VHalue City Runs - A Quest Series to consider before/after reaching Ultimate to fund all of your characters

[ziggypigster]

Introduction:
Hello everyone. I wanted to share more information about VHalue City runs (MA4x, usually MA4C on Bluefull ID) to bring awareness to alternative runs for new and older players. While there are many quests that can be run in VH, this is one of the few quests I would recommend even after you gain access to Ultimate.

What is it (TLDR)?

• Very Hard Mode Episode 4 offers a Massive Attack quest series that has high enemy density spawns that are predominately weak to Fire Techs + Crater enemies weak to Hell.
• This makes them extremely easy to clear as FOnewman, solo or group, for great XP / value / self-found items on Bluefull.
• Other classes can also clear here, but it is recommended to come back with better weapons / be aware they have a higher barrier of entry than a FO to do well.

When is the best time to do it?

• Drop Rate Week
  • The raw increase in materials, PDs, and PCs earned per hour here can’t be understated.
    • VH has a base rate of 1/600 of giving you a photon drop when you do not get a rare item from an enemy.
    • Multiple enemies exist here (Rappies) during Drop Rate week (Zus, Dorphons, Girtabulus) that gain 100% drop rate OR drop a generally solid item.
• Rare Enemy Week
  • The upside – A lot more Ignition Cloak chances.
  • The downside — If you are not ID Swapping Dorphon Ecclairs and Merissas, you are less likely to get desired items from both of these enemies.
  • Pazuzu also drops no items of interest, increasing the odds of getting their rare item instead of a PD.

Why choose this quest over VH / “just entering Ultimate” options:

1. Bluefull ID gives so much here that there are three (!) dedicated sections of advantages.
2. Can be done as early as level 40 if you have your mag + materials ready.
3. Very few items are needed for Forces to hard carry other players when the same character would be very dependent on others for clears.
4. Reset runs are incredibly easy even for party sizes 2-3.
5. The run only gets more rewarding the stronger you are when you run it.
   1. Running with Max MST: You can clear Desert easily
   2. Running at High Level: You can unseal items as you play and earn value.
   3. Running with V502, ES Hell, Demons: Can further trim time on the runs and remove problem enemies
   4. It is not uncommon to run parties with a balance of Demon and Hell that put it in close competition to RBR Ultimate quests of around 110-130XP a second, but with none of the difficulty of actually clearing Ultimate.
6. Some rare drops are actually just better to obtain here than their Ultimate counterparts due to the abundance of enemies, time to clear them, items surrounding the hunts, and ease of run
   1. Ex. (Photon Crystal, Ignition Cloak)
7. There are multiple drops that can be used for Trading to fund new characters
   1. Ex. A single Ignition Cloak or Select Cloak drop can help purchase mats + character mag.
8. ID Swap Quest: You can squeeze even more value out of rare enemies if desired.
   1. How to ID Swap: When the host of the quest drops, the ID of the quest changes to the second player that joined the game
   2. How it can be used: Have player 1 drop before the party defeats one of the below enemies for additional item checks:
      1. Rare Dorphon: Redria for “Heart of Diska of Liberator”
      2. Rare Marrisa: Skyly for “Heart of the Sigh of a God”
9. Party composition flexibility - Due to VH lacking Demon reduction and generally low EDK on crater enemies, almost anyone as any class can contribute with weapon specials here to support or replace FOs as a hard carry.
   1. 1 High level FO can carry up to Dorphons easily with any team.
   2. 2 High level FO can carry to full clear easily any team.
   3. Multiple lower level FO can all Gifoie stack to survive Dorphons
   4. Most Crater enemies are susceptible to Hell, even a single player running V501 / V502 can vastly speed up the run
   5. Demons is NOT reduced in VH --- Slicer of Fanatic, ES Demon weapons can eliminate most mini bosses in seconds.
   6. Divine Punishment attack minimum damage means you can do the run with this even as a Cast to help clean up lizard waves fairly swiftly.
   7. Paralysis special weapons are still great here for beginners as most enemies are affected by this / have a similar or lower tolerance than Ultimate counterparts.

MA4A vs MA4B vs MA4C vs MA4R in VH:

• All MA4 quests
  • Crater Interior: The same until you take a warp (post laser gate fence)
  • Desert: The same until you “pick a path” to spawn the next waves.
• MA4A
  • Semi-Hunter friendly spawns (low Zus, higher lizard counts).
  • Desert has very high Marissa count for Vjaya, but no Girtabulus (better for smaller groups / groups with no Demons, worse for stronger teams)
  • While crater is semi-easy clear solo and group, desert is an incredibly miserable full clear solo experience due to needing to cross back and forth over a pit room.
• MA4B
  • High Zu count can deter non FO groups.
  • High Goran Detonator / Zu count generally more useful for other IDs over Bluefull, but overall the least “annoying” to clear for tickets.
• MA4C
  • Higher density of drop value targets (Dorphons, Goran Detonators, Girtabulus).
  • More difficult to full clear for fresh teams or teams less than 4, but also more rewarding for more seasoned groups.
• MA4R
  • R is generally not preferred for focused hunts, it can be any combination of A/B/C on crater and desert.

Different Run Samples for MA4C:

• Reset when reaching Astarks:
  • Recommended when: Pure Ignition Cloak runs / low level, rapid XP
  • Rafoie every enemy except for Ba Bootas for speed purposes.
  • If playing groups: ES Hell Shot + V502 vs Rappies outspeeds FOnewman clears.
• Reset after clearing post-warp Astarks
  • Recommended when: Team can't survive Dorphons due to being undergeared and sub level 80 and/or has a drop on Astarks (ex. Yellowboze)
  • Can also spot check rappies after here for rare ones without needing to walk over to them with Addons.
• Reset after clearing Crater Interior:
  • Recommend when: Unsealing Solo / running only one FO with new players
  • Allows for Select Cloak / Dorphon Ecclair rare checks
  • If playing groups: One person can run ahead to begin clearing next wave for massive time save with ES Hell / Gifoie stacks. GiFoie stack as a group on Dorphons to potentially eliminate them before they can even attack.
• Full Clear:
  • Recommended when: Has 80% or more boost to Rafoie / running a full party with multiple FOs
  • Can be slow if you aren’t 3 shotting the gorans and lizards in solo play.
  • If playing groups: At least 1 player should bring Demons to speed up Girtabulu clears, although four forces using Grants is also okay enough to clear.

MA4C Appeals to Players:

1. MA4 Tickets: Completing a full run grants you up to 11 tickets that can be gambled for nice items like Girasole, 200K meseta, assorted materials, and even PDs
   1. See more info in the wiki here for handing them in here - https://wiki.pioneer2.net/w/To_The_Deepest_Blue_-MA4_Venue-
2. Area Patterns: Crater Interior is 3/3/3, Subterranean Desert is 4/4/4 with access to ALL weapon specials.
   1. Translation - Crater can roll up to 75% Hit with common weapons, Desert can roll up to 100% hit from common weapons. Many of these items are end-game worthy.
   2. Even with reduced chances of Hit% and Untek%, you get the benefit of mowing down hundreds of easier than Ult Forest enemies with potential Ult Tower level drops.
3. Materials: You are twice as likely to acquire Power materials over HP/Mind materials, but this run can give all three in both areas. Useful for topping off your stats as you play.
4. Armor / Shield Quality: The items that drop here are the same items you may see in Ultimate, in particular in Desert, and can net new players 100k+ meseta consistently every run. Huge boon to low level / low gear Forces to restock and/or mag feeding.
5. Unseal Alternative: It is very easy to do this run solo at high levels, hunt all of the below items, while also unsealing Limiters / Lame D’Argent as a FOnewman.

Bluefull’s Appeal to all Players:

1. Nearly every enemy drops something useful, which is a rare trait for any section ID in any area on any difficulty. How many times can you say you are playing a quest where a single area has 5 or more useful drops?
2. Photon Crystals (PCs): A useful currency the drops from 2 different enemies and both have better rates than their Ultimate counterpart (one of them even being more than twice as likely compared to Ult). It even drops from boxes!
3. Heavenly/Arms (H/Arms): A unit granting +25ATA and is considered best in slot (BiS) when it comes to leveling for ATP builds and most Ranger builds.
4. Ignition Cloak: +10% to all Fire Techs. A nice pick up to speed up runs as you play. Considered BiS in many tech based runs for FOs.
5. Vjaya: End game partisan with a chance to roll up to 100% hit, even in VH. Most valuable item if it rolls high, still a useful beat stick at lower level.

Bluefull’s Additional Appeals to Trade Heavy Players:

1. Select Cloak: +10% to Grants. Used in Divine Filter.
2. Congeal Cloak: +10% to all Ice Techs. Situationally useful in Ult / vs E4 bosses.
3. Caduseus: +20% to Grants. Needed for Mercurius Rod (+30% Grants), Divine Filter.
4. ID Swap Value: Bring Redria (Dorphons) or Skyly (Marissa) for player 2 to get their value drops while already swimming in Bluefull value!

Bluefull’s Additional Appeals to New Players:

1. Asuka: A Hunter twin sword weapon with high stats. It is a heavy combo kill tool you can wield that is frequently dropped to allow for Native/A.Beast/Dark weapon swapping as you play to optimize damage.
2. Rappy’s Beak: A key component for creating an easy to level Mind Mag. Allows you to quickly raise a mag to max level OR can be used for Divine Filter fodder.
3. Heaven Striker Coat: A key component for creating Striker Unit with a Garuda mag. Pair this mag with a Heaven Striker gun (Its stats don’t matter!) for easier E4 clears as any Ranger.
4. Cure/Confuse: While recommended to ID swap out any time you see a Dorphon Ecclair, the consolation prize is still decent vs. annoying enemies such as Sinows / Gi Gue / Dorphons for beginners.
5. Angry Fist: If this rolls with Machine %, can be used for Vol Opt stunlock strategies
   1. See the wiki for more details: https://wiki.pioneer2.net/w/Vol_Opt#First_form_damage_glitch
6. Magic Rock “Moola”: Can be used to create Summit Moon, useful for FOnewearls. Or alternatively gain early access to Aura Field if looking for armors with aesthetics.
7. Common weapons + Caduseus: You can find items that qualify for Claire’s Deal 5 as you play that may result in minor item upgrades.
   1. See the wiki for more detail https://wiki.pioneer2.net/w/Claire's_Deal_5

What are sample builds for Force here?

1. Poverty Build:
   1. Not recommended, as Tech Levels matter a lot here for cast speed and Tech Boosters matter a lot for raw damage.
2. Rafoie build:
   1. Recommended Tech Level: 29 for Rafoie, Rabarta, Gizonde. Grants min 20.
   2. Equipment: Fire Scepter: Agni, Rafoie Merge.
   3. Optional: V801
   4. Fire Tech Damage boosters are crucial to reducing the number of casts to clear a wave from 5->4->3, sometimes ->2 as you approach max MST.
   5. You can unequip Fire Scepter if you do need to cast anything else vs “needing” other weapons to function
   6. The following items are beginner traps to trade early for the quest - Ignition Cloak / Adept / Magical Piece / Psychowand .
      1. These items have niche value when playing solo, but in VH their effects may not even be noticeable when playing a full party.
      2. You can just back at the start of Desert + before handing in quest to sell armors / shields for Forces without Adept to afford Trifluids.

What are sample builds for Ranger here?

1. Poverty Build:
   1. Guilty Light - Can be used to shoot past blocking lizards to hit protected Zus.
   2. Any shotgun with Charge/Berserk, preferably 50H but not required if near max ATA.
   3. Slicer of Fanatic - Cheap demon procs against enemies, destroys Girtabulus. Does not need Hit to do well on VH (accuracy glitch also not mandatory).
2. MST Ranger Build:
   1. Items: H/Battle, enough accuracy boosters to use the weapon OR MST boosters if any free slots, Heaven Striker + Striker Unit (or Heaven Punisher + Divine Filter for the “luxury option”)
      1. Note: Rangers without Heaven Punisher+ Divine Filter can only do this during even beat.
   2. Does decent damage and makes solo manageable even at low level due to the base damage of the lasers, though it has mixed results at clears if paired with multiple FO.
3. V502 Build:
   1. Items: V502, ES Hell Shot, ES Demon Mechgun/Needle vs Girtabulu
   2. You can clear reset runs without ever needing any materials.

What are sample builds for Hunter here?

1. Poverty Build:
   1. Items: Whatever you can do to raise ATA, Asuka dropped in the run, Vulcans to handle stray Zus.
2. Mechgun Build:
   1. 50H Charge Vulcans, H/Armsx3, H/Battle.
   2. Can substitute 1 H/Arm for Smartlink at ATA cap for any Hunter build.
3. Slicer Build:
   1. H/Battle, H/Armsx3; Diska of Braveman, Slicer of Fanatic; Thirteen, ATP booster shields (Ex. Yata Mirror, Kasami Bracer, etc.)
   2. Still recommended to have Vulcans / Mechgun build options vs Zus.

What enemies to focus on as each class:

1. Force - Zus (if Grouped) > Dorphons > Merissas > Lizards > Bootas / Gorans / Rappies > Girtabulus > Goran Detonator, Astarks, Ba Bootas > Everything else
   1. Rafoie as higher levels can stunlock Zu spawns, rendering them unable to do anything to the party / skipping the need to even Gifoie to prevent dive bombs
   2. Encourage allies to finish off Ba Boota / Goran Detonators / Zus
   3. You can handle Girtabulu with Grants if no one has Demons
2. Ranger - Dorphons > Zus > Astarks > Ba Bootas > Goran Detonator > Merissa > Everything else.
   1. If running V502 - You can handle Rappies instead of the Forces
   2. If running Demons - You are expected to handle Girtabulu to speed up the run.
   3. If running Divine Punishment - Even Casts deal decent damage on VH here as a back-up clear for lizards for groups. Otherwise, it is better to position for the next wave and ignore lizard waves if they can be handled by FOs.
3. Hunter - Dorphons > Zus > Astarks > Ba Bootas > Goran Detonator > Merissa > Everything else.
   1. Make sure you have a ranged weapon to fight Zus.
   2. Do your best to pick off stragglers - your goal is to take down mini bosses and not worry about groups of enemies when playing with FOs.

 

[ProjectK777]

Thank you for this, it'll be handy to bear in mind when grinding!

 

[retract350]

This puts to words just how insanely strong the combination of this quest + the current blue VH drop charts are. It can't be overstated how much better this is for value over even 75%+ of ultimate quests. Especially TTF. Stop running TTF for the love of god people

 

[Varista]

This is a neatly detailed explanation of an off-shoot method for making PDs in trade channel.
Although, looking at the drop table that you proposed for Bluefull, it's just OK. Definitely not every enemy has a useful drop, there's a few enemies for episode 4 that are just bad drops on Bluefull.

What I got from all of this is that this method seems to be considered really good for farming 1-2 PD items en mass and then mass selling these really small and relatively un-useful components. As well constructed as this method thread is, I just don't see the appeal behind spending an equal amount of time farming for tiny 1-2 PD items as I would for a generally more useful upgrade from Ultimate.

Now perhaps the PD rate is generally better because of the lowered difficulty and I can understand why people would recommend that over trying to do something similar in Ultimate mode; perhaps this is primarily what this method is intended to do in the first place. Despite that, I still feel like this method is not something I would partake in personally on a regular basis and would only serve to kill time for me or do it if I was bored of Ultimate level grinds.

It's an interesting method for sure though, and good job on the thread it was a fun read.

 

[retract350]

This is a neatly detailed explanation of an off-shoot method for making PDs in trade channel.
Although, looking at the drop table that you proposed for Bluefull, it's just OK. Definitely not every enemy has a useful drop, there's a few enemies for episode 4 that are just bad drops on Bluefull.

What I got from all of this is that this method seems to be considered really good for farming 1-2 PD items en mass and then mass selling these really small and relatively un-useful components. As well constructed as this method thread is, I just don't see the appeal behind spending an equal amount of time farming for tiny 1-2 PD items as I would for a generally more useful upgrade from Ultimate.

Now perhaps the PD rate is generally better because of the lowered difficulty and I can understand why people would recommend that over trying to do something similar in Ultimate mode; perhaps this is primarily what this method is intended to do in the first place. Despite that, I still feel like this method is not something I would partake in personally on a regular basis and would only serve to kill time for me or do it if I was bored of Ultimate level grinds.

It's an interesting method for sure though, and good job on the thread it was a fun read.

I can speak to over 30 hours of runs of my own and vouch for what Ziggy has said. The value here exceeds even what was seen in CCC pre-drop removal. The drop charts are good enough that the value and consistency exceeds even rbr quests like sweep up 3 when in a good rotation. The idea isn't that it's going to get you end game gear - those hunts for lame, heaven striker, etc are miserable because the value along the way is usually around 1-2 pds per hour whereas this hunt give 4-5 pds per hour typically, PLUS all the other drops on the charts. Also, calling the drops "1-2 PD items" and "un-useful" components seems a bit off base when talking about items like vjaya, select cloak (filter item), or igni cloak (a FO staple), or H/Arms (something you always need more of).

 

[Varista]

I can speak to over 30 hours of runs of my own and vouch for what Ziggy has said. The value here exceeds even what was seen in CCC pre-drop removal. The drop charts are good enough that the value and consistency exceeds even rbr quests like sweep up 3 when in a good rotation. The idea isn't that it's going to get you end game gear - those hunts for lame, heaven striker, etc are miserable because the value along the way is usually around 1-2 pds per hour whereas this hunt give 4-5 pds per hour typically, PLUS all the other drops on the charts. Also, calling the drops "1-2 PD items" and "un-useful" components seems a bit off base when talking about items like vjaya, select cloak (filter item), or igni cloak (a FO staple), or H/Arms (something you always need more of).

I'll trust your personal data on this since I've never even bothered to run anything like this so I'll give it a try tomorrow and see how I like it.