So week two of my time with Kancolle began pretty well. My resources, while not high, were relatively stable and I’d unlocked some of the key levelling areas in the game so I was all set to start levelling up my main fleet. Unfortunately ignorance of how the game functioned once again took me by unpleasant surprise.
While pushing to open new content I’d been abusing my heavier ship classes, battleships, aircraft carriers, etc. I’d been getting them beat down and repairing them up (speeding up the process, who has eight hours to wait?) without paying much attention to how repair functions. You see repair uses fuel, which a lot of stuff uses, and steel, which is one of the harder resources to farm (certainly where I am at the moment). What I failed to note was that the heavier ships cost an absolute fuckload of steel to repair (talking in the hundreds as opposed to the low double figures of smaller ships). When I noticed how low I was on steel I was stuck with a number of ships damaged that I literally couldn’t afford to repair. Which was awkward but not too bad, I’d unlocked as far as I needed for the moment so I could concentrate on levelling ships up until I built up enough steel.
Ah my shattered steel innocence. I managed to level up a number of ship’s to their first remodelling (Kai) point at more or less the same time, Hiei, Maya, Jun’you, Akagi, Chitose, Fubuki and shortly afterwards Yamashiro. I had around nine hundred steel at that point. The total cost of remodelling those ships was two thousand five hundred and twenty. So clearly I had a problem, the best source of steel for me is a twenty minute expedition that I didn’t really feel like grinding. So I decided to take the most efficient approach, I levelled up Hiei even though it cost five hundred because I like battleships.
I also upgraded Maya, because I need to get her to Kai Ni for the equipment, as well as Fubuki and Chitose because they were cheap (~170 steel compared to the 700 it would cost to remodel Akagi). This left me going to bed with zero steel, though I sent out my second and third squadron’s on some of the longer expeditions hoping to turn that situation around. In combination with completing some daily and weekly quests I managed to get some steel together. The next day I decided to do some levelling, levelling generally focuses on one ship at the expense of burning down the morale on all the accompanying ships, you can keep it up longer if you rotate the low morale ships in and out. I generally don’t as elongating the grind time can be a little boring. To alleviate my boredom I decided to spruce up my office a bit more, admiral’s gotta admiral
Levelling via grinding also generally involves specific fleet compositions, one of which is the Aviation Battleship. I only had one, but with an upgrade Yamashiro’s class would be upgraded to Aviation Battleship. So the five hundred steel I spent doing it was totally justified, right?
I’ve talked a lot about remodelling here, one thing I didn’t mention was that to reach their final remodel level (Kai Ni) a handful of the ships require a blueprint. The only way to get blueprints in-game is by trading in four medals and there are very few ways to get medals. You can sometimes get them from seasonal events but the only way to reliably get them is by completing extra operations. In the previous post I mentioned that each zone has four basic maps and then some extra areas. These extra areas consist of a fifth map, featuring a mega boss that resets once a month and a sixth map which is sort of like a monthly resource farm. The mega boss is interesting, you have to reach the boss node and sink the boss unit a set number of times in order to complete the event. This gives you one medal. So you can, in theory, get one blueprint a month. Of course I’ve only just unlocked the extra operation areas on world one and two. So it’ll probably take me longer. But I decided to make a start on trying to clear the extra operation on world one at least. My initial run at it did not go well. I ultimately decided that I needed to level up my ships and remodel the ones I had available to remodel. So once again I came face to face with (the riddle of) steel (Conan would be so proud). I did upgrade two ships, Jintsu and Chitose as their upgrade costs are pretty cheap
I quickly realised that I would also need to pay more attention to what I’m doing, as I spent a good while on Saturday running a map that has submarines as a rare drop. Submarines are very handy and a pain to get, RNG might be kind or it might be cruel. But that didn’t matter, because I failed to note I’d reached the ship limit which disables drops. Sloppy. Of course I had no choice but to assume that I “missed” the drops I needed.
It was only at the start of day two I realised that some of my problems clearing 1-5 were due to the fact I’d completely forgotten to use an anti-sub formation. Considering every enemy on enemy map is a sub this was a rather large oversight (moving anti-sub damage from 60 to 130 percent). Which seems to be a trend. Ah well, another lesson learned. I blame FFXIV, as I was alt-tabbing to play Kancolle so I was usually rather distracted. Once I switched formations I cleared out 1-5 and earned my first monthly medal, only another three medals to go before I could purchase my first blueprint. Most of my playtime over the course of the second day was a mix of “sparkling” up my expedition fleets (running easy missions with them to boost morale before sending them on expeditions) and rushing to try and complete some of the weekly goals which reset Sunday evening local time. Unfortunately I failed in the latter and ended up wearing down far more ships than I could afford to repair. Luckily the next day started with a nice bit of luck, while crafting to clear daily quests I managed to acquire a Saiun (a rare, 5% chance, but super useful recon plane) and Shimakaze (a rare, 1.5% chance, one of the most powerful Destroyer’s).
Sadly day three ended terribly, due to the trials and tribulations of this desert life I was playing the game on my second monitor while silently fuming against the injustices of the world. My lack of attention lead to the sinking of my only submarine (I guess I’m just not luck with subs). Thus bringing a halt to my ability to level up on 3-2, the best levelling map available to me. Needless to say my already poor temper was not improved by this occurrence.
Day four didn’t start off particularly well, I hope to get a replacement sub while crafting for the dailies. But instead, because the game loves trolling me, got a second Shimakaze. The rest of the day didn’t really go anywhere, my idiocy had disheartened me (also spent forever re-rolling in DBZ Dokkan). I did a few missions (gotta take care of those dailies) and ended up remodelling Junyou to make myself feel better (and to save on repair costs as upgrading brings along a free heal). Low on steel again. FML.
Didnt get much done the rest of the day apart from grinding up some more steel, which I spent remodelling Akagi, but considering it would have cost 450 steel to repair her upgrading her for 700 didn’t seem too bad.
I also upgraded Choukai for a similar reason. Though it did push me below my new self-imposed limit of having at least 1000 of each resource. Worth it though because I love how mental she looks, something about the eyes screams yandere.
Day five was also pretty much a write off, didn’t play much and when I did play didn’t have much luck with drops or crafting and lost another ship to the vagaries of inattention. At least this time it was just a throwaway ship I’d included as fodder. Still annoying though. The rest of the day, and week, were fairly low key. I mostly took care of daily missions (managed to unlock some monthly missions as well) and built up my resources via expeditions and passive regen. I managed to replace one of my lost units, though sadly still havent gotten another submarine which is becoming a (bigger) problem. I also curtailed my upgrading spree in order to help stock up on resources, only breaking once to upgrade Haruna
While finishing off one of the more stubborn dailies Kaga dropped, which is great as she’s the best aircraft carrier in the game and was number one in my carrier priority list.
