I'm in your FF save, spanking Yuffie.
I'd prefer getting Firearms to 3 before the first Arena fight, and the Ghouls are quick Karma for the first two sets of spawns. I only get 3 Karma from the ghouls, though.
Nothing bad about the idea to hire Kitsune; after all, judicious use of shadowrunners could make the game a lot easier. Only problem is that after you get the Invisibility spell, it's more cost-effective to just go invisible in any fight and either blow the enemies away or run past them.
I tried just sneaking past the guards in the Drake's Tower with Invisibility to trigger the elevators; the only problem is that you lose your invisibility the moment you come out of the Matrix and have to recast it because they'll stunlock you to death while you run for the elevator. For that strategy, you have to cast Invisibility a total of 13 times... and the Karma cost would outweigh the benefits of saving time.
My current strategy is to clear out the 2nd floor, casting Invisibility twice, heading down to get the Dermal Implants and the Boosted Reflexes (doing it in one trip), then using Invisibility once on each of the next few floors, with a casting of Heal on either the 4th or 5th floors depending on how well you do after your invisibility runs out. This means I need my Magic at at least 8... which matches my needs for Drake's Volcano anyway.
I'll be trying out this strategy when my current run (checking Karma and nuyen totals reached at each point in the game) reaches that point; the only save-state I have there has Magic at 9, not 8.
So far, these are the segments I'm planning, well, the part I'm saving at at least.
1) Just after leveling firearms to 3 in Caryard. (12 minutes is the goal, but I'll settle for 13; I timed it earlier at that rate)
2) Arena Gang Member, 2 Heavy Dudes.
3) Arena Two Mages.
4) Arena Samurai, Ferocious Ork, King.
5) Rust Stilettos inner door.
6) Leaves from Kitsune, Dog, Incubus.
7) Rat Shaman.
8 ) Arena Gang Leader, Stake and Bottles, back to 10th Street, asking Kitsune about DB, Dark Blade.
10) Bremerton.
11) Drake's Tower.
12) Volcano.
13) Aneki.
I sell my Beretta to the dwarf when I buy the T-250, to buy 7 Slap Patches total. 5 Slap Patches should be enough to see me through both parts of the Rust Stilettos, barring horrible luck. I'm using 1 on the Samurai fight and 1 on the King fight on average, and I'm not patient enough to redo each fight like a jillion times looking for perfect battles.
Well, maybe I am; we'll see when the time comes to actually RECORD the fights. I may split the Samurai, Ferocious Ork, and King all into separate segments to try and save as many Patches as I can. The main manipulation to accomplish isn't time in those fights; it's just plain staying ALIVE.
I was tempted to merge the Dark Blade and the Bremerton segments together, but decided against it because the ghouls in the basement CAN be dangerous when leveling up. That will be the boring segment, because I'll have to get a fair bit of Karma from that part; probably about 30-35. No fun at all.
According to my calculations, I have to pick up at least 2900 nuyen from random drops in order to to afford the HK227 after Drake's Tower. I'm still trying to decide whether the time I spend on picking up 1k of those nuyen drops would make up for running into Glutman's office to pick up the nuyen there... probably not. Once I have that, I can ignore any more random nuyen drops. I'll be focusing on the ones in Downtown mostly because they're more profitable. Also, I'll be ignoring any random battles I can without being stunlocked by enemy fire.
Nothing bad about the idea to hire Kitsune; after all, judicious use of shadowrunners could make the game a lot easier. Only problem is that after you get the Invisibility spell, it's more cost-effective to just go invisible in any fight and either blow the enemies away or run past them.
I tried just sneaking past the guards in the Drake's Tower with Invisibility to trigger the elevators; the only problem is that you lose your invisibility the moment you come out of the Matrix and have to recast it because they'll stunlock you to death while you run for the elevator. For that strategy, you have to cast Invisibility a total of 13 times... and the Karma cost would outweigh the benefits of saving time.
My current strategy is to clear out the 2nd floor, casting Invisibility twice, heading down to get the Dermal Implants and the Boosted Reflexes (doing it in one trip), then using Invisibility once on each of the next few floors, with a casting of Heal on either the 4th or 5th floors depending on how well you do after your invisibility runs out. This means I need my Magic at at least 8... which matches my needs for Drake's Volcano anyway.
I'll be trying out this strategy when my current run (checking Karma and nuyen totals reached at each point in the game) reaches that point; the only save-state I have there has Magic at 9, not 8.
So far, these are the segments I'm planning, well, the part I'm saving at at least.
1) Just after leveling firearms to 3 in Caryard. (12 minutes is the goal, but I'll settle for 13; I timed it earlier at that rate)
2) Arena Gang Member, 2 Heavy Dudes.
3) Arena Two Mages.
4) Arena Samurai, Ferocious Ork, King.
5) Rust Stilettos inner door.
6) Leaves from Kitsune, Dog, Incubus.
7) Rat Shaman.
8 ) Arena Gang Leader, Stake and Bottles, back to 10th Street, asking Kitsune about DB, Dark Blade.
10) Bremerton.
11) Drake's Tower.
12) Volcano.
13) Aneki.
I sell my Beretta to the dwarf when I buy the T-250, to buy 7 Slap Patches total. 5 Slap Patches should be enough to see me through both parts of the Rust Stilettos, barring horrible luck. I'm using 1 on the Samurai fight and 1 on the King fight on average, and I'm not patient enough to redo each fight like a jillion times looking for perfect battles.
Well, maybe I am; we'll see when the time comes to actually RECORD the fights. I may split the Samurai, Ferocious Ork, and King all into separate segments to try and save as many Patches as I can. The main manipulation to accomplish isn't time in those fights; it's just plain staying ALIVE.
I was tempted to merge the Dark Blade and the Bremerton segments together, but decided against it because the ghouls in the basement CAN be dangerous when leveling up. That will be the boring segment, because I'll have to get a fair bit of Karma from that part; probably about 30-35. No fun at all.
According to my calculations, I have to pick up at least 2900 nuyen from random drops in order to to afford the HK227 after Drake's Tower. I'm still trying to decide whether the time I spend on picking up 1k of those nuyen drops would make up for running into Glutman's office to pick up the nuyen there... probably not. Once I have that, I can ignore any more random nuyen drops. I'll be focusing on the ones in Downtown mostly because they're more profitable. Also, I'll be ignoring any random battles I can without being stunlocked by enemy fire.