FROZEN WASTELAND Frontier Dungeon Picture Guide

[Azagthor]

UPDATE #0: This guide is very out of date, as there have been several changes to the enemy line-ups in this dungeon. In general, the changes have made the stages easier to manage. I shall update the enemy wave graphics for Madness and Insanity, but the longer text parts may still be out of date for a while longer sorry.

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Welcome to the visual guide for the Skull Quest related FROZEN WASTELAND Frontier Dungeon. Compared to the other dungeons, this icy one is relatively straight forward, but the more information available the better. This new dungeon was released on the 18th of November, 2019. It was aimed at newer and intermediate players (and now caters to all players with the introduction of Insanity), and introduced Icy Talisman Legendary Souls. Every 250 Hard runs, 100 Madness, or 25 Insanity runs of this dungeon will earn a blue T2/3 cosmic talisman.

First of all, huge shout-out to Bakura, for giving me the inspiration to create my own guide for this easier dungeon. Love your work mate!
Secondly, where possible/remembered I have underlined and linked to the Compendium page for relevant characters and talismans.
Lastly, whenever you see [ed:] that's me adding editor's commentary to someone else's posts. Thought I should make that clear as Ed means something different here in LotB!

You can find the official announcement and description of this dungeon HERE. It contains some nice official illustrations.

Frozen Wasteland at a Glance
(Image updated on 9/1/2020 to include Madness and changed reward chances.)

How to Unlock the Frozen Wasteland
The Frozen Wasteland requires a key, like all Frontier Dungeons. Initially, these keys could not be purchased for Frontier Coins, and could only be obtained as an uncommon (20%) drop from Skull Quests during events, or as event challenge rewards. The launch event had three keys as a challenge reward, and the second Skull Quest event has another three as challenge rewards. The third Skull Quest event had six keys as rewards, and announced the keys would be permanently added to the Frontier Store for 150FC.

Each key costs a nominal 25,000 gold to open in the Book of Souls. The key opens the dungeon for eight (8) hours. You are only limited by time (and your ironite for refills), there are no other restriction. There are now two stages, a HARD and a MADNESS mode. Hard costs 10SoT, Madness 20SoT.

REWARDS - What can you get from the Frozen Wasteland?
As you can see from the in-game reward list above, this dungeon is heavily focused on cosmic talismans. However, the game doesn't show everything, so here is the full list and discussion of potential rewards. A month after launch, alongside the introduction of the Madness stage, the drop rates were drastically changed, and drop sizes standardised. Some of Hard Modes drop rates were transferred directly to the new Madness level, while others were slashed across both stages. While this guide's previous reward section was based on over 1,000 runs, this reworked section is only based on 100 runs each of Hard and Madness. Enough to give a general idea of drop patterns and determining rough common/uncommon/rare probabilities, but not enough to be confident with any of the numbers. RNG will be RNG after all.


Super Rough Summary while working out how best to visualise this:
HARD = 2 Icy Frags + 2 Evo Bricks + 0-3 Additional Rewards
MADNESS = 5 Icy Frags + 4 Evo Bricks + 0-4 Additional Rewards
INSANITY = 20 Icy Frags + 6 Evo Bricks + 0-4 Additional Rewards


Apologies for the length of this section! Even cutting it down in the update hasn't reduced it by much.

• Icy Talisman Legendary Soul Fragments - Each Hard run always drops two (2) Icy Talisman Fragments and Madness run always drops five (5). 500 fragments converts into a blue T2/3 cosmic soul, a 5* Gold Skull, and 100 Icy Talisman Mythic Soul fragments. 1,000 Mythic fragments guarantees a blue T3 along with another 5* Gold Skull.
  
• 3* Evolution Shards - The reward image only shows the colourless variety, but all six varieties drop here. Every run ALWAYS drops two (1+1) of these evo shards in Hard and two pairs (2+2) in Madness, which will be a combination of either Red, Green, or Purple (95%), or Blue, Yellow, or Colourless (5%). Even with the reduced SoT drops, this is a decent way to gather the Red, Green, and Purple bricks. May even be better than LoL X, although you'll obviously miss out on the other rewards from that dungeon.
  
• Cosmic Evo Runes 1* & 2* T1/2/3 - All six types of cosmic evo runes drop here, and always drop in a pair of two (2). While not a guaranteed drop, they will only ever drop once per run. They drop in around 1/3rd of Hard runs, and 3/4th of Madness runs. As expected, the odds for each type of rune relate to their star and T-level, with 1* T1 being the most common.
  
• Talisman Soul Fragments - These drop in stacks of 3, and are very rare. Considering you need 400 of these fragments for a complete soul, and other dungeons drop larger stacks, these feel like a wasted reward drop.
  
• Rare Souls - Rare souls have become rare again.
  
• Skill Shards - Skill shards have become exceedingly rare once more. In my 100 Hard runs, not a single SS dropped, compared with 4 in Madness.
  
• Frontier Coins - The most heartbreaking of all the nerfs, the humble Frontier Coin. When the dungeon first launched you could expect a long-term average of around 1.3 FC per run. It was an excellent way for newer players to catch-up on this increasingly vital currency. Frontier Coins still drop in stacks of 5, but they only dropped 5 times in my 100 Madness (so 25FC in 100 runs), and once in my 100 Hard runs. The FC drops here are negligible.
  
• Gold - Nothing too special here, just under 7,000 gold each Hard run and around 10,750 gold in Madness. Only ever on the first screen, as the reward chest never contains gold. Thankfully.
  
• Sands of War - Sands of War drop in stacks of 3. While reduced, SoT remains one of the more common rewards. My Madness runs have average slightly over 1SoW per run, while Hard mode has half of that. If you're already running this dungeon for whatever reason, you'll stock up a few SoW for the next PvP event.
  
• Sands of Time - Like most dungeons in this game Sands of Time can drop as both a regular mission reward (first page) and an extra reward from the Treasure Chest (second page). The first page displays a combined total of both, but can be separated once drop sizes (5 in both stages) are determined. The first page is roughly the same for both stages, around 65-70% for 1-5SoT, but when it comes to the 5SoT from the reward chest, Madness has double the drop rate of SoT compared with Hard mode. On average, Hard will recover ~2SoT each run, and Madness just under 4SoT. Not much, but enough to get an extra run most refills.
  
• Ironite - Ironite also appears on both the first and second reward screens, but aren't combined on the first screen like SoT. Both stages drop 1-3ironite on the first page ~35% of the time. The reward chest can drop 5ironite. In my 100 Madness runs this happened 9 times, and only twice in my 100 Hard runs. Again, it's not much, but it could refund around 20% of the ironite you spend on refills.
  
• Experience - Nothing special, Madness has 20,000xp to divide between the characters you take, and Hard has 15,000.

In summary, the Frozen Wasteland remains a good source for Red, Green, and Purple 3* Evolution Shards, all varieties of Cosmic Evolution Runes, and a decent source for Sands of War. Everything else should be treated as an extra bonus, and not expected.



THE ACHIEVEMENTS - What to wear?
There are five new achievements relating to the Frozen Wasteland. They all involve having a character wearing a set of talismans beat the dungeon 500 times. There is one for each colour, and most of them drop from the Talisman Skull Quests stages. Venom is event-only, the odd one out. They do not need to be on active characters, you can have them on a back-seat Eddie and they will still count towards the achievements. Putting two sets on a character doesn't work, but two characters with a set each will count twice.

• Prime - Red 2-set
• Future - Blue 2-set
• Heal - Green 3-set
• Tranquillity - Yellow 2-set
• Venom - Purple 3-set

All five acheivement rewards are the same: 25 Ironite, 75 Talisman Soul Fragments, and 2 Skill Shards.

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The following information only related to HARD mode. For information pertaining to MADNESS scroll down to the second post.

THE ENEMIES - Who are we fighting here?
As befitting a HARD dungeon designed with newer players in mind, the enemies here are not overly difficult. They are all 4*, and either level 75 or 80. They might not have much HP, but they can hit surprisingly hard if you're not careful. They don't have any special talismans, and all have the same additional stat boosts, as shown below. The Frozen Wasteland has five waves, ending in a boss fight. However, despite Beelzebub being used in the official images for this dungeon, he is not the boss. That honour goes to the second blue bat.

Potential Pitfalls
With a proper team, this dungeon shouldn't be a problem. However, if you're using the dungeon to level characters, you may be relying on only one or two strong characters, and could run into the occasional mishap, or have your runs slowed down unnecessarily. These are the two waves you'll need to handle for the smoothest farming experience.

Wave 2 - This is where my only two defeats (in hundreds of runs) have come from. The Purple Dog's power attack can give the whole team Endure, so you'll want to beat their team on the first turn. The Green Dog has the Block passive, making it slightly harder to one-shot the whole team. Either Passive Disable, or use a strong multi-hit attack to get past the Block. Both Purple and Red Hound have passive Immunity.

Wave 5 - This is the boss wave, and the two Green Bats have the Block passive. Same as last time, use Passive Disable or a strong multi-hit attack to break through. If left alive the Green Bats can grant themselves Invincibility, which will slow down your runs. While Beelzebub can give himself Vanish, which could slow down single-target auto-runs, the actual boss of the fight is the second blue bat. Killing the bat, once you've dealt with the Blocking green bats, will end the fight.

TEAM SUGGESTIONS- Who should you take?

Remember the enemies deal more damage than you might expect, so unless you can kill everything in one turn, be sure your Eddie can take a couple of hits in return. Once you're certain you can survive, you'll want to kill things as quickly as possible, to get the most out of the unlimited runs. An aoe multi-hitter will see you through, or two strong aoe attackers. A way to deal with Immunity, and at the worst, Endure, could be helpful.

This is what other people have been saying:

Player	Team Suggestion
Ip4	I am using DOOMSDAY EDDIE and LILITH MOONLIGHT [ed: Max Awakened version] and always win with 30 seconds.
Yup	Guy Fawkes Ed will beat it by himself as well. Takes around 40 seconds because of that dog with Endure in the second battle, but that's the only slow spot.
Celobeast	You can try dragonscale talismans, since they cause extra damage after the main damage. Navigator + Killer Prime 18-22 sec.
Blade685	My best is always 17 sec too with Navigator.
Muzzleloader	I also got 17 seconds with a lone Navigator. Chance, blight [ed: Blight prevent your character from wasting time with power and fury moves] and attack cosmic.
scott-5496	17 seconds is also my fastest - that was W LOL [ed: His basic attack hits all enemies once awakend the first time] and Magma... between 17-26 seconds is fine!
Me-Azagthor	I'm using Flight of Icarus Eddie with Lanterns & Warlords, along with W LOL wearing Orbits. Lanterns let FoI's basic hit multiple times with a chance to heal and trigger Warlord's extra turn. Everything usually dies in the first turn, and the Orbits help remove Endure and Immunity if needed.
Bakura	Final Frontier Eddie can solo the dungeon. 20 seconds with NotB Eddie and Killer Prime.

GOOD LUCK- Have Fun
What team have you been using? How fast are your runs? Have you found any good Icy Talismans yet?