XP and Mastery Farming in VV: Ultimatum - The Bear Trick, Turtle Mastery and War Medals

Per Mizurri, the fastest Shikai/Res EXP method is farming the tanky bears in the Arctic Plains with your power output turned down to 25% (hold H). The reason it works: progression EXP scales with how long you fight, not how much damage you deal - so a deliberately weakened, drawn-out fight against a tanky mob is worth more than fast kills. Two to three bear kills reliably trigger a new progression 'message'; meditate when it appears.

The bears carry a bonus incentive: per Mizurri they exclusively drop the Conqueror's Trophy - described as the best weapon-build item in the game, with a very low drop chance and reportedly not found in any chests. Every bear killed for EXP is also a roll on that drop.

Pacing expectations: players typically finish full Shikai/Res around level 50-60, and hard rushing (for example farming toads in the Marsh) can get it done by roughly level 35 (per Mizurri).

The bear trick does not work for Quincy Schrift progression - combat EXP does nothing for it. Schrift progression is task-based via the medallion (per Mizurri). The documented route: spam the easy tasks (for example map clearing, which is just killing 5 hollows), and use invasion missions with PvP disabled to guarantee specific hollow spawns when a task calls for them - a Menos task, for instance, is solved by an invasion that guarantees 2 Menos.

Ability mastery grows from sustained ability usage, and the documented best target is turtles (per JustKenshi): their attack pattern is trivially easy - attack, spin, long idle - and they have enough HP that each fight gives sustained ability usage. Roughly 10 minutes of turtle farming reaches the mastery threshold for the next skill; grouping two turtles and hitting both speeds it up further.

The thresholds themselves differ by source and probably by ability: JustKenshi cites about 35% mastery for the next move, while Zentii needed 45% for his Shikai's second skill - treat 35-45% as the working range rather than a single number. Mastery levels also feed customization: in Zentii's footage, 6 points into damage added bleed on hit, and 4 into status duration gave 1.2x damage to afflicted enemies.

War Medals from Human World event fights convert to Hogyoku progress at a documented rate (per JustKenshi): roughly 30 kills or grips awards one Hogyoku Shard, and about 200 kills yields all 7 shards needed for a full Hogyoku. A completed Hogyoku grants a wish - 7 ability rerolls, or alternatively weapon rerolls, ascension fragments, or hollow trait rerolls; ability and weapon rerolls are considered the best picks.

For raw shard speed, JustKenshi rates the highest-tier Soul Reaper missions from the mission spot as the fastest route - their chests roll on top drops including Hogyoku shards. Boss chest piles are the other steady source; see the Solo Boss Farming guide (/wikis/vv-ultimatum/guides/solo-boss-farming/) for the Calamitas route.

For plain character XP, Radex Tips' documented order holds: story quests give the best XP, then daily quests, world quests and homeland quests. Start meditating at level 25, since meditation gates Shikai, Res and Schrift alike, and save XP boosters for long multi-activity sessions rather than short bursts.