The honeymoon period is over and now the grind begins. I will give credit where credit is due and say there’s a lot to do in Granblue Fantasy at all times, but that doesn’t change the fact that to get anywhere fast, you’re going to have to do the same tasks over and over again to get them.
Want to uncap your characters’ levels? Grind the trial/Angel Halo quests, grind the co-op quests, grind for crystals and treasures to trade for them, grind for crystals to roll for cerulean sparks to trade for items, etc etc. Want more weapons? Do quests for crystals, do quests for tickets, grind raids and hope to get lucky, then when you’ve done all that, grind for another 3 copies of the same weapon so you can unlock its true power, and on and it goes.
Which is not to say that it’s not fun (for a certain definition of “fun”) or that I didn’t know what I was getting into when I started Grindblue Fantasy. I had some downtime last week, so I played from 8am to 8pm on Thursday, got some good time in on Friday and Saturday and played a little more on Monday and now I’m level 40! I feel a little bit stronger. I can do the Hard trial/Angel quests with ease now (though Grand Order always helps) whereas I got slaughtered the first time I tried them. That’s good. But with that kind of investment, I could have finished or gotten pretty far in another RPG. It would be one thing if Granblue had a definite endpoint, but it’s going to go on forever. I’m not willing to put that kind of time and investment in an endless grind, so I’m dialing back my commitment here.
Aha, so the Black Knight joins you, does she? Thanks for spoiling!
Besides, with the way the game works, unless you pay through the nose, people who started years before you (i.e. the majority of Japanese players) will always be stronger than you and run around one-shotting lv. 100 raids like they were nothing. I’m an all or nothing kind of person, so I’d be totally demoralized if I tried to keep up with that.
So my ‘goal’ right now, as far as you can have a goal in this kind of game… was going to be seeing what happened in the story, but since the game is endless, the story is bound to be endless as well. That’s why everyone’s acting all mysterious and not sharing what they know. And it’s kind of ridiculous how every tiny bit of story is preceded and followed by a battle against monsters. But I don’t have anything else to aim for that isn’t a grindfest, so we’ll go with that for now.
Atrocious translation aside (seriously, the developers ought to sue their translation agency) the story isn’t that bad. I’d describe it as “comfortably cliched”. It hits all the usual RPG tropes without trying to do anything radical with them, which is only to be expected when you’re trying to write something that will please millions of people of all ages and keep them spending tons of money on your game.
So stop inflicting it on me!
The upside of that is I can progress without worrying about unpleasant surprises or betrayals (can’t have someone’s favorite character turn bad! They might stop playing!) or deaths (same) or similar dark turns of story. The downside? It’s pretty boring and predictable. There are some interesting characters in there so a good localization could have made something truly memorable out of this, but well, it is what it is.
Unless something really major happens or I drop the game, I don’t think I’ll be giving many more updates on Granblue Fantasy. There isn’t much to say, you see. Day 1: Grind. Day 2: Grind grind. Day 3: GrindOoh, shiny weapon drop that is actually totally useless because it’s the wrong size/shape/color, grind, grind. I don’t mind playing through it (it’s a lot more exciting than I’m making it sound, honest) but it would be boring to write about, so just assume I’m playing it. My agenda for the next couple of weeks/months/till I get tired:
- Play Unite and Fight and any other events that come my way. Especially if they involve raids. Raids are awesome!
- Uncap all my characters and watch all their fate episodes, just because.
- Continue the story whenever I can find the time. Just finished chapter 28. Die, Mithra, die! (Psst: if Mithra ensures that all promises are fulfilled, then why doesn’t the Chancellor just say “Lyria! I promise to capture you and take you back to the empire!” and leave the rest up to the primal beast?)
- Leech raids because raids are fun.
- I hate co-op but the rewards are too good to pass up so, ugh, do co-op every day.
And that’s about it. Nothing that requires urgent grinding. Next up, I don’t think I have it in me to finish my Stranger of Sword City replay, so I’m just going to be honest with myself and shelve it. Sakura Taisen 3 I’ll get to it when I get to it. Which leaves me with starting something new on the PSP/DS/PC. I’m thinking Shiren the Wanderer 5 or something similar where I’ll die quickly and move on. We’ll see.
The story has an ending, it’s 62 chapter longs, so you are halfway through, thought i heard it’s more of a “end of season 1” kind of deal than a proper resolution
The Black knight is a recently added gacha character that you can only pull during legfest (which since they happen at the end of the month it’s going to happen soon), like seriously it was added last month
Anyway if you need help with anything just ask, as long as you get 6 magna/raid weapon with large attack (or medium attack+small enmity) and skill them up you are on the right track
once you hit rank 50 you unlock 2 more raids, bahamut and grand order, certain bahamut weapon give a huge attack increase to character of specific races (20%, where a standard weapon give only 6%) so doing bahamut is well worth the effort even if it’s hard to get into them because they get filled almost instantly,
Aye aye sir, will do my best. Really glad to hear the story has an end. It gives me something to aim for.
Master teasel, Master teasel, what’s the best way to get Champion merits? Google says Proto Bahamut raids, but I’m not high-level enough to leech those yet ;__;
yeah that’s the best way, you can get them from event too but it takes forever to grind for them in that way as opposed to bahamut which drops them like candies
if you are that impatient you can use co-op to rank up faster, it takes no stamina to join games but you still get full XP/RP, it’s also a great way to rack up money since all the coins you gain from co-op can be sold
Thank you Master teasel. I think I’ve hit the limit of how much stronger I can grow on my own, so co-op sounds like a good idea. I’m also trying to save up crystals for the premium draw. As per your advice I’m waiting for LegFes at the end of the month to see if I can get any SSRs.
Oneiros in the current event drops Champion Merits from time to time. She’s already given me two.
Hello Kina!
Will you make another “Games I quit early”?
I would love to see a 2016 edition…
So many many many games dropped 🙂
I didn’t drop anything last year without blogging about it so there was no 2015 edition. There probably won’t be a 2016 edition at the end of this year either, unless the year ends up more rotten than I’d expected. I play fewer games these days, so I put a little more thought into stuff before I start it.
legfest is on right now, time to roll all your crystals and then cry when you pull nothing good
SWEET! As a rank beginner almost anything I get is bound to be better than what I currently have. I have 7000 crystals and a few premium tickets. Let’s see what I get~!
First draw, mostly junk:
Second draw, also mostly junk but I did get an SSR character and bow:
I have about 1400 crystals left so if I work hard I could get them up to 3000 for another draw before the Gala ends on June 3rd.
Got 3000 crystals and did a third draw. This one went pretty well with 2 SSR characters/weapons, an SSR summon and an SR weapon.
I’m still not convinced waiting for LegFest was worth the while though. 3% -> 6% is not that significant a gain. Maybe I would have gotten the same results by drawing earlier.
you should post what character you have, so maybe you can decide on a team
silva is really good for taking fire enemy down because her ougi hits like 20 times harder than other character ougi, it’s a shame you didn’t get yodahara, the whole gimmick of that character is that his ougi always deal 999999 damage and he make grinding the early game really easier (i don’t have him and i still did fine by the way)
My party, weapons and summons are all over the place, so it’s a little soon for me to settle on one element. It’s mostly story SRs, a few other SRs and then Feena, Silva and Vaserga for SSRs. I’m doing quests and fate episodes to get crystals and trial quests/summon battles to uncap my characters for now. When that’s done I’ll fight for Cocytus/Ifrit and the other grindable summons. I’ll get serious again if I get anything promising next LegFest.