Guide to Pink Bean entry order and Right Bird management

Contrary to the way it's been run in the last year, this new agro system for the statues phase of Pink Bean requires some forethought into the exact order by which you enter. It's simply too risky to have everyone click to enter at whatever point they please, as there are consistent sed mechanics that can be managed with the right entry order, greatly decreasing chaos in a run.

Mechanics at play:

1: Banish
Banish targets the earliest player to enter the map, so the person who initially starts signs is the first banish target. The second banish target will be whoever entered the map next, as after the first banished target re-enters the map, they become entrant #30 to the map, pushing them far to the back of the Banish list and out of sed range.(given enough living targets)

2: Seduce
There are multiple seduce skills on the bird, and they appear to target either 15 or 16-20 players at once. The people targeted for seduce are based on entry order, with the kicker that Banish shifts the entry order for new targets slowly shifting in as the old targets get forced to the back of the line.

3: Dead Players
Players dying within the first 15 entries is an emergency situation as more and more players without Holy Shield coverage will become susceptible to Seduce in the confusion. Dead players cannot be a target for seduce, so the skill will continue its way down the list where coverage may not be as broad. On the other hand, players that are seduced can tank more seduce pings, all without increasing their sed timer. Very perceptive players can also use their knowledge of timers to their advantage in perilous situations, such as using a 1st sed timer's end point to stop a 2nd sed timer after using Will in danger.

With these mechanics in mind, the goal of entry order should be to maximize coverage over the most of the first 15 entries for a total of 2 minutes, as that is generally the amount of time it takes to deal with the Right Bird.

How that should be done is a complicated question that's been the topic of a lot of debate in the Pasta guild discord. I can't claim to know what the best option is, or even claim to have discovered any of this - Mr. Kakine played a huge role in theorycrafting alongside the rest of the members of the #1 sweatiest guild and nexus for optimization. :^)

There are some promising strategies though:

The Rotating Bishop:
Before moving on to Right Bird, have a bishop at the ready in order to Shield the party. In a 3 attacker party run, it will involve kicking one member out of the party in order to make room for the shield. After shielding, kick the old bishop and add a second bishop, and when Holy Shield expires, cast the second shield and leave for a potential third bishop. If there is no 3rd bishop for the party, the options are Time Leap Holy Shield or pray a single Will is enough coverage for the 1st shield to come back.

What parties look like: 3 parties consisting of the first 15 entrants, being given as much shield as can be mustered. There's a risk in including bishops in the first entries as their shield protection is limited to their own production, so the protection for this setup is 15 people for 80-100 seconds and requires 6 bishops to pull off, with those bishops entering last. With a Time Leap, this setup can protect these 15 long enough to reasonably clear Right Bird. Past those first 15 though, there are likely to be deaths among the 16-24 crowd as they will have no coverage, so it's likely best to put people you trust to survive within this range. Compensating for Banish via party switching should also be an organizational effort, or else slowly the levels of protection will decrease.

Double bishop sed tank parties:
Very similar to the previous strategy, only rather than holding bishops off to the end of the entry order, instead you put them near the beginning and keep them shielded, granting wider coverage. In order to pull it off, it will require party reorganization on the beforehand, swapping out attackers for more bishops and holding for the duration of bird.

This will protect 18 people for 80-100 seconds, or for the full duration of bird with a TL, and requires 6 bishops, 2 in each of 3 parties, entering some time within the first 18 signups.

The Kakine Gambit:
A heresy born of the gluttony of man. "Just bring more bishops" "Everyone has a high level bishop" "Can I bring an extra Paladin/shad?"

Take your 9 bishop mules that all of your runners bring, then simply create 3 mule parties consisting of 3 bishops and 3 attackers/sed tanks. Just keep shielding forever, what's bird going to do about it, hit you with rocks? Entry order would probably be 5 NLs, then your army of bishops/tanks, then a few more tanks, followed by the rest. Simply remember entry order for banishment swaps and you're ready to cheese the hardest boss in the game by the power of muling. Why is hammer mule in PB? Because there's an extra slot. The power of 3-4 party runs is that you can simply bring a lot more utility along.

Those have been many of the topics of discussion. Too often in runs you see some rather inefficient shielding, covering everyone for 40 seconds but past that there is a lot of danger for everyone. How to effectively cover more should be a question every PB host asks, and I look forward to hearing more strategies popping up, and an organizational effort focusing on who ought to enter when given the circumstances.