Archive for MTCG – Divine Armaments

Divine Armaments – Recursive Enhancements

There Must Be A Better Way

So, you’ve been evolving and enhancing your Divine Armaments cards, but you’re beginning to feel a bit like Edward Bear…

Here is Edward Bear, coming down the stairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.
It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs,
but sometimes he feels that there really is another way,
if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.
And then he feels that perhaps there isn’t.

I’ve come across a couple of posts on the Internet and some YouTube videos that discussed some options, I’ve consolidated them into what I call the Recursive Approach to developing my feeder cards.

Working Smarter verses Harder?

This process is the most efficient in terms of the number of cards it requires and the amount of orison you spend doing it. It is NOT the most efficient in terms of the time it takes. You’ll be using the Single Enhancement mode and changing the Enhancement target each time. So, the enhancement process does take more time than the method I shared in earlier posts. However, that may be balanced out by the fact that it takes less time to gather the cards you need and less time to gather the orison to pay the evolution and enhancement fees.

The Goal

To create a fully enhanced Rare character card which will be used to level up one of my “real” cards. Mostly these days my event and battle decks use Super Rare and Super Rare+ character and equipment cards. So it takes a lot of level 40 Rare cards to level those cards up to maximum. To get the most out of a 4, 6, or 8 (gulp) card evolution, it takes a TON of feeders! So being efficient is important.

As I mentioned in my Levelling in Divine Armaments post a while back ago, the best place to gather levelling cards is Palace Corridor 1. So, I’ll be targeting a level 40 Hecate Effy (The Elegant) Rare card with this process.

Ingredients

You’ll need to gather the following cards and orison for this process:

  • 5 Hecate Effy (N+)
  • 5 Tyr N+ armor cards (see note below)
  • 12,423 Orison

Note: The armor cards should all be for the same slot. So you need 5 Banded Armguards or 5 Scale Skirts. While you can cross from arm to skirt slots, the enhancement process is most efficient when you’re using the same card as the target and material.

Process

There is a four-step process to this procedure. Technically creating the rare Hecate Effy can be done either at the beginning or the end. I tend to do her first because I’ve had times when I miscounted, and it is frustrating to get to that last step and realize that I need one more and have to go back to the Palace Corridor to get another one. In my example, I’m using the Banded Armguards for the enhancement armor.

Tip: Don’t forget to turn OFF the enhancement animation. This was a very nice feature that Sakurasoft added to the game recently. When you’re grinding out feeder cards not having to hit the “Skip” button is one extra button press that you can avoid and a few extra seconds saved may not seem like a lot at first, but it adds up over time, believe me!

Step 1 – Create Hecate Effy (The Elegant) (Rare)

This step is pretty straightforward. Just evolve four of the Hecate Effy Normal+ cards into her Rare form.

Target Material Cost Result
Hec. Effy Hec. Effy 2687 Hec. Effy+
Hec. Effy+ Hec. Effy 3741 Hec. Effy++
Hec. Effy++ Hec. Effy 4795 Hec. Effy (Elegant)

Step 2 – Enhance Tyr N+ Material

This is where the “recursive” part comes into play. The first enhancement is just one level 1 enhanced with another level 1. That creates a level 4. But then we use the Change Target button, select another level 1 Banded Armguard and use the level 4 that we just created as the material. That creates a level 8 result. We keep changing target, using the result of the last enhancement as the material, until we get a level 26 result.

Target Material Cost Result
Armguard (1) Armguard (1) 200 Armguard (4)
Armguard (1) Armguard (4) 200 Armguard (8)
Armguard (1) Armguard (8) 200 Armguard (12)
Armguard (1) Armguard (12) 200 Armguard (26)

Note that we could do it one more time and get a level 35 Banded Armguard. The problem is that if we use a level 35 Banded Armguard (which is a Tyr Forest item) to try to level a Rare Hecate Effy (fire) card, we won’t max her out. We’ll get her to level 39. And it will take another level 8 Banded Armguard to get her to level 40. Wasteful. It’s better to just take the Armguard to level 26, and proceed to Step 3.

Step 3 – Enhance Hecate Effy N+

Since the Hecate Effy character card is only Normal+, we can use the level 26 Armguard we created in Step 2 to enhance her up to level 35. Then, since she is the same base card as our Rare Hecate Effy we’re trying to create as our feeder, she’ll max out the card in step 4!

Target Material Cost Result
Hec. Effy (1) Armguard (26) 200 Hec. Effy (35)

Step 4 – Enhance Hecate Effy (The Elegant) [Rare]

Now that we protected ourselves from that inefficiency of changing jobs, card types, and elements by using the Hecate Effy Normal+ as our final enhancement in Step 3, we can max out our Rare Hecate Effy card in one move here.

Target Material Cost Result
Hec. Effy (Elegant) (1) Hec. Effy (35) 200 Hec. Effy (Elegant) (40)

Conclusion

At first this is going to feel frustrating. Changing target for every enhancement doesn’t feel as efficient as the first method I put up where you’re using the multiple enhancement which has fewer steps to it. However, as you begin to realize how many fewer cards you have to farm to get your Rare feeders and how much more quickly you’re getting your Super Rare and Super Rare+* cards maxed out, it starts to sink in that the changing target is a fair trade-off for not taking so many trips back to the Palace Corridor!

*Footnote: Ok, let’s be real. Maxing out a Super Rare+ card is never going to feel fast. But at least it won’t be such a drag building the Rare feeders you need to do it.

Leveling in Divine Armaments

One of the challenges that new players in DA face is how to best level (enhance) their cards. After a good amount of experimentation, I think I’ve found the most efficient way to approach it, but I’d be willing to hear from others if you think your approach is better.

Preparing

The first step is to make as much room in your card case as possible. It is a pain to have to stop grinding material cards because your case has filled up. Having extra “junk” cards in your case will make the multi-select option in the enhance screen more of a pain. Move any cards you want to keep into your Storage Container.

If everything doesn’t fit into your Storage, put the Normal+ or lower cards in there first. It will make the enhancement process much simpler. Also, if you happen to have any Normal or Normal+ cards that you are keeping in your main Card Case for some reason, do yourself a favor and enhance them once with something cheap. That will automatically exclude them from the multi-select enhancement pool.

Where to Grind

I’ve analyzed the various areas and chapters in the game, and I strongly believe that the best place to grind for materials is the Palace Corridor – Chapter 1. All of the loot drops there are Normal+ cards, the cost to advance is fairly low (4 action points) and the drop rate on potions is high enough that if you have a decent AP pool, you can probably grind there until you get too bored.

Note, this is also a good place to grind for orison (gold) when you’re early in the game and money is an issue. Since you can sell every Normal+ card for 954 orison, you can quickly fill your coffers with cash you need for enhancing and evolving the cards in your deck.

Step 1 – Gathering Cards

Basically, just keep gathering loot cards until you fill your card case. If you run out of AP, greet your friends, pop a recovery potion, etc. until you fill up your deck. You will have several Hecate Effy, Tyr Banded Armguards, and Tyr Scale Skirt cards to use for enhancing.

Which Cards to Use

After quite a bit of testing, it seems that character cards are by far the most efficient to use in leveling the cards you want to keep. So for this process, you’ll be using the Hecate Effy cards to level your gear.

You may be wondering why we didn’t just sell all the Tyr armor that we don’t want if this is the case. The reason is that using a level 1 Hecate Effy card is not NEARLY as effective as using one what has been pre-leveled herself.

Step 2 – Level up Effy

Here are some step-by-step instructions for what I do with each of my Hecate Effy cards…

  1. Go to your Card List and filter it so that you only see the Hecate character cards. I sort them by lowest level first
  2. Select one of your level 1 Hecate Effy cards to Enhance (make sure you’re using the Multiple Enhance mode)
  3. On the Material Card screen, change the filter to display All Arm armor at Normal+ or Lower rarity
  4. Use the Check all displayed link and enhance Effy with 10 arm pieces
  5. Click on the Change Target Card button and pick the next level 1 Hecate Effy and repeat
  6. Once you’ve used all the arm armor you have, change to waist armor
  7. If you have some junk chest armor, you can use that as well
  8. Once I’ve used all my armor, I’ll switch to using Character cards until I don’t have any junk Normal+ or lower cards left in my card case

IMPORTANT: Please notice that I only enhance each Hecate Effy card once. Doing so with 10 Normal+ armor bits should bring her to level 25. You could keep going until you max her out, but doing so requires a lot more armor. You start to quickly see diminishing returns. To be honest, you could probably get by with less than 10 armor pieces per Effy, but since it is so much faster to just click on “Check all displayed” and I can easily replenish my stock of materials, it isn’t worth the extra time to me.

Step 3 – Enhance your main card

The final part of the process is pretty simple as well…

  1. Go back to your card case and find the card that you want to level up.
  2. Choose to enhance that card
  3. You’ll need to have the Enhance Material screen set to the single enhance mode. This may mean that temporarily you have to change the filters to something like All Rare Characters or something to get the link that lets you change the mode.
  4. Change the filter to Hecate Character Normal+
  5. You should see your leveled up Hecate Effy cards there
  6. Choose one to use as the enhancement material and level up your main card
  7. Repeat until you max the card or run out of Effy’s

Analysis

At first I was using the Hecate and Tyr cards in their level 1 form. A full case was leveling my Super Rare+ character cards between 2 and 4 levels at a time. When I changed to this method, I could take an SR+ character from level 1 to level 45 in about 3 or 4 rounds of grinding material. MUCH much faster!

 

Divine Armaments

I’ll flesh out this article in more detail later. For now just wanted to say that my primary MTCG has become Divine Armaments. The most unique feature they have is the ability to choose from different sets of armor and weapons for your cards, allowing you to customize the look of your characters. It is still a fairly new game; so along with the nice features comes some bugs and rough spots, but it is still the 1st game I login to during my gaming time.

I’m going to make some additional posts that cover some tips and tricks I’ve learned with this game as the theorycrafting and experimenting about the optimal way to improve your deck is part of the fun for me.

Related Posts

Leveling in Divine Armaments