I hope you have a strong stomach, True Believer.

Let’s start here: I’m free to play. Every game I pick up I’m free to play. On principle. Not because I don’t like supporting App development or because I’m a glutton for punishment (which I may be). Simply so I can, inevitably, post on a forum like this one that I’m 100% F2P, and demonstrate that games I love can be won without money. Know this: like most good games, Legacy of The Beast can be won without money. But you better not plan on playing anything else.

This new dungeon event brought a new kind of grind, which is worth examining. The dungeon events are, I think, a dev’s excuse to have a cake and eat it (in front of you). They start wonderfully: in the first hour or so, you can get two sets of shiny new talis whilst netting ironite, skill shards, and et cetera, and et cetera. I shrewd F2P player at my level or beyond should STOP HERE. Unfortunately, sitting on your buns for a week is hard to do.

So I’m 200 runs into the event, gaining achievements that aren’t worth it because I can’t resist. Let’s see exactly how not worth it they are:

#1) Artifact Talis. Artifact Talis are fun to at least try out. Now is a great chance to grab them! In two hundred runs (madness, minus the 30 requisite runs for achievements and the single run on insanity for first clear bonuses) I have zero Artifact Tali drops. I should have a full set in approximately never, plus or minus a few millennia.

#2) Dungeon Fragments. So, in the new dungeon you get Sentinel frags and Dungeon frags, and the occasional rare soul. You get other stuff, too, but at rates < what you can get them for from other places. If you’re grinding, these are the things you’re probably grinding for.

Don’t get me wrong… if it’s rare souls you want, dungeons are pretty good for rare souls, which are pretty good for sacrifice events. You can buy a rare soul from the store for 75 ironite, or you can grind Madness a dozen (or a baker’s dozen) times for 30 ironite, get roughly half your investment back, and get probably a rare soul to drop plus a Sentinel soul (which is about equally valuable). 15 ironite per couple rare souls is not too bad.

Let’s say you’ve been missing Starfire Talis, though, and it really is the Dungeon frags you want. The good news is, if you grind long enough they’re guaranteed. All you have to do is collect those 6 frags per Madness run and wait for…

…

…

Six months?

According to my internal calculations (which require a bit of number fudging), one ironite (in SoT) is worth about 5 Dungeon Frags, grinding Madness, without losses. And there is simpler math which requires less fudging. If you prefer to stop once you’ve reached max achievements (800 runs), you’ve collected 4800 Dungeon Frags on Madness. Congratulations! That’s a single Tali from the store. Collecting a full set of Starfire will only take you about 6 Dungeon events, which will only take you about 6 months.

To sum:

3 Power and 3 Sacrifice Talis net you, I don’t know, I was up maybe 75 ironite when everything was said and done?

1 Starfire Tali from the excellent Dungeon event store costs about 800 ironite, and you can get a full set after 6 months. (But you may want to wait until they drop a different way, in which case you’ll spend 6 months doing nothing with your event currency until you have enough for a set. Will you still be playing this game in six months? The chances I will are about 50/50.)

Still, extrapolating my drop rates, you’ll have your Starfire set sooner than you’ll have your Artifacts, which you’ll have never.