Well I've farmed my crates for today. I don't have time to dig through the story during the week, so I'll be catching up on the weekend. I'll be keeping my eyes open to find a better map to farm them on than Illusory Peace 3. IMO the assessment that it is the best because it can be done for free with a dummy is woefully misguided and I want to find the best one based on the metric of which one wastes the least amount of my time IRL. This whole song and dance of shuffling dolls around for four turns is a huge pain. I think it's just as dumb as back during singularity when everyone shuffled squad 404 around for their daily crates with a billion clicks while I farmed mine in a fraction of the time by flinging my agent team at agent in maybe half dozen clicks a run.
You can't even automate it a that much. The one is singularity wasn't too bad, it wasn't the fastest but it also wasn't massive pain in the ass. I'm also cringing about the dissonance of Illusory Peace 3 is the best map to farm for crates and then "hey guys, double the drop rate in EX for limited drops." I know the argument is going to be "you'll get more badgers for buying limited drops!" but that's far more resources a run in most cases than just running it on normal with a farm echelon that isn't five fully linked dolls.
That said, if someone hasn't done Illusory Peace 3, run it on EX for the first time or any time you do it because it can be completed with no fighting so you might as well run on EX mode for the extra rewards. The second Cat And Mouse map we get to do is another, where if you've got a decent lvl 90 and fully linked ARSMG echelon with green equips, then you probably could pull up the guide for it and run it on EX because that only pits you against strelets and I think maybe one rodelero group. I'll keep an eye out for other maps where one probably could do a map on EX, even if all they have is one ARSMG at lvl 90, fully linked and equipped with greens. Granted there are some EX maps where you not only need to be pretty established, but able to field echelons build around specific niches. The first Cat And Mouse map is a good example. You don't just need two echelons that can tackle armor, you need a echelons that are either comprised around rapid fire rifles, hard hitting ARs that can overwhelm the armor and maybe MGs. If you don't have the units to do two echelons in one of those three groups, well that map is going to suck on EX because some of those enemy groups will steamroll an RFHG echelon that can't dish out a high enough rate of fire.
Also hopefully, they get some of the bugs worked out. Ran into one that I don't think is getting much in the way of coverage by the community because you only run into if you're reading the story. On one of the battle maps for chapter one, I think it was Beyond the Borders, the very first battle map for that story line, the story text essentially bricks. You can of course skip it, but if you wanted to read the story, it pretty much bricks your progress.
So for crate farming and intel farming, I've found Faith Of Blood II isn't terrible to farm. It's not ideal, but it's nowhere near as tedious as the recommended garbage map (seriously, only really do that if you absolutely need to save resources). On normal, which is what I'd run it on for the purpose of farming, you get 20 intel, three shots at P22, maybe more, looks like RNG or a slightly different setup could get you more bites at the apple and still complete the map with S-Rank. Can't remember how many crates one gets. I'll admit, I do plan on farming up P22, so it might end up being less rewarding once I get her. I'd have to check the other maps with Isomer specific limited drops on normal, since those could work.
On intel, don't really mind this gating mechanic. Sure I have go back and run some maps quite a bit, but it's nice that this effectively means that if you play everyday, you have a cap on how much play time goes into Isomer maps, outside of farming drops. So you pretty much cap intel unlock all the maps you can and then can do other things. Plus, it's a significant enough amount of play time that it isn't annoying. To make it better, it saves up potential intel points to earn later, so it doesn't screw over people that don't have enough time everyday to do Isomer stuff.
As for EX. Don't know if 4* and 5* fairies make a huge difference to where it's super easy. If Isomer just happened to hit the right spot on EX, while later stuff failed. If people are being unreasonable because not all the maps are hard. Don't have much sympathy here for those types because game design means you will get maps on the harder levels that end up being easy, not all maps can be hard. Probably fair to complain if you get cases where the normal map is harder than the hard map. Also don't know if it's just a case of gamer gate scum whining because they feel things are to accessible and well those types can fuck right off. Just curious as to what other people's take is on EX because for the most part, the maps seem reasonable and I've seen complaints at EX being to easy. So trying to figure out if there is any merit or if it's just people complaining for the sake of complaining.
Also heads up, there is a node in Wolf And Owl I that seems a bit temperamental. As in it wont' let you move stuff onto it as the end point, but you can use planning mode to get stuff to go for the nodes next to it. It's pretty annoying. Plus, Nimogen in Wolf And Owl III Ex will cause affection lose if she kills anything. So chalk that up to one more boss that ignores the rules. IMO not a huge fan of the affection setup, it's a bit on the creepy side and given how the game plays, the whole punishment aspect of losing potential damage because units die to the wrong things is a shit mechanic. Best case scenario, the player is out a significant amount of manpower and parts to "revive the unit", double if they do emergency repair. If the battle is a loss, then there is the loss of all ammo and rations. Not to mention a loss or emergency repair means less rewards once the map is completed. Also can be pretty bad for new players, since they might not have the option of quick repairing. No matter how one breaks it down, resource loss from units "dying" is a significant enough deterrent to discourage players from being to cavalier on sacrificing units. I mean they could keep affection, ideally rename it trust and remove some of the creep factor with it, just do away with the whole "even though you got screwed because of a unit dying, we need to make it an even bigger fuck you by adding in potential stat losses!" I know the stats aren't much, but every little bit can add up.
Neat, I see I wasn't the only one in the group today to get HS2000. Already fed her the like 659 reports to get her to 90 and she is currently undergoing training. Also got FP-6 in the same crate with her, so that's all shotguns acquired. Chances are on use my true mask on Negev because I'm currently chasing Stechkin.
BTW does anyone know if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in or not. Got her to MOD 3 today because why not, but not sure if her red dot SPEQ will provide enough of a boost to make it worth the resources. I mean, it currently doesn't really do much for the main thing that you bring her for, unless her skill can miss.
I'm hoping once Mica gets down with the fairy pass, that they have some plans to do a pass on some of the SPEQs because even if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in, it's one of many that can fill the accessory slot that doesn't bring night vision. IMO any SPEQ that would be competing with PEQs should have night vision given that all the ranking maps are night maps and that can easily trump using a SPEQ. So it's kind of a waste if a SPEQ never sees use in ranking because you lose too much by leaving the PEQ at home. Also there do seem to be a few SPEQs that aren't worth using, like Barr's titan chip and I think we have some that are just barely better than their non-SPEQ counterpart.
Also on the fence in regards to if Faith of Blood II EX is worth doing over the normal map. With some fiddling you can get more than three checks on normal without really spending more resources on fights that don't drop P22. You can also go with echelons that use less resources on normal, where EX will force you to run full echelons. Depending on RNG you could get 3-4 checks, seems like you mostly get 3 because the Gundam likes to suicide into the hostage. I don't know if I need to micro better or just get better stuff, likely 4* or 5* fairies, but I pretty much need to taunt fairy to keep the rodeleros under control since there are six of them and it's hard to get the time right without taunt letting me corral them to the center and either pick them all off before the taunt dummy dies or get rid of most of them. If I could do it without fairy commands, I'd say that EX map is probably better because more medals, more intel and more crates, thus less time farming isomer stuff. Problem is I need 6 fairy commands per run and I do want those for ranking attempts. Haven't really seen any other maps that would be good crate farms.
Neat, I see I wasn't the only one in the group today to get HS2000. Already fed her the like 659 reports to get her to 90 and she is currently undergoing training. Also got FP-6 in the same crate with her, so that's all shotguns acquired. Chances are on use my true mask on Negev because I'm currently chasing Stechkin.
BTW does anyone know if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in or not. Got her to MOD 3 today because why not, but not sure if her red dot SPEQ will provide enough of a boost to make it worth the resources. I mean, it currently doesn't really do much for the main thing that you bring her for, unless her skill can miss.
I'm hoping once Mica gets down with the fairy pass, that they have some plans to do a pass on some of the SPEQs because even if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in, it's one of many that can fill the accessory slot that doesn't bring night vision. IMO any SPEQ that would be competing with PEQs should have night vision given that all the ranking maps are night maps and that can easily trump using a SPEQ. So it's kind of a waste if a SPEQ never sees use in ranking because you lose too much by leaving the PEQ at home. Also there do seem to be a few SPEQs that aren't worth using, like Barr's titan chip and I think we have some that are just barely better than their non-SPEQ counterpart.
Also on the fence in regards to if Faith of Blood II EX is worth doing over the normal map. With some fiddling you can get more than three checks on normal without really spending more resources on fights that don't drop P22. You can also go with echelons that use less resources on normal, where EX will force you to run full echelons. Depending on RNG you could get 3-4 checks, seems like you mostly get 3 because the Gundam likes to suicide into the hostage. I don't know if I need to micro better or just get better stuff, likely 4* or 5* fairies, but I pretty much need to taunt fairy to keep the rodeleros under control since there are six of them and it's hard to get the time right without taunt letting me corral them to the center and either pick them all off before the taunt dummy dies or get rid of most of them. If I could do it without fairy commands, I'd say that EX map is probably better because more medals, more intel and more crates, thus less time farming isomer stuff. Problem is I need 6 fairy commands per run and I do want those for ranking attempts. Haven't really seen any other maps that would be good crate farms.
no her speq isn't worth it because as a molotv SMG you don't give two shits about their ACC since it's usually bad anyways. you want the EOT holo sight for the extra base damage that gets multiplied by the skill modifiers, so it was an incredible disappointment to see her SPEQ be a Red Dot +. Then again, if she had gotten an EOT+ she would just be outright better than Vector in basically every aspect probably
also the Faith of Blood II EX farm route for p22 that i've seen is a 2 turn run - 3 fights with 2 of them being checks for P22 and then restart using a 2-3 man echelon to lower the amt of resources being thrown away with the restart. comparatively i doubt spending the extra RL time and resources on doing a clear would be worth the extra checks you get since you would probably need to use full echelons for some of the checks and you would need to deploy multiple for a decent clear time.
I wonder, assuming they are concerned about ensuring she isn't better than vector in everyway, if they could do something similar with Uzi's SPEQ as to what they did with Stechkin's SPEQ. Have it give a flat percent boost to one or both of her skills. She is primarily taken for the Molotov and if they made it so it increased the duration, hence impact both skills, that wouldn't impact Vector. From what I've read there are some mobs where Vector's Molotov is better because it has more upfront burst. Still disappointing that we have SPEQs that are either completely worthless or might as well be worthless. Guess I'll lock Uzi's red dot and maybe someday she'll have a reason to use it just in case.
Also got BGM to lvl 100 and Stechkin finally showed up in the factory. So I guess it's time to start MG crafting in hopes of getting the MGs I don't have and see if either of the two SMGS I don't have show up in the process. Also got to do a free link for HS2000 since I got another copy of her in a crate today.
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
I would personally have held off on using a hs2000 dupe to link considering she's still one of the very few shield hg tdolls that are also limited acquisition
I would personally have held off on using a hs2000 dupe to link considering she's still one of the very few shield hg tdolls that are also limited acquisition
That's the approach that I would have taken, however Mill is deliberately avoiding dupes. I'm still waiting for my first HS2000, but I did receive an FP6 in a loot box. This is mildly annoying since I used my anniversary TCM on FP6 instead of Saiga. However I'll be collecting Saiga with Isomer's TCM. Once I have Saiga, the 5* handgun from the most recent batch of dolls will be the only 5* doll in the construction pool that I don't own. The only other constructable doll that I'll be missing after that is the trench sweeper.
Yeah, if i was duping I would have kept the second, but I don't do that, outside of the 3 lvl 1 and 1 lvl 4 Mk23s I have for dummy echelon purposes. The lvl 4 one is so that I can feed fodder drops to her one at a time if I need to cheese the enhancement daily.
Armchair, if I could have I would have gladly given you one of the many trench sweepers I got when I was still doing heavy construction. Think I ended up getting 4 or 5 of her altogether. Upside for the 5* handgun is that apparently 30x4 recipe is the best one to go with.
I'm not worked up about not having her. Truth be told I've skipped a lot of my weekly shotgun crafts just to prioritize fairies and help fund my insistence to grind 10-4e and 6-4e without corpse dragging for the sake of preserving my sanity and at the expense of basic resources. She'll show up in time.
Oh boy, I wish that I had more free time to chew through this event. I've just barely cleared chapter 1 so far. I did however find a MUCH faster crate farm route in chapter 1. I used M4+Calico+Stetchkin with a paradrop fairy as my HQ capture team, but I"m sure a wide variety of team compositions will work.
Beyond the Border II EX:
Turn 1: Spawn the capture team at the HQ, and then have them advance forward one tile to burn an actionpoint. Then paradrop to the temporary helipad on the far west of the map and issue orders to advance through the enemy HQ like depicted in the attached screenshot.
Now go AFK until you receive your crate. Over the course of two more turns, your squad will advance towards the HQ, the paradrop debuff will wear off, and they'll be involved in one quick fight against some infantry before automatically capturing the HQ. The only downside that I can see is that it burns 5 fairy commands per run, but that's a price that I'm willing to pay to save some time.
So the quick time events kind of suck IMO. Took a bit to get the brain used to hitting the right buttons for up and down, while waiting long enough to make sure I didn't hit the wrong direction when the hazards started showing up for the second part. The first part has the issue where they do the glowing button thing, so you expect that as an queue for when stuff is going to go down but it only does that for the damage ability. I will say hot keys on emulators probably help and I did this on EX, so it's probably easier on normal, but for less rewards. I'm reminded of why I don't like quick time or pvp because that manages to up the stress on me enough, that it actually does make my noticeable familial tremor worse. I'm guess Isomer release close enough to the quick time event craze that they felt they needed one, but I'm not a huge fan of them and they really should be optional things that either give nothing or it's an either or thing (aka do the quick time or if that's not you cup of tea do this other minigame and both reward the same thing).
Also the final combat map can really suck if RNG doesn't want to work for you. The biggest issue I ran into was that the deathstacks didn't want to move in a way that worked for me and it took a ton of turns to get them off the damn access consoles. Also M16's ability is still bugged, so be prepared to close the game out once you beat her unless you enjoy hearing a constant beep. (edit: before I forget the node before the SF command center with M16 on it, that has a one way direction. That node seems to be bugged and telling an echelon to go directly on it will result in the echelon running in place but going nowhere. The good news is that planning mode can get you by it, but it's still annoying).
Also for judge fight, you'll probably want to make sure you can clear stuff fast because the meat shields can get your frontline stuck in a spot where they eat damage from her kick ground DoT. I was still able to kill her despite my armor only being enough to get her phase 2 damage down to 9 points of damage on the SG or at least on SAT8, KSG might have been taking slightly less. Had Lewis and QJY for the 15% tile buffs, with a lvl 67 3* armor fairy and I think the Armor ! talent was active. Also fully kitted out armor plating on the SGs. Went with M4 as the dps because I didn't want to invest data in Lewis or combat reports to get her leveled, so MGs were retreated ASAP, probably should have kept them to kill the meat shields had I realized that you could get stuck in a spot where the frontline would eat the kick ground DoT.
Anyways, I wouldn't use chapter four maps for crate farming, it isn't worth it IMO. Not unless 5 star fairies and better micro can make the fights there a cake walk. SWAP SF are no joke on EX.
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
ayy lmao
if we take into account the amt of times it took for me to actually lock down the muscle memory to run the farm route without mucking things up it was probably about 10 fewer runs than that number at 2 checks each, so not half bad. getting hs2000 early also increased my speed by a lot because i could afk through the runs
now to see if i can muster the energy to farm a 2nd/3rd
If you intend to get X95 and still don't have her. I gather the recommendation is to just get her with medals that were farmed up primarily by trying to get P22.
I've pretty much figured out how to do faith of blood II EX without using fairy commands. Also found that I can run one side with a solid ARSMG. The rodeleros are still obnoxious because their timing is out of sync enough that an ARSMG has to have the main tank eat lasers from the first group to get the second group to land in the center. The upside is that they don't do that much damage to my lvl 90 RO, I think she loses a quarter of a link from just that. So plenty of HP to deal with the 1-2 zombie packs she has to content with and then you can switch her with a third combat echelon of HGRFs if the gundam is still up and might have have to be fought (granted if you're after P22, might be worth bring that 2nd HGRF down to kill it for the check if you have the AP). I'll have to look at the route armchair suggested because that map is also good for getting UKM 2000. Just not sure I want to spend fairy commands that I'll need for ranking.
Edit: Time to do some note comparisons. I know I'm not the only one that can't stand the discount map. I was willing to do the one in Singularity for crate farming because that was a one turn and done thing. The one is Isomer is awful because it's three turns, you have to wait for game to go through and change mob status when you step on certain radars. You also have to suffer through dealing with the AI's auto battles. To make it worse, you can't really automate the process for AFK purposes; especially, with the things that you'd really like to AFK through. Also even if you could AFK the thing, the one unit that always opens combat with a high pitched "eeeeehhhhhh" is rather grating.
Anyways, I think I've more or less figured out faith of blood II EX for crate farming. There are two outlooks. First is that you also want P22 drops or medals to get X95 and the second is that you have enough of P22 and medals, so you only care about the crates. Also I'm going about this with the idea one is using two HGRF echelons and one ARSMG. Maybe someone has found more efficient setups that use MOD 2 M4 and get her buffed enough that she can handle zed packs and the rodelero pack on the left side.
For P22 and/or medal drop farming.
-Ideal scenario: The zed pack below the left most helipad that you end up control goes to the right and keeps going right. Thus your ARSMG echelon only has to fight one zed pack and the rodelero pack. On the right side, the gundam decides to run into your HGRF echelon instead of the zed pack, while the topmost zed pack goes down instead of capping your helipad. This results in 4 checks (2 from rodeleros, 1 from gundam and S rank map clear) with only 5 fights (2 zed packs, 2 rodeleros and gundam.
-Worst case scenario: The zed pack below the left most helipad goes right and then doubles back when you have your 3rd HGRF echelon in the spot it started on. Chances are pretty good that your HGRF here has grape, so it'll be even less effective against zed packs. The gundam suicides into a hostage, normally not having to fight them is good, but your after P22 or medals and it not suiciding means one more check even if that results in the number of fights for this map. Finally, the top left most zed pack decides to be a pack of assholes and caps your heliport. So you get three checks total but end up having 7 fights.
For crate only farming.
-Ideal scenario is pretty much the same as if you were farming for P22 or medals. You pretty much need the echelon on the right to be HGRF in case the gundam runs into you and IMO HGRFs tend to come out with less damage against gundams than they do against zed packs. So the gundam means less resources on repairs and you can do something with the medals maybe.
-Worst case scenario is nearly the same as if you were farming for P22 only instead of getting 7 fights with the gundam suiciding, you get 8 fights because the gundam didn't suicide but didn't engage you it's turn instead of a zed pack. Given that you aren't farming for P22 or medals, the extra check is less appreciated and that's just another fight draining your resources.
With adequate setups fairy commands are needed for this map. So my question is, has anyone find a better map to farm crates on that isn't as tedious as the budget map, but ends up using less resources on EX than faith of blood II EX?
I'm still surprised that opening/closing doors doesn't cost an action point.
3DS Friend Code:
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
0
Options
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
edited July 2020
a 2nd p22 followed pretty hot on the heels of the first at around 100 attempts on Faith of Blood II EX
then i rolled another HS2000 today from crates so i have 2 of each now
bought X95 with the Platinum Medals i've got because screw farming Wolf and Owl II for her, so out of the Isomer limiteds i just have UKM left, which, /shrug
probably going to just go to 500 more Platinum medals trying to farm for a 3rd P22 so i can either get an extra if my luck holds or guarantee the 3rd
Yeah, all of X95's farm routes look awful. I'm sitting at 370 platinum medals right now and managed to snag P22 already. If I'm doing the math right, I can probably ignore actively farming for platinum medals since my routine is run faith of blood II EX x5 a day, which gets me between 30-40 medals depending on what the gundam does. I'm still actively killing it if it doesn't yeet itself into the hostage or one of my echelons. Probably get X95 in another four days assuming I don't do a ranking run and have her drop there before hand. From what read she has some handy uses as an off tank SMG that shoots things up.
I can totally see why people would skip UKM because she is pretty much a pokedex checkmark and none of the maps are particular great for farming for her. I feel bad for those that can't manage Shark and the Sea I EX because the other maps are just awful. If you can swing having enough fire power to kill a gundam without an HoC, even better if you can kill it with a M4 mod2/3 + solid rifle + handgun (I did M4 Mod 3 + M14 Mod 3 + HS200, since all of them have maxed skills). Gets you 4 nova medals per run and if people hold off on farming till after they've completed all chapters, chances are pretty good that at worst it's around 90 runs. I mean once you get 400 medals, just buy her and be done with farming for her.
Oh man. One of my HOCs got defeated for the first time. I miscounted my action points on the run up to fight Judge, and she was left exposed to SF counter attack. I'm actually a bit surprised how disappointed I am at the realization that HOC repair just starts a countdown timer instead of visibly tumbling the HOCs around in the washing machine.
That's a missed opportunity on Mica's part, should suggest that they add the amination.
Also in 3-4 days should have all the limited drops. Also need to figure out how many days it'll take me to get stuff trained in skills before I do any ranking stuff. Currently, trying to max out Skill 2 on Uzi and get Skill 2 to SL8 for the two handguns. Then need to see what also might also need level. I figure I should probably try for at least SL4 on all the stuff I use. No way in hell I get everything to SL8 that will be used, but I also suspect that only really the main echelons need SL8 and a good chunk of the other echelons can probably manage with like SL1, higher helps but probably get a few units that just don't see much in the way of combat. I figure for skill leveling the priorities probably should be rifles, handgun skills that boost damage, any grenade skills I'm using and then skills for any ARs I plan on using that aren't at a decent level yet. I figure I probably should level some debuff stuff at some point, but suspect I'll get more mileage out of boosting my dps first. Both P22 and HS2000 are getting max skills. Debating if I should do the same for MDR's skill, which is at SL8, shields are really handy. Then for shotguns need to figure out if I want to max KSG's skill yet or if I should invest in other shotguns like Saiga. Upside is that I have a ton of meta stuff already at SL8 or higher so after Isomer I can probably start investing in other units and get some of the niche stuff, while debating on which meta units are going to get maxed out skills. Probably avoid advance data sim unless I badly need advanced combat sim data or get to the point where I'm literally training skills on units that will never see actual use.
Also need to map out my echelon setups for ranking. I'm pretty sure I have enough of everything.
I'm in the process of training Uzi and HS2000's skills. I still need to farm P22. I also recently leveled up Mozin Nagant's mod based on several favorable reviews of her, but I'm not sure if she'll have a place on my ranking teams or not. I did waste some skill data on the M2 mortar HOC. I just got caught up with keeping the fires lit to get her trained up for the future, and forgot that I may very well need that data for final ranking preparations while her 2* self may or may not be fielded at all (m2 mortar rate up was NOT kind to me and the massive stash of data that I had).
I'm hoping to be done with the story mode here later tonight or tomorrow. Then I need to do my homework for ranking final preparations. I need to check to see if anything unexpected slipped through the cracks of the original prep guides. I'll share my preliminary teams once I have them setup.
edit:
Isomer story complete.
Rather than windmill slamming Saiga, I'm going to hold out for a bit longer before spending my TCM. I still have a bit less than 26 days before I need to spend it. I'll hopefully be done with ranking and I might be back to making my shotgun rolls by then. There is a non-zero chance that I might craft Saiga. In that case I'll probably either craft PA-15 (who would be the last 5* that I'm missing), or a third copy of Grape. I'm not enough of a madman to spend the TCM on the profile icon.
I've identified an alternative crate/intel farming map that's pretty easy to automate runs. This run is way more combat intensive, but it doesn't consume any fairy commands so I'll be using this to help replenish my fairy command stockpile in preparation for my first attempt at the ranking map.
The map is "Shark and the Sea IV EX." It rewards 15 crates and 60 intel per run. Auto-resupply must be enabled. To complete the map, you'll need the following, most of which should be easy enough to scrape together if you've made it this far:
1: A squad capable of defeating three rodelero fights, two Sangvis mortar fights, and the sangvis brute squad while afk. More on this below.
2: A squad capable of defeating a single Paradeus Rodelero squad while afk. Most ARSMG squads should be capable of this task. Some of the squad members will take a pounding from the rodelero beam since you'll be afk, but it should be nonlethal damage.
3: A squad capable of defeating a sanvgis ripper/floaty boi squad. Lots of teams should work for this. I ran an ARSMG team.
Back to the squad that does the lion's share of the combat, pairing armor and shields seems to be the way to go. I utilized an assault rifle team composed of AR-15/SOPMOD/M4/M16/HS2000. M16 tanks the strelet fire like a champ, and then HS2000's shields kick in just before the rodelero laser. The shields combined with the armor on m16 and M4 completely defangs the laser. Meanwhile the ARs mop up against the enemies. Some chip damage will be taken by the Sangvis mortar fights, but in my runs it wasn't sufficient to critically impair fighting strength.
An alternative squad may be to utilize a shotgun, ideally pasta, in position 6 and then positioning the rest of the squad on positions 7, 8, 1, and 2 so that the shotgun will bait the lasers to the central row where none of the DPS are in harm's way.
The route is as described below:
First, spawn the AR-Team at the HQ and the anti-rodelero squad at the helipad.
Move the AR-Team north, and the anti-roderero squad west to capture the temporary helipad
spawn the anti-ripper team at the HQ
enable planning mode and enter the following commands
AR-Team to capture the paradeus helipad (pink order)
Anti-rodelero team to return to the helipad (green order)
AR-team to move clockwise around the perimeter of the map to the radar (blue order)
anti-ripper team to move north to capture the same paradeus helipad from before (orange order)
Assuming that your teams are up to the task to complete their respective fights, then those orders should safely deliver the AR-team to the radar and then send the anti-ripper team on a hike to waste the last of your action points and automatically end your turn.
Sorry for the triple post, but I want to share the trailer for the upcoming Gunslinger Girl collab. It shows which characters are part of the collab, which guns that they'll be using, and teases some of the skins.
If you're inclined to dupe, she's one of the better dolls to dupe.
I have a spare mothballed for duping, but I've been prioritizing getting unique dolls online.
edit:
I've been trying to compile some useful information on the first page of the thread. Here's a repeat of some commonly recommended dupes. The dupes will really only help you gain an advantage if you're super serious about trying to min-max your ranking map scores. I'm talking top 100 to top 1% super-sweaty territory where you absolutely positively need the best to cleansweep the enemies with minimal effort and damage.
Of the dolls listed below, while I have duplicates mothballed for each of them, the only ones that I've actually trained up as are Grape and the machineguns. Grape because nobody else quite fills her niche, and the machineguns because machinegun spam was THE meta for Arctic Warfare and Deep Dive ranking. Also, not pictured in that example are handguns. There aren't as many alternatives for handguns that provide the right buffs + buff tile pattern, so I have several handguns duped.
tl;dr
If you want to dupe her, then she's worth every ounce of EXP and skill data. You don't NEED to dupe her unless you're going all tryhard. Having a spare on hand might make it easier to reach certain score thresholds on ranking maps.
edit2:
Also, when that infographic was made, I don't think that Uzi had her mod 3 upgrade yet. Uzi mod3 is arguably stronger than Vector. However it's much easier leveling up Vector than it is leveling up Uzi mod 3.
Yeah, the infographic is probably dated at this point.
I don't know if it's just EN isn't super serious or the old servers have descended into massive group think, but ranking on EN seems to indicated that duping would be more of a convenience factor (aka makes it easier to score higher because some units minimize the micro needed to keep going) but that people can get into the top hundred on EN without duping.
As for duping. Probably the big areas are handguns because you get some that are pretty unique in what they do or very few cover a certain buff and all the ones for that buff are a pain in the butt to get. Then you get things like grape, where she is probably the only rifle that can be argued as a must have dupe for dupers.
After that, I feel like that's where you really get into the realm of "Yes, I could dupe X because they are the best at that niche, but they aren't significantly better to the point where you see a massive return." Uzi probably killed the arguments for vector when she got her mod. Probably could add R93 for rifles, while taking off all the rifle dupe candidates that aren't grape and maybe strawberry. R93 is an outstanding unit and she can pretty much go into most rifle echelons because she can benefit from any buff layout. I feel like AN94 pretty much kills the argument for duping G11 because it seems like she can do everything G11 does, only better. MGs and SGs are in a weird spot because not many are unique in what they do. The ones that are unique and worth using, are often only good for a very niche fight that won't be super common. I know with MGs there is the whole issue where most of them aren't that good. So there are plenty of arguments to dupe the good ones, but right now there just aren't many situations where the player would see a return. Maybe that changes in the future. Really the MG and SG thing highlights the major risk of duping, if the meta shifts you may find yourself with dupes of units that have fallen out of favor, sometimes they are still very useful, but sometimes they are just hanging out at the base doing nothing.
Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
EN on the whole is far less competitive than CN or KR are as servers so it's easy to get further with less when all ranking is relative but the average on EN is much lower than it is on CN/KR
like i've said multiple times, you don't have to do the very best, you just have to beat out whatever percentile of people for whatever ranking reward you're trying to reach.
that being said duping is entirely a matter of "putting extra work in now to smooth things over later" because it's much easier to fill in comps as a duper when i have 2-3 copies of various handgun compared to my friend who is a non-duper and has complained about putting together RF echelons for Isomer ranking
knowing what i do now would i dupe ARs and the like? probably not because they keep releasing competitive ARs, but the calculus is still pretty different for roles like SMG main tanks where there's a cadre of them that are just heads and tails better than all other SMGs - you can't really get away with 3* equivalents at high end play because they'll just get blown the fuck up or the 3* equivalents don't really even exist. ditto for HGs although that situation has slowly gotten better over the years as MICA fills in the rough edges of HG comping. Grape is still in a class of her own until they add more "can nuke gundams and tanks" RFs. M200 is still going to be very hard to replace as an RF that can use her skill to not miss at night.
Also seems like it really depends on what the echelon is doing on a ranking map. Doesn't seem like all 10 echelons need to be uber powerful for high rank. You need the best of the best for the main routes and then after that, you can have weaker echelons because the enemy echelons they face are fewer and are also weaker. Then also depends on what a 3* unit is doing for an echelon, if it's a tank, it's probably melting fairly quickly on EX ranking. if it's providing a buff, it's only slightly holding you back on EX since 4* and 5* handguns will provide better buffs, same deal if it's dps. Though I want to say if one is able to do EX, I'd think the main issue they'd have is that some of their handguns are 3* and likely being used more for buffing than anything else.
I know if I was going dupe, it would be handguns and Grape. I feel like even though expeditions and theater are exactly huge, they do more or less slightly nerf duping and reward raising everything. Though I'd say very minor because expedition champion doesn't linking or skills and for theater it only really matters if a unit gets picked as advantaged. Also I gather theater is setup where the same advantaged units are used for two theaters straight. So it really comes down to how many gems one is willing to spend on inventory space and where they want to spend combat reports and time on raising.
Anyways, one thing I'm debating is if i want to attempt EX ranking or go for normal. There are more points to be had on EX, but that shit hurts and if I can get higher points on normal because I know any echelon I put together should be able to hack it against most of what the map has. There is little point in running EX. I'm just tryin to figure out where my stuff puts me. I know 3* fairies are going to hold me back some in regards to EX and I think I'll have to use some green equips. Mostly with HP ammo, exos and cloaks (only have 5 gold cloaks). So I have this hunch I'm probably at the threshold. In theory I could get more points on EX if things go my way; however, it's probably far easier to get a good run on normal with what I have and I could probably make full use of all or most point gain areas. Not entirely sure on some KCCO points and suspect I'd want to avoid certain SF bosses. On EX I'm pretty sure I don't want to chance SF bosses spawning since most will be awful and KCCO could be dicey.
duping for expeditions is valuable because it means i can both continue using a tdoll in my day to day operation and also get the exploration bonus
This is a good point. Duping for expeditions is also much easier since the dupe doesn't need to be linked, skill trained, or even enhanced. Just throw a bunch of combat reports at it. Even if if you don't throw any combat reports at it, a level 1 expedition doll goes a long way with keeping you on schedule with your expedition income.
@Mill
For what it's worth, I assumed that you would be running EX. I forget how highly you scored last time, and I'm too lazy to dig through the thread, but wasn't better than top 10%? Or was it 15%? Either way I think that puts you in the class where you're capable of going toe to toe with EX mode.
I suppose that you could always do a practice run on normal to get an idea how the map flows and to see if your gear shortcomings are acutely apparent even at that level.
Having good fairies and gear helps, a lot, but the only times that I've felt that high rarity fairies really were a dealbreaker in a fight were against fights where there was a strict DPS check. Namely the Typhon fights in Singularity, the Doppelsoldner fights in the playpen during CT's ranking, and the high CE Doppelsoldner squads that most people sent their M4 railgun team against.
I suppose hydras also fall into the category of "you need to kill these things before they shoot at all", but their dps checks haven't felt as extreme as the aforementioned.
Having the right type of fairies and the right skill level is usually a bit more important than having the fairy at 4* or 5* level. The twin and taunt fairies have proven quite capable at trolling paradeus groups in general, while paradrop and illumination have proven themselves to be staples of ranking maps due to their strategic level influence.
That 100k deathstack of 20 Hydras sure is something. The artillery bombardment is the worst part. You've gotta pray that the artillery targets your HG's instead of your rifles. In testing I've managed to S-rank clear the fight with no damage, but it sure was obnoxious resetting so many times.
Yeah, I'll have to probably do some research, but thinking 20 hydra deathstacks are out of my reach right now. Watching some videos and even if I probably need to use different fairies, it still looks like I'll need better than 3* because I'm not killing them fast enough. 4* might do the trick but not happening this event and definitely not if I need 5*. Upside is their patrol AI can be gamed to get them to move out of the way and then kill the other KCCO. Cap the heliports and the supply nodes.
I'll have to see how ranking looks towards the end of the event because IMO this is pretty resource intensive if you do everything right and max pierce on your BGM because you'll be shooting tons of resources into structures and that one rumble pile unless you want to play dodge with mortar and missile emplacements. I pretty much need to recover resources on top of fairy commands because I suspect 24K ammo will not cut it, even if I get BGM to the right side of the map for ganking KCCO structures instead of using 2B. ><
Lots of mistakes. Forgot to make sure the bossing ARSMG was supplied and had one retreat that could have been avoided. Also need to see how the spawn for bosses works. I can kill alchemist with little trouble, but will need to repair the tank. M16 is awful, but doable. Probably easier if I can get all three HOCs positioned for support, not sure if that was possible and I flubbed it or if I only get two. AGS and 2B seemed to work best. Also need to see what my options are for establishing the supply line quicker. There were a few retreats I know i can avoid. I know that I can't take the deathstacks so that's another two retreats that could be avoid. Ran a HGRF echelon into a gundam and found out it could hack it. So about 4 retreats I could easily avoid. Better planning means I probably wouldn't need to eat two to take the KCCO helipads by either getting what I need out there or having parachute ready to go. Probably could also farm a few other spots a tiny bit longer. Like probably could get more out of KCCO easily, definitely more out of ELIDs even though they give very little and depending on how SF works, maybe I could get one more boss. Hell, probably could farm paradeus a bit longer. I might have been a tad to aggressive on claiming map real estate. I did note, if you can kill the 20 hydra deathstack, it's possible to capture the entire map, though that might not be best for top score. Also better management of a few spots could probably prevent paradeus from capping a heliport that I probably need the AP from. Also probably see what I can do to boost some echelons. Not sure if rearrangement would work better, hope that I get some more gold equips (a good chunk of my HGs had to go without ammo because I had run out of gold and green HP ammo) and maybe some skill training. I do have to say, can't wait for Mica to give us more handguns to use because I realized I was drawing from the bottom of the barrel with some of the level 90 HGs I had to settle with.
All told my Ranking run on the EX map got me a score 644539. Kind of curious what the cap might be on normal, if I can't do significantly better on the normal map, then that will go into my decision on another attempt.
Edit: Also anyone else think M16 might be bugged in more than one way on the EX ranking map? There is the whole audio bug where the beacon will keep beeping after the fight concludes until you restart the game, but I also noticed she'll eat a shit ton of damage early in the fight that doesn't seem to register on her HP bar. Not sure if she is bugged in some weird way that results in damage not being subtracted from her HP bar or if the game is failing to display something that indicates she has some sort of shield. It's both weird and obnoxious because her HP bar will not move any until she does her first skill action cutscene, which is like a good 10-15 seconds IIRC.
Some people have cleared the deathstack with 3* fairies. It looks like this first one was designed as a budget team (except for Grape) https://streamable.com/v1rxqf
3* warrior with damage II and active level 10 skill
VM59, Serdyukov, Bren Ten, Astra, Grape
https://streamable.com/8bctg1
3* warrior with damage 1 and active level 10 skill
M14 mod3, Px4 Storm, Five-Seven, Grizzly, FN-49 Mod 3
Both examples have one of the handguns taking damage to stall for a little more time. That might make it a bit more challenging trying to knock out the second deathstack from a damaged state.
Two important details about runs that utilize Grape against the deathstack. First, her ability is set to manual activation. In order to maximize her damage output, you wait until after she procs her first nuke via stacking up to 18 stacks. Then you activate the skill to fire off a second nuke. The second key detail is that the handguns run up into attack range of the hydras to force them to stand still for a moment. This apparently flips the Elite flag on the Hydra for some dumb reason. Grape's nuke will bounce right off of them if they haven't been stopped, but will OHKO them if they have paused.
As for 24k ammo, yeah I I would not feel comfortable starting a ranking run with 24k ammo.
I haven't had time to do a ranking run yet, but I have been trying to design my squads. You can definitely feel the pinch for equipment, especially with all of the handguns competing for the same stuff. After a point you need to apply triage. The above anti-deathstack echelons are one example. They're there to be shot at and not much else. They don't need ammo since they're not punching through that armor and will be inflicting 1 damage anyway. They don't need night vision gear since the Hydras have zero evasion. They don't need exo's or suppressors since they are not going to be dodging those hydra or artillery attacks. Their only defense is if you're deft enough with the retreat button to get them to retreat to safety after baiting an attack. They exist to draw fire and buff the rifles. It's basically a super-specialized squad with one purpose, and that handgun gear can be used by other squads that can actually get some use out of it.
Yeah, I'll have to rethink my anti-deathstack team. Already gimped the handguns with no HP ammo. I rank that one with M2000, Stechkin, Grape, PKK, HS2000 and 2* twin fairy. Probably need a different fairy altogether and to manual Grape's skill. it was a champ at punking the Gundams though. HS2000's shield probably does squat to buy time against hydras. The other team I had was M14 Mod 3, FN49 Mod 3, 5-7, Px4 Storm and SPP-1 with a 3* taunt fairy.
I really should probably get an account with an img hosting site again, made sure to have and see what people have to say about my echelons because I know they likely could be better tailored. Actually, thinking about not bothering with a double Jupiter team because all I ended up using it for was to kill ELIDs. Probably would be better served with another ARSMG for punking strelets, ELIDs and Rodeleros. ARSMG would definitely free up some of the better handguns for other teams.
Sucks having to wait a day to get an idea of what my rank is because I've yet to track down a site that is tracking outside of Mica. I probably could get to 800K; especially, since I forgot to blow up a bridge and have an idea of how to slay the 20 hydra deathstacks. Plus, doing a better job at maximizing enemy echelons to farm, I think I was probably too aggressive on taking heliports. The supply line could get me another 10K, but that involves figuring out a better way of dealing with the smashers and the hydra deathstack. Probably should have held on on killing some of the enemy turrets in that area since that might have resulted in damage to the hydras or figure out how to bait them into both smashers (which is less points, but the smashers suck).
I don't know how well a 600k rank score will end up being in the end. I can say that I'm expecting a LOT of people to follow Ceia's "low budget" guide that got posted to GFC. So I expect there to be a big shelf in the scores at ~400k, which is the score that Ceia claims that the guide should produce.
So, without looking at the current trends and by simply assuming that the majority will be shooting at Ceia's guide's target 400k score, then your ~640k score will likely earn you a copy of MG4's scope. You're guaranteed a copy of the fairy since you achieved 300k points. The question is if that's good enough to earn extra copies of the fairy or the gimmick talent fairy.
One thing about the SF bosses, apparently there is a trick to squeezing some more score out of them? Something about how the SF units will upgrade to a given boss depending on what turn it is, and a recommendation to kill two Intruders on one of the earlier turns and then killing three M16s on turn 8.
I haven't done much testing for the other roles yet. So far I've just earmarked some dolls for my anti-SF team, my anti-Hydra team, and Double-Jupiter team. I still need to setup some anti-Elid teams and some general roaming teams for dealing with the Paradeus and KCCO troops.
edit:
Oh yeah, the August roadmap has been revealed.
New theater mode next month, and Calico mod 3.
Also, word on the street is that the alternate skins for the Gunslinger Girls collab will all be cash shop bundles. So I'm free to spend some of my tokens. I'm mildly tempted to try to roll for some of the summer furniture since that aquarium is kinda neat. I may very well just hold off though. It might be better for me to save big for another cosmetic gacha that I like such as the halloween or next year's anniversary skins (I really want SOPMOD's dress).
Posts
You can't even automate it a that much. The one is singularity wasn't too bad, it wasn't the fastest but it also wasn't massive pain in the ass. I'm also cringing about the dissonance of Illusory Peace 3 is the best map to farm for crates and then "hey guys, double the drop rate in EX for limited drops." I know the argument is going to be "you'll get more badgers for buying limited drops!" but that's far more resources a run in most cases than just running it on normal with a farm echelon that isn't five fully linked dolls.
That said, if someone hasn't done Illusory Peace 3, run it on EX for the first time or any time you do it because it can be completed with no fighting so you might as well run on EX mode for the extra rewards. The second Cat And Mouse map we get to do is another, where if you've got a decent lvl 90 and fully linked ARSMG echelon with green equips, then you probably could pull up the guide for it and run it on EX because that only pits you against strelets and I think maybe one rodelero group. I'll keep an eye out for other maps where one probably could do a map on EX, even if all they have is one ARSMG at lvl 90, fully linked and equipped with greens. Granted there are some EX maps where you not only need to be pretty established, but able to field echelons build around specific niches. The first Cat And Mouse map is a good example. You don't just need two echelons that can tackle armor, you need a echelons that are either comprised around rapid fire rifles, hard hitting ARs that can overwhelm the armor and maybe MGs. If you don't have the units to do two echelons in one of those three groups, well that map is going to suck on EX because some of those enemy groups will steamroll an RFHG echelon that can't dish out a high enough rate of fire.
Also hopefully, they get some of the bugs worked out. Ran into one that I don't think is getting much in the way of coverage by the community because you only run into if you're reading the story. On one of the battle maps for chapter one, I think it was Beyond the Borders, the very first battle map for that story line, the story text essentially bricks. You can of course skip it, but if you wanted to read the story, it pretty much bricks your progress.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
On intel, don't really mind this gating mechanic. Sure I have go back and run some maps quite a bit, but it's nice that this effectively means that if you play everyday, you have a cap on how much play time goes into Isomer maps, outside of farming drops. So you pretty much cap intel unlock all the maps you can and then can do other things. Plus, it's a significant enough amount of play time that it isn't annoying. To make it better, it saves up potential intel points to earn later, so it doesn't screw over people that don't have enough time everyday to do Isomer stuff.
As for EX. Don't know if 4* and 5* fairies make a huge difference to where it's super easy. If Isomer just happened to hit the right spot on EX, while later stuff failed. If people are being unreasonable because not all the maps are hard. Don't have much sympathy here for those types because game design means you will get maps on the harder levels that end up being easy, not all maps can be hard. Probably fair to complain if you get cases where the normal map is harder than the hard map. Also don't know if it's just a case of gamer gate scum whining because they feel things are to accessible and well those types can fuck right off. Just curious as to what other people's take is on EX because for the most part, the maps seem reasonable and I've seen complaints at EX being to easy. So trying to figure out if there is any merit or if it's just people complaining for the sake of complaining.
Also heads up, there is a node in Wolf And Owl I that seems a bit temperamental. As in it wont' let you move stuff onto it as the end point, but you can use planning mode to get stuff to go for the nodes next to it. It's pretty annoying. Plus, Nimogen in Wolf And Owl III Ex will cause affection lose if she kills anything. So chalk that up to one more boss that ignores the rules. IMO not a huge fan of the affection setup, it's a bit on the creepy side and given how the game plays, the whole punishment aspect of losing potential damage because units die to the wrong things is a shit mechanic. Best case scenario, the player is out a significant amount of manpower and parts to "revive the unit", double if they do emergency repair. If the battle is a loss, then there is the loss of all ammo and rations. Not to mention a loss or emergency repair means less rewards once the map is completed. Also can be pretty bad for new players, since they might not have the option of quick repairing. No matter how one breaks it down, resource loss from units "dying" is a significant enough deterrent to discourage players from being to cavalier on sacrificing units. I mean they could keep affection, ideally rename it trust and remove some of the creep factor with it, just do away with the whole "even though you got screwed because of a unit dying, we need to make it an even bigger fuck you by adding in potential stat losses!" I know the stats aren't much, but every little bit can add up.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
i don't like crate pulls not having the acquisition screen for tdolls because i need that lizardbrain dopamine rush when i hear and see 5 stars
BTW does anyone know if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in or not. Got her to MOD 3 today because why not, but not sure if her red dot SPEQ will provide enough of a boost to make it worth the resources. I mean, it currently doesn't really do much for the main thing that you bring her for, unless her skill can miss.
I'm hoping once Mica gets down with the fairy pass, that they have some plans to do a pass on some of the SPEQs because even if Micro Uzi's SPEQ is worth investing in, it's one of many that can fill the accessory slot that doesn't bring night vision. IMO any SPEQ that would be competing with PEQs should have night vision given that all the ranking maps are night maps and that can easily trump using a SPEQ. So it's kind of a waste if a SPEQ never sees use in ranking because you lose too much by leaving the PEQ at home. Also there do seem to be a few SPEQs that aren't worth using, like Barr's titan chip and I think we have some that are just barely better than their non-SPEQ counterpart.
Also on the fence in regards to if Faith of Blood II EX is worth doing over the normal map. With some fiddling you can get more than three checks on normal without really spending more resources on fights that don't drop P22. You can also go with echelons that use less resources on normal, where EX will force you to run full echelons. Depending on RNG you could get 3-4 checks, seems like you mostly get 3 because the Gundam likes to suicide into the hostage. I don't know if I need to micro better or just get better stuff, likely 4* or 5* fairies, but I pretty much need to taunt fairy to keep the rodeleros under control since there are six of them and it's hard to get the time right without taunt letting me corral them to the center and either pick them all off before the taunt dummy dies or get rid of most of them. If I could do it without fairy commands, I'd say that EX map is probably better because more medals, more intel and more crates, thus less time farming isomer stuff. Problem is I need 6 fairy commands per run and I do want those for ranking attempts. Haven't really seen any other maps that would be good crate farms.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
no her speq isn't worth it because as a molotv SMG you don't give two shits about their ACC since it's usually bad anyways. you want the EOT holo sight for the extra base damage that gets multiplied by the skill modifiers, so it was an incredible disappointment to see her SPEQ be a Red Dot +. Then again, if she had gotten an EOT+ she would just be outright better than Vector in basically every aspect probably
also the Faith of Blood II EX farm route for p22 that i've seen is a 2 turn run - 3 fights with 2 of them being checks for P22 and then restart using a 2-3 man echelon to lower the amt of resources being thrown away with the restart. comparatively i doubt spending the extra RL time and resources on doing a clear would be worth the extra checks you get since you would probably need to use full echelons for some of the checks and you would need to deploy multiple for a decent clear time.
Also got BGM to lvl 100 and Stechkin finally showed up in the factory. So I guess it's time to start MG crafting in hopes of getting the MGs I don't have and see if either of the two SMGS I don't have show up in the process. Also got to do a free link for HS2000 since I got another copy of her in a crate today.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
That's the approach that I would have taken, however Mill is deliberately avoiding dupes. I'm still waiting for my first HS2000, but I did receive an FP6 in a loot box. This is mildly annoying since I used my anniversary TCM on FP6 instead of Saiga. However I'll be collecting Saiga with Isomer's TCM. Once I have Saiga, the 5* handgun from the most recent batch of dolls will be the only 5* doll in the construction pool that I don't own. The only other constructable doll that I'll be missing after that is the trench sweeper.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair, if I could have I would have gladly given you one of the many trench sweepers I got when I was still doing heavy construction. Think I ended up getting 4 or 5 of her altogether. Upside for the 5* handgun is that apparently 30x4 recipe is the best one to go with.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Beyond the Border II EX:
Turn 1: Spawn the capture team at the HQ, and then have them advance forward one tile to burn an actionpoint. Then paradrop to the temporary helipad on the far west of the map and issue orders to advance through the enemy HQ like depicted in the attached screenshot.
Now go AFK until you receive your crate. Over the course of two more turns, your squad will advance towards the HQ, the paradrop debuff will wear off, and they'll be involved in one quick fight against some infantry before automatically capturing the HQ. The only downside that I can see is that it burns 5 fairy commands per run, but that's a price that I'm willing to pay to save some time.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Also the final combat map can really suck if RNG doesn't want to work for you. The biggest issue I ran into was that the deathstacks didn't want to move in a way that worked for me and it took a ton of turns to get them off the damn access consoles. Also M16's ability is still bugged, so be prepared to close the game out once you beat her unless you enjoy hearing a constant beep. (edit: before I forget the node before the SF command center with M16 on it, that has a one way direction. That node seems to be bugged and telling an echelon to go directly on it will result in the echelon running in place but going nowhere. The good news is that planning mode can get you by it, but it's still annoying).
Also for judge fight, you'll probably want to make sure you can clear stuff fast because the meat shields can get your frontline stuck in a spot where they eat damage from her kick ground DoT. I was still able to kill her despite my armor only being enough to get her phase 2 damage down to 9 points of damage on the SG or at least on SAT8, KSG might have been taking slightly less. Had Lewis and QJY for the 15% tile buffs, with a lvl 67 3* armor fairy and I think the Armor ! talent was active. Also fully kitted out armor plating on the SGs. Went with M4 as the dps because I didn't want to invest data in Lewis or combat reports to get her leveled, so MGs were retreated ASAP, probably should have kept them to kill the meat shields had I realized that you could get stuck in a spot where the frontline would eat the kick ground DoT.
Anyways, I wouldn't use chapter four maps for crate farming, it isn't worth it IMO. Not unless 5 star fairies and better micro can make the fights there a cake walk. SWAP SF are no joke on EX.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
if we take into account the amt of times it took for me to actually lock down the muscle memory to run the farm route without mucking things up it was probably about 10 fewer runs than that number at 2 checks each, so not half bad. getting hs2000 early also increased my speed by a lot because i could afk through the runs
now to see if i can muster the energy to farm a 2nd/3rd
I've pretty much figured out how to do faith of blood II EX without using fairy commands. Also found that I can run one side with a solid ARSMG. The rodeleros are still obnoxious because their timing is out of sync enough that an ARSMG has to have the main tank eat lasers from the first group to get the second group to land in the center. The upside is that they don't do that much damage to my lvl 90 RO, I think she loses a quarter of a link from just that. So plenty of HP to deal with the 1-2 zombie packs she has to content with and then you can switch her with a third combat echelon of HGRFs if the gundam is still up and might have have to be fought (granted if you're after P22, might be worth bring that 2nd HGRF down to kill it for the check if you have the AP). I'll have to look at the route armchair suggested because that map is also good for getting UKM 2000. Just not sure I want to spend fairy commands that I'll need for ranking.
Edit: Time to do some note comparisons. I know I'm not the only one that can't stand the discount map. I was willing to do the one in Singularity for crate farming because that was a one turn and done thing. The one is Isomer is awful because it's three turns, you have to wait for game to go through and change mob status when you step on certain radars. You also have to suffer through dealing with the AI's auto battles. To make it worse, you can't really automate the process for AFK purposes; especially, with the things that you'd really like to AFK through. Also even if you could AFK the thing, the one unit that always opens combat with a high pitched "eeeeehhhhhh" is rather grating.
Anyways, I think I've more or less figured out faith of blood II EX for crate farming. There are two outlooks. First is that you also want P22 drops or medals to get X95 and the second is that you have enough of P22 and medals, so you only care about the crates. Also I'm going about this with the idea one is using two HGRF echelons and one ARSMG. Maybe someone has found more efficient setups that use MOD 2 M4 and get her buffed enough that she can handle zed packs and the rodelero pack on the left side.
For P22 and/or medal drop farming.
-Ideal scenario: The zed pack below the left most helipad that you end up control goes to the right and keeps going right. Thus your ARSMG echelon only has to fight one zed pack and the rodelero pack. On the right side, the gundam decides to run into your HGRF echelon instead of the zed pack, while the topmost zed pack goes down instead of capping your helipad. This results in 4 checks (2 from rodeleros, 1 from gundam and S rank map clear) with only 5 fights (2 zed packs, 2 rodeleros and gundam.
-Worst case scenario: The zed pack below the left most helipad goes right and then doubles back when you have your 3rd HGRF echelon in the spot it started on. Chances are pretty good that your HGRF here has grape, so it'll be even less effective against zed packs. The gundam suicides into a hostage, normally not having to fight them is good, but your after P22 or medals and it not suiciding means one more check even if that results in the number of fights for this map. Finally, the top left most zed pack decides to be a pack of assholes and caps your heliport. So you get three checks total but end up having 7 fights.
For crate only farming.
-Ideal scenario is pretty much the same as if you were farming for P22 or medals. You pretty much need the echelon on the right to be HGRF in case the gundam runs into you and IMO HGRFs tend to come out with less damage against gundams than they do against zed packs. So the gundam means less resources on repairs and you can do something with the medals maybe.
-Worst case scenario is nearly the same as if you were farming for P22 only instead of getting 7 fights with the gundam suiciding, you get 8 fights because the gundam didn't suicide but didn't engage you it's turn instead of a zed pack. Given that you aren't farming for P22 or medals, the extra check is less appreciated and that's just another fight draining your resources.
With adequate setups fairy commands are needed for this map. So my question is, has anyone find a better map to farm crates on that isn't as tedious as the budget map, but ends up using less resources on EX than faith of blood II EX?
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
then i rolled another HS2000 today from crates so i have 2 of each now
bought X95 with the Platinum Medals i've got because screw farming Wolf and Owl II for her, so out of the Isomer limiteds i just have UKM left, which, /shrug
probably going to just go to 500 more Platinum medals trying to farm for a 3rd P22 so i can either get an extra if my luck holds or guarantee the 3rd
also rearranged my furniture a bit
I can totally see why people would skip UKM because she is pretty much a pokedex checkmark and none of the maps are particular great for farming for her. I feel bad for those that can't manage Shark and the Sea I EX because the other maps are just awful. If you can swing having enough fire power to kill a gundam without an HoC, even better if you can kill it with a M4 mod2/3 + solid rifle + handgun (I did M4 Mod 3 + M14 Mod 3 + HS200, since all of them have maxed skills). Gets you 4 nova medals per run and if people hold off on farming till after they've completed all chapters, chances are pretty good that at worst it's around 90 runs. I mean once you get 400 medals, just buy her and be done with farming for her.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
that's a wrap on the story
probably finish up some training and raising these dupes i got and do some more farming before i bother with Isomer ranking
the rewards for Isomer ranking are resoundingly mediocre - mg4 scope? lmao
spent the true core mask picking up her instead of wasting resources
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
sure, but i'm not in a hurry to get it since it doesn't get distributed until the event is over anyways
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Also in 3-4 days should have all the limited drops. Also need to figure out how many days it'll take me to get stuff trained in skills before I do any ranking stuff. Currently, trying to max out Skill 2 on Uzi and get Skill 2 to SL8 for the two handguns. Then need to see what also might also need level. I figure I should probably try for at least SL4 on all the stuff I use. No way in hell I get everything to SL8 that will be used, but I also suspect that only really the main echelons need SL8 and a good chunk of the other echelons can probably manage with like SL1, higher helps but probably get a few units that just don't see much in the way of combat. I figure for skill leveling the priorities probably should be rifles, handgun skills that boost damage, any grenade skills I'm using and then skills for any ARs I plan on using that aren't at a decent level yet. I figure I probably should level some debuff stuff at some point, but suspect I'll get more mileage out of boosting my dps first. Both P22 and HS2000 are getting max skills. Debating if I should do the same for MDR's skill, which is at SL8, shields are really handy. Then for shotguns need to figure out if I want to max KSG's skill yet or if I should invest in other shotguns like Saiga. Upside is that I have a ton of meta stuff already at SL8 or higher so after Isomer I can probably start investing in other units and get some of the niche stuff, while debating on which meta units are going to get maxed out skills. Probably avoid advance data sim unless I badly need advanced combat sim data or get to the point where I'm literally training skills on units that will never see actual use.
Also need to map out my echelon setups for ranking. I'm pretty sure I have enough of everything.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
I'm hoping to be done with the story mode here later tonight or tomorrow. Then I need to do my homework for ranking final preparations. I need to check to see if anything unexpected slipped through the cracks of the original prep guides. I'll share my preliminary teams once I have them setup.
edit:
Isomer story complete.
Rather than windmill slamming Saiga, I'm going to hold out for a bit longer before spending my TCM. I still have a bit less than 26 days before I need to spend it. I'll hopefully be done with ranking and I might be back to making my shotgun rolls by then. There is a non-zero chance that I might craft Saiga. In that case I'll probably either craft PA-15 (who would be the last 5* that I'm missing), or a third copy of Grape. I'm not enough of a madman to spend the TCM on the profile icon.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
The map is "Shark and the Sea IV EX." It rewards 15 crates and 60 intel per run. Auto-resupply must be enabled. To complete the map, you'll need the following, most of which should be easy enough to scrape together if you've made it this far:
1: A squad capable of defeating three rodelero fights, two Sangvis mortar fights, and the sangvis brute squad while afk. More on this below.
2: A squad capable of defeating a single Paradeus Rodelero squad while afk. Most ARSMG squads should be capable of this task. Some of the squad members will take a pounding from the rodelero beam since you'll be afk, but it should be nonlethal damage.
3: A squad capable of defeating a sanvgis ripper/floaty boi squad. Lots of teams should work for this. I ran an ARSMG team.
Back to the squad that does the lion's share of the combat, pairing armor and shields seems to be the way to go. I utilized an assault rifle team composed of AR-15/SOPMOD/M4/M16/HS2000. M16 tanks the strelet fire like a champ, and then HS2000's shields kick in just before the rodelero laser. The shields combined with the armor on m16 and M4 completely defangs the laser. Meanwhile the ARs mop up against the enemies. Some chip damage will be taken by the Sangvis mortar fights, but in my runs it wasn't sufficient to critically impair fighting strength.
An alternative squad may be to utilize a shotgun, ideally pasta, in position 6 and then positioning the rest of the squad on positions 7, 8, 1, and 2 so that the shotgun will bait the lasers to the central row where none of the DPS are in harm's way.
The route is as described below:
Assuming that your teams are up to the task to complete their respective fights, then those orders should safely deliver the AR-team to the radar and then send the anti-ripper team on a hike to waste the last of your action points and automatically end your turn.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I need to get around to watching the anime. At least season 1. I heard that fans don't care for season 2 as much.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
is she worth duping at all? i know she's ridiculously good as mine is basically level 100 now, but unsure if it's worth keeping a 2nd around.
I have a spare mothballed for duping, but I've been prioritizing getting unique dolls online.
edit:
I've been trying to compile some useful information on the first page of the thread. Here's a repeat of some commonly recommended dupes. The dupes will really only help you gain an advantage if you're super serious about trying to min-max your ranking map scores. I'm talking top 100 to top 1% super-sweaty territory where you absolutely positively need the best to cleansweep the enemies with minimal effort and damage.
Of the dolls listed below, while I have duplicates mothballed for each of them, the only ones that I've actually trained up as are Grape and the machineguns. Grape because nobody else quite fills her niche, and the machineguns because machinegun spam was THE meta for Arctic Warfare and Deep Dive ranking. Also, not pictured in that example are handguns. There aren't as many alternatives for handguns that provide the right buffs + buff tile pattern, so I have several handguns duped.
tl;dr
If you want to dupe her, then she's worth every ounce of EXP and skill data. You don't NEED to dupe her unless you're going all tryhard. Having a spare on hand might make it easier to reach certain score thresholds on ranking maps.
edit2:
Also, when that infographic was made, I don't think that Uzi had her mod 3 upgrade yet. Uzi mod3 is arguably stronger than Vector. However it's much easier leveling up Vector than it is leveling up Uzi mod 3.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I don't know if it's just EN isn't super serious or the old servers have descended into massive group think, but ranking on EN seems to indicated that duping would be more of a convenience factor (aka makes it easier to score higher because some units minimize the micro needed to keep going) but that people can get into the top hundred on EN without duping.
As for duping. Probably the big areas are handguns because you get some that are pretty unique in what they do or very few cover a certain buff and all the ones for that buff are a pain in the butt to get. Then you get things like grape, where she is probably the only rifle that can be argued as a must have dupe for dupers.
After that, I feel like that's where you really get into the realm of "Yes, I could dupe X because they are the best at that niche, but they aren't significantly better to the point where you see a massive return." Uzi probably killed the arguments for vector when she got her mod. Probably could add R93 for rifles, while taking off all the rifle dupe candidates that aren't grape and maybe strawberry. R93 is an outstanding unit and she can pretty much go into most rifle echelons because she can benefit from any buff layout. I feel like AN94 pretty much kills the argument for duping G11 because it seems like she can do everything G11 does, only better. MGs and SGs are in a weird spot because not many are unique in what they do. The ones that are unique and worth using, are often only good for a very niche fight that won't be super common. I know with MGs there is the whole issue where most of them aren't that good. So there are plenty of arguments to dupe the good ones, but right now there just aren't many situations where the player would see a return. Maybe that changes in the future. Really the MG and SG thing highlights the major risk of duping, if the meta shifts you may find yourself with dupes of units that have fallen out of favor, sometimes they are still very useful, but sometimes they are just hanging out at the base doing nothing.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
like i've said multiple times, you don't have to do the very best, you just have to beat out whatever percentile of people for whatever ranking reward you're trying to reach.
that being said duping is entirely a matter of "putting extra work in now to smooth things over later" because it's much easier to fill in comps as a duper when i have 2-3 copies of various handgun compared to my friend who is a non-duper and has complained about putting together RF echelons for Isomer ranking
knowing what i do now would i dupe ARs and the like? probably not because they keep releasing competitive ARs, but the calculus is still pretty different for roles like SMG main tanks where there's a cadre of them that are just heads and tails better than all other SMGs - you can't really get away with 3* equivalents at high end play because they'll just get blown the fuck up or the 3* equivalents don't really even exist. ditto for HGs although that situation has slowly gotten better over the years as MICA fills in the rough edges of HG comping. Grape is still in a class of her own until they add more "can nuke gundams and tanks" RFs. M200 is still going to be very hard to replace as an RF that can use her skill to not miss at night.
I know if I was going dupe, it would be handguns and Grape. I feel like even though expeditions and theater are exactly huge, they do more or less slightly nerf duping and reward raising everything. Though I'd say very minor because expedition champion doesn't linking or skills and for theater it only really matters if a unit gets picked as advantaged. Also I gather theater is setup where the same advantaged units are used for two theaters straight. So it really comes down to how many gems one is willing to spend on inventory space and where they want to spend combat reports and time on raising.
Anyways, one thing I'm debating is if i want to attempt EX ranking or go for normal. There are more points to be had on EX, but that shit hurts and if I can get higher points on normal because I know any echelon I put together should be able to hack it against most of what the map has. There is little point in running EX. I'm just tryin to figure out where my stuff puts me. I know 3* fairies are going to hold me back some in regards to EX and I think I'll have to use some green equips. Mostly with HP ammo, exos and cloaks (only have 5 gold cloaks). So I have this hunch I'm probably at the threshold. In theory I could get more points on EX if things go my way; however, it's probably far easier to get a good run on normal with what I have and I could probably make full use of all or most point gain areas. Not entirely sure on some KCCO points and suspect I'd want to avoid certain SF bosses. On EX I'm pretty sure I don't want to chance SF bosses spawning since most will be awful and KCCO could be dicey.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
This is a good point. Duping for expeditions is also much easier since the dupe doesn't need to be linked, skill trained, or even enhanced. Just throw a bunch of combat reports at it. Even if if you don't throw any combat reports at it, a level 1 expedition doll goes a long way with keeping you on schedule with your expedition income.
@Mill
For what it's worth, I assumed that you would be running EX. I forget how highly you scored last time, and I'm too lazy to dig through the thread, but wasn't better than top 10%? Or was it 15%? Either way I think that puts you in the class where you're capable of going toe to toe with EX mode.
I suppose that you could always do a practice run on normal to get an idea how the map flows and to see if your gear shortcomings are acutely apparent even at that level.
Having good fairies and gear helps, a lot, but the only times that I've felt that high rarity fairies really were a dealbreaker in a fight were against fights where there was a strict DPS check. Namely the Typhon fights in Singularity, the Doppelsoldner fights in the playpen during CT's ranking, and the high CE Doppelsoldner squads that most people sent their M4 railgun team against.
I suppose hydras also fall into the category of "you need to kill these things before they shoot at all", but their dps checks haven't felt as extreme as the aforementioned.
Having the right type of fairies and the right skill level is usually a bit more important than having the fairy at 4* or 5* level. The twin and taunt fairies have proven quite capable at trolling paradeus groups in general, while paradrop and illumination have proven themselves to be staples of ranking maps due to their strategic level influence.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I'll have to see how ranking looks towards the end of the event because IMO this is pretty resource intensive if you do everything right and max pierce on your BGM because you'll be shooting tons of resources into structures and that one rumble pile unless you want to play dodge with mortar and missile emplacements. I pretty much need to recover resources on top of fairy commands because I suspect 24K ammo will not cut it, even if I get BGM to the right side of the map for ganking KCCO structures instead of using 2B. ><
Lots of mistakes. Forgot to make sure the bossing ARSMG was supplied and had one retreat that could have been avoided. Also need to see how the spawn for bosses works. I can kill alchemist with little trouble, but will need to repair the tank. M16 is awful, but doable. Probably easier if I can get all three HOCs positioned for support, not sure if that was possible and I flubbed it or if I only get two. AGS and 2B seemed to work best. Also need to see what my options are for establishing the supply line quicker. There were a few retreats I know i can avoid. I know that I can't take the deathstacks so that's another two retreats that could be avoid. Ran a HGRF echelon into a gundam and found out it could hack it. So about 4 retreats I could easily avoid. Better planning means I probably wouldn't need to eat two to take the KCCO helipads by either getting what I need out there or having parachute ready to go. Probably could also farm a few other spots a tiny bit longer. Like probably could get more out of KCCO easily, definitely more out of ELIDs even though they give very little and depending on how SF works, maybe I could get one more boss. Hell, probably could farm paradeus a bit longer. I might have been a tad to aggressive on claiming map real estate. I did note, if you can kill the 20 hydra deathstack, it's possible to capture the entire map, though that might not be best for top score. Also better management of a few spots could probably prevent paradeus from capping a heliport that I probably need the AP from. Also probably see what I can do to boost some echelons. Not sure if rearrangement would work better, hope that I get some more gold equips (a good chunk of my HGs had to go without ammo because I had run out of gold and green HP ammo) and maybe some skill training. I do have to say, can't wait for Mica to give us more handguns to use because I realized I was drawing from the bottom of the barrel with some of the level 90 HGs I had to settle with.
All told my Ranking run on the EX map got me a score 644539. Kind of curious what the cap might be on normal, if I can't do significantly better on the normal map, then that will go into my decision on another attempt.
Edit: Also anyone else think M16 might be bugged in more than one way on the EX ranking map? There is the whole audio bug where the beacon will keep beeping after the fight concludes until you restart the game, but I also noticed she'll eat a shit ton of damage early in the fight that doesn't seem to register on her HP bar. Not sure if she is bugged in some weird way that results in damage not being subtracted from her HP bar or if the game is failing to display something that indicates she has some sort of shield. It's both weird and obnoxious because her HP bar will not move any until she does her first skill action cutscene, which is like a good 10-15 seconds IIRC.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PFX2RrqQQuDJtbAeV40IqIjgzNJbUr2uv_XiJtOZn3E/edit#gid=474134596
Some people have cleared the deathstack with 3* fairies. It looks like this first one was designed as a budget team (except for Grape)
https://streamable.com/v1rxqf
3* warrior with damage II and active level 10 skill
VM59, Serdyukov, Bren Ten, Astra, Grape
https://streamable.com/8bctg1
3* warrior with damage 1 and active level 10 skill
M14 mod3, Px4 Storm, Five-Seven, Grizzly, FN-49 Mod 3
Both examples have one of the handguns taking damage to stall for a little more time. That might make it a bit more challenging trying to knock out the second deathstack from a damaged state.
Two important details about runs that utilize Grape against the deathstack. First, her ability is set to manual activation. In order to maximize her damage output, you wait until after she procs her first nuke via stacking up to 18 stacks. Then you activate the skill to fire off a second nuke. The second key detail is that the handguns run up into attack range of the hydras to force them to stand still for a moment. This apparently flips the Elite flag on the Hydra for some dumb reason. Grape's nuke will bounce right off of them if they haven't been stopped, but will OHKO them if they have paused.
As for 24k ammo, yeah I I would not feel comfortable starting a ranking run with 24k ammo.
I haven't had time to do a ranking run yet, but I have been trying to design my squads. You can definitely feel the pinch for equipment, especially with all of the handguns competing for the same stuff. After a point you need to apply triage. The above anti-deathstack echelons are one example. They're there to be shot at and not much else. They don't need ammo since they're not punching through that armor and will be inflicting 1 damage anyway. They don't need night vision gear since the Hydras have zero evasion. They don't need exo's or suppressors since they are not going to be dodging those hydra or artillery attacks. Their only defense is if you're deft enough with the retreat button to get them to retreat to safety after baiting an attack. They exist to draw fire and buff the rifles. It's basically a super-specialized squad with one purpose, and that handgun gear can be used by other squads that can actually get some use out of it.
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
I really should probably get an account with an img hosting site again, made sure to have and see what people have to say about my echelons because I know they likely could be better tailored. Actually, thinking about not bothering with a double Jupiter team because all I ended up using it for was to kill ELIDs. Probably would be better served with another ARSMG for punking strelets, ELIDs and Rodeleros. ARSMG would definitely free up some of the better handguns for other teams.
Sucks having to wait a day to get an idea of what my rank is because I've yet to track down a site that is tracking outside of Mica. I probably could get to 800K; especially, since I forgot to blow up a bridge and have an idea of how to slay the 20 hydra deathstacks. Plus, doing a better job at maximizing enemy echelons to farm, I think I was probably too aggressive on taking heliports. The supply line could get me another 10K, but that involves figuring out a better way of dealing with the smashers and the hydra deathstack. Probably should have held on on killing some of the enemy turrets in that area since that might have resulted in damage to the hydras or figure out how to bait them into both smashers (which is less points, but the smashers suck).
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
So, without looking at the current trends and by simply assuming that the majority will be shooting at Ceia's guide's target 400k score, then your ~640k score will likely earn you a copy of MG4's scope. You're guaranteed a copy of the fairy since you achieved 300k points. The question is if that's good enough to earn extra copies of the fairy or the gimmick talent fairy.
One thing about the SF bosses, apparently there is a trick to squeezing some more score out of them? Something about how the SF units will upgrade to a given boss depending on what turn it is, and a recommendation to kill two Intruders on one of the earlier turns and then killing three M16s on turn 8.
I haven't done much testing for the other roles yet. So far I've just earmarked some dolls for my anti-SF team, my anti-Hydra team, and Double-Jupiter team. I still need to setup some anti-Elid teams and some general roaming teams for dealing with the Paradeus and KCCO troops.
edit:
Oh yeah, the August roadmap has been revealed.
New theater mode next month, and Calico mod 3.
Also, word on the street is that the alternate skins for the Gunslinger Girls collab will all be cash shop bundles. So I'm free to spend some of my tokens. I'm mildly tempted to try to roll for some of the summer furniture since that aquarium is kinda neat. I may very well just hold off though. It might be better for me to save big for another cosmetic gacha that I like such as the halloween or next year's anniversary skins (I really want SOPMOD's dress).
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012