Me: Collabs don’t have skill ups!
GH: Here’s skill up fodder.
Me: The drop rates are cancer!
GH: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Me: Shitty collabs last too long!
GH: We’ll make it a week.
Me: Now there’s not enough time to farm skill ups!
GH: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
As someone that has skilled up countless monsters, I thought I was over the whole complaining-about-the-rates thing. However, when the fodder drop rate is so low, going 0-fer is one of the worst feelings ever. I truly hope they find a better way to distribute collab skill up fodder, but considering almost every collab does it the same way now — Bleach, FF, FotNS, Shinrabansho, etc, etc — it’s unlikely to change.
Anyways, I’m almost hoping they never improve Shiva’s cooldown again as farming Dragon Stones is a living hell. To be honest, I’m glad I don’t have a Balancile, either; her fodder drop rate is basically the same as Sephiroth’s in the first iteration of the FF dungeon.
I went 446/1664 or 26.80%. Anything above 25% is nice, but this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting from a 3x event. The confidence interval (95%) with my sample size is 24.67% to 28.93%, so the expected 30% isn’t even within range. So, fairly unlucky. Bleach skill ups, combined with the horrible drop rates, were particularly bad so I’ll be using Pys on the rest of those.
First off, thank god Elia invades coin dungeons now (GungHo hasn’t updated their Facebook to reflect that, of course). There was no good descended to farm this event, but with Athena in the coin lineup it became possible to run a minimal match team.
Elia Invade Mythical Farming – No Bonuses
Date
Dungeon
Runs
Stamina
Stones
Drops
Drop / Run
Stam / Drop
10/23/2015
Takeminekata
20
1000
3
6
30.00%
166.67
10/25/2015
Izanami
75
3750
9
5
6.67%
750.00
10/30/2015
Grimoires
30
1500
4
2
6.67%
750.00
10/31/2015
Aamir
51
2550
6
5
9.80%
510.00
11/1/2015
Thoth & Sopdet
81
4050
10
10
12.35%
405.00
12/3/2015
Noah
37
1850
5
5
13.51%
370.00
1/17/2015
Athena Coin
319
15950
Many
35
10.97%
455.71
Total
613
30650
?
68
11.09%
450.74
I’m actually pretty surprised I ended up with such a good invade rate. Over the first three hours of farming I’m pretty sure I had a sub-5% invade rate. What saved me was in the last hour where I got three invades in a row. I couldn’t believe it myself.
Sigh, 319 runs of Athena. The good thing was I got to watch a lot of Silicon Valley and catch up on the latest anime season. The bad thing wasthe amount of stones I had to spend. For some reason I just didn’t keep track, but with everything being done I’m almost glad I didn’t. The total damage is likely around 70 stones, though.
The best news was this:
So the nightmare is finally over. Her skill up rate was 15/65 or 23.08%. That number seems pretty acceptable, right? Well, skill ups are always rough no matter the overall rate and there was certainly a fair share of ups and downs. Even though I can’t complain about the final rate, there’s no changing the fact that this skill up system has way more feel-bad moments than feel-good; I’d argue most of the feel-good moments are more about relief than anything.
As for whether the whole process was worth it or not, I don’t think it was. I mean, I did it because there was a mountain to climb and getting to the top is a reward in itself, but I have no immediate use for Elia and I didn’t get any side benefits to the farming like 10x or even useful skill ups (I now have four max skilled Athenas, three school, one normal). With NA potentially getting co-op soon, the decision may look even worse as both Elia and Grisar will appear as bosses to the co-op Rushes (as one might expect, God and Devil, respectively). There’s slight regrets, for sure. If I ever get around to skilling a Grisar, I’ll definitely do it at a more opportune time.
I decided to farm five Elia’s then call it an event. I have no pressing need for her and I’m hoping for better farming conditions in the future (10x + Elia pls gungho).
Elia Invade Mythical Farming – No Bonuses
Date
Dungeon
Runs
Stamina
Stones
Drops
Drop / Run
Stam / Drop
10/23/2015
Takeminekata
20
1000
3
6
30.00%
166.67
10/25/2015
Izanami
75
3750
9
5
6.67%
750.00
10/30/2015
Grimoires
30
1500
4
2
6.67%
750.00
10/31/2015
Aamir
51
2550
6
5
9.80%
510.00
11/1/2015
Thoth & Sopdet
81
4050
10
10
12.35%
405.00
12/3/2015
Noah
37
1850
5
5
13.51%
370.00
Total
294
14700
37
33
11.22%
445.45
A pretty nice invade rate. That luck was then extended into my skill ups, going 3/5:
Only six more to go… I also want to finish skilling up a Noah, but I’ll do that when we get her 5×4 dungeon (we are getting it, right, GungHo?).
In other news, I used the following team to farm Noah: Yomi Dragon / DValk / Persephone / Haku / Akechi / Yomi Dragon. I only had 80% dark OE, but it worked out better than expected. I also came to have an appreciation for Persphone and DValk on the team. The heart enhance + heartbreaker combo surprised me with how relevant it was. The awakening is also relevant by giving a Haku board a higher enhanced dark orb hit rate. DValk giving a quick orb changer to work in conjunction with Yomi Dragon’s haste was also nice. I can’t imagine heartbreakers being very good outside of farming, though.
I didn’t think I’d be done with this today, in only a few hours to boot.
Farming Numbers
Fist of the North Star Conqueror – No Drop Bonus – 72 Runs
Floor
Drop %
Trash %
Tama %
Stam/Tama
Jagi (Goetia/Kenshiro)
70.84%
52.78% (38)
18.06% (13)
276.92
Amiba (Gamble/Toki)
76.39%
52.78% (38)
23.61% (17)
211.76
Uighur (Wee Jas/Yuri)
80.55%
56.94% (41)
23.61% (17)
211.76
Raoh (Raoh)
100.00%
79.17% (57)
20.83% (15)
240.00
The numbers pretty much line up with what PDX is reporting: 20% for each Tama drop and only 100% for the boss floor. Since this is going to be a busy week and I only really cared about Raoh, I went ahead and started farming today even though the trash floors aren’t a guaranteed drop. That being said, it’s uncertain how they’ll handle bonus drop periods since this collab is only running for a week. I have to think there’s going to be at least one bonus day, it’s just that PDX hasn’t picked up on that information yet.
Farming was a breeze, thanks to a video by Izaya:
I fed some Flampys to my Leilans just for this and it was well worth it (thank you, Ra Dragon). The time and effort saved was amazing.
Skill Up Numbers
Monster
Tries
Success
Rate
Raoh
15
5
33.33%
Yuria
10
5
50.00%
Kenshiro
10
5
50.00%
Kenshiro #2
3
1
33.33%
Toki
17
2
11.76%
Goetia
38
8
21.05%
Gamble Mage
25
6
24.00%
Light Wee Jas
30
4
13.33%
Wood Wee Jas
10
3
30.00%
Raoh (Boss)
56
10
17.86%
My garbage luck with my high-priority collab skill ups has finally changed for the better. It’s unfortunate that Toki only got two skill ups, but if I really need him for something I’ll just throw some Bubpys at him (Bubpys are pretty worthless to me, anyways). After FF and Eva, I’m glad to be done with this collab so quickly.
I guess I’m supposed to be thankful that there are skill ups at all?
Farming Numbers
Final Fantasy Legend – 2x Drops – 110 Runs
Weapon
Drops
Drop %
Stam / Drop
Yuna
29
26.36%
170.69
Cloud
41
37.27%
120.73
Sephiroth
4
3.64%
1237.50
Squall
39
35.45%
125.92
Rinoa
37
33.64%
133.78
Tidus
28
25.45%
176.79
Zidane
37
33.64%
133.78
I ran Legend because it was the lowest difficulty that guaranteed a Cloud/Kefka drop, the only skill up I was interested in besides Yuna. I’m not sure if other difficulties are better or not, but I couldn’t find any good sources indicating otherwise. I encountered Gilgamesh 13 times, or 8.18% of my runs, for a total of four Masamunes. Meaning even if you’re farming to skill up an entire Cloud System, you probably won’t be able to skill up a Sephiroth in the same about of time. Pretty lame, in my opinion.
Skill Up Numbers
Monster
Tries
Success
Rate
Yuna
20
5
25.00%
Cloud
40
5
12.50%
Squall
35
10
28.57%
Rinoa
37
9
24.32
Tidus
28
5
17.86%
Zidane
20
5
25.00%
Chaos
70
10
14.29%
Emperor of Palamecia
63
10
15.87%
Cloud of Darkness
46
10
21.74%
Zeromus
32
10
31.25%
Neo Exdeath
36
7
19.44%
Kefka
34
10
29.41%
All of my luck went into skilling up everything except the one thing I wanted: Cloud. I went 0-for-5 on him five times. Luckily I got two 2-for-5s, but it was still frustrating as fuck. This is what I get for trying on 2x instead of waiting for 2.5x, but I just wanted to get this out of the way. Hopefully we never get 2x again.
This event was pretty boring for me as it was mainly composed of farming, mostly descendeds, for skill ups during the 2.5x event (which for some reason we aren’t getting for the next event even though it’s now standard for JP). The first set of monsters that needed skill ups were what I rolled from the Halloween REM. This event also premiered the Angel & Reaper invades, meaning it was a good time to start work on Elia while skilling up descended bosses that I had wanted to for a long time.
Whew, a full three weeks of 2.5x. I think people are starting to take it for granted, but I’d wager the skill up salt will never end short of the entire system being removed. For someone like me, the extra 5% goes a long, long ways toward saving stamina and time. Here’s hoping 2.5x becomes the norm soon and 3x becomes a thing.
I went 217/938 or 23.13% this event. I kicked this off the event with an 0/40, but at least things could only get better from there on out. I’m just thankful that we got Zaerog∞ while under 2.5x; I wouldn’t want to farm that dungeon ever again. I’m also quite thankful for good results on Hathor and Nephthys as I’d likely kill myself farming any more of those damn DeviNyans.
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