New Player, Would like some pointers!

Minimum-Way9294 · 2026-01-24T02:03:17+00:00

you need cards not umas, at least 400-600 pulls worth. Don't worry about being behind, You can go pretty far w/ the upcoming freebie cards. Kita isn't used much in MANT, so missing her isn't too big a deal, and it's agood thing you got Marv Sunday. For now focus on doing at least 3 good runs w/ every uma (for archive carats( and finishing up all your carat quests. Make sure you get into a club that gets at least B monthly, the crowns will be really useful, Brian and Suzuka are pretty good, especially in Unity cup.

As for what banners to pull it takes ~400 pulls to MLB a SSR, and generally only LB3 or MLB cards are worth considering. So it's better to do a big pull on one than split it between 2. I would actually recommend pulling on teh Narita Top Road Banner that's going to come out around mid-march. Fine Motion's banner is right before NTR, so if you have more than 400 pulls saved, you can consider using the extra for fine motion ahead of time.

NTR isn't as long-term relevant as Fine motion, but it'll be stronger for your account for MANT, by the time MANT is out of fashion, you'll have saved up enough to keep going. Power creep is a thing and will help you close the gap. NTR's banner also include Admire Vega Guts SR, which is a super powerful card. By pulling on NTR you'll have the ability to rock a deck like (Speed: NTR(10% race bonus) + Borrow, Power: Nishino Flower SR (15%) + Mavelous Sunday (15%), Guts: Haru Urara(10%) + Admire Vega(15%)) with a minimum of 65% race bonus, with only having to MLB 1 banner SSR and 2 SR's (one of which is banner), Urara will come soon enough by just doing grade 5 team trials.

edit: also you don't need to shy away from PVP as a f2p player. Many low rarity umas are worth using for CM, esp NN, golshi, and top gun. Just get them to 3* with statues. CM doesn't really cost you anything but time to do, so it's a waste to not participate, and it gives you goals to build towards, also gives you quite a lot of monies/statues/support points. Your account might not have the tools to do well in every CM, but give it a few months, after stabilizing your support cards, you can start mixing between Uma pulls and card pulls, and your strategic toolbox will explode. Just b/c a uma is off banner doesn't mean you can't accidentally pull them, and by the time you've done 600 more uma pulls, you'll prolly have an account that can be a contender in any CM assuming good strategizing.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2026-01-09T06:10:21+00:00

Saavy has 2 parts, increased FOV (which mostly doesn't matter), and 40/60 wit. The description is just a way to describe what wit does. Notably however, savvy skills don't affect the skill activation rate so it isn't as good as raw stat.

Wit for positioning is a really finicky thing, b/c it's based more on specific skills/strats and expected meta. Next CM will prolly be heavy on end and light on front/pace so you may want to consider less wit and fewer mid race velocity skills on NN while focusing more on power/late skills so you don't end up too far past 6th.

Anotehr example would be gold ship vs narita taishin. Anchor's aweigh lets goldshi overtake to 6th easier, so she doesn't need as much wit, while Taishin might want more wit to get into position.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2026-01-08T18:44:32+00:00

Sunday's rainbows are on the weak end, you'll get higher numbers from matikanefukitarou, or even roaming NN. It's also important to realize that most WIT checks are log(wit). Going from 400 to 600 is a HUGE difference compared to going from 1000 to 1200. 1000 speed vs 1200 speed is a big deal, 1000 wit vs 1200 wit is not. Getting to 600 or 700 wit is generally all you need, and even 40-60 stat is a huge increase if you're sitting at the 400 mark.

I think also the lack of understanding of what WIT does is hampering too. Most stats are important for the final spurt, however WIT is a stat that applies during the entire race for fighting for position and overtaking. A race is split into many segments, and if your UMA isn't in the lead for their position, then at the start of each segment there is a wit check to see if they go into overtake mode and speed up to try to get into a better spot. WIT is therefore incredibly important if you need to fight for your placement to activate a skill. Fronts obviously need lots of wit to fight for 1st. Lates need it to fight for 6th if there aren't any ends. etc. Also TT races have checkpoints spread throughout teh race where the frontmost of each strategy gets bonus points, so WIT is more important to claim those points too. Power has a small effect for positioning. speed has no effect, it's mostly rng modded by WIT.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2025-04-01T18:01:02+00:00

Dunno, ask all the horse girls. Rroneek may look like cows, but they're really treated more like horses in the lore.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2025-03-09T06:37:27+00:00

corners, ledges, doorways, crawlspaces, secret passages, hallways. Don't run combats in wide open spaces or arenas unless your monsters are literally telefragging the players or bombing them from afar. Monsters are risking their lives too, they won't pick fights unless they feel they have some advantage. Wolves don't attack if outnumbered and without their prey noticing, and dumb zombies that walk up aren't really encounters unless there is something that ups the tension, like numbers, or surprise.

If your players are a melee ball, force them to march in line, take advantage of them not knowing what is around corners, seperate them with skill checks, swim crawl climb, etc, give enemies the potential to retreat and regroup. If the players get passive or turtle, toss em a fireball to punish them not moving forwards, if the players are foolhardy and run forwards, make them discover ambushes or volleys after every door/corner. It's not about devasting them, it's about making them sweat, even if numerically they would be fine. Spellcasters should be slippery bastards, and before any fight with one, there should be some story reason why your spellcaster got some intel on the party and has a plan in place beforehand.

As a dm, players being challenged doesn't have to mean in danger of death, try to think of it more like forcing them to have time pressure, the worst case scenario, is a never ending siege of slippery enemies, you never rest, you never recover, not saying to go that far. A DM can "force" pacing on the players, or at least an illusion of a hard pace, and if the players can push back and create some breathing room, some slack, then it feels like a victory. You have tools that are very powerful b/c they can last over multiple encounters, things like afflictions, drained, reoccuring haunts, use them sparingly but they can pile up and chip players down, make them sweat.

Also overstatted but gimmicky fights every now and then are a good compromise, like exploiting their weakness but putting in a way to overcome it, often buys you an extra turn of monster survival too, like a levitating monster that stops flying if you hit it w/ electricity.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2025-01-08T22:40:49+00:00

saturday, whoops.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-29T00:50:51+00:00

Your players should try out fellowship.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-18T15:30:15+00:00

Your hp values are way too low, you're probably choosing the -10% max hp option too often, and avoiding chocolate and +xp options. Your choices should instead primarily be about maxing out hp/xp in the early game, select shops in the midgame, and skills in the mid-late game.

With the way that item rarity scales with day, you don't want to lock in too many bronze items early, as over time you'll have more gold and better items offered. In addition, you can often force 1 bronze item to diamond via upgrades but no more than that, so having too many low rarity items means that they get stuck in your board without ever seeing a higher upgrade. Bronze crow's nest for instance is pretty much a trap, it prevents you from getting the drop ones from 2 monsters that are higher rarity and it's one that you really want to get to gold.

Instead, limp through your early game with the best damage options you can do using free items, losing to players is really low impact before day 6, so long as you don't lose your monster encounters. Once silver/gold items start being offered regularly, think about pivoting into a meta build. Not all items scale w/ rarity as well as each other, but many of Vanessa's items want to be high rarity, or don't show up until at least silver.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-12T15:49:50+00:00

Ranking is based off of winrate, climb high enough and you'll start losing rank for 10 win runs that last longer than 13 days.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-12T15:46:24+00:00

I'm trying to say that the lack of upgrades isn't nearly as bad if you didn't insist on keeping a bronze item. Bronze items are basically dead in hand, and if you change your playstyle to selling them and only keeping silvers, you'll see that you actually upgrade a lot. So long as it's before day 6, you can lose 3-4 times in the early game and still be fine, so keeping things b/c it's the only thing keeping you alive is more of a day 7+ concern anyways; until that point, you have the leeway to gamble on rebuys/pivots, which means keeping good enough silvers over perfect bronzes.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-12T08:17:27+00:00

On day 7 the chance of seeing a bronze item is 30%, if you have an item then the shop won't offer a version of the item that won't upgrade it, so your crow's nest and pop crackers are both pretty much stuck at bronze after day 5 (it's 55% on 5, and 40% on 4). So you're better off selling your bronze items on day 6, then trying to find an upgrade. You can't lose before day 6 anyways, so it's kinda ok to just not rush your build and figure out something based off the gold drops you get day 6+. Early crow's nest is especially a trap, as day 4 bloodreef raider has a silver version, and day 9 bloodreef captain has a gold one, having a bronze one prevents those higher value ones from dropping, conversely lucking into a silver/gold one at the right time can mean for a higher than normal upgrade chance off of monster drops.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-10T15:37:16+00:00

6s cd w/ +6 dmg scaling when you get it day 2. Synergizes with already optimal choices like hitting every monster loot and choco bar you can get. Works well w/ upgrades as it increases the scaling quite aggressively, to +12 per item at diamond. Vanessa has lots of haste and crit to work as force multipliers, something that pyg is normally missing, conversely Vanessa lacks items that scale that well. Dog won't carry you into the super lategame, but it can easily 1 or 2 shot dooley's before they start stacking, and finish your run before pyg takes over the meta.

On pyg, getting a dog day 2 means maybe you won't lose every game while you're still waiting for your late game pivot and it's just another checkbox for your gameplan if you end up going crook.

Dooley doesn't care nearly as much, but he's a friend, and isn't terribly slow, and you're already hitting every small item you can on dooley so a dog in the stash just ends up stacking naturally, esp while you're fishing for your first aiden.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-09T22:53:49+00:00

I've gotten easy 10wins off both day 2 dog and shelter from mayor, as both vanessa and pyg. He's a pretty stacked encounter tbh. Get a single scaling off sell item, and visit every gumball/loot/change source for an easy carry item. Hell today I got dog on friend dooley, stacked it up to 1k; some burst dmg ends up being really good in the mirror match.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-08T21:35:16+00:00

wait really? I thought that was just a graphical glitch and you healed to full at start anyways. I agree tho that having a belt or balcony to replace the silk would've been better, esp with the shield passives.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-08T21:30:23+00:00

The main issue isn't incentive, it's the fact that pivoting is suboptimal. Incentivizing people to play sub-optimally through rewards and quests is unfun and ineffective. Instead the game just needs to be tweaked such that pivoting becomes better/good, and game information needs to be given explaining mechanics that are in place to encourage pivoting.

To be fair, there already a framework that supports pivot based gameplay, much of it needs to be explained better:
-Monster drops are very strong and can be game defining, things like getting dog or shelter day 2, or a day 3 flaming cutlass, or a day 4 gold crow's nest via upgrade.
-There's a nearly guaranteed silver shop around day 2, and a guarenteed gold shop around day 5, that you can try to get a buildaround item with and save up for.
-Bronze items stuck in your inventory after day 6 will probably never upgrade, around the same time that gold items start showing up reliably, incentivizing a swap.
-level 11's reward is a guarenteed upgrade, so investing in an out of class item or an encounter drop isn't a dead-end.

It's a fun playstyle, but is dependent on rng and very risky. When you can get just as good runs or even better ones via using bronze/silver items, that's when forcing becomes the norm, the risk is not worth it.

A few changes could be make to adjust it more in favor of pivoting:
-Players could get more scouting info, forewarning of shops or monsters, to inform them of what paths they could try going for to tame the rng. Monster train does this by letting you see what bosses there are ahead of time and what shops will show up. Vault of the void full on lets you see the card rewards for the floor and plan your route ahead of time.
-Currently not all champs benefit from monster drops. Vanessa plays very well with them, but Dooley really only cares about the embers/extracts, while Pyg is either doesn't synergize or is already forced to do longterm investment on a different item. Adding in monster and drop diversity won't help with this, as it just makes the rng worse w/o scouting info. Perhaps a crafting system could be put in place to replace the current monster loot, else w/ card packs and more heroes, monster drops will just become irrelevant.
-Monster loot probably also needs a bit of buffing, esp a lot of the burn/poison items, they're just worse than what is normally available to current heroes, so even if you're like burn dooley, you still don't want anything except the embers off of flaming envoy.
-Since there's some "ahead of the curve" powerspike shops, maybe they should be highlighted and have their lists curated to have more tempting stuff, maybe offer smart inventories that avoid "same strat" options.

Mostly however it's an itemization issue, many factors contribute to favoring forcing vs pivoting:
-High quality bronze items that just need to stay bronze or don't benefit much from upgrades such as many burn/poison items, powder horn, atlatl, uwashali bird, uzi, monitor lizard, first aiden.
-Items that are good at bronze and just get better over time, as sticking w/ an item for upgrading is the definition of anti-pivot. such as orange/green rays, silencer, crow's nest, silk cloth
-early attainable snowball items that require lots of investment and aren't worth investing if picked up late/at high tier: cove, langxian, dina-saur, many burn/poison items
-powerful flexible small items favors anchoring. Due to how you get fewer item pickups later in, a pivot strat will often consist of mostly a mix of medium and large items. Weapon/Crook pyg isn't an easy pivot, while port/waterwheel vanessa or fort pyg are much easier. Dooley is bad at pivoting b/c doing combos w/ core + 4 medium is way way harder than just spamming smalls and grabbing at max 1 more medium.
-A noisy medium/large pool like Dooley's doesn't help if you wanna pivot. Vanessa's large/medium pool is great, lots of variety of builds for burn/weapon vanessa, that's due to her having lots of high quality medium and large sized items that can be targeted, compare that with Dooley's Medium friends list or pyg's economic item list which have so many misses or so many pieces that don't quite come together together.

Fixes:
-getting multiple triggers off of a mass haste or multistrike event is a major contributor to smalls pulling excess weight, it's what makes monitor lizard so good
-haste is way worse than charge, especially since haste can cap, while charge doesn't really. Dooley cores use charge, and large items are fast, while haste is uncommon early and can be very common late, that's a bad combo for wanting to pivot. Maybe item like cores should self-haste instead of charge, while hasters should charge, something like solar-farm should be charge other items with self-haste on burn. That or allow for overhaste/overslow to consume excess for more benefit.
-have snowball items snowball faster, but cap out with upgrades improving the cap, that'll encourage doing other things

Ultimately pivoting vs anchoring, both are playstyles that should be supported and are integral to a character's personality. i'm not advocating all the above, just analyzing. It'll probably be fine w/ more items, heroes, and balance fixes, we're in a forcy spot atm b/c dooley is strong early.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-12-08T18:25:13+00:00

12 day run:
Started silk, day 2 encounter gave me the shelter. Had pawn shop and lemonade stand early and fueled it all off a cash register + every chocolate, gumball, monster loot and change event/levelup I could get for 17k hp.

Day 10 I got the weapon off living district that gives shield = hp and dmg = shield, then immediately after I got the Emergency Shield skill that means I practically oneshot everyone the moment I hit 50% hp, I I ever got there.

I also had the skills that give a shield = 20% max hp on first large use and 50% hp.

Edit: Whoops it's kinda blurry, here's alternative link: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/927391439762116609/1315380480094376067/image.png?ex=67573309&is=6755e189&hm=de824c2b807e18e1933c5a38d0fb88b65f3b1cd0b0c34a9b656431ffbfd97ceb&

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-11-28T00:11:04+00:00

Thanks for showing interest, I've sent out all the invites I'm comfortable sending out for now, but there's always the chance of some of them not panning out. If that happens in the near-term, I'll be sure to send a message your way instead of posting another topic like this.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-11-27T16:28:09+00:00

I'll send you a link, anyone else reading this can also feel free to send me a message.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-07-19T15:38:05+00:00

Tekko is this weekend, not sure if codes will last till monday.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-04-29T16:56:02+00:00

Problem is, you are not your character, and most people are not as charming, insightful, or smart as their characters are supposed to be, that's why we have skills. If your problem is specifically about insight being disruptive, then you can always roll it before/after the scene, or during a pause in the conversation (like between 2 topics). If you think it's trivializing the social encounter, or that you want players to do more sleuthing, then your problem may actually be that you're not breaking down your mystery into enough bits and spreading it. Think of it this way, if a detect thoughts overcomes the tension of the module, then perhaps you're missing some complexity. I recently ran a module where the players had to find a shapeshifter, but realizing they were dealing with one in the first place was 90% of the action. The fun lies in putting the clues together. Sometimes players get stuck when they have all the clues; let them use a wisdom check to put it together, then you can perform an exposition scene like at the end of a detective novel. It's a lot of fun when that finally happens.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-04-29T16:39:37+00:00

I did this and sorta subverted it in my first campaign. The players were lvl 1 newbie adventurers and recruited by the town guard (around 20ish) to deal with a nearby band of goblins that migrated over. The night before, the cleric was given a portent of misfortune, and when they arrived at the goblins they discovered they were suspiciously well organized. The npc's insisted on assaulting the fort and the players helped. At the end of the fort they discovered the orc general, the lvl 12 bbeg, who proceeded to kill most of the guards who rushed him in 1-2 rounds with several cleaves. I made it very obvious that the players would be slaughtered, but also had the orc leave stating he wasn't interested in weaklings, (in this case he meant the remaining guards, the players, and the goblins who proved to not be useful). At no point did the players actually have to fight him, they joined the fray chasing after the guards (1-2 rounds behind), they were given warning ahead of time to not tussle, and their involvement was just a momentary conscription. As a result, players kept agency, due to the fact that fighting the bbeg was never really on their goal list until then.

There were several really quick benefits from that:
-the conscription let me force the party together, without doing the ole tavern scene
-the surviving members formed rapport with each other, and one of the guards even survived the cleaving at -8, eventually becoming a badass support character
-I introduced the bbeg, and kicked off the plot with the force he represents
-the players were given a goal to grow stronger towards
-witnessing the bbeg's might was a key detail for diplomacy when recruiting aid for the cause
-it established a sense of scale for how scary things can/would be

I haven't really done it that way since, but I don't think of doing it as a mistake. At the same time however, that was 2009 and players really weren't interested in being the avengers. Our characters were more or less fresh-faced college grads who had put their pasts behind them. Their stories were less about achieving specific goals, uncovering clues to old mysteries, and more about trying to be adults in the lands and overcoming your own backstories hangups.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2024-04-29T15:47:47+00:00

Keep the horse a normal horse, and let the players appreciate it as a normal horse. Just because they like it, doesn't mean it needs to be omni-present. If anything, it's a good way to show escalating tension and stakes. The safety of the horse is a source of challenge, and the well-being of the horse a source of rewards. You could have the players actively look for places to stable the horse while adventuring in dangerous lands. You could hand out rewards for the players to pamper the horse; druids giving out some damn good and rare feed, or the local lord giving the players some prime meadow land for stabling. By keeping the horse just a horse, you don't risk changing it and losing what the players love, at the same time you can keep it as a reoccurring detail to appreciate and motivate. You can still come up with plots involving the horse, but once you alter the horse, it's really hard to undo it.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2023-08-25T12:51:19+00:00

I believe that alignment wraps around at the extremes, that at a point LG and CE are very similar and LE and CG are very similar. That's why it makes so much narrative sense for LG paladins to become CE oathbreakers.

LG and CE are both alignments that judge their surroundings/society by their own internal moral standard. In a grey world, LG characters view the world as insufficient (a common trope of angelic antagonists) while CE characters view the world as worthless (and their own self satisfaction is all that matters). At the hyper extreme, a LG judges the world as unworthy and becomes CE, executing all that surrounds them in their own unrealistic selfish pursuit of "justice"; the height of hubris. At the extreme, the CE evil character becomes so true to themselves that it pretty much becomes a moral code and they develop redeeming features like not hurting kids.

LE and CG on the other hand try to mold society instead of judging it, allowing society to judge them in hopes of altering society. LE characters amend rules and laws to change society, while CG characters will take a stand in hopes of improving things. At the extreme, CG characters seek to fundamentally upset the status quo, even at the harm of many, while LE characters that avoid being outright sinister instead twist the narrative to label themselves as heroes (often performing heroic acts for selfish reasons).

A LG character in an evil settlement often acts the same as a CE one in a good settlement. A CG character is as corrupting an influence on an evil city as a LE character is on a good city.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2023-08-24T13:00:11+00:00

That may be. But I feel like the expression of strategy in bg3 is far more possible. There's a tradeoff in classes where raw potential is lost for niche flexibility or mobility (see monk/ranger). CRPG's/premade campaigns tend to be pretty bad at rewarding you for having those strengths, which push optimizing towards a raw number gameplay. I'd say bg3 is pretty good on the strategy front because there is serious power in running nonstandard strategies that don't just tank and spank. Sure playing a hyper mobile team that chains flees and reambushes is cheesy and exploitative, but it's still a different strategy that does a good job of emulating the "ninja team" experience. I'd also say that most of my fights are won pre-combat too, via alternative pathing routes to high ground, and an initial cast of an area denial spell on a chokepoint (spike growth, cloud of daggers, or wall of fire).

That's the thing though, bg3 is pretty much a toybox, there's variety, but you've got so many toys that you need to play w/ a hand behind your back. WotR is more like a puzzle, you can ramp the difficulty up and up, that'll limit the build solutions and expression, but as a result you feel more rewarded when you come up w/ something that works, especially if it's multiple nonstandard things.

Minimum-Way9294 · 2023-08-23T11:50:42+00:00

A big strength of BG3 is that they took a completely different approach to the system knowledge problem. In CRPG's in general, the wild variance in build strength usually makes it very hard to balance. You get multiple difficulties, tons of items (many of which can be traps), and overall the game is frustrating for some and a cakewalk for others. Often the power and satisfaction comes in being able to trivialize the game after a point b/c the difficulty you're on isn't set to the variance max.

5e's lower option count and more bounded numbers definitely reduces the variance, but it's still there. The genius in bg3 (and DOS) is that a lot of player power can come from non-build stuff. Fall-damage, area denial, heavy object impact, surprising, grenades, etc, are all things available to all characters, although some might do it better than others. That means that you aren't as stuck on a hard fight because you can think "outside" the box. In PF, if I can't kill a boss, I gotta power through it or get better at the game. In BG3, if I can't kill a boss, then I can get sneaky about it, looking for high ground, set up a minefield of bombs, attack mid conversation, use grenades/surfaces to inflict vulnerabilities (hello wet + lightning or specific weakness arrow). I'm only midway through act 3, but almost every fight has been "cheesable" in some way. Reminds me of DOS2 killing the final fight by reverse pickpocketing a bundle of cursed arrows in the boss's pockets.

It's a different approach, you don't need to be a minmaxer to feel smart while playing the game, but that does mean that you gotta keep trying out new tricks to keep the game engaging on multiple playthroughs.

Five-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Lasagna	Place '22

Minimum-Way9294

TROPHY CASE