Grandmaster

Goals

1. Obtain a Ticket to the Burroughs Bazaar in the Training Grounds
2. Repair the Shredded Furoma Map Piece in the Bazaar
3. Capture one each of the Master of the Cheese Claw, Master of the Cheese Fang, and Master of the Cheese Belt and combine the Shards into a Master's Seal

First Steps in Furoma

Once you've been promoted to the rank of Grandmaster, it's time to take your Mutated Venus Mouse Trap and head to your home for the near future: Furoma. Your first experience in his new land will be the Training Grounds. There you will find scores of brand new mice to catch, all of which carry hefty point rewards. Brie is generally the cheese of choice in Furoma, making sure to pair it with the Dehydration Base for that extra bit of attraction.

Your goal in the Training Grounds is to obtain the Ticket to the Burroughs Bazaar which is dropped by Archer, Kung Fu, or Assassin mouse. The Archer and Kung Fu mice are not rare by any stretch, and you'll likely make short work of this task. If you get the Ticket quickly, feel free to stay a bit longer to collect some of the new mice if you wish, but you'll find many of them in the Dojo later on and you can always come back.

Gaining Access to the Furoma Dojo

Your next task is to travel to the Bazaar and repair your Shredded Furoma Map Piece so that you can gain access to the Dojo. Under the "Shops" tab in the Bazaar you'll see a link for the Cartographer. He'll charge you 90,000 gold for his efforts and it'll take a day to complete. During this time, you will not be able to travel to Furoma at all. There are two perfectly acceptable options for this day. You can either head to the Laboratory and collect a few RB potions for later use or sit at the Great Gnarled Tree and rack up gold and points. After a day passes, travel back to the Bazaar and pick up your newly minted map piece. You're now ready for the Dojo.

Hunting in the Dojo

The vast majority of your time as a Grandmaster will be spent in the Dojo, so load up on all the Brie you can carry and settle in for the long haul with your Mutated Venus Mouse Trap and Dehydration Base. You'll encounter many of your old friends from the Training Ground here in addition to 3 new (and tough) mice: Student of the Cheese Fang, Student of the Cheese Claw, and Student of the Cheese Belt. Each of the Students drop their respective Tokens 100% of the time. These Tokens will be ingredients for crafting special cheese to be used in the Meditation Room to hunt the Masters. More on this below.

To nip in the bud any theories you may have picked up from other hunters, no one type of Student is any more common than the others and their catch rates are very similar (a little over 50%). Any imbalance you begin to see in your count is a statistical aberration and will rectify over time. That said, the attraction rate for the Students are modest with Brie. Patience is key. As I said, you'll be in the Dojo for the vast majority of Grandmaster. Sit back and relax. The students will come.

Note: The Devs have given hunters a neat little option for improving their attraction rates of students: Maki cheese.

Maki Cheese:
1 Nori [Training Grounds]
3 Curds and Whey
3 Magic Essence (obtained by smashing SuperBrie+).

If you're in the mood to donate some money or complete offers (using the big blue DONATE button on your MouseHunt interface), this is a viable option to improve your performance in the Dojo. According to MouseHunt Analytics, Maki increases base Student attraction rates from approximately 8% with Brie to 13-15% using Maki (it should be noted that we feel this estimate for Maki is a little low). The choice is solely yours as SuperBrie+ is very expensive and Brie does the job, just a little slower.

Eying the Ambush

So by now you may be wondering, what exactly are we shooting for at this point by amassing our stash of tokens? To answer your question, we are working toward a new trap: the Ambush. The Ambush is a much-needed upgrade over the Mutated Venus Mouse Trap in Furoma. It will significantly improve your catch rate in the Dojo, as well as help maximize your chances against the tougher mice that await you. Unfortunately, Grandmasters cannot craft this weapon without risk of failure. This is a significant risk, not only financially, but in-so-far as the amount of effort that must be put in to obtain the Blueprints and Master's Seal required to craft the Ambush. We suggest that most hunters wait until they reach Legendary status before crafting the Ambush, but some more adventurous hunters may choose to take the risk and go for broke. If you have the "stones", by all means, go for it. But you'll need a sizable stash of Tokens anyway to run the gauntlet of the tougher mice, so the wiser move is to sit tight.

Finishing up Grandmaster with the Masters

At any time before you complete Grandmaster, you should take a hiatus from the Dojo and catch one of each of the Master of the Cheese Belt, Master of the Cheese Claw, and Master of the Cheese Fang in the Meditation Room. To attract these powerful mice, you must combine the tokens you obtained from students with special ingredients to craft a unique cheese that is specific to each Master. For your reference, the recipes and locations where you can purchase the ingredients are as follows:

Combat (Master of the Cheese Fang):
1 Paint-brand Paint [Bazaar]
1 Splintered Wood [Training Grounds]
3 Tokens of the Cheese Fang
5 Curds and Whey

Susheese (Master of the Cheese Claw):
1 Burroughs Salmon [Training Grounds]
1 Nori [Training Grounds]
3 Tokens of the Cheese Claw
3 Curds and Whey

Glutter (Master of the Cheese Belt):
1 Cheesy Fluffs [Bazaar]
1 Invisi-glu [Bazaar]
3 Tokens of the Cheese Belt
7 Curds and Whey

Once you've crafted 6-9 of each cheese, move to the Meditation Room and switch the Dehydration Base for the Explosive Base (the special cheese have nearly 100% attraction). Once you've caught one, switch to the next cheese. You only need one of each Shard. Save the rest of your cheese for later.

Finally, you can craft the three Shards together to form the Master's Seal and move back to the Dojo to collect more Tokens while you finish up the Grandmaster rank.

Note: Be sure you have the Ambush Blueprints before reaching Legendary. Many hunters get them from the VERY rare and tough Assassin mouse in the Dojo. If you aren't lucky enough to land an Assassin and you're close to Legendary, take your Brie to the Pinnacle Chamber and hunt Hapless mice there. Be patient. The Blueprints only drop rarely from Hapless mice. (Note: Hapless mice in the Dojo DO NOT drop the Ambush Blueprints)

MouseHunt Birthday II: Week of March 22 Update

Week of March 22 Update

This week's update added 11 brand new mice for experienced hunters to hunt in the Town of Digby. These mice vary drastically in chances of encounter and overall power. The main goal is to capture the Big Bad Burroughs Mouse so as to obtain the final upgrade for the Nanny Bot. All 11 mice are only attracted to Limelight Cheese. To craft this 3 pieces of this new cheese, you'll need to combine 3 Radioactive Sludge, 30 Curds % Whey, and 3 Living Shards (available for purchase in the Digby general store). If you don't have enough Radioactive Sludge to make all the Limelight you want, head to Dracano, arm your stalest set up, and stale some RB cheese for a bit.

If you were lucky enough to capture each of the 3 powerful mice and get all 3 Nanny Bot upgrades, feel free to smash your Nanny Bot and craft the parts with your upgrades. The result will be the Chrome Nannybot. This trap is Shadow-type, stronger than the portals but weaker than the Clockapult of Time. The BBB Mouse will also often drop the Monolith Base. Both the trap and the Base will be more-or-less useless for veteran hunters, but are still neat as collectibles.

So in summary, you'll want your most powerful trap set up armed with Limelight cheese to catch all 11 new mice. From there, your fate is in the hands of Lady Luck.

Happy hunting!

MH Birthday II: Week of March 15 Update

Week of March 15 Update

A new mouse has been released in the Great Gnarled Tree. Dubbed the Curious Chemist Mouse, this mouse is attracted to Gnarled Cheese (crafted from Gnarled Cheese Curd Potions) and SuperBrie. It drops a Wicked Gnarly Cheese Curd Potion.

Use the Wicked Gnarly Cheese Curd Potion to make Wicked Gnarly Cheese. Load it into your strongest Hydro trap and hunt in the Lagoon. Your target: the Silth Mouse. This is an extremely powerful mouse and the Wicked Gnarly Cheese attracts all the strong mouse breeds in the Lagoon, so be ready for a fight. The Silth mouse has been seen dropping Satchels of Gold, Hunting Research, Scrap Metal, and Chrome Nanite Coating, the next update for the Nanny Bot.

Also, hang onto some Wicked Gnarly cheese for later. The devs have hinting at a new area branching off the lagoon coming soon. We will likely need to catch ANOTHER Silth mouse to reach this area.

More information to follow as it comes in. Happy Hunting!

16 Things You Must Know about MouseHunt

This is one of the most famous threads circulating the MouseHunt forums. I think it's priceless and has a place on our site. I'm not sure who is the author, but where ever you are, THANK YOU for this heaping slice of genius. Enjoy!

16 Things you MUST know about MouseHunt

1. The Devs Hate You
All problems that you will ever have when playing MouseHunt can be traced back to this single, universal truth. The devs lay awake at night thinking of ways to make your MH life as miserable and profitless as possible. They have a camera next to your computer, and they love watching you grind your teeth in frustration.

2. Trap Setup Means Nothing
It's time to forget about those naysayers who try to tell you that the best way to catch mice is to use the best trap setup available to you. These people are idiots, and they live in a world of "statistical probability" and "sample sizes" and "patience" and "reality", which quite frankly does not lend itself to the pursuit of catching an awesome mouse every single time you hunt. The only way to catch the best mice on a regular basis is to switch up your trap components and your cheese as often as possible, preferably immediately after a hunt fails. More often than not, when you're in the Mousoleum and haven't caught something in the last 4 minutes, it's best to swap out that BG/exp/RB setup for your dependable old Rocketine/target/marble setup. You'll be glad you did.

3. Perpetually Complain About Everything
Remember, people who frequent the forums want to hear about your struggles. Especially relevant to everyone's strategy are the times when a prize mouse eats a piece of your cheese without setting off your trap; this is such a rare occurrence that you'll want to sprint to the forums immediately after it happens and create posts in every section, moaning about how that $500 Leprechaun wasn't snatched up. Oh, and make sure to post about it in the Tech Support section, as well. Chances are, the only reason you didn't catch the mouse is because there was a glitch in the system. The devs will fix this problem immediately and send you a cashier's check in the mail the very next day.

4. The Differences Between the Ambrosial Portal and Sinister Portal are Absolutely Staggering
Just because two traps cost the same amount and have roughly the same attributes does not necessarily mean that they're more or less equally effective in the game. One of these traps is much, much worse than the other. It's laughable. Everyone knows this. You were about to buy that one, weren't you? You moron. You'll never catch anything with that one. Remember when you chose between the Force Field and the DeathBot? You sure made the wrong decision on that one, didn't you? Everyone else you know bought the other trap and they caught so many mice with it that their computer melted. Well, you'd better be more careful this time. The decision you make will determine the course of your success for years to come. Either you will be rolling in gold and points, or you'll be awash in a sea of red boxes for the rest of eternity. Choose wisely.

5. Bump Your Own Threads All the Time
This is a particularly important one if you spend lots of time on the forums and have a propensity for posting things that have an incredible amount of intrinsic value, especially if nobody seems able to grasp how valuable said posts are. Whether you're posting your newest superkewl idea for a hunting area, a contest that nobody in their right mind would ever have any interest in entering, or just another pathetic attempt to get attention, you must make sure to keep these threads from drifting more than five spaces down the first page of posts.

6. Everyone But You Has the Shredded Furoma Map Piece
Yesterday, at 9:43 PM Greenwich Mean Time, Jane Doe from Naperville, Illinois caught a Lycan who dropped the Shredded Furoma Map Piece. She was the second-to-last MH player to not have the map. Even the players who are still hunting in the Meadow have their map piece. Even people who don't have a Facebook account have their map piece. They give those things out in Happy Meals now, for goodness sake. How do you not have a map piece yet? What the hell is wrong with you?

7. You Absolutely Must Have SuperBrie+, but Shouldn't Have to Make Sacrifices to Get It
One common misconception that many players have is that it's possible to catch mice with cheddar, marble, and swiss; and some players even operate under the assumption that Radioactive Blue can be made by mixing regular brie with an RB potion. These are both myths. No matter where you're hunting, what you're trying to catch, what your setup is, or what you want to craft, you must always, always, ALWAYS use SuperBrie+. Just act as if the other cheeses don't even exist. Don't bother donating, either - acquiring your own stash of SB+ is no problem at all. You should expect to pay about 250 gold per piece. Anything higher than that is completely unreasonable, and anyone who sells SB+ to you at an inflated price is nothing but a greedy capitalist pig who worships at the altars of "supply and demand" and "market value", and doesn't understand the well-accepted doctrines of sharing, common ownership, and state control of the means of production. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

8. Ronza is Coming in 15 Minutes
Save your gold. Don't upgrade to the next trap yet, even if you have three times as much gold as it would cost. You really need to save your gold for when Ronza comes, which is certainly going to be REALLY soon; even though the devs have given no indication whatsoever that she's coming, and nobody knows what she's going to be selling, and nobody can determine whether or not what she may or may not be selling is even remotely better than what you already have. Save your gold, though. Because Ronza's coming.

9. There are Tons of Crazy Secret Special Things that You Can't Access
What's next after Bristle Woods? Incredible amounts of awesome stuff. You have no idea. The Salt Mines, Hanging Gardens, and Infinite Desert are just the beginning. You haven't lived until you've caught a Jaguar Mouse in the Rainforest with your Chainsaw Array/Frictionless Vessel/Gorgonzola setup. So many people are in the loop with these new areas, it's certain to make the rest of you jealous. And the only way you will ever be able to see any of these fantastic new areas, mice, and traps is by whining non-stop about how there are no new areas, mice, and traps.

10. The Last Hour's Hunts Always Provides You with Enough Information to Make an Accurate Judgment
You're in the Lab. It's 8:15, and you haven't had caught anything since 7:15. There is only one course of action: get the hell out of there. The mice are all gone.

11. Never Read Other Posts on the Forums
It's highly unlikely that anyone but you has ever had the question that you are about to ask. Just go ahead and throw that question about the Training Grounds up on the forums without a second thought, even if there are eleven posts on the first page of Mouse Lore and Hunting Strategy with the phrase "TG" or "Training Grounds" in the subject field. There's no way they're about the same thing as what you're thinking of.

12. Beg
The folks who have more points, gold, and SB+ than you are always willing to just cough up their stash to whoever comes along asking for it. This is and has always been the best way to accumulate wealth. Also, there's no faster method for gaining respect among your fellow MH players than by publicly admitting you are too lazy and impatient to make your way through the game without an inordinate amount of assistance. It's been a long day, and you deserve a free ride. Hands out, palms up.

13. Everyone in Mouse Lore & Hunting Strategy Wants to Read Your Post
Some folks will try to tell you that the ML&HS section of the forums is no place to advertise your newly-discounted stash of SB+, but they're just the vocal minority. Since ML&HS has the highest volume of new threads, it's always best to post whatever you have to say in there rather than in sections where your post would be "appropriate". Contests don't go in the "Events and Competitions" section; they go in ML&HS. Complaining endlessly about your last day's worth of catches doesn't go in "Cheese & Whine"; that should go in ML&HS, too. You'd have to scroll slightly down to get to Ideas and Feature Suggestions, so just post those in ML&HS. Your dog threw up on the carpet? ML&HS.

14. Item Descriptions are Completely Arbitrary and Unhelpful
Hey, so some loot you've never seen before just got dropped! Or a new trap was released! Or you just crafted some new cheese! Exciting times! Now, the big question is, what does it do? Where on God's green earth could you possibly discover this information? All items come with their own descriptions loaded directly into the game that you could read, but they're all written in the King's English and therefore are undecipherable to the naked eye. Even then, the text written in said descriptions never describes or hints at what it's used for, and you certainly don't have time to experiment. You'd better head over to the forums and make a new post about it. In ML&HS.

15. All MouseHunt Players Have Psychic Powers and Access to the Source Code
Before new content comes out, make sure to sprint to the forums and ask early and often about what exactly the new content entails. Everyone on the forums knows absolutely everything about every single update before the update is ever released, so asking a question about the new content that nobody could possibly know the answer to UNLESS they were clairvoyant is a great way to find out everything your inquisitive mind yearns to comprehend. Otherwise, the only way to make proper, well-informed conclusions on new aspects of the game would be to wait for the new content to be released, actually play the game, and try out the new aspects yourself. Screw that.

16. The Big Purple "LORE" Button Does Not Actually Exist
Sadly, there is no great , extremely user-friendly storehouse of MouseHunt information that you can access any time, and the devs have no interest in creating one. The "LORE" button is just a placeholder image. There's nothing there. Just ignore it.

MH Birthday II: Week of March 8 Update

*For information regarding the first week update, check out this post*

Terrible Twos mice have awaken a new, extremely powerful mouse in the Pinnacle Chamber of Furoma: the Dojo Sensei mouse. This mouse is attracted only to a new type of cheese called Onyx Marbled Gorgonzola, or OMG cheese. This cheese is made using the onyx stones dropped by the Master of the Dojo mouse, curds and whey, and ionized salt. The recipe for OMG is 60 curds and whey, 6 ionized salt, 1 onyx stone. This recipe will give you 3 OMG cheese. The Dojo Sensei mouse drops blueprints to a new physical type trap: the long-awaited Onyx Mallet trap. This trap is made with 10 Platinum Bars (available at the Training Grounds General Store) and 12 onyx stones. Here are the trap stats for Onyx Mallet.

Onyx Mallet ( 3800 power )
Power Type: Physical
Power Bonus: 12%
Attraction Bonus: n/a
Luck: 6
Cheese Effect: Stale

This trap is a little better than the Digby Drillbot but is a downgrade if you already have the Rhinobot, Chrome Drillbot, or Christmas Cracker traps.

For the event month only, the Dojo Sensei mouse may also drop a Timeout Clock Upgrade which will be used to upgrade the Nannybot. After the event is over, it will be for sale at the Harbor general store for a hefty price, so if you have the means to catch the Mojo, it might be worth it. The full Nannybot upgrade will require three parts. Stayed tuned for more information on this.

So, that's all we have so far- more updates will come as hunters discover more about this new mouse and what it drops!

As more events related to Mousehunt's second birthday unfold, we will update them here. Again, if you have any questions about the event that you want us to answer, please don't hesitate to post a comment on one of the birthday blog posts and we will do everything we can to address it.