penny is awesome....if you are on freeplay, why wouldnt you want to get to the highest area you can much faster without having to pick it up yourself? sure the game does it, but not nearly as fast as her.

I can only comment on the ones I've used overall, but I will also add in whatever I think of other crusaders I know halfway-decently even if I rarely use them.

~Crusaders I use~

Sal - I honestly have no clue what you're talking about. ALL of Sal's gear and legendary ability boost his own DPS, and he has 4 abilities that buff his DPS. For the longest time, he was one of the best DPSers in the game because he's higher up in the slots and has the "animal" and "royal" tags, which open him up for some massive buffs from other crusaders. Until The Exterminator and, recently, Chiyome came around, he was easily one of the most powerful crusaders in the game and very, VERY flexible about where he can be placed in a formation. He's a DPSer, so of course his abilities are going to focus more on increasing his DPS rather than support abilities or gold find. That's his whole purpose. You don't put a gold crusader in for it's DPS, so why would you put a DPS crusader in for it's gold or support?

Baenarall - You said it yourself. Her speed ability. That's why people use her. It is common for a crusader to be used entirely due to a single ability they have. Yes, "The Old Guard" and "Diversity" don't really buff much DPS, but she's not MEANT to buff DPS. She's a speed-support character. Those two abilities are supplementary at best, irrelevant at worst. "Ancient Hatred" is why she is used because increasing monster spawn speed is very useful.

Penny - At base value, "Trash Pickup" barely does anything. You're right, it auto-picks-up about a second or two earlier. Big whoop. BUT, with her better gear (like epic/golden epic/legendary/golden legendary), the ability picks up items almost instantaneously. With her golden legendary grabber, she picks items up after only 1.25 seconds. Items are barely on the screen for a second before being picked up, which speeds up progression significantly. Something to remember in this game is that, often, crusaders are weak and not useful until they've gotten rare/epic-or-higher gear. until that point, they are usually dead weight. Penny is also a pretty good DPS-support, too. If she has her legendary tablet and recycling gear, put her above or below your DPSer and she'll buff it pretty nicely. She is absolutely perfect for a Chiyome-centered formation.

~Crusaders I do not use, but know about~

Eiralon - ...Yeah, I don't get this guy, either. Even circumstantially, he's not great. Have healers to keep him alive anyway? There are still many, MANY other crusaders that buff the formation better than him without the effort he requires. The ONLY way I see him being useful is if Montana James is in your formation anyway, putting Eiralon in front of him would instantly proc "Turn the Tides" at the start of every area and buff your damage, but even that is a really roundabout way to get a buff that would still be trumped by other, non-sacrificial crusaders.

Also, healers heal him up just fine. Even weaker healers should be able to keep up with his masochism. His firt ability increases healing done on him for specifically that reason. At worst, with his legendary dagger, he bleeds himself out for 75% of his health every second, so a healer would only need to heal 50% of his health at base (his ability buffing that to 75%) to keep up with him, and most healers can hit 50% with halfway-decent gear. Brogon, explained more in-depth below, can heal crusaders by 60% of their max health with golden legendary gear.

Brogon - He has a unique way of healing, and heals a much, much wider area. Yes, there are other crusaders that buff more or heal more, but he does both, so he can fulfill a niche for certain situations. More importantly, though, is that his heal works differently than most other healers. Whereas most healers only affect crusaders adjacent to them, Brogon heals every crusader NOT adjacent to him, which opens up possibilities. Need a healer, but the crusader needing healing is surrounded by other crusaders that can't be moved because of their abilities? In comes Brogon, who can heal from a distance. If you want to buff your DPSer in the back row while still healing your tank in the front row, Brogon's got you covered, bro. Not to mention he has an enemy-slowdown ability to help keep bosses away for longer. He's kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. Moderate DPS buff, easy-to-position healer, and respectable enemy speed debuff. And if you happen to be running Fire Phoenix, too (for some reason...), his healing becomes a constant full-heal.

Rocky - Are we talking about the same crusader here? All he needs to do is be placed around female crusaders. How is that "challenging"? I've never used him as a DPSer, but having all his good gear on and looking at his skills, he's fine. Not the best DPSer, but not bad enough to warrant the confusing hated you seem to have of him. I don't know what you mean by "it hardly helps DPS" unless you're referring to an UNGEARED Rocky, in which case, as I mentioned earlier, ungeared crusaders aren't worth judging since they are useless until they get decent gear. But a GEARED Rocky is no different than most other DPS crusaders, just weaker due to his slot position.

Thanks for explaining Sal! Maybe I'll craft his epic gear and try him out.

Penny is one crusader whose trash pickup makes sense for Speed Running, but, her legendary items (AT least what I think) are replacable with one of my maine DPSers, Natalie Dragon. If you aren't speedrunning, she's better than Penny if you have DD on with legendary gear. She buffs all female crusaders along with Penny. Instead of buffinf Toupe Troopers, Natalie will increase gold. And the Nate Legendary does seem a bit annoying, but, if you use him for Max dps you'll be fine.

Baenarall can be replaced by Roboturkey, whom, is my main buffer. With his legendary battery up to level 4, he can upgrade a crusaders DPS by 475% and then take 150% of their DPS for a damage overload. Meanwhile, like you said, her diversity hardly works along with the old guard, so that limits us down to her 2 +10% dps abilities and her speed. Her speed is good, but her other 2 abilities aren't very powerful in the long run. So, just her speed really is powerful at the end game.

Eralon was a crusader I'm just assuming about. I haven't gotten him yet. But, like you said, his buffs do nothing. In the end, he gives you a 150% DPS increase (Not counting gear) but there are multiple better buffers out there. If you want a REALLY powerful one get Viktor or Xander.

When you say "If you want to buff your DPSer in the back row while still healing your tank in the front row, Brogon's got you covered," how does he heal the tank? Momma Kaine is best for tanking and slows enemies, like Brogon does. SHe also slows enemies and buffs crusaders with Roboturkey. She also doesn't need another base crusader (Basic 20) who aren't the best, though Pheonix is good.

Rocky isn't very powerful on his own and with gear he's good, but Montana James and the Dark Helper are better crusaders. Their gear is better, too, ecspecially Montana.

Hopefully this clears some things up.

Thanks Animenut. My 3 Dpsers are Natalie, Wendy and Robo if used properly. Sometimes Pete works too if I spent too much gold on Wendy and Natalie levels.
I only have 5 legendaries, 2 of which are on Pete, so it makes sense that my judgements are clouded.

I think 2 gold crusaders are good (I'll try out Bernard after the event) so I'll have 3 in my main arsenal which'll be good enough for me. I haven't reached a level over 1000, at my level cap rn of 439 while farming before PPP event. I never thought speed was truly essential to the game. I just use the occasional buff.

For Brogon, I read his Wiki page wrong. I thought friends of Brogon heals crusaders next to him, not close up. I think that crosses him off my list on not understandable.

Thanks for your help, and, hopefully others can be educated like me.

Speed isn't so much "essential" as it is "enormously useful". Think of it like this. While gold and DPS help to push more areas, since GPS directly affects how far you can go, and gold affects how high your DPS can reasonably be pushed, when do you actually reset? When you reach your limit of how far you can go. Let's say that the highest area you can currently reach is area 500. With all your DPS and your gold find no longer allowing you to level up reasonably, 500 is where you'd call it a run, reset, and collect your idols. Rationally, wouldn't it make sense to try to reach 500 as soon as possible? Reaching 500 in 8 hours is objectively worse than reaching 500 in 4 hours, because however many idols you get from resetting (let's assume an average of 5000 per reset), you'd be getting 5000 idols within 4 hours instead of 5000 idols within 8 hours.

I understand that, in a way, it might seem counter-intuitive to sacrifice DPS or gold for speed, but let me give you a little hint as to how many veterans play. Typically, we have two or three saved formations that we switch between based on the situation. For ME, specifically, I have one saved formation that focuses on speed and gold only. Every slot is filled with speed crusaders first, then any extra slots have gold crusaders, with one slot saved for my main DPSer. Now, like I said before, I always reach the level cap with ease, but before I was able to do that, I did the following. My second saved formation is DPS/speed. Since having the gold crusaders in the team no longer made any difference in buying levels, time to switch all gold crusaders out for DPS-buffers. Still keep all the speed crusaders to keep up the momentum, but now with more DPS-support to make better use of the levels I've gotten. Once this formation tapers out, start replacing speed crusaders one-by-one. Hit a point where you are no longer insta-killing? Switch one speed out for one DPS-support, keep going. Once you sop insta-killing again, switch another speed out for another DPS-support. Keep doing this until you have no more speed crusaders and no better way to buff DPS. Then reset.

Short version: Speed/gold at beginning, once that stops being useful, switch to Speed/DPS, once that stops, pure-DPS.

This is just for farming idols in Free Play, though. The point being to reach your area limit and reset as fast as humanly possible. In objectives with challenges, speed rules ALL. Since the challenges are not good places to get idols, don't worry about an ideal idol-run. Just focus on getting to the area objective as fast as possible, using whatever tricks needed to survive the conditions.

As a little aside, there are some objectives that are made entirely harmless with enough speed crusaders. For example, some conditions affect crusaders the longer you're in an area, but if you complete an area in, like, 10 seconds, the hindrance barely has time to even affect the formation, or affects it significantly less. Sometimes speed crusaders are the entire reason you even CAN beat an objective at all, where DPS was mostly useless.

With all due respect, I honestly have no clue what you're saying. I've read your comment several times and can't make heads or tails of the second and third lines.

I can't think of specific objectives offhand, but a few I remember speed being useful in are objectives that kill crusaders every few seconds, DPS being sapped per second spent in an area, and enemies with annoying effects like tanking. More quest drops and faster spawn speeds means less crusaders dead, less DPS drained, and less time dealing with stubborn enemies in any given area.

Oh, okay, well I see the issue here. It seems you've misunderstood what we've been saying. Nobody is saying to use the speed crusaders for DPS. Not at aaaaaalll. Just have them in the formation and put all, let me repeat that, AAAAALLLL, let me say that again, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL of your gold into only, only, only, ONLY your one DPSer. There is no need to level up any other crusader once they've got all their abilities. Only the DPSer's levels matter, so the gold/cost thing shouldn't be an issue. Once your formation is set up and all crusaders have their abilities bought, the OOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYY crusader you should be spending any gold on at all is your single DPSer. Reason being that your DPSer typically makes up nearly all of your DPS, while support crusaders add next-to-nothing. Even when at the max level with your current gold, support crusaders are not meant to even compare to the DPS of actual DPSers, so spending gold on supports after they have their abilities is just wasting gold.

Just to clarify, this only applies up until the end of a run. you should still click the "level all" button before resetting.

We kind of do have a speed DPSer in Sasha's spot. Actually, the crusader in that spot is...largely considered the best crusader in the game. You'll unlock her eventually. Mindy the Mime. Her big thing is being able to mimic the formation abilities of up to two adjacent crusaders. This means she can copy other useful abilities to double-dip. With the proper gear, she even copies those abilities BETTER than the originals. She basically does nothing on her own, but putting her next to other good crusaders makes her pretty much an "everything" crusader. Need more DPS? Put her next to your best DPS supporters. Need more gold? Put her next to your best gold crusaders. She fills any roll you need her to as long as you have a crusader with an ability for her to copy. So you want a speed/DPSer? Have her mimic two speed crusaders since she is a DPSer. Mindy the Mime and President Billy Smithsonian are two crusaders that you'll find in pretty much EVERY one of ALL veterans' formations. Both are universally useful.

Simply put, if you've got Mindy even halfway-decently geared and she isn't in your formation, you're playing the game wrong lol