PSO2 Advance Quests - Match-ups, Tips and Tricks

[Meji]

ADVANCE QUESTS
Information about the Advance Quests can be found on Bumped.

With the Advance Quest patch hitting in a few hours, I figured I'll make a thread where we can share information, tips and trick of the Advance Quests with eachother (pretty much like the "Experience of being Abducted" thread).
I will fill this first page with useful hints on the different Advance Quests when more information hits the net. In the meantime, feel free to stick around this thread for speculations, rants and hopes.

Here's a few things to discuss:

• Will the AQ cost affect this games economy?
• Will the new items bring up the Grinder prices?
• Is using Rare Drop boost tickets during AQs a good idea?
• Sakai's shoe size

Since these quests will costs about ~500k to run per person, finding 3 other party members willing to pay this cost won't always be an easy task. Therefore, I figured people could post a little information in here whenever they're in dire need of a party to play Advanced Quests with.

Tips & Tricks

• You activate Advance Quests by being LV45+ and going to the quest gate (Koffee will speak to you).
• Koffee gives you 10 free capsules for each quest type (Forest/Cave/Desert) when you clear her Client Order, so the first tour is free.
• The capsules themselves cost:
  
  50k for Forest
  60k for Caves
  70k for Dessert
• Advance Quests can be played Solo
• They have a time limit of 60:00
• To be able to increase the Advance Risk, Koffee's CO's for each area must first be completed.
• The Capsules are a fairly common drop in the AQs
• The "Red Series" weapons drop in AQs
• There's a chance weapons/units drop with a LV 3 ability (Power III, etc). Make sure you check your equipment before NPC-selling it.
• Maps are always randomized
• Bosses (A3) are always random
• Clones can spawn, since these are Single Party areas (no idea of Paralell worlds yet)
• LV15 PA's drop in AQs
• Risk Levels increase whenever a map is cleared.
  [B]
• For every LV3 Risk (3,6,9, etc), enemy level is increased by 1, until LV60 (risk 12).
• The Risk Level of the quest all depends on the leader. Even if you've never played any AQs, you can still join another player who's at (for example) Risk LV+6.
  
• High risk level increases the rate of infected enemies.
  
• Higher risk levels increase enemy speed (like how enemies were faster in Ultimate, back on PSO)
  
  
  Spoiler!

  So, what differentiates Advance Quests from everything else:
  
  1. Nothing respawns, but what DOES spawn tends to spawn in much larger and far more persistent groups. You can actually end up spending 5 minutes in the same block just constantly downing swarms of enemies. I like that.
  
  2. Of course, everything is higher level. This means more HP and more damage output, so you have to be more careful about getting hit AND you have to stay focused for a longer duration, which keeps things more interesting than in standard quests (and certainly more than in TAs, at least IMO).
  
  3. DROPS OMG. It's so weird to actually get at least one 7*+ rare per run. Of course, these rares are probably going to be worthless because of the frequency of the drops, but it remains a nice change of pace from not seeing anything after dozens of hours of MPA farming.
  
  4. You need capsules, and you're incentivized to clear EVERYTHING to maximize the number of capsules you attain (alongside all the other drops, naturally). If you clear everything you're guaranteed at least 10 capsules and will probably rack up a surplus over time (this is where letting the leader pay for other party members comes into play). The capsule system itself means you're likely to do a round-robin on the missions, going from forest -> caves -> desert and back again, which again is a nice change of pace from running the same area over and over again.
  
  5. The bosses have an extra element of challenge in the form of the unusual adds. The Vol Dragon has dinians accompanying him (the ones with the shields), whereas the Tranmizers get Signo Guns, which are a far cry from the diggs and the... nothing, in the case of the mizers. I don't know what the banther gets because I always run without adds (seriously, those fuckers are hard enough on their own as it is).
  
  6. At least one PSE Burst is all but guaranteed in each run.
  
  7. They're LONG. Unless your party is unusually strong, these will take you at least 40 minutes each to completely wipe the map clean, and gets longer when your advance risk gets higher, and higher, and higher. Definitely not for quick play sessions, and certainly not for players who don't at least have a ground up lambda rare on hand. I'll be honest - fatigue was setting in by the third run. It just requires enough concentration that I don't think I could handle running more than a handful per day.
  
  All in all, I think they're a positive addition to the game. They're pretty consistently engaging and provide enough carrots to keep on pushing through to the end. They're not going to retain their appeal forever (obviously), but then, I don't ever expect anything to. I just want more options, and this is one of the better ones so far.

Best luck to all of us, stay sharp.

[Requiem Aeternam]

As much as I want to do these I won't be doing them for a long time. Not until I have both my characters with their main class and sub classes at level 55. That and I'm dirt broke right now

[MetalDude]

Sakai's foot is definitely a 7.

[Anduril]

Well, there is apparently going to be a CO that covers our first AQ, so most people will at least attempt to do it once. I am hesitant to try it right off the bat, but the new weapons that need spellstones are just too tempting.

[BIG OLAF]

I probably won't get a chance to play w/ any friends either way, since they'll all most likely be doing AQs whilst I'm a work everyday. But, if they can be soloed, then yes, I will.

[Gen2000]

Adv. Quests the only thing left really holding a firm attention of this game for me. If it's even half as good as Darker's Den I'll be running as much as possible (MGR coming out next week so my attention is already split). Else I'm back to mainly afk'ing and just helping friends with whatever they need or just not booting up the launcher at all.

[Z-0]

I don't think Advanced Quests are actually going to see much change in the market. At the very least, they'll make prices of fodders, grinders and affix boosts go up due to a large new drop table (eg: what happened when VH was released).

There are people with a lot of meseta out there, because it's not hard to obtain it, unless you insist on staying a free player.

As for the CO to help with the payment of your first AQ, I think it will work like this:

Spoiler!

The Client Order for the Forest Capsules are actually daily. This will let you get into Forest, and then you'll play each of the Advanced Quests in an order (Forest -> Caves -> Desert). After you do your run a day, you will then have to pay full price for the next set of runs you want to do, and considering the majority of players are complaining about the price, most people will not do this.

[Renvalt]

I don't think Advanced Quests are actually going to see much change in the market. At the very least, they'll make prices of fodders, grinders and affix boosts go up due to a large new drop table (eg: what happened when VH was released).

There are people with a lot of meseta out there, because it's not hard to obtain it, unless you insist on staying a free player.

As for the CO to help with the payment of your first AQ, I think it will work like this:

Spoiler!

The Client Order for the Forest Capsules are actually daily. This will let you get into Forest, and then you'll play each of the Advanced Quests in an order (Forest -> Caves -> Desert). After you do your run a day, you will then have to pay full price for the next set of runs you want to do, and considering the majority of players are complaining about the price, most people will not do this.

From what I've read, the capsules are a rather common drop. Ricardo's blog says on this matter that Sakai (or whatever entity you wish to use here) stated this. So who knows? It may be a lot easier than you think.

And a little advice: pessimistic speculation never helped anyone. If you really feel that this game isn't offering you the time you want, then quit. It's that easy.

.... Or you can continue to cling to a game you hate, like some desperate, needy, Nexon-y fanboy who simply cannot leave because there is no other game to satisfy you.

[Cyron Tanryoku]

someone pay my forest entry fee

[Shirai]

I'll probably do this. Though, after the gacha I might be running a bit too low.

But will have to say this, it better be worth the money to actually be a meseta sink.