r/OnePieceTC • u/FateOfMuffins Doktah Carrot Muffins • May 16 '20
JPN Guide Pirate Festival Overview + Ranking Strategy (Part 1/4)
What is the “Pirate Festival” game mode?
Pirate Festival, or PF for short, is OPTC’s version of PVP. It is a completely separate game mode from the main game, with brand new mechanics and team building. Most units in the game will have unique PF specials and abilities that do not affect the main game whatsoever. However, it is not “live” PVP and is instead much more similar to “blitz” or “TM“ rankings. You gem for stamina, you fight a match, you gain points, you rank against other players. No new concepts (yet).
To put it simply,
- Pirate Festival is a PVP-style game mode, where the battle is an automatic fight of 8 v 8
- You can fight against others 3 times a day, which resets at 4am JST. Otherwise, you can spend a gem to add more Festival 'Stamina"
- For each Festival 'stamina' you get a choice of 3 teams. You can reset these with the button at the top-right when selecting your opponent.
- Rival matches are divided into period sessions: rank high in the preliminaries to take part in the finals
- Each phase will have special rules and boosted characters
- Units you already have will get unique Festival stats, specials, and abilities. There are also power-up items (flags) specifically for this mode, to improve their PF specials and abilities. Entirely new stats include Defense and Speed. Units will also get new roles, these are "attacker", "defender", "healer", "supporter", and "disrupter"
- Teams in this mode are limited by Formation Cost. During each Season (month), Trusty characters will have their Formation Cost Reduced. Raid Kaido is one such unit.
All battling is completely automated, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t depth! This game mode can easily become more complex than the main game at the highest level of play, but I guess you wouldn’t be here if you were at that level huh. See Teambuilding 901 for an example of how complex this can get.
What rewards can you get out of this game mode? Well, mostly flags, which are the source of PF EXP that makes your units stronger in PF. But like TM and Blitz battles, you can obtain gems, USBs, and ticket pulls (including Red tickets). However, in comparison to TMs and Blitz battles, these rewards are few and will not make a major impact on your regular gameplay, so don’t be worried if you think that PVP is too confusing or too “P2W”! You are not missing out on all that much.
You can also unlock Resource Facilities, which automatically generates resources for you to use. This includes Beli, RP, LB mats, Evolution mats, flags, support medals, gems, stamina, as well as increasing the CC cap on your units. Winning in the PF also grants you PF tickets, which can be used to buy some of the rewards previously mentioned, but is mostly used for upgrading these resource facilities. You will need a LOT of tickets to max the facilities (amounts that whales would take years to earn), but can otherwise level them up to a reasonably high level without too much trouble. See Resource Facilities for more information.
User Interface & General Info
Current Phase
- Displays in which phase we are in now and how many days are left. After Prelim A, B, C are over it will go into Finals/Exhibition Phase.
PF Shop
- Use PF Tickets to buy items / characters.
PF Points
- The current amount of PF points you have accumulated.
Rules
- Displays the rules that apply to this season.
You obtain these “Grades” for achieving certain ranks during the finals of each season
The important one is your “Highest Historical Grade”. This determines what level resource facilities you can unlock. Your resource facilities will be unlocked thereafter; you only need to reach this grade once, you do not need to maintain it. Currently you need to have achieved Top 1000 in Finals to be able to upgrade a Facility to Level 35 (max). See Resource Facilities for more information.
Rank
Current rank.
Ranking Placement is based on your ranking points, which you get from winning matches. You can earn more by having a winning streak, which will appear alongside your current point tally. See Attacking for more information.
Similar to TMs, you can also check the current top 100 rankings as well as players who are around your own rank
This page also shows you the current defense teams that each player is using
However keep in mind that this is their defense team, not their offense team. What is meta defensively isn’t necessarily meta offensively.
Also keep in mind that mindlessly copying top 100 defense teams is not necessarily good. People at lower ranks will not attack extremely powerful defensive teams when they can reset for a much easier opponent. See Teambuilding 101 and Ranking Strategy for more information
- There are 2 types of rewards: Challenge and Ranking Rewards
- Challenge Rewards are based on your Participation Matches and Wins alone
- Ranking Rewards vary based on the current phase, and will be given out the day after each phase as 12:00 JST
- Leftmost: Challenge rewards. You will find Festival Ace and his LB mats here.You need 100 matches and 50 wins over the course of 1 season (1 month of 3 preliminaries + finals) to clear out all seasonal rewards, which includes the PF unit and LB mats (only 20 wins needed), as well as flags. Mostly flags.
- Second: Ranking Rewards for Preliminaries A-C. You can get the Flag materials and Tickets. Ranking rewards for preliminary rounds are not very good, so there’s little reason to rank very high in prelims.
- Third: Exhibition Ranking Rewards: Ticket and Material Pools expanded, and gems+Legend Pulls are added.
- Last: Finals Ranking Rewards: top 21,000 with the top 2,000 getting a Legend Pull.
Single Match
- Play against pre-defined CPU teams to unlock facilities. This does not use up any stamina.
Rivals Match
- Play against teams of other players. Your team can be chosen from the "Attack Teams", your opponent team will be chosen from their "Defense Teams".
Attack Teams
- These are the teams that you can choose to challenge an opponent in Single Match and Rivals Match.
Defense Teams
These are the teams that will be shown to the opponent that will challenge you (it will be one of the 3 options they can choose from). The main team that you have selected here will be the one that the opponent sees.
You will get PF Tickets/Points if you manage to successfully defend against your challenger. Therefore it is important to choose your teams wisely in this section.Making a too easy team here means that you will give away an easy win to the opponent and you will not get any extra PF Tickets/Points from your Defense Teams. Making a defense team too hard means that no one will challenge you, as players can endlessly refresh the list of their opponents. See Teambuilding 101 and Defending for more information.
Teambuilding (TO BE ADDED)
You can store up to 8 defensive and 8 offensive teams, just like in the main game. Some options are also the same as the main game, such as “reselecting all units” and “changing the position” of units.
You can have up to 5 active units and 3 backup units in a team, for a maximum of 8 different units. Active units are the ones that are on the battlefield. Backup units are not on the battlefield at the start. They will replace any active units that lose during battle.
Teams can have up to a maximum of 300 cost, which unlike the main game, is fixed and does not go up by level.
- Legends cost 55
- PF RRs cost 20
- Other useful F2P and RR units generally cost between 30-50
- Some “boosted” units have their cost cut in half (for example, currently raid Kaido and Kizuna Carrot are 20 and 25 cost respectively)
- FN units cost 20
- You can find some other FN units with 1 cost
When you first open the Pirate Festival, all of your teams would have been automatically generated by the CPU, presumably to maximize the “PF Power Level”. This metric is relatively worthless and does NOT indicate how strong your team will be in practice. Team composition and investment into their PF specials and abilities are far more important. See Teambuilding 101 for more information
When you are making your team, in your box there are 2 additional filters
- In the second filter, you can also see the icons representing each unit’s PF roles. These icons are also present on top of the unit icons (for the units that have PF roles). See Teambuilding 101 for more information.
In the unit screens, there is now another button that takes you to their PF status screens
This screen shows you all of their PF stats, specials and abilities. Levels, special levels, CC, LB, sockets as well as their PF special and abilities all increase their PF stats and “Power” level.
HP, ATK, RCV can be increased from the main game just like you’d expect. DEF and SPD are fixed for each character and can not be changed
CT is essentially the cooldown (charge time?) of the special. This value is fixed for each character and does not change when you level up the skill. This will be important in Teambuilding 901.
PF specials are a unit’s special attack that they can launch when the CT bar is full and it is their turn to attack. Just like the main game, these have a variety of different effects and can be incredibly powerful. Unlike the main game, nuke specials actually make up a significant amount of the damage dealt. PF specials can be increased to a maximum of level 10.
PF abilities are essentially what is the main game’s captain ability, except these are active as long as the unit is in combat. So at any given time, up to 5 units’ PF abilities are active. PF abilities can be increased to a maximum of level 5.
Similar to specials and CA’s in the main game, PF specials and abilities make/break the team comp. They usually work off of types/classes, just like you’re used to. And more often than not, boost the same types/classes that they do normally. As an extremely brief tip on teambuilding, just make sure the units’ PF specials and abilities synergize. For example, Bullet boosts the ATK of STR, QCK and INT units. So use those units. The tough part of teambuilding in Pirate Festival is that unlike the main game where you only need to worry about 2 captain abilities (and 6 specials), you have to worry about essentially 5 captain abilities (PF abilities) and 5 specials. Which can make teambuilding increasingly complex. See Teambuilding 101 and 901 for more information.
For Legends, it will cost 67k PF EXP to max the ability and 227.3k PF EXP to max the special, for a combined total of 294.3k PF EXP. Keep in mind that some units’ specials are much more important than their abilities and vice versa. Also keep in mind that the costs increase exponentially. Getting 1 unit’s special from level 9 to 10 will cost more than completely maxing out a different unit’s PF ability. Gold, silver and bronze flags give 6000, 1000 and 300 PF EXP respectively (with 1.5x bonus for feeding to the same type, same as the main game). See Teambuilding 901 for more information.
The PF status screen also tells you about their attack pattern, who they target as well as any resistances they may have. If you’re reading this guide, chances are this will not apply to you. Don’t worry about it. Come back once you’re ready for Teambuilding 901.
Teambuilding 101 - TO BE ADDED
Teambuilding 901 - TO BE ADDED
Unfortunately, teambuilding can get EXTREMELY complicated real quick (if that 901 didn’t give you enough hints), so that will be a completely separate guide altogether. On the other hand, I will feel bad for not giving you guys any tips for teambuilding (which is probably what most of you guys are here for), so here’s a little bit.
In case you didn’t read what I wrote above
Similar to specials and CA’s in the main game, PF specials and abilities make/break the team comp. They usually work off of types/classes, just like you’re used to. And more often than not, boost the same types/classes that they do normally. As an extremely brief tip on teambuilding, just make sure the units’ PF specials and abilities synergize. For example, Bullet boosts the ATK of STR, QCK and INT units. So use those units. The tough part of teambuilding in Pirate Festival is that unlike the main game where you only need to worry about 2 captain abilities (and 6 specials), you have to worry about essentially 5 captain abilities (PF abilities) and 5 specials. Which can make teambuilding increasingly complex.
Remember how in the main game you make FS teams or Cerebral teams or Powerhouse teams or STR/DEX/QCK teams etc? Essentially teambuilding in PF is the same idea. Just that you might need some more mix and matching and the fact that not all units will be boosted. One tip - make sure your damage dealers are buffed as much as they can. Your tanks? Your healers? They don’t necessarily need the billion attack buffs because they’re not doing the damage.
About Dual Units - for some reason, dual units do not receive any bonuses to their typings. For example Vivi/Rebecca do not count as a DEX nor STR unit (you can still feed DEX and STR flags for 50% exp bonus). They also only count as the classes of their dual form - so in this case, Striker/Cerebral, and not considered Free Spirit.
One last thing, positioning is important. Here is the layout of how a PF battle starts. Red is the attacking team, Blue is the defending team. The order that you make your team from left to right determines their positioning from 1-5.
As you can see, for an offense team, units 2 & 3 are at the front. Since “most” units prioritize attacking the nearest enemy, positions 2 & 3 are the most exposed and positions 4 and 5 are the most safe. At least, for the start of the battle. But that can mean a significant amount of damage. Therefore, if you’re running tanks in your offense teams, keep them in positions 2 & 3. Put the units you want to keep safe in positions 4 & 5. For a defense team, units 1 & 2 are at the front. Position 1 is especially exposed, so keep your main tank in position 1 and any units you want to keep safe in positions 4 & 5.
Attacking
You are given 3 natural stamina every day to attack an opponent’s defending team. This resets at 04:00 JST (the “new day” time).
This is the screen you see to select opponents
You can choose between 3 opponents. The lowest ranked opponent, about 250-500 ranks below your current rank, the middle rank opponent, about 200 above and below your current rank, and the highest rank opponent about 250-500 ranks above your own rank.
If you don’t like the opponents you see, you can refresh the list in the top right corner. There is no refresh limit, but there is a finite number of opponents and they will start repeating.
Naturally, higher ranked opponents give more points, so try to refresh and find a higher ranked opponent that you can beat.
As stated before, battles progress automatically. This includes all specials, even though they look like a pressy-type button. These specials have a set cooldown time, and will activate upon the unit's next attack.
You win a match if you defeat all of the opponent teams' units in the allotted time (100 seconds). If you fail to defeat all of them in this time, you will lose, even if you outnumber them in the end.
On the win (or lose) screen, you can see your points being broken up into the “base points”, which is determined by your and your opponent’s rank, as well as a “win streak bonus” of up to 5 additional points and tickets. At lower ranks, it appears at win streak caps at +4.
Around the top 3k-10k ranks, the highest ranked opponents give approximately 7 to 8 points/tickets + 5 win streak = 12 to 13 points per win. Around rank 2k, the highest ranked opponents give approximately 10 points/tickets + 5 win streak = 15 points per win. From rank ??? (at least below rank 300 or so) to rank 1000 (approximately), the highest ranked opponents give 15 points/tickets + 5 win streak = 20 points per win. In the top 100, opponents give 16-19 base points/tickets + 5 win streak = 21-24 points per win. It appears top 10 gives the highest base points at 19 per win.
Win streak is extremely important and makes up for a huge amount of your points. Mathematically, if you do not have > 90% win rate vs a specific team, you will earn more points in the long run by taking up to a 5 pt hit and choosing an easier team. Of course with how many times you can refresh opponents, that shouldn’t be necessary. You should take a 1-2 pt hit instead to maintain your win rate. Each time you break your win streak, you lose 19 points from the win streak.
| Win streak | Bonus Points | Bonus Points if you kept your win streak capped | Loss from breaking a win streak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 -> 1 | +0 | +5 | 5 |
| 1 -> 2 | +1 | +5 | 4 |
| 2 -> 3 | +1 | +5 | 4 |
| 3 -> 4 | +2 | +5 | 3 |
| 4 -> 5 | +3 | +5 | 2 |
| 5 -> 6 | +4 | +5 | 1 |
| 6 -> 7 | +5 | +5 | 0 |
| Total | 19 |
- As an example, I earned roughly 249 pts from 21 attacks in Prelim B. I lost twice, each resetting my win streak. If I didn't lose, I would have approximately 74 more points from the pt loss (15 from the points I did not win, 3 from the loss itself) and win streak loss (19). Because of the win streak, you see how a single win might be worth approximately 15 points? A single loss means losing more than twice that amount.
Defending
You can make and store up to 8 defensive teams, however only 1 will be active at any given moment. This is the last team you selected before exiting the editing crew page. This is also the defense team that other players see, whether it’s when they attack you, or if it’s when they see you on the rankings.
You win a match if you defeat all of the opponent teams' units in the allotted time (100 seconds). If you fail to defeat all of them in this time, you will lose, even if you outnumber them in the end.
Therefore one strategy for defensive teams is to simply “time out” - you don’t need to defeat the enemy team if they can’t defeat you.
In the image above, I had 16 successful defenses giving me 80 extra points and tickets, or 5 per win. This was done at around rank 500-600 or so, where I would get 20 per win when attacking the highest ranked opponent with maximum win streak. Every day, when attacking, I would only get +60 points at most, yet this single overnight string of defenses gave me more points than that.
From approximately rank 1000-10000, you will obtain about 4 pts/tickets per defense win. From approximately rank 1000 onwards, you will obtain 5 pts/tickets per defense win.
Aside from team composition, the number of successful defenses is also correlated with your rank. First of all, natural stamina only gives 3 attacks per day. Which means if your rank is around where players only use natural stamina, aside from team composition, a player is attacked approximately 3 times per day. Naturally, most players will have fairly high win rates when attacking, so at lower ranks, you might even average less than 1 successful defense a day! On the other hand, at high ranks, people gem for stamina refills more often, meaning players attack more on average. Therefore, players are attacked more on average and thus have access to more wins from defenses.
Ranking Strategy
First of all, you only need to rank in the top 7k in one of the three preliminary rounds. If you’ve hit top 7k in prelim B? Great! You don’t need to worry about prelim C, aside from whatever tickets you earn with natural stamina.
One important thing to note if you're using natural stamina only - win all 3 matches on day 1. If you have to lose a single match, make sure you do not lose match #2. This is because of how the points you earn per attack is based on your rank, how winning builds up a win streak and how losing reduces your points. If you are at 0 points, you will only earn 1-2 points with your next attack.
- LWW would get you +12 points
- WLW would get you +1 points - If you get this, you are majorly screwed. There is close to 0 difference between you and someone who is unranked. That is to say, you will not be getting many defenses whatsoever.
- WWL would get you +9 points
- WWW would get you approximately +25 points
The difference in ranking between 25 points and 1 point is EXTREMELY big. You can be top 3-4k or end off at rank 12k on day 1. Why is this important? See the explanation for the strategies below.
Here is an example. This is my rank for Prelim B. In comparison, this is /u/Gear56's rank for Prelim B. We had a similar number of wins, a similar number of losses and a similar number of defenses for most of the round, no gems spent. With 1 exception - I avoided the WLW pattern on day 1 and /u/Gear56 did not. As a result I ended day 1 in around rank 3k or so while he ended at > rank 10k. I kept track of the number of defenses I obtained, and half of it came from days 1 & 2! That is to say, I had 65 defenses in the first 2 days while /u/Gear56 had single digit defenses. A 50 defense difference in days 1&2 results in a 50x4 = 200 gap, which almost entirely explains the pt difference between our two ranks. What happened? A 4k rank difference was the result of a WLW. Make sure to win the 2nd match of day 1 no matter what.
From the above 2 sections, I think you know where I’m going with this. You earn more points at higher ranks, from both attacking and defending, therefore you want to achieve a high rank ASAP. So here I will introduce to you 2 basic strategies for obtaining as many points with as low of a cost as possible
First strategy
- Gem 0-1 times on early day 1. Use an OK defensive team. Not too strong as to scare people off (aka NOT the most “meta” top 100 teams you see), and not too weak so that you’re an easy win (see Teambuilding 101 for more information). At this point, you are among the most common opponent for most other people when they begin the Pirate Festival. As in, there will be a very high volume of attacking traffic coming your way. Since your team doesn’t look extremely difficult, many players who are unfamiliar with the PF will attack you, causing a large number of surprise defense wins on the first day.
Second strategy
Gem ASAP on day 1. Before other players begin playing, there are not many players in the rankings. Since there is no competition, it is EXTREMELY easy to get to somewhere in the top 1k with very few gems spent. This has a snowball effect - other top players will recognize this fact as well and gem very early. This results in a HUGE amount of players gemming for stamina on day 1, resulting in a HUGE amount of potential defenses.
- Why is this important? First of all, including the win streak, you get +20 per attacking win. You get +5 per defending win. You get more defenses because people are gemming at this rank. For example, just considering natural stamina, if the PF lasts for 1 week, that’s 21 attacks. In the top 1k, you will earn 420 points if you win all 21 attacks. At a lower rank (3k-10k), you will earn about 13 pts per win instead, getting you about 273 points. Without considering the extra stamina from gemming, the higher rank player already increased the gap by almost 150 points. For the lower ranked player to catch up, they will need to spend an extra 3 gems. This doesn’t even include the fact that each gem the higher ranked player spends nets them 60 points vs the lower ranked player’s 39 points. Nor the higher points per defense, nor the increased rate of defenses
- Don’t forget that this is a ranking event. What happens on the last day of TM and Blitz events? People go crazy. They spend gems like crazy. Many people in prelim A spent 20+ gems just to stay in the top 7k. 20 gems at lower ranks? That’s approximately 780 points/tickets. 20 gems at top 1k? That’s approximately 1200 points/tickets. If your goal is to just stay in the top 7k, you will need to spend far fewer gems if you got to a higher rank earlier.
Don’t forget about your defenses. At 5 pts/tickets per win, they can add up quickly. Thanks to me abusing the fact that players had no idea what they were doing early on in prelim A, I was able to rack up a large amount of points from defenses. While other players may have spent 20+ gems just to stay in top 7k, thanks to my defenses, I only spent 7 gems to stay around top 1k.
- Another example is /u/RoseMySweet, who spent quite a few stamina refreshes early on in prelim A. He got to around top 200, then slacked off, including his defense teams. At the same time, I spent about 5 gems to hit top 500. Over the next several days, I slowly went down in rank to around rank 700-800. At the same time, /u/RoseMySweet declined down to rank 4k+. This difference was created solely on a good defense.
Hint
Whatever strategy you choose to do, make sure to play within the first 5 minutes of the Pirate Festival Round starting. The point gain difference is insane.
I started my matches around 12:10 JST. My first match gave 1 pt. Second match gave 9+1 points. Third match gave 9+1 points. By the time I was entering match 2 & 3, I was around rank 2-3k.
Meanwhile, others like /u/Gear56, /u/RoseMySweet, /u/Padabe, started their matches almost immediately. At around 12:05 JST, they were reporting +15 points, +17 points, +20 points for their 2nd and 3rd matches. Why? Because so early on, there are very few competitors, resulting in an extremely high rank early on. The points you earn directly correlates with your rank. They were able to break into the top 100 (briefly) just from their first 3 matches being played within the first 5-10 minutes.
/u/RoseMySweet got +1+20+20 resulting in 41 points using 3 natural stamina (facing ranks 9 and 3 in his 2nd and 3rd matches). Me play 10 min later? +1+10+10 resulting in 21 points using 3 natural stamina.
Resource Facilities (TO BE ADDED)
There is a new section for resource islands. Here's what you can get from them:
Time-Based Rewards
- Gems
- Beli
- Training/exp points
- Stamina
Once-Per-Day Rewards
- Evolution Items
- Limit Break Mats
Continuous Effect
- Max Stamina Boost
- Plus Value Boost (for Cotton Candy)
You can use your Pirate Festival Tickets to upgrade these locations, yielding quicker gems, for instance. Higher levels for the locations require that you have achieved a certain ranking at some point playing the FEST mode.
Resource Facilities ticket costs and upgrade requirements
A separate detailed guide will be made later on the resource facilities after the finals when players can actually upgrade them.
Cheatsheet
Find below a couple useful Japanese characters to get an idea about what you’re looking at.
攻撃: ATK
体力: HP
回復: RCV
防御: DEF
速度: SPEED
ダウン: down (lowers)
アップ: up (raises/boosts)
範囲: range - can be 少 short, 中 mid, 大 long
横: side
前方: front
Attack patterns: 通常 normal, 強 strong, 全力 full power
回復: heal
自分: self
ダメージ: (deal) damage
痺: Paralysis
封: Bind
必殺封: Special Silence
挑発: Taunt
吹き飛ばし: Blow away
クリティカル: CRIT
確率: probability/chance/rate
タイプ: class (always comes after the class name, when two or more classes are mentioned they’re separated with a dot)
斬撃: Slasher
打撃: Striker
格闘: Fighter
射撃: Shooter
自由: Free Spirit
野心: Driven
博識: Cerebral
強靭: Powerhouse
1
u/GP-Sproud May 16 '20
Could you shed some light on the stats? In particular, the attack Stat. I find myself doing the same amount of damage with basic attacks regardless of whether I'm at atk +12 or +2. Do you know what exactly that Stat does?