Events 17, and 18 - A Busy Rocksmith Session

I have now hit the encore wall. With qualifying scores of 90k, it's just damn hard to get the 120% required for an encore. Three events - not a single encore. Not even a first encore. Forget about double encores and unlocking the Secret Squirrel Club songs. In fact, it looks like I can forget about unlocking anything on events except guitars. I haven't confirmed this, but I'm guessing pedals get unlocked by first encores. Not sure how many I have left to unlock. Since most of my qualifying scores are maxed out at 90k now, any tones will unlock before I even qualify songs for events.

It took me 2 days to qualify the seven songs in Event 16. Monday night I got stuck on two SSC unlock songs and just ran out of time. Tuesday night I ran through Smoke on the Water once, didn't make the 90k qualification score and fell asleep. I was still pretty tired from Monday night.

Last night I qualified Smoke on the Water and played Event 16. It was not very eventful. . . The only unlock was the Vintage Gibson Firebird. I went on to play two more events: 17 and 18.

Event 17
Angela
Boys Don't Cry
Go with the Flow
Ricochet

I had one new song for Event 17 - Ricochet, which I unlocked on bass. I qualified that one at 34,548 (Q=25,500) in one play.

Go with the Flow was prequalified; my high score so far on my restarted journey is 111,565. I already had Boys Don't Cry over 90k from Event 5, but I had to qualify it again for Event 17. So, I'm guessing only songs with scores of over 100,000 show up pre-qualified on set lists.

Took me two attempts to get Angela back up over 90k. I forgot how to play the solo. . . of course. It's always the solos that give me grief. The one on Angela is easy, too. I just spaced it.

As I said, no encores, so I unlocked a 1967 Gibson Flying V and that was it for Event 17.

Event 18 was just 3 songs but two of them were tough to qualify.

Event 18
Slow Hands
Higher Ground
Ricochet

Slow hands was no problem. Qualified in two tries at 76,865 - 96/239 (minimum was 64,500). Unlocked the Wasteland Tone.

Higher Ground is a bitch. It took a lot of work for me to get this one figured out the first time and it had been quite a long time since I last played it. For some reason, though, this one had a qualifying score of 90k already! Took me 8 tries to get it to 91,009 - 97/180.

Ricochet showed up again with a slightly higher qualifying minimum of 63,200. I tried 3 times, took a break, tried 2 more times and topped out at 46,917 - 78/44. I let RS lower my qualifying minimum to 46,535 so I could get on with the event.

I left the crowd at Symphony Hall speechless. When I finished my set, they just sat there in silence. So, I grabbed my new Epiphone Prophecy EM2 Custom EX and walked off the stage. My event minimum was 201,035. I got 221,051.

Technique Challenges
I played the Chord and Double Stop challenges last night during my break from qualifying Ricochet. Both pretty easy. I got gold in Chords (98,868) in two attempts. I got gold in Double Stops in two attempts, but I took a third shot to get my score up to 94,500 (minimum for Gold is just 34k).

Just two more technique challenges left. I enjoy them, and I really like some of the little ditties they use. So, even though I've got pretty much everything up to Gold level, I'll probably come back and play these challenges every now and then just because the riffs sound so cool.

Until last night my technique challenges were working normally - when I wanted to play again, I could press A to skip the "lesson" and go straight back to work. Last night, on the Chord challenge I skipped the overview but RS still took me to through a little "warm-up." I figured I just wasn't paying attention and hit the wrong button or something, but the same thing happened when I got to the Double Stop challenge. It was like there were two separate pre-challenge videos but I could only skip one. Weird.


Fiddling with Event Set Lists
I had never messed with the set list editing feature before, so last night I played with that a little. I tried dropping a song off the set list to see if that lowers the event minimum score. It does. Then I put that song back and tried adding a whole new song to see if that raises the event minimum. It does. Pretty simple and straightforward, although I probably won't use it much until I start playing Master Mode Events.

Adding a song is sort of weird. Another navigation issue that Ubi's developers need to clean up. To add a song, you've got to select one of the songs already on the set list and click on it as though you're going to edit that song. Seems like to me if you're going to Add a whole new song to the set list, the Add Song option should be in the Customize Set List menu - not buried in the individual song edit menus.


Other Navigation Quirks
I've said from the beginning (or close to it) that the menu which pops up after you play a song in rehearsal mode should include Riff Repeater. There should be a way to go directly into Riff Repeater after playing a song all the way through so you can dial in any rough spots without having to meander all the way through the main menu or song list.

The latest patch seems to have added a direct link to Riff Repeater to the Journey menu. This appears to take you directly into RR to work on your weakest phrases, which is cool. But, a menu connection to RR needs to be presented at the end of songs, too. When you finish playing a song in rehearsal mode, you should be able to go directly into Riff Repeater. I don't care if they take me straight to my weak phrase - although that's pretty handy, but at least let me go straight into the tool where I can work on the weak spots in that song.


NEXT: Event 19.
So far, I can tell you that Me & the Bean is on the setlist with a qualifying minimum of 90k. I ran through it twice last night. Got up to 81,936 - 90/121 and unlocked the City Limits Tone.

RSPs are up to 9,330,224. Can't remember if Level 9 is at 10,000,000 or 10,500,000. I know Level 10 unlocks at 15,000,000. I'm a long way from where I was before I lost my game data!