Returning player from ep 2 trying to catch up

[Laggy]

So I dropped PSO2 for a long while after Ep 2 when my main class (Gunner) got nerfed into the ground and the game in general ran out of content. I've been back a couple days and have been trying my best to catch up to all of the new content but one area that I've been unable to find good information on is how to gear up to current endgame levels.

When I was playing 12* barely existed and most people were decked out in 11* stuff. I have a maxxed out Guld Milla (which was op as shit before the nerf) and quad affixed Gloam Set + Ing legs. I read up on skill rings and got the materials to craft a Frontal S-Roll and C/R Ranged immediately and have appropriate Gu/Ra and Gu/Hu skill trees. I'm sitting at level 70 on all of those classes.

I do not intend to go crazy with optimizing equipment but I do know you need a 13* weapon to be competitive and that there are these magical things called Collection Sheets that apparently make them not awful to get and I don't need to pray for a tiny drop chance from camping EQs anymore? Maybe???? I've read that I should be grabbing those sheets for the Ray TMG or whatever but I'm not sure how it works or how easy it is to actually acquire. Like that looks like it still requires you to camp EQs and I just got into a failed TD4 this morning with pugs so I'm not sure how eager I am to reexperience that endeavor. If someone can seriously ELI5 collection sheets for me and point out which ones I should try to get and where/how to make progress on them it'd be greatly appreciated.

Similarly no idea what's a good armor set nowadays, if my current one will suffice for the time being, etc.

[Pyrei]

hmm I can try to catch you up without going nuts of getting high end stuff I guess?

13*s are all the rage now pretty much, collection files make it easy to get them, and the new grind system is awesome for not being overly rng based and expensive... NT 13*s go to +35, but most stop at +31 or +32 because 30 and beyond requires copies of that 13* to grind, to +35 a NT weapon you'll need 6 copies of it which even with collection files, can be a chore. my advice for gu/ra tmg is get aura or ray tmg, ray tmg is great for general use things, and aura is strong vs bosses. if you want to go further beyond that level of power, try gathering the stones for austere or orbit tmg, pretty much in all cases austere is the strongest of each weapon type (though you'll really hate getting all the stuff for austere weapons), and orbit is really good on PP and dmg (though running random TD eqs for stones is ugh...)

Don't really recommend yamato tmg or revo tmg as yamato tmg is only good after you get 15 kills with it, on same map, and no switching weapons, and revo tmg is really painful to grind out even for just 3 of them...(not to meantion its wind elem too)

As for units, 11* saiki set is standard for most players, but theres also austere set, crafted tian set and orbit leg unit and if you somehow find tagami tmg now, tagami 11* units are a great choice too. there should be an affix week coming sooner or later to affix all of this up, and

as for NT grinding I was using this http://www.fulldive.nu/2016/06/21/pso2-nt-grinding-guide/#more-3087 for all my NT 13* grinding, well this + 100% grind boosters off player shop for like 300k each, 0 to 30 in uh 5 grinders is pretty good to me, sure 12*s can be even less but 10*s are cheaper to me

[Pyrei]

hmm let me list potentials and stats for all this stuff lol

ray tmg - 1408 ratk - 10% dmg increase, 5% dmg taken decrease, 10% pp costs reduced
aura tmg - 1447 ratk - 12% dmg increase vs bosses only, 15% dmg taken reduced (not sure if that's only from bosses of not)
orbit tmg - 1416 ratk - 13% dmg increase, 200% passive pp regen increase while weapon is sheathed (not in hand), 60% atk pp regen, 0 passive pp regen while unsheathed (0 meaning 0 period, all passive pp regen while unsheathed is halted, and nothing at all trumps this)
austere tmg - 1514 ratk - 12% dmg increase, 10% passive pp regen increase

[Laggy]

Thanks very much for the response.

For Collection Files, I get that you make some amount of progress of each of the individual items on the file when you kill that enemy and successfully clear the mission you killed them in. The finer details escape me though.

1. I assume you get the final item in the collection file once you've finished all of the prerequisite items? Do you give up those items to get the final prize, or do you get to keep them?
2. I'm getting the implication that you are able to run the same collection file more than once. Can you just take it again once you're done or is there a cooldown time? If the latter, is there any way to reduce that?
3. Related to that, I assume element grinding for weapons is as vital as it used to be. Is the element cap still 50? For NT weapons, does it work the same way (same weapon copy = add element value, same * value = add 10, etc.)? Can you still use element changers to change element, and is Holy still the overall best rounder element? (I do not intend to keep a rainbow set.)

Austere and Orbit look very grindy so I'll probably be avoiding them for now. Aura in particular looked attractive because it looked like all I had to grind was the LQ and Facility Free Field (Ray looks like it requires PD EQ, and from the ship I'm on it looks like no one runs PD on anything but XH... I'm not even sure I'm capable of running it on that difficulty below L75, albeit I haven't tried yet.)

Crafting was out when I played but I think it's been expanded on greatly. Is there an easy way to find a crafter via search that has the maximum possible Ex value or do you just need to know such a person by name? I'm not grinding out TAs or whatnot every day so I won't be swimming in mesata, so I'd probably look at doing, say, the crafted Tian set. What am I looking for when I try to extend it, should I be using consumables, etc.

Sorry for the ignorance, it's been a while and I'm still trying to take it all in!

[Droid803]

Collection file works like this:
Kill marked enemy (or any enemy that can drop the item on the file) -> progress increases by set % upon successful quest completion
The % is affected by your current Rare Drop Rate, so try to have at least a 250% RDR boost running
Upon reaching 100% when finishing the quest, the next instance of the enemy listed on the file will be guaranteed to drop the item - it will be marked in white, and picking it up will mark the box as "Complete"
Picking up a drop that occurred "naturally" (not from 100% file completion) will immediately mark the box as "Complete" without having to finish the quest. Such drops will NOT be marked in white.

1. Yes, the 13* is added to your inventory once all other boxes are "Complete". Once a box is "Complete" you can do whatever you want with the item on that box you picked up (sell it, cube it, discard it, feed it to your mag, whaveter) and the box will remain complete.

2. There is a 48 hour cooldown that starts once the 13* is added to your inventory. You can either wait it out then pick up the file again, or immediately reset the cooldown at any point with Star Gems. You likley want to complete the same file at least 3 times for max element (20 element each and +32), and possibly as much as 6 times to completely max out the weapon (+35)

3. Cap is 60 for 13*, 50 for 12* and below. Element grinding follows the same rules. You can still use an element changer. Light is still the best all-round element. The only difference is you don't use a separate option to grind element - simply use the element fodder as part of normal NT grinding, and if the fodder matches the rules for increasing the base weapon's element, it will increase accordingly.

Austere is quite grindy. Orbit isn't actually that bad, but does need you to kind of religiously attend unscheduled TD emergency quests, and farm the limited quest for weapon badges to turn into Torana Stones.You can try XH Profound Darkness starting at level 70 I think, but without being level capped and having decent gear or simply knowing the fight well, prepare to die a lot. I mean A LOT, possibly to the point of possibly annoying your MPA greatly, since Double/PD will probably kill you in one hit with most attacks and they come pretty rapidly, especially if you don't know the attack patterns.

Aura (and Revolucio) are not locked behind EQs and can be grinded out at any time.

As for crafting, you can search for crafters by crafting recipie. You can also try the PSO2: Trading forum, i've seen people successfully find crafters for units using that. The various wikis should have the materials listed correctly for unit crafting despite some being quite outdated the requirements haven't changed. There's no real consumables you need for unit crafting especially if you're getting someone else to craft for you - simply know what crafts you want: probably ex lv.8 or lv.10, HP (s-def) or PP (r-def) special crafts, and have the materials required to get there on hand and you should be good to go.

[Laggy]

Awesome, that all makes sense.

Just a few more stray questions:

1. I have read up on Selphea's guides on Gunner and peeked at the NT grinding and affixing guides. I do have a sizable stock of 10* and the gist of what I read is that it seems more efficient to grind same-name weapons together to upgrade them and then feed them into my 13* I am trying to grind. Is this correct? The new grind exp system is a bit unclear to me, particularly the most optimal way to go about it. (And I'll take anything over the horror that was the old grind system)

In particular I have heard mention of Lambda Grinders but don't know what they actually are.

2. What's the standard budget affix nowadays? 4 or 5? Which affixes? Doing anything funny past a single Soul used to cost a fortune (at least by my standards) when I played but now it looks like throwing in Ability III, Vindictum or Flint or whatever seems really standard. I can do the research on how to efficiently affix but I'd just like to know what fodder I need to pick up. (I have around 15m lying around from before I quit.)

3. As I noted before, I'll probably just buy Tian units on the cheap and look to extend them. What is the recommended third unit I should use if I don't intend on having Orbit anytime soon, or should I try to get the Orbit unit anyway?

Again a huge thanks for the detailed answers, that was exactly what I was looking for.

[Pyrei]

lets see answering questions...

1. yes you combine 10*s into +30~35 fodders, these can be bought or sold too, lambda grinders come from a number of diff sources these days, the most notable one is COs from an NPC called zieg in the shop area near the stage/big tv screen, he gives 11 per week, per character for doing very simple crafts. the next best source of lambda grinders after zieg is casino and yamato EQ, casino can get 20 per week per account for 5000 cc, and yamato randomly gives 0~3 for clearing it. As for the most effective way to grind 13*s really cant say which way is best, there's 10*s at +30~35 method like Selphea says, there's 12*s which are even easier on lambda usage but not sure if its cheaper, and (when in season) theres emperor embrace fodder, which is basically feeding 13*s things with emperor embrace affixed to it. Its really all up to you to choose which way to go, but to me the simplest way is 10*s from EQs.

2. budget affix varies on affix to me, "my" budget affix is apprentice soul, modulator, stat III, and love/saint/latan fever. this gives 110 atk and 2 pp, which is very good for regular stuff, and costs about 2 mil and a 30% affix booster. Heres a simulator of that affix set up cheaply and easily

http://pso2affix.seilent.net/#!/s=TD05.ZA01.AB03&1=RP55.ZA01.AB03&2=TC01.ZA01.ZB01&3=TC01.ZA01.ZB01&4=TC01.ZA01.ZB01&5=AB03.XA01.ZA01&r=TD05.TC01.RP55.AB03&o=A05

Each fodder there "SHOULD" be less than 100k and available on the shop. as for the base (item being affixed) you'll need to affix shoot 3 and saint fever onto it first, there used to be a better soul receptor fodder with fang soul on it to make this easier but that is no longer in season so its really high in price now.

3. There's not many units to choose from as a leg unit for Tian set, there's orbit cell for those that use orbit weapons, there's White tail (10PP) or Ing plate (100 HP) which don't need crafting, and I still recommend looking for in bonus quests/buying saiki set, when crafted it gives 55PP which is really nice for offensive units.