Justin

I finished up my most epic Ultimate Umbra run of the Valor Rift to date. I ended up with 700 hunts total, and my very last hunt got me to Floor 102. Not bad at all!

Now that my base has had its stats boosted from lvl 69 (previous record) to lvl 102, it was making a noticeable difference in my catch rate. I think if I would start over with a new UU run now that extra power and luck would allow me to get even higher because I wouldn't be knocked back so much.
And even though I had farmed 400 Champion's Fire before starting, and I had several drop, and even more from the egg drops, I still ran out. I think an additional hunt with all the things from the start, I could easily make it to 104 (the next Total Eclipse Mouse) and how far beyond that?
The Chinese New Year event is hands down the best time to make that run. (3x bonus loot from the Total Eclipse!! Yes please. And thank you. ) The problem is by next year there will be new areas to take advantage of, so is it worth spending ALL THAT TIME doing another climb up the tower? 750 hunts for me = about 12 days...maybe more. That's pretty much the whole event. So I will have to think about it.
Speaking of The Total Eclipse, I now have 150+ Cores which theoretically equals another three pages for the tome. The problem is that I'm sooo low on gold and Ronza is likely only a few months away. (Not that I've bought much from her the past few years.)
So that's now my focus. Get gold! And I find that treasure maps seem to be one of the fastest ways for me to get $$$.

Justin,

here's my profile as well - https://www.mousehuntgame.com/profile.php?snuid=100004347820277 - I play there as Bee Cissy, and happily accept NWeb friend requests!

If you're playing through Facebook, you might be interested in this FB group (requires that you're logged in at FB):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/420377988016283/?ref=bookmarks

Some of us have played for several years, and have reached far in the game.

Have fun!

FK I'm still scratching my head on how you have managed to totally eclipse me (har har) so thoroughly in the VRift...I'm still working on finishing my upgrades in the area, haha. I feel like I'm not usually so far behind in an area but I feel extremely slow these days.

Btw if you're really hard up on gold, you'd be amazed how much money you can make on the Marketplace. I don't have oodles of disposable items, but even I have earned over 82mil on the MP in the last two months, and that was without any particularly huge big ticket items.

Perusing my MP history also reminds me how much gold I've SPENT on items in the last few months, and also that 110mil for a Rib seems like a really decent deal these days considering that I think they're up to 160mil now.

Anyway, all that to say, most of my gold is tied up in my Ronza fund (I always set aside about 30mil around this time of year) and also I'm playing with buying kits/LGS via the MP instead of using real cash, so I have some gold tied up in Buy offers. Can always cancel those if I need to, or if they get fulfilled, I will have gotten a pretty good deal.

Soooo.... I've already sold a very large quantity of stuff on the Marketplace to get gold to buy lots and lots of overpriced Champion's Fire. And I think that probably answers your question as to how I managed to pull so far ahead.

I will have to look to see if there's anything else I can be rid of to restock my Ronza gold supply.

I'm not going to make all the new eggs this year. I wasn't ready for the ultimate umbra and I ran out of wildfire. I need about 48 hours to get enough wildfire to finish out the eruption.

I won't be able to do the ultimate umbra either, starkat.
I should follow fantasia's example and buy Champion's Fire.

I'm working on an epic eruption now, though - and I think I spent about 48 hours to get enough wildfire for it. I wanted a full wildfire only run this time, no flamin', going all in for the Kalor'ignis. I think I've got 3 eggs from him so far, and I'm about half way through the run. Only I'm currently on a Slayer map run, in Acolyte Realm - I've been there for two days, got 8 Acolytes and still waiting for the Chrono

I’ve spent the entire event at v rift.

All upgrades are done and am collecting secrets for string stepping.

I’m actually planning a multi year endeavor for the v rift prestige base:

I will do a prestige push now with rift ult lucky charms, then farm gold for the next six months to buy ember charms for another prestige push during Halloween. I could easily drop 600 to 800 million just buying ember charms. Madness you say? Perhaps. I want to run out of ember charms at about floor 110 then switch to ultimate charms. I have about 35 right now and will get more during the seh.

Then I will just keep that run going for years and years and farm more ult charms during lny and seh each year and only hunt with ult charms at the v rift. Eventually the floors just get so long that you run out of hunts in the mud 120s.

Then use the upgraded prestige base on the new areas like floating isles and new rift areas. The increased catch rate from a prestige base will hopefully be worth it.

This sounds great but then we will probably get more areas like iceberg and f rift where you really need the area specific bases

Is it wise to buy the next VRift trap now? I can buy it in about half an hour, but then I have to wait longer for Speed 8.

Edit:
They say it's wise to buy it some time before Speed 10.

Edit 2:
Someone said on the MH Forum,

Save eclipse cores to buy celestial dissonance trap, or upgrade speed and sync first?
Just wondering which to do first, currently at 6/6/4.

... and was answered,

Speed and siphon. Wait on sync, it's not very important at all at that stage. Wait on the trap for a little bit too.

Someone else said,

You will get enough cores in three runs (or two if you go all-in) to get the trap and upgrade to 8/7/5.
I'd prioritize the upgrades:
Speed 7 > Speed 8 > Siphon 5 > Trap > Sync 7

I reached 21 cores at Floor 32. I'll see whether I can get to Floor 40 on this run - with all the push-backs it's not a given, but if I do, I'll get 10 cores there, enough for both the traps and Step 8 (need a few Secrets for Step 8, though).

If I can't get both, it might be better just to update the Speed - I'll need to do an ordinary run to get fragments for the next UU run, then, and the extra speed may be more important than the better trap.

So perhaps Speed 8 > Siphon 5 > Trap, then.
But probably Speed 9 and 10 before Sync 6, then Prestige Base, and Sync 7.

So here's a little bit of interesting news that I saw today:

Apparently there has been a "bug" with the Prestige base that has doubled the listed stats (even though it still says the "correct" stats on the trap page, in actuality it's doubled...which would explain why people have been reporting the Prestige being better at lower UU TE catches than it *should* be). According to the most recent FBF, it seems like the "bug" is going to be made permanent?

This is what they said on the forum:

"New milestones for Prestige Base:
Overtakes CWB Power at Floor 17
Matches CWB Luck at Floor 32 (TE4), overtakes at floor 40 (TE5)
Overtakes Mino Power at Floor 27
Matches Mino Luck at Floor 40 (TE5), overtakes at floor 48 (TE6)
Matches Denture Power at Floor 52 [but denture has 5% more power bonus]
Overtakes Denture Luck at Floor 64 (TE8)"

I still don't fully understand it, but basically it means you can take all of the old recommendations on what TE catch is needed for the Prestige base to match/eclipse other bases, and divide it in half. That means for me, with TE7, the Prestige base is better than the Mino in ALL areas (just with worse attraction). The only base it's not better than is Charged Denture, and I was one stinkin' TE away from that lol.

So, assuming this is all going to stay, it changes up my strategy a bit. I'll probably push for UU Floor 64 a lot sooner than I planned, since I was really close during SEH and I have much better augmentations now. I'm still going to try for a big UU run, but I'll do it at Halloween instead of next CNY. And I'll probably aim for something like Floor 100 or thereabouts, depending on how much gold I want to spend.

Varna, if you haven't bought the Prestige base already, you might want to sooner if you were able to get to Floor 40 on your UU run?

FK, since I know you've gone past UU 64, I'd be curious to know if you've tried the Prestige base everywhere and what your experience has been with it.

@Dracula, that sound really ambitious. Good luck to you!

That's really interesting Gymmie. I'm not personally one to keep close track of my catch rate. Those days of being able to do so are long, long gone. BUT, I did notice on that last tower run where I got to floor 102 my catch rate was drastically improving the further I went on. The Bulwark of Ascent was especially noticeable because he wasn't pushing me back down the stairs very often.

Since then, the only time I have used any other base has been for regions where another base has a special use that the Prestige Base doesn't cover. (Like the Minotaur Base in the Labyrinth, etc.)

The bug hasn't been only with the Prestige Base, it's also connected with the Taunting Charms - something was done to them that had to with them acting specially for the top 4 mice in WWRift, I don't understand it, but perhaps Prestige base uses some of the same mechanisms.

The Taunting Charms have had that bug for 5 years, they find now. The Prestige Base only for a few months. If they fix the bug, it will mean that not only the base will go back to what it shows instead of what it does, but also some of the values of the Taunting charms will suffer from the same.

If they fix the bug, all calculations about both the charms and the base will become useless - and as some of that has been around for five years, they don't want to annoy the hunters who have counted on it.
(I guess that current VRift hunters would be even more annoyed than veteran WWRift hunters. The devs have annoyed them once already, about the revoking - for some weeks - of the right to retreat, and I guess that it might be more to avoid another reaction like the one they had then, than anything else. But that issue wasn't mentioned on the FBF on Friday, it's just my guess.)

Anyway, rather than fix the bug, they will incorporate it into the game (on May 6) and make it permanent - meaning letting it work as it does now, but also showing the actual values that have been invisible until now, so that we know what we've got to reckon with.

The Base and the Charms have been better than shown - and rather than making them worse, they'll let us see how good they really are.

Which you've got some examples of in your post, Gymfan.

Unfortunately I didn't reach Floor 40. On Floor 37 I realised that I was too far down, and have now retreated. So I have to decide what to spend my 21 Cores on. With 81 more Secrets, I can spend 10 cores on Speed 8, and not buy the trap now after all. But my base (if I buy it) will go straight to the values of Floor 32, which are (according to your list) on a level with Clockwork Base, which I've been using until now.

I need to do an ordinary run now to farm Fragments for another UU run. I might as well get a new base

On one hand, doubling the effect of the Prestige base seems staggering on paper and would have massive in-game implications. BUT. People have been hunting (unknowingly) with the doubled stats for ages now, and thus far it doesn't seem to have broken anything lol. If anything, I could see them making the mice in the new Archduke area tougher, to keep them on par with the more powerful Prestige base. But then, it makes getting it in the Rift VITALLY important.

Anyhow, we shall see. I'm wrapping up a bit of hunting on the Rainbow map, and then I'm going to camp out in VRift for the last few days so I can get as many Secret eggs as possible, as those have helped quite a bit with accrual. I'll probably go for my next UU run once I have enough Secrets for String Stepping, or I might go without it. We'll see.

VRift is one place where I definitely don't collect all eggs and open them after the event - the secrets (not so many) and sigils (lots) I get from eggs, I need to use immediately, thank you very much. Or at least as soon as I reach an even number. I retreated from my recent run and found, outside the tower, that I had 2000 sigils.

What eggs had most secrets? I need them for Speed and Siphon upgrade now.

Definitely the Secret Eggs...floor specific eggs has Secrets but at such a low drop rate that I didn't open them all unless I was REALLY close to an upgrade and needed it to push me over.

Also the Eggsweeper game has some occasionally.

This year I found a REALLY handy Chrome script for MH that gives you the option to "Open All But One" for Eggs...I can't tell you how useful that has been for someone like me who likes to save 1 egg for the duration of the event but wants to open the rest.

I know people have been asking for that option. Occasionally I have a lot of an Egg and want exactly that, the contents of most of them, but still one staying unopened - so it sounds like a very good script.

I want to keep a Bard Floor Egg for next year. I think it's the prettiest egg they have made so far.

Where are Secret Eggs dropped?