Disregard the Last Post - NEW E7 Farming Guide: Dog Walking Is Really (Mostly) Dead

 So the big Rise update has been out for a couple days now, and you can mostly disregard my last blog post. They really did simplify things to the T.

Old School

For those who are viewing this as new players, or those looking back from the future and trying to recall what the whole "dog walking" thing is, here's the basic rundown of how maxing out a hero's level used to work;

You would want a single unit with a powerful and easily repeatable AoE attack to use on auto. The only units to fit the bill were pretty much Vildred, Arbiter Vildred, Lena, Dizzy, and HYufine (technically you could somewhat use Vivian this way too, but it typically will mean at least one extra move, and a specific additional artifact). The remaining slots on your ream were occupied by a Silver Phantasm, a Gold Phantasm, and one 2-star fodder. You then run about whatever map this setup lets you work through, swapping out dogs or fodder as they each max their levels out. Once maxed out, 2-star fodder was limit broken up to 3-star, silver dogs were broken up to 4-star, and those silver dogs were used to limit break your gold dogs into 5-stars, so that you can then limit break your 5-star heroes into 6-stars. 

New School

Here's how the new system works;

You take your best team for whatever map you feel like clearing - doesn't matter what kind of attack they have, how they use their skills, just the best team or team you most want to use on that map you are trying to farm. 

And that's that. 

Yes, you still need to limit break units, still need to feed fodder into one set of units, and then feed those into something else, and then feed that into your 5-stars to make them 6. But now you don't have to worry at all about the merry-go-round of replacing units after they max out their levels, or really keep track of the units on the team much at all. If it can beat the map reliably, and doesn't take very long, then you're all set. 

Now, all that "excess" exp gets converted into penguins - an average of 2 1-star penguins per battle. It takes about 3 of these penguins and the paltry sum of 1800 gold to take a level 1 fodder to level 20. And since penguins are now condensed into ubiquitous 1, 2, and 3 star items, they completely empty out your hero inventory of all that used up space (assuming that was ever an issue for you). Given the rate you will be getting penguins, however, the change to off-inventory storage was a no brainer. Whenever you're ready you can jump into your hero inventory, feed penguins to any and all things in need of leveling up, and then limit break those in batches thanks to the old batch promotion update. 

Gain and Loss

It is a highly simplified system. You can focus exclusively on farming either event currency or catalysts, or even hunts, without stopping to think about your team in terms of placement of dogs or fodder. In fact, given the fact that the passive of the dogs don't' even come into play anymore, you don't have any reason to worry about dogs at all. You don't even need them, as their only utility before now was the enhanced exp they got off their passive, and thereby redistributed to the rest of the team if maxed out. 

In fact, dogs are now such an unimportant aspect of the game I wonder if they won't at some point in the near future make some sort of change to them. The most obvious one would be to decrease the amount of exp they need to level up. In many other games the limit break item itself is locked to a specific item or to duplicates of the unit. I don't foresee that being the case in E7. It would be a step back in terms of their apparent efforts to simplify things. 

That doesn't mean there is no use for them anymore. In terms of maximum efficiency of saving gold, the old dog walking method probably works out better. Via dog walking, you have no gold cost in leveling up, only in limit breaking. I would count this as a minor case. As noted, the cost of using the penguins is minimal. At worst you are spending under 50k gold to level a hero from 50 to 60. Still, for those hyper focused on their gold levels, that's one spot where gold usage will be going up. 

In addition, they do still serve as easily identifiable, and in the case of silver dogs easily obtainable, fodder. And just as previously, silver dogs do save you just a touch by coming already max level 2, so you don't only have no need to spend the penguins on them to get them there, but save the paltry gold cost associated there too. 

Conclusion

The long and short end to this discussion is that if you simply choose the best team you can to farm the latest content you can in terms of both speed and reliability of your team, you're good. Just relatively normal farming in one day and I was able to collet a couple hundred 1-star penguins, a few dozen 2-star, and about 25 3-stars. And of course, every one of those 3-star penguins should be converted into silver transmit stones and gold. Some minor testing is still to be done to see if there are potential gaps in the new system where you might get better results. 

Indeed, if there is a bit of advice to be had, I'd say there is even more emphasis placed on the rate up days for AP shop, as your best bet, similar to Spirit Altar double up days, is to choose those days to heavy farm the AP of your choice so that you can then spend the time until the next rate up leisurely spending the accumulated AP, maybe only going back to AP farming when you've used up your stock of catalysts.