Day 29: The Day Before the Storm
This post is intended to be a summary of major events before OPTC Hell begins. For posterity's sake, the reason we are about to enter OPTC Hell is that this December is Feature Film Frenzy. What this means is that we're going to be receiving all of the movie fortnights and raids packed into a two week period because Bandai loves us, but also has no plans to release this content again in the future. Now what this really means is actually that Bandai is likely about to lose rights to use the movie content in Treasure Cruise, we're all about to get boned, and this is our last chance to farm up any key content as a last hurrah. For longterm players, it sucks, but it's life. For new players? RIP. Guess which I fall under, one month in? Anyways, this post will be broken down into three sections. Progress since the last update, the provisional plan of attack for this event, and finally what we hope to achieve by the end of it. Let's get on with the show; first, recent progress on unit levelups.
STR:
Blackbeard - Lv. 65
Dice - Evolved, Lv. 50, skillup maxed, sockets at 5 bind/2 despair
Lola - Evolved, Lv. 40, 4 skillups, 3 bind/2 charge special
Diamante - Skillup Maxed
DEX:
Mihawk - Lv. 50
Paulie - Lv. 50
Doublefinger - Lv. 50
Koala - Lv. 50
QCK:
Enel - Lv. 70(waiting on evolvers)
Doma - Lv. 50
Mr. Tanaka - Lv. 50, skillup maxed, sockets at 5 autoheal/2 Bind
Inazuma/Sugar/Leo - Lv. 35
PSY:
Squard - Evolved, Lv. 50
Rakuyo - Evolved, Lv. 50
Bon Clay - Lv. 50
Gild Tesoro - Lv. 93
INT:
Vista - Lv. 60
Brain Point Chopper - Lv. 45
Baccarat - Evolved, Lv. 70, skillup maxed, sockets at 5 Charge Special/orbs
Ivankov - Skillup Maxed
Mirage Tempo Nami - Skillup maxed, 5 bind/4 despair
Thunderbolt Tempo Nami - Skillup maxed
Books:
17 Log Luffy
16 Towel Nami
33 Machavise
27 Gladius
As you can see, lots of progress on PSY units and skillups. Diamante took what felt like an eternity but in the end, mission accomplished alongside a host of other benefits; lots of skillbooks for other useful units, maxed out fortnight units, and boosters applied generously onto non-INT units. I'm also really glad I committed to maxing him out early, as with the news that Gran Tesoro is going away, trying to max him out at the last minute could have been particularly painful. After finishing up with Gran Tesoro, I swapped my focus to Bride Nami which has got to be my 2nd least favorite fortnight to date; the crown easily goes to Dr.Indigo, which I'm NOT looking forward to hitting up for Legend Marco books when it rolls around, but more on that later. I did eventually narrow down a team that can clear Bride Nami 9 out of 10 times, even through shitty boss stages and the godawful secret stage. Credits go to bjork for giving me recipe to easy INT orbs for an early player, and other GAFers who have put up their Vistas alongside bjork; there was definitely at least two of you guys that did me a solid
Vista/Towel Nami/Whitey Bay - Vista
Brain Point Chopper - Trebol
Nolan - Buggy
How it works is pretty straightforward; tank your way through to Lola taking minimal damage, while stalling on the turtles. KO Lola while taking your time, as you can safely bulldoze her so long as you don't let her attack under 20% HP. Then Bride Nami is fairly straightfoward; lots of HP? Whittle her down a bit first, then burst. Low on HP? Time to burst. My burst consisted of using Chopper to get RCV orbs on my Friend Captain, Trebol, and Nolan, Buggy to give those three units INT orbs, Trebol to lock orbs and give my Vista a INT orb, Nolan to boost my orbs, and then go to town on Nami. Solo Nami is an easy 2 turn KO from full HP with this team at ~Lv. 50 on all units. And as a general rule of thumb, Nami is always the first to die no matter the boss stage, as we can reliably kill her and grind down any other units we're facing. Flip a coin on clearing Sanji + Absalom though.
Next on the list is Gild Tesoro almost being ready to be evolved. I went HARD on PSY turtle time, gemmed twice, and the end result was 11 Elder Turtles. After getting Rakuyo to Lv. 50, all boosters went straight to Tesoro and the end result is Lv. 93, and 500k exp away from being maxed. All boosters from Bride Nami have been sent straight to him as well and I anticipate that I'll have him evolved by the time I go to bed. Sadly Tesoro ain't maxed and I don't have Impact Dial Usopp or Coby, or I'd totally run a first turn burst team against him starring Tesoro as a captain for easy Zephyr raids.
Finally, my player level and Blackbeard's raid. You guys remember how I said, huh, maybe I'll be at PL 130 by Sunday on that last post? About that...more like 140. 142 to be exact. All I can say to explain it is bless half stamina fortnights, and that I really wanted my Diamante books. Then on Blackbeard, double Marco tears him apart like wet toilet paper. The only hard part that requires paying attention is needing to get RCV orbs on the way to Blackbeard to ensure the boss stage starts at >90% HP, allowing me to beat him down while using Marco specials to heal up and burst him down. Bad things happen, however, when I have to stall and don't pull any RCV orbs. I've actually died twice on the way to Blackbeard precisely because I couldn't pull any RCV orbs, throwing me into a death spiral as I could no longer kill the minions. If I had Lv. 1 anti-despair, I could simply just rush through Blackbeard without a second thought but I'm sadly not quite there. Ain will make Blackbeard a hell of a lot easier once I get 5 despair sockets on her. And truthfully, I haven't been farming Blackbeard all that diligently either, and only farmed about 15 copies. The only reason I actually ran him at all was because I needed Elder Sea Horses to evolve my units. Koala, Blackbeard, Enel, and Doma are all waiting on that magical day at the moment, and my drop rate has been terrible on them. I'll likely hold off now until Zephyr, as all the units I needed to clear him are now ready and Zephyr should provide any missing sea horses by the time I'm done with him.
With this week's progress summarized, let's move on to the gameplan for this coming event. First on the list is the Amazon fortnight coming out on Tuesday starring Marguerite. I'd love to farm her, but for the sake of achieving my goals within this limited period of time, I'm not gonna touch her fortnight if I can help it; she'll be back around, while these other fortnights range from unlikely to never. So the actual first challenge I'll be taking on is Zephyr:
The plan is simple, if not tedious. Get through the stages using usual stall strategies, then face Zephyr. Thanks to Marco's 30% damage reduction, Zephyr can never one-shot us. The plan here is simple. Beatdown. Straight beatdown through the bind stages. Whenever Zephyr hits us, use a Marco special and keep on rolling. Finally, once he's just over 20% HP(the math works out to be just after his second attack), use Squard, use Marco, use Rakuyo, use GP Usopp, use Monet, and go for the KO. Slow, but fairly safe.
Next, Count Butler's FN. From giving it a preliminary once-over, it appears like the FN will be straightforward with Double Marcos. I don't really care for any of the units other than Butler much but I'll do it to the point of getting one of each. What I AM interested in is the idea of losing Vergo's skillup books until whenever it is that we get the Pekoms fortnight. I think that since Vergo's special isn't super high anyways, I'll bite the bullet on this one and focus resources elsewhere after getting at least 1 Count Butler, although I'll farm it given excess stamina(read: Zephyr-claimed stamina) which is likely to happen on the 8th and 9th after I grind a copy of Shiki. I may also try to get at least one copy of Breed, and ignore Morgan completely.
Next on the list is Shiki; my aspirations towards Shiki can be summarized as such: 'Lol I can't farm Shiki'. Thus, we will get one copy of Shiki and walk away real pleased with ourselves.
In theory, I have enough units to slap together to pull it off. This is what I've been kicking around in my head. I have no idea if it'll actually work.
Although swap Marco with Leo in their positioning.
My current brainstorming is first turn, I farm STR/DEX/QCK orbs. Next turn, I use Leo to cut off ~900k HP from Shiki and lock my orbs, Enel for the QCK boost, Marco for the orb boost + heal back to full health, and Capone to get QCK orbs. Go for the burst, which can be anywhere from 1.9m-2.7m(I may replace Sugar with Legend Boa and put Boa on the middle row for a more consistent burst). I should knock off anywhere from 3m to 3.5m HP off of him by turn 2. Turn 3, I take a hit to the face while farming QCK orbs and survive by a sliver assuming all my levels match what I've posted. Turn 4, I'd use my second Marco special and burst him below 20% HP. From there, I'd use Sugar's special, he revives...and then I die, because this team can't land a 30 hit combo. If anyone's got any ideas for what I could do to piece together a team to actually KO him with what I've listed, I'm all ears. I do have Inazuma; would he do me any good when put together with Legend Marco? I could see him facilitating a beatdown on Shiki under the best case scenario of how I'm speculating that he'll work, that then lets me use Sugar to KO him when he revives. To clarify, I'm speculating/wishing that Inazuma's special would take priority, and then Legend Marco's captain ability would stack on top of Inazuma's reduced damage. How I'm suspecting it works however, is the other way around where Marco reduces damage then Inazuma's special does almost nothing for me as it'd only be reducing the ~5000 damage I'd take per hit with only a friend Legend Marco.
ANYWAYS
Dead End Begins, the Gasparde FN. Gasparde would be interesting to me since I don't have a Powerhouse booster but....8 specials to feed? Fuck dat, I know that ain't happening. Thankfully, I don't need any books from here so my focus will be on other stuff . Maybe here's when I'll sneak in Breed, after getting one of each unit from the FN. After that, Gild Tesoro, thankfully at 40 after I went through gems like they were water for 60 when he first dropped.
See here for the practical demonstration
Leo seems like a far more useful version of Hina...making me question why I got Hina up in the first place, but whatever. The strategy shown in this video remains the same, except Leo also acts as a health cutter here too. Ain will be socketed in the process of farming Zephyr, letting me take on this raid without too much to fear. My only concern is that I'm going to be short on sockets to get Lv. 1 Despair up, meaning I'll have to do something more annoying to pull this off, although only just. Basically, stall until Tesoro is debuffed by hitting with Usopp every turn, do the original turn 1 play, next turn heal up with Marco, and proceed to finish the job. A little bit longer, but I'm just too early in the game to have the sockets I need on these units other than Ain.
From here on out, Raids become a rather straightforward affair once double skillup rolls around, at least for Zephyr and Gild Tesoro. Use up all copies of the unit, if still missing skillups or sockets, farm again the 2nd time they roll around. Shiki will likely remain pie in the sky man. For FNs, the most relevant for me is Dr.Indigo as I have a Legend Marco, and Kohza is also a nice side bonus. Gonna hit that one as much as I can. I don't care too much about the Young Nami/Robin FN unless I manage to magically get a great version of Nami/Robin by the time their FN rolls around in order to socket them. Gild Tesoro? Hehehe, I'm done with it forever.
What am I aiming for by the end of this crazy ride? First, I want to pass my exams. Like seriously, I'm gonna go as hard as I can but I do have exams. Those come first. Second on the bucket list for this month is to max out Zephyr and Gild Tesoro; both are going to be incredibly useful to me, and Zephyr is literally irreplaceable in Global atm, especially more so should Byrnndi World fall under the same restrictions as the movie content. Third is to max out Ain and Carina; Ain is just a great bind/despair remover, while Carina spares me from having to bother with farming Bellamy in the story until I can get Doffy. Fourth is to secure a copy of every fortnight character and Shiki; Shiki would be higher, but the chances of me clearing him reliably are very, very low.
RIP my wallet, because you already know these farming gems aren't coming out of my nonexistent gem stash.
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