Master

Goals:

1. Craft the Dehydration Base if you have not already
2. Catch a Dwarf mouse in the Laboratory holding a Key to Digby
3. Catch a Zombie mouse in the Laboratory holding a Tattered Mousoleum Map
4. Purchase the Sinister Portal trap
   
5. Catch a Lycan mouse in the Mousoleum holding a Shredded Furoma Map Piece
6. Collect 20 Radioactive Sludge
7. Purchase the Venus Mouse Trap and convert to Mutated Venus Mouse Trap
   

Preparations for a Long Journey

Now having achieved the Master rank, you're ready for your MouseHunt adventure to really get cooking. The game is about to become significantly more unpredictable. To some this is extremely frustrating. Patience is rewarded and, as you'll soon find, rewarded handsomely.

Your first order of business is to ensure you've crafted a Dehydration Base out of 4 Splintered Wood (loot), 1 Dehydration Base blueprints and 213 Salt (Harbour General Store). As a Master, you're now able to craft these 3 ingredients without risking failure. Learn to love this base. You'll use it a lot. You should also purchase as much Swiss cheese as you can. 300 or so is a good number, but if you can afford more you'll use it eventually. Finally, arm your Swiss in your Swiss Army + Dehydration Base trap and head to the laboratory and set up shop. You'll be there for the foreseeable future.

Potion Hunting in the Laboratory

You have three main goals while in the Laboratory. The first two are to collect the Key to Digby and the Tattered Mousoleum Map dropped by the Dwarf mouse and the Zombie mouse respectively. In the process of collecting these you should also be amassing as many Radioactive Blue potions as you possibly can. Before moving on from the Laboratory, you will need about 40-50 RB potions, about 175,000 gold, and 182,000 points.

Don't expect this to be a quick process. In fact, the Laboratory is so infamous that a significant amount of analytics have been done on loot drop rates of the different mice in the Laboratory. (what else is one to do while spending days in the Labs but run analytics?). This link is to an excellent example of such analytics. Here is the Cliff Notes version:

• RB potions are dropped by Granite, Steel, and Bionic mice
• The heavier the mouse, the more likely the mouse will drop more than one RB potion
  
• Steel mice can only drop 1 RB potion, Granite mice 1-2 RB potions, and Bionic mice 1-3 RB potions
• The overall percent chance that each type of mouse will drop a potion upon a capture is as follows: 7.72% for Bionic, 10.56% for Granite, 13.20% for Steel

The message here is to be patient and hang in there. It will soon get much more interesting. To help alleviate some of the monotony of the Laboratory, there are many, many tournaments offered that are geared toward Lab hunters. Check them out to help pass the time.

Preparing for the Mousoleum

Once you have captured a Zombie mouse and a Dwarf mouse and collected their respective travel accessories, have 40-50 RB potions, and the gold and points requirements, you're ready for your hardest MouseHunting challenge yet: the Mousoleum. First, you'll need a new trap. If you travel to the Town of Digby (you won't be doing any hunting here, just an in-and-out job to get the trap you want), you'll notice that there are 3 traps of the Shadow type needed for the Mousoleum.

This is the first time I've mentioned trap typing since this is really the first time it has been of importance. From here on out as you travel into new lands in MouseHunt, the first thing you should be aware of is the dominant type of mouse that inhabits that area. In the case of the Mousoleum, the majority of mice are Shadow type. Therefore, a Shadow type trap will be "very effective" against these mice. In fact, the hunters log will inform you of this fact when you catch one. By "very effective," what the game is REALLY telling you is that the effective power of your trap is doubled against these mice. This is obviously a very good thing in your attempt to land as much of them as you can. Type matching is a very important element to the game, and as you follow this guide you'll find it is a central theme to our choice of trap for a given area.

Alright anyway, back to the 3 trap choices you have in Digby: the Sinister Portal trap, the Ambrosial Portal trap, and the Bottomless Grave trap. The former is unobtainable for most hunters at this point, so the real choice is between the two portals. The Sinister Portal has more power, the Ambrosial Portal has better attraction and a fresher cheese effect. In the Mousoleum, we will be using Radioactive Blue cheese (crafted from the RB potions you collected in the Labs, more on this in a sec). This cheese has a VERY high attraction rate in the Mousoleum on its own, something like 90% or more. Furthermore, when Radioactive Blue cheese goes stale, it will not be added to your "Stale Cheese" pool. It will instead appear as "Radioactive Sludge" in your crafting menu. As you may have noticed in the "Goals" section, we need to collect 20 Radioactive Sludge for later use. Plus, the mice in the Mousoleum are VERY powerful and you need all the power you can get in order to land them. With these three facts in mind, hopefully you have come to the same conclusion we did: that the Sinister Portal is the way to go. For added proof here are the catch rate estimates:

Sinister Portal:
Estimated Overall Attraction Rate: 91.41%
Estimated Overall Catch Rate: 44.77%
Estimated Stale Cheese per 100 Hunts: 4
Points per Hunt: 1173.00
Points per Cheese: 1225.68
Gold per Hunt: 910.98
Gold per Cheese: 951.89

Ambrosial Portal:
Estimated Overall Attraction Rate: 91.91%
Estimated Overall Catch Rate: 44.16%
Estimated Stale Cheese per 100 Hunts: 2
Points per Hunt: 1144.09
Points per Cheese: 1217.99
Gold per Hunt: 888.20
Gold per Cheese: 945.57

Once you've purchased the Sinister Portal for 140,600 gold, you'll want to travel back to the Town of Gnawnia and pick up some cheese. But what kind? The answer is Brie. When it is all said and done, imbuing Brie using your Radioactive Blue Cheese Curd Potions is the most cost effective way of obtaining Radioactive Blue cheese. Be sure when you buy the Brie to leave a little money left over as the imbuing process costs a little gold as well. As you imbue your Brie, you'll notice that each piece of Radioactive Blue is very, very expensive (500 gold to be exact). Don't be too concerned about this. The mice of the Mousoleum, while tough, offer fantastic monetary reward for their capture, so you'll more than make up for this cost as you hunt there.

Hunting in the Mousoleum

Now that you've purchased your trap and made some Radioactive Blue cheese, travel to the Mousoleum and arm them with the Explosive Base (again, no need for the added attraction and cheese effects of the Dehydration Base, you want power, power, and more power). Your main goal here is to capture a Lycan mouse holding a Shredded Furoma Map piece for the next part of your journey. Unless you are very unlucky, this should happen in the course of using up all of the RB potions. Also in the process of using up your potions you should easily collect the 20 Radioactive Sludges and A LOT of gold. Even after collecting everything you need, feel free to use up all of your RB potions, returning to the Town of Gnawnia to pick up some Brie as needed. You'll need the gold soon enough.

One of the most painfully obvious aspects of the Mousoleum is that not only are the mice tough to catch, but they aren't shy about pillaging gold or crippling your courage in the process of stealing your cheese either. In fact, if you're like most people you'll hit several long strings of red boxes. Get through this and trust the law of averages. Even despite the red boxes you'll still be raking in cash like never before.

Finishing Up the Master Rank

Once you've used up all of your RB potions, you have two options for the last bit of hunting before you are promoted to a Grandmaster. The first option is to go back to the Laboratory to hunt for more RB potions and return to the Mousoleum with more Radioactive Blue cheese. This is an absolutely viable choice. However, if you're like most people, you're sick of red boxes and can't bare the thought of another Steel mouse. If this is you, then head to the Great Gnarled Tree. There, you can purchase the Venus Mouse Trap for 299,650 gold and immediately craft it to the Mutated Venus Mouse Trap by smashing the Venus Mouse Trap with the Hunter's Hammer and crafting the Venus Mouse Trap Husk with the 20 Radioactive Sludge. By doing this you've significantly upgraded the power of your Venus Mouse Trap at the expense of attraction rate and cheese effect. But hey, we have a nice Dehydration Base to fix both of these issues.

With your Mutated Venus Mouse Trap and Dehydration Base armed, hunt the last of the Master rank away in the Great Gnarled Tree. Use Swiss if you're looking for gold, use Brie if you're looking for points.