Ever since the heat update, making your 4* gear heat lvl 10 has been pretty challenging. Especially since the area you find them in is so small.
I am speedrunning "In Cold Blood"
aka
Skipping all monsters and breaking all boxes. Only on the first floor though, then I reset the map.
What strategies do you guys use?
Do tier 3 runs.
Either you get Shining, or you get radiants you can craft into shining.
I thought that we were supposed to spend horrendous amounts of money to pay for those fire crystals so that OOO could finally decorate their little office with that tea set that they've had their eye on since the Forge and the new alchemy methods were introduced..
You may try The Rotting Metropolis (mission 8-2). It has short levels, always with several treasure boxes next to the exit elevator.
I haven't tested how fast you can run through them actually because I don't like speedruns, but recently I've redone this mission for an elite difficulty golden icon and I had an impression that levels are really short. Last level has Radiant Fire Crystals so you may want to skip it, but first two have Shining ones.
I just run T3 and do any and every danger room/arena I come across, I normally do only one run a day though so the time it takes to heat up a 4* can stretch out to a week or two depending on how lucky I am with the shining crystal drops. I don't really know if that's "too slow" for your tastes but it gets the job down pretty reasonably. I'd recommend doing all of T3 if you choose to do it that way though (that way you can also build up radiants for when you get your 4* to 5*)
Nascarfan, you've already got a thread on obtaining Shining Fire Crystals. Why not just continue that thread?
I thought we were suppose to pay for fire crystals.