I’ll just preface this by saying I still really like Granblue Fantasy. In fact I’m stopping now while I still like it so I have some motivation to pick it up again one day. For now though, I need a break from the grind. And luckily I’m in a place where skipping one event or a hundred won’t make a difference to my strength so this is a good time to stop.
Are you perchance familiar with the term “diminishing returns”? I’m too lazy to define it, but it applies very much to progression in Granblue Fantasy. In the beginning anything and everything you throw into your pool only makes you stronger. Any crappy R, any HP-up SR weapon, anything and everything makes a big difference. Then as you go along it slows down. More effort, less reward. Even more effort, even less reward.
Crappy rolls like this have plagued me all my days.
I remember when I got the Suzaku Katana, WOO HOO! Now we’re cooking with gas! Months later I got the Qinglong Spear, same sort of weapon, same sort of effect, but my party was already so much stronger it was like “Hmm, okay, I guess you can go in my pool for now. But don’t get too comfortable, you hear?” I turned level 80 yesterday and got a Cosmos dagger and a Bahamut dagger and I know in theory my party is hitting harder now, but I’m not feeling such a big difference now because we’re doing plenty well already. The jump are getting smaller and smaller and less tangible the further I play.
Of course it feels awesome to be so much stronger now and be doing all the things I thought were impossible when I first started out. But now I’ve reached that point where I’m just doing those things over and over again, just a little faster. If I could solo Tiamat Omega in 20 minutes, soon I’ll be doing it in 15, then 10. But it’s still the same thing until I hit level 101 and more of the same battles open up (not even new enemies, just stronger versions of the same ones). Honestly I wouldn’t mind doing them eventually, but first I’ve got to let some time pass first so I forget how repetitive and unrewarding it all is.
Achievements in Grinding
Don’t laugh. I beat several EX Gugulannas with this very grid.
It was a fun ride up to this point and I’m happy because I did a lot of things:
- Cleared all story quests up to 61-4. Leviathan Malice and Mithra Malice can go jump in Lake Titicaca.
- Cleared all free quests and Grand Blues channel quests except the two 80 AP ones.
- Cleared all Showdown and Special quests up to Extreme. I beat Vohu Manah Maniac once too, but I’m not ready to try the others just yet.
- Cleared all Co-op quests except EX4 IIRC. Too lazy to go back and check. Co-op really sucks.
- Hosted all non-HL raids except Grand Order. And I must note that after failing to drop Bahamut horns for me all game long, Proto Bahamut suddenly gave me three (!) in one hour after I reached level 80. To those that have, more will be given…
- Solo’d Yggdrasil Omega and Tiamat Omega, MVP’d Colossus Omega. The last one is a fluke depending on how many people pile into the raid after I open it up. Leviathan, Celeste and Luminiera are just meanies. They’re not invited to my birthday party.
- Mastered all Row I, II and III classes except Ogre and Valkyrie. I also have enough material to unlock several of the Extra classes.
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My current Tiamat killing grid. For the record I main Wind, but I like Fire better ‘cos it’s all fiery and stuff
Won Super Bingo! It was only 21 million rupies, but it was enough to get an MLB Anat and two months’ worth of skill up fodder, both of which gave a big boost to my strength at the time. You don’t really feel it when you skill up weapons once in a while, but when you skill up a whole lot in the same week, woot! Feels good, man.
- Bought my first 275 valor badge pack. Though to be honest this had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the hard-hitting EX+ dog-splatting members of my former crew. Thank you guys for your hard work. Sorry I was such a whimpering leech, but I had a lot of fun ^_^.
So all in all I didn’t do too badly for myself. I just have some Maniac quests, story quests and Grand Order to do, then the rest is just grind grind grind until all my weapon pools are complete. It would be super nice if they could add more free quests and showdown summons every couple of months to keep the game fresh.
All roads lead to the top of the same mountain
I want to leave on a positive note, seeing as this isn’t really the end for me and Granblue Fantasy, but I just can’t resist one teensy-weensy last complaint: endgame weapon pools are boring! They’re all cookie-cutter alike – same omega weapons, same omega summons, maybe an Unknown here, a Cosmos weapon there, a Bahamut weapon or two, but basically the same layout for all players of the same element. If you’re Wind it’s Tiamat guns, for Water it’s Leviathan daggers, and on and on.
If you’re a free player like me you’ll at least have an interesting ad hoc character party, but otherwise there’s an ideal set of characters for each element as well. Birdman, Korwa, Lancelot, Percival, blah blah blah, nyah nyah nyah. And there are all these classes but only a few are useful in the end. Dark Fencer, Holy Saber, Hawkeye, Bishop >>>> everything else except Row IV. To paraphrase Tolstoy(?), endgame pools are all alike, midgame pools are all crappy in their own special way. Maybe that’s why I like my imperfect Fire party so much better than my Wind pool filled with Tiamat Bolt Omegas.
The story of my Granblue life
I got my hopes up a bit when new weapons were announced in August, but they turned out to be not worth the trouble. Much more grinding for more or less the same results. And yes you can “think outside the box” and focus on the “wrong” weapons if you really want to be a rebel, but since it can take months of grinding to complete a pool, nobody wants to go through all that effort for sub-optimal results. I hope something can be done someday so non-ATK up weapons have a legit use and worth and there can be more mixing and combining and stuff. Well, a gamer can always dream.
You haven’t seen the last of me!
As I said, I’m leaving the door open for a return someday. I’ll still be logging in for the free R-summon rolls till 5th September. Plus I’ll probably jump in again any time free rolls are promised. I can’t resist, even knowing how bad my draw luck is. Barring any of that I estimate it will take at least 6 months for me to get to the point where I miss the game enough to return. There’s no telling how much staying power I’ll have then either. Basically it’s not-completely-but-mostly-over between me and GBF for now. Fun while it lasted, the end.
Next up
Kaiyou Resutoran turned out to have more bite to it than I’d expected (the debt is actually £1 million, not £100,000). More on that if I ever finish it. More importantly I really really want to start Ray Gigant this weekend but I’m not sure I’ll have the time. Maybe early next week. Anyway, barring any unforeseen circumstances that’s the next game I’ll be playing. Yay for dungeon crawlers and Experience Inc.! Okay, that’s enough rambling for one day. See you soon!
Hi Kina. お疲れさまです！I enjoyed reading your blog post–really cool to see your progress up to this point.
Some reactions as I was looking over your achievements:
-I actually stopped at a similar point in the story quest, too: Leviathan Malice and Mithra Malice weren’t fun…
-How did you get a Cosmos weapon so early? Don’t you need to farm drops from the Grand Order raid for a while?
-Congrats on the Super Bingo win! Also for clearing a bunch of quests/soloing tough raids/obtaining cool items.
-Lastly, would you mind if I filled your friend spot with another player for the time being? (sorry, no offense or anything… saw your plan to be taking a break for a while)
– The story isn’t that interesting at that point either. They’ve been stopping Freesia for the past 20 chapters or so. Enough already.
– I got lucky with a share chest from my guild. It’s a DEF dagger so not really the best for my party, but I’m hanging on to it until I gather the materials for something better.
– Thank you! Thank you! I had a great time.
-Nope, I don’t mind at all. In fact I was planning to log in and unfriend everybody, I just haven’t gotten round to it. In fact I’ll just do it now. Thanks for being my friend for a while!
All done. I tried out the new Arcarum event while I was at it. Not sure if like.
Thanks Kina! If you resume again, though, I’d be happy to re-add you.
Yeah, Arcarum was…interesting. I suppose it’s a nice change from Guild Wars and Defense Order (and most people find the latter to be meh anyways).
Sure. If I do resume it’ll most likely be during the next magnafest or other rewarding celebration. Preferably involving free rolls. See you then!
Oh my~ A free 10-pull ticket and a mini magfest already? Yay~
It was short but nice while it lasted haha
I’ll probably pop in and out for magnafests until my grid is complete. I’m so spoiled now I can’t imagine spending 50AP on an omega battle.
Used the free 10-draw ticket during legfest and got this:
Granblue gacha can be kind when it wants to be ^_^
Wow–it was kind, indeed 😀
Yuel is great, and I hear that Juliet is a top tier light SSR. Looks like you logged in at the right time!
I heard the same thing too. I had no intention of going Light, but now that I have Juliet, Amira, Summer Heles, Sarunan and Apollo, maybe I should give it some thought. Windmeme is way too convenient right now though.
Nice. Like you, I’ve worked on fire and wind (I’ll reach windmeme eventually!) but the GW character grind is taking up time, too…
I wanted to make Siete/Seofon before I stopped but I got to the part where you have to grind for weapons to upgrade Sierokarte’s shop and just fizzled out. Now that there’s a half AP event going on + magfest + a collab event, I might pop in to do a bit more of that.
Yup, if you’re looking to upgrade the shop, now’s the time since I believe the Mithra quest is also half off, from which you’ll need 5 anima.
I picked up a couple of Mithra animas… and promptly spent them on uncapping SR Katalina so I can beat Celeste more efficiently. Back to the grindstone.
Yeah… there certainly is no shortage of things to do in Granblue…
You main fire, right? How are the Unknown Fire axes coming along? I got two lucky flips from a Black Creature Nightmare so I have one FLB-ready axe without too much effort, but I don’t know if I have the strength to aim for another one. So many things to do, so little time.
Update: Two more flips. Guess the second Fire axe is happening, then. This is my kind of event!
Glad to hear that! Over the weekend I was lucky to receive enough flips for one FLP Fire axe and two FLP Earth axes (thanks, Septian Burner!), with some uncapped copies waiting in the corner–the only downside is the number of Nightmare stars necessary. At this point, I have about 50 of the 90 required in total… Not to mention scrapping of my gacha SSR light axe which I may need for the next GW.
I agree, I like this event, too. If I weren’t busy with other things I’d definitely be trying to get more out of it!
Oops, I meant FLB ><
Also sorry, I hadn't addressed your first question–yes, I main fire but technically my Magna collection and weapon skilling has been all over the place, so maybe they'll all peak around the same time haha.
Are you going for the Idolm@ster characters, as well, Kina?
I got them all already except Ranko, who sounds like too much trouble. I don’t have any use for them though, mainly just got them for the free crystals. Playing Cinderella Girls was boring but very easy because I play another game (Ring*Dream) that copied 90% of CG’s system.
Ooh, very nice. Yeah, Ranko’s unlock requirements are a lot of work, but I figured I might try for it since I also had most of the previous characters. Now just have to level up her summon to 100.
That’s the issue for me. I don’t have much summon fodder to spare, and what I do have I’d rather spend on maxing out my three buncles, Ifrit and Yggdrasil Omega first. I’m also hoarding rainbow prisms and other uncapping mats for my GW character grind, so I don’t want to uncap the girls yet. I’ll borrow Brynhildr summons when I can and see if it all happens organically.
By any chance, would you be interested in joining my guild? It’s a Japanese guild but it’d be cool to have you.
Thank you for the invite! I’d love to join a serious guild when I return to the game fulltime, but right now I’m still “officially” on hiatus. I’m just in it for the magfest/event right now, so I would only be a bother if I joined and left after a week. I definitely have no intention of grinding for Guild Wars this month either. But I’ll definitely come crawling and begging when it’s time to get back in the game ^_^
No worries! Best of luck with the current event (^-^)/
Thanks. I’m gonna need it since I only have 34 nightmare stars out of the 90 I’ll need to FLB two sombre axes and a swirly hammer.
Update: I give up. My body is rebelling at the thought of fighting even one more mysterious creature. I’ll save the FLBing for the next rerun.
Totally understandable. I’m leaving the third FLB for the rerun. Sure, they can incentivize Nightmare runs with the prospect of gold bar drops, but with the abysmally low 0.1% drop rate, I”ll let it rest for now.
If I’m not mistaken, was that your Tiamat raid I just joined?? Haha
Yeah, I saw you! 😀 Thanks for helping!