The Way of the Masamune Grinding Tip

[PooPooBlast]

Hi guys,

 

If you were like me and was completely put off by the trials which nets you only 27 orbs per run on insanity and lots of R2 spamming using shadow fury, then I found this other method online on PST.org which I truly believe that the guide on PSNP should've mentioned as it saved me so much time. Instead of doing the trials 250+ times, you can do this in less than half the time. The drawback is that you don't get to keep the orbs but if you don't care about that then keep reading.

 

Anyway to summarize I did the following and each run took 2 mins including loading times (probably faster if you have an SSD).

 

• Start a New game with your current character upgrades on the highest difficulty that you are able to clear (the higher the better), choosing to skip the prologue and play all the way up to Industrial Espionage campaign mission. The reason is that the first few missions have a lower reward.
• Once you finish all the objectives for Industrial Espionage and travel back to dragon mountain, quit to the game main menu to save your progress.
• Grab a USB port and back-up your Character save and not Profile Save. We're using a USB port because it's faster to download to system storage than from the cloud. We're also backing our character save so that we can keep downloading it over and over and over right before we turn in the mission for the reward. Don't touch the profile save because your progress towards the orbs is tracked here, independent of the character save.
• Now load the game, turn in the mission, quit to the game main menu of the game to save your progress (important), then quit to the XMB menu and download the character save from your USB storage. Load the game, Rinse and repeat.

 

All in all, you can get 72 orbs per run at Insanity 3 and I imagine upwards of 100+ per run as you go higher making the grind significantly less annoying and it doesnt require your full attention due to not having to kill 34 enemies every time you do trial of the embedding over and over and over mashing the trigger buttons.

 

Hope this helps somebody.

 

Cheers!

[tobaldou]

Thanks Dude,

I'll soon have the trophy, Insanity 5 92 orbs by restarting the game!

Too long without this boost method!
You are my hero

25 hours of play (to quickly boost the Lvl I did trial 3 in loop with the karma boost at the maximum, I took 50 lvl in 2h30. Once lvl 91 I did your boost method!

[PooPooBlast]

4 hours ago, tobaldou said:

Thanks Dude,

I'll soon have the trophy, Insanity 5 92 orbs by restarting the game!

Too long without this boost method!
You are my hero

25 hours of play (to quickly boost the Lvl I did trial 3 in loop with the karma boost at the maximum, I took 50 lvl in 2h30. Once lvl 91 I did your boost method!

No problem! Just spreading awareness here on PSNP. Good luck with the rest of the game and cheers!

Edited December 1, 2020 by PooPooBlast

[maggot1612]

Thanks! 

Tried it with my buddys, still works. Saving a lot of time ?

[Mori]

First of all, thanks for this method, while tedious, its definitely the lesser Evil.

 

I'd like to add for those that might still need money after collecting 10.000 Orbs. 

 

You can mark all Gems you have as junk, upload your save and sell them. I get over 1 Million zenny per run. Can be easily combined with the Orbs grind of course.

[Ferdinand357]

imma ask a little bit of a dumb question, but how do i transfer or configure a usb stick to copy the saves? for some reason i can´t

[PooPooBlast]

10 hours ago, Ferdinand357 said:

imma ask a little bit of a dumb question, but how do i transfer or configure a usb stick to copy the saves? for some reason i can´t

The way I did it was:

 

- Click Application save data management in the settings of the ps4

 

- Click save data in system storage

 

- Copy to USB storage.

[Ferdinand357]

Just now, PooPooBlast said:

The way I did it was:

 

- Click Application save data management in the settings of the ps4

 

- Click save data in system storage

 

- Copy to USB storage.

also, another thing, how do i configure a usb to use it as a storage device? for some reason it doesn´t work for me

[s1peed23]

Still working here in 2022! Thanks!!!!

Edited March 27, 2022 by s1peed23

[dieselmanchild]

Great method! However there’s actually a slightly faster and more efficient set up to make this even smoother. 🙂

 

First off, I disagree with OP about using USB over cloud saves. Idk if it’s just me, but transferring files (even a single file) off USB is very slow and takes at least several seconds, whereas downloading from the cloud is instantaneous for me with a half-decent (not great) internet connection. Also the cloud function is much easier to access and not buried in the console system settings, meaning it doesn’t require as much tedious fiddling with menus. I would encourage ppl to try both methods to find the one that suits them best.

 

The method:

 

• Play the game in NG+ or Pain & Gain difficulty up to the very final story mission, “The Battle of the Gates.” Make sure you have the game set to the highest possible Insanity level you’re comfortable with to maximize orbs.
• Start the mission and kill the final boss. After she dies the mission does not end immediately — instead you are required to walk up to her and press square to “FINISH HER.” DO NOT DO THIS YET.
• Exit to the main menu so the game saves, then close the game and copy both your saves into the PS+ cloud. Now you’ll be following the exact same instructions as the OP states.
• Load up the game and you’ll be standing 5 ft. away from the final boss every time. Run up and “finish her.” You’ll see the save game icon appear on the screen immediately and see your orbs added to your inventory.
• As soon as the save game icon disappears you want to double-tap the PS Button to bring you to the dashboard with Shadow Warrior 2 application highlighted. Press the Options button, then select Upload/Download Saved Data from the menu.
• Select Online Storage > Select and Download (this will ask to close the application, click yes) > Select only the game save file that says “The Battle of the Gates” and leave your profile save alone > Download save > Click Yes to overwrite saved data
• Press circle to back out of the cloud menu, then click Shadow Warrior 2 application and repeat the process

 

Important to note:

- This cycle took me a little over 1 minute (exclusively due to the time it takes to into the game) and netted me almost 3000 orbs per hour on Insanity 1. ***Keep in mind this was on PS4 where load times for this game are atrocious (30-40 seconds) AND I forgot to raise the game to Insanity 4 before I set this up.*** If you raise Insanity level and you have a PS5 that loads into the game instantly, then I would imagine this is easily 3500 or 4000 orbs per hour maybe even more which completely trivializes this grindy achievement.

 

 - Also super important, like OP says, don’t EVER download your Profile Save from the cloud to overwrite the Profile Save saved on your system. Your orb count is stored in that file independently so doing this would overwrite all the progress you made.

 

- Every half hour or so, it would be wise to UPLOAD your Profile Save to the cloud, so you’ve got a save file with an up to date orb collection in case you accidentally overwrite it

Edited November 30, 2023 by dieselmanchild

[Axeman_Phoenix]

I tried doing this on the final boss and not only did it not work, it also bugged the trophy for defeating the last boss, so had to farm the heisenberg 3 side quest ( where you fight kyokgami twins and the lord of war boss with each droping 27 orbs)

Here is hoping i don't have to make a fresh save and play the game ....again.....

[PooPooBlast]

On 1/22/2024 at 8:28 AM, Axeman_Phoenix said:

I tried doing this on the final boss and not only did it not work, it also bugged the trophy for defeating the last boss, so had to farm the heisenberg 3 side quest ( where you fight kyokgami twins and the lord of war boss with each droping 27 orbs)

Here is hoping i don't have to make a fresh save and play the game ....again.....

Yea unfortunately I didn't test Diesel's method so I have no way of verifying if it always works or not (apparently it worked for him). 

 

Sucks to hear but thanks for reporting so others are aware 

[Axeman_Phoenix]

i didnt try your method @PooPooBlast, maybe it works but  there could have had a stealth patch on the game for Diesel´s method, i noticed that when i fought her the second time the orbs spawned before the "finish her" part of the fight and i could be due to my positioning they spawned on top of me along with the rest of the drops (again it could be my unlucky positioning) so i would pick it up, the only thing i would get from "finishing her" was the 40k money and the 2 skill points.

Also what bugged the trophy was probably quiting to main menu during the "finish her" part, since i raised the difficulty to insane 3 to try and farm the orbs maybe it didnt see like i fought her at all(?) , so second time around just for the sake of it, i backed up the save before jumping on the mission and beat her and got the trophy.
 

Edited January 24 by Axeman_Phoenix

[AndyKazama]

The grind begins. This is the only trophy worse than the secrets one ..