https://gingerbred.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] gingerbred.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] hpwu2020-10-20 03:59 pm

Brilliant Event: Darkness Rising Part 2

Part 2 of the Darkness Rising Brilliant Event runs from Tuesday, 20 October at 11am PT through 27 October. The thoroughly amazing Orange Wizard has been at it again and made us some infographics to help us prepare...



Rewards include 15 green Restricted Section Books, 5 DADA Spell Books, 3 red Spell Books, one Dark Detector, a silver Key, 50 gold, a Strong Exstimulo Potion, miscellaneous Potions ingredients and 60 Energy.


TIPS:
DO NOT VISIT THE EVENT REGISTRY PAGE UNTIL TASK 2. A word of caution, if you max the number of fragments (including via Portkeys) for any of the pieces from part 1 (or part 2), you will be forced to visit the page whether you want to or not. This will slow you down come task 2.

DO NOT PLACE ANY IMAGES ON THE EVENT REGISTRY PAGE UNTIL TASK 4.

If you're planning on finishing the beginning as quickly as you can, queue only your fastest brewing Potions and don't perform Master Notes, because whenever you hit task 2, you'll need to perform Master Notes FIVE TIMES for one of the tasks. Even using the rental cauldron, that gates you for a couple of hours, or the amount of gold required to speed the brewing process up.


For TASK 1: if you're somewhere where ingredients rarely spawn, emptying Portkey slots should force Portmanteaus to spawn, and picking them up off the map counts for this task. Don't visit the Event Registry during this step in order to speed up the Runestone collection assignment in Task 2.

IF YOU ARE LOW ON ENERGY, you'll just have to waste some of the TFTD spawn. (Don't get me started...) Do not return any Brilliant Foundables from Part 1 of the Event, stick to the required Dark Wizards, and do not return more than five Dark Witches. This is going to be more difficult / time consuming than it was in Part 1 as there are now four Brilliant Event Foundables spawning. (Yay.) If you're really hurting for energy, you can even put off the Dark Witches for this step. You will need to return at least 15 Brilliant Event Foundables in Task 4. For optimisation, you'd return only 20 total each of Dark Wizards and Dark Witches which are placed when you get to Task 4.


For TASK 2, visit the Event Registry Page now. The five Dark Witches and 10 Dark Wizards should have gotten you enough Brilliant Event XP to get the required Runestones. (Unless they changed the numbers again. Who knows.) If you don't have enough, especially if energy is an issue, Event Portkeys from either event and using Event Runestones in low level fortresses (especially as a Professor with maxed Deterioration Hex) can get you more Brilliant Event XP to get the required Runestones. DO NOT place any event images! That includes the fragment completing this step awards you.

Queue only quick brewing Potions, because you'll need to perform Master Notes FIVE TIMES this task. Go for something short like an Exstimulo or a Health Potion. (This week's freebie includes ingredients for two Health Potions to help with that end of things.) Note that you can let a Potion start brewing while still on Task 1, and as long as it's still brewing when you get to this step, you can perform the Master Notes and have it count for the task. If you're renting a cauldron, rent the three hour one and queue a long potion like Baruffio's at the end to make the most of your 15 gold investment.


TASK 3 is this week's Fortress centric assignment. The requirement to defeat 15 foes should help with the dead weight out there. Baruffio's Brain Elixir will help you get the required Fortress XP together more quickly. Doing the highest chambers you can will also get you to the required Fortress XP faster.


TASK 4 It's unknown at this point, but likely, they've made the same "mistake" as the last couple of times (with Brilliant Flitwick and Sprout, and the Brilliant Poacher and Snatcher), that the unplaced images are worth more than the placed ones. We'll have to keep our eyes open for this one. Either way, not having placed the Brilliant Family images from page 2 until we reach this step should help complete the assignment. Chances are it will take much less energy getting the required fragments together to place by opening Portkeys from this event and completing Fortress Challenges with Event Runestones. If you have enough Runestones, the lowest chambers return a fragment about 50% of the time, meaning within an average of six battles (costing advanced players roughly 12 energy), you could have a fragment to place. You should have the Fragment from Task 2 ready to place, and by completing parts of this task, both the Dark Wizard and Dark Witch. That will get you three of the required five. The Knight Bus and ca. 12 battles with event Runestones can get you the other two, or use some combination. Opening five portkeys from part 2 of the Brilliant Event will get you one. Another word of warning, though: the bonus assignment will require us to unlock five Portkeys, ten for a single event might be too much for you / require too many silver keys.

The Mysterious Note pieces will randomly drop when you return Brilliant Dark Witches and Dark Wizards. They will only drop while you are trying to complete Task 4, and only from those two Foundables.

If you're going for the bonus, stop collecting your finished Potions.




Here is where you can find the Brilliant Foundables on the Event Registry page:



Note that you can obtain the Brilliant Borgin Portkey Fragments required to fill your Registry as Bonus rewards. For maximum efficiency, if you intend to complete the bonus, try not to open Event Portkeys before collecting the Bonus reward. If you need to, say for the image placing requirement in Task 4, try to open five of them and place Borgin before you collect the Bonus reward. Just be sure to remember to collect your rewards before the event ends.

It also appears they've returned to the pre-Knight Bus / during coronavirus alteration of granting us the Fortress Fragment as the reward for Task 2. Nice. Not as necessary as the Portkey reward, but definitely nice. If it weren't for Task 3's Fortress assignment, I'd say they were trying to make us less miserable about how those have played out lately.

Brilliant Portkeys for this event have once again been reduced to 1.5km! Remember, Part 1 Portkeys will give you part 1 rewards anytime you open them, so you need to pick up the ones you'll need in order to get the Fragments for your registries during *this* event. As in the past, you don't have to unlock them now, as long as they are in your inventory, you can buy yourself some time.


Bonus Assignments! Make sure to look for these in-game.



Rewards include 5 DADA Spell Books, 1 red Spell Book, 5 Borgin (Portkey) Fragments, a Potent Exstimulo Potion, 1 Silver Key, and 30 Energy.

45 Brilliant Oddities... Jeepers Creepers. I can't say it often enough, as an unfinished Auror, I'm spending a fraction of the energy on the map I was as a finished Professor. It's a new moon, and Fluffy is putting in an appearance. He normally takes me three or four shots (very often four) with his 300 Stamina. (It's always bittersweet when I see him.) I've now managed it four times in a row with two shots as an Auror. Meh. Worst case, he'd take three shots absolute tops. Give it some thought, my fellow Profs, give it some thought.

10 Exstimulos of any kind during Fortress Battles... Remember you can quaff the Exstimulos at the end of a battle, and use most of the energy boost it gives you on the map to help with those 45 Brilliant Oddities. If you were so industrious as to max the Professor's Deterioration Hex and fight as a Prof, hint hint, then you can complete that battle without energy or firing a shot, and have the full potion's bonus to use on the map. (You *do* have to remember to change professions though. lol Voice of experience? Maaaaaaybe.)

Brew TEN Potions! Some of these can have brewed in advanced. What counts is collecting them. Depending on where you are in your SOS Skill Tree, if you are making use of the Rental Cauldron, as many as seven Potions can be waiting for you to collect when you hit this step. Keep in mind you can only perform Master Notes on the first of the potions you have pre-queued if you are trying to maximise the potion collection at one time, so it's always more efficient to queue the shorter potions after that first one for your main cauldron. The Rental Cauldron sort of works the other way around, as the gold is also a factor. (For example, I'll probably rent the three hour cauldron for 15 gold, queue two Exstimulos, perform Master Notes on the first, and then have fifteen minutes to spare to add a Baruffio to the pot, but then I also have a 16% reduction on brewing time for the Exstimulo, which obviously helps.) TIP: If you aren't sure how long potions take for you to brew (there have been a lot of changes with the SOS skills, so it might not be what you think it is), click on your suitcase, on "Potions", and then on "Recipes". In the upper right of each entry, it will tell you how long it takes to brew. Even if you are not currently renting the extra cauldron, if you select it, and then click "Recipes", you'll see the (- 10%) adjusted brew time (before Master Notes). Here again, you can only perform Master Notes on the first of a series of queued Potions you mean to collect all at once, so take that into account.

UNLOCK FIVE PORTMANTEAUS! That's "unlock". Not "open". So you can't walk these off in advance. Silver keys are your friends if you're stuck at home. (I don't know how many Portkeys I've opened pacing my home while on lockdown...) Completing the event will net you two of them total, with the gold key in one Portkey, that's only two more to invest. On the other hand, if you get to this step early enough, you might have time to walk some more of them off. It helps greatly that they're still only 1.5km. (Thank you, Niantic! <- not snark. If I'm going to complain all the time, I must also give praise where and when due.)


Freebies! And bundles.



If you do nothing else, don’t forget to pick up your free TFTD and 2 Health Potion ingredients and 25 Spell Energy.

Good luck, guys. Fingers crossed that it's better than part 1... 😉

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