Need Millions of SEEDS - What Am I missing? (ED4+)

[WhatRoughBeast]

I have beaten the first three guardians, cleared ED4 and just entered the Holy City. The obvious combos (Witch, Dryads and summons like Elite Chicken) while sloth-shaming the tournament contestants (one-shotting Iari) are just not going to get me there without a long grind. And surely it goes up from here.

Any advice? :D

[Synthar]

continue a bit further, you need a long grind, but it took only around the same time or slightly longer as the g3 summons to seed the g4 summons for me
you get more powerful summons in the next area after HC, these help a lot

[Nico]

I must admit I am confused how you are able to farm in the tournament while being in HC ...
But yeah, usually slothing the highest possible tournament or DK1+2 with Iari's sharp spike should be the quickest way to get seeds. Though I guess with G3 beaten you can use envy for an aditional boost. And seeding the witch first obviously also helps. But it still will take a while to seed up everyone, though only the guardians should really take a long time. Which is why you mostly could ignore them until later.

[WhatRoughBeast]

I am just thinking about my total options, as the Tournament seemed to be the most obvious route.
Yes I am in HC for the first time (seem to be missing some max gold but that's another worry...) so I was torn between pushing forward with a grind even though I am underpowered, or reincarnating and spending some real days in the academic city grinding seeds again.

I did unlock Envy and have spent 3 total Complaints so far, but now I am finally starting to generate Sins regularly from The Hermit.

Thanks for the replies and advice.

[Synthar]

my advice would be to continue pushing w/o grinding the guardians, the rest is easily doable in like a day or so
if you can, unlock the area after HC and try to get something from there if possible, then reincarnate but wait with seeding guardians until you have some envy lvls in seed drop, but that takes time since loop action, instant action and dungeon reward are SO MUCH BETTER that you should prioritize those

[WhatRoughBeast]

Thanks for the advice - I am still gated by gold in the HC (likely need to seed some summons yet) but I did manage to defeat the 4th guardian while waiting and now I have another seed dump to deal with.

Just thought I'd mention that when I started the thread I was missing a couple million seeds and as of now I am missing at least 11 million on the main character alone.

Looks like bit of a grind from here, but that's not a huge surprise :D

[WhatRoughBeast]

Update - Found a really nice combo

If you can kill the Demon King at the exact moment he summons the shadow party, it will also count as killing the minions. I am able to accomplish this with a simple setup:

1- Queen bee (Honey Production)
2- Main Character (Sharp Spike)
3,4,5 what you want to farm

Based on my current setup and attack speed bonus, the Sharp Spike goes off at the exact same time as the summon, but it kills everything, basically turning it into an AoE. Bonus of +6 Honey every few seconds never hurts.

It might be an exploit, as it's downing even the HC monsters and giving me their drops, making this part easier than grinding the dungeons (Silver Dragon drops Runes). Or maybe a reward for clever thinking. :D

[Nico]

The usual strategy for this is using brain domination on a summon that has no weapon attribute, so it gets no atk speed buff from the warrior routines, so for example the phantom whale. And while it's ok'ish for seeds it's still way less than what you get from slothing 2 DK's together, since first, DK simply drops way more seeds than the other summons, and second, with waiting the 4 seconds for braindom and then waiting 3 seconds for him to respawn you just get one kill every 7 seconds, which is really slow compared to nearly 1 kill per second when slothing 2 DK's together with Iari's sharp spikes.

[WhatRoughBeast]

I'm not using Brain Domination, using the Magic Wand or waiting for Magical formation - this is Honey Production and Sharp Spike. Yes I do agree keying it to a sloth combo would increase the speed but the takeaway is the nature of the Summon ability. The sharp spike targets the DK even as the summons arrive, killing all of them in one hit as the DK falls.

I cannot yet complete Abandoned Temple dungeon at my power level, but somehow I can rapidly defeat all of those enemies off the back of the DK Summon with a single Sharp Spike, granting me their research (I would not otherwise be able to pass the Librarian at this stage), seeds and resource drop chance.

(Side note, I find it hilarious that Goblins have returned and are wiping me out, the Dragon Slayer)

[Nico]

Well, as I said, setting it up with just brain domination is just way easier, since it's ust a single skill and it achieves the very same thing. And sure, using AOE would be a lot slower as well since it has a very high cooldown. And relying on a skill from your MC means that the warrior routine speed bonus can potentially screw you over since you won't always have the same attack speed.
And that's why I also mentioned the phantom whale, since he is a rare who can use the skill, and you obviously prefer letting DK summon rares, since their research is more valuable.
Also, another advantage of using Iari's sharp spike (since she is the quickest) is that you get her 100% EXP bonus, which is especially great considering that slothing 2 DK's is the quickest way to get EXP. and since you don't care about seed drop chance since DK already has 100% you can simply combine the seed farm with an EXP farm by also using all companions for their EXP bonuses. Especially since there aren't that many seed drop amount summons with higher values, so swapping some of them out for EXP won't hurt much.

[WhatRoughBeast]

I don't think it's possible to mark my own post as the answer, but I had to update that I finally had my Seed breakthrough and am now generating more than I know what to do with.

The short version was that I waited too long to progress further into the game. I did all of ED1-ED4 without getting out of the Desert village or beating Guardian3.

I hunkered down for a long run, pushing all the way into Evil City and getting useful Astral and Akashic upgrades from Guardians 3 and 4. Thanks to Synthar above for the suggestion to hold out for a certain summon, combined with all the extra passive Sin from a 13day run, Envy is helping too.

I should have pushed further in earlier runs, but we're here in one piece and the beginning of ED5 starts now.

[Nico]

Yeah, usually you need enough power to beat the area after the desert to be able to beat ED4. Trying that while staying in the desert surely sounds like it would take quite a while.
And I must admit, since you mentioned the witch I was kind of sure that you have already beaten the valley, since getting her also requires a similar power as beating the valley.

[Darnavir]

With the new area and summons comes another question: is there any "reasonable" way to get the 2 Billion seeds needed for the area summons?

I feel like I'm missing something important - I cap at thousands (sub 10k) per drop and it will take ages to get anywhere. This is with all Astral world/Akashic records seed drops bought, revolutionary witch, dryads and several +seeds drop amount summons.

[WhatRoughBeast]

The new allies do help a fair bit, especially the rare - getting some equipment with Seed Drop + can be an additional multiplier.

The Pride challenges add a new layer as well, because it's better to grind seeds in the end game of course but the bonuses for doing some quick runs with reduced stats are a tradeoff I guess. The 5th clear of Need Not Envy for each ED will also give a big boost.

Happy grinding!

[Darnavir]

The allies are worse than evil city summons before getting seeded - not a major difference.
The equipment is of some use, but again, not a gamechanger.
Need not Envy is kinda brutal (Pride level 11), this isn't something I'm gonna clear anytime soon.

I kinda hoped I'm missing something major, because at this rate, the seeds will take ages.

[Nico]

Idk, I curently get 60k seeds per kill after levelign all regular summons in DV for which I needed around 2 days, I just miss the rare and guardian summons.
Idk what you could be missing, I at least didn't yet touch any pride challenges.
I get x12 from familiar, x12 from ally, x2.2 from quest, x1.5 from greed and x3 from envy ... I guess your ally is a bit lower since the new ones aren't seeded yet ... did you maybe not put charisma as your envy strategy?