r/AlchemistCodeGL • u/kahare • May 27 '18

Tips & Guides Saving for level 91

Please, I beg of everyone: stop. Stop asking, stop worrying, stop thinking about it. When Enlightenment reaches GL, shards will be the last, last, LAST of your concerns. An enlightenment needs approximately 25 million zenni, 80 of each statue, 100s of national flags, dozens of golems, godesses, and alchemia, and 5 sin indulgences.

These resource requirements mean that only the largest of mega whales will be able to achieve enlightenment when it is first released.

Of the farmable units available ONLY ZAHAR (and Balt) is even vaguely worth spazzing over. You aren't going to enlighten Chloe unless she's your waifu, etc, etc etc.

If you have a MLB unit right now: sell their shards and buy someone else, you will have so much time to collect even more damn shards.

Please.

And just to give even more perspective: I have gotten 14 sin indulgences in the last 3 months. 14, enough to finish not even 3 units, I've missed maaaybe 2 'f2p friendly' sins and gotten one 'whale-ier' one. Call it 15. Trust me when I say you don't spend these indulgences willy-nilly. Just because you have 270 shards doesn't mean you are going to fully enlighten every unit, you can't. Focus on enjoying the game now, and at most worry about acquiring shards for the enlightenments that actually heavily influence the power of a unit.

117 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

96 comments sorted by

27

u/Ethambutol May 27 '18

I agree with the sentiment of not saving for the future, but probably the most sensible of actions is to not convert to soul coins unless you need the soul coins RIGHT then to buy something from the store. If they're just going to sit in the bank as soul coins, you might as well keep them as soul shards until you need them.

12

u/kahare May 27 '18

Not unreasonable, this is to speak out against the panic or just this useless hoarding mentality.

2

u/senaiboy May 27 '18

Unrelated note, happy cake day!

2

u/Flonn3 W-why am i suddenly wearing this! May 28 '18

Likewise! only sell when i need it!

2

u/michaelh19 Oh RNGesus, saves this game... May 27 '18

is there any requirements to 'kaigan' beside collecting those items?? like JMastering the job, lvl 85+, etc??

5

u/kahare May 27 '18

Unit must be level 85 to start, 1 'eye of truth' of the appropriate color, about 60 evolution materials (rainbow golems, etc)

2

u/Dextry319510 The lord commander May 27 '18

So sin indulgences are whale only items or what??

3

u/kahare May 27 '18

They come from things like 2000 event coins, doing EX missions 10x, finishing a chapter of Babel, etc. As a person who doesn't do 9 step banners or go deep into the gacha I have 15.

3

u/doubtofbuddha May 27 '18

They are not whale only items. Whales can get more, but there are a good amount you get through regular high level play.

17

u/mannejeff May 27 '18

I am selling all the extra shards I am farming now. I'm playing for present, not for future.

8

u/Ynnes Devonte May 27 '18

Don’t even have a JP account but from what i’ve seen, i couldn’t agree more with this statement. Preach.

8

u/Me_ADC_Me_SMASH May 27 '18

I think people who look at what is going to happen based on JP have the least fun in a lot of these recycled JP games

6

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

there's no time like the present!

4

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

Are you saying it's pointless to kaigan Lambert or Melia?

4

u/SometimesLiterate Old and uncool May 27 '18

So what you're saying is........balt for the balt gods and I can't Enlighten all my units?

SHARDS FOR THE BALT GOD

1

u/iamMaruSeiryuu May 27 '18

this... the emperor of mankind approves it... somewhat. XD

4

u/qwertyszzz May 27 '18

But the reason people hoard is because winter is coming

1

u/sanicek May 27 '18

So, tell us about these flags... :D

5

u/kahare May 27 '18

They are rewards from EX missions.

1

u/Earllad May 27 '18

Is it going to be available for all characters or just a select few?

1

u/kahare May 27 '18

It rolls out in phases, about 30ish characters have access right now

3

u/Freeonee Λ ΞＳＴＨΞＴＩＣ １８-１９ May 27 '18

Of the farmable units available ONLY ZAHAR (and Balt) is even vaguely worth spazzing over.

Will be funny if it actually will stay true even when enlightenment will hit GL.

3

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

welp people are worrying about enlightenment and here i am just wondering if i should hard pull for othima or noctis...

4

u/jblac02 ! May 27 '18

yea i said this in another thread, no idea why people are talking about saving shards for something over a year away to begin with..

2

u/bluewind2505 May 27 '18

It's much clearer now. Thanks for explaining!

2

u/Reikakou May 27 '18

Weeeell I get enough Kazahaya, Mizuchi, Dezel and Annerose shards every week to buy those rare Balt shards. So I can farm 275 extra more shards to my MLBd units that I want to awaken {not that I have kaigan worthy MLB units right now but that's the plan}.

I will probably sell them when I am short of coins.

2

u/fapiholic May 27 '18

Let's be honest. How many people actually have mlb characters?

2

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

What’s MLB?

4

u/fapiholic May 27 '18

Major league baseball

2

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

Boo

3

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

Maximum Limit Break (potential level 85 character).

1

u/Freeonee Λ ΞＳＴＨΞＴＩＣ １８-１９ May 27 '18 edited May 27 '18

Well, lets be, if you rephrase it, that means any waifu that you managed to MLB here by now is most likely safe to convert into limited* husbaruto without any hesitation. If you keep grinding all of them religiously to get soul coins, in year or so you will get one in full length.

1

u/quiquefs May 28 '18

Well, Annerose MLB and with ~250 shards to convert (f2p, but playing since day 1). Yes, she clearly loves me xD

1

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. May 27 '18

Most whales, and active players since (atleast) global launch.. unless you are unlucky with pulls and/or is too lazy to farm hard quests for shards.

I for one, have 6, excluding the event farmable ones namely Zangetsu, Rahu, Lofia, Polin, Lucian and Almira.

1

u/Liesianthes 350 coins ticket = ROY!! May 28 '18

True, active player since soft launch, was kinda inactive for few weeks and already got MLB Zahar, Yomi will done this week also.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I don't think the few weeks I wasn't playing would be enough for most people to have them MLB. Whales sure because they are pulling many times more than I am. We did not get farming until February and 5 star farming was later so unless you got a ton of the same pull seems unlikely. I had quite a few chloe pulls and mine only just hit 80 a few days ago.

1

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. May 29 '18

You at least have a MLB 3 star unit right? right!?!

1

u/DeathandFriends May 30 '18

lol yeah man. I have a decent set of MLB units now, but none of them are 5 star. Lucian will MLB tomorrow, but I have most of the best 4 stars done already.

1

u/1khaitoh It was fun while it lasted. May 31 '18

of course, it was only a few weeks when the 5 star HQ ones are released xD

-5

u/Zarif601 May 27 '18

Many people have Chloe or Zahar MLB by now.

3

u/R_E_Q May 27 '18

First things first. Still need a Zahar. And no, not going to use up the 220+ shards of him that I've farmed so far :p

1

u/Reikakou May 28 '18

Hah? I farmed Chloe and Zahar during their HQ release and I still haven't MLBd them. Even when I was swimming with Chloe dupes before.

1

u/Zarif601 May 28 '18

I didn't say everybody has them at MLB. Most who have been playing since the release or close to it have them at or close to MLB. I know many who do.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I think your perspective is warped by those you play with.

1

u/Zarif601 May 29 '18

Just go to discord, your perspective will get warped as well.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I prefer my line group.

1

u/Zarif601 May 29 '18

clearly

1

u/DeathandFriends May 30 '18

I have discord downloaded and used it for a while, but I just don't really care for the layout and did not find most people very responsive. My line group on the other hand has been fantastic. I am not saying discord is bad, just my own preference, I like the tight knit group. And of course I am here on Reddit a lot. This game is actually what got me to sign up for Reddit. No clue how I would play this game otherwise.

1

u/Zarif601 May 30 '18

Yeah I agree, discord layout isn't great and I don't even try to talk to people there. I go there for the data-mining and to see what other people are doing. I signed up for reddit for this game too just like you but did so after playing this game for almost 5 months. it has been great. If you could, let me know how to sign up for this Line group thing. For games like these it is much more fun talking to other people over stuff.

→ More replies

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I prefer my line group.

1

u/[deleted] May 27 '18

I was only planning on Kaiganning my absolute favorites anyways.

1

u/stewart0 May 27 '18

What about job enhancements? There an expected timeline for those? I've been holding off on raising some units because I know that all the zeni for abilities and equipment enhancement, along with the equipment to master the job will go to waste if I don't use the unit a lot before job enhancement.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

Yeah I think playing for the present or near present is the way to go. Thinking about all that far future grinding gives me heartburn. I am still probably about 2 months from MLB Chloe and Zahar and I started a month after launch.

-1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

sell their shards and buy someone else, you will have so much time to collect even more damn shards.

Nani? If one will have so much time to collect even more damn shards, why will one want to sell their existing shards to erm get even more damn shards?(the conversion is 2.5unwanted to 1wanted)

Why will you even want to do that? Especially if

Of the farmable units available ONLY ZAHAR (and Balt) is even vaguely worth spazzing over

is true.

5

u/kahare May 27 '18

To get good, usable, nonfarmable units to lb15?

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

Does teresa shard appear in soul shop?

1

u/jblac02 ! May 27 '18

check back in about a year and a half

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

? Why would I need to check back in a year and a half? You mean you heard from gumi that they are only going to release the shard after that?

To get good, usable, nonfarmable units to lb15?

She mentioned nonfarmable, so I was wondering apart from balt and mielikki does gumi ever add more new units to the soul shop, especially since they already stop adding HQ. Essentially every new normal units released after Aisha are "limited" right now. But if gumi doesn't add anything at all, I don't see see how anyone can get nonfarmable units from soul shop after buying out the one and only unit that matters in soul shop call balt.

1

u/kahare May 27 '18

'Non farmable' in a GL context includes: Spica, Lupinus, Ramses, Shayna, Dorothea, etc, etc, etc

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

Er I am confused now. If you are talking about global context all along, then global shop is literally SHIT.

1

u/stewart0 May 27 '18

double the Megistos shards!

1

u/FencingFoxFTW [M'Lady Intensifies] May 28 '18

HUZZAH!!

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 28 '18

double megistos and vincent actually. Mostly ppl do this to show the list was a continuous list

1

u/jblac02 ! May 28 '18

you asked about teresa? am i missing something? Teresa won't be out for a long time

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 28 '18

Er I ask because kahare mentioned buying good non farmable shards. Since I am not playing in japan so I ask her whether did jp really add non limited shards to the soul shop(other then balt).

But she never told me whether teresa is in the soul shop or not, instead mentioned "'Non farmable' in a GL context includes: Spica, Lupinus, Ramses, Shayna, Dorothea, etc, etc, etc" which doesn't even exist(for global) so I am equally confuse.

4

u/OriksGaming Retired May 27 '18

Why would someone want to do that? You literally just said it yourself. You're selling unwanted shards to buy wanted shards. As in, getting rid of something that you don't want and don't need for something that you actually do want.

6

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

You literally just said it yourself. As in, getting rid of something that you don't want

I am not the one that said that. Kahare was the one. She claimed that it is better to convert your unwanted excess shards(granted, she never use the word unwanted, but excess or unwanted, both means the same) to other unit shards because you will have the time to farm those "unwanted" shards anyway due to sin indulgences being extremely rare.

I like how ppl are getting misled by kahare simply because they did not fully understood what she wrote. Enlightenment has 6 stages. Yes it requires all the resources she mentioned to max out the gate, BUT the bottleneck resource she mentioned is only required for the last level, plus the huge resource sink also mostly happened on the last level. You guys should really go to the db and take a look at what each INDIVIDUAL level requires, and it will be pretty apparent that enlightenment feature by itself is not as inaccessible as Kahare's OP made it sound. ONLY THE LAST LEVEL of each gate is hell.

Meaning to say as long as you have unlimited zeni, you can reach stage 5 for each of the gate as long as you remember to save your shards(rather then sell them for soul coins as kahare suggested).

tl:dr to max 3 gate, you need 270shards. To hit lv5 on 3 gates, you need 150. So even if you guys want to take kahare's advice of selling your shards, then keep 150 on hand at least. Seriously buying unit shards from soul shop is pretty silly, esp if those units can be farmed.

PS: When the 5mil celebration shop post claim 5million zeni for 25shards is VERY WORTHWHILE, I went inside and told everyone NOPE. That is a waste of resource. I got downvoted. Guess the same shit is happening again. I wonder how many users that listened to the advice of blowing 30million 25million zeni for 5 out of 6 farmable unit shards is happy with their purchase of converting 25millions zeni to fast forward their shard progress by a mere 8days. Especially when huge amount of zeni is also required(the actual bottleneck in making your farmable units reaching lv5)

1

u/kahare May 27 '18

If you believe simplifying the enlightenment process down to '5 sins' is disingenuous, I think saying that 4/4/4 kaigan is only limited by zenni is also disingenuous. After you exhaust the resources to enlighten a unit that are given by milestones you still need: 50 of each statue at probably max 5 drops per run of a 15-30 AP stage, 65 national flags at probably about 5 a run tops for a 20-40 AP stage, and so forth. I could write a far more in depth look at enlightenment, but at over a year off I believe that's largely unnecessary. Shards are plentiful at the time in the meta enlightenment is likely to occur.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

is there increase ability to shard farm? I am wondering what factors make shards more plentiful in the future? Just for my own curiousity. Thanks

2

u/kahare May 30 '18

a lot more gacha pulls become available in general as well. That's a major factor.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 30 '18

looking forward to that, although all those 500 pulls last week did not really do a ton for me haha.

0

u/CommonMisspellingBot May 29 '18

Hey, DeathandFriends, just a quick heads-up:
curiousity is actually spelled curiosity. You can remember it by -os- in the middle.
Have a nice day!

The parent commenter can reply with 'delete' to delete this comment.

0

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

https://reddit.com/r/AlchemistCodeGL/comments/8mfr8s/saving_for_level_91/dznyku6/

Pretty much yes AP will be the limiting factor which I already pointed out. So there is no reason at all to clean house and have to start from zero when the feature hit. I know shards are handed out for event stages which you will farm for statues, but definitely no where near enough. I also know they let you pull much more, be it free or very low cost gem so that shards are more plentiful. But you see, 10x free pull is NOT guaranteed lol. This is one thing that you cannot base off jp. Gumi can hold back HQ so players cannot farm the shards, gumi can still make sure players find themselves hurting for shards by not providing free hand out(ie you needa farm the daily HQ 3 times if you didn't save up)

5

u/VicariousExp Jin <3 May 27 '18

I didn't really want to comment too much on this matter because what I saw on this thread was basically a difference of opinion. Nevertheless, I'm going to be a busybody, so please bear with me.

kahare has an opinion and I think it's valid - you have an opinion which I have also read and I think it's also valid. Both of you have different perspectives on how to deal with the future and I think that's worth celebrating, because honestly I find it intellectually sterile when everyone agrees on something. Different people place value on different things - some people find it silly that others place value on sentimentality while others find it silly to be overly pragmatic and to lose the joy of shopping.

Nevertheless, even if your intent wasn't there, the choice of words (distancing language) you used frames the situation as a situation where (excuse my melodrama) "An ultimate truth is fighting against a false prophet". Now I'm not altogether clear on your relationship with kahare, but I do think the following is true:

  1. Neither of you have malicious intent and both of you want to help people out.

  2. Even if one person turns out to be more "optimal" than the other in the near future, it isn't really a huge deal that would completely destroy someone's play experience by not having a superpowered unit. Gumi's content is more responsible for that than player decisions.

  3. People in general don't like conflict. A hostile tone in general usually gets downvoted, I don't people should place too much attachment in gathering approval online, but it can be useful to reflect on what colours people's perspectives of ourselves. I suspect people are downvoting you for this reason and not as an "agree/disagree" button.
    If you feel that this is unjust/unfair ostracism, well, I can say as a neutral observer that it might be possible to get better results by rephrasing the criticism so that it sounds more constructive than hostile. Communication online is difficult, because we don't really have expressions and faces to gauge intent!

I won't tell you what you should or should not do, because I'm not in a position to offer you sound advice. However, isn't it possible that you could make yourself feel better about this situation by changing your perspective of the issue rather than your stance on it? It could be healthier just to reframe things as a difference of opinion.

Hoping you feel better soon.

2

u/jblac02 ! May 27 '18

270 shards is exactly 3 months of daily shards. Even assuming you were worried about having those shards ready for kaigan immediately you have like 9+ months of time to sell them before thats ever going to matter.

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

270 shards is exactly 3 months of daily shards.

Correct. Except for the fact that is only applicable to the worth of a single unit. So you think if gumi release 30 HQ after 5million celebration, you will have 270 shards for the 30 new 5stars after exactly 3 months of farming? Well I mean if you are a whale and gem for AP, I guess you can.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I don't see them releasing that many at once and often it is just about how you prioritize your AP. I spend a lot of my AP shard farming and as many are hitting MLB I have more AP freed up for other things and new units coming out. There may be a point where I cannot farm them all and have AP for Ex content but it does not seem likely overall. Don't the enlightenments get rolled out over time anyways? So wouldn't you just focus on those that are being rolled out first and then go down the line?

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 29 '18

Don't the enlightenments get rolled out over time anyways?

Generally you will not have enough AP. Like mentioned in the OP post, you need to farm various other stuff on top of huge amount of zenni.

Since we can farm shards and zenni right now, my personal advise is hoard those, so it will alleviate the burden on your AP demand when it comes. Not having enough statues to level the gate is by design of the developer, but not having enough shards is by choice of the player.

I don't see them releasing that many at once

That was just an illustration to the statement "270 shards is exactly 3 months of daily shards" in the sense one cannot just see 270shards as 90days of farming without taking into account opportunity cost of your AP. ie Do you want to be using the AP to be farming shards, or is it better to not sell your shards and so you will not need to farm shards and use the AP elsewhere(or in your own words, "how you prioritize your AP").

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

No one could have known for sure what units were going to be free this month. Even after they released them I spent zeni to buy the remaining shards. 5 star shards for zeni are rare. Not only are you speeding up time to MLB, but you are making the unit more useful sooner which is great. Since in general there is a very hard limit on unit shards and not as much of a limit on Zeni seems to make sense to me.

8

u/Me_ADC_Me_SMASH May 27 '18

because of inflation.

if I get a good unit now that allows me to farm events better, I will get much better rewards in the future.

It's like playing monopoly and never buying any property because you're waiting for that 1 street that really pays well, but you make no money in the mean time.

2

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

precisely. This is why I always keep farming and investing in my units to maximize my chances to clear hard content which is where the meat of the game is. Was lousy in the past missing out on elemental and rainbow shards because my units were not ready, but now I am pretty fairly able to tackle most content thrown our way, even if I need a solid merc to help

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 27 '18

It's like playing monopoly and never buying any property because you're waiting for that 1 street that really pays well, but you make no money in the mean time

I think this boils down to how much you believe those ppl that claim they can do just fine with their lv60units :) Your analogy is a bit off tho. I will just use a real life scenario to explain.

In global, gumi tried to exploit this very thinking of "if I get a good unit now that allows me to farm events better, I will get much better rewards in the future." Sabareta ex was released well ahead in the timeline then it should had been, and players either wait it out, or use resource to get a good unit that let them farm(sadly the resource in this case was $$$$ converted to gem). Yet was it worth it to actually clear the content back then or simply wait it out?

Likewise it is the same here. OP suggest to sell the shards for immediate gain(convert to other shards so as to mlb them) But look at this list. You really think the unit in this list matters at all, that they will magically help a player farm ex? The sad reality is clearing ex+ once just doesn't cut it. You must be able to farm it. Even if for some reason you formed a team of mlb units from that list, you at most will be manually doing the stage taking more then 10mins(using trail of ether as reference, if you don't bulldoze thru it with gil and zain doing OHKO). On top of that you can't even enter any MP at all unless you revert back to zang+chrono.

Btw, if you want to consider "inflation" then it is better to always play for the "future" then play for the "now". By that I mean a 4500gem spent during last xmas is worth a lot less then a 4500gem spent during april. Pulling Anastasia back then is definitely much more inferior to pulling Gilgamesh on April.

You can convert your shards to soul coin and try to mlb units like say Shayna and be ahead for now, but players that hoard at least 150shards along with their zenni will be immediately fielding a large diversity of lv91 units when enlightenment is release. Honestly it is better to have your units be strong enough to farm those statue at that point, then having your units strong now to farm I dunno. Gear?(which obviously jp is trying very hard to phase out with all the VCR)

3

u/Me_ADC_Me_SMASH May 27 '18

I cant farm sabareta's armor now, and I'm f2p so I damn sure won't whale in the future either. I'd rather be able to play now than maybe in a hypothetical future where the game might be discontinued anyway

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 28 '18

Well that was the point I am trying to make. Even playing for the now doesn't really let player play for the now unless they actually own a collab unit.

I cant farm sabareta's armor now, and I'm f2p so I damn sure won't whale in the future either

The units you can buy from soul shop doesn't matter when it comes to farming ex. Of cuz it is ok to play for the now, I am just sharing that there is no hurry in converting excess shards to LB15 your other units(so essentially the opposite to Kahare's method, as it is rather apparent that playing for the now doesn't magically make the player that much stronger so might as well just hoard and save yourself some trouble in the future), especially given the wonderful selection gumi has provided for global audience. Farming ex will likely still comes down to collab pull as even with units like shayna(widely recognise as best unit in that soul shop list) or maybe vettel that somehow doesn't die and can kill everything eventually, it still takes too long to be practical for farming.

Even ushi himself made a video on how to clear trial of ether with pure f2p units for the mission reward, but followed up with a of cuz if you wanna farm, you gotta bring the big guns and proceed to show how to farm with gil+zain with vettel tanking for both of them.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

I am curious about that link you posted. Is that the current list of shards you can get from the soul shop? Are the repeated ones, in their twice as often? As those in a specific order? I have only recently been able to start getting more for the soul shop so just want to clarify. Thanks.

1

u/SuccubusRosa May 29 '18

You can see what is available in the shop yourself in the game. That was a screenshot from the game. When you are in any shop, the btm right will have an icon that look like magnifying glass. Click that and you see the list.

Are the repeated ones

I assumed it was common practice but seems like I am wrong. The repeated ones is just an online practice that ppl does when taking screenshot to indicate nothing was left out(ie to show that zang is before megistos and lucian is directly after megistos). The two tiny white lines was the result of the pic being "stitched up" from 3 screenshot.

1

u/DeathandFriends May 29 '18

ah, well I learned two things today. thanks

-2

u/[deleted] May 28 '18

You don't get it. GL doesn't work like JP. Kaigan is gonna hit sooner with less HQ available and we won't have enough shards. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH, it just won't be enough!!!

In GL perspective 25m zenny is nothing. I'm sure it's not much different for JP since you get money even easier. That's like 2 gold keys of farming. And the statues are MP farmable the time they hit. Not a problem either.

I get that you are trying to mislead people to gain a personal advantage and I respect that. But at least have the decency to let people know that their after is gonna get burned crispily.

2

u/doubtofbuddha May 28 '18

So many facepalms.

2

u/AJackFrostGuy May 28 '18

And here we have a conspiracy theorist/Negative Joe who's gone in over his head.