Weapon Farming in Dynasty Warriors 8 Made Easy

I'm constantly amazed, as I'm sure you all are, at just how much I can talk about a single Dynasty Warriors game as I'm playing it and indeed for a time thereafter.  It seems like every day brings a brand new topic about the game that I can take and pull apart until I can present it in possibly the most long-winded way possible, and it's something that I've found I can't really do for many other things.  So, whatever, I can do it and I like to do it, so that's what I'm going to do.  I'm aware that most of you are probably not as interested in Dynasty Warriors or really any flavor of game KOEI releases as I am, but I hope the deluge of content over the games is not off-putting.  Because, I mean, I'm gonna keep doing it.

Going with the theme of the last Dynasty Warriors 8 post, we're going to talk about trophies.  Or rather -a- trophy.  We're going to cover the Herculean amount of effort that goes into a single trophy called Weapon Collector that, as you might have guessed, tasks you with collecting all the weapons in the game.  You see, the whole weapon system in Dynasty Warriors 8 got a bit of an overhaul that more or less makes it a very different beast from the games before it except, in a sense, Dynasty Warriors 6.  That's not as bad a thing as that comparison might lead you to believe, however, so don't get ahead of me.  The weapons all have an element attached to them that is either Heaven, Earth or Man, which recalls to DW6's Standard, Skill and Strength types of weapons, though they don't have the same sort of effects and really I guess the only similarity is that they all shared red, green and blue and I swear I was going somewhere with that, but forgot.

Anyway, that's -one- of the categories of the weapons, though.  There's actually two beyond the Elemental Shift, and its all about rarity.  Common Weapons have Orbs, but rare weapons and the Fifth Weapon for each character have Stars instead.  These merely denote uniqueness and nothing else, because as you'll learn, each character has Four Orb weapons and Three Star weapons.  (Well, Sword has like four Star weapons, but you get one from Ambition Mode and it's not important)  You need to collect one of each of these seven weapons for every single character in the game for the trophy which is just a Silver trophy even though it will be the actual second-most grindy thing you do in the game.  Yes, Ambition Mode in all its splendor and magnificence has been bumped to third, with Bond-grinding still likely holding first place.  Though, in all honesty, Weapon Farming might just usurp it, it's that bad.

How can it be so bad, you might be innocently asking?  Well, it's pretty simple.  Of the three Star weapons per character, only -one- of them is a guaranteed drop.  That is the Fifth Weapon which have unlock conditions (readily visible in the Gallery once you've beaten every single Story Mode Stage) that you have to follow on Hard Mode.  You have to do that with every single one of the 77 characters included in the game.  That's the easy part, because the thing you want to do is get Xiahou Yuan's Fifth Weapon first.  It's called the Bow of Destruction, and if there were ever a more appropriate moniker, I don't know of it.  You see, what makes the Bow of Destruction so special is that it has an element on it called Cyclone, which is at level 10.  Cyclone breaks through an enemy's guard with charge attacks.  The weapon also has multiple charge attacks that have multiple hits within it that do Wind damage which seems to take a percentage of health rather than do -damage-.  What this means is that a single charge attack from the Bow of Destruction (one that has the multi-wind shots at least, which are C2, 5 and 6) will straight-up murder any officer, even on Chaos difficulty provided the full attack hits them.  Even if it doesn't, it's not hard to do a follow-up and basically it just means that you will not have to worry about the damage -you- do.

What about the other two Star weapons for each character?  Well, first what you want to do is get your Fortune Hunter skill leveled up, which increases your Luck.  Level 10 at minimum, though you'll likely want up to about 15 unless you're crazy and want to grind it up to 20.  Why would that be crazy?  Well, because the way you level the skill up is by defeating officers on a map after you've attained 1,500 KOs.  On the same map.  There are precious few maps that will allow you to rack up that many kills while also leaving enough chattel for you to reap in an attempt to level up the skill (Because, of course, not every single one and in fact most will not do it since it's based on some weird RNG), but if you are feeling particularly interested, then the Yellow Turban Conflict stage is what you want.

This is Zhang Jiao's Story stage and it offers a -lot- of officers plus a handy little infinite spawn of mooks that you can inflate your score with in the course of a few minutes.  All you need to do is rescue Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang and wait for Huangfu Song to change the direction of their approach.  This will divert forces to the lower left portion (south of Zhang Bao) and the square at the southernmost point before you go East into a base will just, as stated, spawn infinite amounts of soldiers after you defeat both Base captains in the neighboring areas.  Get up to 1,500 KOs (or more if you feel like it, I don't know if it affects your chances) and then go around slaughtering officers until you take down He Jin.  You should hopefully get at least 2 levels if not more, and...then you just do it again until you're happy.  Better chances if you perform the stage on Chaos Difficulty, and of course you don't have to use Zhang Jiao when selecting from Free Mode.  In fact, I would recommend it.  I personally used a Level 99 Lu Bu who has max stats and his Fifth Weapon - since it's an early map it's not difficult at all, even on Chaos, so you won't have to spam Cyclone abuse.

So now that you have Fortune Hunter up at a decent level, you'll want to equip that and go to Shu's section in Free Mode and pick the very last stage - Capture of Wei - Wei Forces.  You see, it's not simple enough that you just kill a bunch of officers for a chance at Star weapons.  No, you have to kill unique characters, since generics possess only the -barest- chance of actually dropping them, where Uniques, especially with a proper Fortune Hunter score, have a chance that approaches reasonable and contrary to what I thought prior, they have a chance of dropping weapons that -aren't- theirs.  Capture of Wei on the Wei side offers you a small-ish map (or at least a map where only 30% of it is used) that has no less than 11 Unique Officers (Jiang Wei, Huang Zhong, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Zhang Bao, Liu Shan, Guan Xing, Zhao Yun, Ma Chao, Zhuge Liang and Guan Ping) in a short timeframe.  Plus it has one more benefit which I will explain to you momentarily.

I've found in my runs tonight that with Level 15 Fortune Hunter, you can expect to walk away from the map with -at least- one Star weapon, which is good.  Not great since there's, you know, 154 Star Weapons in the game not counting Fifth Weapons (Jesus Christ), but it could be worse, and it's honestly a relatively short map.  There -is- a bit of an issue with the scripting, however, in that sometimes Guan Ping and Ma Chao simply refuse to advance on you or on the Wei Main Camp, and Guan Ping is ridiculously out of the way if he doesn't meaning you lose out on a potential chance unless you charge his ass, and even if he does charge, he always charges with Liu Bei (as does Zhuge Liang) who you do not want to kill immediately because it will end the stage and if you kill Liu Bei and, say, Zhuge Liang at the same time, Liang will not drop a weapon.  Which is incredibly frustrating.

The key thing about any and all forms of grinding and farming is the amount of time invested because obviously you want to cut the amount of time spent down as much as possible.  Because grinding/farming is fucking obnoxiously boring and games that rely on it for anything in excess are made by developers who are dumb and also stupid.  And are also jerks.  The good thing with Dynasty Warriors 8 and the way weapons unlock is that there's a little bit of a trick that cuts -way- down on the amount of down-time you have in between runs of the map.  As in, cuts it down to damn-near zero.  You want to know what that funny little trick is?

Let Liu Bei kill you. 

(After killing all his officers.  It's not even difficult to let it happen, since Capture of Wei - Wei Side is an end-story mission which means it's max difficulty and then you have Chaos on top of that...yeah, characters do a lot of damage.  )

You see, when you lose a stage, a message comes up asking if you'd like to restart from the beginning, which it will do so without any load time (unless there's a cinematic at the start, I imagine) allowing you to get right into it.  And at least with Star weapons (honestly haven't tested with Orb weapons, honestly don't even care) they seem to work on an unlock system in a sense.  Because they're unique, once you have them, you -have- them unless you sell them or something else.  So say you get Guan Xing to drop the Sky Splitter which is one of Guan Ping's Star weapons and then you do as I say and allow Liu Bei to kill you.  When you restart the stage, you can check your weapons and look at that, you still have the Sky Splitter.  This way, you cut out the load into the main menu, the load into the stage selection, into the character selection and loading up the stage proper.  That is a tangible amount of minutes and given that you're damn near guaranteed one or two weapons per run (if not more, one particularly generous run netted me four) using that stage and Fortune Hunter 15, it will potentially shave -hours- off of your general farming, especially if you would use a different method.  I would advise, however, that you end a Farm sessions with a victory - I doubt if it really matters if you quit to menu after a defeat rather than replaying and winning, but it's...best not to take chances, yeah?

I'm personally up to 90% of the entire Weapons Catalog filled, so it shouldn't be too terribly long before I can get to bond-grinding and then...simply being done with Dynasty Warriors 8 until Xtreme Legends comes out in some fashion.  Since I will most likely be getting it provided it's physical -or at the very least it's localized for the Vita-.  I'm being optimistic that Xtreme Legends is going to get localized (it's barely been out in Japan yet, so I'm not too worried about lack of announcement) but I wouldn't be surprised if KOEI pulls the same bullshit as they did with 7 and cut the English VAs for a little cost and cut out the Disk production for the same reason.  (Because, once again, no dubs = no disk is bullshit)  If it's localized for the Vita, unless it's just a dreadfully shitty port, I'll at least be alright with downloading that since it will be far smaller than the ~11 gigs that standard KOEI fare seems to be on PS3.  I'd say I don't know -why- I'm bothering, but it's obvious - Zhu Ran is in Xtreme Legends.  I can't wait for an official announcement so I can do another "Let's Talk About the New Characters" and probably just devote an entire post to Zhu Ran.  Just you wait.

Update!:  I figure it's appropriate to do a tl;dr of my method here for the folks who...somehow stumble across this and want to be Weapon Collecting Masochists.

• Get the Bow of Destruction - It's Xiahou Yuan's Fifth Weapon.  The game tells you how to get it.
• Buff Up a Fighter of Your Choice (Potentially Optional) - Abuse the Academy in your Ambition Mode town and use some (most/all) of that gold you've stockpiled playing every single Story Mode mission.  Get someone to Level 99, buff their stats to 1,000, go all out.  I went with Lu Bu, obv. but you go with whoever works for you.
• Upgrade Fortune Hunter - Go to Yellow Turban Conflict (Zhang Jiao's story stage) on Chaos Difficulty in Free Mode, rescue Zhang Bao and Zhang Liang and go to the southwest corner (south of Zhang Bao) where Peons spawn infinitely.  Massacre 1,500+ and then go to town on all the officers in the stage.  Repeat as needed; Bare Minimum Level 10, Recommended 15+.
• Farm Farm Farm - Go to Shu's Missions in Free Mode and pick Capture of Wei - Wei Forces (or find it in the Xuchang maps, maybe).  Equipped with Fortune Hunter and the Bow of Destruction, you should be able to wrangle 1-4 Star Weapons from the 11 officers present per run.  Let Liu Bei kill you to immediately restart the stage.  You'll retain your Star weapons and save a lot of loading time.  Repeat until the trophy dings!

As another side update, I got my Weapon Collector trophy so yay me!  Also Bond-Grinding is definitely number one most grindy, awful thing in DW8.  No question.

okay, I do still wonder sometimes why I do this to myself

Ambition Mode? Ambition Mode.

I'd put it off long enough, going into the unproven territory that was Ambition Mode because I had a rather...sinking feeling about it, looking at the trophy descriptions that associated itself with the mode.   To be fair, most of them were founded, even if not completely or as -bad- as I mad them out to be in my head.  That isn't to say it was a walk in the park or it wasn't grindy as hell, however, because believe me, it wasn't and it was in that order.  So of course I'm going to put aside a little time to delve into to intricacies of the system for any of you reading this who decide that you want to challenge it yourself.  Or because you just enjoy me being over-analytical or what have you in regards to video game things.

First off, you're playing Ambition Mode for the trophies.  Let's not kid ourselves.  There's nothing in the confines of Ambition Mode that you cannot get easily in Story or Free Mode, aside from very, very easy experience, but even that's a bit of a moot point in the long run.  So, you're opening up Ambition Mode and playing it for the trophies.  Let's take a look at which ones, then.

• Facility Construction
• Facility Expansion
• The Birth of a Leader
• Friends to the End
• The Path of Ambition
• A Collector of Rarities
• A Majestic Manner
• The Height of Prosperity
• The Ties That Bind Us
• The Land of Plenty
• Heaven and Earth
• Unwavering Ambition

There are also a few trophies that aren't Ambition Mode's per se, but you need to play it (extensively) to get them.

• Animal Collector
• Vocal Enthusiast (Oh boy, this one)
• Movie Collector

So, yes, of the games forty trophies (not counting the Plat), fifteen of them are tied up in Ambition Mode in one form or another, so really, if you're playing Ambition Mode, it's for them.   Ambition Mode is shallow and forgettable enough in the scheme of things that you don't -need- to go into it and though you can, you'll likely be disappointed by what you discover within.  It's not that Ambition Mode is bad in so many words or ideas, but it's just that it's the same sort of set up as it was in Dynasty Warriors 7: Xtreme Legends and even Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce.  It's a framing device that pretends to move and grow with your actions, but to say that it does so in a meaningful, vibrant or dynamic way is being a bit too generous.  Rather, it simply feels...mechanical.

The end-all goal of Ambition Mode is to build a Tongquetai to house the Emperor who will be attracted to your lands because the Tongquetai is going to be magnificent.  And yes, if you're googling Tongquetai, you're wondering just what in the fuck I'm talking about because the majority of the entries seem to be about a movie called "The Assassins" which is exactly not what you want the Emperor around!  Of course, it's not some sort of meta-commentary or anything, the building is just, of course, some really nice looking mansion deal.  Anyway, to get the materials to build the Tongquetai, you have to first build up facilities in a little poor start-up town, of course, and they will eventually...just sort of -have- the materials somehow.  Just go with it.

So to get a Tongquetai, you have to build Facilities.  How do you build Facilities?  Well...actually you crush your enemies and force them to fight for you recruit them to your cause.  But how do you build -up- Facilities (which is the important part)?  You gather materials.  There are two types of Materials in Ambition Mode:  Weapon and Facility and I'll give you two guesses as to which one you should be paying attention to.  This is what you are going to spend 80% of your time in Ambition Mode fretting over, is getting goddamn Materials for your facilities to level them up for their benefits and also just to get the Tongquetai so you're able to focus on the even more grindy bits of the mode.  Because yes, getting Materials and in fact just getting your Tongquetai/the City built up is the least grindy portion of the entire subset of the game.  Wrap your head around that one.

Now, this is a good time to stop for a moment and breakdown the -other- things you need to 'collect' for Ambition Mode, and the perils thereof.  On top of Materials to build up Facilities, you need Allies to necessitate their construction in the first place and Fame to allow you to recruit more Allies because apparently they're your posse and you can only have a big posse if you're famous and it's not like you get famous for -having- a big posse or that fame and followers come hand-in-hand or anything silly.  Anyway, I'm sure you can see the sort of feed-the-meter logistics at work, and it's not going to surprise you in the least when I say that the missions in Ambition Mode are geared towards getting you the specified resources in direct transfusions of 15-30 minute battles.  (That usually take anywhere from 1-20 minutes to complete)  As such, you have missions that grant you Fame moreso than the others, missions that grant you more enemies to defeat and thus more Allies to recruit, and missions where Materials drop more often.

There's a problem with all of this, however.  Honestly, there's a problem with nearly every facet of this whole set-up, unfortunately, and it's almost hilarious in its own ineptitude.  KOEI commits a cardinal sin against common sense in regards to collecting and building that's so basic it makes my head hurt.  Ambition Mode's mission rewards aren't that great on their own because the goal is for you to run through multiple in a sitting, since you can chain battles.  This is important to know.  Over the course of 3-5 battles, of course, you're going to have a -lot- of gains to your totals instead of just the piddly one battle.  However, there are several times when this is inadvisable to do.  Like, say, whenever you fill up one of the meters.  Because you have to physically go back to camp, wreck your streak, just so the game can show you a building going up and saying "Yay, now you can gain more fame arbitrarily!" before you can actually gain more fame.  So...chaining battles becomes less a necessity for actually building up your town and more solely a necessity for fucking trophies.

Let's get back to those, shall we?  Specifically the ones titled The Birth of a Leader, The Path of Ambition and Unwavering Ambition, which are gained from doing 5, 20 and 50 chain battles respectively.  Note that at any point before actually finishing the City and whatnot when you don't even have to worry about Fame and all that, doing 20 battles will push you to your meter in at least one category, meaning you're wasting a -lot- of time in all reality.  This is to say nothing of the fact that the Animal Collector trophy is -also- tangled in the Chain Battle mess since you have to do 30, 60, 90 and 100 chain battles for four unique animals that count towards the trophy you get for collecting animals.  They are Shadow Runner, Hex Mark, Red Hare and the War Elephant respectively and of those, Red Hare is the one that is worth it, meaning a lot of people who don't -know- what's up will get Red Hare and then immediately fucking quit doing chain battles because they're terrible and discover that "whoops, you were ten battles away from never having to chain battle again!"

The really funny bit about this all is that because of the silliness with Battles in general and their drops, and Chaining Battles, you could end up spending a lot of time on the Battle portion of the mode when really the most lucrative thing you could do is just focus on your town as much as possible.  The only thing you really -need- from battles is Allies and Fame which you're going to earn over the course of everything else -anyway-, so you don't really have to make special outings for them specifically.  Materials, however, are another matter entirely.  You -could- spend about a minute total with loading and actually doing a mission to end up with ~2-6 Facility Materials, or you could be smart.  Being smart requires you to have the Barracks (one of the core buildings), the Stables (optional, really, but necessary for max yield), the Farmer (again, -technically- optional, but you want it) and the Merchant which is another core building.  Once you have these, you are ready to begin farming.

One of the nice things about the Merchant, or the only nice thing about it I should say, is that it lets you exchange Materials for the other variety of it.  So Weapon Materials for Facility Materials and vice versa.  One weapon material exchanges to two facility materials, which is very good and it works the other way around for weapon materials again which is less good, but you don't -need- weapon materials.  What this ratio means is that what you -want- are Weapon Materials because they are vital for your Facility Material gathering.  Your Barracks allows you to send troops off to other areas from whence they will return with things, specifically Materials of a certain type.  That means you want to send them off to Weapon Material places.  Similarly, feeding the animals in the Stables gives you materials that are sometimes weapon and sometimes facility so either way you win, technically.  The supervisor that you assign at the Farmer also has a chance of giving you up to ten materials as well.

So the routine, essentially, is going to your Barracks, getting materials and sending them out again, going to the Stables, getting Materials, going to the Farmer to check if the Supervisor gives you materials and then going to the Merchant.  All told, you have a chance to have something like 24-30 Weapon Materials from the three places you visit around your town which translates into 48-60 Facility Materials.  Low-level buildings require 1-2 Materials to level up and higher leveled ones (40-50 generally, 50 is max Level) require 9-10.  Either way, you can make a nice dent with 48-60 Materials and the time it takes to gather them is negligible.  Especially compared to the minute or so that you'll spend just getting half a dozen from actually having to -work- for them.  Regardless, the one tip that has to be echoed for this process is for the love of God, don't fall for KOEI's Trap Card.

The Merchant, as one of the four core buildings, will need to be leveled up to max for the Tongquetai to be built.  So you, naturally, will probably just go "Well, I'll do that first" because why not?  Well, you don't want to do that because at level 50, the Merchent goes into late-game mode by assuming you don't need Facility Materials anymore and thus drops the exchange rate between Materials to 1:1.  Good for getting Weapon Materials, bad for getting Facility Materials.  It will cause you to need to go at this twice as long and that's something you want to avoid at all costs.  I'm sure I don't have to tell you that.  So yes, the moral of the story is Don't Level up the Merchant to 50 until the very end.  You'll thank me for that.

So you do Chain Battles for Animals for Animal Collector, you gather up allies and fame and materials to eventually upgrade the town to full (which gains you Facility Construction and Facility Expansion for your first of each respectively), gaining the trophies mentioned a few paragraphs ago as well as A Collector of Rarities (for completing all the Duels which show up every four missions until you've beaten them all), A Majestic Manner (Max Fame), The Height of Prosperity (All the Facilities built), The Ties that Bind Us (all 720 allies recruited) and Heaven and Earth (Finally complete the Tongquetai and welcome the Emperor to your city).  Doing that will get you the Ending Credits for Ambition Mode which counts as a movie for the Movie Collector trophy, given you've already beaten the Story Modes completely to see each Kingdom's Historical and Hypothetical Credits.

That leaves you with The Land of Plenty which you get after gaining 1,000 Materials which...you will do eventually.  It also leaves you with Vocal Enthusiast, and Friends to the End.  Friends to the End is easy enough - gain max bond with one of the 78 other characters in the game, which you will do by toting them around from battle to battle as your bodyguard.  Vocal Enthusiast is one of those tricky, roundabout trophies, however.  You see, when you get max bond with an officer, you unlock some of their voice clips in the Gallery.  Which is well and good, but you don't unlock them -all- for that character, because you see, what you have to do is max bond with that character.

Twice.

Once as a Male officer, once as a Female Officer.  Vocal Enthusiast requires you to have unlocked every voice clip in the game.  Which means gaining Max Bond with Every Officer in the game.  Twice.  Remember how I said Material Grinding was the least grindy bit of Ambition mode?  There you go.

So yes, Ambition Mode is....well, it's honestly a neat concept, but goddamn if KOEI does not how to properly introduce Sim elements to the game.  Which is hilarious when you consider that KOEI fucking specializes in Sim games.  But that's just one of the things that makes KOEI the company that it is.  The terrible, awful, no good, very bad company that it is.  That I will continuously buy products from because goddamnit, nobody else is making them.

Vocal Enthusiast is a bronze trophy, by the way, just as one last 'fuck you' from KOEI

Huzzah, Relaxation

Today is the day that I've been looking forward to since....well, Tuesday.  Rather, tonight is because tonight is the first time in two weeks where I was and am able to feel the freedom of nothingness.  No obligations to go to bed at a certain time, to schedule this or that, to wake up at a specific time.  No need to keep this and that in mind for tomorrow for work since I don't -have- work tomorrow.  I got to lay down after work today and just let all that seep out and it felt good.  It felt so good that it basically rocked me to sleep as, two hours later, I awoke in a better mood than I even anticipated being in.  It's honestly something that I didn't even know I missed last weekend when I was sick and it's all the sweeter for having been so long, even if I'm not much of a fan of it taking this long to actually have this feeling.

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with the weekend per se, but I know that I'm going to be doing a lot of leaving the house (unfortunately), so it's looking like my Vita is getting time regardless.  To be fair, I probably would be playing around with it anyway for reasons that I will get into in a moment, but it sort of takes the questioning out of the equation which spoils it just a tad.  I like to at least pretend I have plans to play my poor, neglected PS3 again so I can jump back into Deus Ex:  Human Revolution, REVENGEANCE, Tomb Raider and/or Nier, or play one of the games that I haven't even started that I've been saying for about two months that I need to start.  But there's always next weekend for that, I suppose, and next weekend, well, I can always say there's the following.  Procrastination is magical like that.

It does have at least a little bit of merit this time around, however, as I do have an over-arching meta-goal in Disgaea 3 Vita that I am going to accomplish.  I have stated several times that Dinah is going to be my Avatar of Extreme and Unyielding Murder JUSTICE and for a little bit, I thought I had seated her on that very position.  Post-game, however, has a bit of arguing on that point to do, and it is convincing to be sure, coming in the form of the ever-difficult Tyrant Overlord Baal.  Not even the super-secret final form, but just the regular reskinned mushroom enemy form.  But as you can see above, my training of Dinah has barely even begun, so it's not especially surprising that I haven't taken him down quite yet.

Oh, I'm sorry, you think I'm kidding?  You look at the above image and see that Dinah is level 9999 and go "But Mogs, just where can you go from here"?  You, my friend, must not know the depths of insanity that Disgaea travels to, and you must not have been paying attention to my previous posts on the subject.  Getting Dinah to level 9999 the first time is a mere accomplishment and notice that I said "The first time" - after I clear out the main story once more, I'm going to reincarnate her back to 1 so I can do the whole thing over again.  And this time, I'll be able to add even more insanity to the proceedings - I'll be visiting Dinah's Class World to pump her up so that her gains over this span of 9998 levels will be that much more inflated....and then I'll reincarnate her again and do it over again.  And again and again.  And again.

I have a -lot- of ground to cover, you see, as Mushroom Baal, at base, has 1.7 million ATK, which you can see easily trumps Dinah's measily 242K ATK, with his Defense roughly in the same lines.  With successive training, reincarnating and Class World visiting, however, Dinah's stats will only get better and better with every iteration of her form, and that's even before I finally step properly into the insanity of the Item World, which is not something I'm relishing even in the slightest.  Yet the benefits will be great for what I'm promised is minimal, but tedious, endeavoring.  Basically when I have conquered Mushroom Baal, I will call my relationship with Disgaea 3 severed, but not a moment before.  Because Baal has issued me a challenge, you see.

And Dinah is going to answer that shit.

seriously, she is going to wipe the fucking floor with Baal when I'm done.  Maybe

Bounties and Missed Opportunities

So after soundly finishing up the treasure hunting that I detailed yesterday, I began the arduous task of farming the Bounty Items and almost near-instantly regretted the venture.  I forewarn that it is certainly not something for the faint of heart, nor for the easily bored or distracted, because it is tedium at its worst, and a personal challenge at best.  Basically, as I feared, the objects in the Bounty sets must merely be farmed, rather than acquired in some fashion that allows for planning beyond "Restart from Last Checkpoint -> Kill Stuff -> See Step 1" over and over again.  In the right circumstances, however, this does allow for flexibility on your part which is where you can make the most of it, as I will explain, but otherwise it simply reminds me of all the time wasted in JRPGs seeking similar goals for items that actually did something, rather than provide meta-plot under the assumption that the object is eventually sold on the Black Market to ensure Nathan Drake and Victor "Goddamn" Sullivan scrape by.

The Tarot Card set was easy enough to do, since the best spot for getting those (as recommended by the internet, at least) was a nice big area that you can actually run around in and such.  Play the game tactically as it is intended; I say this because it will be important later, obviously.  To guard against how mind-numbing the task could be, since again, it is simply running the same battle over and over again via the "Restart from Last Checkpoint" function, I decided to have a little fun with it.  Since my treasure hunting had been done on Easy since I didn't want to bother with getting hit a lot and such, I was a little concerned that maybe my skills were in decline from the lack of reason to really tap into them.  In order to prepare for my Crushing playthrough, I set the difficulty back up to Hard to tackle this section, turning it into "Nathan Drake's Combat Finesse Training", making sure that I utilize both Headshots and the Steel Fist technique while not dying.  It was a success.

Granted, the area is fairly early on, so the challenge isn't terribly there, more like a pothole in the middle of a fairly clear road; you know it's there, but if you don't pay attention it will trip you and you will get hurt.  The real test will come with the latter sets, I realize, but for a re-introduction to combat, it worked spectacularly and kept me on my toes for sure.  The classic rush I get from taking out three foes in succession with the Steel Fist technique while my screen is quite gray, meaning that I just barely survived was one I felt the familiar tingle of at several occasions and once again, it reminded me that this was an Uncharted game, pure and simple.  Every reminder of that seems like it's the first, as I still can't quite wrap my head around the fact, no matter how prevalent and/or clear it is.  Hopefully if/when they do another iteration, they'll have figured it out enough that we'll get more than one environment, however.  I don't discriminate between Jungle and Burning Jungle, of course for said purposes.  And before you say "oh no spoilerzz" it's an action game.  Flammable things in action games -burn-.  That's just what they do.  You know this.

After I finished the task of collecting the Tarot Cards, my next task was the Pieces of Silver which are, in fact, Silver Coins.  I don't know why they simply aren't referred to as Silver Coins but that's neither here nor there.  The best spot to farm said coins (again, according to the internet) is during a section where you're given a Sniper Rifle and a healthy supply of ammo to shoot ~20 guys while trying to prevent someone else from being shot.  While true that there is a copious amount of folks here to kill, thus rationally increasing your chances of getting these rare drops, this is boring.  I don't get to run around and almost die, I don't get to punch things, I just sit and shoot at things, killing them in a single hit because the Sniper Rifle is powerful like that.  On its own, of course, it's fine, but when you play it for the extended periods of time that you have to to farm these coins, it becomes near unbearable.  The fact of the matter is, I spent about an hour or two grinding on this single spot and only went from 14 coins to 23.  So when I get back to it, I have more of the same awaiting me.

That is, of course, if I just go back to the most, ahem, 'efficient' spot.  I imagine there is a spot that is far more tuned to what I desire without the tedium of the sniper rifle, or at least I do hope so, because in peeking ahead at the suggestions, another one suggests an area for one of the later sets that is much like the Sniper section, but with a gatling gun instead.  It would be slightly different, of course, but not quite enough I suspect, so I'll be scouting for a different area for that as well, because I simply cannot bear this for much longer.  The only good it's doing is sharpening my aim which is plenty sharp as is, after all.  With any luck, it simply won't take as long as I suspect it might, because the quicker I get into my Crushing play, the better, and that will only happen once I get all the little extraneous things out of the way, possibly even the Kill trophies as well.

I suspect that my main issue with the Bounty sets, aside from the tedium involved, is that they simply don't offer anything but a few voiced lines for the sets and a few of the individual pieces (mostly the rare things) and trophies.  True, they do have an aspect about them as objects that are not always tangibly yours, since you can 'trade' them over the 'Black Market' (or Near), but since I have yet to get Near to work on my Vita (damn Skyhook), that aspect is completely shut off to me.  But if they're going to present these items as tradeable, why not make it worthwhile, by making the items desirable?  Make a mini-game around them; I suggested to a friend earlier that a Trading Card Mini-game where you collect the cards in the main game would be excellent, but as we know, I always think of Trading Card games.  Just -something- to use these things in is all I ask.  That they're tossed in in the way that they have been doesn't denote a lot of thought, and really means to me that they dropped the ball.  Something certainly could've come of this and that it didn't is a real miss.

Regardless, with any luck I should be done with this part of the game relatively quickly.  It's long, mindless work, but I'm fairly use to that with grinding on JRPGs and grinding on Warriors games alike, so there's nothing new to be had there.  That I'll be doing it using the mechanics of Uncharted sweetens the pot some since, as I said, I'm using it as 'Finesse Training' for my Crushing mode run, which will hopefully mean that that goes rather smoothly.  And when I'm done with that, well....then I have to figure out just what the hell I do next.  Since friggin' Gravity Rush doesn't come out til May and LittleBigPlanet doesn't come out til June.  It isn't like I don't have a wealth of options in the meantime, since I have commented on quite a few games for the Vita that are already out that I'm interested in, but my money situation might not like that option.  I really shouldn't worry about it too much not, however, since I won't know what the wait looks like until I am really done with Golden Abyss, which as I mentioned, might still have quite a life left in it.