iDB Community Forum

*Disclaimer: You don’t know me. I’m not at the top of any of the hi-score tables in the BattleDome, I’ll never have a set that people drool over, and I’m terribly undedicated when it comes to training; but I’m working on it and I’m starting to claw my way onto the hi-score tables.

Why bother with 1-player battling
There’s not much to do while you’re waiting around for a good Neopets war and you can only spend so much time refreshing the shop wizard or the stamp shop without going bonkers, you’ve got all of the Defenders of Neopia trophies, and scroll potions have turned 2-player into a wasteland. You have to use those new weapons you got so there’s only one left thing to do:

http://www.neopets.com/battledome/bd_one...ores.phtml

The one player hi-score tables are pretty simple; the 50 players with the highest amount of wins against an opponent appear on the table for that opponent. The top spots are dominated by the usual battledome suspects but there’s plenty of room to get a foothold. You don’t get any trophies and you don’t make any neopoints for it but it never hurts to have your name out there, especially if you’re malling or looking to sell trades. Not to mention your name will stay there until someone bests you; there are no resets that clear your score every month.

You don’t have to get all those wins in one sitting but you do have to jump in and start.

Bashing! (Spyder Squashing! for all you old pros)

You will need some music or a semi-good tv show, a comfortable chair, and possibly a soda and sandwich depending on how long this session is going to be. Here’s the basic technique for doing as much battling as possible while minimizing wasted time.

Fifthmonkee has made an offer on Lot 295981698 NO! *smack* You can check that later. You’re battling now, don’t get distracted.

This is where the fun is. Take your two best weapons and Fierce/Berserk attack, do it again, repeat and keep going until the opponent is toast. Here’s the optimal way to do it:

Step 1: Select your battle pet and select your opponent
Step 2: Hit the space bar (to scroll to the bottom of the screen) this gets more important after the first round when screen gets longer.
Step 3: click your two strongest attack weapons, select Berserk/Fierce and click the Go! Button.
Step 4: Repeat Steps 2 and 3 until you win!
Step 5: As soon as your opponent has zero hitpoints you’re going to hit BACKSPACE on your keyboard (to take you back to the 1-player screen) then hit ENTER. If all goes well it take you to the next battle with the same opponent and save you a few clicks.

Keep it up until you realized that you accidentally lost a battle because you weren’t paying attention; now it’s time to create your first strategy.

Strategies

1) Finding your stride – No more bashing
When your opponent gets too strong for bashing it’s time to retire the Berserk/Fierce and start using your other tools. Do you have a freezer or a healer? Don’t forget about Sink, Burrow, Drain Life or your species abilities. Start tossing in your other weapons and build yourself a good routine. Let say:

Round 1: freezer + weapon + species attack
Round 2: weapon + weapon + berserk/fierce (only because you froze last round)
Round 3: weapon + weapon + sink
Round 4: weapon + weapon + burrow
Round 5: weapon + healer + species attack
Round 6: weapon + shield + species attack

Find something that works and stick with it until it’s not letting you win anymore.

2) Long Battles – really good for boring tv and long commercial breaks
Eventually the battles are going to start dragging out and there are a couple of precautions that you should take. Don’t waste all of your one-use items right out of the gate and the same thing goes for abilities. If you use up all of your power you’re seriously going to limit yourself; you should ride that species attack all the way to the end.

Round 1: stealer + weapon + species attack
Round 2: freezer + weapon + species attack
Round 3: weapon + weapon + berserk/fierce (only because you froze last round)
Round 4: weapon + defense + species attack (repeat this until you need to heal)
Round 5: healer + weapon + species attack (repeat until you risk getting KO’d)
Round 6: weapon + weapon + Burrow
Round 7: weapon + weapon + Sink
Round 8: weapon + defense + species attack (all the way to the end)

3) Weaklings Strategy - Pant Devil, Kauvara, Flaming Meerca.
These opponents are going to be the easiest for you to beat but easy means it’s going to take more wins to reach the high score table. These challengers either spend all of their money on stamps or were created before TNT made good weapons; they’ll get more hit points and they’ll get a little stronger as you continue to beat them but they’re still just packing newb weapons. If you’ve spent even a little time digging around the IDB then you’ll have the advantage for your first 400 or 500 wins.

4) Lenders Strategy – Down for Maintenance Pteri, Evil Sloth Clone, Highland Chia
Can’t afford a Thyoras Tear? Then just take it from your opponent. A few battle dome challengers are packing a really good weapon that you should steal first thing in the battle. If you can get the Sloth Clone’s H4000 Helmet from him it stops him from freezing you and gives you the option to freeze him (double bonus!). It’s not as impressive to steal Kauvara’s Grand Lightning Beam but it’ll stop her from using it on you.

5) Bombers – Meerca Henchman, Kasuki Lu, Commander Garoo
Similar to the weakling opponents, these guys don’t have the most impressive set, but they do have one star weapon that you need to watch out for. The Meerca Brothers Water Pistol packs a pretty good wallop and will eventually freeze you. If you can survive that freezing then they won’t use the pistol on you again. Play defensive until you Kasuki Lu throw’s that Red Clockwork Grundo then open up and do some heavy hitting.

6) Full Healers – Giant Ghostkerchief, Qasalan Mummy
Why do they get a Jade Scorchstone *stomp* These will get more annoying as your opponent gets more and more hit points. Play it close to the cuff with lots of defense until your opponent heals; any one-use items or abilities are just a waste if they full heal on you after you used them.


Elite Considerations – just for the record, I don’t own this stuff
Hubrids Puzzle Box
This is going to take away 33% of your opponents health but it’s going to take three rounds to use it. If your second best weapon does less damage in three rounds than your opponent’s hit points divided by three then it’s time to start thinking about buying one.

Slumberberry Potion
Multiple freezes without losing too much from your attack strength every round. Every free round counts if you’re trying to whittle down a 10,000 hp opponent.

Tornado Ring
Multiple stealing; you don’t have to worry about defense when your opponent has no weapons left.

Fire Whip
I can’t decide if this is truly as good as the people selling it are telling us. But it gives you the option of destroying a few of your opponent's weapons before it breaks.


Where to start: a high-score table review.
So what are the easiest high score tables to reach? I inputted the data into an intricate spreadsheet and did some complex equations (multiplication) to give you the easiest high score tables to reach.

Challenger – Difficulty – Wins needed to reach HST

Mr. Chuckles 10 1255
Kasuki Lu 38 337
Chia Clown 10 1500
Meuka 60 265
Boochi 15 1075
Eyrieki 25 677
Slug Monster 500 37
Down For Maintenance Pteri 75 254
Mootix Warrior 375 55
Snow Beast 300 73

Mr. Chuckles and the Chia Clown are the best examples of easy opponents with high entry scores. It’s going to take a lot of time investment to reach 1500 wins. I’ll have to credit the low entry requirement for Slug Monster on the high difficulty and the annoyance of having to cure “Water Eyes” after every battle. Either way, just pick an opponent and go to town on them. If you max out before you reach the table, switch to another opponent until you’ve gained a boost or a few new weapons.

I’ll have to credit the low score requirement for Slug Monster on the high difficulty and the annoyance of having to cure “Watery Eyes” after every battle. Either way, just pick an opponent and go to town on them. If you max out before you reach the table, switch to another opponent until you’ve gained a boost or a few new weapons.

I’ve currently got spots (low spots) on Pant Devil, Kauvara, Vera, Down for Maintenance Pteri, and Meerca Henchmen Hi-Score Tables. That’s proof enough that those are easy tables to reach; feel free to bump me off.

Thanks for the article.

Just as a note, Fire Whip is fairly horrible in my book for high-score tables unless you like withdrawing a lot and wasting your time; its break rate is about three times that of stealing.

You mention "water eyes" and "watery eyes" looks like you got interrupted and didn't notice that your repeating yourself.

Mention boshi requires a random event, a rare one?

If you meant Boochi, yes it does recquire a random event, not necessarily a rare one I beleive, he attempts to turn your pet into a baby.

This is a decent article, just a quick question what are your stats like?

Hmm, Turmaculus to be added to the Lenders' Strategy, Bent Fork for Koi Warrior/Chiazilla, and notes about how the 700 Defence boost can virtually infinite win some opponents with G-Shield/Tabard. I'm sure Shattered and rabid will have stuff to add, too. Otherwise, nicely written with a sweet dose of humour.

Nicely done, but since I'm already nominated to add some commentary, here it is:

Bashing! (Spyder Squashing! for all you old pros)

The goal here is speed, so remember all your RSing tricks as well. Turn off any extraneous programs, and avoid this sort of battling at times when your tubes are clogged. I believe that disabling image loading to get faster fights in the is against neopets's T&C, but it's worth checking on if you plan on chasing abbie's 125k wins.

Also watch for full blockers here: Eyreki, Chia Clown, Highland Chia, Black Pteri, Tax Beast and similar easy opponents can become frustrating when they resist your big bomb attack and take 2-3 rounds to kill instead of the one you were hoping for. Against many such opponents, it may become worthwhile to use a freeze or steal in round one in order to guarantee the 2-turn kill. At the tail end of the squishing stage it may become worthwhile to wait out an opponent's full blocker before throwing bombs.


Strategies

1) Finding your stride – No more bashing
2) Long Battles – really good for boring tv and long commercial breaks

Nice guides to the basic technique for beating tougher opponents, here I'm still shocked how many battlers haven't figured that out.

As the opponents get harder, consider adding the following variations to the routines:

• Downsize! on an early round when half your opponent's max damage wouldn't finish you off
• Adding an appropriate defensive weapon to cover the icons your challenger does which can get through on the rounds when you use Burrow or Sink. For most battlers that will mean a 50% fragile reflector (Dual Battle Mirror when burrowing etc) or a lower-end full blocker (Illusens Silver Shield when sinking) but hey if you have 350+ defense boost, don't forget about icon based shields
• If you have the wealth or if the fight is really important, buy another turn or two with full blockers. Thick Smoke Bomb and/or Thyoras Tear can each guarantee you one more turn.
• Using the faerie ability Quench on the weak setting. While not as solid as Sink or Burrow, this can block all fire for one turn with only 10% power expenditure. Useful against Space Faerie, The Drenched, Kasuki Lu, Ryushu and others I'm forgetting right now.
• For those last few really tough battles, open with Diamond Dust or Fiery Gaze, then withdraw if you don't get a first round freeze. This works especially well if you have a 100% freezer to get a second round of freezebombing. It does not work so well if you are counting on Prickly Potion, Glowing Cauldron, Bracelet of Kings or other reflected-icon-offense to do your big damage.
  

All of these are dependent upon the opponent faced. Using a Diamond Dust freezebomb is risky against an opponent with a full healer, using Quench to block an opponent whose only fire attack is Scoch is wasteful, etc.


3) Weaklings Strategy - Pant Devil, Kauvara, Flaming Meerca.

Brain Tree belongs on this list - nothing he has does more than like 3 icons. So if you can get to 350 boost, some of the basic shields can cut his attacks by more than half even after you beat him up to the 700 boost.

4) Lenders Strategy – Down for Maintenance Pteri, Evil Sloth Clone, Highland Chia

Also highly worthy against Tax Beast. His Black Frost Cannon isn't awesome, but once you steal it and he uses his muffin and the Tax Beast Tooth, all he has left are physical icons and basic abilities. A Heavy robe of theivery and a Yooyuball Keepers Chest Guard will get you on this HS chart all by themselves.

Furthermore, stealing is generally useful as the basic BD algorithm currently involves RANDOM weapons selection. If you steal a weapon from a human opponent, they will just choose another weapon to use instead. 1p Challengers will still try to use stolen (or expended weapons) against you after they are gone - this results in 1p challengers frequently using only one (or even zero) weapons on later rounds. Thus assuming that the 1p challenger AI selection process is truly random, stealing even an average weapon cuts that challenger's average damage per round by 12.5%. So when battles get to be notably longer than 8 rounds, it can be worth stealing even junk like Harry's Ultra Rainbow Flash or an Attack Fork from the Brain Tree or Space Faerie

5) Bombers – Meerca Henchman, Kasuki Lu, Commander Garoo

Tiki-Tack man belongs on that list, his Tiki Bomb packs a wallop


6) Full Healers – Giant Ghostkerchief, Qasalan Mummy

Yeah - it really bugs me that even war opponents keep using Jade SS- haven't they heard that Leaded Elemental Vial is cheaper. I thought the great Lord Sloth was smarter than to waste all that invasion tax NP...?

One major addendum here - Full Healers are Pre-damage healers. This means that any damage you do IN the same round that they heal counts. Occasionally this matters a lot.

And having fought Lady Frostbite a whole lot, I still can't quite figger out how to deal with Ice Scorchstone - it can take forever to wait out, so sometimes the quick-kill is best, but she can also get lucky and full heal out of a certain-death bombing.


Elite Considerations – just for the record, I don’t own this stuff

Hubrids Puzzle Box
Also a strong tool against full-healing opponents, since you can use two of the rounds before they heal to set it up, then hold it until right after their heal.

Slumberberry Potion
At the very high end, Ice Dice has a higher freezing percentage, which makes it better if your constants are truly awesome.

Tornado Ring
The multi-steal is IMHO the most powerful effect currently in the BD. However it's also a full air blocking multihealer with a small attack. Against air-heavy opponents like Snowy, Kastraliss, Ghostkerchief, and Black Pteri, this is really strong.

Fire Whip
In general, this is NOT worth it. However, if you want to get your 55 boost Xweetok on the HS chart for Giant Ghostkerchief or the Drenched, and don't mind having to start each battle at least a dozen times for each win, this is the only way to go.

and one to add
Everlasting Crystal Apple
Sure, this generally useless tool for breaking league structures should never have existed, but it does have some use in climbing the HS charts. Even at the 700 boost, many opponents have weak weapons (see above) or have a bunch of expendable items, leaving them wasting turns doing no damage other than maybe a standard ability. In such cases, it can be possible to use dual-duties, defensive stances and species resistances to hold an opponent to less than 30 average damage per round, in which case ECA allows theoretically infinite wins.
A couple examples

• Against Harry the Mutant Moehog, a Scorchio who has stolen the ultra rainbow flash can just use ECA + YYPS to heal more damage than Harry can ever do.
• Against Lady Frostbite, any pet who can survive her snowballs, and freezers can then just win with ECA + F-Tab + Species, no matter how tough she gets. (or a pet could just outlast all her fragile items then steal her Ice Sceptre, leaving her with a maximum damage of 15 from Scorch each round)
• A jubjub or elephante who has stolen Garoos attack fork and/or T-Ring comes out slightly ahead on average with ECA + Shield of Pion Troect + Improved Defend. (or an Ixi or Cybunny could use YYPS after they survived his BCG)
  

I'm sure there are others.

Where to start: a high-score table review.

There are also a couple HST which are really about weapons.

• RoDN + YYPS = Drenched HST
• Full Physical Blocker + Stealer = Tax Beast HST
• SoPT + YYPS = Garoo HST
• Fire Whip + Insanity = Drenched and Ghostkerchief HSTs
• etc
  

Quote:I’ve currently got spots (low spots) on Pant Devil, Kauvara, Vera, Down for Maintenance Pteri, and Meerca Henchmen Hi-Score Tables.

I'm slowly working towards you on Vira - but I lack focus on such things .

The humor was a very nice touch. If you modified this to be general maxing out (rather than High-Score Charts) you could probably get this in the NT.

As was said, Fire Whip is crap for maxing out. For single-battles I go with nothing less than a 10% chance, and in the case of maxing out even Purple Sticky Hand's 50% chance is a huge time-loss. Maxing out is all about consistency (unless you really do have several dozen hours to devote to it, but most of us can only do that in Plot-time).

Hubrids Puzzle Box, while the most powerful weapon in existence, only comes into play near the very end. Slumberberry Potion has its limitations (it's still amazing, but there are details worth noting, and Rabid pointed out one of them). One worth noting is that, early on, a 100% freezer is much more time-efficient than Slumberberry.

Your spreadsheet failed to account the unique difficulty in maxing out. Movesets become everything later on, and a seemingly middle-range opponent (Tekkitu comes to mind as a great example) can be brutally difficult.


Uh, Rabid, the opponents have set movesets. The benefit of stealing varies by opponent.

Also, thanks for that list of easy wins. I hadn't gone against Tax Beast or Garoo yet. (I'm sad that Garoo will be so easy.) In fact, I'm not sure how many charts I'm still sitting on.


Ahem. I'd been meaning to write an article on this subject for upwards to a couple of years now. There's so much to maxing out that wasn't discussed here. The math behind everything (which confuses people), movesets (most battlers don't seem to be aware of them), and you only brushed the subject of time-efficiency.

Regardless, it's an easy enough read that it would certainly benefit new battlers that jump on board with a plot. Unfortunately, I think those of us that have the 500+ Strength Boost Pets necessary to get onto the tables are already have all the battling knowledge discussed here.

I'd love to see movesets added to the existing 1p information on the main part of the site

Quote:Uh, Rabid, the opponents have set movesets. The benefit of stealing varies by opponent.

Yes, they have set movesets in that they always use A+B or C+D or E+F or G+H (and never like C+H), but they determine which of those to use randomly (psuedo-randomly if you want to be picky), so removing a weapon still reduces their long-run average damage (as now A+B is just B + Blank Slot). My wording choce was pretty poor, but the general point stands.

if somebody posted a real moveset it might illuminate this more practically, especially if it is one that uses the same item in more then one move?

Wow everybody, I'm loving the feedback. It'll probably take me longer to disgest the replies than it took to write the article.

Meuka_Follower Wrote:This is a decent article, just a quick question what are your stats like?

Level: 225
Health: 1076 / 1076
Strength: ULTIMATE (592)
Defence: ULTIMATE (272)
Move: ULTIMATE (363)

Usually an elephante (with unguent) but occasionally moonlight as a kacheek. Currently an annoyingly pastel yurble (courtesy of my obvious Lab Ray addiction)

Shattered Rift Wrote:If you modified this to be general maxing out (rather than High-Score Charts) you could probably get this in the NT.

I might have to do that (After you guys proof read it and fix all of the loopholes