Which items should I hunt and how do I hunt them?

[Wilhuf]

I've been playing PSO on and off since it came out on the GameCube, but I'll forever be a noob. I never managed to find many rare items or actually get good at the game. So I hope you guys can help me a bit.

I have a Purplenum RAmarl and plan on making a hunter too. I never had much interest in forces, although I do like being able to support my party with techniques. That's mainly why I created a RAmarl. I also often hear that they're the best solo characters. I do think I'll create a FO at some point when I need another section ID.

My main question is which items are good for a RAmarl and for a hunter and how do I get them? Which hunter class should I go with and which section ID should I give it? Any advice on using the items to their maximum potential is greatly appreciated too.

Current ideas for items:

Green means I acquired the item and I'm happy with it.
Yellow means I have one, but it doesn't have (enough) hit or there some other problem.
Items in red are for later on because they're hard to get or not that important.

RAmarl (Purplenum)
Weapons

• Charge vulcan (50 hit, gift from CHRISTINA, thanks!)
• Hell raygun/laser (0 hit)
• Frozen shooter
• Spread needle (0 hit)
• Heaven striker
• Bringer's rifle (Bringer's right arm)
• Yasminkov 9000m
• Last swan

Amor

• Lieutenant mantle
• Aura field

Shields

• Ranger wall
• Red ring

Units

• V101
• V502
• Cure/Paralysis
• Cure/Shock
• Cure/Freeze
• Adept (need to unseal limiter)

HUcast (Probably Skyly)
Weapons

• Charge calibur
• Diska of braveman
• Red sword
• Excalibur (Lame d'Argent)
• Jizai (Guren + Shouren)
• Master raven

Armor

• Thirteen
• Blue Odoshi Violet Nimaidou

Shield

• Red ring

Units

• V101 (have to share with RAmarl)
• V502 (have to share with RAmarl)
• Cure/Shock
• Cure/Freeze
• Smartlink

FOnewm (ID TBD)
Weapons
Armor
Shield
Units

• V101 (have to share with RAmarl)
• V801

Hunt Optimization
I'm also working on a spreadsheet to help me optimize my hunts.

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...pzpsWlwOpW0kjFnC6Ls7fDMQo/edit#gid=1261148380

This spreadsheet has a table of hunting "methods", with each row having a method with the amount of specific monsters killed and the time it takes to do it. Examples of a method are a quest or a run-through of forest 1.

Now, it's not hard to figure out which methods are best to get a specific item. You just pick the method that gives you the highest expected value per hour based on the monsters killed, drop rate and time it takes to complete one round of the method (say one run of Forest of Sorrow). The formula is: amount_of_monster * drop_rate / time_in_hours (this the expected value per hour, not the probability of getting the item in 1 hour of doing the method, please correct me if any of you actually now anything about statistics).

But it gets a little harder when you want to minimize the time it will take you to hunt several items. I recently figured out that this is a linear optimization problem. Luckily Google Spreadsheets has a linear optimizer, which I'm using to figure out the best combination of methods to find a specific list of items.

To give you an example of how this can save time, imagine the following 3 methods exist:
- method A has 10 boomas and 5 goboomas
- method B has 5 boomas and 10 goboomas
- method C has 8 boomas and 8 goboomas
All methods take 10 minutes to complete. It's obvious that method A is best for getting the booma drop and B is best for getting the gobooma drop. But if you want both drops, you're better off doing method C, as you'll kill slightly more monsters per hour. That's what I'm trying to figure out automatically for any list of items I might want.

But of course, for this to work well, I need to know which methods exist and how fast I can do them. Right now my spreadsheet only contains full quest run-throughs as I could easily scrape those from PSO-world. So please tell me which methods you use to hunt items and how long they take you.

Thanks for taking the time to read all this.

 

[Ayria]

Good luck.

Accurate monster / wave counts are usually hard to come by unless you take the time to make them yourself. If you want to optimise so heavily you'll need to take into account how long it takes *you* to complete the run or find a group able to.

Eg. I'd recommend Mericarols for Heaven's Punisher instead of Hildetorrs - but Forest is slightly more accessible than ep2 when starting out and Tyrells Ego is about as popular as TTF.

Just to warn you rates on this server fluctuate wildly depending on the drop anything rate (DAR), rare drop rate (RDR) and rare spawn boosts active in your game. These vary due to the number of people in your party, seasonal events, daily fortunes, weekly milestones and monthly hunters boost road (HBR). What may be optimal one week may not be the next.

There are resources on the forum that should help to answer some of your questions at least.

Item Suggestions
"Best" Items for Each Class

Monster Counts
Monster Finding Guide [WIP]
Girth's Quests Enemy Counts

Section ID advice
The Definitive Section ID topic (for Ephinea!)

 

[Wilhuf]

Good luck.

Thank you.

Accurate monster / wave counts are usually hard to come by unless you take the time to make them yourself.

For quests, those numbers can be extracted from quest files used by the server. For regular (partial) run throughs of areas an average amount should be obtainable from the Tethealla source code or maybe one of the developers can give me those numbers easily?

If you want to optimise so heavily you'll need to take into account how long it takes *you* to complete the run or find a group able to.

Oh absolutely, but it would be nice to know what other people can achieve with the right tactics and gear. For example TTF in vhard takes me over 30 minutes solo, but it can be done much faster with higher levels, better gear or more people.

Just to warn you rates on this server fluctuate wildly depending on the drop anything rate (DAR), rare drop rate (RDR) and rare spawn boosts active in your game. These vary due to the number of people in your party, seasonal events, daily fortunes, weekly milestones and monthly hunters boost road (HBR). What may be optimal one week may not be the next.

That indeed complicates things. What is the drop anything rate exactly?

And thanks for the list of threads, I'll look through them. I actually read some of them already and I already have ideas about which items to get. I added the list to my original post. But I'd like to know which items are most useful and how to use them effectively.
For example, I know that hell's is good in episode II. Frozen shooter should only be used on hard to kill monsters. But I have no idea how import a good shield is for example.

 

[fishhao]

As a RAnger, I think the first few weapons that you should try to get are:
Frozen Shooter (Tyrells Ego is a nice quest with around 50 hildelts, don't forget your cure/shock)
Spread Needle (Apparently Endless Nightmare 4 is a good choice for this quest, forgot the Merlan count though)
Charge/Berserk/Spirit Arms with 50h+
Charge Vulcan 50h+

They're generally weapons that you use in pretty much any quest/hunt and will make hunting the other things a lot easier without getting rushed by monsters. Most of the other weapons you have listed are things you can get in any order depending on what hunt you want to make easier (e.g. if you want to hunt things in Tower, a Bringers Rifle could come in real handy). You also may want to save up PD's for an S-rank weapon, especially needles if you're gonna use RAmarl a lot (Hell, Demon, Berserk, Arrest are all nice choices). As a RAmarl, you might also want to try out Clio so that you can Zalure enemies from a very safe distance before going in to kill them.

Armor is up to you really, whether you want high defense or resists, or if you want convenience via trap vision from Lieutenant Mantle. You can hunt several pieces of armor for different episodes/quests.

For shields, you might want to get Rangers Wall as RAmarl, and you will probably use that the most until lvl 180 where you can use Red Ring. Another shield that is highly valued is the Anti-Dark Ring (Reward for beating Tyrells Ego in less than an hour and killing all spawns) for quests with many Megid spewing turrets/lilies.

And good luck hunting

 

[Melirei]

Thank you.

For quests, those numbers can be extracted from quest files used by the server. For regular (partial) run throughs of areas an average amount should be obtainable from the Tethealla source code or maybe one of the developers can give me those numbers easily?

Monster count can be obtained from the quest files, and from what I heard it's faster to do so than playing the actual quest to figure out. Since enemy waves are fixed except for episode 1 Challenge Mode, what I would do is just compare each of the suggested hunt (from the Monster Hunting Guide (WIP)) qualitatively. Quantitative analysis would be really difficult since there's too many factors, such as player skill, character stats and equipment, and party composition. The list from the guide is not comprehensive, so you should be on the look out for more suggestions from players.

 

[Ayria]

That indeed complicates things. What is the drop anything rate exactly?

The chance for an enemy to drop anything.

Combined with the rare drop rate you have the overall chance for a rare drop as displayed on the chart. DAR for each enemy and RDR for each item should be listed there too.

Modifiers displayed in game using /partyinfo (e.g. drop anything rate : 89% rare drop rate: 103%) apply to these values so you'll need to do a quick calculation to work out your actual chance of getting any particular rare. (I do believe there is a breakdown for standard 1 - 4 player groups, but it doesn't account for luck, milestones or events)

 

[Ayria]

You should also read this.

Colette's general PSO:BB guide.

I won't lie, after coming back to this game after 10 years or so there have been a few things I've had to learn in the past couple of months.

Sadly several players on this server believe such knowledge is innate and not learned. When combined with the poor documentation provided by Sega means it can be rough when starting out.

Give it a few months and you'll pick up spawns, weapon choices, resistances, how to control mobs, DMC and all the other acronyms the 'elite' crow on about - but the above and most guides in that section are decent primers if your curious.

 

[GHOSTS]

HUNT EVERYTHING

 

[anime]

If you plan to play EP4 on RAmarl you'll need either a Hit Charge Gungnir/S-Beats blade or an Excalibur

Finding the best rates should be pretty straightforward. I list a lot of optimal hunts in my Section ID guide in my signature!

 

[Spuz]

HP from Sinow zele.

 

[Wilhuf]

HUNT EVERYTHING

Thank you, this thread can now be closed.

If you plan to play EP4 on RAmarl you'll need either a Hit Charge Gungnir/S-Beats blade or an Excalibur

Finding the best rates should be pretty straightforward. I list a lot of optimal hunts in my Section ID guide in my signature!

I think I actually have 2 s-beats arms, just need to convert them. And I'll definitely take a look at your guide, thanks.
Edit: I just realized I've read most of your guide and it helped me decide to make a Purplenum character.

HP from Sinow zele.

All other hunts are for pussies with a life.

 

[Spuz]

All other hunts are for pussies with a life.

PSO > life

 

[Wilhuf]

The logic in the spreadsheet I was working on is mostly done. Now I need to add more quests and timings. I thought I'd share what I have so far, in hopes of getting feedback and possibly generating some interest. If this sort of thing is helpful to anyone else I could create a more user-friendly Google Spreadsheet that people can copy and use for themselves.

In the screenshot below you can see a list of items I want and then a table with the methods that will get me those items in the most time efficient way possible. A method is usually a quest done with a specific section ID. The only problem is that the timings aren't that great yet (I'm using 30 minutes as a default when I don't know how long a quest takes), so my analysis isn't accurate yet.



Some interesting things to note:

• I only need to use 14 methods (and only 9 different quests) to get 16 different items
• The first two greenill entries can also be done with purplenum
• I'll get 4 smartlinks
• I'd need 8 different section IDs
• But I can throw out redria and whitill, it won't hurt my efficiency much
• I only need skyly for BOVN/lame, whitill or yellowboze for V502/lame, viridia for limiter, oran for aura field and greenill or whitill for V101
• It will take me 321 quest runs (on average)
• This analysis assumes I don't care about hit % on weapons (this might be a big flaw?)

So anime is entirely correct when he says purplenum is a tier 1 RA ID. I'm going to keep going with my purplenum RAmarl and think a bit about which ID should be my second.

Are there things that stand out? Are there quests on this list that make no sense or others that should definitely be on there?

 

[Sillen]

I would be interested in this speedsheet.
By the way Cent/Ability is possible to get from Black Paper Deal 2:
On VH it's 17 items in total and you get 2 items each run, of course you will need some photon crystals for this

 

[Eva]

It looks like you've got a pretty good handle on how to optimize. Take a look at which ids are super common here in the leaderboards and see if you can prune out a few more ids based on which id games you can probably just join (ie, there's always people hunting v101, so there's no real need to make an ID just for that). Ditto for red ring. Ditto for making an oran for aura field, since you can just hunt spirit garment and moola on purple, then convert that to aura field. There's some value to having a character for everything, but there's less efficiency there too. Obviously you should always be leveling multiple mags as well. You can pick up tablets and rappy beaks at the coren npc near the shop to speed the process (1000 meseta gamble). If you pay attention to the tables on each day listen on the ephinea drop charts, that's actually a great way to get g/pow,g/arm, etc for almost nothing.

As far as the timing goes for quests, TTF should be more like 15-20 in even a half-decent group. Half MA4 runs should be considered for v101/801/smartlink/HS/excal, and will run about 15 minutes each. Building on that, have you considered quitting quests early or running solo mode quests? For example, you could run TTF up to the dragon in ~3 minutes and get 4 hildes for FS and the boss kill for xp, or do forest of sorrow in like ~8 minutes and get 15ish hildes if i remember correctly, and they have lower stats in single. Here's a link to a list that takes both of those options into consideration.

As far as upgrading your gear goes from the other thread, i would say upgrading your shot should be the first thing to do. You want either 50h charge or 50h zerk (you'll die a lot, but youll get better fast, and no meseta required) for group play. You can run restless lion for these if you're set on finding them, as that quest will give weapons with 50 in three stats, sometimes including hit, and the specials are only of the highest level. You'll also find useful stuff like 50h c vulcs, arrest rayguns, charge gungnirs for ep 4, hell rayguns, etc. If you're feeling lazy, you could just pipe the shop until some 50h stuff shows up. From there, I'd just prioritize hunts by what's going to help the most characters at the same time. V101 sits at the top of the list. v801 is up there too.

I would also say take yet another look at Anime's guide as to which character should be each id. I would highly, highly recommend rolling a force (or forces, i have three for this, and I'd say Fonewm is the best choice for solo, period) for episode 4. You can easily solo all of subt desert, and running the first few rooms of MA4A then quitting is probably the best hunt in the game for many, many items (like hs, SoF, girasole, tyrells parasol, and on and on).

If you want to get into which items on your list aren't worth getting (and if you don't, I apologize), or at the very least are towards the back end of the pack, I would point to cannon rouge and BOVN. The rouge is actually pretty bad on worm, since he doesn't take damage until his armor his off. This means using an excal to break through a few parts faster is the better way to go. It does have its uses though, like landing dragon, and it's fun. Probably not worth hunting til later on, and certainly not worth an id. I'd be even less inclined to hunt BOVN. You're going to be using a v101 most likely for all the other weapons youll use, so the 40% attack speed buff is worthless, as it doesn't stack. So it boils down to getting 10 ata while using a few katanas, which are cool, but niche items. Compare that to using thirteen, which boosts ata for diska of braveman by 30, and increases atp by ~80, which is capable of hitting four enemies at once for twice the damage of a hard attack. And you can glitch it to vastly increase its effective atp, somewhat negating hucast's miserable ata. Let me or others know if you need some info on how to do that. I would also argue that limiter is back towards the end of the pack, even though it's best in slot for some classes. It's a minor upgrade over most units, and just takes too much time early on to both find and unseal. Better off hunting larger upgrades first.

 

[Melirei]

The logic in the spreadsheet I was working on is mostly done. Now I need to add more quests and timings. I thought I'd share what I have so far, in hopes of getting feedback and possibly generating some interest. If this sort of thing is helpful to anyone else I could create a more user-friendly Google Spreadsheet that people can copy and use for themselves.

In the screenshot below you can see a list of items I want and then a table with the methods that will get me those items in the most time efficient way possible. A method is usually a quest done with a specific section ID. The only problem is that the timings aren't that great yet (I'm using 30 minutes as a default when I don't know how long a quest takes), so my analysis isn't accurate yet.

View attachment 2275

Some interesting things to note:

• I only need to use 14 methods (and only 9 different quests) to get 16 different items
• The first two greenill entries can also be done with purplenum
• I'll get 4 smartlinks
• I'd need 8 different section IDs
• But I can throw out redria and whitill, it won't hurt my efficiency much
• I only need skyly for BOVN/lame, whitill or yellowboze for V502/lame, viridia for limiter, oran for aura field and greenill or whitill for V101
• It will take me 321 quest runs (on average)
• This analysis assumes I don't care about hit % on weapons (this might be a big flaw?)

So anime is entirely correct when he says purplenum is a tier 1 RA ID. I'm going to keep going with my purplenum RAmarl and think a bit about which ID should be my second.

Are there things that stand out? Are there quests on this list that make no sense or others that should definitely be on there?

How long the quests take would make a huge difference, as well as whether you need a party. You would also do the quest a lot faster once you have obtained good gear from other hunts; before then quests are finished considerably slower. In a party there would be a DAR penalty which should be considered, also the quest will be finished faster.

Stats matter a lot for for Hunter weapons, but is mostly fine for most of the listed Ranger weapons since they're usable without hit. Optimally you want hit on many of them though, and good %s on any of them used for damage.

About if odd quests are included,

• MA3 is a quest with a 30 min timer; takes a while on Normal with a bad team. I think it would require a good team to complete on Ultimate, though personally I haven't seen anyone play that on Ultimate.
• Ice Spinner is kind of long as it requires you to go through the entire Caves. The enemies are kind of easy which helps. Some people here probably knows how long it takes since it's featured in HBR right now. I think this quest also require a partner to solve puzzles with. This is an okay hunting quest as it does have okay monster count.
• 9-8 takes 40~50 minutes or something, from what I heard a long time ago. Don't quote me on this.

Also, the analysis you have done is on your current item list. Until you have more experiences with the game however, it's hard to say if you'll change your mind and adopt a different play-style later. I think you might want to be prepared to do the analysis again eventually.

Here are my suggestions on good items for Hunters and Rangers (that I finally wrote). While I may criticize some items, they are not necessarily bad, just that if I were to start anew I would skip or postpone getting them. For your first run through you might find it more enjoyable to get them regardless.

Spoiler: Wall of Text

• I find Spread Needle inferior to S-Rank Needles in the majority of situations. People who are good at Ep2 Challenge Mode would go for S-Rank Needles and skip Spread Needle completely early on. On the other hand for inexperienced players, Spread Needle is considerably cheaper to obtain and could probably help ease the difficulties of early Ultimate. If you're using an android ranger, they could use hit Spread Needles as an alternative to Arrest S-Rank Needle, but as RAmarl, once you're strong enough I would eventually stop using it.
• Centurion/Ability is not an essential unit. While it is helpful while low leveled and you want extra stats to equip some weapon early or to max ATP earlier, once you've gotten decent offensive stats, stat units don't really do much compared to utility units, and doing character plans with them included is not recommended.
• I would hunt for /Arms unit instead, were I to get units to help getting started in Ultimate. Those are very economic in terms of Mag levels, which means you could get higher ATP/ATA earlier. God/Arm is an relatively easy drop from Redria VH while Heavenly/Arms is quite rare. Eventually you would stop using them, but that takes a while.
• Adept is a convenient unit which eases your TP usage and has all around boosts, but unless you're using Spirit or your class is too hard to max without it (like FOnewearl), they can be sacrificed for free slot for other things. Adept also adds a lot of ATA like /Arms unit, can be treated like a pseudo Heavenly/Arms with benefits if you were lucky to get one early on.
• To add enough hit% to Bringer's Rifle requires quite a lot of Photon Crystals. Before then, I recommend to just use a high hit Demon's Laser. You might be like me who never got enough Crystals for it and use a Demon's Laser forever.
• Yasminkov 9000M is for long range damage dealing, for picking off dangerous enemies in Towers or attacking faraway Falz. It's great for the situation but don't have much use otherwise.
• Cannon Rouge is for attacking bosses while they're flying or swimming and other weapons cannot reach. It's definitely handy for Gal Gryphon, but for other bosses, they're either not that difficult or can be killed without it often. Dal Ra Lie for example, in a full party, often dies in its first latch to the raft. Boss killers will definitely come in handy when the party cannot finish off the bosses quickly, like when you're soloing. There are alternative boss killing weapons too, though most are much more expensive.
• BOVN is good, but other armors are worthwhile as well, like Thirteen. Here we have a trade-off of one extra unit slot vs 30 ATA and ATP boost on DoB from Thirteen, or 35 ATP from D-Parts, or EDK from Dress Plate (male only), et cetera.
• You might want to use sacrificial sword/partisans on Hunter. The rare ones are great, and are often dream wants for Hunters, but even a Charge Calibur is good. With good Shifta support, Charge Calibur out-damages Red Sword on moderate EVP enemies and almost all enemies have moderate EVP when frozen. Hit Red Swords are "generally powerful" as they don't have ATA problems like stronger swords do, but as you get more experience with the game you might lean toward other swords.
• Tsumikiri J-Sword is another alternative; very, very hard to obtain, and even harder to obtain with hit, which means it will likely have lower ATA than hit Red Swords. It is however much stronger than Red Sword as long as it can hit, especially when sphered. It also have another use in terms of its special, and some people hunt this for using the special alone. This is the dream want for many veteran players.
• If you use HUmar or HUnewearl, Slicer of Fanatic can come in handy.
• Diska of Braveman is the strongest damage slicer, but Berserk can be risky depends on skill, spawn, and party composition. Charge Diska is an alternative for when it's hard to use DoB.
• Charge Vulcan is also recommended for Hunters.
• Charge Raygun/Last Swan is good for cleaning up and dealing damage at range for Hunters. Last Swan is female only.
• Hunter and Ranger's arsenal are not complete without S-Ranks. The ability to instant kill a group of low EDK enemies with Hell S-Rank J-Cutter (Hunter), Hell S-Rank Needle, Hell S-Rank Shot (Ranger), Arrest a whole group with Arrest S-Rank J-Cutter (cast Hunters mostly), Arrest S-Rank Needle (Ranger), or threaten a whole group with Demon's S-Rank Needle (Human Rangers), totally diminish a single enemy HP pool with Demon's S-Rank Mechgun (Human/Newman, especially Rangers) are in some ways broken. There are many more good S-Ranks. They are very expensive though, and requires grinding rather than hunting.
• For single targets, Hell/Arrest/Demon's Raygun/Laser with high hit are preferred.
• (Power) Materials is another thing you grind for, getting high (ATP) stats is especially important for Hunters/Rangers in early Ultimate, and is arguably more important than many of the listed items early on.
• There are many things I left out since they get more and more specific in use, are hard to obtain with good enough stats, or are involved in esoteric strategies, which I hope you'll gradually learn about.

If you want to get into which items on your list aren't worth getting (and if you don't, I apologize), or at the very least are towards the back end of the pack, I would point to cannon rouge and BOVN. The rouge is actually pretty bad on worm, since he doesn't take damage until his armor his off. This means using an excal to break through a few parts faster is the better way to go. It does have its uses though, like landing dragon, and it's fun. Probably not worth hunting til later on, and certainly not worth an id. I'd be even less inclined to hunt BOVN. You're going to be using a v101 most likely for all the other weapons youll use, so the 40% attack speed buff is worthless, as it doesn't stack. So it boils down to getting 10 ata while using a few katanas, which are cool, but niche items. Compare that to using thirteen, which boosts ata for diska of braveman by 30, and increases atp by ~80, which is capable of hitting four enemies at once for twice the damage of a hard attack. And you can glitch it to vastly increase its effective atp, somewhat negating hucast's miserable ata. Let me or others know if you need some info on how to do that. I would also argue that limiter is back towards the end of the pack, even though it's best in slot for some classes. It's a minor upgrade over most units, and just takes too much time early on to both find and unseal. Better off hunting larger upgrades first.

Cannon Rouge's usage on worms is its ability to attack worms while they're swimming; in DRL's case since it latch onto the raft almost immediately it's better to attack with stronger multitarget weapon as you said, and usually it dies. If DRL survived and goes back to swimming, CR becomes a decent damage option until it latches again.

For BOVN's case, the attack speed boost is not limited to certain group of weapons as far I know, which means using BOVN gets you another open slot for not having to use a /battle unit. It is still true that Thirteen/DoB is so powerful that you might want to use that instead.

 

[Wilhuf]

I would be interested in this speedsheet.

I have to clean some things up, and then I'll share it.

By the way Cent/Ability is possible to get from Black Paper Deal 2

That might be a good way to get it, but I have no idea about the value of photon crystals.

Obviously you should always be leveling multiple mags as well. You can pick up tablets and rappy beaks at the coren npc near the shop to speed the process (1000 meseta gamble). If you pay attention to the tables on each day listen on the ephinea drop charts, that's actually a great way to get g/pow,g/arm, etc for almost nothing.

I looked up some info about cell mags, that's a really good tip. And those god units are good until I get something better?

As far as the timing goes for quests, TTF should be more like 15-20 in even a half-decent group. Half MA4 runs should be considered for v101/801/smartlink/HS/excal, and will run about 15 minutes each. Building on that, have you considered quitting quests early or running solo mode quests? For example, you could run TTF up to the dragon in ~3 minutes and get 4 hildes for FS and the boss kill for xp, or do forest of sorrow in like ~8 minutes and get 15ish hildes if i remember correctly, and they have lower stats in single. Here's a link to a list that takes both of those options into consideration.

All the single player quests are in there. But, for example, FoS had the default 30 minute timing. I changed it to 8 minutes and ran the optimization script again and it's on the list now. I would also like to add partial quests, but I'd have to get partial enemy counts for those quests. The QEdit program might help me with that.

As for the rest of your post, the advice is greatly appreciated! I've already removed cannon rouge from the list and removed some more items from my optimization spreadsheet (the ones now marked in red). I guess I'll also have to learn how to FO at one point to get many of the items I want.

How long the quests take would make a huge difference, as well as whether you need a party. You would also do the quest a lot faster once you have obtained good gear from other hunts; before then quests are finished considerably slower. In a party there would be a DAR penalty which should be considered, also the quest will be finished faster.

Stats matter a lot for for Hunter weapons, but is mostly fine for most of the listed Ranger weapons since they're usable without hit. Optimally you want hit on many of them though, and good %s on any of them used for damage.

All of that is true, will take a while before I have accurate timings and of course they'll change over time.

About if odd quests are included,

• MA3 is a quest with a 30 min timer; takes a while on Normal with a bad team. I think it would require a good team to complete on Ultimate, though personally I haven't seen anyone play that on Ultimate.
• Ice Spinner is kind of long as it requires you to go through the entire Caves. The enemies are kind of easy which helps. Some people here probably knows how long it takes since it's featured in HBR right now. I think this quest also require a partner to solve puzzles with. This is an okay hunting quest as it does have okay monster count.
• 9-8 takes 40~50 minutes or something, from what I heard a long time ago. Don't quote me on this.

Also, the analysis you have done is on your current item list. Until you have more experiences with the game however, it's hard to say if you'll change your mind and adopt a different play-style later. I think you might want to be prepared to do the analysis again eventually.

I'll remove MA3 from the list of possibilities. And it's no problem to do the analysis again, I just have to click a button after tweaking some values in a table and it spews out the result seen in the screenshot. The idea is to constantly improve.

Spoiler: Wall of Text

• I find Spread Needle inferior to S-Rank Needles in the majority of situations. People who are good at Ep2 Challenge Mode would go for S-Rank Needles and skip Spread Needle completely early on. On the other hand for inexperienced players, Spread Needle is considerably cheaper to obtain and could probably help ease the difficulties of early Ultimate. If you're using an android ranger, they could use hit Spread Needles as an alternative to Arrest S-Rank Needle, but as RAmarl, once you're strong enough I would eventually stop using it.
• Centurion/Ability is not an essential unit. While it is helpful while low leveled and you want extra stats to equip some weapon early or to max ATP earlier, once you've gotten decent offensive stats, stat units don't really do much compared to utility units, and doing character plans with them included is not recommended.
• I would hunt for /Arms unit instead, were I to get units to help getting started in Ultimate. Those are very economic in terms of Mag levels, which means you could get higher ATP/ATA earlier. God/Arm is an relatively easy drop from Redria VH while Heavenly/Arms is quite rare. Eventually you would stop using them, but that takes a while.
• Adept is a convenient unit which eases your TP usage and has all around boosts, but unless you're using Spirit or your class is too hard to max without it (like FOnewearl), they can be sacrificed for free slot for other things. Adept also adds a lot of ATA like /Arms unit, can be treated like a pseudo Heavenly/Arms with benefits if you were lucky to get one early on.
• To add enough hit% to Bringer's Rifle requires quite a lot of Photon Crystals. Before then, I recommend to just use a high hit Demon's Laser. You might be like me who never got enough Crystals for it and use a Demon's Laser forever.
• Yasminkov 9000M is for long range damage dealing, for picking off dangerous enemies in Towers or attacking faraway Falz. It's great for the situation but don't have much use otherwise.
• Cannon Rouge is for attacking bosses while they're flying or swimming and other weapons cannot reach. It's definitely handy for Gal Gryphon, but for other bosses, they're either not that difficult or can be killed without it often. Dal Ra Lie for example, in a full party, often dies in its first latch to the raft. Boss killers will definitely come in handy when the party cannot finish off the bosses quickly, like when you're soloing. There are alternative boss killing weapons too, though most are much more expensive.
• BOVN is good, but other armors are worthwhile as well, like Thirteen. Here we have a trade-off of one extra unit slot vs 30 ATA and ATP boost on DoB from Thirteen, or 35 ATP from D-Parts, or EDK from Dress Plate (male only), et cetera.
• You might want to use sacrificial sword/partisans on Hunter. The rare ones are great, and are often dream wants for Hunters, but even a Charge Calibur is good. With good Shifta support, Charge Calibur out-damages Red Sword on moderate EVP enemies and almost all enemies have moderate EVP when frozen. Hit Red Swords are "generally powerful" as they don't have ATA problems like stronger swords do, but as you get more experience with the game you might lean toward other swords.
• Tsumikiri J-Sword is another alternative; very, very hard to obtain, and even harder to obtain with hit, which means it will likely have lower ATA than hit Red Swords. It is however much stronger than Red Sword as long as it can hit, especially when sphered. It also have another use in terms of its special, and some people hunt this for using the special alone. This is the dream want for many veteran players.
• If you use HUmar or HUnewearl, Slicer of Fanatic can come in handy.
• Diska of Braveman is the strongest damage slicer, but Berserk can be risky depends on skill, spawn, and party composition. Charge Diska is an alternative for when it's hard to use DoB.
• Charge Vulcan is also recommended for Hunters.
• Charge Raygun/Last Swan is good for cleaning up and dealing damage at range for Hunters. Last Swan is female only.
• Hunter and Ranger's arsenal are not complete without S-Ranks. The ability to instant kill a group of low EDK enemies with Hell S-Rank J-Cutter (Hunter), Hell S-Rank Needle, Hell S-Rank Shot (Ranger), Arrest a whole group with Arrest S-Rank J-Cutter (cast Hunters mostly), Arrest S-Rank Needle (Ranger), or threaten a whole group with Demon's S-Rank Needle (Human Rangers), totally diminish a single enemy HP pool with Demon's S-Rank Mechgun (Human/Newman, especially Rangers) are in some ways broken. There are many more good S-Ranks. They are very expensive though, and requires grinding rather than hunting.
• For single targets, Hell/Arrest/Demon's Raygun/Laser with high hit are preferred.
• (Power) Materials is another thing you grind for, getting high (ATP) stats is especially important for Hunters/Rangers in early Ultimate, and is arguably more important than many of the listed items early on.
• There are many things I left out since they get more and more specific in use, are hard to obtain with good enough stats, or are involved in esoteric strategies, which I hope you'll gradually learn about.

About the Centurion/Ability, that might be a good call. I've replaced it with Heavenly/Arms and the resulting analysis is already simpler.

As for materials, I'm working towards this plan at the moment: http://www.geocities.jp/psobb2007/s...1&mind=127&lck=23&shield=27&unit1=49&unit2=4e
Or are you suggesting I should go all out on power materials and reset later?

I don't understand why Last Swan is any good, if you look at the stats, even varista seems better. And the lord special doesn't seem useful.

S-rank weapons is also something I need to look into, it's not entirely clear to me how challenge mode rewards work and how you add specials to them.

So much information to digest. But I've already made a few more changes to my list of items based on your advice, thank you!

 

[Eva]

I looked up some info about cell mags, that's a really good tip. And those god units are good until I get something better?

yep. as meli said, g/arm will be more helpful than anything else, as ata is the largest barrier early on in ult and those points are hard to come by

 

[Sillen]

I don't understand why Last Swan is any good, if you look at the stats, even varista seems better. And the lord special doesn't seem useful.

Last Swan fires like a handgun but shot three shots each time like a mechgun.

 

[Wilhuf]

Ok, that makes it ridiculously good in my book. Will have to add it to my list.

In other news, I've cleaned up my spreadsheet a bit, it's pretty usable now:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...pzpsWlwOpW0kjFnC6Ls7fDMQo/edit#gid=1261148380

Please take a look and let me now what you think.