Finally getting my bearings with the game and it's million various systems, loot pools, mechanics, etc. They really make it convoluted for no real benefit to the player. Like nodes in Albion and the map. They should just make all activities available in a single menu in the pause screen. If I wanna fight bosses or do raids or whatever, it's silly to have so many places I have to look for the right activity. The currencies and drops could be simplified too without changing rates, just to streamline it and make it less confusing.
Anyways, I've got a pretty good handle on how to farm characters/guns/materials now. RNG aside, it's really not that bad, but again it's really annoying to grind this shit because every important material usually only drops from one activity specifically, instead of being from a pool of activities that all drop the same things.
Also damn, that defense mode is EZ leveling for sure. I got 13 levels on my Gley in a single run, and we only went to node 3 before the other guys voted to quit. I'm really glad that exists since each character has their own character level you have to deal with. It also helps with mastery too. You can put shitty guns on your 2nd/3rd slots and just use a good main and it will level up mastery of all 3 of them. It's monotonous and kinda boring, but it is definitely effective at gaining levels in a short amount of time with no loading screens.
I've been trying to farm Gley's character specific mod chip in one of the raids, and it's been pretty painful. I think it's the only place that drops it though, so what else can I do but grind grind grind. At least there are quite a few people in the same boat so the runs go faster and faster as time goes on.