but they were soo boooring ;~;
oh i still have my acheron and BTB though, but mainly because there aren't other shadow/pierce swords that i did not sell already, or that have more interesting mechanics. xD

>..> jesus chroma people, if i got bored of the ole' brandishes & sealed swords and sold them, y'all are acting like i cut my own hand off. i just wanted some help, not to explain my motives, but, -sigh-, here goes. [i also edited the op to reflect that i finished the missions and take out the story because it's distracting attention from the point of the thread D: ]

"it's ironic that by selling your useful gear to 'rediscover gameplay', you've hit a wall that prevents you from discovering gameplay at all"

you're mistaking the concept of rediscovering gameplay for most efficient gameplay. :P the latter is what i was tired of and what made me get bored with sk in the first place. i'm very much happy with how i play the game right now, but it's not extremely efficient in relation to how the game is balanced, especially the new missions, this is why i need help from people who don't do less-than-effective metas.

first off you gotta go into this knowing that i don't play to win. i don't play to be the best. i play simply to have fun, even if this means using less effective tactics. brandishes were unfun for me, they were fun at some point but it wore off. back when i was playing actively, i did take things more seriously and seek most efficient methods.
but nowadays, i prefer to do recipe runs, and general clockworks stuff. however, i HAVE to do FSC if i hope to attain radiants before i disappear again. :< the time-to-radiants ratio in CW doesn't compare, except perhaps in arenas. i also kind of have to do the missions.. i'm sort of interested in the story. xD

i'm gonna try and explain this then:
-i played with the most effective tactics before i left, that being voltedge spamming in fsc, blitz, ev, all that fun stuff. oh, and DA. it bored me out because they didn't have anything that could be used in multiple ways, to be very specific. it was pretty much just keep pressing the button and spinning around the enemy. which is cool and all, but it bored me. [not to simplify it, i know it's not as easy-peasy as it sounds; i have great respect for those who can do it right! o: it's a great, efficient, tactic that i have simply have lost my interest in]
-i came back primarily for the hammer, which has the unique mechanics to allow different uses of the simple click to hit. dvs kind of does this too. god i wish there was a 5* winmillion, i would be all over that.
guns and bombs don't interest me as much but given that i haven't used them much i still wished to try them out and see if i enjoy any.
-i can normally handle myself in any level with these two, however this excludes the most recent stuff. why? a lot of things going on at once. take d&n. there's the souls, the turrets, the spikes from the schmoilers. inevitably if you move arroung erratically like i do [not randomly, but not with 100% control either] you're bound to hit a lot of the flying schmucks. unlike the newer levels, in most of the older levels, using the WRH, if you dash away from the monsters you're usually safe unless you dashed into a trap. but with the new levels, wherever you dash there's something waiting. :P
meanwhile, using the old tactics of brandish charges, or gun switching [not hating on them, for the hundreth time, just bored of them], your movement is much more controlled, as you aren't dashing around all the time.
and THAT'S why i need help! ^^ not to mention that i am far from not-messing-up all the time, i'm quite a mediocre player. also it's the novelty of the levels. i'd probably be as phased by fsc if i hadn't played it a million times before. any level that i've already played many times before i can handle with my hammer and dvs [or in case of vana, hammer and unheated GG. tell you what, it takes 20 minutes to solo vana with it, no joke. IT'S A DARN PIERCING GUN OOO GIVE ME SOME SLACK ;_; ]