NA Alt Update 5

Account background: I’m playing this account for my friend. It is non-IAP outside the various special deals. The purpose of this account is to see how far I can take it being non-IAP, but I eventually envision spending money on it in order to co-op farm with my main. The initial box review can be found here; the entire series here.

Previous update

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The big news this week was finishing the MP farming for and purchasing Summer Myr. I did about 125k MP in five days on natural stamina only which was a better rate than I was expecting. Beyond that, I continued to grind Zaerog∞ — and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future — and also farmed skill ups and tamas when I had time.

Summer REM YOLO

Against my better judgment, I decided to try my luck at getting a Navi for my Myr team (before I had even bought her). I figured any silver outside Awilda would be helpful so I convinced myself to take a gamble. At first, I was cursing at the sight of a gold egg, thinking it was a dreaded Fuu or Kurone troll, but out popped what is the second best gold egg for this account, only behind Summer Urd (Escha is really only a mediocre SI here). I started this account with zero two-color board changers and now I have four: Christmas RSonia, Avalon Drake, BSonia, and now Summer GSonia. Too bad I didn’t have these cards for the Wadatsumi Tournament as I could’ve gotten top 10% with little effort; maybe even 1% with some luck.

What am I going to do with her? No clue. This acquisition has less impact than Avalon Drake since there isn’t much that differentiates her from Christmas RSonia. Sure, I can use her as a straight sub instead of just for inheritance, which is important, but there are very few places where she’s better than Avalon, at least for farming. I can’t bemoan adding new, powerful cards to my arsenal, though.

The Myr MP Grind

I think I bought her last Friday morning and finished hypering her Saturday evening. After leveling Myr, I’ve managed to use most of the Snow Globes on this account which is a shame considering that was one of its few strengths. One of the few remaining strengths is PAL points in the mail which is something I’ve already consumed a great deal of; now I have to decide whether I should use them in the evo or enhance PAL machines.

The grind actually wasn’t that bad. Even though I can’t run Zaerog∞ continuously at my rank, the wait to get the next rank up was usually under an hour. It’s not like I had the time to run several bars of stamina per day anyways, especially on the weekdays, so while waiting is frustrating, it was doable. I ended up selling everything worth more than 1 MP during this period, including the Pirates, Samurais, Heavy Metals, and Zaerog himself. This made each run usually worth 585 MP or greater.

Myr Team Plans

The core team is hypermaxed, so the question is what to fill the remaining slots with. I glanced over this last update, but now’s the time to consider the options a bit more seriously.

Card	Notes
	Paulina is the most likely candidate for the third sub slot. I’ll toss an Urd on her and call it a day. It’s still tempting to try for a Navi instead, but I shouldn’t push my luck.
	Amberjack puts a huge strain on the team, contributing almost nothing outside his active. This can be mitigated by co-op which is likely the mode I’ll be playing most. Without a Y’shtola, Andromeda or Gabriel, this will have to do. Comboing with Ryune’s board change is a nice bonus.
	The effect of Ilsix’s active is close to perfect for Myr, but the cooldown is brutal. Locking water and hearts seems to only be an upside on this team as it allows you to store orbs without having to fear orb changers. I’m not sure whether I’m running this or Amberjack in the fourth sub slot, but since Ilsix requires less investment (would likely have to Py Amberjack) I’ll probably give him the first shot.
	I successfully farmed Another Justice and max skilled him. I still need to evo him, but I’ll get around to that when Gold Keepers hits on Tuesday. This guy isn’t all that great, but he does have a nice set of awakenings — the most relevant for me being 2x SBRs — and his active has a short enough cooldown to be a decent inheritance base. I don’t intend to solo very often, but as it stands, this card is the only way to reasonably hit 100% SBR. As for what to inherit on him, I’d say a Fairy Tale girl, but the only max skilled one this account has is Snow White who will probably be put on Myr.
	Sun Quan is an option I overlooked previously, but he’s one of the better utility candidates for this team. Since my team isn’t biased one-way toward TPAs or rows, it can easily accommodate his triple TPAs if his delay is needed.
	I still have to play the team more to know for sure, but at least when I used to play Lakshmi, I really did like the presence of just a normal water orb changer. I’d obviously love an Andromeda instead, but considering what I have at my disposal, Hastume might be a good options. She also works well with Ryune.
	It’s a given that she’ll be inherited somewhere on this team, but question is how I’m going to skill her up. I’m most likely going to Py her, but I might wait and see whether the Norns get put back on Trifruits. I’m only considering Trifruit hell because the green one will eventually skill up Ronove. I can’t spare the Woodpys for him so if I can pick up some Urd fodder in the process, I might as well. I’ll be watching the JP skill rotations a bit more closely.
	Wee Jas is a great card, but I just haven’t had time to invest in him. He has a permanent skill up fodder in the Taiko no Tatsujin coin dungeon; it’s just hard to dedicate the stamina there with so many other higher priorities. However, considering that the Minerva skill up fodder is a fairly legit role player, I might get around to it sooner rather than later.
	Another card I overlooked that I wished I had more of. This account also has a Sleeping Beauty, but since there’s no skill up fodder on NA, she’s basically useless.

 Farming Star Justice

This is basically a just the standard Liu Bei team tailored around the subs I have on this account. Both sides are pretty demanding, P1 needing an inheritable gravity, Jize and Vaan and P2 needing Raphael and a wood heartbreaker. Not to mention the skill boost, SBR and all attributes requirements. Surprisingly, this account has just about everything it needed for P1, the only thing lacking was a replacement for Hermes’s two skill boosts and SBR. So the solution was to make P2 (my main) run an Avalon instead of a second Dios which requires some unfortunate matching, but was a small price to pay. For my fire and water coverage, I originally thought of using Mithril Edge (a farmable option), but instead used Christmas Paulina since her enhanced orbs equate to more Dios board damage and I was too lazy to calculate whether I could sweep everything without them.

If I wasn’t lucky enough to have access to these subs, there are certainly some ghetto alternatives, but I’m glad I didn’t have to resort to them. For those that don’t have Liu Bei, consider using a Dios as a lead (although if you don’t have a Liu Bei, there’s a good chance you don’t have any Dioses). I’ll take my Another Justice and hopefully never have to revisit the dungeon again.

I spent a stone on this dungeon. Not really sure if it was worth it since Another Justice isn’t a high priority to skill and I could just finish it the next time the dungeon comes around, but it’s nice to be done with it.

Evaluating the Non-IAP Life

After several weeks of living the non-IAP life through this account, two things have stood out to me: the rate of progress is far greater than I expected, but the fact that you can’t do it at your own convenience is frustrating.

This became an obvious problem in the short time I was farming MP for Myr. While 25k MP per day off purely natural stamina was above my expectations, it required me to fit my life around it instead of playing when I wanted. This problem will become exacerbated as I continue to rank up as the downtime between ranks increases to the point where it’s not even worth waiting to finish the next rank; I’ll just go to sleep instead.

So sooner or later one of two things will happen. Either I’ll be content with just playing this account casually, mainly as a co-op partner with my main to burn stamina. Or I’ll break non-IAP and play the account regularly. At this point in time, I don’t intend to buy stones for rolls and hopefully never will.

I’m aware that the whole stamina system encourages this pay to play mentality, but I don’t mind giving GungHo more money as long as I’m having fun, which I am. I’m a (somewhat) responsible adult and I’m more than willing to trade money for convenience and time. I do wish they’d do more to improve the game considering how much they rake in, but that’s a complaint for another time.

All things considered, I intend to play this account non-IAP as long as I can. While I have a close to respectable endgame team in Summer Myr and I’ve almost fully realized Awoken Liu Bei’s farming potential given this box, I still think there’s plenty to accomplish while still non-IAP. I don’t really know when I’ll make the transition, but just know that it’s something I eventually plan to do for this account.

Plans for the Future

I’m going to use this section to keep track of the cards I want to raise as it’s too easy for me to forget what I have to do. This list is ordered loosely by priority.

Overarching Goals

• Farm MP to buy Summer Myr – Done
• Get SUDR team ready for Ilsix skill ups (YouTube link, or this).
  • Max skill Zeus & Hera – Stone if necessary. It’s coming again 8/24.
    • I’ll probably do something similar to this. Running Vaan and Summer Myr as inherits over Kaoru (since we don’t have her just yet). Will probably inherit onto Chester instead of Liu Bei so I can keep Ra on him.
    • Since it’s not 3x it makes farming them a little troublesome. I’ll probably dump three stones into this which should hopefully be good for over 50 drops which will hopefully mean a max skilled Zera come Friday.
• Get Star Justice team ready (YouTube link) – Done
  • Probably need to do P1 since I don’t have Raphael.
    • I surprisingly have Jize and Hathor done. I’ll use Mithril Edge instead of Hermes. I’ll have to Py Vaan, but I was probably going to do that eventually anyways.
  • P2 can run Avalon Drake instead of a Dios to hit the SBR requirement (since my alt will be using Mithril Edge instead of Hermes). Don’t exactly want to have to match against Kamui, but considering he doesn’t have a combo shield it shouldn’t be too bad.
• GOdin for MAthena?
• Farm MP for Ragnarok Dragon/Halloween.

Liu Bei

• Zeus & Hera – Wednesday 8/24
• Avalon Drake – Rainbow Keepers
• Tengu – Friday 8/26
• Ra
• Spica
• Phact
• Balboa – Done
• Summer GSonia – Done
• Ronove – Green Fruit (in the future)
• Masamune

Summer Myr

• Ilsix
• Amberjack
• Christmas Paulina
• Urd
• Another Justice – Skill ups done, need to evo – Gold Keepers
• Change Sun Quan to awoken – done
• Hatsume
• Wee Jas

MHera Arena 1

• MHera
• Claire
• Dill Sirius
• Grisar

MZeus

• MZeus
• Venus
• Thouzer
• Vaan – Done
• Pollux
• Kopis

Long Term Liu Bei

• Fafnir
• Armadel
• Hanuman
• Bartz

Ronove

• Ragnarok Dragon
• Gainaut

Other

• Scarlet
• Surtr
• Elia
• Nordis
• Myr
• Amaterasu
• Sakuya
• Kagutsuchi – MHera
• Bastet Ace
• LValk Ana
• Goemon #2
• BSonia
•  MAthena
  • GOdin
• Cao Cao