Box run
Box run refers to a strategy of accessing a multitude of item boxes in a short amount of time. This can be achieved by playing the Episode 2 quest Phantasmal World 3 and progressing through two rooms to gain access to an area with 44 item boxes. Box runs are a quick and easy method to obtain
Meseta. Additionally, it can be efficient for hunting common weapons and certain rare drops.
Quest
Phantasmal World 3 is an Episode 2 quest. To access the area with the item boxes, the player should proceed through the left door in the first room, and then go straight in the following room. A long L-shaped hallway will then lead to a warp to the room with the boxes.
A few monsters must be defeated along the way:
Without the right equipment, it can be challenging or time-consuming to deal with them. Using instant kill methods like Megid for Forces or high-hit Hell weapons like Hell Raygun with
V501 or
V502 is an efficient way to defeat the enemies.
Meseta
Meseta can be acquired quickly by picking up
Frames and
Barriers and selling them to the Pioneer 2 shops. In Ultimate difficulty, this is the fastest way to accumulate Meseta. However, in lower difficulties it's still a good way to acquire Meseta if funds for purchasing replenishing items like
Trifluids are running low.
Common weapons
Item boxes can also drop common weapons. Additionally, all monsters that have to be defeated along the way can drop them too. After destroying all the boxes, entering the side room spawns four more Dolmolms, all of which may drop common weapons. Defeating these enemies also spawns the warp to leave the box room area.
Seabed Upper Levels also offers the second-best selection of common weapon patterns, which increases the chance of obtaining common weapons with high percentage attributes like Hit. One additional strategy is to play the quest on Anguish level 1 to push the common weapon pattern to the best possible in the game. This pattern push only applies to common weapon drops from monsters though. Common weapons from item boxes can only have the original pattern selection.
Every ID has its own common weapon drop table. Viridia,
Skyly,
Purplenum,
Redria and
Whitill are considered the best IDs to hunt for common weapons.
Rare items
Item boxes also have their own rare item drop tables. Redria and
Whitill are considered the best IDs for boxes in Seabed Upper Levels, and both IDs have a 13% chance per box run for
Diska of Braveman.
Redria also offers chances at
Monkey King Bar and
Yunchang from the enemies defeated along the way, as well as having a very good common weapon drop table. For these reasons, Redria is considered the best ID for Box runs.
It is important to remember that item drops from item boxes are not affected by any drop boosts. As an example, this means that playing the quest on Anguish won't have an effect on item box drop rates.