Expeditions & Relics
Okay, so I wanted to write a guide to go over the way Expedition works and how it will integrate into your daily routine. You’re basically doing it all for…
Basic options are things like +3% Atk, +3% Def, +3% HP, +7% Heal, +%2 Crit and +7% Skill Damage
Sub options are things like: +Dmg to bosses, +PvP Dmg, +Crit Multiplier, +Melee/Ranged AoE damage to nearby enemies every x seconds, Recover +HP every 5 seconds, +5% Relic obtain chance and Mystic Resistance.
Party Relic Set Options are awarded if everyone in your party has a similar type of relic. The bonuses are Guidance of Truth: Def +7%, Solemn Ringing: HP +5%, Eternal Unity: Crit Hit Chance +5%, Holy Vow: Atk +5%
So what that all means is your goal is to pick a specific Relic type for a game mode that you want and try to obtain the best grade of Relic (3 stars) of that type for each team member. So for example, I’m going to push for raiding more so than any other game mode so I want to go with a Eternal Unity Relic type (+5% crit is sooo much better and rare than +5% atk).
So what I want to do is get 4 of these bad boys for each of my raid teams, then I want to roll the best stat types on them. So let’s figure that out.
Just for example purposes, you could also design a set specifically to use in Expedition, something like:
Basic: +Crit
Sub: +5% Relic Obtain Chance OR +Melee/Ranged aoe damage to nearby monsters
Party: +Crit or whatever you can obtain
Nonetheless, that I’ve designed my desired Relic(s) for raiding, I can now go into Expedition knowing what to look for.
Every 120 coffee spendage you’re going to plant some magic beans, well seeds. When you plant the seeds you have to spend 120 coffee on anything in the game (evo stones, item dungeon, mirror dungeon, whatever) and those seeds will be ready to harvest. The harvest comes in the form of Magic Powder. So on day 1 of the Expedition for every 120 coffee you spend you’ll be harvesting 10 Magic Powder.
Magic Powder will be used to reroll your Relics, which you’ll be doing quite a lot.
So let’s say you go crazy and spend $25 on the 5, 500 coffee packages right before the patch hits you’ll have 2,500 coffee. If you were a smart little earner you’ll have another 750 coffee in the mail waiting to be opened from the last week which puts you at around 3,250 coffee. We’re gonna use this inflated example as a way to do some math on Expeditions on launch.
If you go to the farm after every 120 coffee spent you’ll have 27 chances to harvest crops on the first day. Which means you’ll have 270 Magic Powder for rerolling your Relics (and with 3,250 coffee you’ll have a decent amount of relics). If your account is good enough you’ll get another 40 Magic Powder from obtaining 400k damage in expedition (which probably isn’t that hard to pull off for most) and that puts you at 310 Magic Powder (or rerolls) on Relics.
The harvesting of seeds and obtaining their Magic Powder is the only relevance the farm has directly. Other than that you’ll most likely be accessing the Forge from the expedition menu.
Firstly, the Trials. The Trials are encounters in which you fight a ton of monsters, a few mini bosses, some bosses and some random encounter trash. You’re building a multiplier through the encounters so you can hopefully hit a high score threshold which will trigger better drops upon completion. If you hit any score threshold you’ll be able to Sweep for that threshold and get better loot so it helps to get the highest score possible.
Scoring in Trials
Scores bonuses are broken down into three categories:
Time Remaining score is pretty tight since the monsters spawn on a timer but you’ll be getting the biggest bonus there (so long as you kill everything).
Surviving Party Member Score - Don’t let your teammates die. It’s just that simple.
Party Switching Count Score - The more you switch, the better the score but performance trumps this particular metric. Meaning, switch when it’s appropriate and advantageous, don’t just switch to get the bonus.
Now with all of those scoring mechanisms, you’re going to be placing records and meeting reward thresholds. The better the score/threshold, the better the rewards and you want to ensure you can obtain a Unique relic from the drops.
Now here’s something that you haven’t had to deal with until now but you will have 3 parties in Expedition the whole time which means they share items. So if you had 4 Statues of Bravery and you’re outfitting your team for Expedition, you’re now missing 8 Statues of Bravery. That means you’re probably gonna wanna use that Elemental Merch again. As I mentioned with the +8 Atk cards on kill, there are only 10 of them whereas you have 12 characters that need 24 cards. You getting the picture now? How many Sharp Shooters have you mystery evolved recently? Well guess what, you’re probably going to need 9 total now!
Now then, we’re all just theorycrafting right now but for my money, the best characters to lead are Claude and Lifeguard Yuze. Claude is a BEAST in Expedition. His freakishly large circular AoE devastates bad guys. He’s going to lead your primary team.
Lifeguard Yuze is also a crazy good lead just because of her mobility, self healing (which REALLY comes in handy) and low cool down Weapon Skill. I usually have Yuze kill the Lava Bug in the middle because she does it so fast. On my squad she usually runs with Ray, Beth and Lilith. Ray isn’t ideal because she takes too much damage but I have her slotted in until I find something better.
As for the 3rd team, I really can’t think of two characters that handle groups in Expedition quite like the other Claude and Yuze so what I did is I made the 3rd team the boss killing squad. Everything is skill damage with that team, merch, cards, everything pushes skill damage. I’m basically only going to switch over to that team to burst down a boss then switch back to Claude or Yuze. Now I don’t know if this is optimal but I really don’t need a 3rd team as is but there are bosses that aren't ideal for Claude and Yuze to deal with. Furthermore these bosses are like any other bosses and some have resistance to down, or injured, etc. You’ll want your 3rd party’s lead to have a high stun % on the bosses but ultimately, you shouldn’t be switching over to that party to the stun the boss but to take over the chain of an already stunned boss.
The first District (3 trials) is all about AoE’ing monsters. The second district has bosses and I haven’t made it to the 3rd district but I can’t imagine it’ll be much easier on you or your gear. To give you an idea of how far your gear will take you, on the KR server my little account has every raider he needs, every weapon (although only soft capped) and a handful of MLB'd characters. That being said, he put up 600m in the last raid. It may sound like a badass account but it's a year old F2P account that has resource issues. Nonetheless, on the first day of Expedition I was able to get to the 6th parish (2nd District) but can't get beyond that boss. I'll post a video about it down below.
Just set your expectations properly. For those that have VERY solid accounts, this may be challenging but fun but for people using accounts like the one listed above, it will be very challenging and slow to progress. Finding the right Relics will be challenging enough but you really just need to throw stam at it.
If you're a little more advanced you may want to do that process within the first trial in District 2 as you can get other, better materials and rewards.
yers hitting 1 billion damage during a raid season relatively soon (myself included).
All in all, Expedition is a very fun, very challenging and requires a lot of planning to optimize. It can get you a new type of item that you can tailor to any game mode you’d like and that the obtainment of those item(s) will be both gratifying and satisfying.
A few quick modes of play and what to get:
Good luck!
Relics
It’s important to note that despite a relic’s VERY long list of potential stats, it can only be granted 2 Basic options, 1 Sub option and 1 Party Relic Set Option.Basic options are things like +3% Atk, +3% Def, +3% HP, +7% Heal, +%2 Crit and +7% Skill Damage
Sub options are things like: +Dmg to bosses, +PvP Dmg, +Crit Multiplier, +Melee/Ranged AoE damage to nearby enemies every x seconds, Recover +HP every 5 seconds, +5% Relic obtain chance and Mystic Resistance.
Party Relic Set Options are awarded if everyone in your party has a similar type of relic. The bonuses are Guidance of Truth: Def +7%, Solemn Ringing: HP +5%, Eternal Unity: Crit Hit Chance +5%, Holy Vow: Atk +5%
So what that all means is your goal is to pick a specific Relic type for a game mode that you want and try to obtain the best grade of Relic (3 stars) of that type for each team member. So for example, I’m going to push for raiding more so than any other game mode so I want to go with a Eternal Unity Relic type (+5% crit is sooo much better and rare than +5% atk).
So what I want to do is get 4 of these bad boys for each of my raid teams, then I want to roll the best stat types on them. So let’s figure that out.
- Basic Option: I’m going to go with the crit and since you can roll the same stat twice, I’m going with 2, +2% chance to crit
- Sub Option: +7% Damage dealt to bosses
- Party Option: As mentioned, +5% to crit
Just for example purposes, you could also design a set specifically to use in Expedition, something like:
Basic: +Crit
Sub: +5% Relic Obtain Chance OR +Melee/Ranged aoe damage to nearby monsters
Party: +Crit or whatever you can obtain
Nonetheless, that I’ve designed my desired Relic(s) for raiding, I can now go into Expedition knowing what to look for.
Farm
Before we jump right into the gaping hole of Expeditions, let’s start with the farm (because it’s so minimal). On the first day you’ve quickly put up your House, Forge, Storage and you already had a crafting bench. You then no doubt put up the 10 crop tiles to plant seeds (which is important for the next bit).Every 120 coffee spendage you’re going to plant some magic beans, well seeds. When you plant the seeds you have to spend 120 coffee on anything in the game (evo stones, item dungeon, mirror dungeon, whatever) and those seeds will be ready to harvest. The harvest comes in the form of Magic Powder. So on day 1 of the Expedition for every 120 coffee you spend you’ll be harvesting 10 Magic Powder.
Magic Powder will be used to reroll your Relics, which you’ll be doing quite a lot.
So let’s say you go crazy and spend $25 on the 5, 500 coffee packages right before the patch hits you’ll have 2,500 coffee. If you were a smart little earner you’ll have another 750 coffee in the mail waiting to be opened from the last week which puts you at around 3,250 coffee. We’re gonna use this inflated example as a way to do some math on Expeditions on launch.
If you go to the farm after every 120 coffee spent you’ll have 27 chances to harvest crops on the first day. Which means you’ll have 270 Magic Powder for rerolling your Relics (and with 3,250 coffee you’ll have a decent amount of relics). If your account is good enough you’ll get another 40 Magic Powder from obtaining 400k damage in expedition (which probably isn’t that hard to pull off for most) and that puts you at 310 Magic Powder (or rerolls) on Relics.
The harvesting of seeds and obtaining their Magic Powder is the only relevance the farm has directly. Other than that you’ll most likely be accessing the Forge from the expedition menu.
Expedition
The overview of what we’re doing here is pushing into the Trials to obtain relics and other resources that let you earn free rewards upon reaching certain score thresholds. It's also important that note that every Expedition run will reward you with a seed. This is what you'll be planting in the farm so you'll only have Magic Powder so long as you play expedition. Basically 1 run of Expedition will get you 1 Magic Powder (after harvesting the seeds) and a chance at a relic.Firstly, the Trials. The Trials are encounters in which you fight a ton of monsters, a few mini bosses, some bosses and some random encounter trash. You’re building a multiplier through the encounters so you can hopefully hit a high score threshold which will trigger better drops upon completion. If you hit any score threshold you’ll be able to Sweep for that threshold and get better loot so it helps to get the highest score possible.
Scoring in Trials
Scores bonuses are broken down into three categories:
- Monster Kill Score
- Time Remaining Score
- Surviving Party Member Score
- Party Switching Count Score
Time Remaining score is pretty tight since the monsters spawn on a timer but you’ll be getting the biggest bonus there (so long as you kill everything).
Surviving Party Member Score - Don’t let your teammates die. It’s just that simple.
Party Switching Count Score - The more you switch, the better the score but performance trumps this particular metric. Meaning, switch when it’s appropriate and advantageous, don’t just switch to get the bonus.
Now with all of those scoring mechanisms, you’re going to be placing records and meeting reward thresholds. The better the score/threshold, the better the rewards and you want to ensure you can obtain a Unique relic from the drops.
Building your Teams
This is the hardest part of Expedition. What you -think- you know about raiding and other game modes doesn’t necessarily apply to Expedition. For instance, there are a lot of monsters all over the place, your teammates aren’t necessarily focused on killing bosses rather then what’s closest so a debuff isn’t as useful as it used to be. Furthermore, the vast amount of monsters have low health so Statues are going to be vastly more effective then Motherships. Since there are so many monsters you’re going to want to use as many +8 Atk on kill cards and at the time of this writing there were 10 such cards in the game.Now here’s something that you haven’t had to deal with until now but you will have 3 parties in Expedition the whole time which means they share items. So if you had 4 Statues of Bravery and you’re outfitting your team for Expedition, you’re now missing 8 Statues of Bravery. That means you’re probably gonna wanna use that Elemental Merch again. As I mentioned with the +8 Atk cards on kill, there are only 10 of them whereas you have 12 characters that need 24 cards. You getting the picture now? How many Sharp Shooters have you mystery evolved recently? Well guess what, you’re probably going to need 9 total now!
Now then, we’re all just theorycrafting right now but for my money, the best characters to lead are Claude and Lifeguard Yuze. Claude is a BEAST in Expedition. His freakishly large circular AoE devastates bad guys. He’s going to lead your primary team.
Lifeguard Yuze is also a crazy good lead just because of her mobility, self healing (which REALLY comes in handy) and low cool down Weapon Skill. I usually have Yuze kill the Lava Bug in the middle because she does it so fast. On my squad she usually runs with Ray, Beth and Lilith. Ray isn’t ideal because she takes too much damage but I have her slotted in until I find something better.
As for the 3rd team, I really can’t think of two characters that handle groups in Expedition quite like the other Claude and Yuze so what I did is I made the 3rd team the boss killing squad. Everything is skill damage with that team, merch, cards, everything pushes skill damage. I’m basically only going to switch over to that team to burst down a boss then switch back to Claude or Yuze. Now I don’t know if this is optimal but I really don’t need a 3rd team as is but there are bosses that aren't ideal for Claude and Yuze to deal with. Furthermore these bosses are like any other bosses and some have resistance to down, or injured, etc. You’ll want your 3rd party’s lead to have a high stun % on the bosses but ultimately, you shouldn’t be switching over to that party to the stun the boss but to take over the chain of an already stunned boss.
Switching Parties
As I mentioned switching parties, you'll be switching to each party for situational advantage. If there are a lot of spread out mobs, I switch to Claude. If the monsters are condensed or I need to burn a boss quickly, I switch to Yuze. If the boss is a big baddy that is weak to Water, I'm going to switch to my 3rd boss killing team and take it out. This is by far the biggest skill you have to learn and practice to get the higher scores. It takes some finesse.Expedition Difficulty
Just understand that the difficulty scales quickly. Even those with advanced accounts will have issues with the later Trials in Expedition. The good news is, if you're having a bad run (i.e. members die, you missed a boss, etc), you can always go to the lobby and it won't spend your coffee for that run. This is important because you don't want to waste your runs and you will have some crappy runs.The first District (3 trials) is all about AoE’ing monsters. The second district has bosses and I haven’t made it to the 3rd district but I can’t imagine it’ll be much easier on you or your gear. To give you an idea of how far your gear will take you, on the KR server my little account has every raider he needs, every weapon (although only soft capped) and a handful of MLB'd characters. That being said, he put up 600m in the last raid. It may sound like a badass account but it's a year old F2P account that has resource issues. Nonetheless, on the first day of Expedition I was able to get to the 6th parish (2nd District) but can't get beyond that boss. I'll post a video about it down below.
Just set your expectations properly. For those that have VERY solid accounts, this may be challenging but fun but for people using accounts like the one listed above, it will be very challenging and slow to progress. Finding the right Relics will be challenging enough but you really just need to throw stam at it.
Relic Obtainment Difficulty
Getting through Expedition mode and experiencing all the content is one thing but obtaining Relics is a lot easier. It's all about Coffee. The more coffee you throw at it, the more Relics you're going to get back. Just make to the 3rd Trial, get your high score and just sweep until you're weak in the knees. You'll get your relics just a matter of RNG on which ones you get and how good they are.If you're a little more advanced you may want to do that process within the first trial in District 2 as you can get other, better materials and rewards.
Goals
As a raider though, I’m absolutely stoked about getting an item that gives each of my raiders +9% to crit and +7% damage to bosses. That’s a HUGE amount of damage and we’ll probably start to see some plaAll in all, Expedition is a very fun, very challenging and requires a lot of planning to optimize. It can get you a new type of item that you can tailor to any game mode you’d like and that the obtainment of those item(s) will be both gratifying and satisfying.
A few quick modes of play and what to get:
- Raids - +Crit / +Damage to bosses
- Arena / Colo - +Def / +PvP Damage
- Expedition - +Crit/Atk/Def / +Relic obtainment chance
- CoOp Defense - +Crit / +AoE to Melee or Ranged monsters
Good luck!