User:Vazkii/SandboxTLDR

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What to Farm Guide | Theoretical Grid Building Guide | Sandbox Starter Guide | Friend Summons Guide

Sandbox Starter Guide

Last Update: July 30, 2023
This guide is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0, a permissible license for futureproofing. (more info)
(What does this mean??)Essentially, this gives you the right to make your own versions of the guide. If I stop maintaining the guide one day, you're welcome to pick it up and continue it as long as you give credit, so that it can live on and help players even after I leave.

Introduction

A lot of people ask me how Replicard Sandbox works and how to farm the items there. This guide is just a very quick reference for what you should be doing to farm Evoker and NWF materials, and does not substitute a full comprehensive tutorial.

Furthermore, this assumes you have basic knowledge of grid building, as well as access to at least "midgame" weapons. For more info, please check my guides on:

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  • For a full comprehensive tutorial on Replicard Sandbox farming, check out Auryona's Guide.
  • For a guide on which Evokers and NWF are relevant, check out NoL's Guide

Getting Started

  1. Have an Evoker. If you don't, focus all your Arcarum work on getting Npc s 3040164000 01.jpg Caim ASAP. Farming "Here Be Staves" is not worth it.
    • If you're already super close to a different evoker, finish that one instead. The first one is always the hardest, and after you have access to "Here Be Swords", the further ones become much easier to recruit!
  2. Fully clear the Sandbox areas once up to the point where you can see the big Marble in Zone Mundus ("The World").
  3. Build up your books by doing missions, the main ones used are Specialist's Guidebook square.jpg Specialist, Shockwave's Guidebook square.jpg Shockwave, Valor's Guidebook square.jpg Valor, and Avarice's Guidebook square.jpg Avarice.

5-Gauge

The most important content in Replicard Sandbox is the 5-Gauge mob, anything that has 5 bars like this:
Vazkii 5gauge.png

3-Gauge mobs have the exact same drop table and treasure box chance as 5-Gauge with double the HP and longer entry animations, and as such, are usually not worth killing outside of the purpose of clearing missions. The one situation where 3-Gauge is efficient to kill is if you can do so with the same amount of buttons as 5-Gauge (i.e. you have Weapon s 1040315100.jpg Ereshkigal), as it'll stack more Defender hosts.

5-Gauge is what you'll be killing most of the time, so we should make a team that can kill it as fast as possible. These mobs have around the 20 million HP range, and with help from our books, we can easily cook something up for quick kills without much hassle.

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Aside from the final bosses of the eight main areas and Xeno Militis bosses, nothing in Replicard Sandbox has element resist - this means you can use any element for any battle, as long as forgoing the Seraphic boost is acceptable.

Dark Is Good

Your objective here is to kill the 5-bar mob as quickly as possible so you can farm it for drops very fast. My prefered build is 0 Button, 0 Chain, using Dark:

  • Specialist's Guidebook square.jpg Specialist, Shockwave's Guidebook square.jpg Shockwave, Avarice's Guidebook square.jpg Avarice for our book choices
  • Use characters that can bring skill damage without needing button presses, e.g. Npc s 3040424000 01.jpg Bowman, Npc s 3040094000 01.jpg Veight, Npc s 3040219000 01.jpg Lelouch, Npc s 3040035000 01.jpg Seox, etc.
    • If Summon s 2040411000.jpg Belial (Summer) is available, Npc s 3040357000 01.jpg Lich is fantastic too.
    • (Summer Belial will always add a significant amount of extra damage, so it's worth using even without Lich!)
  • If you have access to supplemental such as Weapon s 1040314300.jpg Pain and Suffering or Weapon s 1040711100.jpg Agonize, absolutely bring those.
  • Main character should provide as much self damage to help bring the enemy's HP to a trigger point, bring a high dmg class like Class 190301 sp square.jpg Apsaras.
    • Characters with high damage pre boss attack can be used if the trigger point isn't reached, such as Npc s 3040445000 01.jpg Cendrillon or Npc s 3040456000 01.jpg Ilsa (Yukata)

An example reasonably low-budget setup is provided as follows, but I could only test this in my account with maxed books, so it may not be functional for weaker setups. Having access to stronger characters such as Npc s 3040424000 01.jpg Bowman or high transcendance Npc s 3040035000 01.jpg Seox, as well as a second Weapon s 1040314300.jpg Pain and Suffering and Weapon s 1040711100.jpg Agonize can make this much smoother.

Main text label.png Sub text label.png
Apsaras djeeta profile.jpg Npc f 3040417000 02.jpg Npc f 3040219000 02.jpg Npc f 3040094000 03.jpg Base empty npc.jpg Base empty npc.jpg
Summon m 2040046000 02.jpg
Main Summon		 Summon party sub aura empty.jpg
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Empty skill.png Not Selected
Empty skill.png Not Selected
Empty skill.png Not Selected
Weapon Grid background.png
Weapon Grid Extra background.png
Main Weapon label.png
Weapon m 1040301400.jpg
Weapon m 1040911100.jpg
Weapon m 1040711100.jpg
Ws skill atk m 6 3.pngMistfall's Might IIBig boost to dark allies' ATK Ws skill counter 2 3.pngHoarfrost's ClaritySlight chance to dodge and counter (big DMG) for water allies Ws skill god m 6 3.pngMistfall's Majesty IIIBig boost to Dark allies' ATK and max HP Ws skill ability limit.pngβ Revelation50% boost to skill DMG cap Chain of Falsehood square.jpgDeceitful FallacyBonus Elemental DMG effect / Sharp hit to charge bar gain Ws skill atk 6 1.pngDark's MightSmall boost to dark allies' ATK Ws skill job weapon.pngPurgatory's SpectacleSupplement dark allies' skill DMG
Weapon m 1040301400.jpg
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Awakening Attack.png
Ws skill atk m 6 3.pngMistfall's Might IIBig boost to dark allies' ATK Ws skill counter 2 3.pngHoarfrost's ClaritySlight chance to dodge and counter (big DMG) for water allies Ws skill atk a 6 5.pngSlaughterous SovereignUnworldly boost to Dark allies' ATK. Ws skill job weapon.pngAstral Claw II10% boost to Dark allies' one-foe attack damage cap on multiattacks. Ws skill atk a 6 3.pngArmed ShadowBig boost to dark allies' ATK Ws skill job weapon.pngGraphite ArtsBoost to dark allies' skill damage cap
Weapon m 1040706000.jpg
Weapon m 1040020300.jpg
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Ws skill job weapon.pngPurgatory's PactSupplement dark allies' DMG Ws skill job weapon.pngAxe Voltage IIBoost to ATK based on how many axes are equipped Ws skill tyrant 6 2.pngOblivion's Tyranny IIMassive boost to dark allies' ATK / 10% cut to dark allies' max HP Ws skill job weapon.pngCulmination of Nightfall10% boost to Dark allies' damage cap. Ws skill whole 6 4.pngEclipse's StaminaMassive boost to dark allies' ATK based on how high HP is Ws skill job weapon.pngBlack CovenantSupplement Dark allies' C.A. DMG based on how high HP is. Ws skill whole m 6 3.pngMistfall's Stamina IIBig boost to dark allies' ATK based on how high HP is Ws skill hp m 6 2.pngMistfall's AegisSmall boost to dark allies' max HP
Weapon ls 1040314300.jpg
Weapon m 1040106700.jpg
Weapon m 1040314700.jpg
Sephira Emerald Reaper icon.jpg
Ws skill baha 3.pngConcrio VentusBoost to Humans' and Erunes' ATK and HP. Ws skill job weapon.pngIncursio VentusBoost to all allies' ATK based on number of Humans and Erunes in party. Ws skill job weapon.pngAxe Voltage IIBoost to ATK based on how many axes are equipped Ws skill job weapon.pngPurgatory's ExertionBoost to dark allies' multiattack rate based on how high their HP is Ws skill atk m 6 3.pngMistfall's Might IIBig boost to dark allies' ATK Ws skill tec arcarum 6 4.pngSephira Dark-TekMassive boost to dark allies' critical hit rate in Arcarum

I have also recorded a Demo on YouTube of this team killing an off-element boss to showcase it. As you can see from the video, there is very significant leeway, as Lelouch's nuke didn't finish, and Veight's didn't trigger at all, so weaker setups should still be able to manage.

Fallback Ideas

Thanks to the sandbox books and access to the full 13 slots, the threshold is not super high. Here's some other ideas:

  • Wind can use Npc s 3040288000 01.jpg Anila (Summer) and Npc s 3040261000 01.jpg Grimnir (Valentine) to abuse the supplemental in Shockwave's Guidebook square.jpg Shockwave's Guidebook for high auto damage.
  • Fire can use Npc s 3040425000 01.jpg Percival (Grand) and just press Ability m 1859 1.png Koenig Dekret900% Fire damage to all foes (Damage cap: ~1,020,000).
    All Fire allies gain Status FireAtkUp.png100% Fire ATK UpFire ATK is boosted
    Strength: 100%Duration: 1 turn     and Status 1383.png30% Bonus Fire DMG (1 time)Deals bonus fire DMG for normal attacks (1 time)
    Strength: 30%Duration: 1 turn     .
    All Fire allies instantly perform a normal attack without using up a turn.
    (Consumes Status 3169.pngKing's BlazeATK is greatly boosted based on how high HP is / Deals bonus fire DMG upon normal attacks (Can't be removed)
     after activation.)     for the kill.
  • If the kill still fails, swap out Avarice for another boosting book. You lose out on drop rate, but at least you can kill.
  • If nothing else works, Summon s 2040157000.jpg Huanglong main summon with Overflow's Guidebook square.jpg Overflow's Guidebook as a fallback for a 3 or 4 chain setup can always function in a pinch.

Drop Rate Is Good

5-Gauge mobs (and nearly everything else in Sandbox for that matter) are affected by drop rate, so within reason, you want to bring in all the drop rate support possible. The higher your drop rate, the higher the chance for items to drop, and the less time you'll have to spend in the mines.

In a rough order of difficulty in optimization, here's some ideas you can try:

The paramount objective here is getting the kill 100% of the time, so it's only worth optimizing drop rate to the point where that doesn't interfere with your kill consistency. Worth noting that players may wish to do sandbox with secondary objectives in mind, such as raising Master Level or leveling up characters, in which case, optimizations such as class picks or backrow changes may go against your goals.

Flow

As the kills themselves are trivial, the main bottleneck in getting kills fast is getting in a flow state where you can spend as little time messing through menus as possible.

Personally, I kill the Herald monsters until my EXP multiplier is maxed at 200% (or 600% during Tales of Arcarum), and completely ignore the Chests/Mimics, as they require me to go back to the map to open, which takes time. However, if you're trying to conserve Half Elixir square.jpg Half Elixirs, killing the Mimics is recommended.

The two greatest pain points here are menuing and ping.

Menuing

Menuing is the overall term for how fast you can get through the game's popups and screens before you can enter another battle. I personally utilize two game screens to do this as fast as possible, and have recorded a Demo on YouTube you can watch for what my sandbox gameplay looks like.

The setup is as follows:

  1. The first window has its Homepage set to the Team Select menu for the battle in question. We do this by copying the page's address and making it our Homepage.
  2. The second window has a bookmark for https://game.granbluefantasy.jp/#quest
  3. I start the battle, and immediately attack using Semi-Auto
  4. Once the "YOUR TURN" popup appears, I click the Quest bookmark on the second window, this shows the results of the kill
  5. Once the second window loads the results, I press my Homepage key on the first window to return to step 3, repeat

In this video you can also see me making a mistake in the timing around 0:55, which wasn't on purpose, but is a good demonstration of what happens if you do it too early. This is a fairly optimized setup but you can make concessions if you want to be less of a tryhard:

  • Two windows provides only a very minor speed increase, you can just press the Quest bookmark in the same window
  • Instead of setting the quest start page as your Homepage, you can just make it another bookmark and press that instead

Good menuing is crucial to achieving any sort of reasonable kill speed in Sandbox, and therefore, any sort of reasonable drop rate for the items you want.

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This menuing strategy is fairly universal. You can do it on any enemy, and it's also super useful for end of month story events and Guild War EX+. For those, you set the homepage as the summon select screen instead.

Ping

Since Granblue Fantasy's servers are in Japan, the further away you are from it, the slower your menu actions will be. I personally compensate for my awful European ping using Mudfish, which helps lower my average RTTRound-trip Time, or how long it takes for a game request to get to Cygames and back to me by around 60ms to 80ms, but this is a paid service (albeit fairly cheap), so I understand most people would not be interested.

If you want to know your ping, you can test it by opening a Command Prompt (on Windows, open the Start Menu and type cmd) and then pinging the game server by running the command ping game.granbluefantasy.jp, as such:
Vazkii ping.png

As you can see, mine sucks when Mudfish is off. Ultimately, there isn't much else you can do here other than move closer to Japan, but I figure I'd mention Mudfish either way as it is a significant speed up for people far away from Japan.

What Do I Kill?

Most of the items you need from Sandbox will come from mass grinding 5-Gauge nodes. You can locate the one you want to kill by pressing the (i) icon to see what it drops: Vazkii sandboxdrops.png

Evoker Info Chibi.png Which 5-Gauge?
  • Zone Mundus is the go-to area for 5-Gauge farming. However, tetra-elementFire, Water, Earth, and Wind enemies drop an even split of the element's Ideans, which may be undesirable.
  • Here Be Swords areas may be used as an alternative to Mundus for tetra-elements if one specific Idean is being targeted, or for AX in (Olden) Primal Series Weapons.
  • Here Be Staves areas are used exclusively for Fire Verum Proof square.jpg Verum Proofs, or if you are actively farming AX in Omega Series Weapons.
Enemy Drops
Treasure Boxes (how?)Spawned by killing anything in any area, so just spam 5-Gauges for them! Flameborne Astra icon.jpg Sun Idean icon.jpg Sephira Stone icon.jpg Sun Veritas icon.jpg

Astras, Ideans, Sephira Stones, Veritas, etc

Swords/Mundus 5-Gauge Flameborne Astra icon.jpg Sun Idean icon.jpg Sephira Stone icon.jpg Aurora Haze icon.jpg

Astras, Ideans, Sephira Stones, Hazes, etc

Staves 5-Gauge Fire Verum Proof icon.jpg

Verum Proofs (Only one specific enemy, check drop tables)

Staves Heralds Aquila Fragment icon.jpg

Arcarum Fragments (Low drop rate)

Area Bosses/Xeno Militis Ignis Luster icon.jpg

Lusters (Bosses have Element Resist!)

Staves/Swords Defenders Eletio Organ icon.jpg Invocation of Flame icon.jpg

Area Boss Host Materials

Mundus Defenders Gospel of Egeiro icon.jpg Ignis Luster icon.jpg

Gospels, Lusters (Easier to kill than Area Bosses)

The World World Idean icon.jpg Ignis Luster icon.jpg

World Idean, Random Lusters and other items

Important: this table is not comprehensive, and includes only the main drops for each type of enemy. For example, Defenders can all drop Astras, but aren't an efficient way to farm them in particular, so they aren't noted.

Acknowledgements

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If you have any questions, or want to suggest an improvement, you can get in contact with me at the GBF Wiki Discord Server - my Discord username being vazkii.

Thank you to:

  • Mettie and No Laifu for reviewing the page
  • Umikin for formatting help
  • The 8923829832 people who asked me how to farm Veritas that inspired me to make this

Changelog

July 30, 2023

  • Added a note to Verum Proofs to check drop tables as not all enemies in the area drop them


Previous Changelogs

July 29, 2023

  • Updated Zone Mundus description to remove erroneous drop rate claim
  • Removed "Only" from Fragments in Staves Heralds, as apparently they can appear in other places with a super low drop rate
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