Covers a lot of ground in these two updates. Works with pretty large improvements, compared to the end of the day. Leads with some hints for better visibility.
- @Explorer of Time Stage 4 Hard at Welcome to the Jungle: North-East Relic in Starcraft 2. No big rush. Hinted for the last stage to give just winning outright a shot.
- Arcaneum: Progressive Fishing Rod at Pokedex (Nidoqueen). Appears at Route 23 (Water), Route 3 (Land), Trainer Tower Exterior (Good Rod), Trainer Tower Exterior (Old Rod).
- Cherrim: Progressive Fishing Rod at (STT) Sunset Terrace Hi-Potion.[/b]
Holocure (Update 4)
Unlocked Stages 3, 1 Hard, and 2 Hard. Also received some good upgrades, such as G Ranks. Adds 20% to Hitpoints, Attack, and Speed to all characters. (Maxed it out for everyone.) Amounts to about +5 Max HP, +3 Attack, and +3 Speed, which is kind of like 5 upgrades in one (based on how they are split up for Archipelago).
Relied on pretty similar strategies, due to the available items. Chose characters with a focus on ranged damage.
- Stage 3: Reine. Relies on crits and getting money. Satisfied the former with Sake (+crit for not getting hit and also eating food) and the latter with the Greed stamp (chance to hit coins of out enemies). Assembled everything for the Jingisukan supercollab just about as the final boss spawned.
- Stage 1 Hard: Haato. Describes this more as a process of elimination. Depended less on healing and skill damage than the others, on top of having a ranged weapon. Buffs Spider-based weapons. Already used those. Appreciated the Devil Hat here, thanks to Haato's very short special cooldown. Provided a constant x1.3 ranged damage buff. No real issues.
- Stage 2 Hard: Aqua. Chose on the items given again. Ran into far more troubles here. Built Aqua like a glass cannon. Sports the lowest base hitpoints of all characters. Cannot explode all of your problems in later levels, unfortunately. Used the Chicken Feather revives for the first time...multiple times. Absolutely melted to some mistakes. Stuck on a wall? Dead. Had decent healing, but not enough health/damage mitigation to benefit.
Reached Nodoka, the boss of the stage, with no revives left. Stood a little too close trying to get damage in. (Risks regular enemies spawning again if you take too long.) Died in a hail of bullets at the 20:59 mark. Partially blames getting unlucky on getting Spider Cooking. Really needed that for Jingisukan for a small heal and +50 max hitpoints (more than Aqua's base hitpoints).
Led to an awkward scenario. Gets 1 item from beating Nodoka, plus another for clearing a stage with a new group. Is 20+ minutes worth two items,
if successful?
Returned after some Stardew Valley. Received an extra +16% hitpoints and Cooking. Chose the "33% less damage from projectiles" meal.
Went poorly the first time. Died at 12 minutes without getting Chicken Feather. (Forgot about having Holds. Saw it once, and then never again. Could have simply gotten it on the next level-up.) Jumped right back in. Played much better. Beat Nodoka without using a revive at all (which was kind of necessary because of not getting it until about 18 minutes in).
Screenshotted one of Nodoka's attacks. Touhou, anyone? Emphasizes dodging a lot more than Vampire Survivors.
Turned out to be a waste of time, sadly: Metal Coat from the JP Gen 2 clear and 25 Pons from Nodoka.
Stardew Valley (Update 4)
Start of day notes: some really good items.
- Furnace recipe. Turns ore into bars for crafting stuff now. Creates crab pots without buying them too.
- Two Progressive Fishing Rods. Catches some fish now. Goes a little slow without bait, but oh well.
- A Stable. Struggled for movement thus far. Relied on a coffee machine for a short buff. Is not a huge fan of the horse. Helps for getting around town, however.
- One movement speed buff. Finally. Stuck in 6. Expected one sooner.
- Desert Obelisk. Provides quick and easy access to the Desert. Prefers this over the bus repair any day (despite way more checks from the bus repair), especially without the Golden Clock to advance time.
- Shipping Bin. No longer needs to wait for Pierre's shop to open to sell crops. Could not sell a Treasure until now. (Potentially could have to Clint. Did not try.)
Crafted a whole bunch of things. Caught a bunch of fish and leveled Fishing too.
Put in a lot of time into Stardew Valley. Barely went anywhere in terms of in-game time. Played...about two-and-a-half weeks. Kind of blames fishing for that. Goes slowly with no bait. Hit level 10 in Fishing, if that tells you anything (with x3 experience).
Took on a Qi quest too: 100 Qi Fruit by the end of the season. Needs 35 Qi Gems for a bundle. Figured there would only be 30 Qi Gems in the multiworld, same as last time. Nope. Received another batch of Qi Gems later on, making it unnecessary. Continues anyways. Either grabs the Key to the Town or deconstructs stuff into Radioactive Bars for crafting.
Stopped in the middle of Squidfest. Needed 3 Squids for Day 1. Spent all day (in-game) and barely got enough, with no missed catches. Stands no chance of getting 5 the next day. Might end up leaving it and hoping it is not good. Still needs a better fishing rod to not get irritated at the required fish.
Received some other really nice items throughout the day:
- Greenhouse: Helps for the crops to be closeby. Neglected the Ginger Island farm because of having to take the Parrot Express to the Docks to return to Stardew Valley every time. (Got the Farm Obelisk that kind of fixed that just before, though. Still prefers the Greenhouse.)
- Golden Clock: Speeds up time. No longer needs to idle in place for a festival or a shop to open.
- Foraging Level: Sounds minor, unstandably. What makes the 4 out of 10 Foraging levels good? Tappers. Combines with Mystic Trees from Foraging Mastery to create Treasure Totems. Helps a lot for Museumsanity.
- Bite Rate bonuses. Made fishing without bait slightly more bearable.
- The other Progressive Backpack. Sacrifices much less stuff now from being too full.
One gripe about Museumsanity: Expects you to grab all artifacts in logic immediately. Happened with Setsuna's Blue Tea (Sphere 2). Received Progressive Mine Elevators to reach floor 40, which is where you can first get Frozen Geodes, all in sphere 1. Contains 15 different artifacts. Has a 50/50 chance per geode of even getting an artifact. How many geodes do you need, on average? Good question. Stats time.
Does not know how to modify the coupon collector problem to fit the situation off-hand. Will just simulate it instead of getting a precise number. Assume a 1 in 30 chance of getting any individual artifact. Ran 100000 simulations. Takes a median of 93 Frozen Geodes (or an average of 99.4) to get all 15. Considers 10 Frozen Geodes a pretty decent haul, for context.
Mitigates the problem somewhat with the Traveling Merchant Metal Detector. Sells artifacts you do not own for wildly varying prices (like, 40 to 10000+). Even so...