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)