are you saying status effects might be relevant again :O
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I was there for like two hours and also ran the Easter. My opinion.
It's alright. It's a standard MPA. I've seen quite a few people say it's very hard, but at least roaming around in expert, it felt like a very standard MPA exploration. You just run around and kill mobs/codes. It didn't feel like anything did particularly much more damage than normal and everything died in a timely manner. I died once the whole time I was there and it was just Apostolo Dragon doing his explosion.
Regular monsters and bosses drop Excubes straight and also Weapon Badge SP. They added a couple things to try to spice up the standard MPA formula.
The shields on monsters make you think a little bit on how to approach them, which adds another dynamic to them. They aren't always there on regular monsters nor on bosses, only sometimes. I've seen:
-Attack from short range
-Attack from the air
-Attack from behind
-Attack from the front
If you don't, you get a noise and a small shield effect knowing you aren't fulfilling the shield conditions, and you hit for like 30-40% of normal damage or less. As summoner I basically only had to worry about the front/behind.
Code: Defeat adds little... minigames to rank you against other people when a boss or monsters spawn. It tallies up a score as you participate at the top of the screen and actively shows your rank above your head. Conditions I've seen:
-Combine your total damage (it just counts up how much damage you do)
-Deal damage without getting hit (same as the first one but you lose score if you take any hit, alter ego bricked this for me)
-Deal a maximum amount of damage (hit as hard as you can in one hit, it counted over 999,999 since I hit a 1.3mil Torim Spiral and got rank 1)
-Get last hits on monsters
-Break monster parts (Big Vardha spawned)
When the code finishes it pops up with score for the top 3 players. This was just a simple damage counting code.
https://i.imgur.com/YnUsKIV.png
The code reward seems to always be Excube x3 if you're rank 1, Excube x2 if you're rank 2/3, and Excube x1 otherwise. So, the reward is minor and it's just to try to add something interesting to the grind.
Managed to get one rainbow drop, the Mirage rod. Its SAF is Phrase Recovery.
https://i.imgur.com/7lRrnlB.png
As for Easter, it's the same thing besides the two bosses at the end. The regular monsters live longer, but not by too much. Vegas Illusia has a chance to be replaced by the new Gwanahda, and the boss at the end is always Drecente Draal, which seems to just be a differently colored Apostolo Dragon. If you get the Gwanahda it ends up being a faster run because he's really potato and a decent group should easily be able to one cycle his belly (break tentacles -> hit belly -> dead). Illusia has much more HP now.
The monsters had enough HP that I was only able to get 3 runs in both times, and while many more Excubes drop at the end, I didn't get a single rainbow out of all six runs, which is either very unlucky or there are reduced rates for the 13 stars.
New abilities that dropped (screenshot from a friend):
https://i.imgur.com/xMyVhsL.png
Exceed Energy seems to be weapon only and it could not be transferred with 3 of them.
Ultra Hard seems okay. I hope the Rappy Egg is out there.
There are other new souls and affixes:
- Ex Act Soul - +30 S-ATK, All DEF +20, HP +20, PP +2
- Ex Til Soul - R-ATK +30, All DEF +20, HP +20, PP +2
- Ex Magi Soul - T-ATK +30, All DEF +20, HP +20, PP +2
- Exceed Energy - All-ATK +50, DEX +20, All DEF +20, HP +20, PP +5
- Crack I (already announced) - All-ATK +3, All DEF +5, HP +5, PP +1
- Crack II - All-ATK +5, All DEF +10, HP +10, PP +1
- Crack III - All-ATK +10, All DEF +15, HP +15, PP +1
- more Crack ???
I couldn't find a way to transfer Exceed Energy, even with five fodders.
Crack I transfers at the following rates: 2 Crack I fodders 80%, 3 Crack I fodders 100%
Crack II synthesizes at the following rates: 2+ Crack I fodders 70%
Crack II transfers at : 2 Crack II fodders 70%, 3 Crack II fodders ? (didn't have time to check)
Crack III synthesizes at : 2 Crack II fodders 50%, 3 Crack II fodders ? (didn't have time to check)
I don't know any of the new Ex ??? Soul transfer rates.
The EX souls seem to have the same transfer rate as normal souls. I also heard you can use them to make the non ex versions at a 90% rate, but I don't know what you need for that if it's true.
So would you rank Ultra Hard? Between XH Forest/Volcanic Cave/Coast and Ultimate Naberius/Lilipa/Amduscia? (won't be able to try until tonight once I'm done with my dailies)
Stat wise the monsters are harder than all those. However, the regular monsters are all just potato darkers and lilipa mechs, no ultimate monsters, so I never really felt threatened at all. Worst thing that spawned is probably just those bugs that run at you in Mining defense, and it sometimes spawns a lot of monsters at once.
The new Gwanahda is mostly just a very tanky Gwanahda that takes very little damage (like 10%) if you don't hit his belly.
The new Transmizers only reveal their core after shooting their giant laser, and shoot elemented missiles... otherwise they just run around and do stuff like regular Transmizers.
Apostolo Dragon spawns and he's same as usual, more stats than ever so he hits pretty hard.
The new Blu Ringahda spawns a whole lot of tornados and projectiles, and has some other stuff, so him and Apostolo are probably the real threats, but Transmizer isn't irrelevant either. You can still knock him down by breaking his rings and then it's just free DPS time, he should die either the first or second time he goes down.
So mobbing wise, it's pretty easy, and if you can handle those bosses, then it will go just fine. I can't really rank it since I didn't participate in a lot of those fields on release. Can probably just treat it like a harder XH Desert Exploration with some stronger bosses.
Thanks for the write-up, Crevox. I'm at work so I can't check out UH until I'm back.
I'm not too surprised that it doesn't differ much from usual MPAs, but it's nice having rotating content like the XH rotation we had during the Monster Hunter collab, new weapoms and affixes, and excubes dropping normally so we don't burn meseta untekking cube fodder
Don't take this as an attack of any sort (I play Su a lot too) because of this question: Did you ran it as something else than Su? Am not sure your average Fi, Hr and Fo would sing the same song for example.
I noticed one thing is now I try to take advantage of landscape to get partial cover or isolating mobs. Also beware the 2 legged mechs with a big canon and launching missiles (which usually spawn in Quarry). I got rekt 2 times because the laser was going through rocks:-o
Ah well, of course, naturally being Su I'd say things might be a liiiitttllleee easier on me survivability wise, but we still had very few deaths across the MPA in general, which was all random people. And while I'm a Su, I am extremely greedy on my units and skills for damage (+0 HP total from unit affixes and -20 all DEF, only 1 point into HP Restorate).Quote:
Did you ran it as something else than Su?
I didn't do it on anything other than Su, so you're right to be skeptical a bit there, but I think my MPA did a good enough job surviving as well that while things do hurt, people should easily be able to adapt and overcome it without too much difficulty. If people are doing this good within only a few hours of the servers coming up already, I think anyone that is having trouble will get better at it with a little practice or just slight equipment/skill changes. Even something like a Deband Drink, Guts Drink, or defensive tree buff goes a long way.