Posted by: @starkat

I've gotten four of the jewels for the floating islands so far. 

Sell them all

Sell them all.  They are still getting 10-11million per piece.  That number will only drop over time, after playing mh for years you know this.  You can buy them back in 6 months at a fraction of the cost

I got all of the items I wanted from the event and am just sending to fi and mousu Picchu to get even more loot.  

is it too early to talk about lunar New Years?  I will power up the lantern with 350 hunts on the monstrous black widow, use a couple hundred baitkeep charms on queen quesada to take advantage of the 100% catch rate and use some for ascended elder as well.  

the rest of my candle hunts will be on the pirate hunting . Also I will queue up a retired Minotaur, the big three in the living garden and maybe an absolute acolyte but those are all one hunt each and done

it looks like the pirate bosses have a lot of mouse power, the new sentinel trap will be very useful.  Richard the rich is even tougher to catch, I guess use ultimate charms on him?  I have not unlocked oculus 9 yet so I cannot say that I’ve hunted him yet but it seems like a good use of ultimate charms, for now.  I figure Ronza maybe will sell some charm to weaken him but no promises obviously 

I think that's a wrap for the event for me. I finished up the last treasure map I plan to be part of, I finished up the final available tournament, now I'm just going to hunt with Super Brie to farm gold for next year while my golems finish their trips to and from the Floating Isles, and then I'm outta here! 🙂 

Next up, LNY! In which we spend all the goodies we've earned from this event. This year is the Year of the Ox, which also happens to be the last animal that Mousehunt hasn't covered! That's kind of crazy to think about. 

I ended up with six of the jewels for the floating isles. I've got one more golem out. I'm snagging one more giftnapper and heading out to Valor I think to give it a go in getting to string-stepping there. It's the one section I have yet to achieve. I've been mainly farming in the floating isles, valor, and the comet. I did some in MP and the Geyser. Managed to bring in a good bit of gold for this one. I got so many cloud curds and bottled wind, I didn't need that many. 

I am 56 Sky Glass away from Oculus lvl8. If I don't get it today, I definitely will tomorrow. 

I didn't pay attention to how many Jewel's I had before the Christmas event, but I'm up to a total of 11 now. So the next trap I get will depend on if I can afford the STINGER Trap or Circlet of Seeking Trap first.

Posted by: @dracula

Sell them all

Sell them all.  They are still getting 10-11million per piece.  That number will only drop over time, after playing mh for years you know this.  You can buy them back in 6 months at a fraction of the cost

If I was a more casual player, this would certainly be my approach. But for me, I like to get the traps as quickly as possible, which increases my catch rate, which also earns money. Would it earn me 110mil gold? Probably not, but I'm not exactly short right now.  

Got my oculus upgraded last night. Cycled the island 'til I had two pirates in a row, and headed in. I caught 2/3 new mice but could not catch Cloudbeard....next time! Hopefully he drops a lot Seals or collecting enough for a treasure map will take forever....

Posted by: @fantasia

Got my oculus upgraded last night. Cycled the island 'til I had two pirates in a row, and headed in. I caught 2/3 new mice but could not catch Cloudbeard....next time! Hopefully he drops a lot Seals or collecting enough for a treasure map will take forever....

From what I understand they do drop a lot of seals.  Try using the new sentinel  trap against pirates, it works similar to zugwangs ultimate move.  

I read another good strategy for finishing off the oculus 8 and 9:

do 3 lower altitude runs and instead of catching the 4th warden just reroll until you get either 3 glass plus one loot doubler or 3 ore plus one loot doubler and just keep repeating instead of going onto the high altitude.  You can do the opposite after unlocking oculus 9 where you no longer need ore and glass but need to get to the high altitude as often and quickly as possible .  I wish I thought of that sooner 

edit this seems like a really bad strategy as it uses up a lot of cyclone stones.  I’ll keep going as I was, I try to get + 8 ore or glass per hunt in the lower isles and + 16 per hunt in the higher isles and catch the wardens as fast as possible but I never retreat.  After unlocking all of the oculus I’ll just catch the warden and leave and concentrate on mapping, this fi area will be a long grind abd take most of the year to get all of the traps.  

Pouring everything CNY into Oculus Level 9/Richard the Rich. I don't know if I'll make it before the end of the event or not, but it'll definitely take a huge chunk out of the way there. I'm currently at 5,300 resources and using a small handful of red candles, but saving the majority of them for the High Altitude Loot drops.

As a side note, I bought a Sky Pirate Scroll Case and my friends and I finished that up quickly. I did get one jewel out of it, so that was nice. Since I'm not pointedly focusing on pirates right now, it will be a long, long time before I can afford another one. 😉

This morning I bought the Circlet of Seeking Trap, which leaves the STING trap. Hopefully I can easily snag that one before the end of the event and then the long, arduous process of upgrading all of those traps begins. 

Posted by: @fantasia

This morning I bought the Circlet of Seeking Trap, which leaves the STING trap. Hopefully I can easily snag that one before the end of the event and then the long, arduous process of upgrading all of those traps begins. 

Wow that’s a very good use of the lny. 

I spend every lny hunting monstrous black widow. This year I’ll try to get a lot of queen quesada as well.  I want to get 500 queen quesada to unlock the theme scrap.

I finished oculus 8 before the event started and will collect map seals.  I have zero of the new traps from floating isles and will try to put a dent on that during the egg hunt.  I’m somewhat burned out on the floating isles already, I’ll likely get most of the traps this year and take a break and come back and get the tactical trap as that right there will be a long grind

one highlight of the lny for me was catching the Minotaur with a red candle and getting 3 shadow plates.  I’ve seen people get far luckier but my luck usually isn’t that great 

I look forwards to the superbrie factory and the cheese from it.  

Posted by: @dracula

one highlight of the lny for me was catching the Minotaur with a red candle and getting 3 shadow plates.

Congrats! That's about the best drop I can think of getting with a red candle lit. 

Well, I have poured everything I have into the last few days of the event and I got my STING trap, finally unlocked Oculus Lvl 9, and caught Richard the Rich. But Mr. Rich is holding out a bit imho (though I honestly haven't looked up his loot drops online, so maybe there's something more there), but so far he's dropped a bonus Low Altitude Chest, and with the red candle, I'm getting 3 per catch. I was hoping for a bunch of Jewels because how else are you supposed to get all four of those trap upgrades. Holy moly, this is going to take FOREVER.  
I'll snag a few more but then I'll probably spend the last few days farming pirate supplies because at least I got one jewel out of completing one of their maps. 

Posted by: fantasia

 

 I was hoping for a bunch of Jewels because how else are you supposed to get all four of those trap upgrades. Holy moly, this is going to take FOREVER.   

I'll snag a few more but then I'll probably spend the last few days farming pirate supplies because at least I got one jewel out of completing one of their maps. 

As for “how are we supposed to get all of those jewels”?

As you mentioned we get 1 for every sky pirate chest.  We got a decent number from the gwh.  We haven’t seen what sort of eggs will drop on the seh, we will hopefully get decent pirate eggs to get more seals to get more pirate naps to get more jewels.  

it’s meant to be a long ass grind and it is.  

im still sticking with the premise that the fastest way to get the jewels is to sell all jewels now with the intention of buying them back in a year or 2 for far less gold/ superbrie.   

The other possibility is we get an event like big jaq to speed everything up.  I’m not holding my breath and honestly I’m more of a casual player at this point that plays events and just checks in a few times a day on my phone.  I do use bots to sound the horn and cannot really imagine playing this game without auto horn .  

but right now it looks like about a 2 year grind, maybe more.  The price of jewels will eventually fall the way really really shiny gold and similar items fell.  Then after more and more players get all the teas they will sell jewels  

The only problem with that logic is after 2 years those players will be playing newer  areas and not hunting and selling jewels to drive the price back down (look at the price of ribs, it’s still over 100m, about the cost of ten jewels )

the other thing, you can hunt other areas to buy gold and in turn buy jewels buy right now the fastest way to get the jewels seems to be pirate maps and just grinding the area.  I mean I guess the end game is supposed to be a challenge like you feel like you accomplished some great feat or task when you finally get there?  I’ll likely just quit over the summer and play event season.  

oh they do have tournaments that give semi decent loot (no jewels but things like wind and stones I think)

I will likely quit before getting all of the traps 

I managed to finish the event just under the wire. I armed the red candles from the end and got three temporal shadow plates! Right now, they are running over 30 mil on the marketplace. I can finally get out of my $60mil in gold before ronza rut.

@dracula, those are all excellent suggestions. I think I'm doing all of them other than selling jewels now and buying them back later. I know that you're right in your assessment, I'm just not sure that they'll come down that much for quite some time because they're in such high demand. And the traps are more valuable to me than gold. But we'll see. I remember the days of the Fiery Warpath where you just ground and ground to get those trap parts to drop and I think it went on for three years or so? This may be the new Fiery Warpath. A place to return to when other new areas/events are completed. 

@starkat, congrats on those shadow plates and all that gold! Well done! 

I'm mostly happy with how the event went Everything except for the big push to get Richard the Rich right at the end was spot on for what I intended to accomplish. I have all four basic traps now which was my second goal. And at the very end when I realized Richard wasn't worth it, I spent about 24-36 hours farming pirate mice, and got lots of good loot off of them. I ALMOST have enough pirate medallions for a four person Pirate map.
The next item on my mousehunt to-do list is to get the STINGER trap. I need three more jewels. Most likely one from a pirate chest and two from the general store. 

I'm not really sure how the event went for me, to be honest. Between my long work days and some internet issues at home, I wasn't able to check my setup and switch from farming cheese to burning candles and all that as well as I have in previous years. I think I came out all right, but I'm still two Oculus levels away from Richard. I didn't get my Queso Geyser hunts in the way I wanted to, but I did manage to do a decent UU run in the VRift, and made it farther than I have before.

Currently, I'm just hanging out in the FI trying to farm stuff. I'm not getting as bored as I normally do since I'm not babysitting my trap as much. I just keep cycling through wardens and paragons as needed, trying to max out my loot.

I'm currently a hundred glass/ore away from Oculus 7.

I've made myself an Excel sheet to follow how far I'm getting towards bronzing all the Paragons, trying to get one more catch of all of them before I go for the next set of catches.

It shows that I started with needing 400 Warden runs, and I've now done 90 of those. To me, that shows me that I'm getting somewhere, not just grinding without really knowing where I am.

It also makes it a bit easier for me to monitor the farming of HA loot - although that is easy enough by seeing what new traps I've bought (the S.T.I.N.G. and Thought Manipulator traps). It looks like I should get all the necessary HA loot for all the traps by the time I've bronzed all the Paragons.

Not counting the jewels, which is a whole different matter. We need 225, and I've got 6 so far.

I shoul reach Oculus 7 before the next event even if it starts on March 2 (which I've seen peple say it does). The Birthday event is usually good for farming SB+.

Then the SEH should start late March. It seems they will be dropping the Charging cycles this year, and have some kind of Vending machine instead for using event loot on. And the event mice may come as bonus hunts, like the Valentine's mice did last month. Not sure of details.