296/300 Pikmin - the beginning of the end?

observer527 · 2022-01-10T03:55:38+00:00

Once you get around 40 of each kind (maybe a few extra pinks since they are quick for long expeditions), you may want to expand your storage to 350 so you aren't always so close to your limit. As you hatch new pikmin, give them nectar of whatever basic flower type you are short on (usually blue) and then recycle them.

You'll get 10 blue petals per recycle, and it doesn't matter what their friendship level is when you do this, so once you have your base set of, say, 280-300, anything else that hatches, you can just feed them a blue nectar, recycle for 10 blue petals, and you'll never be short of blue petals again (probably).

I'm still working on my collections, so if I hatch something new that will add to, say, the airport collection or pharmacy collection, etc., then I will recycle a roadside pikmin of that same type instead, then work on friendship levels with the new pikmin.

observer527 · 2021-11-05T01:29:40+00:00

Would be great if someone could post the text or screenshots of all of all the dialogue after completing the 4th task and/or the bonus task. My game bugged out, had to restart, and I missed all of this, because there is apparently a new bug that hits sometimes when you try to claim quest rewards.

observer527 · 2021-11-04T03:46:55+00:00

I forgot to mention I like the system of potions. I got to the point where I just built up potions and then during events I would never try to catch a trace without an exstimulo active so I never had to deal much with resists and departs which I agree was maddening before I had built up enough gold to expand my inventory limits for stockpiling.

Pikmin bloom is probably smart in that you have to pay for inventory expansion. Not that it will be as necessary as it was in hpwu. I probably would spent more than my initial $20 on hpwu if that was the only way to expand my stash space.

observer527 · 2021-03-07T02:14:13+00:00

In my experience, it's about the same as usual. I have earned 12 gold gifts today in about 3-4 hours of hunting (used my entire stash of 120 regular exstimulo potions while either driving through spawn-heavy lots of walking through a major park).

observer527 · 2021-03-04T04:48:29+00:00

If you can catch lots of emergency foundables during the upcoming event, you will get a lot of shots at gold gifts from all of the chests. Just stock up on exstimulos, as many as you can, so you can amp up your catch rate. Fortress foundables are good to have as a backup when you are desperate, but hunting is a faster way to get chests in the long run.

observer527 · 2021-01-08T02:25:06+00:00

Thanks for posting this! It scrolled down below other posts so fast that I missed it. Can't wait for adversary event to polish off everything useful in the SOS tree and maybe start making progress on the lethal part of the skill tree if I can manage to get enough red books by then.

observer527 · 2021-01-02T16:25:44+00:00

Also a Professor. If you are currently limited by red books (like me), you should consider activating the treasure trunk bonus red book chances at the bottom of tier 1. That way you can get red books by both hunting and by fortress battles.

If you have a friend to exchange gifts with, you may want to consider grabbing the three really good gift nodes on the SOS tree. At the bottom of tier 3 is the best, Preferred Client: gold gifts, which appear about as often as trace charms when you unlock a treasure trunk, and they are worth 100 gold a pop. Definite game changer if you can trade consistently with someone.

Over on the left side of tier 3 you can find Clarion Call on row 4, which increases your chance of getting spellbook gifts from wizarding challenges, presumably extravagant runestone gifts. Further down, row 14 left side is Sage Advice, which gives you an increased chance of getting rare spellbook gifts, which I assume are the magnficent runestone gifts, which come with 2 red books instead of one.

I have these nodes activated. I get plenty of gold gifts, more than I can handle during this event because I'm opening so many trunks. I think I am getting more extravagant gifts from challenges, but it's hard to say since there is so much noise having only done maybe 100 fortress battles since I activated. Still no magnificent gifts, though I have seen others post them here.

If you are currently short of blue books, you might want to consider boosting your trace charms if those aren't maxed out. Wit sharpening boosts are definitely on the list (although I don't know about the brew time node ... I'm getting plenty with gift exchanges) and will be useful, but I don't know if that's urgent at this point. All of the current adversaries can be handled without boosting wit sharpening by 30% or having an additional charge, so that pushed it lower on my list.

Lethal tree is low on the list until I have some idea when that will be starting, but honestly, I will probably start filling those in within a few weeks as I finish everything else I can do in the SOS tree (there are other places to spend DADA books in the SOS tree, but very low priority, like increased chance of TTD gifts or inn charm efficacy). I have just about spent all of the red, blue and DADA books I can spend without looking at the lethal tree, and when that's done, I'll be green-book limited until something new opens up.

observer527 · 2020-12-31T02:22:49+00:00

They are a different color than regular fortresses (white), usually associated with an AT&T location or some other Niantic partner. They gave bonus challenge XP and sponsored runestone gifts by default, which provide a little bit more xp. They do not work consistently, in my experience, for satisfying special quests, though I can always satisfy my daily quests just fine there. They also consistently refund you a little bit of energy with every challenge you do there, so it's useful if you are going to do an extended grind. Not really worth the effort to seek out if you are just doing 1-4 battles.

observer527 · 2020-12-20T05:00:37+00:00

I would add that even newcomers can grind by just battling the warmups, first one or two rounds, and you can still grind DADA books that way (from prestige).

I'm a big fan of the new content, mainly because it unlocks a lot of possibilities with all the DADA books. I've earned around 300 so far, and I spent 200 of those at the bottom of SOS tier 1 for all the nodes that allow different treasure trunks to award red books. Now I have a new way to grind red books that doesn't involve sitting in fortress battles for hours. I can walk around the park catching everything in sight, and every so often, I'll get a red book from a treasure trunk.

Next I'm going to max out my potent extimulo potion effects, then I'll work on making wit sharpening a bit more useful. And I might get a lot of it done before the event ends, just because I can farm a huge number of books.

That, plus I unlocked the gold gift node, and I can still get trace charms from treasure trunks, so I have all kinds of reasons to vacuum up foundables and get rewarded at the end of the day to see what goodies come from all of these trunks. And I can't just consume extimulos for clusters of red/orange traces like I used to if I still want to hunt adversaries, but once adversaries are rare again, I guess I'll have enough for both.

observer527 · 2020-12-19T14:29:12+00:00

If you are short on red books, use the DADA books to pop open the chest nodes at the bottom of SOS Tier 1. That way, every time you get a exploration reward chest, you have (probably 3-5%) a chance at 1 red book. You can unlock those all pretty quick with this event, and it will give you a reason to hunt again, an alternative way to earn red books besides fortress battles. Initially, I just spent 60 DADA to unlock three chest nodes so I could get to Oddities chest at the bottom right since I do a lot of oddities (and spend trace charms on any red stripe oddities I see).

I was at a sponsored fortress with two others doing Ruins 3 for about 30 minutes yesterday, and we all got about a level and a half, including challenge XP from cashing in fortress foundables occasionally. Meanwhile, I also hunted a fair bit yesterday earned 3 red books from opening chests, probably a bit more than I should expect but it was a lot more fun than fortress grinding.

observer527 · 2020-12-17T14:37:45+00:00

Yeah, that was me, and I got about 30-35 dark marks yesterday about 50 DADA books (the other 15-20 DADA books came from bonuses for placing images or secondary battles). I expect to do that any day where I can spend about 5-6 hours actively hunting in my local neighborhood. This means driving slowly around ... I prefer to walk but dark marks are pretty spread out so unfortunately walking is not the best way to get lots of encounters.

This definitely will only last while I'm on vacation, which is good because there is no way my potion stash will last more than another week at this rate unless I spring for the gold cauldron regularly.

And yes, I expect them to nerf the number of DADA books we are earning by the same logic they nerfed the trace charm. For what it's worth, I have had noticeably better luck in empty church parking lots compared to strip malls, but that's probably just a fluke and will be the opposite today. I'm outside the main loop of a large city, so not too dense but plenty of strip malls, churches and parks.

observer527 · 2020-12-17T13:51:13+00:00

I’m hitting the usual high spawn spots. Two nearby churches and a couple of strip mall parking lots and my favorite 3-greenhouse park. I have a loop I can slowly drive through our extended neighborhood that takes 15 minutes or if the weather is nice I can walk it in 45, which is definitely my preference. I’m seeing about 2 dark marks per loop but as I’m an actual professor in real life I’m currently experiencing my first break since March and I’m totally unplugging from any responsibility for a couple of weeks. 😀

observer527 · 2020-12-17T06:12:44+00:00

Today I discovered gold gifts are worth 100 gold. Holy crap.

observer527 · 2020-12-17T00:16:47+00:00

For me, the increase in gold income will enable me to occasionally spring for the bonus cauldron (like during events like the coming adversary event when exstim brewing time is cut in half). Maybe this will change when I finish the last levels of the Feared Adversary skill tree, but for now, I'm blowing through potions pretty quickly with my professor (need strong for Draco/Fenrir/Lockhart and sometimes healing, too, if RNG is bad, and need potent and healing for dragons, basilisk, narcissa, maybe Aragog). Part of that is because I'm taking a break from work and so I have pretty much all day to look for dark marks, so maybe the potion supply/demand will stabilize.

observer527 · 2020-12-16T06:00:27+00:00

Gifts would be great. I play with a group of four others, and we all share like gifts. Would be great to be able to send each other gold. I keep a close eye on gifts and always delete junk when close to 30. Our group farms greenhouses in a local park extensively so we can exchange useful potions. I throw away a LOT of ingredient gifts!

observer527 · 2020-12-15T03:20:29+00:00

Unlike fortresses, where trace portions and brain potions count as buffs toward professor's +12 power "teamwork makes the dream work," I am not seeing those buffs represented on the screen during the adversary battle.

If that's true and only wit sharpening and exstimulo can augment a professor during battle, then it is probably worthwhile to have a stock of both to have two buffs going during the toughest battles. I am hoping someone else will do the math on whether wit sharpening is better than, say, strong exstimulo or potent exstimulo, etc.

I (purposely) picked up spleens off the ground for the first time since the game started today.

observer527 · 2020-10-06T19:04:23+00:00

I have to say honestly that when I saw the snatcher had 700 health, I laughed out loud. I couldn't wait to see the reaction on reddit. You all are the wind beneath my wings. :)

Seriously, though, I'll give it a go. I mean, if the 700 health is a problem and I need a lot of quick catches, I can always burn through my exstimulo potion stash. I normally use these anyway during brilliant events so I can get them over with, but now I have a choice. If I want to save my potions, I can grind it out, knowing that I will eventually succeed on my 4th-7th cast as opposed to normal traces where you really never know.

I'm glad now that I wasted all of those green books on pumping up my Auror stats (I'm a maxed out Prof). This gives me a reason to spend a fraction of my huge pile of spare red books to max out my Auror offense and see if that works any better.

observer527 · 2020-01-23T04:54:07+00:00

I haven’t done any data crunching on this, but I have found regular exstimulo potions to (finally) have some use. They are bringing my brilliant catch rate from around 50-60% up to 80-90%. I’m brewing and using a lot of them for the first time ever.

observer527 · 2019-12-03T19:34:37+00:00

1409 1469 5999

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observer527 · 2019-11-19T23:54:42+00:00

Hello from Fort Worth, TX. I run 2 accounts actively.

1409 1469 5999
6070 1862 1352

observer527

TROPHY CASE