Apprentice

Goals:

1. Obtain the Swiss Army Mouse Trap
2. Obtain the Explosive Base
3. Catch a Granite mouse from the Harbour holding Whisker Woods Clearing Map piece

New Abilities with Apprentice Rank

Congratulations! You've endured the least fun part of MouseHunt and are ready to delve into the good stuff as a newly dubbed Apprentice. With this increase in rank, a few more options are opened up to you:

First, you are now able to craft items out of ingredients/blueprints using the "Crafting" tab. Revel in your new found skill, but you won't be using it right now. We'll come back to this as a Journeyman. One important thing to note, however, is that if you go to the crafting tab, one ingredient box is red. From now on, if you craft an item and and you have an item in this red box, there is a chance your crafting attempt will fail and you will lose your ingredients. But don't worry about this much right now.

As an apprentice you will start to collect the cheese that goes stale in your inventory as "Stale cheese." It may be hard to wrap your head around right now, but each time a cheese goes stale it is NOT a negative. You will use these stale cheeses later. In fact, you will likely get more profit out of the stale cheese later than you would now had you caught. But that's a story for another day.

Your third new found ability is to interact with the MouseHunt community. If you've been active on the Forums, you've likely learned that once you reach Apprentice you can now trade/buy SuperBrie|+ cheese and participate in tournaments. These are important aspects of the game that will become increasingly useful as time goes on, but feel free to engage in them right away as an Apprentice if you wish.

Moving to the Harbour

Now that you have your Mouse Trebuchet and Target Base, you should stockpile as much Marble cheese as you can and head to the Harbour using your Travel tab. Try to buy as much cheese as possible in Gnawnia before you go. Traveling is expensive at this point, so you don't want to be going back and forth for cheese all the time.

A few things to note about the Harbour: First, you will begin to see red boxes on your Hunter's Journal that indicates a mouse has run off with a little gold, points, or cheese when you fail to catch it. DO NOT SWEAT THESE. Even if you're in a bad run of them. Your trap is good enough for the Harbour and luck regulates (See this blog post). You will come out on top. Be patient.

Second, resist the urge to switch to Swiss at this point. Marble has a significantly better profit margin. Proof? I have it:

Mouse Trebuchet + Wooden Base with Target + Mable in Harbour (+LS):
Points per Hunt: 106.38
Points per Cheese: 142.47
Gold per Hunt: 193.35
Gold per Cheese: 258.95

Mouse Trebuchet + Wooden Base with Target + Swiss in Harbout (+LS):
Points per Hunt: 123.80
Points per Cheese: 147.09
Gold per Hunt: 225.02
Gold per Cheese: 267.35

As you can hopefully see, the slight increase in gold per catch with Swiss is not worth the addition cost of buying Swiss. We will be using Swiss soon enough, but for now, stick with Marble.

Finally, we are looking to catch a Granite mouse in the Harbour holding the Whisker Woods Clearing Map piece. Be patient with this. Not all Granite mice will drop the map piece, but you will get it before you become a Journeyman.

A New Trap and Base

Once you've arrived in the Harbour you've found your home for the duration of the Apprentice. Your first goal is to catch, catch, and catch again. You need to get all the scratch you can to buy the Swiss Army Mouse Trap (specifically 70,300 gold and 45,500 points). Don't stress this amount. It'll come. As soon as you have that amount, travel back to Gnawnia and buy your new trap.

Once you have the Swiss Army Trap, it's time to set your sights on the Explosive Base (29,775 gold). With this base you'll sacrifice more stale cheeses for a huge increase in power. This power increase will be useful as a Journeyman. And remember, STALE CHEESE IS NOT BAD.

That is about it for Apprentice. If you find yourself with extra time after completing the objectives, just sit in the Harbour and rack up profits and points. You can never get enough gold and points.