Save Winterfest! Help Thread and FAQs

This is just a thread that basically takes everyone's opinion on how to beat the level.
Some questions I have are:
1. How does the mission change between tiers?
2. Big Box or small box?
3. What difference do the grinches attacking impostoclause make?

1. only in difficulty, at the moment. No other change
2. Big, from impostoclaus. Small from middle bit
3. If they defeat impostoclause, the level ends early
Just saying, keys are found in the little buckets of bolts spread across the level

1. Not sure, only done t3 at the moment.
2. Big gives ya 3 wishes but is a tad harder to carry through (more enemies and it slows ya). Once you unlock the small boxes in the middle, they are a lot safer to deliver.
3. They beat the stuffing out of Impostaclus, ending the level earlier.
Health trinkets and ASI trinkets are pretty useful, you'll rarely have time to charge your weapons. From what I've seen, Polaris, AP and the toothpicks are good, with Furious Flamberge and Fearless Rigadoon kinda shining in this mission.

1. Don't change at all. Got the same dmg from T2 and T3
2. Balance the team with big/little
2 red 2 green is the best so far with 1 bombe

1. I have 4* gear, so I got the tier 3 version of it.And let me say, it is not fun.You really have to have a plan on how you are going to do the mission.Teamwork is also important.Without it, you'll be dead in less than a minute.When my friend(who is tier2) invited me to do the mission, it was way easier.Managed to get 40 tokens.
2. The small boxes make you move at normal speed, but they only give you one token.While the big one gives you 3 tokens, but makes you move slower.
3. Leave him be, the level ends early, so I would protect him when that happens.Also, in case you didn't know, the cookies and milk give impostaclus some health.

The difficulty level = OOO hates us. :L

Do T1, T2, or T3? (i got me an alt)
is there a noticeable difference between the tiers?
What is the ideal gear for me? Skolver, Vog Cub, Snarby, ?
and...
Best Knockback Weapons? The blast bomb is no working for me.

The mission is full of Devilites, Chroma and occasional Gremlins. So Snarby set w/ Deadly Skelly Shield would be nice. For weapons, use pokey swords, Scintillating Sun Shards, DBB or RSS.

I've done it a few times with random people in tier 3 (haven't tried the other tiers), and some of the things I've found:
- On the left side, the upper and lower paths are pretty similar, so your choice doesn't really matter. On the right side, however, the lower path seems to be the best in both directions (use Polaris to trigger the ghost block when delivering the presents).
- Stick together at all times. If you lose your present, only grab a new one if there is a present pile nearby. Otherwise, just stick with the group and try to be more careful next time.
- Kill the enemies as they spawn (do this as a group) so that they don't build up.
- Grab red presents until the last 1-2 minutes, then switch to green presents.
- The best weapons seem to be the Pulsar and Flourish lines.
- The best armor would probably be something like Snarbolax or Skelly, with a Skelly Shield.
I'm sure there are groups that have done much better, but using these ideas, we were able to get 49 tokens as a random tier 3 group.

Yeah it's easier on T2 and T1, my bad.
Haven't notice with 1 mins of play but after a whole 10 minute of gift delivery I noticed a HUUUGE difference.
Going for T2 or T1 only. I will rush my mule to rank 4-1 and get me n my buddy in T1 winterfest :D
Edit: @ Goofio. Flourishes and polaris are good to DPS and switch but having 1 bomber in your team can time the switch perfectly (my part) and have 1 with Blitz to cover the bomber + 2 flourishes. Seems to be the best tactic we found so far.

What are those Devilite tokens that the gremlin kids get (As in are they an in-game item a knight can obtain)?

They're toys. Some of them might be action figures.
I'd love to see the Super Splodin' Shard Squad take this one on...

Goofio's right about staying in a group.
Me and a couple friends always grabbed big gifts and always stuck together, never lingered too long with the enemies, and only grabbed small gifts if we're at 1:30 left or so. Anyone of us who lost their gift would just continue to follow the group, or kill the klepto that took it (they do drop any gifts they eat).
The result; we'd often get 50-70 tokens per run.
The key definitely seems to be moving in a group if everyone has a big gift. Any time the one random with us sort of did his own thing, it slowly devolved into a desperate struggle to deliver the gifts. One exception to this was a random who would carry only small gifts, but sort of escorted us who had the big gifts.

I did T1 mostly for the easier enemies. Ice Queen set seems ideal for the freeze/stun resist (or Skolver if you don't have that). That and a trinket (or low freeze uv) will let you be able to run through the ice pits without getting frozen.

I've only played on tier 3 so far, and I'm going to repeat some of the advice everyone else has been giving - STAY TOGETHER. Seriously, we can't emphasize this enough; every time one of my party got separated from the others, the whole thing suddenly became a lot more difficult - particularly for the poor solo guy.
Also, kill the monsters as you go; don't just power through them until the last minute or so. They keep spawning, build up, and then swarm you.
As far as weapons go, my guild actually had a lot of success with spamming DBB attacks. We had...I think two using DBB constantly, and the other two switching between toothpicks and polaris/supernova as needed. So long as we stayed together, it was more than enough to keep us all safe and moving. We managed to get 81 tokens on our best run using that method, and between 60 and 70 on the other runs.
Oh, yeah - and we only grabbed the big gifts for most of the run, then switched to small during the last run or two.

If you are going to run past the monsters to deliver the presents then for the love of god, MAKE SURE YOU KILL THEM ON THE WAY BACK. Because otherwise you can easily end up with a massive swarm of 10-20 enemies sitting outside the walls, making it nearly impossible to pick up new presents.
Also you only need 1 Key because you can grab presents through the 2nd gate.

My advice on what to wear.
Armor: Skolver set/ Mercurial set
Shield: Any 5* shield really
Weapons: Anything in the flourish line, Argent peacemaker/Sentenza
Trinkets: Freeze trinkets or heart trinkets (If you get enough freeze resist you can walk through freeze grates without getting frozen but still take damage.)
Oh and another thing, if a chroma takes your box, Kill the chroma and he'll drop your box when he dies.

Dread Skelly gear (and maybe a freeze trinket; haven't tried without) makes the T1 traps and snowballs not freeze you. That and an Ironmight shield will let you power your way through most of the map.
My Question is: YTF(rosty) didn't they make the SW Mission one Easy/Med. Difficulty for everyone to play?
I've seen 4 different Difficulties on my Friends List, 3, 9, 19, 25. I guess that is all, but I think I saw a Depth 14 Version too... Means one for each * Gears rating? Anyway, Noobs have it cushy, because the Vets are clamouring to Join them to get the Max # of Tokens per run. And those Vets who don't want a Noob in their Party just exploit the other way. Which leaves us honest folks out in the cold, if we are too principled to exploit. (My only moment of weakness so far was when a Guildie suggested I qualified for an Alt. with a seperate Mist Guage, which didn't pan out...)
It frosts my cookies, because OOO knew perfectly well what they were doing. There's no way they didn't see this coming. But the Noobs and the Vets are all happy, so I'm sure there won't be a tweak.
And I did the math according to my normal earnings - and taking into account I don't make a habit of gambling on unboxings - and running the Event Mission doesn't even come close to being worth it in terms of time and Mist/CE. Not to mention the overall frustration factor...

I'm fortunate (Some say unfortunate) enough to be a Tier 3 player in a primarily Tier 2 guild, so I've been playing a lot of Tier 2 Winterfest. From my experience...
1) I've been mainly using Mercurial for armor. When I did dabble in Tier 3, it was quite painful though. The movement speed is rather nice if you have fast weapons, as it allows you to stay with the rest of the team while getting some quick smacks on greavers/passing fiends/chromalisks
2) My weapons have been the Final Flourish, Warmaster's Rocket Hammer, Acheron, and Callahan. I've also been using the Swiftstrike Buckler for the ASI, and have a Heart Trinket + Sword ASI med trinket. The FF with near ASI Max lets me get really quick hits in without slowing down too much (The slow down per strike is countered by Mercurial's small MS increase). The WRH is for those massive clumps of enemies that block your path. Pull it out, and plow your way straight through massive hordes without slowing down. The Acheron is for the gremlins who occasionally mob Imposto, but the GF works just as well (My Acheron has an anti-gremlin UV so I use it over a GF). The Callahan is when you're waiting for the ice hazards to clear. Instead of just sitting around, I tend to strafe back and forth so it's harder for fiends to hit me, in addition to sniping/stunning Chromalisks who would like to steal your boxes.
3) Don't try to outrun the Greavers. When they come in for an attack, turn around and do a quick Toothpick swing. That'll knock them back and prevent you from getting caught in their stun-cloud.
4) The route I take is, from Imposto: Exit down so that when you get to the center, you can see what is actually in the center before you run into it. Cross the center to the upper right path (Less obstacles) and eventually to the pile of presents. On the way back, take the lower right route, hitting the ghost blocks as you go. Once in the center, it doesn't matter which way, but I prefer taking the lower left back to Imposto.
5) Always thaw allies and always travel in at least pairs. When an ally is frozen, one attack from a sword will break them free. On the ice hazards, you can smack away at frozen allies and eventually their invincibility frames will carry them through it, but that's only if you're desperate.
6) It takes about 1 minute and 30 seconds to do one trip with the larger red boxes. If you have less than that, it's best to grab a green box and just try to get one or two more.

Funny thing too. This mission is just about the only place where anyone will free you from ice, or even feel the need to.

You can free people from ice? Why has nobody ever done that to me?

2) Warning to the wary: Big boxes slow you attack speed in addition to your movement speed, and both debuffs stack with being stunned. Given that I play very much like a Guardian, I prefer the small boxes.

Ok, a lot of people have stolen my words, but I'm still gonna give some papayadvice =)
Arguably, the best path to take would be "bottom left, top right. On this path there is only one of those freezer things. While on the "bottom right, top left" path, there are 2 (or was it 3?) of them.
You should always take red boxes since they give 3 winter wishes, while green ones only give one. Some people say that the green ones make up for it since they are much easier (faster) to carry. Red boxes take around 40 seconds to get from impostoclaus to the gremlins. Green boxes can take around 20-30 from my experience, so red boxes would still be better.
The only time you should take a green box is when you have less than 40 seconds to deliver a box. Some people try to deliver a red box within the 30-40 seconds mark but they usually don't make it OR they don't have the time to pick up the winter wishes (which is just disappointing)
If you are doing T1 just ignore the monsters. Even wearing proto armor, they still do less than half a bar of damage. I've never done T2 so I can't give you any papayadvice on that one :P. T3 is just a big pain in the [bucket]. The monsters all gang up on you and start to chop away at your health.
If you ask me, it isn't fair for us T3 players. The missions is 129219059120581902times as hard but we still get the same amount of tokens?!
Yeah, you gotta protect Impostoclaus. Those grinchlins hate Christmas like [pelt] and start to beat the [ship] out of him. You should try to deliver cookies from the gremlins to Impostoclaus, but only if you are sure that you won't get hit by monsters (since the cookies "break" when you place them down, or when you get hit).
During the mission, the party should stick together for the first-second delivery. After that it would be nice if the party members could spread themselves across the pathway evenly. That way there will always be one person near to Impostoclaus in case the grinchlins decide to appear.
And also, how/where can you find the golden keys?