Event 22 - Two Weeks into Journey Part II

Just realized that last night marked exactly two weeks since I restarted my Rocksmith Journey following the big game save data file loss.

That's 22 events in two weeks! Took 4 days to get from Amateur to Level 8 and another 8 days to reach Level 9. Still haven't quite gotten back to where I was prior to the restart. I'm about 40% of the way through Level 9 with 11,891,726 RSP. Should make it back to Level 10 by next week.

Before my restart, I insisted on getting songs up to 70k before I played them in events. I wanted to feel like I could at least sort of play the songs IRL before I played them in RS events. I gave up on that policy after my restart. Now I play events as soon as I make the minimum qualifying score (MQS) on the songs in the set list. Heck, I'm even voluntarily letting RS reduce my MQS on songs that takes more than 5 tries to qualify.

Of course, since this is my second time around, none of the songs are completely new to me and some of them I had worked on quite a bit before the restart. Oddly, though, some of the songs I worked really hard before restarting have been hard to get leveled back up. Not quite sure why.

I really regret not taking this approach the first time around. It's much less stressful. And, I'm still getting songs up to the 70k level - just not necessarily the first time they appear in an event. Plug in Baby is a good example. I really didn't play that song more than a couple of times before the restart (not sure why because I really like the song!). I've now played it in two events and it's up to 70k already. Took 5 tries to qualify it the second time, but that's nothing compared to the number of times I used to have to play songs to get them up to 70k.

Title		Plug In Baby
Artist		Muse
Date	Score	%	Streak	Notes
9/28/2012	42763	88	116	Event 8 Q = 28,400
9/28/2012	53941			Event 8 Performance
10/8/2012	56214	90	124	Event 21  Q = 62,500
10/8/2012	58490	93	124	x
10/8/2012	60640	90	150	x - 1 restart
10/8/2012	60929	91	147	2x restarts
10/8/2012	63672	94	126	Qualified Event 20
10/9/2012	65161	90	152	rehearse for Event
10/9/2012	71516			Event 21 Performance
				Unlock Tone - Phase Zone (in event)

This is my score history for Plug in Baby (I have a page like this for each song)


I'm thinking perhaps the Journey and events is really the better way to learn the songs. You work them up incrementally instead of grinding on them for hours at a time. So far it also seems to prevent getting Master Mode Encores. I've got a few songs mastered but in 22 events I haven't seen a single MM Encore. Yet. But, like I said, it's hard to say how this approach would work if I hadn't already played all the songs before. I'll have to try this approach with new DLC down the road.

I'm also avoiding Riff Repeater as much as possible for now. So far, since the restart, I've only used RR once and that was just to get God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen back up to Master Mode level. At this point I've been able to qualify everything within a reasonable number of tries by just playing through the songs. That may change in the near future when more MQS's reach 90k.

The only thing noteworthy about Event 22 was that I added a song to the set list. That's the first time I've added a whole song to an event. Just wanted to see how that worked. In this case - not too good! I need to work on my Christmas stuff so I added God Rest Ye Merry G'men, which I just re-mastered and played from memory. Not sure what happened. All the other songs went very well and all of my event scores were new, post-restart high scores. But, I got off-track at the beginning of God Rest and I never really recovered. It was pretty bad. (You can see from my Notes that I wasn't happy about it.)

As far as the effect of adding a song on the event, I guess because the song I chose was already mastered, RS added 90k to the event minimum. I SHOULD have easily beat 90k on this song, but I didn't. I'm curious what the increments for qualifying minimum scores are and how that works. There doesn't seem to be an across-the-board set of scores except that 90k is apparently the maximum qualifying requirement.

Event Location	Pacific Garden	Notes
Date Played	10/10/2012	Unlocks:
Song	Score	Guitar	Vintage 1977 Gibson LP Artisan
Mean Bitch - Combo 2	85559	Pedal
Breed - Combo	95827	Tone
Step Out of the Car - Sgl Note	100768	Tone
Chimney - Combo	42452	Tone
Sunshine of Your Love - Combo	91961
God Rest Ye Merry G'men Combo	71203	You Suck!! This song is mastered!
No Encore
Minimum RSP	467,700
Event Score:	487770	Total Score to date:	11,891,726 RSP

Obviously no encore with only 104% of the Event Minimum.