I've had this reflection sitting in my phone for more than a year, though I have never felt the desire to share my experience with atapon event running in Starlight Stage nor did I really know which outlet would be the best to share these thoughts through. I initially did not want to share my experience on this website since it is mainly devoted to my views on the different anime I watch. Talking about a idol-based rhythm tap game didn't fit the mold of this blog. However I am sharing this now more than a year later since the event concluded, simply because I feel like sharing this very unique experience. My main hobbies are anime and playing games, so why not share something a bit different on here outside of the anime sphere. I have given this reflection a bit of a facelift after reading the initial draft I wrote a year ago, just to provide some additional perspective through the lens of the game in 2022 and my overall view on competitive event ranking in this game.

Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls Starlight Stage is an idol rhythm tap game I spend quite a bit of time on during my free time. There are 190 idols in the franchise, but I mainly produce Shin Sato and Frederica Miyamoto, though I do have a soft spot for Kanade Hayami and Natsuki Kimura. Competitive event ranking was something I wanted to try at least once in this game simply because I wanted a top 100 event rank badge in reference to my favourite idol(s) in the franchise. But to be honest, from the outside looking in as someone who has never event ranked competitively before, the idea of event ranking just seemed like an exhausting task. Even doing the bare minimum to get the recipe each event is a bit tiresome, let alone going beyond to the extreme.

Not only did it seem like an exhausting task, but for me it did not even seem possible to do since I work full time, I also go to school, I volunteer a lot in my community, and have a lot of other adult preoccupations I must tend to. I heard about people's experience with event ranking and to go far you really must take time off and devote so much of your energy into the run. I would never take time off from work or school even for a week just to play a game. I know people do take vacation to play game events hardcore but that was not going to be me. I'm not trying to criticize anyone by saying that we all have different tastes, and we can do whatever we want with our time. So basically, event ranking would never work out for me, so I thought. I am not speaking for anyone else, this is just my experience, but now that I've competitively ranked, I can honestly say that overall, it was an exhausting task. I was for sure happy and satisfied with the result but getting to the end result was not in any way shape or form an enjoyable ride.

I've been waiting for a Shin or Frederica atapon or groove to drop to competitively rank. Sure there have been events for them in the past but I was either not into the franchise at the time or the timing never worked well for me. Then finally an 躍るFLAGSHIP atapon event gets announced on March 16, 2021. At the time I thought to myself, if there was ever a time to competitively rank, it is now. Mainly because I was in an off period from school, I work remotely, and the biggest reason was because at the time we were in the height of the pandemic, and I was locked at home all day. So, what else am I going to do? A Shin event soon? 躍るFLAGSHIP event? Locked at home all day? No school? I am not in the office since I am working remotely from home? Way too much free time on my hands? The planets aligned for me. If there was ever a window of opportunity to event rank, it would be now. The fact that I am working from home in the comfort of my room, and do not have to take time off from work, I decided to go for it.

Prior to starting the event I had zero experience with event running, but if you play this game long enough and don't have experience with competitive event running, you'd probably have an idea of what to do if you were to run an event. What I did was play M@GIC forte using a grand auto team while consuming double the stamina to earn tokens, once I was close to 9999 tokens (which was the maximum token limit at the time) I played the event song to deplete the token currency and repeated this cycle for about a week. I made sure that right before the second half of the event began, I had my token count close to 9999, which is ideal since you could consume the tokens at 4x the rate whereas in the first half of the event you could not consume at 4x. The only non-efficient mistake I made was doing all my eigyous and visiting the event page to grab the 300 tokens a few hours before 4x began. Both were mistakes because the bulk of the 9999 stacks of tokens should have come from M@GIC forte when 4x began, meaning I would have had extra real estate for and burning tokens at 4x from the daily 300/eigyous. But it doesn't even matter since people don't use the terms first half or second half of an event anymore since players get 4x token consumption at the start of atapon events now.

Produce style perks was also something I had to change for this event. I knew stamina reduction was a must since you would want to be efficient with jewels as much as you can during the run. The only aspect I wasn't 100% sure on was which other produce style perks was a must, specifically the eigyou bonuses. I had to swallow my pride and reach out to another Starlight Stage player named D*rrick, who I guess is somewhat of an experienced groove ranking player and I asked which eigyou perks to go for. Basically, you want to have the extra eigyou, bonus rewards from eigyou, and eigyou time reduction. In terms of produce style perks just for the event, I had the maxed-out stamina reduction, and all the necessary eigyou perks. Looking back, I should have also invested in increased exp gain just so that leveling up would be slightly faster to get that stamina replenish after you level up. If you don't have enough points to get max out all these specific perks, I would maybe focus on stamina reduction.

Mentally I had to prepare that I would be physically repeating the task of playing with an auto team for the majoirty of the day for one week. I also had to let it sink in that this event was going to be a bloodbath, and unfortunately it did end up being very competitive to get into top 100. Shin, Miho and Karen are very popular in the Cinderella Girls franchise, so without a doubt there would a number of players vying for a top 100 rank. The 躍るFLAGSHIP atapon event was not as vicious as Snow*Love (thank God), but still extremely competitive to crack into top 100. For additional reference this event was slightly more competitive than 不埒なCANVAS, which was a bloodbath since it was the first Sachiko atapon in a long time. My goal was to get 1 million and twenty-six event points, which was at the time not easy at all compared to now. I aimed for this number because I wanted to go big and get 1 million points for my first-time event ranking, and the extra 26 to symbolize Shin's age. During this time in the game if you went for 1 million event points you pretty much were guaranteed to be in the top 50 without a doubt.

Another aspect of the run was setting boundaries for myself. There was no way I was going to get a podium rank, a single digit rank, or even top 20. Players aiming for podium, or a single digit rank get there with extremely little to no sleep, don't shower for a week, take their phones or tablets while using bathroom, and play with two devices. To maintain staying awake, they either consume bottles of energy drinks or resort to anti-sleep medication to combat sleepiness. If you know me, I must get my 8 hours of sleep in every day. So, there was no way I was going to compromise any substantial hours of sleep. I don't drink energy drinks, and the idea of walking into the pharmacy or ordering anti-sleep medication for an idol rhythm tap game? I was not doing that. Again, I'm not judging, people can do what they want with their time, but swimming in energy drinks and consuming anti-sleep meds for elective purposes was not going to be me. I also like to enjoy a relaxing shower, and don't take my phone while I'm doing my business in the bathroom. Even outside of event ranking, I never understood people who use their phones while on the toilet. All that wiping, then the swiping afterwards - it can't be me. At the time I only had and used my iPhone 12 to run this event. The thought of investing in a tablet to maximize event running efficiency was also a big no for me. Again, I'm not judging, people who aim for the top usually use two devices, people can choose how they spend their money, it's none of my business. Those were my boundaries, going for the 1 million event points was difficult so the only thing I compromised was going from 8 hours of sleep to ~6 hours, which was a difficult adjustment.

Basically, once the event started I auto'd the event song or M@GIC forte. For those who are unfamiliar with this game, auto means you play a live without the need to manually play the beat map when using a specific team composition. My phone was left unattended for about 2 minutes per song until I had to start a new live, and I did this while doing what I usually do in a day. I would wake up, play the game until work began, open my work laptop, do work at my job while playing the game with an auto team, cook/eat while playing the game throughout the day, and when work was over continue playing the game until I slept. This cycle repeated itself until the event ended of course. The only time I did not open the game at all was when I went to sleep, was in a meeting at work, when I showered, or when I had to use the bathroom. Other than that, I had my phone glued to me. It was an extremely repetitive and tiring to do the same microtask repeatedly, all day for a week. I kept myself busy while at work of course, and when I finished work, I listened to a lot of podcasts and chatted with friends as usual. Keep in mind this was during the height of the pandemic last year. If you were fortunate to have a job working from home, you would totally get how easy it is to auto play this game and complete your job responsibilities for the day at work. And in lockdown there's not much do to once you were done with work, playing the event song and M@GIC forte although was tiresome, but very doable in a lockdown. It also helped that 躍るFLAGSHIP is an amazing song, I love the full version, so having the song on repeat all day was a plus for me.

In the end I reached my goal of 1 million and 26 event points! I finished the event around 11pm EST, so there was about 7 or 8 hours left of the event, I didn't even bother to play anymore and just went straight to bed then jumped into work the next morning. But I finished at rank 44 for the 躍るFLAGSHIP event and I'm very happy. The funny thing is that a month or two later we get Frederica event via とんでいっちゃいたいの, and I went for it for the same reasons as above (finished rank 36 at 1 million points exactly). I want to point out that it would have been impossible for me to rank if work from home was not a thing for me.

Now that we're in 2022, would I atapon rank again? No. Although we're still in a pandemic, things where I live are slowly going back to some sort of normalcy since the lockdowns are over and I've been out more often, and my priorities have slowly are shifting back to what they were pre-pandemic. The other thing is that now that the 4x multipliers are at the start of the events now, if I wanted to competitive rank, I am not interested because it is way too costly. And for me after doing two competitive runs in a short period of time, I never want to do something like that again. Though I am happy with my results, 99% of the process is way too tiring and not something I want to experience for a third time. Shin just had groove event for CoCo夏夏夏 Holiday, Frederica had an atapon event for ラビューダ♡トライアングル, and I had little to no interest in ranking either of the events. I am very satisfied with the ranks I got from the two runs I did last year!

If anyone is thinking of aiming for top 100 for either a groove or atapon event, I would say go for it at least once, but no more than twice. However, if you want to run as many times as possible, hey, you do you! Now that I've done two runs, from my experience, it's very doable to get into top 100 especially if you work from home or alternatively take a week off from work if you don't have the luxury of remote working. If you are not aiming for podium or single digits and just want double digit ranking you can still sleep the hours you usually sleep and do what you normally do in a day (just with your phone attached to you throughout the day).

Anyways, that is it for this post. Sorry that it was very long, and I know there were parts of this that came off as negative, but it's not to put anyone down or offend anyone, so please don't take it that way! This is also just a reflection on my experiences, not a guide for competative atapon running. Thank you for taking the time to read.

*****

Below are just some statistics and teams I used from my run for reference. 

Statistics: 

• +25 levels (pLv 395 to pLv 420) 
• About 40k jewels spent 
• 2067 M@GIC forte plays 
• 1227 event master+ plays
• 55 event master plays