It's been a while since we've had blog features beyond yearly Taiko content recaps, but this one might come in handy for several people enjoying the latest Taiko foray!
The official launch of Rhythm Connect, the latest mobile Taiko no Tatsujin game, was met with some general concerns about the adopted AD-based model, something that has been addressed by the developing team several times over the mobile Twitter account as a necessary factor to keep the game operating the way it is, both during the early access and now that the game that is officially out for about a week. Given the many factors in play with the game's unique structure on top of the gargantuan song list it currently bolsters, it might become difficult for the average user to discern what kind of content to prioritize in order to have a swift progression with ingame unlocks/the rankup system and whatnot, ingame AD system withstanding or not. This is where today's feature butts in!
Based on personal gameplay experience from both the prerelease window and the official launch version (as well as an unfortunate guest account wiping on Lokamp's part at this month's start), we'll go over a few pointers to have a general progression idea for the game. As you will see beforehand, this will prove out to be more useful for fresher installs, but even other Rhythm Connect pioneers might find somehing useful out of this read!
Before going through the list of tips for the game, it's important to point out how this Feature is born out for Rhythm Connect newcomers as the major beneficiaries, not necessarily because of the AD system in place per say, but because of its lesser grip on the game within the first days of playing.
As revealed by the RC development team with an in-game notice (English/Chinese official announcement retranslation, mirrored on our Twxtter handle), every person starting out on Rhythm Connect will have a 'Tutorial Period' of 3 days where advertisement playouts are all mandatory and don't affect the ingame navigation. The only advertisement windows in this period of time -also available after the Tutorial Period- will be the following:
- Daily Shop deals for free items- 3 Song Tickets (valid for 1 day), 3 Long-Press Drumroll items and unlimited Performance Assists for 30 Minutes;
- Random Don-Chan Balloon pop-ups, netting different free items according to the number of balloons/Don-Chan color on display;
- Point/EXP Daily Gain Extension, for 10 more plays at regular growth ratio once the allowed daily threshold is surpassed.
After the end of the initial 3 days (according to the server midnight, 4 AM-GMT+9), the account will enter in 'regular mode' operations and will dole out ADs at a more frequent pace and at mandatory junctions:
- After most reloads of the Free Songs menu selection (both with manual/auto song list updates and after clearing/quitting any song, be it a Free or Ticket play);
- As a requirement for retrying a song before finishing it (up to 3 Retries per AD break; only applies if song/point progression at pause is enough to warrant a Silver crown clear).
Because of such a change in most free-to-play users' game flow, it might be useful to take a look at the whole picture and figure out what content/actions are better off to be taken during the initial AD-light period and which ones save for later on, once your own account is good enough down the line. Let's start with what you get after playing a song, regardless of it being a clear/FC/DFC or a fail.
Points - Ingame currency you get after clearing (IA: Silver crown) a song. By playing songs from the Free selection you'll get both Ticket Points for more ingame Song Ticket purchases and a small amount of Variety Points for both event-limited customization parts and some the more expensive ones, like the Petit Charas on display; by playing songs with a Ticket, you'll only get a greater deal of Variety Points. By clearing achievements/crown collection milestones, the amount of points gained may rise drastically (up to 1000 Variety Points from what I've got so far- ndr Lokamp).
Points - Ingame currency you get after clearing (IA: Silver crown) a song. By playing songs from the Free selection you'll get both Ticket Points for more ingame Song Ticket purchases and a small amount of Variety Points for both event-limited customization parts and some the more expensive ones, like the Petit Charas on display; by playing songs with a Ticket, you'll only get a greater deal of Variety Points. By clearing achievements/crown collection milestones, the amount of points gained may rise drastically (up to 1000 Variety Points from what I've got so far- ndr Lokamp).
EXP - Experience points you get after any complete play, be it a clear of any degree or a fail. More points from all currencies, including the First Play/Mission-gated Style Points (=red coins) and Item Points (=dark green coins), can be earned by leveling up, as well as several unique customization elements.
Rank - Score rank which is made of the cumulative sum of all high-scores achieved across all song and has its own ladder of rankup perks. Particularly relevant is the jump to Rank AA, but more on that later.
Title Points - A point subset count that can be increased by clearing songs and upon reaching certain scoring thresholds on each difficulty. It's possible to earn 65 Title Points on each difficulty of a song six different times, three based on clear status (Normal/Full Combo/Donderful Combo) and three based on the final score (aka the gameplay score with all the other score multipliers attached to it). You can see the
Not pictured is also a First-Clear Bonus which is awarded after the first clear of a song at any difficulty. The vast majority of songs will net you Style Points to use for purchasing costumes in the appropriate ingame Shop, but a few choice tracks do give a Taiko avatar customization part instead. It's important to address how all avatar customization parts contribute to the final score calculation, meaning that having unlocked a vast array of Taiko outfits over time may help reaching Title Points scoring thresholds with minimal scoring items on display, or even allow to reach the maximum-required medal with scoring items for already-unlock-robust accounts. By tapping the Info button on the right side of the screen while highlighting a song, you'll get to know which kind of First-Clear bonus is in store for a given song, as well as the Title Points unlock thresholds (and how many of those are already unlocked for each difficulty of that song).
With all of that in mind, here are some tips on how to tackle the mobile Taiko gaming early game, particularly effective for those who have just started their Rhythm Connect experience:
-) Play the songs that hand out Taiko customization parts
As stated before, every single outfit part unlocked by the player will net variable score boosts across all subsequent plays, no matter the method of unlocking. No matter if special events of sorts are running or not, everyone can take a gander at the whole song selection list and scout for those songs who give outfit parts instead of the Style Points, each adding a 0,50% score increase that is bound to pile up as more and more unlocks are achieved. Once again, just tap the Info button on a song when highlighted and you'll know if there's an outfit part in store or not! For the time being, most of them are either Classic, Game Music or Namco Original songs.
Since the English localization of song names in Rhythm Connect might be quite different from our takes being posted on the blog across the years (ia. Mika Sato's 'Wasure na Gusa' became 'Myosotis' for some reason), here's a small sampler of songs that lend an outfit unlock upon first-clearing them:
As noted before, non-Tutorial accounts will eventually gate people out the chance of replaying songs from scratch for a more accurate/perfect performance, unless either video advertisements are watched or 10 in-game Coins are spent per every Retry command selection. This means that the first three days might be the greater time to focus on the more tricky mission requirements, due to the lesser grip of ADs to the pulse of one's account. In the case of "Full Combo with modifiers" achievements, any mode and even the use of items like the Performance Assists is allowed in case you need them, and people just starting out can even use really easy licensed songs to do the trick!
Of course, only the 1-play difficulty missions can be truly feasable in three days, so focus on clearing these missions with all the AD-free retries newcomers can muster:
While there's no rush in claiming the rewards for the permanent mission subset, every time-limited one must be claimed before its expiration, including the daily missions that are reset every day, at 4 AM-GMT+9. Just check the missions in the My Page menu before mission reset/mission expiration happens and you're set!
EDIT (8/11/23): As tipped by TT Discord server user jC, rewards for unclaimed daily/limited missions clears will be added to the personal Gift Box for a limited time instead of getting lost for good, with Daily missions getting a 30-day limit to be claimed before they're gone.
-) Get set on clearing songs on Muzukashii mode
After you're done with the more-retry-intensive missions, you might go after clearing as many songs as possible on Muzukashii mode, largely for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the access to Oni/Extreme mode for all songs is locked and you have to clear Muzukashii mode on each song in order to unlock the hardest difficulty setting for it. Basically, the hardest layer of Taiko games is gated behind Muzukashii completion, so going for it might be beneficial in the long-run for hard content engagement.
The unlock of Ura Oni songs can also be mended by playing Muzukashii songs over time, too! As your Player Rank goes up by scoring a lot across all songs, by reaching Rank AA -the final fixed-score threshold to reach- it will be possible to unlock both Oni and Ura Oni for a song just by clearing its Muzukashii mode, whereas otherwise you'd have to clear the regular Oni as well. This solves not as much of a "skill issue" many may occur but rather a time-issue one as -again- you can't play a song's Oni/Ura Oni right after unlocking them without using up a ticket or waiting for that song to show up in the Free selection, after two separate plays. Just Rank AA and a Muzukashii clear will unlock both, and the unlock is retroactive for all former-Muzu clears of Ura songs as well!
-) Store your scoring items (and don't forget about Retries!)
We've already touched upon how the final scoring outcomes in Rhythm Connect (and thus the related Title Point earnings) are under a number of factors which are gradually increasing upon player progression (in a nutshell: Player Level, Rank, Outfits unlocked and Performance Bonuses with any of the purchased ingame passes), so it might be a wiser idea to save the score-multiplying/drumroll-assisting items once you're in a comfortable-enough range to score the Rainbow point medal on a given song and at a given difficulty, with the aide of more robust score increasers. Remember, even if you achieve a Donderful Combo as a just-starting player, it won't be enough to go beyond the Silver score medal!
Don't forget a few pointers about other items usage, too:
Rank - Score rank which is made of the cumulative sum of all high-scores achieved across all song and has its own ladder of rankup perks. Particularly relevant is the jump to Rank AA, but more on that later.
Title Points - A point subset count that can be increased by clearing songs and upon reaching certain scoring thresholds on each difficulty. It's possible to earn 65 Title Points on each difficulty of a song six different times, three based on clear status (Normal/Full Combo/Donderful Combo) and three based on the final score (aka the gameplay score with all the other score multipliers attached to it). You can see the
Not pictured is also a First-Clear Bonus which is awarded after the first clear of a song at any difficulty. The vast majority of songs will net you Style Points to use for purchasing costumes in the appropriate ingame Shop, but a few choice tracks do give a Taiko avatar customization part instead. It's important to address how all avatar customization parts contribute to the final score calculation, meaning that having unlocked a vast array of Taiko outfits over time may help reaching Title Points scoring thresholds with minimal scoring items on display, or even allow to reach the maximum-required medal with scoring items for already-unlock-robust accounts. By tapping the Info button on the right side of the screen while highlighting a song, you'll get to know which kind of First-Clear bonus is in store for a given song, as well as the Title Points unlock thresholds (and how many of those are already unlocked for each difficulty of that song).
With all of that in mind, here are some tips on how to tackle the mobile Taiko gaming early game, particularly effective for those who have just started their Rhythm Connect experience:
-) Play the songs that hand out Taiko customization parts
As stated before, every single outfit part unlocked by the player will net variable score boosts across all subsequent plays, no matter the method of unlocking. No matter if special events of sorts are running or not, everyone can take a gander at the whole song selection list and scout for those songs who give outfit parts instead of the Style Points, each adding a 0,50% score increase that is bound to pile up as more and more unlocks are achieved. Once again, just tap the Info button on a song when highlighted and you'll know if there's an outfit part in store or not! For the time being, most of them are either Classic, Game Music or Namco Original songs.
Since the English localization of song names in Rhythm Connect might be quite different from our takes being posted on the blog across the years (ia. Mika Sato's 'Wasure na Gusa' became 'Myosotis' for some reason), here's a small sampler of songs that lend an outfit unlock upon first-clearing them:
Kare Kano Kanon- Swan Lake ~still a ducking~
Koi wa Mizuiro- No Way Back
- PaPaPa Love
- Hole in the Wall
- Star Trigon Theme
Seigaitten- D's Adventure Note
- Black Rose Apostle
- Yuujou Pop
- Kaze no Fantasy
- Nyanyanya
- Sengoku Sangen
- Hikari no Kanata e
As noted before, non-Tutorial accounts will eventually gate people out the chance of replaying songs from scratch for a more accurate/perfect performance, unless either video advertisements are watched or 10 in-game Coins are spent per every Retry command selection. This means that the first three days might be the greater time to focus on the more tricky mission requirements, due to the lesser grip of ADs to the pulse of one's account. In the case of "Full Combo with modifiers" achievements, any mode and even the use of items like the Performance Assists is allowed in case you need them, and people just starting out can even use really easy licensed songs to do the trick!
Of course, only the 1-play difficulty missions can be truly feasable in three days, so focus on clearing these missions with all the AD-free retries newcomers can muster:
- Donderful-Combo (all Gold hits) on all 4 difficulties
- Full Combo with a gameplay modifier on any difficulty (x2/x3/x4 Speed, Vanish, Inverse and Haphazard)
EDIT (8/11/23): As tipped by TT Discord server user jC, rewards for unclaimed daily/limited missions clears will be added to the personal Gift Box for a limited time instead of getting lost for good, with Daily missions getting a 30-day limit to be claimed before they're gone.
-) Get set on clearing songs on Muzukashii mode
After you're done with the more-retry-intensive missions, you might go after clearing as many songs as possible on Muzukashii mode, largely for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the access to Oni/Extreme mode for all songs is locked and you have to clear Muzukashii mode on each song in order to unlock the hardest difficulty setting for it. Basically, the hardest layer of Taiko games is gated behind Muzukashii completion, so going for it might be beneficial in the long-run for hard content engagement.
The unlock of Ura Oni songs can also be mended by playing Muzukashii songs over time, too! As your Player Rank goes up by scoring a lot across all songs, by reaching Rank AA -the final fixed-score threshold to reach- it will be possible to unlock both Oni and Ura Oni for a song just by clearing its Muzukashii mode, whereas otherwise you'd have to clear the regular Oni as well. This solves not as much of a "skill issue" many may occur but rather a time-issue one as -again- you can't play a song's Oni/Ura Oni right after unlocking them without using up a ticket or waiting for that song to show up in the Free selection, after two separate plays. Just Rank AA and a Muzukashii clear will unlock both, and the unlock is retroactive for all former-Muzu clears of Ura songs as well!
-) Store your scoring items (and don't forget about Retries!)
We've already touched upon how the final scoring outcomes in Rhythm Connect (and thus the related Title Point earnings) are under a number of factors which are gradually increasing upon player progression (in a nutshell: Player Level, Rank, Outfits unlocked and Performance Bonuses with any of the purchased ingame passes), so it might be a wiser idea to save the score-multiplying/drumroll-assisting items once you're in a comfortable-enough range to score the Rainbow point medal on a given song and at a given difficulty, with the aide of more robust score increasers. Remember, even if you achieve a Donderful Combo as a just-starting player, it won't be enough to go beyond the Silver score medal!
Don't forget a few pointers about other items usage, too:
- Rainbow Mallet items can only be selected if the chosen song at a given difficulty has at least one mallet. Don't worry about using the item on lower difficulties as well, but make sure you're not selecting one of those songs with the unbreakable mallets like Hataraku 2000!
- If you restart a song without quitting while using items, all the employed items will still work on the successive attempts, except for the Rainbow Mallet. Make sure to get to the song's end in one go in order not to waste such a valuable item!
- Every day at server Midnight, everyone gets a free EXP x3 item modifier to use, one which doesn't stack with other day item giveaways of the same kind, for the later days. For a swift progression, remember using the free daily EXP x3 item on a difficult song you can muster!
- Aside from converting 10 misses into Ok hits, the Performance Assist items will also allow you to single-hit Big notes in one play, even if only one of these items is set for a play. Make sure to make the best out of these items in songs where mostly giant notes await (ie. Oodain Oni)!
- Up to 10 Performance Assist items can be used for a single song play, even when the 30-minutes-unlimited Performance Assist boost is active. If you're geared up for some mobile Oni/Ura Oni Full Combos for Title Points, make sure you can handle the rest of the chosen song without slouching!
