User blog:Setakat/Summer 2015 Event - Personal Report

Second event attempted.

"Welcome to hell. Your choice of personal Abyssal torturers for this event are Tsu-Class or Wo Class Kai. Please enjoy yourself."

This event was a mixed bag. Summer Event, so fas has maintained the tradition of being the most difficult of the year. I was looking forward to clearing maps on medium with a more prepared fleet - until I started seeing what the map rewards were, and decided most of the maps weren't even worth clearing on easy. Unfortunately, there is no difficultly lower than Easy, so I had to clear on that.

This post is a bit late, but I've decided to move my event reviews into separate blog articles so I can come back later and reminisce about the early days without having to maintain a monolithic page (although this being a large event with 4 combined fleets means its going to be monolithic anyway)

E1 - Prepare for Second Operation SN!
I waited a few days before starting the event, give the front liners some time to work out the maps, encounters, routing and rewards. At this stage, I was still aiming for a Medium Event clear, but after beating up the boss here once, I decided it was too easy, and switched to Hard. Even then, it was still too easy.

Picking 1CL and 2DD to bring into this map wasn't too hard. Hibiki, Hatsushimo and Jintsuu were all easy choices: They needed experience towards their Kai Ni, but weren't high enough on the priority chain to use them in later maps. With the discovery of Kikuzuki giving guaranteed boss routing, it was a short sprint of levelling in 3-2 and PvP to stack some levels on her. However, the 'No CV(L) and/or SS(V)' kinda hurt. So I decided that I needed AS for double attacks or I'd be relying on torpedos to kill stuff (and the enemy gets them as well), so I decided to bring several CAVs to provide a bit of firepower and opening airstrike, which is probably why it felt so easy.

E2 - Combined Fleet, To The Solomon Islands!
TODO

E3 - Clash! The Second South Pacific Battle!
This map has me officially hating Tsu Class, especially when I have to run a CTF.

Having to bring 2 CVL because of pathing meant that they often wound up being Reppuu mules due to having all their bombers shot down after having run met 2 Tsu by the time they reached the boss, and even Akagi found herself without bombers once. Its bad enough that your Carriers stop shelling at medium damage, its even worse when 2 of your Carriers regardless of their health cannot attack at the boss because they have lost all their bombers. I probably spent more time relevelling bombers in 1-1 than actually running this map because of the losses to the Tsu Class.

I'm not even going to start on the Final Kill boss formation. If I didn't want the Radar for the KanDex, I would not have bothered on completing this map on Normal.

E4 - Into the Strait! Destroy The Enemy Air Field!
TODO

E5 - Hard Fight! Western Deployment Fleet!
For being an Extra Operation, this map was easier that I expected. 2DD+CAV gave a nice easy routing through BEDFIKZ via both resource nodes and some easy battles, so no real problems. Took a few extra battles than it should have at done at the Final Kill, but it as a nice respite, and allowed me to restock some sanity along with resources.

Also spent several days hunting here for Roma, and to a lesser degree Nagato and Mutsu. Found them, so I now have some more BB to use for next event.

E6 - Counterattack Operation! Advance to FS!
I was aiming to clear this on medium, but chickened out upon looking at the enemy composition for medium, and how many Tsu Class there was. It was E3 Medium, only worse. 2 Guaranteed Tsu Class with the potential of a 3rd, that became 3 guaranteed and the potential of a 4th on the Final Kill. Given how badly my bombers got hit during E3 Medium, I expected a repeat in which I would get my CTF to the boss, and wind up with a bunch of carriers that can't attack due to moderate damage or having all their bombers shot down.

12 Runs, 4 Retreats, 8 Boss Encounters, 8 S-rank Boss Kills (2 during day)

E7 - Into the Strait! Destroy The Enemy Air Field!
Congratulations KanColle Summer Event 2015 E7, you're the first game to give me an emotional breakdown due to stupidly insane game difficultly. On easy.

Now go die in a fire. Preferably atomic fire.

On that note, congratulations to all other Admirals out there who managed to survive this BS map, and actually beat it. Including you insane SoBs who did this on medium or hard.

Anyway, back to the map. So many things about this map just ticked me off, and resulted in me having an emotional breakdown.


 * No guaranteed pathing.

Probably the least annoying out of this lot. I could handle the occasional detour to Y or X with my Carrier Task Force.


 * Insane boss stats.

That armour stat is just insane. As it was, only scratch damage could be done since it was greater than the night time damage cap. Not even a Torp CI could get through that. The following didn't really make fighting this boss much better


 * Daily reset on the weakening mechanic.

I have to work 5 days a week, 8 hours a day. So I had to go into stockpile mode until the weekend. I wound up getting up early on Saturday (7am) foregoing my sleep in, and ended up going through to 2am straight the following morning on trying to kill the boss due to this 24 hour weakening mechanic, weekdays I just didn't have the time to sparkle my ships, defeat X and Y and make an attempt at the boss. This contributed a fair bit to my breakdown, but its the last item on this list that pushed me over the edge.


 * Triple Wo Class Kai. On Easy

This is even crueller than the Tsu Class spam. These things have only 2 attacks: 'Miss' and 'Instant Taiha'. So many retreats at the 2 preboss nodes due to these. I had a good fleet, levels 60+ for everyone, equipped with the best equipment I have, lots of sparkles. And someone always gets Taiha'd at the nodes containing these *****es. Opening Airstrike or shelling, when they hit, they hit hard. No scratches, light or moderate damage here.

Still, I managed to get the boss down to the Final Kill - 1HP, but I couldn't just get it. Closest I got was 4HP left on the boss after everything else was dead during one run when my fleet could get past the Wo Class Kai guardians.

Used on Boss attempts

Used for obtaining X/Y kills

Event End
Well, end of the regular event maps at any rate. I gave up on E7, and decided to move onto E8. There wasn't many ships I was after this time around, but I managed to get most of the ones I was aiming for. Didn't Find Zuikaku during the event, so I wasn't able to clear the final Event question - SN11 for the screws (collecting even though no Akashi).

The maps apart from E7 were fine, although they could have done with one less Tsu class on them. E7 was pure hell