Fun game is fun! Almost nothing has changed with regards to the factors that made me drop Epic Seven last time (gearing, insufficient PVE content, gearing, gearing). Nevertheless, I got my second wind for more grinding, grinding, grinding and was able to get some good equipment and use more of my party members in a variety of content. It helps that I finally have a clearer idea of what gear to keep and what to trash, so I’m doing pretty well.

Gear I keep:

•Anything with speed of 4 or higher on it and at least one other desirable stat.

•Anything with two or more of these: Attack percentage, Critical Hit Chance, Critical damage percentage AND high starting rolls in at least one of these stats, e.g. 6%-8% for Attack%, 4%-6% for Crit Chance and 6%-8% for Crit damage, etc.

Keep doesn’t mean guard it for life, it just means I try rolling on them till +6 or +9 to see if they turn out any good. If they’re so-so, they can go on other characters I’m not seriously planning to use – ultimately it’s good to have at least 9 strong characters in every element for World Boss and stuff.

Also I’m a little more lenient with my requirements for right-side gear (necklace, rings, boots) than for left-side gear (weapon, armor, helmet) because the former is much harder to get. Some of my less important characters are still rocking ATK% boots and other weird things because I just don’t have enough speed boots to spare.

The gear I trash:

•Every purple and red (Heroic and Epic) piece outside these.

•Level 51, 65, 70, 71 etc. gear. Anything under 78.

•Any blue, green or grey equipment.

•Necklaces, rings and boots with flat main stats except Speed.

Trash doesn’t mean throw the piece away. Usually I extract the level 85+ stuff for cores or use it to craft charms (until that option was recently removed). Lower level stuff I usually use it as fodder or sell. It’s pretty satisfying to clear out non-optimum stuff and keep only the gear that sparks joy. I’m the kind of person that gets antsy when I have unread mail or unchecked notifications, so doing a Marie Kondo on my inventory from time to time is very carthartic.

To explain further, Rage Set is usually used on DPS. Pure attackers, so I really wanted ATK% instead of that Effectiveness. I could replace the Effectiveness but I will lose a lot of stats. The other rolls are also very low for +15 gear. Basically I just threw skystones away. Don’t be like me.

Wait, what about health, defense, etc?

Those will naturally appear as “undesired” substats with high rolls as you are rolling for the gear you want. It’s the law of the “desire sensor.” If you get a nice piece of gear with Atk%, Spd, Crit% and Eff. Res, naturally it will all roll into Eff. Res. just to spite you. Yes, you in particular.

Same with Health% Def% Effectivenes etc. Then I mod out one or two other things and put them on my tanks/healers and presto! Just save a few HP% necklaces and rings and you’re okay. I mean in practice it’s not that easy because the game will mess with you as soon as it detects what you’re looking for, haha.

But actually the game gives out enough HP set gear for all of your soulweavers and some of your Knights to have two pieces each, so it’s not really an issue. In fact, my Roana, Destina and Angelica are all rocking full HP gear without breaking a sweat. Also I was dumb when I started out and farmed a lot of Golem because I thought HP and ATK sets were bound to be useful.

And you know, they’re not that terrible. The important thing in Epic Seven is achieving the final stat goals you set for a character. If you want Knight A to have 2000 DEF and 30,000 HP and you have to put on DEF/HP sets to get that, then don’t listen to what anyone says. You can’t entirely ignore useful effects like Rage/Destruction but there’s still plenty of room to play around with various 2-piece sets.

The gear I craft:

For regular crafting, the general advice is to stick to left-side gear. I do that most of the time, because it makes sense. You’ll just get crap main stats for right-side, which is a gamble. But for situations where you get to pick at least which main stat you want, e.g. accessory chests from Automaton Tower, free crafting events, equipment conversion, then definitely pick right side, preferably speed boots, attack rings and crit damage necklaces. However I do occassionally craft right side if I need cores and don’t have enough from extracting bad drops. Not often though. Probably because I was dumb early on and crafted and built a lot of junk items, so extracting it all gave me lots of cores. Don’t be like me.

Is this advice any good?

Hehe, you got me. I’m just a middling player who just barely finished Episode 4 and doesn’t touch RTA. I can’t do Nightmare Raid, half of my Expeditions are still stuck at level 2, I peace’d out at Challenger V in Arena, etc etc. If you want to get really strong in Epic Seven, I’m the last person you should take advice from. You’d be better off reading more serious guides and throwing your gear in an automatic calculator.

As I mentioned in my first post about Epic Seven, a lot depends on whether you’re building up for PVE or for PVP. I’m a PVE-only player so my stat requirements are much lower than for PVP. Especially when it comes to speed, effect resistance, effectiveness, etc.

Moreover, this isn’t actually advice, per se. This is just how I play Epic Seven and keep it fun for myself. After playing the game for quite a long time, I naturally accumulated a ton of gear that exceeds the 500-piece limit. And so I had to come up with a way to sort out what to keep and what to extract, and the above has worked pretty well for me. I don’t like the idea of using software to optimize gear: I’d rather quit the game if that’s the only way to progress. But I understand the people that do because gearing in this game is a MASSIVE grind. It just happens to be one that I enjoy in moderation and intend to see through to the end.

Notes to self:

I can never remember which parties I use for normal labyrinth Azmakalis of Cycle raids, so let me note them here.

Queen Azmakalis

Adventurer Ras, Angelic Montmorancy, Seaside Bellona, Cermia. Strategy: Kill the mobs and then kill her. She’s not tough as long as you keep your health up and avoid too many debuffs. A. Ras is good here for keeping your health up via his defence boost while stripping her self-buffs.

Executioner Karkanis and Devourer Arakhan

Violet, Angelic Montmorancy, Seaside Bellona, Cermia.My go-to team for almost everything. I just beat them till they die.

Secretary Vera

Crap, I forgot again… I think it was A. Ras, Verdant Adin, Cermia and… wah, I really don’t remember. Definitely Cermia for smacking it for big damage whenever she gets the chance. I think I used Green Vildred for clearing the eggs? I’ll check again in two days when the labyrinth resets.

Update: beat her pretty easily with A. Ras, Iseria, Tamarinne and Vildred. It was easy to the extent that I’m starting to consider building Nightmare Raid teams… but I won’t do it because it’s work.

Juleeve Council

Roana (taking point with Touch of Rekos artifact), Vivian, Kise and Angelic Montmorancy. It’s slow because of two low-damage soul weavers, but as long as I stagger the heals and immunity between Vivian, Roana and A. Momo, it’s very reliable. If I can raise Roana’s Eff. Res a little to stop taking that initial poison stack and spreading it, that would be even better.

Update: Also tried it with Cermia instead of Kise. It was faster but much riskier because Cermia occasionally triggers the Unhealable debuff for the boss. But she hits like a truck so as long as the soul weavers keep the party’s HP up, it’s not an issue.

Next steps for Epic Seven and me

I’m planning to drop it for a bit, now that I’ve finished Episode 4. Then I can pick it up again when Episode 5 is fully released. I largely enjoy reading the stories in Epic Seven, but more importantly, having new chapters and bosses gives me a goal to work towards. And that inspires me to keep working on my parties in a way that other PVE content like Expeditions and Labyrinth does not.

That said, I’m not dropping it right this very second. I was planning to stop at the end of April, but first they released a Custom Banner that I want to pull on, then they sprang a “Forge your Epic Gear” event on me, giving me two free ideal epic gears. And then there’s a collab with That Time I Reincarnated as a Slime coming up. Not a fan of the series, but I can’t say no to free characters and the other goodies that come with collabs. But after that it’s break time.

What else am I playing?

Picross, of course. In its various incarnations. I recently learned about a similar game on the Switch called Murder by Numbers, but the macabre title is turning me off a bit. Still I’m out of new Picross games so I guess I’ll play it sooner or later.

Apart from that, I recently returned to Genshin Impact in a major way. It took a while, but I worked through the Aranara quests with minimal outside help (yay) and I’m currently working on the first desert world quest. I preferred the Aranara TBH. It felt wholesome somehow, versus all the greed and bickering in this one. Also I explored ahead and came across some explorer notes that potentially spoil some twists in this quest. We’ll see how that turns out. I’m loving having lots of chests to open, at least, and the overworld quests are much easier than in Inazuma. And I recently pulled Nilou so I’m having fun trying to figure her out. Good game, good game.

I’ll write more about it next time. Until then!