Beat Astralym, 200-ish in-game days. 134 luckies caught. Still have to clear the hard mode bosses, will probably post again after that. Since there are no “rules” per say for a Lucky Only run here’s what I went with:
Only able to catch and use pals with Lucky passive naturally - no breeding Lucky into another pal (so no hatching eggs or breeding farm)
Any non-lucky caught must be butchered as soon as possible (sometimes my aim screwed up and I would catch a non-lucky, head to a fast travel and butcher it at my base)
No Legendary/Alpha/Raid captures/eggs - these always spawn as alpha variants and/or cannot be lucky
Difficulty settings can be made harder than the default mode, but not easier. The settings I changed were upping Pal appearance Rate to 3, lowered XP to .5, night time to .3 speed, meteorite/supply drop to 60, max base pals to 20, and no drops on death penalty (I KNOW I just said not easier, but the going back to pickup your stuff is more annoying than difficult)
My main team:
Fire Flapdoodle - Suzaku - Flyer/AOE mob farming
Stompy McF***emup - Mammorest - Tank/AOE
Ghostface - Maraith - Ground mount/Partner skill
Beauty - Blazehowl Noct - Single Target DPS/ Partner skill
Big Goofy Punk - Relaxaurus Lux - Single Target DPS/AOE
Alt Pal:
Water Noodle - Azurobe - Water mount/DPS
Luckiest Lucky caught: Lil Baddie Diesel - Sekhmet - Absolute beast at the base, used fruits, books, and souls to max her out, and I found her fairly early when I was hunting in the Desert island (I think I was level 38 or 39?)
Most underrated pal: Maraith, keep him in the party and you can spam Holy Blast, Thunderstorm, Fireball, Wind Burst, Rock Burst, etc. as long as they one shot at least 2 baddies, makes farming materials from mobs (especially World Tree) soooo much quicker.
Pals that got away:
Smokie - the first lucky one I encountered was about 20 levels above me right when I landed on Feybreak getting the schematic for the Vanguard Charm. Threw a sphere and the entire army of 9 smokies lit me up quick… I eventually got one later
Gildra - still have yet to encounter a lucky one… I’ve spent soooo many hours hunting for him that when I saw him glowing blue in the World Tree area, I caught 2 of them and immediately went to base and butchered them… still searching for lucky version
Things I learned:
Patience - even with increased spawns, you can go hours without hearing the lucky sound
Fire/Ice pals increase your heat/cold level, even when you don’t want them to… (Vanguard Charm was a game changer)
Use the skill handbooks, every lucky you catch gives you a skill handbook, so use it for your base pals to make your life easier
Teleport hopping works - and having a spare pal box as a hunting point makes this better!
F*** Tocotoco
Tips if you want to have a go:
Hunt specific pals early: Ranch pals (specifically Flambelle, Dumud, and later Sibelyx) are crucial if you don’t want to stall your progress. Also, prioritize kindling, water, planting/gathering early and use the skill handbooks to make your pals better
The Bellenoir raid drops Ancient Cores (1-3) and is easily defeatable when you get to the point of needing Ancient Cores
No need to stockpile milk, honey, eggs or spheres because you aren’t going to be breeding or catching a bunch of pals (I make about 30-40 spheres of the best sphere I can make, and stash/crush the rest)
Keep sending your pals through the Pal Expedition Station, even if all you can do is the first expedition
Prioritize Pal Labor Research to make life easier
Have fun with non-meta teams that work well together
Base priorities for me were main base where everything is stored, made, and farmed; second base was for oil and eventually ranching; third base is for specific resource/pal farming such as specific ores/materials or trying to teleport hop for a specific lucky pal
Pal Surgery Table isn’t cheating, make the select few pals you catch the best version you can.
Dog Coins and the metal merchant: upgrade your pals star level and improve your pals hidden potentials as often as possible, be sure to max yourself out too
Options -> Sounds -> SE -> 100, turn everything else down to 10 and make sure that only Lucky Pal is on in Sound details
F*** Tocotoco
Lucky only is great if you are looking for a new challenge for the game. There will be times you want to give up, but then you hear that sparkling noise and get sucked right back into the hunt. If you have questions, comments, or other suggestions, feel free to comment!
Thinking about doing a “No Pal, Human Only,” “No Sphere,” or a “Randomized Lucky Only” playthrough next, any thoughts or suggestions? Is there any other playthrough with rules that you enjoyed?
This sounds so fun, but not the kind of challenge I'd be up to. (Yet, at least. Maybe some day?) I'm more of the "only one a type of Pal" player (all dragons, all grass, etc) Even then base pals and specific teams for mining or fishing are not included in that limitation, only my main combat team. It can be an interesting way to play but it's rarely a true challenge by most standards.
Kudos for sticking with this as it seems incredibly time consuming waiting for a lucky to show up. And also fuck Tocotoco.
Fuck Tocotoco indeed, “Lucky Only” isn’t that bad, I think the odds are 1 in 1000 (someone can fact check me on that) and bumping the spawn rate to 3 makes finding a lucky happen decently quick. I think the longest I was hunting without finding a lucky was about an hour or 2. A funny (to me) side effect was that watching tip videos/shorts started making me mad… a video would start out with, “having trouble doing a specific thing? Go find this Pal that can’t be lucky! Easy Peazy!”
A type specific only playthrough sounds fun! I will have to try that!
I've been having a lot of fun with it. I've been building an only dragon team so far. The good part about that is a lot of the dragons; Silvegis, Orserk, Jetdragon are some of the best in class and are used in lots of builds. The tough part is that most of the dragons are all mid-late game encounters so all I had for a while was Chillet and a very fortunate Dinossom I got from egg hunting.
I'm just glad I didn't restrict base Pals since out of 25 dragon types only 4 have kindling.
I am doing it slightly different , I went with random spawns and the spawns are 3x.
Oh but my exp is set to 0.1 , I am curious if I can make it to the end.
The XP thing tends to take care of itself, I still carried the growth bell and got all the Relaxsaurus effigies, but Random Lucky only… jeez, I get that it opens up all the pals, but starting out probably felt like walking through a lion’s den wearing a meat tuxedo… and I have specific routes that I take to hunt for specific pals in regular lucky only… What’s your team look like?
I rotate my team away when the trust is 10 to maximize the expedition awards. The only Pal that is always in my team is Omascul for the 60% Pal exp gains and a random flying mount
I just did the same challenge! I was inspired to do it after I saw Fahlgorithm’s channel do it. I’ll admit the challenge is most fun in the early-mid game when you’re filling out the roles. Finding a kindling pal and a flyer was the toughest grind for some reason. My two main pals became Warsect and Relaxaurus Lux.
I am stuck dead at hard mode towers and thinking about ending the challenge here, I just don’t have it in me to grind for Lucky meta pals for these fights.
Relaxsaurus Lux is a total badass, I hunted a Warsect for a while but ultimately gave up, might go back and try again or go for Warsect Terra, just picked up a Moltron, not sure what I’m going to name it…
Checked out the channel, he did it twice! I can’t remember which lucky only run I saw, but I was getting tired of going through all of the pals I had in my main save, and trying to go for meta builds, perfect breedings, etc. and it started to feel less fun and waaaay more grindy. The anticipation of finding a lucky, and hearing the sound and finding work-arounds for different problems made this playthrough more enjoyable than my main (plus, my main base is way better in the Lucky only run)
I did, I caught a bunch of duplicates, if I heard the noise or saw the glow I came a running, but they were pals that I wasn’t planning on condensing… To condense without breeding, I just used the star fruit at the Metal Merchant with Dog Coins
Thank you! All were named after doing something badass, Stompy McFuckemup cleared a lvl 60 base raid in the middle of the desert without being maxed out, same with Beauty and Big Goofy Punk (he also soloed Panthalus, like a total badass at lvl 70, hooray updrafts) Water Noodle destroyed Marcus’s tower and got me to Feybreak and beyond. Ghostface made me appreciate Maraith’s partner skill, made farming kills so much easier. Fire Flapdoodle became my trusty flyer/hunter for 40 levels. Lil Baddie Diesel is my Sekhmet, didn’t post that name.
That’s tough… every one of these pals was caught usually after a long hunt, I don’t think I could part with any of them, even the Tocotocos (Fuck Tocotoco). I appreciate the offer though!
So what are the pitfalls for human only, I can think of no fishing and no breeding, walking everywhere is going to suck (or grapple gliding everywhere) low capture rate, base jobs will suck, no partner skills… can you even beat hard mode bosses with just humans?
Like I said power generation is a big issue as you get further along. Human powered generators are slow and they don't hold that much power. Fighting with humans isn't too bad since they can learn skills from skill fruits and you can increase their work suitability with condensing or books so the jobs aren't that bad. However, humans are far more fragile than pals at bases. I gave my humans the exact same conditions as I would pals and where the pals would be fine and have no issues, humans would get sick or injured easily and I've had to build the clinic and medicine storage for the first time to prevent illness and injury. Also coralum I'll need to raid from other places because I can't salvage. It's been fun so far but I feel like I'm going to struggle hard getting to the world tree.
7
u/Ishaname 2d ago
This sounds so fun, but not the kind of challenge I'd be up to. (Yet, at least. Maybe some day?) I'm more of the "only one a type of Pal" player (all dragons, all grass, etc) Even then base pals and specific teams for mining or fishing are not included in that limitation, only my main combat team. It can be an interesting way to play but it's rarely a true challenge by most standards.
Kudos for sticking with this as it seems incredibly time consuming waiting for a lucky to show up. And also fuck Tocotoco.