@ June 19th, I had been at it 14 weeks. Now it's 14 weeks + 2 days.
As of last update, all toons were 7*, with gear and relics being the barrier, not shards.
(Raddus, btw, is 0/100. But we don't need Raddus to get anything done in the event and 0/85 was good enough to qualify, so I'm not worried about the ship.)
Been 19 days since I finished all that farming. Let's see where I'm at:
Pilot = g12 +4 ==> r1
Trooper = r1 (same)
ScavRey = r1 ==> r2
All my r3s:
Rose = g12 +4 ==> r3
Vet Chewie = g12 +5/6 ==> r3
Resistance Hero Poe g12 +5 ==> r3
Resistance Hero Finn = r1 ==> r3
BB-8 = r-1 ==> r3
Poe = r1 ==> r3
Holdo = r1 ==> r3
JTR = r1 ==> r3
Finn = r5 (No change)
You can see taking those last 4 toons to g13 took a while. I only had so much g12 gear saved up when I started. The first couple toons I got to g12 (cause I think I only had one g12 resistance toon when I started -- JTR) it wasn't that hard to boost them up, but things slowed way down fairly quickly when I ran out of gold Fusion Furnaces and a few other key pieces.
As I've said before, but which folks might not remember, I farmed the hardest 2 types of data first and have huge stockpiles of each. Enough to relic everyone to their minimum requirements minus about 10-20 because I hadn't added things up carefully and I was less concerned with going back to farm a couple more than I was with spending time and energy farming too many.
The easiest Signal Data, though, that's pretty much the last thing I left for myself to farm. This is why my relics are where they are. Every day I'm taking a toon from r1 => r3. When that's done, I'll be able to take one toon a day from r3 => r5. I'm a few Mk3 Holos short of having everything I need to take the rest from r5 to r7, but I can get those quickly (I've just been working on gear for SLKR since i finished taking everyone to g13).
That puts me a couple weeks away from qualifying for the event - so we're now estimating July 4/5 and a total of 16 weeks of work, possibly plus a couple of days, to take garbage resistance (but everyone farmed to 7* except RHPoe & RHFinn) up to minimum GL Rey requirements.
In the final analysis, my early guess that I would be finished approximately during the last 10 days of June proved slightly optimistic. However, I spent thousands of crystals on Galactic Chase events for the new ships. My estimate probably would have been solid if I'd decided to leave farming those ships for later. However, if you're an FtP player trying to learn from the examples of others (which is the whole reason for this thread) it's probably going to be hard to not spend on anything other than one faction for 5 months. Maybe you'll be like me and drop crystals on a GC. Maybe it will be some other kind of event, or maybe you just won't be able to resist gearing up another character in the middle of your Resistance/FO chase. But recognizing that you'll probably go off script at least a little bit is probably accurate.
It's also interesting that at times I thought I was ahead of schedule, but ultimately I underestimated the amount of time needed to gather up all that relic data. In retrospect, spending 100 crystals/day on signal data much earlier on would have been good for me. I would have gotten my last pieces of gear later, but more data would be waiting when the gear was ready and ultimately since I finished the gear almost a week ago and still have 2 more weeks on data farming, I could have matched the timing on those better.
Actually, thinking back, I wouldn't have even needed to finish my gear farms more slowly if I just hadn't spent a whole mess of crystals (4k or something?) on getting Raddus shards early. I hadn't realized that a 5* Raddus would qualify, so dumping those into signal data farming would probably mean that I'd be qualified for Rey right now, with the only cost being that I'd have a 5* Raddus instead of 6*. So... think about that, too, if you're trying to learn from my mistakes.
I’m not even trying on GL Rey, and I doubt I will start there until I’ve got Holdo to 7 stars by doing the BH events. I’ve still have to 7* the Resistance bros, Holdo, and Rose plus Rey’s **** and Lando’s **** for the Raddus event.
I will probably leave this GL until I’ve got GAS and JKL which wouldn’t be a while as I’ll probably build up GL tickets for GL KR, while building up the rest of the rosters to XII to bolster my options for GAC. Probably going to hoard zetas and omegas for the GL KR.
I applaud those going for both gls. I don't have the patience honestly. Instead I did lots of sidetracking and now working on luke for the 2nd run (which should take at most a month), then mando toons for whatever they will bring.
Here is where I am as of June 21st on shard farming with almost no additional node refreshes from the character release date, if that data is interesting to some of you. The two First Order characters are now one day ahead of basic spending for farming.
I have gone Resistance first, but I'm also farming Sith Trooper and Hux.
JTR, Finn, and RT are done
Scavenger Rey is R2, BB-8 is R4
Poe is G12 +5, RP is G12 +3
Holdo is G11 +4, Rose is G10 +5, Chewie is G8 +5
Hero Finn 19/85 G8 +5, Hero Poe 14/30 G9 +4, Raddus 40/65
Not actively working on FO per se, but they are on my list
JTR, Finn, RT, Scavenger Rey, Poe, RP, and Raddus are done
BB-8 is R5
Holdo is G12 +5, Rose is G12 +1, Chewie is G9 +4
Hero Finn 60/100 G10 +4, Hero Poe 7/85 G10 +1
Not actively working on FO per se, but they are on my list
I haven't spent any crystals except for refreshes at this point. Gear has been the biggest bottleneck so far. Since I'm still farming toons, I figure I don't need to spend crystals on gear yet.
Slowly getting there:
JTR, Finn, RT, Scavenger Rey, Poe, RP, Raddus, BB-8, Holdo, Rose, Hero Finn are done
Chewie is R2, just need a few more relic pieces to finish him.
Hero Poe 62/100 and have the last piece crafted for G12 once he hits 7*
Anyone farming toward GLRey might want to stop and see what CG's response to reworked Vader teams stomping maxed/ultimate Rey teams is first. Proceed with caution.
In game name: Lucas Gregory FORMER PLAYER - - - -"Whale blah grump poooop." - Ouchie
In game guild: TNR Uprising I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
*This space left intentionally blank*
Yeah, it's too late for me to stop on GL Rey. With everyone in Relics, I could save signal data, but I have to get someone else to g13 to make better use of the signal data, which means I might as well use this now and just keep farming signal data for other toons as I go.
As for Luke, about 10 days ago when I got all my Resistance toons to g13 I started adding gear to FO & Palp. The intent was to immediately go for SLKR.
But with Luke out and able to completely dismantle LS Geo Jedi missions even with 2nd-rate jedi backing him up, I can't justify the longer farm for SLKR.
Yes, it will cost me in some areas (including raids, where I'm going to fall behind in accessing the gear that I need to get characters up to relic levels in the first place, which makes everything harder), but I owe it to my guild to do better in LS Geo and to gear up my KAM-mission toons. So I have to relic Shaak Ti and ARC Trooper plus all the JKLuke characters before I can go back to SLKR.
somehow I badly miscalculated the middle-difficulty signal data. How did I do that?
anyway, things slowed down as of yesterday when i ran out of that data, so now instead of only farming one signal data type, I have to farm two.
If you're FtP, let me tell you right now, you're going to run out of signal data. With all he weeks I was farming gear, I thought that I would have the signal data done, but it takes WAY too long to get the data. Spend 100 crystals every day to refresh cantina and get that signal data boosted. You need a ton.
That said, progress is good, it's just slower now, so instead of finishing in 3-5 days from now, it will take at least a week. I originally guessed that I would be finished at the end of June at the latest (and I have the crystals to have done so, if I'd spent them on signal data earlier), but then I splurged huge on the Galactic Chase events for ships. If you do the math, it's crystal-efficient to spend during GC events, but it does set you back on your farms. I thought with how much I spent (and with holding off spending crystals on other things so I didn't run out during GalChase), that I'd put myself back about 2 weeks. In sum, that's probably correct, since I'm still a week away from finishing up the requirements so I can start collecting tickets.
But enough preamble. How's the work going, you ask? Here's the state of my GL prep:
Still Working:
ScavRey = r2 ==> r3
BB-8 = r3 ==> r5
JTR = r3 ==> r5
Finished:
Pilot = r1 ==> r3
Vet Chewie = r3 (No change)
Poe = r3 ==> r5
Holdo = r3 ==> r5
Resistance Hero Poe = r3 ==> r5
Resistance Hero Finn = r3 ==> r5
Trooper = r1 ==> r5
Rose = r3 ==> r5
Finn = r5 (No change)
So I need 4 relic tiers on ScavRey and 2 each on BB-8 and JTR. If I was still getting 2 tiers a day most days, you can see that we're talking 4-5 days. But now it will take longer needing to farm that 2nd signal data type. Oh, well. It is what it is.
As of today it's been 15 weeks and 5 days, starting from a pretty lousy faction as these things go (1 g12, 1 g11, several g10, the rest g8, and 2 toons - the resistance heroes - at 50/330 shards from the marquee event and nothing else).
I have a pretty decent crystal income (over 600 per day), so don't expect 4 months FtP unless you've got something similar, even if you learn from my mistakes or unless you skip stockpiling crystals to gear up your GL and spend everything you have (but then, of course, you're going to take longer to make your GL useful after getting it).
It's a lot of work, but the next one will come faster. Good luck to everyone who is trying this FtP.
I probably don’t qualify as FTP as I bought crystals to get the remaining Kyro Rey needed when I unlocked her (200 shock prod, 100 of the other one). But other than that I’ve not spent any money on the game since unlocking GAS last October.
I’ve now got 4 SLKR toons ready, 5 at g13 needing a handful of relics, and the remaining 3 need a couple of gear pieces and their finisher before g13.
For the FtPs who are trying to learn from our experience, how long would you say you spent on working your factions into shape, and where did they start from when Rey/SLKR were first announced?
FTP attempt. Only seriously started focusing on it 100% about a month ago. Already had KRU, Kylo and FOX at G13 when GLs were rolling out. Used to run FO in arena for ages, so had FOO and FOST @ G12+3 too.
I started farming them on the side as soon as they went to the table. Have everything but the stun guns to take Hux straight to G12. Need two of them and then it'll be right away.
Banking all my right side pieces and right side salvage from STR as well. It's frustrating/tempting to see all those green crosses.
Actually going back through my roster screenshots I'd say it's closer to 5-6 weeks. Still threw the odd gear piece on others during the first while. Now it's 100% GL.
Almost switched to JKL because I'm theoretically closer to it, but not as game changing.
For the FtPs who are trying to learn from our experience, how long would you say you spent on working your factions into shape, and where did they start from when Rey/SLKR were first announced?
I’ve done pretty much nothing else in game since January. So 6 months working on the 24 toons.
I’m also a bit of a GP bloater, so they were all starting from g8 at worst, with many a good bit higher than that. I’ve averaged around 750 crystals a day from January this year. Maybe a bit less over the last month when work went crazy.
I just scrolled through discord to see how long I’ve been at it, and found some gems:
“They surely won’t make every toon need relics to access the events?!”
“R2 and 3p0 are guaranteed requirements for Rey. I’m gearing them now, no sense waiting”
(In February) “Just took FOO to g13. 2020 will have to suck big time for there to be something worse than that happen!”
@Vendi1983
SLKR strategy is probably best left to another thread, but as I understand it, making Hux your 2nd fastest character can be important, seeing as Hux grants a bonus turn (almost as good as TM swap) as well having better abilities.
ST is a great toon on offense, but his assists/counters also can pose a problem vs. certain teams, so better left off your defensive version. (In other words, fight 4 battles with ST, then swap out for your last battle of the day).
Remember that I don't have SLKR, though, so this is just what I hear. I'm not your best source of information on this stuff.
You're doing really well -definitely way ahead of me. I like knowing it takes about 6-7 months for BOTH toons with a 750 crystal/day budget. That makes it easy for people trying to follow along and learn what to expect.
Yes, that's a long time to spend not gearing up other priorities, but considering the requirements, 6-7 months is a reasonable amount of time to get GLs over and done with.
I've decided to go JKL before SLKR (mostly feedback from my guild leaders who want us all to push to get better in LS Geo - we're already getting 30 stars in DS and close to 31 last time - don't remember if we're close enough we might hit 31 this time, but not too far away). With my crystal budget less than yours, I'm looking at about the same time frame to get Rey + JKL instead of Rey + SLKR.
But on the upside, I did do a little side prep on F.O. & Palp after I got Rey's toons to g13 and before JKL was announced. I get to start from 4xg12 instead of 1xg12 when I go for SLKR. I'm confident that I'll be completely done with both GLs and JKL before the end of the year.
I was terribly disappointed by the requirements, so I was thinking to ignore the whole thing.....
Then I started to farm for SLKR about one month - one month and a half ago... I had nobody g13 at that time.
Current situation:
KRU, FOO and FOST: done.
Finalizer: done.
Kylo: R6.
Phasma and Executioner g12+3.
Palpatine: g12+4.
Hux: g12 but 67/85.
FOTP: g12.
FOSFTP and Vet Han: g11.
Sith Trooper g10 and 3/85.
It will take ages......
UKylo, foo,fox,Foto,fosftp eine
Kylo r6
Palp r5
Hux R3
Vethan g11
Fost and sith trooper (55/100) g8
Finalizer 30/65
Hux is nearly done, vethan is not difficult to bring him to g12 and I already farm his g12 items.
As I need 4 finalizer events and some time for farming sith trooper, I might finish the prerequisites in 3 month, depending a bit on the hsith results.
UKylo, foo,fox,Foto,fosftp eine
Kylo r6
Palp r5
Hux R3
Vethan g11
Fost and sith trooper (55/100) g8
Finalizer 30/65
Hux is nearly done, vethan is not difficult to bring him to g12 and I already farm his g12 items.
As I need 4 finalizer events and some time for farming sith trooper, I might finish the prerequisites in 3 month, depending a bit on the hsith results.
You need 2 more months for the finaliser then. If you happen to get done earlier, save 1k crystals for the 3rd next event.
Today, Friday, Jul 10th, I have finished the last required toon to participate in the event.
For clarity: I do not have Rey. I still need to farm tickets and play the event tier.
However, and this is a big however, at this point I can shift my resources to anything else I would like (save the Kyros & Stun Guns I have saved up - which isn't quite enough yet, but getting there).
And even better? Farming Rey has finally gone from chore to actual content! That's right, from here on out, all I have to do is the farming I would do anyway for Mandalorian characters, SiT, and gear, and then use the crystals I pick up to actually play the event.
So if you're an FtP SWGOH fan and wondering how long you'll have to devote yourself to farming & gearing toons to qualify for this event before you can focus on something else, something new, something not so overwhelming? (Which, after all, was the entire purpose of this comment thread.) I can now report that as someone with a crystal budget just over 600/day and starting from really pretty cruddy resistance by today's standards (only 1x g12), it took me exactly 17 weeks.
TL/DR of what's to come: I made some mistakes that you can learn from, but this is still a long process. If your situation is similar to mine but you learn from my mistakes, it will still take a minimum of 13 weeks to qualify for the event, but probably more like 15 and maybe even 16, depending on how disciplined you are.
Can it be done faster? I certainly could have gotten it done faster. I underestimated how long it takes to get all those signal data and finished my gear long before I finished my signal data. I also spent a TON of crystals on the two Galactic Chase ship events which happened in the middle of my GL quest. Had I done the math to figure out the optimal amount of crystals to spend on farming signal data so that I finished signal data at the same time I finished farming gear, and if I had not blown through thousands on the GalChase events (which would have made certain I had enough crystals on hand) I theoretically could have been finished 4 weeks ago.
The primary lesson from my experience are: Start refreshing Cantina energy much earlier than I did - like at the very beginning of the process. You'll need over 300 of the most difficult, annoying signal data which will drop at a rate about 2 per 3 attempts. You should plan on 500 attempts at 16 energy each, with only 10 attempts per day free (from 120 accrued energy + 45 bonus energy per day). It will take you 50 days or 7 weeks just to get that without Cantina energy refreshes. You'll need 500-ish of the 2nd most difficult signal data, but they drop at a rate of about 1 per attempt, which means another 50 days if you're not refreshing Cantina energy.
This means it will take more than 14 weeks to get just 2 types of signal data saved up if you don't refresh Cantina energy every day, and although the easiest type of data does indeed go faster (more drops per attempt AND fewer needed than Type 2), that's still another long while. For me it took even longer because I decided to spend some of my signal data on unrelated toons when it became necessary for me to upgrade my pilots to r7 to keep taking 1st in fleet.
18 weeks is the minimum for acquiring the needed signal data if you're not refreshing Cantina Energy. Based on how long it takes to acquire the gear, that's just too long.
Even at the beginning when you might be more worried about shards for Holdo or Rose or the Resistance Heroes, do 1 Cantina Energy refresh per day. This shortens a 50 day farm to about 31-32, and thus your 14-week farm for the 2 difficult times of data down to merely 9 weeks.
With 4 weeks/ 30 days on the easiest signal data with no refreshes, you'll then be well positioned to match finishing your easiest signal data to the moment you finish your gear farm, and if you're finding yourself a little behind, it's easy to keep spending 100 crystals/day on Cantina Energy to catch up or to stop spending when you know you'll finish what you need on time. This front-loading your Signal Data farm allows you to still adjust your crystals spending so you don't spend more than you need, but also to match finishing the data and the gear farms at close to the same day.
However, I think that most people won't be obsessive enough to do the math and plan things down to the crystal and that some mismatch of finishing signal data vs. finishing gear is to be expected and that, as much as we tell ourselves we'll focus on this one thing to get it done, there will always be special releases and other things to do that can serve as distractions. Some of those, particularly Gal Chases, can be incredible crystal hogs and may mean you lose progress. Often these are worth it anyway, but setting aside the question of "worth it", I think that it's just unreasonable to expect the vast majority of players to simply ignore these distractions entirely, not least because they can be fun, and the game is supposed to be fun, right?
So if you learn from my mistakes and have a crystal budget about the same and start from where I started in terms of gear (2x g1 and 50/330 shards, 2x g8, and a whole bunch g9-10 with just 1x g11 and 1xg12), you should still only count on doing better by a week or two. If you're disciplined and finish 4 weeks better, that's fantastic! Good for you! But this guide is being written for most players and most players won't be quite single-minded enough to accomplish things in that time.
15-17 weeks for the average end-game player with a faction in bad shape seems a reasonable estimate for qualifying for the event. Fortunately, my next task is JKL, who is miles easier, and my FO is in significantly better shape, even if none of them are relic'd yet.
Okay, I didn't pay attention to the Ticket system for unlocking Rey.
All I can say is, it's bad.
Once you're invested in all your characters to qualify for the event, there's nothing you can do but play it out, but it's going to take a long time.
Math, possibly very, very boring and over-detailed:
From what i understand from other sources, ticket drop rate = 20-25%.
You can only earn tickets from LS battles if you're going for GL Rey and only from DS battles if you're going for SLKR. (If you were ready for both battles at the same time, you'd be earning tickets from both LS and DS, but knowing CG you probably couldn't use tickets earned from DS battles on Rey's event and vice versa).
You require a minimum of 420 tickets to unlock. This assumes zero losses on any event battles. Many people have lost battles on a fairly regular basis, though many have also cruised through with zero losses at all. Since I haven't played the event battles yet, all I can say is that spending the time on tutorials to make sure you have the maximum chance to win is definitely going to be worth it.
Going further, we see that the drop rate for tickets does not change with the energy cost of the node. As a result, 6-energy nodes are your quickest way to farm these tickets. However, those come with their own costs. If you're not willing to do 6-energy farms, you can definitely find a 10-energy farm that's worth it because it has gear you need (like all the Kyros you need for your new GL). So this will assume you're farming tickets on a 10-energy node.
10 energy * 420 tickets = 4200 energy required if the drop rate was 100% - but of course it's not. As I said earlier, unverified sources put the drop rate at 20%-25%.
This means that total energy required is 4 x 4200 to as much as 5 x 4200.
Thus energy required = 16,800 to 21,000, assuming you fall into the normal range of ticket RNG.
Regular energy per day = 240 accrued + 45 + 45 + 45 bonus = 375.
Farming tickets without spending crystals ends up with a total duration of ticket farming, JUST TO UNLOCK, NOT COUNTING THE ULTIMATE, of 45 to 56 days. You would have to plan for 60, just in case you lose a battle or two along the way.
The Ultimate costs another 840 tickets, or exactly double what the unlock cost.
Using our math above, this means that from the time you get your GL unlocked to the time you have her ultimate = 90 to 112 days.
Obviously this can be brought down by purchasing energy refreshes. Using 150 crystals/day, you get an extra 360 energy. 360 + 375 = 735.
Spending 735/day, we find unlock requires 23 to 29 days
The ultimate requires another 46 to 54 days.
Together, from the moment you meet requirements to the moment you have a GL toon with completed ultimate requires 69 to 83 days, which equals 10-12 weeks.
Of course, you might have other farming priorities. I currently have only 2 regular energy toons at less than 7* - Sith Trooper and Cara Dune.
At 5 attempts each, I lose 160 energy per day. 735 - 160 = 575 energy available per day.
Now, my SiT is currently at 95/100, so theoretically I go right back up to 655 energy per day just a couple days from now, and that 80/day extra means that every 6 days calculated at the old progress rate will get me 6.8 days progress once SiT is done. This saves me about 4 days off the unlock time and 12 days off the time to unlock + ultimate. I could calculate that out, but Rebel Y-Wing and TIE Bomber are about to become farmable, so I'll probably go back to having 2 distraction farms per day pretty quickly. We'll just leave the estimate as is then, at 575 available energy per day.
So for me, at the end of all these calculations, we find that unlock requires 30-37 days, and the ultimate requires 60-74 more, with the grand total being 90 - 111 days, or 13 to 17 weeks. Curiously, that's right about the amount of time we found is required to gear up the entire faction to begin this wretched event.
Now, of course I could bring the time required down further (by another 8-10 for unlock and 25-30 total) if I wanted to spend 3 x 100 crystals per day for even more regular energy.
What does this get me though?
More math:
300 x 22 to 300 x 30 = 6,600 to 9,000 crystals for an extra 2 TWs and an extra round (possibly 2, depending on luck) of GAC.
The rewards for adding a single character, even a fantastic character, to GAC are so small they hardly bear counting. TWs, likewise, are a full guild enterprise and the odds are that your one character won't be the difference in any particular TW. If it is, great! But you only earn 1 extra zeta, 1 extra omega, 50 extra GET, and other very small rewards.
So the entire benefit to you for finishing early is going to be the extra rewards in Arena. Everything depends on that b/c no other possible rewards come close.
But you're spending 300 crystals/day for 22-30 days. The extra time you have the character available to you is at most 10 days. So you have to earn an extra 660 to 900 crystals from Arena every single day for this to be a fair trade.
Since maximum crystals reward for Arena (finishing in 1st place) is 500 crystals, we know that it's impossible for 500 crystals minus your current arena crystal reward to exceed 660, much less 900.
The answer, then, is that spending any crystals on the 100/day energy refreshes will not recoup your losses through increased Arena or other rewards, even if you went from Rank 999 to 1st place every day.
You're FAR better off to spend 150 crystals/day and get JKL while you're waiting for your GL.
Still farming New Poe and New Finn, but I'm nearly done. I could be done by now with refreshes, but it's more cost efficient to me to simply farm five characters with no refreshes than to farm one character with five refreshes. (Currently farming Finn, Poe, BTL, Hyena, and Hux)
Scavenger Rey's relics are coming along well but now I'm at that painful part where you have to start sacrificing useful gear... After her it'll be BB8's turn. Then the last two and I'm good to go.
Also I would recommend farm for the tickets and get 140 so when you’ve done relicing the GL to R7, you can get start right way and get tier 4 and 5 out of the way.
Replies
As of last update, all toons were 7*, with gear and relics being the barrier, not shards.
(Raddus, btw, is 0/100. But we don't need Raddus to get anything done in the event and 0/85 was good enough to qualify, so I'm not worried about the ship.)
Been 19 days since I finished all that farming. Let's see where I'm at:
You can see taking those last 4 toons to g13 took a while. I only had so much g12 gear saved up when I started. The first couple toons I got to g12 (cause I think I only had one g12 resistance toon when I started -- JTR) it wasn't that hard to boost them up, but things slowed way down fairly quickly when I ran out of gold Fusion Furnaces and a few other key pieces.
As I've said before, but which folks might not remember, I farmed the hardest 2 types of data first and have huge stockpiles of each. Enough to relic everyone to their minimum requirements minus about 10-20 because I hadn't added things up carefully and I was less concerned with going back to farm a couple more than I was with spending time and energy farming too many.
The easiest Signal Data, though, that's pretty much the last thing I left for myself to farm. This is why my relics are where they are. Every day I'm taking a toon from r1 => r3. When that's done, I'll be able to take one toon a day from r3 => r5. I'm a few Mk3 Holos short of having everything I need to take the rest from r5 to r7, but I can get those quickly (I've just been working on gear for SLKR since i finished taking everyone to g13).
That puts me a couple weeks away from qualifying for the event - so we're now estimating July 4/5 and a total of 16 weeks of work, possibly plus a couple of days, to take garbage resistance (but everyone farmed to 7* except RHPoe & RHFinn) up to minimum GL Rey requirements.
In the final analysis, my early guess that I would be finished approximately during the last 10 days of June proved slightly optimistic. However, I spent thousands of crystals on Galactic Chase events for the new ships. My estimate probably would have been solid if I'd decided to leave farming those ships for later. However, if you're an FtP player trying to learn from the examples of others (which is the whole reason for this thread) it's probably going to be hard to not spend on anything other than one faction for 5 months. Maybe you'll be like me and drop crystals on a GC. Maybe it will be some other kind of event, or maybe you just won't be able to resist gearing up another character in the middle of your Resistance/FO chase. But recognizing that you'll probably go off script at least a little bit is probably accurate.
It's also interesting that at times I thought I was ahead of schedule, but ultimately I underestimated the amount of time needed to gather up all that relic data. In retrospect, spending 100 crystals/day on signal data much earlier on would have been good for me. I would have gotten my last pieces of gear later, but more data would be waiting when the gear was ready and ultimately since I finished the gear almost a week ago and still have 2 more weeks on data farming, I could have matched the timing on those better.
Actually, thinking back, I wouldn't have even needed to finish my gear farms more slowly if I just hadn't spent a whole mess of crystals (4k or something?) on getting Raddus shards early. I hadn't realized that a 5* Raddus would qualify, so dumping those into signal data farming would probably mean that I'd be qualified for Rey right now, with the only cost being that I'd have a 5* Raddus instead of 6*. So... think about that, too, if you're trying to learn from my mistakes.
I will probably leave this GL until I’ve got GAS and JKL which wouldn’t be a while as I’ll probably build up GL tickets for GL KR, while building up the rest of the rosters to XII to bolster my options for GAC. Probably going to hoard zetas and omegas for the GL KR.
Rey - 20/330
I'll be slow farming Rey - 3x50 LS refreshes only. My stockpile of crystals is gone so I'll try to build that back up to 100K
Here is where I am as of June 21st on shard farming with almost no additional node refreshes from the character release date, if that data is interesting to some of you. The two First Order characters are now one day ahead of basic spending for farming.
Slowly getting there:
JTR, Finn, RT, Scavenger Rey, Poe, RP, Raddus, BB-8, Holdo, Rose, Hero Finn are done
Chewie is R2, just need a few more relic pieces to finish him.
Hero Poe 62/100 and have the last piece crafted for G12 once he hits 7*
For FO:
KRU G12 +5, Kylo G12 +3, ST G12 +3, Phasma G12 +2, FOO G11 +5, Hux G12 +3, Sith Trooper G10 +4, FOE G12, FOTP G11 +4, FOSTP G9 +4, Han G8 +5, Palpatine G12 +5, Finalizer done
Just need these guys done and I'm ready for Rey event.
Yes, I'm going for Jedi luke right after getting Rey. I'm farther along to Luke than kylo.
In game guild: TNR Uprising
I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
*This space left intentionally blank*
As for Luke, about 10 days ago when I got all my Resistance toons to g13 I started adding gear to FO & Palp. The intent was to immediately go for SLKR.
But with Luke out and able to completely dismantle LS Geo Jedi missions even with 2nd-rate jedi backing him up, I can't justify the longer farm for SLKR.
Yes, it will cost me in some areas (including raids, where I'm going to fall behind in accessing the gear that I need to get characters up to relic levels in the first place, which makes everything harder), but I owe it to my guild to do better in LS Geo and to gear up my KAM-mission toons. So I have to relic Shaak Ti and ARC Trooper plus all the JKLuke characters before I can go back to SLKR.
It is what it is.
anyway, things slowed down as of yesterday when i ran out of that data, so now instead of only farming one signal data type, I have to farm two.
That said, progress is good, it's just slower now, so instead of finishing in 3-5 days from now, it will take at least a week. I originally guessed that I would be finished at the end of June at the latest (and I have the crystals to have done so, if I'd spent them on signal data earlier), but then I splurged huge on the Galactic Chase events for ships. If you do the math, it's crystal-efficient to spend during GC events, but it does set you back on your farms. I thought with how much I spent (and with holding off spending crystals on other things so I didn't run out during GalChase), that I'd put myself back about 2 weeks. In sum, that's probably correct, since I'm still a week away from finishing up the requirements so I can start collecting tickets.
But enough preamble. How's the work going, you ask? Here's the state of my GL prep:
So I need 4 relic tiers on ScavRey and 2 each on BB-8 and JTR. If I was still getting 2 tiers a day most days, you can see that we're talking 4-5 days. But now it will take longer needing to farm that 2nd signal data type. Oh, well. It is what it is.
As of today it's been 15 weeks and 5 days, starting from a pretty lousy faction as these things go (1 g12, 1 g11, several g10, the rest g8, and 2 toons - the resistance heroes - at 50/330 shards from the marquee event and nothing else).
It's a lot of work, but the next one will come faster. Good luck to everyone who is trying this FtP.
I’ve now got 4 SLKR toons ready, 5 at g13 needing a handful of relics, and the remaining 3 need a couple of gear pieces and their finisher before g13.
Aiming for both GLs unlocked by end of July.
For the FtPs who are trying to learn from our experience, how long would you say you spent on working your factions into shape, and where did they start from when Rey/SLKR were first announced?
Currently have:
KRU - done
Palp - done
FOTP - done
Finalizer - done
OG Kylo - R3
FOST - R4
FOO - G12+3
Phasma - G12+1
Hux - G9+3
ST - G8+4
VH - G8+4
FOSFTP - G8+4
Are Hux and Sith Trooper at 7* already?
And good work. You're in good shape for only a month focussing on this.
Hux 81/100, ST 50-ish/100.
I started farming them on the side as soon as they went to the table. Have everything but the stun guns to take Hux straight to G12. Need two of them and then it'll be right away.
Banking all my right side pieces and right side salvage from STR as well. It's frustrating/tempting to see all those green crosses.
Almost switched to JKL because I'm theoretically closer to it, but not as game changing.
I’m also a bit of a GP bloater, so they were all starting from g8 at worst, with many a good bit higher than that. I’ve averaged around 750 crystals a day from January this year. Maybe a bit less over the last month when work went crazy.
I just scrolled through discord to see how long I’ve been at it, and found some gems:
“They surely won’t make every toon need relics to access the events?!”
“R2 and 3p0 are guaranteed requirements for Rey. I’m gearing them now, no sense waiting”
(In February) “Just took FOO to g13. 2020 will have to suck big time for there to be something worse than that happen!”
SL, KRU, Hux, FOO, ST?
Trying to plan ahead who I mod and gear the best.
I'm going to throw my CLS mods on SLK, and plan to leave KRU as-is. Currently have about 125-130 speed on FOO and only 105 on Hux.
SLKR strategy is probably best left to another thread, but as I understand it, making Hux your 2nd fastest character can be important, seeing as Hux grants a bonus turn (almost as good as TM swap) as well having better abilities.
ST is a great toon on offense, but his assists/counters also can pose a problem vs. certain teams, so better left off your defensive version. (In other words, fight 4 battles with ST, then swap out for your last battle of the day).
Remember that I don't have SLKR, though, so this is just what I hear. I'm not your best source of information on this stuff.
@DarjeloSalas
You're doing really well -definitely way ahead of me. I like knowing it takes about 6-7 months for BOTH toons with a 750 crystal/day budget. That makes it easy for people trying to follow along and learn what to expect.
Yes, that's a long time to spend not gearing up other priorities, but considering the requirements, 6-7 months is a reasonable amount of time to get GLs over and done with.
I've decided to go JKL before SLKR (mostly feedback from my guild leaders who want us all to push to get better in LS Geo - we're already getting 30 stars in DS and close to 31 last time - don't remember if we're close enough we might hit 31 this time, but not too far away). With my crystal budget less than yours, I'm looking at about the same time frame to get Rey + JKL instead of Rey + SLKR.
But on the upside, I did do a little side prep on F.O. & Palp after I got Rey's toons to g13 and before JKL was announced. I get to start from 4xg12 instead of 1xg12 when I go for SLKR. I'm confident that I'll be completely done with both GLs and JKL before the end of the year.
Then I started to farm for SLKR about one month - one month and a half ago... I had nobody g13 at that time.
Current situation:
KRU, FOO and FOST: done.
Finalizer: done.
Kylo: R6.
Phasma and Executioner g12+3.
Palpatine: g12+4.
Hux: g12 but 67/85.
FOTP: g12.
FOSFTP and Vet Han: g11.
Sith Trooper g10 and 3/85.
It will take ages......
Kylo r6
Palp r5
Hux R3
Vethan g11
Fost and sith trooper (55/100) g8
Finalizer 30/65
Hux is nearly done, vethan is not difficult to bring him to g12 and I already farm his g12 items.
As I need 4 finalizer events and some time for farming sith trooper, I might finish the prerequisites in 3 month, depending a bit on the hsith results.
You need 2 more months for the finaliser then. If you happen to get done earlier, save 1k crystals for the 3rd next event.
For clarity: I do not have Rey. I still need to farm tickets and play the event tier.
However, and this is a big however, at this point I can shift my resources to anything else I would like (save the Kyros & Stun Guns I have saved up - which isn't quite enough yet, but getting there).
And even better? Farming Rey has finally gone from chore to actual content! That's right, from here on out, all I have to do is the farming I would do anyway for Mandalorian characters, SiT, and gear, and then use the crystals I pick up to actually play the event.
So if you're an FtP SWGOH fan and wondering how long you'll have to devote yourself to farming & gearing toons to qualify for this event before you can focus on something else, something new, something not so overwhelming? (Which, after all, was the entire purpose of this comment thread.) I can now report that as someone with a crystal budget just over 600/day and starting from really pretty cruddy resistance by today's standards (only 1x g12), it took me exactly 17 weeks.
TL/DR of what's to come: I made some mistakes that you can learn from, but this is still a long process. If your situation is similar to mine but you learn from my mistakes, it will still take a minimum of 13 weeks to qualify for the event, but probably more like 15 and maybe even 16, depending on how disciplined you are.
The primary lesson from my experience are: Start refreshing Cantina energy much earlier than I did - like at the very beginning of the process. You'll need over 300 of the most difficult, annoying signal data which will drop at a rate about 2 per 3 attempts. You should plan on 500 attempts at 16 energy each, with only 10 attempts per day free (from 120 accrued energy + 45 bonus energy per day). It will take you 50 days or 7 weeks just to get that without Cantina energy refreshes. You'll need 500-ish of the 2nd most difficult signal data, but they drop at a rate of about 1 per attempt, which means another 50 days if you're not refreshing Cantina energy.
This means it will take more than 14 weeks to get just 2 types of signal data saved up if you don't refresh Cantina energy every day, and although the easiest type of data does indeed go faster (more drops per attempt AND fewer needed than Type 2), that's still another long while. For me it took even longer because I decided to spend some of my signal data on unrelated toons when it became necessary for me to upgrade my pilots to r7 to keep taking 1st in fleet.
18 weeks is the minimum for acquiring the needed signal data if you're not refreshing Cantina Energy. Based on how long it takes to acquire the gear, that's just too long.
Even at the beginning when you might be more worried about shards for Holdo or Rose or the Resistance Heroes, do 1 Cantina Energy refresh per day. This shortens a 50 day farm to about 31-32, and thus your 14-week farm for the 2 difficult times of data down to merely 9 weeks.
With 4 weeks/ 30 days on the easiest signal data with no refreshes, you'll then be well positioned to match finishing your easiest signal data to the moment you finish your gear farm, and if you're finding yourself a little behind, it's easy to keep spending 100 crystals/day on Cantina Energy to catch up or to stop spending when you know you'll finish what you need on time. This front-loading your Signal Data farm allows you to still adjust your crystals spending so you don't spend more than you need, but also to match finishing the data and the gear farms at close to the same day.
However, I think that most people won't be obsessive enough to do the math and plan things down to the crystal and that some mismatch of finishing signal data vs. finishing gear is to be expected and that, as much as we tell ourselves we'll focus on this one thing to get it done, there will always be special releases and other things to do that can serve as distractions. Some of those, particularly Gal Chases, can be incredible crystal hogs and may mean you lose progress. Often these are worth it anyway, but setting aside the question of "worth it", I think that it's just unreasonable to expect the vast majority of players to simply ignore these distractions entirely, not least because they can be fun, and the game is supposed to be fun, right?
So if you learn from my mistakes and have a crystal budget about the same and start from where I started in terms of gear (2x g1 and 50/330 shards, 2x g8, and a whole bunch g9-10 with just 1x g11 and 1xg12), you should still only count on doing better by a week or two. If you're disciplined and finish 4 weeks better, that's fantastic! Good for you! But this guide is being written for most players and most players won't be quite single-minded enough to accomplish things in that time.
15-17 weeks for the average end-game player with a faction in bad shape seems a reasonable estimate for qualifying for the event. Fortunately, my next task is JKL, who is miles easier, and my FO is in significantly better shape, even if none of them are relic'd yet.
All I can say is, it's bad.
Once you're invested in all your characters to qualify for the event, there's nothing you can do but play it out, but it's going to take a long time.
Math, possibly very, very boring and over-detailed:
You can only earn tickets from LS battles if you're going for GL Rey and only from DS battles if you're going for SLKR. (If you were ready for both battles at the same time, you'd be earning tickets from both LS and DS, but knowing CG you probably couldn't use tickets earned from DS battles on Rey's event and vice versa).
You require a minimum of 420 tickets to unlock. This assumes zero losses on any event battles. Many people have lost battles on a fairly regular basis, though many have also cruised through with zero losses at all. Since I haven't played the event battles yet, all I can say is that spending the time on tutorials to make sure you have the maximum chance to win is definitely going to be worth it.
Going further, we see that the drop rate for tickets does not change with the energy cost of the node. As a result, 6-energy nodes are your quickest way to farm these tickets. However, those come with their own costs. If you're not willing to do 6-energy farms, you can definitely find a 10-energy farm that's worth it because it has gear you need (like all the Kyros you need for your new GL). So this will assume you're farming tickets on a 10-energy node.
10 energy * 420 tickets = 4200 energy required if the drop rate was 100% - but of course it's not. As I said earlier, unverified sources put the drop rate at 20%-25%.
This means that total energy required is 4 x 4200 to as much as 5 x 4200.
Thus energy required = 16,800 to 21,000, assuming you fall into the normal range of ticket RNG.
Regular energy per day = 240 accrued + 45 + 45 + 45 bonus = 375.
Farming tickets without spending crystals ends up with a total duration of ticket farming, JUST TO UNLOCK, NOT COUNTING THE ULTIMATE, of 45 to 56 days. You would have to plan for 60, just in case you lose a battle or two along the way.
The Ultimate costs another 840 tickets, or exactly double what the unlock cost.
Using our math above, this means that from the time you get your GL unlocked to the time you have her ultimate = 90 to 112 days.
Obviously this can be brought down by purchasing energy refreshes. Using 150 crystals/day, you get an extra 360 energy. 360 + 375 = 735.
Spending 735/day, we find unlock requires 23 to 29 days
The ultimate requires another 46 to 54 days.
Together, from the moment you meet requirements to the moment you have a GL toon with completed ultimate requires 69 to 83 days, which equals 10-12 weeks.
Of course, you might have other farming priorities. I currently have only 2 regular energy toons at less than 7* - Sith Trooper and Cara Dune.
At 5 attempts each, I lose 160 energy per day. 735 - 160 = 575 energy available per day.
Now, my SiT is currently at 95/100, so theoretically I go right back up to 655 energy per day just a couple days from now, and that 80/day extra means that every 6 days calculated at the old progress rate will get me 6.8 days progress once SiT is done. This saves me about 4 days off the unlock time and 12 days off the time to unlock + ultimate. I could calculate that out, but Rebel Y-Wing and TIE Bomber are about to become farmable, so I'll probably go back to having 2 distraction farms per day pretty quickly. We'll just leave the estimate as is then, at 575 available energy per day.
So for me, at the end of all these calculations, we find that unlock requires 30-37 days, and the ultimate requires 60-74 more, with the grand total being 90 - 111 days, or 13 to 17 weeks. Curiously, that's right about the amount of time we found is required to gear up the entire faction to begin this wretched event.
Now, of course I could bring the time required down further (by another 8-10 for unlock and 25-30 total) if I wanted to spend 3 x 100 crystals per day for even more regular energy.
What does this get me though?
More math:
The rewards for adding a single character, even a fantastic character, to GAC are so small they hardly bear counting. TWs, likewise, are a full guild enterprise and the odds are that your one character won't be the difference in any particular TW. If it is, great! But you only earn 1 extra zeta, 1 extra omega, 50 extra GET, and other very small rewards.
So the entire benefit to you for finishing early is going to be the extra rewards in Arena. Everything depends on that b/c no other possible rewards come close.
But you're spending 300 crystals/day for 22-30 days. The extra time you have the character available to you is at most 10 days. So you have to earn an extra 660 to 900 crystals from Arena every single day for this to be a fair trade.
Since maximum crystals reward for Arena (finishing in 1st place) is 500 crystals, we know that it's impossible for 500 crystals minus your current arena crystal reward to exceed 660, much less 900.
The answer, then, is that spending any crystals on the 100/day energy refreshes will not recoup your losses through increased Arena or other rewards, even if you went from Rank 999 to 1st place every day.
You're FAR better off to spend 150 crystals/day and get JKL while you're waiting for your GL.
Still farming New Poe and New Finn, but I'm nearly done. I could be done by now with refreshes, but it's more cost efficient to me to simply farm five characters with no refreshes than to farm one character with five refreshes. (Currently farming Finn, Poe, BTL, Hyena, and Hux)
Scavenger Rey's relics are coming along well but now I'm at that painful part where you have to start sacrificing useful gear... After her it'll be BB8's turn. Then the last two and I'm good to go.
Sadly, I slightly misjudged my push on relic materials, so I’ll finish that with 2 or 3 relic levels still required elsewhere.
As mentioned earlier, FTP since unlocking GAS first time around apart from buying crystals to grab the remaining Kyro for gearing Rey when I got her.
Really looking forward to finishing the SLKR grind so I can immediately begin the JKL grind.
Rey - relic 4 no ultimate
Getting there. Then finishing off required toons for Jedi Knight Luke