A Guide to earning ~5Million AVG in Operation Bagel
In this Guide I'll talk a bit how to set up your investigation Squad, how to play your general strategy and how to route on each map, so that you can get an average profit of 3 to 3.5 Million.
To prove that I actually know what I am doing here's a screenshot showing that my highest earning run is 8.5 Million and that I am Top 200 on EU server.
What Agents to use and which Equipment
The first thing to figure out is what Agents to send out into the dangerous Hollow and what equipment to use.
In my opinion, Shungus/Dialyn/Sunna are the clear winner for teams for multiple reasons. First is that Shungus is the second fastest agent after Miyabi which let's you spend less time walking and more time looting.
Second, which is also why Shungus us better than Miyabi even with less speed, is that this team will enable Shungus to be in her Ult basically 100% of the time in every fight, this makes you pretty much invulnerable to all damage, which is important when enemies on High-Risk can kill you very fast and very effortlessly. The team also deals excellent damage in a huge AOE to deal with both single enemies and Groups. On top of that Sunna can heal your team if you do get chipped.
That the Agent Gear should be Z-Rank is self explanitory. If you already spent your Season Currency on getting other ones, the priority for these three in Order is: Shungus > Dialyn >>> Sunna.
For the Blade we pick the Rush option because it 1. Reduces Cacophony Shield and 2. Gives us extra Sword uses, which is really important as I will lay out in the Strategy segment, but for now know, the Sword is very strong and we want to use it as much as possible.
For tactical Equipment we use Scorched Horizon and Primordial Nightmare to deal with annoying fights and also very importantly, to kill Ulidim in roughly 1 minute once we enter his Arena. This is because Ulidim has a LOT of HP and these beauties deal % damage so we don't care about the actual HP. By spamming both Ulidim can be killed quite effortlessly in about 1 minute.
We take Thracian with us to one-shot Ulidim once he appears to hunt us in the overworld while he's not in Nightmare Mode yet. When we use Thracian will be discussed in more detail later.
We also take Golden Bangboo with us to cut down on Looting Time in a few critical spots, which ones exactly these are will also be covered later.
In the inventory we also put some S-Rank Healing and Repair to deal with Corruption. You will get enough A-Rank Healing from drops to cover for Mistakes during Play in combination with Sunna Ultimate.
General Strategy
Our General strategy will be to play runs on High-Risk with 1.5 Million Investment. Higher Investment will achieve higher scores, however the ROI will usually be lower, at least I have personally found 1.5 to be the sweetspot.
If we have Keycards we also take these with us, otherwise we stick to the Equipment as laid out above.
For general strategy that will hold true regardless of Map, there are a few things to take into consideration. First is, that we want to start EVERY fight with sword skill. It deals insane amounts of damage once fully upgraded and not using it loses a lot of time we will need for looting.
Once Ulidim spawns, ignore him and travel to your next spot on your route and fight whatever is there. Ulidim will catch up, and once he does use Thracian to one-shot Ulidim and also do damage to whatever you are fighting, this let's us compress time of what we are doing by a lot.
For targets to fight, generally don't fight any roaming bosses. We only want to fight those that are actually preventing us from looting high value stashes.
For what stashes we want to target, it's Electric Boxes, Safes, and Gear Boxes. We ignore all other containers 100% of the time.
If we are at a Location with 3 or preferably 4 Lootables (which in this case includes Boss Drops) we want to use Golden Bangoo to deal with them. There are specific locations on both maps that have a higher likelyhood of providing these and I'll point them out in the Routing Section.
For Map selection, both are honestly fine and will average roughly the same amount. I do think that Janus is more forgiving for bad play though and is more consistent. Suburbs can low roll a lot especially if you get a bad spawn and so does the exit boss portal, but it can also high roll a lot more due to the RNG.
Shopping in Janus Illusion
Janus Illusion is divided in three Main Areas: Sixth Street, Construction Site and Lumina Central. We can traverse between the three using the metro, which we will also use to do so most of the time. I will cover each of these sperately. For the order in which we clear them, we want to start with Sixth Street or Construction, and always clear Lumina Central last.
Areas will be color coded on what they are, blue areas are big maybes, red are gear chests and gold are our money spots.
Sixth Street is pretty easy to Route, regardless of if you spawn there or if you get there via Metro. We first check the W-Engine store, as it has a pretty good chance of spawning an Electronic Lock Box, then we go into the upper floor of the station, loot the Gear Chest and then take the northern Railing to get to the North section.
There we go to the area circled in Yellow, it will usually have 1 or 2 Electirc Lock Boxes and a Boss Fight. From there we go south and first take a turn left to fight pulchra and loot the box she protects. We than turn around and open the gear chest. We run past our Store and fight the enemies there if there's an electronic Lockbox.
On the courtyard we fight for the Electronic Lockboxes present there. It's also usually a good spot to Rip one of your Golden Bangboos if you got 2 Boxes to spawn. Once we are done we always take the railing towards Construction Site, either because we want to clear the construction site or to take the metro to Lumina Central.
If you get to Sixth Street from Construction site we play it in exactly reverse direction.
The Construction Site varies a lot in it's value compared to the other two regions and also takes pretty long to cover and is also the worse spawn. In what order you do everything depens on if you spawn here or if you go here organically, I will cover the case you spawn here and also briefly mention how to go about it if you travel here from Sixth Street/Metro.
When we spawn in we spring straight ahead into the building and take a left to check the region in the very south marked in blue. This can spawn between 0 to 2 Electric Boxes in my experience, if there none just leave and go back to the elevator and go up.
On the upper floor an electric box can sometimes spawn, which is always guarded by jane regardless of if it spawn or not. We only fight jane if it does spawn and ignore her otherwise and travel to the northern complex. The golden area basically is always a money spot that spawns 1 or 2 electric boxes. Travelling down, the area on the inbetween floor sometimes also spawns 0 to 2 Boxes for us to Loot.
Once we exit the building we find ourselves at the square in front of the metro station. Always loot the gear box on the left. The enemy group on the right will depend on if they spawned in with Electric Lootboxes which again varies from 0 to 2.
Going further East we will encounter boss Fight and up to 3 Electric Boxes (and at least 1), this is one of the prime spots to Rip your Golden Bangboo. If you have the time, which you will usually have, we also grab the Gear Box on the 2nd floor of the contstruction in front of us.
Once we did we travel onwards to Sixth Street, and will leave it via Metro once we completed our route there.
If you arrive in the Construction Area from Sixth Street or Metro, we do so at the Plaza in front of the Station, clear that one first, and then the Area to the East. Go back West up the Building checking all the spots, take the Elevator down, check the spot in the south as marked. From here it's slighlty faster to take the metro still but it doesn't matter too much if you take the regular route.
Lumina Central is where we will Arrive last, usually with ~11 Minutes to spare, and it's also the simplest to clear out.
We start with the Police Station, which is also an excellent spot for our Golden Bangboo as it always has a Safe and 1 to 3 Electric Boxes. We also fight the Boss on Main Street for their Loot and the Box they protect and then head to the gas station which has a safe and 1 or rarely 2 boxes.
The south eastern area sometimes has electric boxes for us to loot so we check it out before we enter the building. Depending on our time situation we fight Ysolde at the exit, to get her loot and also the safe she's close to.
At this point you will usually fight Ulidim, leaving us with 5 or six minutes once we nuked him with our saved up Primordial Nightmares.
We enter via the entrance marked with the green arrow, and take care of Jane and the Loot she is protecting. We then head to the Top Floor and check if a Lockbox spawned, if not we just go to the basement unless we have the time left to just fight whatevere spawned up there for it's loot, though we want to plan in at least 2 minutes for the Boss fight in general.
Lastly we head to the Basement, fight the Exit boss and leave with ~1 Minute to spare.
I'm Suburbing this Illusion
Suburbs can sometimes be rough, by a lot, because it's very inconsistent and RNG can hit you hard with no mercy left to spare. It has four Areas: Highway, Town, Warehouse and Fantasy Beach. 3 of these are rough and Fantasy Beach is where 80% of your value is.
The very unfun thing about Suburbs is that your spawnpoint and boss exit matter a lot, I'll first talk about the general plan for routing depending on spawn and boss exit.
I've ranked these spawns and exits via number. The spawn on Highway is the best because it let's us fullclear the map the easiest, because we don't want to ever use the Elevator to get down to beach due to Silly as it's a very long fight that doesn't give us loot. The other spawns are worse because we will need to Backtrack at some point.
Same logic applies to the Boss exits, they will force is to Backtrack depending on how bad they are.
Due to how random entry and exit are I won't go into detail in what order to do things but instead on where to go for loot. Keep in mind though that with how big the map is you won't have time to check every Blue spot I'll mark, so you should skip those if inconvenient with your travel route and prioritize the money spots.
Out of the bad locations Highway is the best. It has three spots with Potential Lockbox Spawns (that are worth checking), one is right next to one of the potential entries and exits, the other two are at the Gas station, one outside and one inside, so we will always go to the gas station to check both and also because we pass it to get to the Town area.
In the north is a Gear Chest protected in a Boss. It's out of the way but Gear Chests can be pretty useful, so it's up to you on wethere to get it or not.
The gated area connecting Highway to the Elevator of Evil is an excellent loot spot with up to 3 Lockboxes and Boss Loot, though we will always travel there via the Elevator from Fantasy Resort, because farming this place to Backtrack to the gate to open it is not worth the time.
You might notice the lack of yellow circles, this is because Town is rough and doesn't have any guranteed Lockbox Spawns. Check the Blue Spots and grab the Gear Box if you want to. It is rare I spend more than 2 Minutes in this Area, most of which is spent traveling through it. Especially the Area on the East and the Gear Box are prime Skip material to have more time for Fantasy Resort.
Yeah, I was serious when I said that all areas other than Fantasy Resort are rough. Check the big hall for loot (or ignore the boss inside if there's no Electric Box), and then visit Ysolde in the South. I usually fight her even if the Lockboxes that can spawn there didn't, because I already traveled all the way here and can grab the Gear Box that way, as well as her drops). We are now free of the hassle as we go to the exit, fight the boss there and get our 1 or 2 Electric Boxes and travel to Loot Paradise, also known as Fantasy Beach.
The age of bad Loot has passed as we arrive in Fantasy Beach. As we take the rail down from Warehouse we immediatly go south, fight the boss there and use Golden Bangboo to loot the 2 or 3 Electric Boxes and the Boss Loot. We go to the elevator, travel back to Highway, get the loot up there with the help of golden Bangboo most of the time and go back down the elevator to go the north and get the loot there.
As we travel to the aquarium we check left of the stair for a potential electric box. We fight in front of the Aquarium to get the Safe and Gear Box that are guranteed to spawn and also perhaps the Electric Boxes that can spawn there (0 to 2). Inside the Aquarium is a Aria that might protect another Electric Box. Going to the East into the Building, Aria waits inside to give us a Performance again, with a guranteed Electric Lootbox.
We check the safe on the ship deck and make our way out to the Boss.
A small Afterword
I hope this Guide was informational and can help you with earning more moneys! I didn't touch on Keycards, but all of them are somewhere along your Route anyway, so if you have em, us em is what I have to say. It's also possible I missed something, in which case feel free to add it in the Comments.
If you have questions feel free to leave them in the Comments and I'll try to get around to answering them.