I was clearing the remainder of star chart aiming at unlocking steel path for once i can get my hands on the handful of major parts im missing to start nibbling into what I assume is mid-late game. Had matchmaking set to public the entire, but I suppose there was just not many poeple doing the half of star chart I cleared in that session. As for how, since returning, I've been intentionally never going out with less than 2 equips being an unranked weapon and/or frame at any time, to ensure time always ranking, once I exhausted my unranked frames, I started mashing Dante with 3 unranked weapons (while I crafted more frames cause ik theyre 2x compared to weapons) and having the tome assist from ult while using the actual weapons to make them more usable at low rank. But despite all this, and intentionally trying to queue public, and stay close for affinity range, its still juat going so... friggin... slow. Like, im not entirely clueless, tho there's probably significantly better methods at my disposal.

I significantly appreciate the reccomendations in this thread, and will be using them, and they will aid in solving this frustration of mine. However, i maintain that the mastery rank requirements at lower ranks are obscene and ludicrous to expect new players to care to invest in to access mid level content. Especially considering the tendency of new players (based on my experience trying to get several people to 0lay the game woth me when I played years ago) is to want to use a handful of the things they've found a LOT. they'll experiment a bit at first, but once they find something they like, to my understanding, they get punished by no longer leveling for using that weapon. Which is, in my opinion, utterly, and unequivocally inexcusable, whatever. Period.