User blog:Hayashi H/Rapid Levelling Procedure

Just going to dump what I used for levelling here in case anyone wants to copy the technique. If not, it still serves as a reference for me, so it's fine. The general philosophy here is to use exactly what you need to pull the levelling off, AND NOTHING HIGHER to lower resource costs.

Sparkling
The initial technique was to use 1-5 and dump ASW only on FS, but this stopped when HQ Lvl > 79. Ever since then, fully modernised destroyers have been used instead in 1-1.

Procedure


 * Dump 3 Boilers in the destroyer/light cruiser you want to sparkle.
 * Put 2x Lvl 1 destroyer drops with her, with their equipment removed.
 * She gets MVP while the Lvl 1s take the hits leaving your primary ship unscathed and ready for expeditions. Do not resupply the lvl 1s, use till supply flat or any damage taken. Lower supply drops rate of them stealing MVP at node 1 by chance while also saving you reso on them. Use dregs for modernization or scrapping.
 * Heavy Cruisers take 4 boilers. Ships with initial strike like AVs and CVLs take full damage complement.

Expeditions
The full levelling set is expeditions 5, 21, 37 with sparkling. It should sustain grinding at 3-2 at virtually the same rate it uses up the resources. Overnight expeditions are [11 for bauxite, 24 for fuel], 35, 40. Deviation from this will lead to bauxite shortage for development or fuel shortage. Following this rotation exactly makes you limited by ammo, but you'll never truly be short either. Steel will stockpile to ungodly amounts, this is normal.

3-2 Grinding
There are two modes. The resource efficiency mode minimises repair of submarines due to high rate of killing all ships before they can possibly fire, but MVP is unstable. Battleship is set as flagship to reduce amount of resources used in total to level all ships (battleships have greater ammo/fuel costs).

Mode 1 setup The heavy cruiser levelling mode requires more submarine repairs, but MVP is stable and usually flagship heavy cruiser. This increases overall resources required for levelling, but becomes important once you've already gotten a lot of battleships and carriers to lvl 80+ territory, since now you'll want to avoid slamming your high resource ships into the lvl 99 wall while leaving the other ships behind at lower levels.
 * Slot 1: Battleship. 2 heaviest main guns without overweight penalty, AP shell and type 0 seaplane.
 * Slot 2: Carrier. Optimal setup 3x Ryuusei Kai + Egusa Suisei.
 * Slot 3: Light Carrier. Optimal setup 3x Ryuusei Kai + Saiun.
 * Slot 4/5: Two Light Cruisers or 1 Heavy Cruiser + 1 Destroyer. Setup for double attack if possible.
 * Slot 6: Submarine with as many Boilers as it can carry.

Mode 2 setup The expeditions will support 3 chained fleets. To minimise downtime while guaranteeing the ships are always at enough morale for full evasion, the rotation is to send fleet 1-1, 1-1, 1-2, 1-2, 1-3, 1-3, dailies fleets OR sparkle fleet, 1-1 once, then wait for 給 to turn solid green before repeating the cycle (this time doing 1-1 just once more before going on to 1-2. Fleets 2, 3 and 4 must be on nonstop expedition rotation to supply this cycle - and the reason for exactly 3 grinding subfleets is that any more will inevitably bankrupt your resources, and any less will lead to resource stockpile. You want to end every day with less than 1000 ammo - which will be your main limiting factor.
 * Slot 1: Heavy Cruiser. 2 best mainguns possible, 20.3 type 3 advised (tone, chikuma, kinugasa and mikuma will give a total of 4, good enough to do two of these fleets). Add type 32 radar and the best recon seaplane you have (the rare ones). Skimping here will reduce MVP rates.
 * Slot 2: Aviation battleship. Optimal setup 15.5 cm main + 12.7 HA + any radar + standard type 0. This allows for day cutin attacks, which will guarantee kills on red/yellow ships but not outdamage the flagship unless flagship fails to DA, in which case slot 3 is far more likely to steal MVP than slot 2 anyway.
 * Slot 3: Light Carrier. Optimal setup 3x type 62 fighter-bombers + saiun. Any bombers greater than this (even the lousy common ones) will steal MVP and force a reduction of total bomber slots, which reduces the number of ships the light carrier can OHKO at the start. This will get MVP if CA fails to DA.
 * Slot 4: Kaini Destroyer or Light Cruiser. Neither are capable of outdamaging the flagship, but are capable of killing ships.
 * Slot 5: Destroyer you want to train. This one is just leeching.
 * Slot 6: Submarine with as many Boilers as it can carry. This requires submarines with very high evasion and yet low repair times like Ro-chan or 168 (twin boilers), or Maruyu.

Dailies and weeklies
Because of XP-resource efficiencies the only dailies/weeklies I bother to clear involve 2-2, 2-1 and 1-5 only. Clear 2-1 as early in the week as possible to finish the carriers quest, and sparkle ships to clear the 'multiple wins at boss node' mission. Clear 2-2 daily transport kill quests, then kill 2-2 boss repeatedly until that is clear, and then clear submarines for the day. Do not waste resources on clearing the weekly transport quests as clearing dailies for a week will finish those quests as well automatically.

Fleet setup for transport killing in 2-2 is FBB + 5x Kaini DDs. Fleet setup for 2-2 boss is FBB + CVL + 4 Kaini DDs. Optimal CVL here is Ryuujou Kaini due to her very high offensive power. Load Ryuusei Kai + Tomonaga Tenzan + Ryuusei Kai + Saiun. This persuades the compass fairy to send you to boss node. Air superiority is pointless given carriers appear only 1/3 of the time, your kaini destroyers will disable enemy carriers via AACI disallowing them from attacking in the first place, and the only ship in the fleet who will benefit from artillery spotting is your FBB, which will already kill anything with single attacks.

Drop management
In the early stages resources are less of an issue than stats so the idea is to modernise as much as possible, with at least +3 bonus in each stat that you're going to have more than +0 in during modernization, aiming for +18 if possible (3 fusous + 2 kongous gives +18 firepower), and multiples of 5 otherwise, in that order of priority.

In the later stages when all ships are at full stats and you're only modernising new kaini ships, scrap all light cruisers and heavy cruisers except Tone and Chikuma. use Tone, Chikuma and battleships in conjunction to modernise firepower and AA together, and good destroyers like Kagerou, Mutsuki or Shiranui to modernise torpstat together with armor and/or firepower. Reserve use of carriers like junyou and shouhou with chitose to modernise ships that need nothing else but AA. Once all ships are modernised and you have time to go till next kaini, keep only the battleship complement in ratio 3 fusou:2 kongou, and scrap everything else. This allows you to raise a ship to maxmod from kaini in the fastest possible rate while gaining the most resources from scrapping. Wherever possible, use destroyers for sparkling before scrapping them for more efficiency.

PvP
Clear all PvP you can, they give very good experience as long as they're not lvl 1-1 troll fleets. Triple CLTs + Abukuma Kaini + FBB + Maya Kaini will obliterate any ship composition except pure submarine fleets, which you respond to with pure destroyer (+ASW) fleets. Fleets that don't need the CLT treatment are disposed of accordingly with lower resource cost fleets. Never use aircraft carriers to keep Akagi's supplies of lunch happy, and gain reverse air superiority by sortieing zero combat aircraft, but shooting down the majority of enemy aircraft with AACI. This allows your FBB to DA if it happens - but if it doesn't the torpedoes will still massacre everything for at least an A rank.