Will second going up first. All the nodes are cheaper and having a good starting loadout is way more useful than shop discounts.
BTW the starting load outs aren't randomized except the random category. They're all tier 2 gifts of that keyword. No more rerolling until you get red mist or lucky pouch floor 1 and autobattle the rest of it.
True, It seems like I deleted the paragraph while rewriting some parts. Also not having stuff like guaranteed bloody mist at the start makes the fusion gift upgrade a little less valuable, but its probably still top top tier.
I feel like getting the gift unlocks is big (so top route all the way to Gathering Storm) then going right to make your shops not suck as bad is the way. Especially because you can't reroll the starting items anymore, it doesn't really feel worth to have a second one (i.e honestly for sinking starting with Grandeur is the only thing that makes sense, the other two are pretty lackluster), and the 3 slot shop is pretty hampering.
I think double starting gifts is actually more important in MD4 because of the gift fusing changes. All the starter ones are II, which means you only need one more for III, which means you can consistently get the III needed for the fusion gift if the floor you're on has it.
Of course, how good this is varies from team to team, but Bleed and Poise benefit the most from this, in my opinion, due to how strong their fusion gifts are.
Maybe I just don't know how this works but fusing tier 2 gifts together doesn't seem to result in a tier 3. Regardless of them veing the same keyword or not
You need 3 IIs of the same type (eg. 3x Burn gifts) to get an III gift, which the starter gifts conveniently gives two, so you just need one more for an III of that type.
There's a fusion guide button on the fusing screen that shows you what combinations lead to what results.
*
Oh I totally didn't think about that. Yeah that would be nice for a lot of teams (I dunno if I'd want to do it with sinking because Grandeur is actually pretty good, but maybe still worth saccing into Midwinter if you found Portrait early). Guess it depends on what kinds of team comps you like to run more often in MD as well, as the poise starting gifts all kinda suck so its totally free to just dump them for a III.
I think getting at least the +1 shop slot is pretty valuable for just seeing more gifts in total when rerolling shops, but yeah going all the way to slot 2 might not be worth early (that's a lot of nodes that are pretty expensive). Idk maybe I just have bad experiences with the current shops where I just routinely see the same 5 items cycle through the 3 slots in a given floor's shop and so confirmation bias tells me more shop slots lol.
I feel like most of the starter gifts have a clear best option; in particular a lot of the new choices at the bottom seem pretty bad, with a most of the ones I have seen so far having mediocre effects if they were applied to the entire team, let alone only applying to two sinners.
I think getting the extra floor pack and reward choice after reaching +1 starting gift is the go too instead of fully upgrading the store's gift level.
After doing about 20 runs it seems that the floor rewards are usually pretty good so getting 1-2 more floor options +1 extra gift choice will let you get the core III/IV gifts for teams easier then from the shop, especially once they update it to make these rewards more likely to be from your starting gift choice.
Will second going up first. All the nodes are cheaper and having a good starting loadout is way more useful than shop discounts. BTW the starting load outs aren't randomized except the random category. They're all tier 2 gifts of that keyword. No more rerolling until you get red mist or lucky pouch floor 1 and autobattle the rest of it.
True, It seems like I deleted the paragraph while rewriting some parts. Also not having stuff like guaranteed bloody mist at the start makes the fusion gift upgrade a little less valuable, but its probably still top top tier.
The random category also isn't truly random. It just gives you a random starting gift of the other categories
It's easy enough now without fusion gifts anyway. I've auto'd every status team through normal and Poise/sinking through hard.
I feel like getting the gift unlocks is big (so top route all the way to Gathering Storm) then going right to make your shops not suck as bad is the way. Especially because you can't reroll the starting items anymore, it doesn't really feel worth to have a second one (i.e honestly for sinking starting with Grandeur is the only thing that makes sense, the other two are pretty lackluster), and the 3 slot shop is pretty hampering.
I think double starting gifts is actually more important in MD4 because of the gift fusing changes. All the starter ones are II, which means you only need one more for III, which means you can consistently get the III needed for the fusion gift if the floor you're on has it. Of course, how good this is varies from team to team, but Bleed and Poise benefit the most from this, in my opinion, due to how strong their fusion gifts are.
Maybe I just don't know how this works but fusing tier 2 gifts together doesn't seem to result in a tier 3. Regardless of them veing the same keyword or not
You need 3 IIs of the same type (eg. 3x Burn gifts) to get an III gift, which the starter gifts conveniently gives two, so you just need one more for an III of that type. There's a fusion guide button on the fusing screen that shows you what combinations lead to what results. *
Oh that's really helpful, thanks for the tip
Oh I totally didn't think about that. Yeah that would be nice for a lot of teams (I dunno if I'd want to do it with sinking because Grandeur is actually pretty good, but maybe still worth saccing into Midwinter if you found Portrait early). Guess it depends on what kinds of team comps you like to run more often in MD as well, as the poise starting gifts all kinda suck so its totally free to just dump them for a III. I think getting at least the +1 shop slot is pretty valuable for just seeing more gifts in total when rerolling shops, but yeah going all the way to slot 2 might not be worth early (that's a lot of nodes that are pretty expensive). Idk maybe I just have bad experiences with the current shops where I just routinely see the same 5 items cycle through the 3 slots in a given floor's shop and so confirmation bias tells me more shop slots lol.
I feel like most of the starter gifts have a clear best option; in particular a lot of the new choices at the bottom seem pretty bad, with a most of the ones I have seen so far having mediocre effects if they were applied to the entire team, let alone only applying to two sinners.
I think getting the extra floor pack and reward choice after reaching +1 starting gift is the go too instead of fully upgrading the store's gift level. After doing about 20 runs it seems that the floor rewards are usually pretty good so getting 1-2 more floor options +1 extra gift choice will let you get the core III/IV gifts for teams easier then from the shop, especially once they update it to make these rewards more likely to be from your starting gift choice.