So, are we doing the usual Thursday meet-up of FF?
I've done a bit of single player to try and farm some mods. There's still at least 12 mods or so that I've yet to acquire though. I tried pokepal's method of playing the M12 on Hard to quickly farm them and I was able to acquire a few nice ones but I've still yet to see a split- missile mod appear. When I played M12, I didn't know where the mods were and thought they might come from blasting away at the boss and having them launch towards you for the damage you caused like in M18 where blasting the enemies to protect the drill results in various mods coming to the top of the drill. But this was the incorrect method to acquire them. There's three caves with two mods per cave and that's where you get them. However, my attack on the giant beetle was so effective that I took it down well within time and before 200 meters getting the bonus objective. Yet, I was 1000 points shy of getting three medals. So, after collecting mods for awhile, I later refought the boss and got the third medal.
Thinking about what else I may accomplish in Hard Mode, I decided to try M6 which has you out of you mech to destroy the force field. I already had gotten the three medals in Normal Solo like pokepal did and suggested so I tried in Hard and there seemed to be no difference in difficulty. I also was able to three medal it although I had to play it twice because I was about 1000 points shy again the first time I did. I then decided to try M20 in Normal Solo since pokepal had mentioned getting three medals in that one himself already. Like the M6 mission, M20 is easier to do in solo for accomplishing the bonus objective of not getting harmed while out of the mech. All you have to do is just get through the first fireball maze with no damage which is easy and then you are back in your mech for the rest. In team play, you've got people out of their mechs for a lot more of the level leading to more chances of getting harmed. It's fun to be able to go further in the level out of one's mech but if you want to speed up the process of getting all the medals then solo is probably the way to go.
This means that I only require 1 medal left in Normal Mode which is the third medal of M21. To my knowledge, pokepal still needs that last medal also. I believe this means that Mop it up will be three medals behind as she has not done M6, M13, or M20 solo to acquire those last three medals in each of those missions. We can try and do them in team but I really do recommend M6 and M20 done solo to speed up that process. M13 and it's no damage from gas requirement makes that easier in solo even though hunting the architect globes can be a pain. Likewise, I recommend Mop pass that info on to Terra if she is looking to get more medals for her file as well instead of waiting to play them in an online squad.
I guess the Hard Medals are supposed to be platinum (although they look a lot like silver too) but the color is disappointing since they look a lot like the grey non-medals that show when you've already acquired some of the medals in a mission. Wish they had just keep them gold or done a bright diamond instead.
Perhaps Mop can provide a list of the normal missions she needs three medals in (although I'm pretty sure that list is M6, M13, M20 and M21 at this point) and a list from Terra of the missions she still needs all the medals in. What I'm thinking is that we complete M20 and then start Hard Mode and stay on the same page in Hard Mode. When we come to a mission that Terra needs, we do it in Hard first and then go back and play it in Normal. My hope is that be getting it done right in Hard, it should be easy for us to go back to Normal then and three medal it in one shot there since we'd hopefully have a system and could just redo what we did in Hard to speed things along rather than go through it in Normal again for awhile and then maybe having to do it a few times over again later in Hard.
Thoughts?