Frostfire Expansion · Crowded-Lobby Recovery
RRLLR is still right. Fresh veins are still better. Outbursts are still the priority. Recovery play is what keeps the match useful when 100+ other accounts have the exact same ideas.
The recovery hierarchy
Outbursts
Reachable patrol + fresh vein
Productive mining
PvP only when it pays
The lobby is being an asshole
Stop expanding the search radius until every march is spending its life traveling. Mine while you scan, grab realistically reachable patrols, and accept that you may not finish the skill tree until late in the match—or at all.
Use a cleared productive vein. Keep watching for fresh opportunities, but do not earn zero points while waiting for one.
Shorten your target distance or move pockets. Repeatedly arriving second is not a route; it is a time sink.
Compare the value of the vein with the time, hero recovery, and marches you are about to waste defending it. Moving is often the scoring decision.
Do not let one player turn the entire event into personal PvP. Keep relocating, use the map, score wherever you can, and protect your reward progress.
Recall and hit the Outburst anyway. The optimal boost is a bonus; the Outburst itself is still the priority.
Do the time math
Losing a fight can put deployed heroes into recovery, and repeated attacks can remove useful marches from the rest of your plan. Before you fight over a vein, ask what those marches could be earning somewhere else. Frostfire is worth playing. It is not always worth fighting.
The actual goal
Not every account belongs in a Top 10 fight. A good Frostfire run can simply mean maximizing the points your account can reasonably earn, collecting useful rewards, and leaving without spending 30 minutes pissed off because somebody with a mortgage payment in their account wanted your vein.