u/Professional_Year579

Warning: long rant to explain how I’ve approached escalation and going through the math of the grind.

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I decided to math out just how long I would be grinding for a true “prototype build.”

Here are some factors to consider because we all play Division at different rates farming different objectives.

I have a full time job so I have a life outside gaming. That’s true for most players.

But I’m also an introvert who also enjoys playing just one game to death before trying another. So Division 2 was the ONLY game I’ve played.

Basically I’m playing on average a few hours every day between maybe 2-4 on work days and more on weekends.

HOWEVER…I don’t ONLY PLAY ESCALATION. That would bore me and make me quit even sooner. Again…I bet this is true of most players….

Finally, I will play in coordinates parties sometimes but not all the time…I have to depend on random matchmaking often. Again, I’m betting this is true of most players.

This means playing on the highest escalation tiers is totally unreasonable for me. I’ve noticed many steamers that post videos on Division agree saying the most common tiers they see people farming is tier 2-5. No one is bothering with stupid Hotfoot….😂

I also don’t enjoy playing pure gun builds that’s why I don’t only play escalation. Basically I created an “escalation build” to farm and that’s the only place I use that build otherwise I’m playing as a tank or skill build in Retaliation or Countdown.

So I maybe farm a FEW escalation missions between tier 2-5 every day….Maybe I’ll play like 5 max if we don’t wipe that gets me angry or I’ll just play 3. 3-5 missions I think is my average. Again maybe a couple more on weekends.

I think that’s about the average of most players.

So since they added prototype I’ve only gathered 40 cores playing like that so far. Granted they increased the drop chance marginally for part of that time farming.

That’s just enough to finally upgrade all 4 of the builds I enjoy playing. But that’s it.

The real grind we ALL KNOW is farming for the exact augments you want on all your gear items and then upgrading those to the max version of the augment.

So here’s the math I’ve figured out….

There are 8 different augments. Half of them are probably utter garbage for any kind of build. But if you’re smart you won’t bother upgrading any until you roll the perfect one for your build.

Re rolling costs so many increasing prototypes by the 6th roll it costs you 25 cores every time.

But remember there’s 8 augments…

So on AVERAGE it will take you 8 re rolls PER ITEM…

You may get lucky on some and it only takes 1…or you may have a bad year and it takes 50 re rolls!!! Believe me on a 1/8 chance that WILL HAPPEN.

But let’s stick to the averages.

It will cost about 110 cores on average to roll the augment you wanted. This is even assuming the devs didn’t play fast and loose with algorithms and deliberately increased the chance of getting crap like the more health augment lol….So assuming again the chance is an equal 1/8 for all 8 augments…

But then it costs about 30 more cores to fully upgrade it.

So that’s 140 cores per item…

Now let’s assume you want to augment all 6 gear items and primary and secondary weapons.

That’s 8 items for any build requiring 880 prototype cores on AVERAGE again to fully upgrade a build.

Now I play a few tier 2-5 missions every day. I might get 6 cores I might get NONE. I don’t think I’ve seen any higher than 6 even with the current increased drop chance.

Let’s assume then I average 3 cores per mission and I play 5 missions on average every day playing less on work days and more on the weekends.

That’s 15 cores a day…but again I only have 40 now after WEEKS so I feel im being too generous most likely.

So it will take you roughly TWO MONTHS to max out ONE build. But most of us have multiple builds we enjoy. So realistically it’ll take you in the YEAR RANGE.

And this is assuming your luck is at least average the whole period.

But honestly I was being too generous…the fact I only have 40 now means I think I haven’t played escalation EVERY DAY which is what this math assumes.

More likely I’ve played a few missions every OTHER or 3 days or something…

Finally…this is ONLY FOR A FULLY AUGMENTED PROTO BUILD. But what about maxing all 3 attributes on all your gear next? That is BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE…the rng of maxing all stats when you prototype is almost non existent.

Instead, the ONLY WAY to achieve THAT level of completion for a build is to farm MAX escalation tiers and then have to wait constantly for a whole other RnG grind of hoping the targeted loot is where you need it on a given day and also on a mission you can reasonablt complete constantly on tier 10. lol…good luck with that…that’s pretty much only going to be viable for the No Lifers of the game.

So with that said…I don’t play anymore lol.

I quit the game a few days ago. Escalation is crap. Prototype is crap. Ubisoft is total crap.

I went back to Outriders for the millionth time just because I enjoy the build freedom it offers still. I even started playing Skyrim again.

I’ll look for another decent looter shooter eventually but Division is too horrible now imo. I hate the difficulty or rather the build RESTRICTIONS applied in endgame…(tanks unwelcome always even though they have such builds in their game), hate the new grind now, it used to be more positive than negative to keep me playing. Now it’s just negative.

Anyway that’s the rant and here’s some Outriders gameplay for fun:

https://youtu.be/VyCHM_kgXMQ?si=mWQE_pHP5h3ICtxq