User blog:NemuriNoMori/Soul Gem with a low level account

I'd made a lowbie alt for devious reasons (which said plan was a bust, I was going to use it to grab an invite bonus - and special summoned Giara. Lesson to learn, don't do SS on invite bonus alts!). Anyway, I had it available and well stocked with Hare mags, and since I read about low level strategy for SG tried to experiment with that.

Lowbie Soul Gem strategy:

Stay absolute lowest level you can, only exploring till you find first Hare of Inaba seal stone. Proceed to unseal her and stock up on mags.

Get a max level Kotetsu (summon or start with one, and level up using HoI mags). Or a Wind Weasel etc. would also work, Kotetsu is recommended as the strongest 6 spirit daemon.

Once event starts, just keep repeating following steps:
 * 1) Explore till you find a gem
 * 2) Use Kotetsu to aggressively grab gems off 15 AS players (relying/hoping for friendly bots or exploring newbies) till you complete a set only through battle
 * 3) Go back to step 1

I made a few mistakes at start that I thought wouldn't matter much - but combined with some terrible luck, it spelt doom for my SG efforts u__u.
 * Started the event 6 hrs late, with a nice refreshing sleep.
 * Spent the first few hours using Hare to hunt for mags (I read about Kotetsu strat & decided to try that midway thru first day). So I was using 13 AS instead of 6 AS, more than 100% costlier.
 * Also was a brave fool attacking people with > 15 AS def., just to try my luck ... what this meant is I'd often lose my hard-won gem and have to recoup losses!
 * In the previous event Shrine, I'd taken a few steps in shrine - each step bumped the level, so I got 2-4 levels before realizing I had to stop asap. This gave less hp to explore before L16 (i.e. before min AS requirement)

End Results

Around 55 completions, I think my IGN got perma pinned to the target list at 5 gems; I'd get to 5 gems ... wait 6 mins for completion ... and find out someone else hit me and I lost a gem. I got frustrated when a single completion took me > 2 1/2 hrs (to be fair, ~1 hr was in public transit with crappy net connection).

In the end, I lost interest and cursorily completed 65 sets; finishing outside the top 1500 and also not reaching Western Clock. This being my first SG, I severely underestimated the drop in chances of getting a gem after 50 sets.

Lessons for next SG

I might try to do better with a lowbie alt next SG, just to see if I can. Some notes to myself (and hopefully, to help others on same path)
 * Maxed Kotetsu should never attack DEF > 19
 * Near-maxed Hare should never hit DEF > 29
 * Must aim for 70+% of target in 50% of event time, as completion rate will drop a lot
 * Raise defense early on, to avoid losing extra gems by having weak def.
 * If there are plenty of mags & decent daemons, may be worth raising def to 13k without waiting for big fusion, as it would greatly increase the chance of successful counters vs the better attackers
 * Always fuse any Kaede or Pillow Phantom asap after exploration, else they will gatecrash attack teams and waste AS