I just finished my second nighttime run and I did pretty good for it just being my second run through.

End of Day 2 progress:
Silver ballista, small cannon, small moat, and power enchantment have been constructed.
Missing only five mice, and I will hopefully catch the Meteorite Mover shortly.
I made it to the second -to-last area, but I can't remember what it's called right now. Only had 46 hunts until the end.

I'm pleased with that. Now I will be hunting during the day for a while as I drastically underestimated how much cheese I would need the second time through and nearly ran out of meteorites and cheese.

ETA One Day Later: I farmed meteorites all day yesterday and then jumped in last night. I realized very quickly that that was a mistake as I did not have anywhere near enough crescent/moon cheese. I switched to SB, was promptly knocked back to the beginning, took it as a sign to get out of there and farm more meteorites, so that's what I'm doing now. Hopefully I'll get back to nighttime sometime later today.

I have tried to go in with 200 Crescent cheese (plus whatever is still left of the 140 Moon cheese I started with, about halfway through it now) - so I need meteorites for that and for rebuilding the wall. I've got the Wall2 upgrade, and when I get the next one and hopefully will be able to stay until dawn and further, I may need more cheese per run (or not, when I get better catch rates).

I enjoy building up the fort - I also enjoyed the snow fort. I'll probably not buy the traps, though, I'll save my gold for the Laby traps, which are not aimed at Baron level.

Then there's still Furoma Rift ...

I'm trying to figure out the purpose of this new area. . . .

I think I've heard them say their intention is that this is the next step in Law areas. There will be more to come and they will get harder and harder.

I forgot to mention that the devs did confirm that this is the case. This area is a stepping stone to future law areas and I believe there's a more direct connection intended between this one and whatever future one there will be. Perhaps we need the parts that the boss mice drop for the future level, who knows? They also stated that they had a really cool idea for a Law area, but felt it was too advanced for a Baron/Baroness area, so they put it on the back burner for whenever they get around to releasing that higher level area. So now I'm curious.

My third attempt at Fort Rox nighttime did not go so well. Ironic as I had way more upgrades this attempt.
Well, I upgraded the wall so it now has 200 health. That will hopefully by itself let me finish up a full run next time. We'll see. I made it 93 hunts in (not including how many times I got knocked back by the Nightmancer mouse) so I wasn't far off.
Anyways, farming meteorites to repair my wall and then a little extra for more cheese.

My fourth attempt made it all the way to the Dawn. So I have all the mice except for the Battering Ram mouse.
I got absolutely slaughtered by the Nightfire mouse though. I am going to hold off on all further upgrades to my Fort until I have the Energy Cannon. Then I will resume with the rest of the upgrades to the fort.
I do like the artwork for the Dawn Guardian mouse. Probably my favorite in a long time.

It's interesting because I have a totally different strategy than the intended strategy. I don't need the traps, I don't want them. (Unless I will need them someday to smash into bigger traps. Hmmm... might need to think about that.)
Rather than sticking it out at the end with the Dawn Mice and fighting them until they finish breaking down my wall which requires farming for meteorites for a while, I've been retreating when I have enough of the bloodstones to get good upgrades and then restarting again.
Just got my Energy Cannon (THANK GOODNESS!) and the Big Moat. The Sunsilver Ballista is next on my upgrade list and after that I will be unstoppable!

I'm farming nightshade at the moment. Fantasia said hydro was better. If I try hydro, I get maybe a single solitary nightshade in 24hrs. If I use forgotten, I've gotten as many as 5 - 10 in 24 hours. Any ideas?

I'm likely to be farming nightshade through next week due to my schedule. Figure it wasn't a bad thing to stock up.

I have four days left of my Sugar Rush Aura, and decided that I need to hunt some more in Furoma Rift while the aura still lasts.

I used all my Master Fusion cheese and ended up with 20 Rift Rumble - which is very little, but the first Rift Mojos were friendly. I soon got enough Null Onyx Stones for one batch of NOG, and was lucky enough to catch one (my second) Rift Sojo, with the required Rift Blossom Branch!

Then the Rift Mojos stopped being friendly - I have 2 pieces of cheese left and have caught 1 of them, the rest has been a whole cabinet of red boxes. I need 8 Null Onyx Stones and have got only 1 at the moment. I need more Students to build up a new store of FRumble - while the aura lasts.

But I only need the Null Onyx Stones now, other than that I have all I need for the Mynorca

Probably a good idea to go elsewhere for the duration of the Sugar Aura, Varna.
I purposely burned this run to catch the last Fort Rox mouse, and now I have. That Battering Ram mouse is rather nasty. I wonder if he'll have an Easter Egg? Probably.
I do still have 30 health on my wall, but I'm into Utter Darkness with a good setup and with the Energy Cannon, I'm hoping I get the last four Bloodstones I need for my next upgrade with no trouble. After that I think finishing out this area and prepping for the Egg Hunt will be a cake walk.

Did a Mino run over this week, and I got the Essence of Destruction!!! Gah I feel very lucky considering my abysmal Mino loot drop rate. Of course, I don't actually have enough Scholar Scrolls to craft the dang thing, and I'm fresh outta Nightshade, so I've got to do a Farming run and THEN a Scholar run before I can craft it. But that will make finishing Fort Rox MUCH much easier.

FK, once I figured out the Battering Ram was a no Shoppe-mouse, it was pretty easy...I armed Gouda at the start of Twilight and it didn't take me *too* many hunts to get him...of course my wall got pillaged to death, but he only "cost" me Meteorite so actually I was expecting him to be a lot tougher. Maybe I got lucky; I dunno. I used Mino Base, Clockwork Portal and Candy Charm, and I caught him on the third try.

Speaking of Candy Charms, my aura has worn off, so I'm using up my Spooky Shuffle tickets. I might save some for next year, but in the meantime, can't argue with the loot.

Maybe I got lucky; I dunno. I used Mino Base, Clockwork Portal and Candy Charm, and I caught him on the third try.

Uh yeah. I caught him on my 16th try with the Mino Base, Temporal Turbine/Event Horizon, and Ultimate Ancient Charm.
Congrats on your Essence of Destruction!

haha ok wow. Maybe this is the MaGolem all over again...I caught him very painlessly back in the day and I couldn't figure out why so many people cursed that mouse until I figured out that I got VERY lucky. I'll take it!

I'm only a short Tech and Scholar run away from my Mino Base! I should have it by the end of the month. Then I'll try another Mino run or two to try for a trap part drop. I'd like to get at least one of the Shadow/Arcane upgrades before spending more time in Fort Rox.

I'm farming nightshade at the moment. Fantasia said hydro was better. If I try hydro, I get maybe a single solitary nightshade in 24hrs. If I use forgotten, I've gotten as many as 5 - 10 in 24 hours. Any ideas?

The drop rate does not change one bit with whatever trap setup you have, but your catch rate does. Approximately 73% overall catch rate with the SoS and apprx 59% with the the EL (that's according to horntracker, no charms are entered).
I suspect you got so many more nightshade on those couple days with the EL because you were online hunting more. If that's not the case, then it's a complete coincidence, but I can guarantee that if you compare a much larger pool of time other than 24 hours, you'll get more nightshade with the SoS.

@Gymmie, I got the Magmatic Golem with relative ease as well, and again during the Egg Hunt. But I have never caught him during a train ride when I was trying to get loads of points for my team.

@stwin, That'll be nice to have out of the way before the Winter Event starts.

I'm starting my first Fort Rox run with the Sunsilver Ballista. Just kicking back, putting my feet up, and watching the mice roll in. No, seriously, this is boring and I'm trying to decide how much more I want to do in this area before I move on. Options include....
~Farming enough Crescent Cheese for the Egg Event. (Bare minimum goal.)
~Finishing out the Fort Rox upgrades (except for the last wall upgrade which I'm not interested in).
~Farming enough Dawn Dust to get the traps in case I need them someday for a future trap upgrade.

What are you all doing as far as your final Fort Rox goals are concerned?

Laby is still my priority because I'm still down two Temporal Shadow plates (I've decided that if I loot one I'll find a way to buy the other, but gosh dang they are so expensive). I've been keeping Fort Rox as my night time/backup hunting area; working on it slowly but surely. If I progress far enough before getting the Temporal Turbine I might buy the Shadow upgrade, but otherwise, I'll just save the crafting loot for the future.

But Christmas will probably be starting soon so likely I won't be doing either of these plans for awhile, haha.

I've tried the SoS for 48 hours before vs my forgotten setup. I still consistently get a higher nightshade drop. I was unable to log in except for once a day Mon - Wed and I still ended up with something like 15 nightshade. It was crazy. But then I have always had lousy luck in the warpath with loot drops. Maybe I'm just weird.

I needed a break so I decided to go hit the Furoma rift to try and finish building battery #7