so i've been grinding the challenge floor for the molten fury bow and i gotta say, it's not very fun having to grind for a quest item that has a less than 5% chance of spawning when i have go through a bossfight to even have a chance of getting it. if i didn't need it for a quest i wouldn't bother at all
Yeah all the pointless grinding is pretty annoying especially the Nature Raid crafting system, where it gets even worse.
But a tip for the Fire Raid, is that after you beat it 8 times, you're probably better off using just Ryen by himself when you get the option to do the raid by yourself without Henrik's party.
Give Ryen a few health ups / magic apples so that his health is over 4,500. Then give him 2 rings of regeneration, and equip him with the Royal Coat (I think you get that from getting the polygamy achievement) which makes him immune from burn damage. Equip him with a steel sword and ice blade. That way you can just go through the entire raid by yourself without having to worrying about anyone else getting burn effects on them. You on average only take about 400ish damage per enemy attack, and assuming you have Ryen with high agility he gets to attack twice for every time Shika and Funeral attack, which means he heals 900 health every round. So your healing far outpaces their damage per round.
You can also bring Trey since his wedding ring gives him immunity to almost all effects, but to be honest his damage out put is almost nonexistent so it actually takes longer to watch his animations than its worth it.
If you managed to get Icicle which is the precursor to Triton's love from the Ice Raid, I recommend you keep it as Icicle instead of upgrading it Triton's Love. Because Shika and Funeral constantly spam water protection, the stat bonuses you get from Triton's Love is no where close to being worth it due to how much damage you lose from going from ice damage to water damage while fighting Shika and Funeral. Especially by the time you get either weapons, you can probably 1 shot most fire element enemies that are outside of the Fire Raid by just having either water / ice damage.
Once you get the Wet Ring from the Christmas Event Slot machine you can bring either Brad or Elly assuming that you got their ice weapons. For Brad once you do the female adventure quests, you get his Frozen Gauntlets, he will help you do massive amounts of damage (especially during his brawler training you gave him all STR / ATK). Equip him with the Wet Ring, Ring of Regeneration, Frozen Gauntlets, and Anti Heat Armor. If you bring Elly, assuming that you either have the water tank attachment or frozen muzzle from the Ice Raid, you give her the Wet Ring and go with the gunslinger tree, the reload skill, 3 burst shot, and headshot skills absolutely amazing. Use reload to max out your TP, then use headshot for 100% crit chance for 3 turns, then use the the 3 burst shot skill to do insane amount of crit damage.
Alternatively you can bring both Elly and Brad. Give Brad the wet wing, make Elly use the grenadier skill tree path where she has the water bomb skill which removes burning. That way you not constantly just wasting money / time on water bottles / blue ice crystals. You can also bring Chiyo if you go with Elly grenadier skill tree, though make sure Elly has more Agility than Chiyo. That way if one of them gets the burn affects, Elly always goes first and can use her water bomb skill.
Ryen, Brad, Elly, and Chiyo combo is probably the fastest and highest DPS combo you can bring, that way you don't have to watch a lot of pointless enemy attack animations, but requires more input from you.
Though honestly in my opinion bringing just Ryen and Brad is probably the best way to go. Because you can just mindlessly hold down the enter key and auto attack your way through the entire raid, though it takes a bit longer.
Go with the solo Ryen path if you don't have the necessary items to bring the other party members. Though it takes significantly longer, cause you have to watch a lot of pointless enemy attacks. For instance Shika and Funneral have about 30K health (5K health per stage x 3 stages x 2 enemies), which means you have to watch about 19 rounds of their attack animations if you're doing around 1600 damage per attack. You have to watch about 8-12 rounds of attack animations from the first 4 fire elementals things assuming that you 2-3 shot them consistently.
Edit: Just for reference here is how I usually equip my characters for the Fire Raid.
Ryen: Light Steel Helmet, Steel Sword and Ice Blade (assuming you don't have better Raid weapons yet), Thunderfury / Excalibro and Icicle / Tritons Love (if you have them already), Royal Coat, 2 x Rings of Regeneration, Safety Shoes (though you can replace these with something like Oriental shoes for higher agility since you don't have to worry about floor damage during the Fire Raid)
Brad: Light Steel Helmet, Frozen Gauntlets, Anti-Heat Armor (recommended) or Magic Leather Armor+ , Wet Ring and Ring of Regeneration, Safety shoes.
Elly: Light Steel Helmet, your best gun with either the water tank or frozen muzzle attachment (frozen muzzle recommended due to Shika's Water Protection spell), Anti-Heat Armor (recommended) or Magic Leather Armor+ , Wet Ring and Talisman of Preservation (if going with the gunslinger tree, though you will probably need to use Ryen's connection healing skill to keep her alive), 2 x Rings of Regeneration (if going with grenadier route, alternatively you can replace one with Talisman of Preservation), Safety shoes.
Chiyo: Highest Magic ATK hat / cane / body you have, 2 x Rings of Regeneration or replace one with a Ring of Mana (to reduce the number of times you have to the healer after the Raid to replenish her mana assuming that you don't have the Ashira robe), Safety shoes.
