Month: December 2019

Secret Daybreak – 558,265 points…for Rank 133.

Posted on by eonleader

This is a re-post of my Reddit achievement post from /r/StarlightStage, found here. I’ll have a further blog post here on some other bits of the event soon, hopefully.

I wasn’t supposed to be here. Not when, all told, I should have quit the game six months ago.

Ah yes, six months ago. This time six months ago I was rolling for Minami3 for the second time. I didn’t get her in June 2018, and all the jewels I’d earnt – and quite a few I hadn’t – didn’t get her in May 2019 either. But at the time I wasn’t angry, just disappointed. I knew that, eventually the limtix would come and put me out of my misery, even if it meant spending another bunch of money on Minami, whom I’d spent one suptix and one limtix on already. Obviously I wasn’t best pleased that all my jewels were gone, but in the moment it all seemed OK.

What was not OK was when an even better girl came in the next gacha: Mika4. This is the dangerous game you play whenever you roll for one thing while you’re waiting for another to come. When you can Never Predict Bamco, you know the risk you’re taking when you do such a thing. That didn’t make it any less painful to take. Make no mistake, this was the lowest, most crushing moment I’d had in this game.

So I gave myself an ultimatum. I would spend as much as I dared to try and get Mika. This turned out to be enough for three 10-rolls. If I didn’t get her within those three 10-rolls, I would leave Deresute, and never come back. A 0.4% rate. To hit it, three chances.

I only needed two.

Six months later, after Minami should have made me quit the game, I’ve just done this for her. Oh, and of course, my Best Girl Ever, Kanade. Only in the world of THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: Starlight Stage…

Before

If I hadn’t got plenty of forewarning, this would not have been possible. The pamphlet for Funky Dancing was the first giveaway: the song Kanade and Minami did at it made it almost nailed on. In-between then and when the event was ultimately announced, I successfully formed my first auto team. With me working Monday to Friday (where they neither minded nor cared, so long as I wasn’t tapping), this was a necessity if I was to do what I wanted to on this event: play enough to satisfy my love for the two girls. How many points that would get me, or what rank I’d get, didn’t bother me. Even better yet for this Cool event, it was a Cool team. All I needed was, firstly, a suptix to spend on the missing link, a Coordinate, which would be Kako2. And secondly, an event as a good excuse to get Mizuki to the magic 7 skill prob potential required to get her life lock working perfectly. The lives I did in the Sushiroad prior were exactly enough to both achieve this and get both its cards. Once I’d confirmed the team was working as intended, I went off to figure out what songs it was best on – which means to say, songs where I could get an S and didn’t have to tap anything. I came back with 24 songs that achieved these two, critical goals:

Hakka Hakka, Susume Otome, Memories, You’re stars shine on me, Hello Especially, Near to You, Mikansei no Rekishi, 2nd Side, Nebula Sky, Nocturne SS3A, Tsubasa, Lunatic Show, Colors, Rainbow, Twilight Sky, Last Kiss, Gokigen Party Night, Legne, AnemoneStar, Undead Dance Rock, High Pressure, Soukyou no Aria, Flip Flop SS3A, Hotel Moonside.*

*Kono Sora no Shita also achieved this, but I researched before realising auto teams play out songs the same way every time, so was worried it wouldn’t get me an S rank every time. Hence me only autoing it once, which was completely by accident but also when I realised it was fine. Oh well.

So that was one half of the plan laid out. It was only rather a bit later I remembered that the best way to get tokens is to do Grands as well. And before this, I was utterly hopeless at Grands: they might as well have been a different game to me. Tentatively, I approached Onegai, Trust Me and Stage bye Stage Piano, and would start Grand grinds on them.

The start

So I went into the first day not really caring about my rank; that was mostly me just fleshing out my farming strategy depending on where I was at the time. Which basically amounted to autos in public, Grands mostly anywhere else. But here I would figure out the most critical thing of all: could I fully auto Secret Daybreak? This would be a make-or-break factor for the whole event: being able to cash in at will would blow my options wide open. Joy of joys, I could. And so, after spending my hometime rotating between grands, autos and SDB, I went to bed with tokens in hand for the next day, and the satisfaction that things had gone as planned – and looked likely to continue that way. Again, I’d prevented myself from looking at my rank; not even on the screenshot I’d taken at the end and shared out.

But before day 2, I got wind I was in rank 150 – and this after I’d been asleep for three and a half hours. How much I needed to play to drastically improve that, I didn’t know, but I gave it a hell of a go on day 2. My first really massive cash-in on tokens early in the day probably helped, but still I chose to be none the wiser to my rank. But at this point I clocked that, to really make a difference, Piano Grands would not be the best option: to really step it up, I would have to go in and do Fortes. Even though I’d now FCd my three Pianos of choice, this was a daunting prospect. But switching teams to healers and perfect locks (including my auto team) meant survival on them became that much easier. I gave each Forte a couple of tests, but while I hadn’t yet figured out which would be best for me, the difference it made to my token count was considerable. Still I chose not to look at my rank, but just from looking at the difference in point gain compared to the previous day I know these Fortes would make a real impact. I used my tokens up, and went to bed. Still, only those who’d seen the screenshot I sent knew where I’d ranked.

A message I woke up to confirmed just what it had done: when I went to sleep, I’d hauled myself into T100. A ranking of 88th confirmed I had a chance at achieving a magic two-digit finish, and this in an event where such a finish was scheduled to require more points than any other. It didn’t last as those around me pounced while I slept, but it was still a promising sign. But while I knew my plan was working in that regard, I knew I’d also have to step it up, with the weekend approaching and the required standards rising. So Friday night, I went about checking how I could go about a full Forte grind, from 0 to the token cap. And I went through the six maps and evaluated which of these I could really play for what, ultimately, would prove to be 3 hours straight. Onegai was fine difficulty wise but it felt an uninspiring map to play – the map matched the beat but it was as if the notes themselves had been plucked at random out of a hat. Stage bye Stage was fine…except for the outro, which consisted of a hellish bunch of flicks with random notes chucked in between that could and would kill me if I got tired. And Illusionista, Starry-go-Round and Trust me were all just way too hard. That left True Colors. Now this was a map that matched its song perfectly – and that inspired me to get it nailed down and actually learn it. It also helped that I wouldn’t get tired of it, given I’d been hearing it every time I started the game already. (It also proved to be the fastest Forte to do, but that was by the by for me). Not that it helped for my first grind, of course. It felt brutal to go through the first time, and made me question whether I could go through it again. But alas, I knew I’d probably have to.

The weekend

Unfortunately, before I could get a gauge on where I’d rank after using all my tokens, I fell asleep with 4.5k+ worth still to go. So I was none the wiser on my rank overnight until I woke up again and actually used them. There, I found I sat at rank 110. And so, I went into Saturday. And I’d chosen to plan my grinds around another hobby entirely: football. Not wanting to miss my first taste of a world where Jose Mourinho is Tottenham manager, I did autos until 12:30 to start (no way was I doing a Forte grind first thing in the morning). It worked a treat, but once again, cashing in my capped out tokens proved too much for my sleepiness and I dozed off: this time with 2k still left to spend. I’d fallen way behind schedule on when I wanted to do my Forte grind, but as it turned out, when I started it at 6pm, it turned out to be a far more enjoyable affair doing mostly just True Colors, mixing in a couple of the others from time to time to keep things fresh. It helped that I still had the evening football game to keep me occupied on something else, too. With that finished, I used the cap’s worth of tokens I’d earned – without falling asleep this time – and had hauled myself, just about, back into T100, up to 96th. I went to sleep a little earlier this time, to try and get myself some rest. But not only did I know I’d be getting passed again, but that I’d be waking up in time for things to get serious: 4x time.

I slept 6 hours. 4x had been going an hour without me – and it showed. Again, though, there was no way I’d do a Forte grind straight away, even if I probably ought to have done. That’s because I’d scheduled one for 1:30pm, to finish at 4:30pm, in time for me to watch one of the few things I love more than Kanade: Manchester United. That Forte grind went fine as well, but I knew I was gonna have issues with time management now. Autoing a cap’s worth of Secret Daybreak gave me a good 3 hours of downtime at 1x: at 4x, that was cut down to just 50 minutes. That wasn’t the most immediate problem, though. Throughout a lot of Saturday, I’d always had a minor concern that there was something I’d been forgetting this whole time. When I saw I hadn’t risen nearly as high as expected after using my Forte grind’s cap, that minor concern became a major one. A quick ask around confirmed what I’d feared: I’d messed up the bloody eigyous again.

I had completely forgotten about the feature during my failed Pretty Liar attempt, but on this occasion, having concentrated so hard on my live strategy, I had neglected to ask how the eigyous actually worked. I’d just been setting myself up on random ones: usually the wrong ones. I calculated what I’d lost by (mostly) not doing them: all the lost points and tokens wouldn’t have gotten me back into T100 at that moment in time, but they would have brought me pretty close. Also, by all accounts, I was supposed to be using stamina (and jewels) to clear out all the yellow ones straight away. In that respect, I at least consoled myself with the fact I hadn’t burnt so many valuable jewels on it. I’m still at the mercy of the gacha while I’m waiting for Minami4, you see…that’s why I’d already spent on my last two discount packs. And it’s why I would continue to not do what you’re supposed to do on eigyous, too. I just played out the right ones, but waited for them to finish naturally, rather than forcing them straight away at a cost. The damage had been done. I suspect it’s a minor miracle I was even able to sniff T100 in this event without doing eigyous, but the reality was now that, with 4x in full swing, I was getting eaten up. (Also, United played one of their stupidest games in recent memory. So it’s not like even they could patch over the misery.)

But in obsessing with my rank, it was here that I came to realise how I’d forgotten my original goal: to satisfy my love for Kanade and Minami. But even when I tried to convince myself to reset my mind for that, I thought: is this really doing that? If I wanted to show my love for them, I’d ideally be doing something involving them. All I was doing here was playing True Colors for three hours at a time, mashing out a bunch of other girls’ songs on autos and then playing Secret Daybreak a bit. Yes, I’d get a nice number at the end of it to show everyone how dedicated I was, but in that moment it didn’t feel like I was doing anything ‘for them’. This is why I feel so strongly about the gacha. Because that’s where your love for them really counts. But showing it through something like a token event? At the time, it didn’t feel that way.

So having decided the very thing I was doing was stupid, I wasn’t all that bothered where I ended up. So I just finished up for the day, with quite a few tokens still lying around, and at such a rank that I still wasn’t entirely convinced I couldn’t finish in T100. Still, I had a plan for the last few days, and I’d be sticking to it. And that’s when Monday happened.

Maintenance Monday

Starting my grind as normal, on the train I’d just finished an auto of High Pressure when I got the fateful error message. The reaction from Discord told the whole story: someone had decided now was the time to do an update. Which hadn’t worked. And they’d taken the game down for maintenance.

Absolutely seething, I was. Because here was what proved to be nearly a whole day’s break (more like Public Daybreak, amirite?!) with all the downsides and none of the benefits. I couldn’t get any rest because it was 7:23am when it went down and I still had a day of work ahead of me. I’d be quite literally in the dark when they made an announcement because they scheduled it for 3am Tuesday. But worst, it laid waste to my best-laid plans and intentions. I’d planned to cap out in time for Tuesday 10am, when something was scheduled at work and I absolutely, positively needed to fully auto stuff, and ideally make the most of it. At the time, I was still way, way down on that. Worse was to come when, having been to my all-new place of work that afternoon, where I reckoned I’d be on Tuesday, I realised I could lose up to 6 hours of playtime then. As it turned out, so busy was that afternoon that in many ways, having downtime on the event was a blessing in disguise: I would’ve got bugger all done on the event anyways. Oh, and of course, I would have to put up with this whole godforsaken shebang for another day. I spent the rest of the time raging out on Discord, and putting together my thoughts from the night before on my blog. Eventually, though, I had enough time to reminisce on my one true goal: doing it for Kanade and Minami. And I remembered all I wanted to do was play enough to satisfy my love for them. In that respect, I’d already done exactly as I wanted: all I could do now was continue to do that until 12pm Thursday. I thought, once and for all, “to hell with T100”, and went my own way on strategy. Whatever happened, would happen.

The end

So, Tuesday. Obviously I went in expecting to lose all this time, but I was pleasantly surprised to wake up just 10 minutes before the event kicked off again. So at least I could start again on the right foot, and would continue to do so even through the most miserable commute imaginable that day. I lost the first hour or so as expected, did what I had gathered for Secret Daybreak at the 10am thing, and prepared to lose the worst of my time for the rest of the day…until I was told I’d be sitting in my new place somewhere else where it was a hell of a lot more chilled out. Not only that, but the work I was half expecting to materialise almost by default…didn’t. I wasn’t just set for the day; I was set for the rest of the event. But best of all, I thought I would lose 6 hours that day: instead, I only lost an hour and a half. Although I wasn’t bothered at this stage, by the time I got home I’d dropped back to 138, but it could, and probably should, have been so much worse. All the morale I’d lost from the previous two days was back. With the pressure of my misguided rank thoughts behind me, I could finally, truly, settle back and get stuck in. In the midst of that night’s Forte grind, I had a thought for the last full day, Wednesday: should I do two Forte grinds? I had enough time to pull them off, and for the second one I could pretty much decide to sleep and leave however many tokens I wanted for the final push Thursday. Either way, the notion I could get back to where I did that Tuesday would have seemed unthinkable when the day started.

As it turned out, I decided not to throw my mind, body and soul into two grinds in one night, instead opting to do mini-grinds of about an hour each for the Wednesday night. I dipped much more into the other songs for those last ones, simply to give them a last chance to shine in what would be my last mass Forte grinds. Not that it stopped me falling asleep towards the end of my grind – although I just woke up and used what tokens I’d gathered up at that time. And so it was, having been put through the wringer, on an eight-day roller-coaster ride the likes of which I’d never been on before, the event finished up without any real qualms. All I had to do was figure out how to finish up. I decided I wanted to finally play out Secret Daybreak properly, in 3D, with Kanade and Minami in the unit. Having heard the song enough times, I had an inkling that I could FC it. I screenshotted my rank before hand – I was at 133, and having seen the yawning chasms opening up between the runners ahead of me in the rankings, I was confident I’d be finishing there. Obviously, and predictably, though, my plan didn’t go that smoothly. Because in my rush to get the live started I forgot to pick 3D. And I tried to record through Game Launcher and it lagged the game out. Which meant I didn’t FC it. And I collected my eigyous right before doing it so I left quite a few tokens on the table. Oh well. That about summed it all up for me, a man who’d been spending his entire two-year Deresute career mostly being clumsy about everything and who had just broken his previous points total record fourteen-fold. And with that, it was all over.

After

The next day confirmed what my efforts had yielded: the confirmed rank of 133, earned with 558,265 points. Almost certainly enough for T100 in nearly any other event. But not even close in this, quite the most extraordinary bloodbath I, or anyone else, has witnessed.

Do I care? Not one bit. I set out to achieve one goal, and to my eyes, I did it. For these two girls, who’d come together to sing this song, I’d done them justice. I’d wanted to do this kind of thing for Kanade for two years; since the utterly crazy period at the start of my Deresute career when I conspired to get all her SSRs in the first three weeks of playing it. My attempt to do so in Pretty Liar was an utter disaster: this laid the ghost of that failure completely to bed. As for Minami, my love for her had already been reaching something of an apex prior to this: in that respect, this event came at the perfect time. And of course, I’m not done with her just yet… I won’t be truly done with this game until Minami4 is out of the way. She seems a strong candidate for the next Cinfes, so I’m locking and loading for that as much as a man with no resources left can (for the record, after all was said and done, I finished with 30k jewels, and I have six 10-roll tickets saved up). But if this event proved anything, it is, once again, that you should Never Predict Bamco. You never predict them to launch one tantou’s card after another’s rerun; you never predict them to raise an update in the middle of an event that doesn’t work; I won’t predict them to launch Minami4 at the next reasonable opportunity. Still, if I don’t roll her either, I won’t be mad at her. I might even raise a chuckle. Partly because it’s what I’ve come to expect from her. And partly because it would be because I did this event. So I won’t be too salty about it. If I do finally, finally manage to roll her, though…hoo boy.

Anyway. Would I do anything like this ever again? Haha, no chance. I only have three tantous I would do any such thing for in the first place: the other one is Mika and unless she gets a hitherto unexpected duo with one of these two I can’t see myself going through an undertaking quite like this again. I mean, quite apart from the questions I raised about what I was actually doing, I would need the kind of luck that went my way at times throughout this event, and I can’t possibly legislate for that. One thing I will say, though, is that I chose voluntarily not to fight my own body clock and its needs – as observed by me drifting off twice Saturday. This was a trade-off worth making, for while I was feeling a bit tired from time-to-time, it was nowhere near as taxing as I’d expected. Probably for the best, all things considered. God knows how all the boys and girls ahead of me in that near-680k(!) T100 felt by the end of this. Needless to say, they’re probably thanking their lucky stars for that Monday-Tuesday rest!

Of course, I have to give shoutouts to all those who helped me on this wild ride. My biggest thanks go to two people: firstly, Lolicore, who was hugely supportive before, during and even after this event, and whose vast experience at this sort of thing was a great help throughout. Second, to fellow MinamiP Rafe, who also helped me out a lot before the event, and most importantly, during my lowest ebb on maintenance Monday, he helped me pick myself up off the mat and go again. So huge thanks to the pair of them.

Shoutouts to everyone who supported me across the various Discords I frequent, including, but not limited to: Hakua, Creed, Zhu, Rain, Dwr3k, Alan, Sairaan, Kami, Honk, monohicon, Sikachu, Apoc, Adwins, Avi and Roen.

And of course, shoutouts to everyone whose support idols were Rin3, Syuko3, Kanade3, Minami3, the Foom3, Miyu(whichever number Miyu princess is idc), Haru2, Kako3, or “stripper” Nao4 – including, as I found, the aforementioned Lolicore, Rain, and Roen.

Thank you for reading this, and I’ll leave you with this one conclusion – I might not be overly praising of events, but I recommend you try something like this at least once. If you truly love a) Deresute and b) whoever you do it for, it’ll be all worth it by the end. Just hope your event isn’t as mad as this one! Thanks again, see you all next time.

TL;DR wake me up when it’s Minami4

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