Making "Expert" and the Gold Stars doable

[ValkerianCreator]

If you think that there is something wrong with the tracking in Audica and you are shooting on point, but it still doesn't give you +1900 points for each target, or it even misses when you are certain you were aiming and shooting right, guess what, you are correct.

 

With the standard settings you will be able to do everything in easy and normal difficulties, and perhaps, even in advanced, but with the faster and crazier songs in expert mode it becomes obvious that there is something wrong with the tracking, and it is not just because of your "terrible aiming skills." What's worse is that many of the gold stars (which are literal beat saber SS ranks for the expert songs in Audica) are pretty much impossible to pull off if the crappy tracking is making you score less per target hit. And obviously, that also makes the 5-star rankings for the laser priest trophy more difficult, but those are still doable with the tracking problem. The gold stars are what is not doable with the tracking problem. But then, how did 20 people manage to get all the gold stars you may ask. I am going to share that now.

 

Be aware that even with this grand tip that improves the tracking in Audica and that raises the total points you get, the 33 gold stars are still a nightmare, and the gold stars in Highway to Oblivion and G.O.A.T. are the most unfair thing I have seen in VR. We are talking about something that can be compared with finishing Ghost expert+ or with getting SS ranks in other beat saber expert+ songs. For the record, I never bothered with Ghost expert+, but I got a few expert+ SS ranks in beat saber. The GOAT and HtO gold stars were probably a little harder for me than those expert+ SS ranks, to be completely honest.

 

Anyways, here's the necessary tip to make gold stars doable and expert 5-star ranks easier in Audica:

 

At the end of each song, you get statistics with a bar graph for timing and a darts-like circle for aiming. Below the bar graph for timing, it gives you a positive or negative number for "average offset." Let's say that number you got in an expert song that you played wonderfully was a -30. And you can see that the timing bar graph isn't centered, even though you felt that you aimed and shot with the rhythm flawlessly. Now we are going to fix that problem a little. Go to the Calibration settings. Because you got an average offset of -30 for the timing, you are going to change the number in INPUT OFFSET MS by that -30 amount. So, let's say you had 40 in input offset ms, you will change it to 10 then. Another thing you can do is change the GUN PITCH number to raise the guns up a little bit. Hold the controllers (the guns) as you feel the most comfortable, and then, if they look a little downward like that, you can raise them up a little by lowering that gun pitch number WITHOUT sacrificing your most comfortable way of holding the controllers. For the other numbers in the calibration settings DO NOT change anything else. You can change video input ms to 0 if you want, but that will force you to change input offset ms again to a new number. Changing ANY of the other numbers will likely affect your scoring negatively, so, it is not worth it. In reality, the main helper is changing INPUT OFFSET MS, according to that average offset number for timing, at the end of a song. Changing gun pitch is not necessary either, and if you change it wrong that will probably affect your scoring negatively too.

 

If you do the above procedure FOR EACH individual expert song that will help you to maximize the points you get for that song during your best run for it. If you manage to pull off a full combo in that run, it's almost a certainty that you will get gold star ranking. The gold stars are only given if you get >90% of the total possible points for the song in expert. So, unless you are shooting everything incredibly well, a full combo is required. I could not achieve the hardest gold star runs until I got a full combo run in them. And that was even with the tip I explained above to maximize the points you get. In other words, I don't think they are even possible to pull off if you don't tweak that "input offset ms" number in calibration settings. The good news is that doing that tweak will also allow you to get the standard 5-star ranks for the other trophy with a few more misses during the song. So, that makes expert mode 5-stars a little easier for sure.

 

I feel I should leave this tip here because I don't think Audica's completion is even possible without knowing this.

However, if you want to enjoy the experience, go up to expert mode and don't worry about the "gold stars" trophy at all. It is definitely the most hair-pull level difficult thing I saw in VR. I still think it is the equivalent of if Beat Saber had a trophy that asked for at least 8 SS ranks in different expert+ songs. Then, less than 100 people would have the Beat Saber platinum, just like in Audica. Lol, it's that bad. I think I only got it out of stubbornness, and because I left it completely (literally gave up) and came back several times. The Highway to Oblivion gold star/ full combo seriously made me doubt I would ever get it. But I got one lucky run one day and that was the end of it. After this I quitted the idea of wanting to complete ultra hard VR rhythm games ... I said no thanks to Hatsune Miku VR very quickly. It is nice to know I could finish something this difficult, but it really wasn't fun, which is what I truly seek from gaming, at the end of the day.

 

Now that the golden tip for Audica has been revealed, I'm done here.

 

Edit: Just in case it makes any difference, I have the psvr1 camera at the same height as the center of my face when I am standing up AND I always walk to the center of the view when it shows you that "camera view" at the beginning, before starting the game. I'm sure that those help with the tracking too. Audica was also terrible when there was too much light in the room. But maybe it's just Audica, because I have played others like that on psvr1 and the tracking wasn't worse.

Edited September 16, 2023 by ValkerianCreator