Saltwater Scourge

So, I've cleared the new lab with Miss Fortune and Tahm Kench. I'm in the middle of a run with Twisted Fate.

So far, I think it's a lot of fun and fairly complex. There is a lot of player agency in deciding how to approach the lab as well, and a much wider variety to the encounters.

My tips would be: for the first few clears, don't really worry about your badges for the end of the run. Focus on maximizing your equipments and powers, because Gangplank is HARD to beat. VERY hard.

In my first run, I defeated him in one try, thanks to having Evolution and some absurdly overpowered units.

In my second run, despite having 6 really good powers, including Yipp's Genius, and having Zoe in the deck, I still died once on Gangplank before I defeated him. He's insanely strong. A much more fitting end boss than Viktor for sure.

Edit - After playing a few more times, I can say for sure that getting 6 powers is not normal. There isn't even a guarantee that you'll get an epic power at all, though you WILL get a random epic power offered if you spawn the Smooth Soloist '!' node. In any case, I've cleared all three champs, with TF being the hardest for me to finish. S-tier skill and wealth on both MF and Tahm Kench. I'll be going for speed badges last.

Yes the mode offers more and better decision making and is overall an improvement in comparison to the lab of legends however I don't think that gp is thaat hard to beat. 

If you use all the options offered by the campain you will fight him with a godtier deck almost all of the times and with such you will stomp him. 

However: 1 tipp for beating gp: make sure his board is full when you hit him below 20 hp to make the ship not spawn. 

I had a godtier deck and I lost the first try. 

Though I did make a huge mistake with a Parley that dropped him to 20 when I totally didn't mean to. Then he dropped another boat and hit me for 12+24 unavoidable damage for the OTK.

Just finished my first run with MF, didn't have much problem with GP since I had an insanely fast deck with domination and an elusive Miss Fortune my only death came from getting snowballed by a legion marauders deck.

Quote From minuano28

Just finished my first run with MF, didn't have much problem with GP since I had an insanely fast deck with domination and an elusive Miss Fortune my only death came from getting snowballed by a legion marauders deck.

I haven't lost yet with MF against GP, but I've rarely spent so much time planning my moves carefully against an AI before. In my most recent battle, I was going for the S-badge for Skill, meaning no deaths and no healing nodes. I picked up a few healing potions on spells, and those kept me healthy throughout the run.

I wound up beating GP by planning ahead to the next turn when I was going to spawn in the Dreadway. I had a Hextech Transmogulator, which reduced cost when spells are cast. It was down to costing 1. I also had a Siphoning Strike in hand, as well as a 7/3 spellshield Akshan on the board. So, I purposely dropped him below 20 health, knowing it would spawn Dreadway and draw GP. There's no way he keeps GP in hand, so we know he will play GP. I Siphoning Strike GP, he responded with a Make It Rain that was killing off both of my 1/1 units, so I had to respond to that by doing the Transmogulator earlier than planned. But in any case, I killed GP and transformed Dreadway to a 1/1. Then I killed him on my open attack on the next turn, since all of my units had overwhelm. Incidentally, Crush is one of the best passives in this game mode, even if you don't get Evolution.

But even with all that, he still had me down to 20 health at the end. When this kind of dramatic dominance and planning are required just to have a chance at winning, you know that a fight is hard.

Quote From TheTriferianGeneral

However: 1 tipp for beating gp: make sure his board is full when you hit him below 20 hp to make the ship not spawn. 

I'd love to know how you manage(d) to do this with any consistency, and without dying to his attacks. So far, I've had zero opportunities to let him fill his board without being in danger of dying due to his attack, and then somehow damaging him below 20 without killing off any units.

I wasn't try to imply that he was easy just that aggressive strategies are usually the best way to deal with him. He is definitely one cheap mofo capable of dishing absurd amount of damage out off of nowhere.

Finished my first run with MF. Got 2/3 badges and barely bought anything from the shops because they all options seemed like bad additions to my deck. GP was not that hard. I just  made sure to have a plan for the Dreadway when it came down. 

Might be more difficult with TF or TK.  

Quote From FrostyFeet

Just managed to crawl through my first run (I've been playing it slowly) and only managed to get 2/3 of the adventure badges. Has anyone gotten all three? It isn't showing me what I needed to do to earn the third and I wouldn't like to blindly retry at some point to get the missing one.

There are 3 badges : Skill, time and wealth.

To get the skill one you cannot die more than once. For the speed one you have to finish a run in at least 60 minutes and finally for the wealth one you have to finish a run with a least 1000 gold.

Just played through until my first death with Miss Fortune. 

I realize this is just the first iteration and the design team hasn't tackled anything like this before... but this feels really, really rough compared to other Roguelike Deckbuilders. 


 - I want the option to not add cards to my deck when offered 'rewards', since most such 'rewards' are hot garbage 

 - The ability to cut cards is vital to this type of card game (or there is no interesting strategy). While you can cut cards in a very limited capacity on some board spaces, this needs to be dramatically expanded upon (and probably also be a Gold sink, since right now there is almost nothing to spend Gold on aside from the super hot garbage trash offered in most stores)

 - Because you can't cut cards in a meaningful way, leading to your deck becoming a bloated mess, going around the game board fighting enemies for fun & rewards is counter-productive (due to each fight giving-up non-optional 'rewards' that clutter your draws). This means that, as the game stands, the best strategy is currently to just beeline for the bosses doing as little exploration as possible so you can fight them with a decent deck before it gets ruined by 'rewards'

 - Given the synergies that make Runeterra fun, IMHO this game mode needs to give characters specific card pools to draft from, where your main hero & secondary hero effectively determine your archetype

 - The map itself feels quite clunky. Since there's no real cost to moving around, what's the point of forcing me to move back to shops or other point of interest to use them? Why can't I just click on them and use them instead? It's the same difference in mechanical terms, but the way the game implements it makes it more tedious without any gains 

 - I realize this is a Bilgewater-specific thing and meant to be thematic, but the 'False Shuffle' enemy power is horrible and anti-fun. Non-interactive stealing of my upgraded cards feels just awful and consequently means I will strictly avoid any fights with that power. Again, fully appreciate that Nab is a very theme-appropriate Bilgewater mechanic, but at least make it interactive so that there's counter-play available 

 - The UI in places is too slow and clunky. In particular, the level-up screen just seems to last for absolute ages - just staring into your soul and letting you know YOU HAVE LEVELED UP! before eventually getting to the interesting part of the process. This should be instant, kinetic-feeling and satisfying, like most of the rest of the stuff in Runeterra. DING! BOOM! LEVEL-UP! PICK BONUS! GOOD! NOW PLAY MORE VIDEO GAME! 

 - We need re-rolls just like in the rest of the lab. This would help tremendously with 'rewards' otherwise being garbage (especially if done alongside giving each hero a specific draft pool), and could be another Gold sink (allowing extra re-rolls to be bought in shops for example)

 - I want to be able to unlock stuff for future runs. That's pretty core to most roguelikes & roguelike deck builders; unlocking extra cards for draft pools. maybe unlocking a couple of champion-specific signature cards that they can start the game with, unlocking special powers, unlocking card upgrades, unlocking the ability to alter the draft pool... I don't need all of those things, but one or two of them would go a long way to make the mode replayable 

I only completed TF so far, failed MF and didn't try TK.

Also having played a fair bunch of Viktor lab, my conclusion is that you have better gearing tower abusive early game. Whenever I could hit spawn a poro a turn and +1/+1 to the weakest at the beginning of the turn, the run would immediately become much easier. I could only clear Malphite (and his HORRENDOUS starting deck) and Zilean this way.

My main issue with the lab (both Viktor and GP) is that it is made that you seems to always have better closing the game as fast as possible, being unable to easily restore nexus at each encounter. That, and the fact that both Viktor, GP, and a couple of battles in Viktor lab (noticeably Scargrounds and Shrooms encounters) are punitive as fuck the longer the game (GP especially).

Late-game control decks *can* work, but you just need such a really specific set of cards... and the garbage in the starter pools really make them inconsistent.

I made an absolutely amazing Swain / Vlad / J5 control deck in the Viktor lab that drained itself back to full HP and created an impenetrable board presence - but the thing need to wait until Mana 4 or 5, without a mana ramp power, before it would really start switching-on and it was just super inconsistent because the early drops were just so mediocre. 

Unless we get character-tailored draft pools, I think the labs will be dominated by aggro / mid-range decks because you just don't have any guarantee of drafting Leviathan or the right combination of sea monsters to make a control deck functional.