Getting the One in the Million Badge Solo

I felt I had got pretty close the other night to hitting for a million damage, so I gave it another shot tonight. I chose the same spot (Lady Blackhope Tower), but bought a few more treasure cards, and crafted one additional item.

First, I did some research on the net. So very many people youtube their million damage shot, but even when they show you their deck setup, it's hard to eyeball what exactly they have in it. Most of them have a lot of spell duplication (since they want to use those to discard to draw their treasure cards). I knew I'd get confused if I did too much of that. Prisms and pixies are easy to figure out, so they and my fortify spells would be the ones I'd discard first. I also noticed most people don't include reshuffle, which for my strategy is nearly mandatory. Since ordering my spells is key, I needed to failsafe my deck drawing.

Here's the best web page I found for describing how to get a million damage in one shot (solo even!). I compared what he had in his lists with what I was running, and as well, how hard it would be to acquire some of those cards. I'll let you look at his stuff yourself. It's going to be more informative than what I have here (unless you are a pyromancer).

http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/showthread.php?t=280871

After reviewing this, I realized I wasn't running optimally with my equipped items. However, I didn't want to go out running dungeons to get better gear for this, since I wanted to do this NOW. The one concession I made was getting a wand item that gave bladestorm. The critical chance I was losing was being made up for in an additional percentage boost. I also noted that he eschewed the use of prisms, feeling that there might be too much room for mistakes or getting caught having to discard before getting all of your post-prism damage cast (which means in our case, getting all your ice damage cast before casting prism). Every single damage buff has to go on for this to work. Well, almost... which I'll mention at the end.

I also discovered an angle that I had not thought of before. While reviewing the treasure cards I already owned when putting in my newly bought cards into the sideboard, I discovered that I owned a Polymorph Colossus treasure card. Hey, don't those things cast ice spells? I looked it up, and sure enough, one of the spells they cast is ice trap (I think the 30% variety). I looked up the other polymorph spells to see what other spells might aid my endeavor. You must note, that these are school cards. If you already cast any of these, the polymorph is a wasted effort... your using up six turns for one spell. This is a desperate wizard's gambit. In my case, the colossus, the ninja pig, and the mander polymorphs all gave good school cards that I couldn't cast (ice trap, feint, and balance blade). I did have versions of ice trap and feint, but as treasure cards, so these spells would be able to stack. I was only able to buy the polymorph ninja pig, unfortunately.

I got my equipment ready. It was nearly the same as before but with the following changes:

· Hammer of the Stone Sky (gives 25% BladeStorm item card)
· some other ring that I forget, but gives 4% fire damage boost instead of general damage, but gives a little extra percentage for incoming heals. I didn't need it at all last time (constantly hovered within 200 of my maximum health, mostly due to pet casting spritely), so whatever.

What was important were the additional spells in my deck. For my main deck setup, I removed one elemental trap and one prism.

For my treasure card sideboard, I added in the following spells:

· 40% Ice Trap (Bartleby Series)
· 35% Fire Trap (Bartleby Series)
· 40% FireBlade
· Polymorph Colossus (for 30% Ice Trap school card)
· Polymorph Ninja Pig (for 70%/30 Feint school card)
· 2 x Reshuffle (added one in, just in case)

I also removed the extra elemental trap. The six additional boost cards should bring me over the top. Right? Well, almost. Everything is working right, and remembering how I kept trying to wait it out for my ice cards before... this time I just aggressively discarded, saving only my reshuffle as it came up, and casting every treasure ice card I got. The first time I tried this, I had ice blasts from my wand, and that is how I took out the minion. This time I did not have them, since my wand had changed to non-damage spells only. I did have an extra Grand Phoenix from my pet, but worried that I'd already have blades on me by the time it would show. I thus planned to use the polymorphs to take out the minion. Well, there was no need for worry. Phoenix came early, and I elected to just send it toward Ms. Blackhope herself. The remainder of the fight would be with her skeletal minion.

A bit later, I drew the polymorph colossus. I had to be very careful, as there is a lot of damage in the colossus arsenal. One mis-click would spoil the whole thing. I got my ice trap cast on my target, and then just passed the rest of the time until the polymorph expired.

A few turns after this, calamity! I did NOT put Polymorph Ninja Pig in my deck. Rather, I had put the Ninja Pig damage spell in. That meant I would be without an extra feint, which is a big damage boost. Oh man! That meant I was really cutting down my numbers. I didn't have time to re-calculate the whole effect, and it didn't matter. Treasure cards had already been cast. I had to see it through. I finished putting all of my ice damage on, not worrying about the in-between cards that wouldn't matter which order they were cast and finished up the battle.

Here was my battle plan, executed about right. I don't know if my Phoenix pet ever cast his fire trap or not... I didn't notice it.


PHASE 1, laying on the ice
30% Ice Trap, colossus spell (and kill minion in colossus form)
35% Ice Trap
40% Ice Trap

PHASE 2, switching damage types
Prism

PHASE 3, the in-between spells... ones that didn't matter if they were cast before or after prism
25% Elemental Trap
30% Elemental Trap
70% Feint, pig spell
70% Feint
75% Feint
35% Elemental Blade
40% Elemental Blade
Gargantuan, stick it on Efreet whenever they are both in hand
35% Fireblade
40% Fireblade
40% Fireblade
25% Curse
35% Wyldfire

PHASE 3, adding fire
25% Fuel
30% Fuel
25% Fire Trap
30% Fire Trap
35% Fire Trap
35% Fire Trap

PHASE 4, draw back and punch
35% Dark Pact (best to have the feint traps on yourself cleared before casting...)
25% BladeStorm (important! must not cast bladestorm before dark pact)
35% Berserk
1145 modified-damage Efreet

Survey says? BOOM! 1,000,000 damage rolled up the screen above the poor skeleton's (once again) lifeless body. Damage displayed is capped at a million, and I'm pretty sure my damage wasn't too much higher than that. Were I to be sure that my pet cast his fire trap, and I had actually gotten the polymorph ninja pig's feint cast, it would have been around 2 million.

I did get a screen grab, but upon reviewing it, I realized that once again, I had left my chat window open. I may post it here eventually, but first I will have to "shop" the names and/or text out of the image. Maybe a blur or strike-through will suffice.

This is how I soloed for a million. To be sure, this is more easily done in a group, as long as communication is clear. You won't need to spend so much gold on treasure cards, and if you review the link I put in earlier, you can see there are a lot of treasure cards possible. Also, no school comes close to storm for the top damage ability. I don't know if fire or death or some other school comes in second, but it's pretty distant from the top. If you're storm, you almost HAVE to get this badge to remain in the club. I just had to see that I could do it, so here you go. I hope this helps anyone else trying to get the badge.

Final advice? Plan it out. Do the math! It will save you some gold. Don't be afraid of prisms, as they give you a pretty cost-effective avenue of boosting your damage. Just make sure you stick with the plan and lay your cards on in the right order. And use Reshuffle! It will help avoid potential mistakes. If you decide not to solo this, be kind and return the favor for your friends. Keep extra treasure cards on hand that you can trade to them or cast on them. Load up shields and heals, and communicate through the whole thing. Everybody loves a winner.

/PS. I didn't critical here either. Counting on a critical might make you sad. You may find yourself attempting the feat over and over hoping for a different result from a critical, which is luck. Plan it out, and you won't need luck. Paying extra gold up front saves you from spending more on retries.

Attempt One on the Million Damage badge

I had an interest in trying this for awhile, and had already begun crafting gear that would give me some bonus spells. Sunday night, I decided to finish what I started. Unfortunately, I spent about two hours gathering up the materials to craft my helmet and my boots, only to discover (after crafting both), that I had already crafted the boots. Ah me. Good bye, gold.

I didn't think I'd do it the first time out, but I needed to see how close I could get. I chose Lady Blackhope's tower in Unicorn Way. No one would be able to jump into my fight (watch out for porting friends, though!), the two monsters were very light on damage dealing, and they wouldn't put up spells that would hurt the effort (like Weakness, or any kind of shields). I wouldn't get any kind of cross-school boost, but I could easily live with that.

Here's how I was equipped:

· Blazing Chieftain's Helmet (gives 40% Fire Blade item card)
· Chief's Garb of Flames (gives 35% Fire Trap item card)
· Boots of Wyldfire (gives 35% Wyldfire item card)
· Dragonbreath Bow (gives 37% critical chance)
· Raven's Ruby Talon (gives 5% fire damage boost)
· Jewel of the Feint Amulet (gives 75% Feint item card)
· Ring of the Wolf's Song (gives 4% general damage boost)
· Pet Phoenix (gives 5% fire damage boost, can cast Fire Trap pet card, gives Grand Phoenix spell)

And here was my deck (Bundle of Eternal Flame):

· Efreet (895 fire damage)
· 25% Fire Trap
· 35% FireBlade
· 25% Fuel
· 35% Elemental Blade
· 2 x 25% Elemental Trap
· 7 x Fire Prism
· 3 x Fortify aura
· 6 x Pixie

My sideboard, of course, is where the main damage was stored:

· 250 Gargantuan TC
· 35% Berserk
· 25% Curse
· 35% Dark Pact
· 70%/20 Feint
· 30% Fuel
· 35% Ice Trap
· 30% Fire Trap
· 40% Elemental Blade
· 2 x 30% Elemental Trap

You'll notice that I included ice damage, which I accessed through my prism. All of my ice damage (except from elemental trap) rested in my sideboard, so I started pulling from my sideboard early. I had some pretty good draws and thought I might not need to use a reshuffle, but eventually I got stuck without putting on my ice trap, so I cast what I could, discarding all fire traps until I got it. I then cast it, followed it up with a prism, and reshuffled.

I made a fairly obvious error. I THOUGHT that I might be able to double up on the elemental traps, casting one of each kind (regular and treasure card) before the prism, and then again each kind after the prism. My logic was that the fire would be used from the one, and the ice from the other. It just don't work that way. When the routine for determining which spells to register in the stack, it will ignore all subsequent cards that are exact. Treasure cards, item cards, school cards, and pet cards are all treated as different spells, even if the card is otherwise exactly the same (for those who didn't know this). Treasure cards of the same name but different percentage level are also treated as separate non-duplicated spells. So the extra school and treasure trap cards were ignored. The good thing is that the elemental trap doesn't matter in what order it is cast (before or after the prism).

I knew enough to save my berserk for last before casting my efreet. No need to take any more boosted damage than I had to.

Final result? Around 420,000 damage. Had I sat down and calculated it on paper, I could have avoided going in and using up my treasure cards, but hey. Sometimes you have to actually feel how it plays. I was a little disappointed, but not much. I didn't get a critical, and that would have gotten me close to the million, but even that wouldn't have been enough. So I needed to re-examine my cards and calculate it out for a second attempt.