[Top Gun]

I just went through a whole T1 run with six Tunnels missions, and only managed to find the cake dudes once, which is a bummer. I'll take another crack at just running one mission repeatedly tonight, to see if that produces better results.

The slightly-frustrating thing for me at this point is that I can't continue to progress through the remaining missions, since I'm stuck at the full 5-star loadout requirement. I've had my Levi Blade for a while, and I managed to craft an Aegis recently, so now I just need to hoard up some CE and grind out the armor and helm requirements. I did pull my first FSC run with a few benevolent strangers the other day, though I didn't have the equipment to attempt Vanaduke.

[NegimaSonic]

Originally Posted by Top Gun

I just went through a whole T1 run with six Tunnels missions, and only managed to find the cake dudes once, which is a bummer. I'll take another crack at just running one mission repeatedly tonight, to see if that produces better results.

The slightly-frustrating thing for me at this point is that I can't continue to progress through the remaining missions, since I'm stuck at the full 5-star loadout requirement. I've had my Levi Blade for a while, and I managed to craft an Aegis recently, so now I just need to hoard up some CE and grind out the armor and helm requirements. I did pull my first FSC run with a few benevolent strangers the other day, though I didn't have the equipment to attempt Vanaduke.

It won't get incredibly better I suppose, but it's better to spam 1-2 stages than a whole tier. It's an energy sink for the impatient, it was like that for me in Halloween. I had my friends and guildmates all over it.

Now about the star stuff, that's new to me since I kind of haven't done the missions but same basic principle for getting your gear up. It's going to take a little time but you'll get there. I hope the armor you have ready for 5* is elemental or has fire protection though if you're after FSC. (Shadow is ok, but some of those have fire weaknesses so that could be terrible there lol)

[Top Gun]

It's not, just the plain old Cobalt set, for better or worse. :P It was the only armor I had up to 4-star in the first place, plus the missions gave free recipes for the 5-star variants of the whole "standard" weapon/armor set, so that's definitely what I'm working on first. After that, I'll get going on something more specialized.

I really do love the missions system as a whole, though, even as someone who'd been playing the game for a long time before it was implemented. It's nice not having to commit to a full 8- or 9-level run when I want to play; a mission with two or three levels takes a half-hour at most, so it's a nice bite-sized portion of gameplay.

[NegimaSonic]

oh, I see, well it's not terrible, I mean if you're good at dodging, it doesn't honestly matter what you wear. I just know I'm not. So that's why I went with the standard bread and butter stuff. But even though you've put time in, you may still wish to stop and get started on your ideal set because that 1600 energy (helm + armor) could be put into a set you really want to use.

Piercing defense isn't bad though in some places, but you could be packing Ash Tail with a sword attack bonus for that same effort (50+50+200+200+400+400+recipes that cost no more than 10k). Then you could choose between heading into an elemental set with vog (+fire protection) or more sword damage and slightly less piercing defense with skolver (assuming sword user). If you're not running all of tier 3 with the final cobalt stuff, it'd be a waste to go past 4* since it has no other bonuses, you can just keep what you've got and run JK some more (or whatever other gate, but JK tends to your piercing defense)

[Thylacine]

Sorry I keep missing you, Top Gun. I see you log on around the same time I play, but I've been mid-run when you're starting and you're mid-run when I'm tapped out on energy.

Man, this is even more frustrating than the Punkin King stuff. I want this helmet, but I keep partying with people who aren't privy to how this works. I'll have to do the D9 grinding you mentioned. As much as I hate "exploiting" a system, it's my only option if I want to make the Tuesday deadline.

[NegimaSonic]

nah, you're not exploiting it by running the same initial depth. It's very minimal profit and more than likely costly if you go over your mist energy (and you'll have to if you want to make the deadline) because crown production at d9 (or any first depth of a tier) is terrible.

A real exploit would've been doing something like bringing an alt or knowing people who had alts at the entrances of arenas that could be joined continuously for the sake of farming crowns and mats...but ahem, that was a long time ago.

[Top Gun]

Originally Posted by Thylacine

Sorry I keep missing you, Top Gun. I see you log on around the same time I play, but I've been mid-run when you're starting and you're mid-run when I'm tapped out on energy.

Yeah, I saw you on last night myself, but I was derping through the first one or two T1 or T2 levels looking for tokens, and considering how dull it was, I didn't feel it would be a good idea to subject anyone else to it. :P

Negima, I know there are probably better ways to go about things in terms of overall preparedness, but I think I'm going to stick with getting my current stuff to 5-star before working on anything else. The only other armor/helms I have are back at 2-star, and while I do have a few 3-star recipes, it'd still take a long time to get a new set to 4-star, even. Since I already have the Azure Guardian recipes, and I only need about 1200 more CE to craft them, it's definitely the fastest way to go, especially if I want to keep working through missions. I do plan on working on a few different sets in the long-term, so I'll get to leveling something else up eventually.

And while I agree that the Wolver line does have some pretty nice end products, the main reason I never did much with them before is because I thought most of the line looked pretty damn ugly. :P Besides, that, everyone and their mother seems to wear them, and I wanted to stick out a bit. (Obviously this isn't as big of a deal with costume slots, but still.)

[Thylacine]

Top Gun and I have been doing a few runs of this. I've been trying to invite people on my runs, so if you are on late and see me, let me know if you're interested. I like the company, especially when waiting for elevators (which they really shouldn't make us do). That said, I'm not really having a lot of luck finding these rooms.

Tonight's run was less than stellar - 12 cake tokens. I got some with Top Gun, some from the daily mission, and some from another room that I finally got into on my last floor of the night. (Seriously, I must have run at least 10 times after he logged out before I found one.) I'm roughly 30 tokens from the helmet, and I intend to buy some energy tomorrow night to finish this out.

[Top Gun]

I've enjoyed those past few runs with you, too. I've managed to eke my way up to 86 tokens thanks to them, so with any luck, I'll finally be done with the thing after tonight. It'll be nice to go back to profitable runs again.

[Thylacine]

Both Top Gun and I have our prismatic frosted helms now. After my unlucky streaks, I managed a rather lucky run after he left where I got two in a row (worth 4 and 5 tokens, giving me the last 9 I needed). I'll figure out a set that I can wear this helmet with, because it does look really neat.

I shall now take ANOTHER one of my "I'm burned out on this game and am taking a sabbatical before I hurt something" breaks. I'll try to pop on after I'm done playing other, non-SK games for a while.

Oh, and Top Gun - thanks for making what would have been a draining endeavor very much enjoyable.