Yes, play the multiballs. Mayhem and Carnage (either stacked or separate) should easily reach level 10 to start fighting the bosses.
Yes, beating a boss via Mayhem doesn’t count as a boss fight for purposes of enabling a host change.
You do get stuck in jail if you somehow finish two hosts on one ball without reaching level 10. But you should have played the multiballs by then. Completing 6 mini-modes for that is always enough to qualify 3 Mayhem locks. If you declined Mayhem and now need to shoot more mini-modes just for the locks, that was your own doing.
The worse jail is when you did beat the first-tier boss (either normally or in Mayhem) but are now stuck between level 10 and 20 so can’t do Grendel yet. It’s not a bug, it’s the design working as intended, but the design is very frustrating. The best way is to avoid the problem in the first place by getting to 20, during a stacked Mayhem-Carnage MB with both 2x exp multipliers (grid box and 3 left-side locks.) If you do end up in this situation stuck short of level 20, generally the one thing you can do is more Carnage modes; Blood Lust is worth good XP, and it’s not that hard to turn it all the way over to a second instance of Carnage MB.
2 Likes
I still frequently find myself struggling with “What am I supposed to do now…?” situations in this game. Found myself in one of these “jail” situations in league play last night and wondering if anyone has any tips for how I was supposed to progress further.
Notes:
- This was on a Premium
- Game was not set on competition mode
Rough timeline of the game:
Ball 1
- Chose Eddie Brock
- Skill shot to spot a mini mode
- Locked ball 1
- Drain
Ball 2
- Stayed on Eddie Brock
- Locked ball 2
- Finished remaining 2 mini modes
- Change host
- Chose Flash Thompson
- Skill shot (quick shot?) to spot a mini mode
- Locked ball 3, started mayhem MB
- Activated + hit spidey sense to light super
- Collected super (spotting a battle)
- Collected a few more JPs and drained down to 1 ball
- Finished 2 remaining mini modes for flash (change host did not light; I think this is expected?)
- Started carnage MB
- Got some JPs, drained back down to 1 ball
- At some point along the way I had picked up 2 dopple bois, so Toxin Team-Up was ready to go at this point
- Played toxin team-up, collected 2 supers
- Drained down to one ball
- Hit the weird semi-hidden combo shots to light host hurry-up
- Drain
Ball 3
- (Game did not offer me the option to change host here; why?)
- Started host hurry-up, finished it
(This is the point where I had no idea what to do next. Change host was not lit, nor was anything else really. I was at level 13.)
- Started hitting mini-modes hoping that maybe it’d let me play Mayhem again
- Finished around 4 mini modes, locks did not light; gave up on mini modes (were these doing anything for me?)
- Started bashing carnage ball
- Eventually triggered a doppleganger and defeated him, which lit rampage
- Played rampage; used a spidey sense and got some decent points
- Back to bashing the carnage ball
- Drain, Game Over
So I guess my main questions are:
- How was I supposed to requalify “Change Host”?
- How was I supposed to requalify Mayhem MB?
- Was my only option to progress the game further at this point to basically to grind out random sundry crap to get all the way from level 13 to level 20 to qualify the Grendel battle…?
You should have had the option to pick any host at the start of ball 3. I’ve never seen that not happen. Either you plunged too fast and skipped it, or something on the playfield triggered by vibration so the game thought the ball was in play. Also completing all mini-modes for your current host during ball 3 should have lit Change Host at the left ramp. Either you didn’t do all three (or six for an unlockable host) or you didn’t notice that light.
To reopen Mayhem locks after playing Mayhem, you must play any boss fight (win or lose).
If the first-tier boss for your current host has been beaten (during Mayhem or a previous game with saved progress), and a host change isn’t available, then yes there is nothing to do between level 10 and 20. Yes, the only thing you can do is bash on random crap for experience. Yes, this is a very aggravating piece of the game design.
The answer to avoiding that jail is to plan way ahead - plan out your Mayhem locks in order so that you won’t end up stuck with the wrong first tier boss already beaten. Yes, the game design sucks that you have to do that and get punished so badly for doing it wrong.
4 Likes
Thanks. At least there is an answer. But wow, what terrible game logic design. Ugh
saved progress (that is not an full save / load) and grinding lead to issues like this.
Do the reset / fail back points need work?