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Monday, January 26, 2026

1/26/2026 Grinding

Superstar SMTOWN is a cruel mistress.

In my introductory blog post, I mentioned that gameplay involves a lot of leveling up cards, like in Project Sekai - and now that I have verified the definition of "gacha game" it is occurring to me that this blog may become a log of my gambling addiction. Fuck.

So be it. 

Anyway, my main card-upgrading strategy is to sacrifice every card I receive of a member of Super Junior. I have no Super Junior cards; I sacrifice them all when there is an occasion to level up another card. Collecting SuJu cards is my very last priority.  

An S-grade card of Joy from Red Velvet with one star. At the bottom there are five spaces to add supplementary cards, two of which are filled by a B-grade Kyuhyun card and an A-grade Zhoumi card, respectively. The latter two are members of Super Junior. The Power Up Success Chance is High, and a button at the bottom indicates that one may Try for 1,257 RP, or rhythm points.
Joy's gaping maw receives the sacrifices of Kyuhyun and Zhoumi. (Neither card succeeded.)

My secondary strategy is to sacrifice a) duplicate cards in lower grades (why have a C-tier "Obsession" themed Sehun card if I already have a B-tier one?) or b) duplicate cards in the same grade that I don't feel like using to make cards go up a grade (for example, if I max out two C-tier identical "Married to the Music" themed Minho cards, I can combine them into one B-tier card). 

A C-grade, one-star Kai card from EXO's "Don't Fight the Feeling" lineup. At the bottom, one of the power up spaces is fillled with an identical card.
I could've combined these two Kais, but IDRGAF, so I sacrificed one to the other.

A set of digital "cards" with six spaces saying "RIIZE (EVENT)"; five spaces are taken up. The first row has two B-grade cards and an S-grade card; the second has an empty space and two A-grade cards. All the cards have five stars on them.
Click to see my cool cards.

This week, "Something's in the Water" by RIIZE became playable on Superstar SM. During events like these, there will usually be special "event" cards listed as separate from the regular group cards, and with fancy borders and shit. There are also missions attached to it - missions involving collecting a certain amount of event cards and getting a specific score on the song. I have five out of six cards in various grades, but only some are rewards for doing the missions: after a while they just expect you to buy the rest using diamonds, a currency notoriously difficult to attain.

Five missions reading as such: "Clear song five times" with a reward of an A-grade card; "Clear song one time with three stars" with a reward of a non-theme A-grade card; "Clear song one time (hard mode)" with a reward of a card pack of five; "Clear with score of 1,500,000 or more" with a reward of 5 premium cards; and "Clear with score of 2,000,000 or more" with a reward of 10 premium cards. All missions are completed but the last one.

Phase one of the missions. How am I to survive in these conditions?  


Six missions reading as such: "Obtain 'Something's in the Water' theme card (A-grade and above)" with a reward of one B-grade theme card; "Obtain two theme cards (A-grade and above)" with a reward of a B-grade theme card; "Obtain three theme cards" with a reward of a regular S-grade card; "Obtain four theme cards" with a reward of a regular S-grade card; "Obtain five theme cards" with a reward of a regular R-grade card; and "Obtain six theme cards" with a reward of 10 premium cards. The first three missions are completed.
You can see where they stopped giving me cards.

The higher your card grade and star-level on a card, the more points you gain by hitting notes while that card is on the screen. Therefore, if I don't have high enough grade cards, I will never get 2,000,000 points - and the challenge ends tomorrow!!! 

Fuck, this is embarrassing. If I complete all three phases, all I'll get is a wallpaper. But I also want to win! I want to get it all done!!

Superstar SMTOWN really is an ingenious game model. There are so many groups under SM, and many of them are still releasing music, giving it a large and ever-expanding music library and therefore an ever-expanding library of cards. I guess that's the premise of every rhythm game, though. 

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