These games all have very long tails, and Factorio is entirely bound to the legendary farm. In the goal of ‘making numbers go up’, the long optimization requires the productivity bonus of legendary material.

Let’s math it out:

Normal: A Cryogenic Plant has base base speed of 2, productivity modules (x8) of 4% and -5% speed, beacon of 1.5, and speed modules (x2) of 20%. Works out to 2.2 speed x 1.32 items = 2.904

Legendary: A Cryogenic Plant has base base speed of 5, productivity modules (x8) of 10% and -5% speed, beacon of 2.5, and speed modules (x2) of 50%. Works out to 4.25 speed x 1.8 items = 7.65

Factorio is often (outside of Nauvis) about building in confined spaces, so having 2.5x the productivity for the same footprint is amazing. Getting all the material required to reach that productivity is it’s own challenge, and one that’s been optimized by more invested people (with blueprints!)

I am not interested in reaching 10kSPM (currently at around 3k), as it would require a near complete retro-fit of my entire production line. Getting to the Shattered Planet in one piece, and then returning to Aquilo is ‘complete’ enough for me. That can certainly be done with normal items, and in fact should be normal weapons. Upgrades to Rail Gun speed/damage to the 100k ranks is ample.

Closing Thoughts

The experiment here was two fold. First, build more compactly on Nauvis. Second, only use normal items.

Compact on Nauvis is a cool puzzle set and relatively less challenging than I would have thought. The largest impact is on science production, and then not a whole lot. Coming in knowing that I didn’t need massive oil production chains saved a ton of space. It also made my roboports much more effective as the distance was a fraction of what the last playthrough was. Until the game allows multiple landing pads per planet, Nauvis really should stay small.

All the other planets were already 50×50 builds due to space limitations, so not much changed in that regard. Having existing blueprints, or at least advanced knowledge of the puzzles dramatically sped up my playthrough – Fulgora a bit, Gleba by a factor of 10, and Aquilo was simple enough this time.

Playing without legendary items is a more pleasant experience, in nearly every regard. Fulgora benefits from uncommon/rare batteries, but that’s truly the only super useful instance. Aquilo was completed with normal stuff, and then I opted to try to optimize prior legendary builds. I could have (and did for personal reasons) built a normal-quality space ship. It goes slower and needs to be a bit bigger to effectively buffer/process all the things, but it works. A legendary version is useful for the crushers, foundries, assemblers, and chemical plants. Legendary weapons are bad in this game, as it increases the range and wastes ammo (laser weapons would be the only exception).

Overall, I really do like the puzzle aspect of Factorio. Making the numbers go up while your investments is rewarding. Each planet brings a new set of variables to adjust and there are optimal solutions for each. I still think Aquilo’s bar for entry is too high as you can’t fail-forward. I think that the legendary ‘farm’ is a red herring for many players, and one that could have been implemented differently or behind a later research gate. There are only two meaningful quality types – normal and legendary. Everything else is simply fodder along the chain.

Factorio remains the gold standard, if only because of the QoL and detail applied to every single step. Moving from here to any other logistics game feels like time travelling backwards. It’s frankly astounding the level of depth present, and I remain convinced that it should be required in any engineering program. If you can’t solve Aquilo, then I don’t want you solving anything that matters.

A legendary farming space platform runs a simple concept. Recycle chunks with quality mods for a percentage chance to upgrade them. Each recycle has an 80% success rate, and they can take 2x mods. Regular Mk3 mods are 2.5%. Epic are 6.2%. So double that per attempt.

You do it for regular, uncommon, rare, and epic. Then you crush it for an output. This assumes you have the type you want and don’t need to recycle the legendary chunk.

Compound math is both simple and not intuitive. If I ask the odds of flipping a coin, simple 50% chance. If I ask the odds of flipping heads 5 times in a row, it’s 0.5^5 or closer to 3%.

So let’s look at the difference between regular quality mods and legendary mods in this setup.

• The first stage has an 80% chance to get something, and of that result, 5%/12.4% are upgraded.
• The result is 4% and 9.9%
• This happens 4 times.
• Regular odds: 0.0003%.
• Legendary odds: 0.01%

There are 2 zeros between those odds. Or put differently, you should get 3 per 1 million chunks for regular and 1 per 10 thousand for legendary. No need to explain why that is a great improvement.

The challenge is getting legendary quality mods. It is more of a time sink than seems at first as you need a lot of blue chips. Way more than you think.

Real World

Compound interest applies in the real world, mostly with banking and credit. I won’t delve into the ethics of credit, but the math is super interesting. Let’s pretend you have a $500,000 mortgage, with a 25 year amortization (total duration)

• At 5%, and monthly payments you would pay $34,800 annually. After 5 years, you’ll have brought the debt down by $57,000. $117,000 in interest.
• At 6%, and monthly payments you would pay $38,400 annually. After 5 years, you’ll have brought the debt down by $50,800. $141,200 in interest.

A 1% change increases your payments by nearly $4,000 a year (so $20k over the 5 years), but end up reducing your debt by $6,800 less. That’s $26,800 gone due to 1%… not what you may instinctively think as being $5,000 (1% of $500,000).

Option 1 – Farm Materials

• Build a legendary farm space platform to collect iron/copper/coal
• Get LDS research to 15.
• Use coal to make legendary plastic, iron + copper to make legendary blue chips
• Make 4 legendary Mk3 productivity chips first, put them in a foundry. That gives 300% productivity.
• Make LDS from 5 legendary plastic and molten (free) metal. Get 5 legendary plastic + 5 legendary steel + 5 legendary copper.
  • You can do this step before LDS research at 15, you’ll just lose plastic. Which may or not be a big deal depending on how much legendary coal you can get, and investment in plastic research.
• The copper (recycled) can be used to craft blue chips.

Option 2 – Upcycle Materials

• Get blue chip research to lvl 13.
• Build blue chips on Vulcanus (materials are free here). Start with normal Mk3 productivity chips. Upgrade to legendary when you can to give 300% and no-loss recycling.
  • As above, you can do this before research 13, you’ll just lose materials.
• Recycle the material with recyclers + quality mods.
• Use those results to build uncommon chips, and recycle those
• Same with rare, and epic.
• You now have mats for legendary materials.
• This process improves the more you research blue chip production. At level 14, you technically could recycle legendary blue chips for more mats than you put in.

Option 1 is where you will end up eventually. Option 2 may be faster, it’s significantly less research but it’s also on Fulgora. Research there takes up material you’re going to want to use for other things. Option 1 can be done 100% on Vulcanus. Next up, legendary production.

The first time I landed on Aquilo, it went really bad. Scratch that. The first time I tried getting to Aquilo it went really bad. And then it went worse.

See, the ship you use to get there needs to be built in a specific way, and is the first time you need rocket turrets to survive. The challenge here is that rockets need a rather specific set of ingredients to be built, which are rather uncommon, and they do no real damage at the start. You need to invest in research to get max shooting speed (340%) and a good amount of damage (~400%) so that it doesn’t take 9 rockets per asteroid.

In my second run, I forgot this. I didn’t lose this ship on the way there, but it wasn’t able to build enough to survive in orbit. That took ~30minutes for me to figure out and a save reload. And then a heavy investment in explosive research. Meh.

Landing

This is the hardest part of Aquilo as you’re likely not bringing the right amount of stuff with you. Aquilo has oil and 2 other gases that are specific to Aquilo tech. Nothing else. It’s also so cold that everything needs a heat pipe nearby to function, robots take 5x the power, and solar power gives 1% return. The first 10 minutes or so of Aquilo is basically survival with the tools you brought. I did mention in the past that I parked a space farming platform above Aquilo – it gives iron, copper, sulfur, coal, carbonized coal, calcite, and ice.

I opted to take a slightly different approach this time. 50 solar panels to get some trickle power, then a heating tower power by rocket fuel that I brought along. It burns crazy fast until you hit 500 degrees, and with a logic control to only feed if it drops below 550, I could set it and forget it. 2 heat exchangers + 4 steam engines was enough to get the basics off the ground.

Rather than having a bunch of rocket fuel heating towers and complex routing, I opted to focus on solid fuel. That gives more than enough power for the rest of the build.

Growth

Expanding Aquilo needs ice platforms, which take a while to build. And concrete if you want to put something on top of it. Stabilizing Aquilo means Foundries for iron, steel and copper. You can build most things with just that.

From there, you’ll build the first Cryo plant – no production bonus but does have 8 mod slots. From there it’s a rather small jump to a lithium plant, then to fluo liquids, cryo science, quantum chips, and finally fusion power. Never had a power issue this time, which was glorious!

Note about fusion power – it allows you to put production modules in all buildings, along with speed module beacons. Doubles the planet’s productivity. Doing this before fusion will cause a power outage.

I added a rocket fuel plant later on when the rest was stable, and then built my old fusion plant layout. Honestly, I think Aquilo took less time than Gleba. If you know what you’re getting into, and ship the correct materials, it’s not that bad. If you’re going in blind, and don’t have any blueprints, then things are going to be rough and take forever to ship what you need to get going. This may be my favorite planet to crack.

Planet Power Shifts

Fusion power is needed on other planets, and that takes a huge amount of materials to get done. Vulcanus is the urgent one, in order to scale productivity. Legendary space farming platforms are next, followed by Fulgora and Gleba. Nauvis doesn’t need it, Nuclear is more than enough for everything that will remain.

Next Up

Legendary farming. Unfortunately this run was significantly faster than the last one. I think I ran through the entire thing in just over 10 hours. Since I haven’t created upcycling farms, I don’t have any legendary mods. That’s going to be a hurdle. Research is also quite a bit behind, with most near level 8. I need LDS to be 15 for self-sustainability, which is like 100x farther to go.

That means, I need to optimize the heck of out Vulcanus, and ship out a constant feed of research packs. Compound percentages are the enemy… more on that in a bit.

Actually, three of them. One for basic material (which is needed for Aquilo) and two for legendary material. Both can be built early, but can’t really be used until certain steps are completed.

Basic Farm

A square shape, that has walls, gun turrets, and rocket turrets. A belt goes around the whole thing, with the space material on the inside, and the weapon material on the outside. You can power most of it through solar, but that is likely to create problems down the road. Nuclear (only feed it when needed) is the best option. Remember to request nuclear fuel!

There are areas to generate fuel (near the engines), areas to generate ammo/rockets (with foundries), and importantly, the actual farming area.

There’s one loop per rock type, and each rock can give you two results. The arm has a logic gate that opens if you need the material (less than 2k copper in this example) or the belt has room (less than 60 on the belt). The results go to the main storage, and overflow is split to the right and dumped over the side.

Since I don’t want storage overful with one item, I limit each to 2k. The arms shut down if I have that amount. The line naturally backs up to the splitter, and excess is dumped. The left side is a chemical floor that splits Carbon into Coal. End result is 2K coal, carbon, sulfur, iron, corrpe, calcite, and ice.

This is the real magic, since there are times where you have too much of one rock and not enough of another. This is the metallic trigger, where too much metallic (80+) and not enough of another (less than 10) causes the metallic rock to be transformed into a random other one. This is important outside Aquilo, where 80% of all rocks are Oxide (ice). If you don’t recycle them, you won’t have enough metal for ammo.

It is possible to finish Aquilo without a space farm, no question. Be aware that you’ll need to ship an incredible amount of iron, copper, calcite and coal as a result – you will hit bottlenecks.

Legendary Ship

Think regular farming ship but twice the size. The idea here is the last bit I put on the regular ship – recycling. More specifically, upcycling.

Using Quality Modules (the best you can), you recycle rocks with the hope of getting a higher quality result. Do it again for uncommon, rare, and epic rocks and maybe you get one legendary from it. Crush that legendary stone and get either iron/copper/calcite (one ship) or coal + sulfur (another ship). I have a future post on why you want to invest in legendary quality modules – short answer, they are 100x more effective.

Since you don’t need to head to Aquilo (Vulcanus to Gleba has the best type of chunks), you only need gun turrets. Power is a challenge. Since you should unlock Fusion power before Legendary items, it’s a straightforward thing to put fusion on a ship as it runs on it’s own once primed. Again, remember to request the fuel!

These legendary ships are 100% optional and 10,000% end game. My entire run, with the exception of Fulgora power batteries, with only normal items. This is different than my first playthrough, and I honestly prefer it. If I took the time to find a mod that allowed multiple rarity items to be used in crafting, then we’d be talking. But the sheer amount of waste in gambling drove me crazy.

Biolabs are amazing. Not only do they have an innate 50% productivity boost but they go twice as fast (5x at legendary level). It may not seem like much, but when research takes 1+hr and 10k science packs, it’s massive.

The challenge here is that they require biter eggs to build. 10 of them in fact. You can only acquire these by sending capture rockets at biter nests in the wild, then feeding them bioflux to create eggs. You can eventually build your own nests, but only after completing Aquilo. I waited last time, I will not make that mistake again.

Main Steps

1. Get Bioflux to Nauvis before it spoils. It has a 15m shelf life, so a direct path from Gleba to Nauvis is required.
2. Build a capture rocket. That needs Bioflux.
3. Find a biter nest. This may be the hardest part with no enemies. I’ve yet to encounter a single one on Nauvis.
4. Capture the nest, feed it bioflux and harvest the eggs. Manually.
5. Create 40 Biolabs, which is 400 eggs.
6. Profit.

Normal Play

Biter eggs normally expire, and spawn, well, biters. In a normal game, you would need to defend buildings with eggs in case they expired. No enemies means that this risk is entirely gone, as is the challenge of actually acquiring the initial eggs as they would often be in the heart of biter land. This is a very welcome change.

Upgrading Nauvis

This is an interesting decision point, as the value of Nauvis drops massively once you’re done with Gleba, and becomes only useful for research and biter eggs when you complete Aquilo. As I plan to build a legendary factory on Vulcanus, it does make sense to keep Nauvis running for a little while as it’s my ship building yard (no meteors). Building any ship requires a few truckloads of steel, and the absolute best way to get that is through Foundries – from less than 5/s to over 40/s.

So I figure if I’m going to upgrade that, may as well upgrade the rest.

• Foundries on Steel, Iron and Copper. This creates a significant need for calcite shipments.
• Electromagnetic Plants for red/green/blue chips
• Big Miners everywhere

Next Steps

Aquilo is next, but to get there I need a farming ship and a rocket-enabled ship. The last time I did this, it did not go well.

I have a large dislike for Gleba, and the list of grievances is long my friend! In order.

First, the enemies. I don’t mind biters, you can build walls and by the time you launch a rocket, no biter will ever enter your base. Gleba has stompers. These buggers take a beating, and each step they take breaks stuff. Walls are meaningless. And you need to farm material from quite a ways, so the spaces you need to defend are massive. You need lightning guns that have AE/stun attacks and they are constantly firing. Turning on no enemies mode is awesome!

Second is that nearly everything you can produce on this planet has a spoiler timer. There are only 2 practical items you can ship off planet as they have 15m+ timers. The rest you need to have built-in off-ramps to remove spoilage. It means you cannot truly have a main bus, and instead mini-factories that are rate controlled to reduce the chances of spoilage.

Third, the Biochamber is the only way to build anything here, and it takes nutrients as a power source, which you guessed right, spoil. Creating nutrients is a fun little challenge, as it starts off being from spoilage itself, then you realize Bioflux prints it for free.

Balancing items #2 and #3 are a fun little puzzle. Trains are useless here, and only robots can get stuff around quick enough without spaghetti belts to actually be optimal. It takes 200 or so running at all times to keep the basics going. Everything becomes modular, so you can’t really add 1 or 2 buildings, but a cluster of them to keep it working. The end result is a very organic factory, with dedicated cells. I really do think that this is an amazing design achievement.

Having #1 around meant that I was always under attack and non-stop messages about armies attacking my base. I had a ship just flying between Gleba and Fulgora for lightning ammo and to replace busted pieces. It was also an absolutely massive power draw. Without enemies, Gleba is actually fun!

Sure, shipping the spoiling science packs requires some extra math, but it works! Power issues are non-existent. Supply is easy (mind you collecting Pentapod eggs is it’s own journey), expansion is simple, and the planet went by in a relative jiffy. The items research unlocks are extremely useful – access to Aquilo obviously, but also stack inserters (amazing for Vulcanus), essentially free plastic/rocket fuel from Gleba, rocket turrets (needed to get to Aquilo), and Biolabs (which give a 50% bonus to research production).

Next step is not actually Aquilo but:

• building a farming space ship to put above Aquilo, since the planet has no natural resources
• building a space ship to go to/from Aquilo
• moving all research production from Nauvis to Vulcanus
• getting Biolabs
• Upgrading Nauvis to use Foundries + getting enough calcite to make it run
• Starting the build of a legendary farming station. It takes a long time to build and I’d rather have it ready for when I need it.

Let’s go!

My blog, my rules.

With Vulcanus done, time to move to Fulgora. The Electromagnetic Plant is key for all chips, and is priority #1. And honestly, #2 & #3 since it is that powerful.

Fulgora has no water but instead islands of trash in seas of oil. Every 5 minutes or so, a massive lightning storm hits the planet, and if you or your buildings are hit, it’s 2 hits to snoozeville. Thankfully the planet has a bunch of natural lightning rods strewn about, mostly near the minable trash piles. Mine that by hand, recycle the trash for some RNG materials, and that’s enough to unlock the Recycler, and off to the races.

The Recylcer randomly generates stuff from trash, so you need to build a triage line to store the items together, then let the overflow go back into the Recycler line. Some items are results of other items, so it can get a bit busy. With quality items, you need chests/filters per rarity, which is honestly painful and very low return. Blue concrete has very small value. The epic stuff is super hard to get, and therefore even less useful. I made the choice to keep everything normal quality, and when I’m done with Aquilo I can build a legendary farm method instead.

The net result is that Fulgora took about 1/10th the time because it honestly is quite simple. The planet gives you everything you need, with the exception of plastic. The Recycler/triage line is on one area, liquid processing in another, and finally holmium processing. That’s it. 10 Big Miners and I’m done this place.

Well sort of. Power is a challenge on this planet, as you need to collect lightning. You can build batteries (you need them for the planet research) but this is the only time I actually did do a quality roll. Two plants building batteries, one of them randomly upgrading the outputs. The regular ones go for research, the upgraded ones replace those on the map. An uncommon (green) battery has 2x the storage, rare (blue) 3x. This is an absolutely massive difference. And this is the first planet where I had to put in efficiency modules. Two of the Mk2 bring the power usage down by 80%, which is needed to have power last the entire cycle.

Didn’t take long to get my Electromagnetic Plants back to Vulcanus. It is now raining blue chips, which allows every pass of my science space platform to collect 2k purple, yellow, and pink research.

Preparing for Gleba comes next. Good news, with no enemies mode enabled I am actually going to enjoy this ride!

There’s a saying that you can’t cross the same river twice and that’s certainly true in games. The initial experience of discovery, trial and error, and simply awe just doesn’t exist the next time through. It may give the sensation of comfort, but it’s not the type of emotional event that typically marks you.

This is why NewGame+ exists, and why there are challenge modes. You have the sense of familiar, but with that extra challenge. I wouldn’t say this works for every game, especially those that are narratively driven, but it’s a relatively simple option to extend the shelf life of a game.

Logistics games are similar to action games, where you as an individual become better at the game. You’ve optimized builds, strategies and tactics. Think about it, rogue-likes are based on this exact model. The difference is in how long you gain that experience before a reset. MH Wilds is ‘easy’ because mechanically the game has less friction, but moreso because I’m just a better hunter.

End game Factorio has planet-sized factories that are ultra-optimized. I have spaceships that farm legendary material. Tons of blueprints to quickly build complex structures. And importantly, hundreds of automated robots to do all the menial work for me. I am build an entire factory while standing on a different planet as a result!

I have ziltch of that in a new game. I have a forest, rocks, a pick axe, and legs that run in molasses.

New Game Rules

To make this run different than the last, I need to set some ground rules. Concepts and goals that come from experience and desire.

• Compact builds means maximum distance between roboports. 50×50. This also means that I need to build a blueprint from late game to frame things, as it takes hours to normally unlock this tech.
• I want to get off Nauvis as soon as possible and head to Vulcanus. Vulcanus has absolutely every raw material I need in near-infinite supply with much smaller factories as a result.
• To leave Nauvis quickly, I need to drastically limit my resource expenditure and sprawl. Smaller builds require less material, especially trains to get access to Oil/Nuclear.
• I do not want any enemies or cliffs. Enemies are a resource drain, all risk and no reward. Cliffs on Nauvis are dumb because you can’t get rid of them until much later. I could care less about cliffs once the bombs are available to build on Vulcanus.
• The planet order will be focused on meaningful unlocks. Vulcanus (will be the main factory planet), Fulgora (elevated trains and recyclers), Gleba (I really don’t like this planet, but you need heat plants for later), and finally Aquilo (fusion power).
• I am not looking for quality crafting until after Aquilo is unlocked, at least not in any meaningful sense. That is a major resource drain, with minimal results until you have the appropriate unlocks available.
• Space Ships will maintain the prior build structure. One for the interior planets, one for Aquilo, one for beyond.
• The game is ‘complete’ at the solar system edge.
• I am not interested in a time challenge. I prefer clean and optimized lines that can be re-used. Frankly, time challenges require some RNG luck and double the time in preparing the necessary blueprints to skip design work.

So let’s see where this goes.

I am Canadian, no secrets there. While it’s been rocky times this past year+, the last month has been like no other. I am finding it difficult to sleep with the seemingly non-stop news of things that were inconceivable a few months ago. And well, a lack of sleep has all sorts of other impacts. And now we’re in election mode, with one month to go for some sense of ‘stability’. I tend to avoid writing anything that leans towards a political position, that will continue. What I will state is that these processes seem mechanical, but are social agreements. Trust takes years to build, and seconds to lose. So regardless of the outcomes of the process, the people will remain, and positive relationships are the fundamental key to long term prosperity.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Interesting crossroads here. A recent patch causes the game to randomly crash with any bluetooth controller. Not fun. Especially when I’m resting trying to get a decent investigation to pop up. Feels like a giant waste of time when farming 1-2% power increments. And honestly, at this point I’m really trying to farm level 3 decorations, which is better done through Pollen farms.

With title 1 update just around the corner, I’m going to put this game on pause. I enjoy it, but the time/reward math just isn’t there right now.

Hockey

Kids hockey is nearing the end. I’ve got 2, and one finished this weekend. Another in less than a month. Going to be weird having an extra 20-30 hours of free time a week. Knowing me and my family, we are for sure going to fill it with something. Likely a lot of time at the cottage.

Other Games

While I have a back catalogue of games to play through, I am finding it really hard to find one that sticks. My value of time is so out of whack right now, that I need to find comfort rather than exploration, and in bite size chunks. I don’t have the mental bandwidth to learn new mechanics, but I do have enough to optimize existing ones.

• I’ve tried a few cozy games (similar to Stardew Valley) and none have stuck. Bunch of reasons, though most is due to their balance of time & progress.
• Metroidvanias are everywhere, but the good ones are still the good ones! Animal Well is honestly too mentally taxing.
• Base builder / survival games are not scratching the itch. I gave Enshrouded another pass, it has a ton of new content but there are still friction points that annoy me. I may give Nightengale a shot, the mechanics seem to have greatly shifted.
• Logistic simulators are interesting. Techtonica is done. Foundry has a roadmap but no actual content for a while. Dyson Sphere hasn’t had a content patch in a year, and the last one (Dark Fog) really, really sucks. Satisfactory supports mods (yay!) and has yet to improve trains (boo!). 1.1 is coming with mostly QoL things. 1.0 was great and everyone should play it, but building for “beauty” is not what I play those games for.

Factorio

Ever since I put away my MMOs, no game has taken up as much attention as Factorio. There’s always some problem that is present, one with an evident math solution. The challenge in all logistics games is related to concepts. Your fundamental beliefs and design principles are challenged every minute, and sometimes pushed into very uncomfortable spaces. More than once I realized I made a design call a dozen hours ago that was so wrong that I had to rebuild it all to fit a larger need. The good news it that after you unlock robots (~4hrs or so in), these rebuilds are relatively easy to do. This is not the case in Satisfactory, which is a major friction point for me.

My first playthrough in Factorio was a spaghetti fest. I barely got to rockets and then put it to rest. My second playthrough was organized around city blocks (from Nilaus), which dedicated space and blueprints to focus on specific items. A block for smelting, a block for science, a block for rockets and so on. I played 2.0 in that mindset and got to the end game, RNG and all.

City blocks are a great design principle. The challenge is that aside from Nauvis (the first planet), you don’t actually have that much space to build when you land. So I am starting a new game, and using a smaller design principle that is based on the minimal roboport distance – 50×50 blocks. I will have much less space to use, requiring more creative use of belts, but also much less sprawl as a result. Should be fun to optimize.

Oh, and I turned off enemies and cliffs. I can get PvE in another game.

At this point, I have ‘completed’ all the structured content in Monster Hunter Wilds. All the main quests, optionals, events, and side quests. I think I’ve mapped out everything so I can plop down camps across the maps. This effectively caps off the exploration phase of the game, and transitions to the achievements phase. That phase has 3 main parts – weapons, armor, and decorations.

Weapons

There are two types, and the ‘best one’ depends a lot on the type. Artian Weapons have a pile of RNG and the materials only come from tempered monsters (let’s say they are 20% harder than normal versions). Regular weapons are better for elemental damage and don’t have a RNG roller coaster, and they don’t need tempered fights.

If you do need Artian weapons, there’s some small RNG in crafting them and then a PILE of RNG when upgrading them with 5 random rolls. It is min-maxing at that point though and the long term grind for 1-2% gains. Good news is that only the material to craft the weapons is lost in the RNG machine, the material to upgrade items is always recovered. And if history is any judge, the weapons will be replaced in 3 months with something better.

Armor

This part is rather straightforward. Hunt for parts. It may take time for some pieces (notably gems that have a 2-3% drop rate), but optional quests are usually enough here. I would not recommend taking on tempered monsters here until you get to 300 or so defense, you spend too much time healing. You may need to for some material, but generally can be avoided. I personally find tempered Arkveld easier than Gore Magala, but your mileage may vary.

Upgrading armor is very useful. HR armor usually has 7 tiers, and each tier costs more to upgrade, so spread out the love. Later monsters will certainly unlock better armor, so I wouldn’t concentrate in upgrading them too much.

Decorations

Right, this part sucks, big time. Always has. At HR50 you can target level 1 decorations at the melder, and at HR 100 you can target level 2 decorations. So if you need either of those, wait until you reach the proper HR level.

If you need level 3 decorations, you’re gonna have to spin the RNG wheel. Either you get melding tickets or you hunt, both are quite long in the tooth. Is it worth it? I have never found so, but it is a carrot of sorts to keep going. Decorations are good forever, keep 3 of each.

Investigations

This is the bread and butter of the late game grind and somewhat obtuse as a mechanic. That said, it is a massive improvement on the prior versions… no need to run around and collect material to unlock quests. From the world map, you can take a look at available quests per zone, and then save them so you can repeat them up to 3 times. Don’t see a quest you want? Use the rest feature to reset the quests.

Understanding what makes a GOOD investigation is part of a dance mind you. Once you get the hang of it, the cadence is pretty decent. Right now, there’s optimal investigations and then everything else.

Other Notes

• Capturing monsters is best, unless you have the rare food buff for extra carving. So 95% of the time, capture.
• The AI hunters are both great and ok. Great in that they are super helpful in combat (heal + tank) and WAY better than actual people in terms of etiquette. Ok in that their damage is substantially less than actual people. I’d strongly recommend them until you are at the end game and solo work becomes much faster.
• ‘Farming’ materials is extremely hands off and RNG heavy. Seems that there’s missing a Palico farming system.
• Cooking is still super important, but now consumes material for stronger buffs and longer durations. I personally dislike this change, if only because getting the cooking material is cumbersome. I fully expect farming to tackle this issue in the future.
• The Palico is much less useful than before. You can’t select their skills, and some have massive cooldowns.
• The Seikret mount is both amazing and curious. It can traverse the entire map in less than a minute, vertical and horizontally. It defeats the purpose for camps/exploration, with very specific exceptions. It will save your life when a monster is about to kill you as well.
• There’s very little incentive to actually explore the map. This is very jarring coming from Rise that forced you to collect boosting bugs before every fight. Which is too bad, because the map is really cool! (end game, still a good idea to have a maxed herbalist/geologist set of gear to get mats)
• I find that the game strongly focuses on raw (physical) damage and avoids nearly all status effects except frenzy. Given that there really are only 2 relevant monsters at end game, it is less complex and therefore easier. Or more accurately, Arkveld is substantially less complex than Nergigante.
• Finally, it’s important to note that the content in the game today is a fraction of what it will be within a few months. That’s how Capcom keeps people playing. Judging Wilds against Iceborne or Sunbreak is not even close to being fair. What’s here is good, really good.