (based on skill level). Alternatively the Chinese theater is also good. If you learn to skip the hallway adds you can get 1 piece of gear per minute with 1 source mark per minute. If you can find a duo partner than the shady night club is your best pet with 5 pieces of gear in 4ish minutes (again based on skill)

Pro-Tip 2: If doing DK (or any DLC) where you are under the required CR (sounds like that's the case now), save your daily and weekly loot boxes vs opening them. If you open them now, under the 350 minimum, you will only get max 305 gear...the same gear you can get running anything else. If you save them till you are 350, they will open to the 'full' gear which can max at 315, 319 or 323, depending on color. Also some catalysts may not drop if you open 'under' required CR, so more cats to harvest by holding out.

Instanced drops are what they are....open at will...this only applies to the OW reward boxes.

This will also work along with Trexlight's previous tip to open the gear in 'proper' order as these drops/boxes will have un-attuned gear.

Thanks. Yeah I learned that after grinding hard on my main. So following that in the alts. But on lower level alts that are Tier 1 and 2, except for Weapon, everything else is already levelled and role based gear. So it's just finding the right one and then hitting the Tempus when I have enough Source Marks on the most CR boost gear I need (using the CR calculator to see which one will boost me up).

Thanks. I should save up those boxes. I did open it until now as I was too low level (CR 80-100) to worry about 305+. But I should find other ways and save the DK boxes.

Wonderverse is good if you are in Tier 5/6 level. I'm currently levelling up Tier 1/2 level alts. So grinding the solos and duos in that level.

I realized how wasteful Warehouse was after running it. Even skipping adds on two gates (lion one has adds follow you all the way to the boss), it took me 15 mins to finish it. Even for 5 gears, that's 3 mins per gear. I can get 3 gears in 3 mins if I run The Hunt.

I'm going to try funhouse and see. Didn't think of running that.

Hmmm.... 3 minutes is pretty good for 'The Hunt'. The beginning intro and the few video cuts seem to count for at least 2. If you are finishing in 3, kudos. I'd definitely keep a 3 min hunt in the rotation. I think I generally finished it in 5 or so, but haven't run it in a long while so I might be mis remembering. I know when I banged out my 100 iconics for the feat, I did Bizarro as I remember it being faster.

Since you are asking about Solos, this may not be a big help.

I just made an alt on the 17th and he's currently at 337. I have not made a new toon for years and was quite surprised how easy HoL made progression go. It also helps if you can find 2 or 3 friends to help with the alerts.

Once I hit cr 30, I cued for Oan Science Cells. I just kept re-cuing that. The bottom part of the Loot of each boss fights has a Minimum CR reward range which is usually better than the 2 top rewards that automatically attunes to your total Cr. (In later tiers, this bottom gear choice are usually 30-60 CRs above your current gear.)

I kept playing Oan for the gear AND marks to get bumped up to the next tier. (you need to earn at least 40 Source marks every tier) Once I hit tier 2, i go to HoL, buy the chest and legs from Tempus. I think it was Cr 85.

Don't quote me but i think Tempus sells tier 2 cr 85; tier 3 CR 135; tier 4 CR 190; tier 5 CR 265; and tier 6 CR 285. it's something along those numbers.

tier 2, i ran Intergang Crime wave alert.
tier 3 - Demon's plan
tier 4 - earth 3 injustice
tier 5 - volcano mining.

Yes, some of those alerts may be hard but for earth 3 or volcano you can just do the first boss, get loot and re-cue. The first bosses on those are very easy. The trick is to always come up with 36 source marks for every tier to buy the chest and legs. Once you get access to open worlds that have bounties, source marks can be quick if you're lucky to find a wave of players attacking said bounty.

After that, I was lucky enough to make it into 322 to get into Flashpoint while double marks are up, so the 2 bounties and some open world missions got me into LoD to take advantage of the double marks. For Flashpoint, I purchased back and hands. I should be 350 soon.

Hope that helps.

BTW, if you're going to stick with the Solos, go for the last one in the tier list. it will drop you the highest cr you can get for your tier.

Maybe because I am more used on Dual Pistols than Brawling to do it quickly. Or I may have timed it wrong. Will rerun and confirm.

I ran the Funhouse just now. Only 1 loot and I couldn't escape the adds. The doors are locked until I have killed all the officers (ran on villain side). And they followed me all the way to the door and ambushed me. Like 30 adds attacking me in the corner. Only the last bit I was able to avoid by jumping down the clownface hole. But even then, it didn't have a clear path to the boss.

Edit: My bad. 5min 32 seconds. I think I calculated 3 mins without cutscenes.

Thanks for sharing your experience. It all helps. Unfortunately on villain side, finding someone to do the popular duo Shady Nightclub / Police Station is tough enough, let alone finding someone to grind alerts with. That's the reason I was looking for Solo approach since it would be easier to do it on my own. Even open world bounties are rare to achieve.