I'm so sorry that I didn't see this in time anon ;_; I will give you tips and hopefully they will help for next time!!

first of all, I was linked this guide (thank you Nora) which was incredibly helpful. this doc is a general overview of how things work, I'm going to give more direct instructions on what I thought was effective https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1QlKW9Qne04TISkVmaRLC_M_1Hx0OQwdC9gq09Id8j3M/mobilebasic

keep in mind: the guide was written based on the Rutile caulis event, and my tips are written based on the Shino caulis event, so there are some discrepancies from each other in how they work, and there will probably be discrepancies between either of them and how the eventual Murr caulis will work, too. (for example: in the guide, it says you can only explore the tower 3 times per day, but during Shino's caulis, you could explore 6 times, 2 per exploration slot)

tower exploration:
- you get two runs per day for each exploration slot. this is regardless of how much tp or mp you use for that run, so it's best to use the maximum every time! (the exceptions being the first and last days of the events, which are incomplete days, so there aren't 8 hours for those windows, and you should try to do 3 runs within the day to get the daily mission.) be sure to turn the mp boost on!
- the "center" slot as mentioned in the guide is the one at the top that only sends the focus character. if you only have so much tp/time and can't do 6 max tp/mp 4 hour runs, try to prioritize to get longer runs out of the center slot as much as you can
- it doesn't matter which chibis you send for exploration. you have to use different characters but there are no bonuses for using certain characters or for having stronger chibis or anything. follow your heart
- you'll want to do normal training twice and normal battles 3 times a day for the daily event achievements, but if you don't have enough tp/mp to work with and have to pick between daily achievements or longer runs in the exploration tower, prioritize the exploration tower

trial doors:
- there are four doors: a wooden one, a silver one, a gold one, and a special crystal one with limited access. these had to be unlocked in order: you have to go through the wooden door first to get access to the silver door, then you had to go through the silver door to get access to the gold door, then you had to go through the gold door to get access to the crystal door.
- during Shino caulis, there was ONLY a chance of Shino dropping in the gold door. use 300 keys (the minimum) to clear the wooden and silver doors, then focus on the gold door exclusively until the card drops. after the card drops once, it's removed from the rewards pool. the card is NOT in the reward pool for the crystal door. if you look at this screen, as shown in the guide, at the part where it's labeled 'potential drops,' it should show a thumbnail of the card if you're at the right door. (you can also click on the "..." button here to see what other drops you might get at the end of a run.) https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdMpdubFpFBATqXe7B_ywxl-ixzc35XHXG8WoEaDr0p840TM4KWtxq4e5zM-8tIkNt0OvcReLILEEPEMeKtwK2KfsMZXE1pfIs_cLsgxSt8up00SyBNnEz28l873SDhkgsh2_R0swP6-u-0Zky_pAgcxMNr=s800?key=cFBaau79Y9apJZfTZEjJvg
- the crystal door is limited to either two 300 key runs or a single 600 key run per day. it has a higher payout of point rewards for climbing the ladder if you want to get to 2mil for the card in the ladder reward. however, if you don't think you'll make it to the 2mil mark regardless, you should just save your keys for the gold door.
- in the guide, it says that if your party wipes during the trial door fights, you can use mp to revive, but during Shino caulis, you had to spend one mana stone to revive your party. personally I was fine with spending mana stones because the reward ladder was giving me more mana stones than I spent. however, especially if your team is on the weaker side, using more keys per run means fewer opportunities to wipe and have to use mana stones, so go for 1500 key runs (or even 3000 key runs later if you still haven't gotten the card drop) as much as you can.
- like with most event bonuses, you want to run event cards in your party during training and get a chibi with an event bonus percentage and include that chibi in your trial door team. you only need one event bonus chibi, but the bonus can be attached to any chibi from any chara, not just the event chibi

making a strong chibi team for the trial doors that doesn't die as much:
- in the caulis trial doors, a chibi's HP stat is determined by its stat total, while its ATK stat is determined by its score. this Shino chibi's score is 34228 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErdRNPVU0AYcStX?format=jpg&name=large
- a chibi's score is mostly determined by the number of traits it has. I took that Shino chibi cap from this guide on how to get more traits and thus a higher scoring chibi https://twitter.com/izayoi__seeing/status/1348635903690870784
- because HP is still determined by stats, rather than following the above guide exactly, build a team that has a higher ratio of daiseikou cards as usual. if possible, include cards that have BOTH a daiseikou skill and a trait drop skill. Valentine's Faust and north ballad Mithra are cards with both, for example
- list of cards with daiseikou skills https://mahoyaku.fandom.com/wiki/Card_Skill/Training_Success
- list of cards with increased trait drop chance skills https://mahoyaku.fandom.com/wiki/Card_Skill/Traits#All_Stats

navigating trial door tiles:
- I specifically made this section to tell you that when you hit the magical beast's blessing tile, you should pick the blue icon with the picture of a key as much as possible to equip it and and level it up. this effect refunds some of the keys you spent at the end of your run. the icon can be seen here at the bottom right https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdGoi8Uw2FtD0hgaqK4G7dMgnVIS1l5IHlwhEog5Q4H5VM7dVTRgM34oovaDH3dDE55IUrfoTJ-IMGYYlENwhBVQvTj7KT4oeXtE933e0GKVgxeF_CFdPhriPMYCOuYimjW8VpCBtCFA_gqtnAMbHCYNPW3=s800?key=cFBaau79Y9apJZfTZEjJvg
- look ahead and try to plan your route out a little in advance so you don't get stuck in a weird place away from the heal tiles. it's best to mostly focus on the 50% heal tiles and the skill tiles. there's no real hierarchy of which skill tiles are best that I can tell, all of them are good
- I don't actually know if getting chests increases your chances of getting the reward card to drop, but I hit chests as much as I could just in case.

bonding/fureai/rapport:
- BOND WITH YOUR CUTE MONSTER FRIEND LOTS
- during the regular bonding activities, sometimes keys will drop. bond with your cute monster friend lots
- if you bond with them even after your bond is maxed out (maxes out at 100), bonding activities may still drop keys, so keep bonding
- feeding bonds faster, but doesn't drop keys, so after your bond is maxed, there's no need to keep doing it anymore

oh this is hard. I have read a lot of manga in my life

ok in no particular order, not necessarily to say these are definitely my top 5, but 5 that came to mind that I really like

-MADK
eroguro body horror demon hell politics bl. this is the peak of romance for me. comfort series. every single chapter it manages to punch me in the face with something I wasn't prepared for

-Bokura no Hentai
coming of age story about two crossdressers and a trans girl. very heavy to start but it climbs out of it. the author actually noted that she hated her own characters at the start but grew to love them, and you can really like, viscerally feel that progression. it's really fascinating and moving to experience both the characters and the story itself growing and evolving. deeply evocative and affecting manga for me

-Houseki no Kuni
you have all probably heard about this series already or at least seen au fanart of people as rocks. this is also a heavy miserable read. forces the reader to unpack everything they want to happen. I actually read and enjoy a lot of light-hearted mundane series too but you really wouldn't know it from reading this list

-Chainsaw Man
I almost didn't put this on the list because I haven't started reading part 2 because I want to read part 2 all in one shot after it's done so I don't actually engage with csm fandom currently because I want to avoid spoilers. but I can't not put it on this list. it fucked me up so bad I had to stop in the middle and take a break and go cry in the park over my own dad's death for like half an hour. Fujimoto-sensei handles grief manifesting as regret in a way that gets to me like no one else can.

-Blue Lock
I fucking love sports manga

I tend to talk abt more real world issues off twitter in less public spaces cuz I don't want to spread misinformation by mistake. also I just don't want my twitter to be a stressful place. I have to put a lot more thought and research and effort to accomplish serious widescale reform while otoh I can create joy for a small number of people even while being a complete idiot by just shitting out of my mouth about wizards sometimes

that said I could probably stand to bring it up sometimes anyway you're right. maybe I will just start tweeting John Oliver videos at random. I appreciate the talent of jangling keys to keep ppl's attention through difficult topics

sharing some of the notes I have written to myself:

"If Figaro's absolute value as a central is "protection," Murr's is "truth." Compared to canon Murr, he has a stronger sense of responsibility over the damage caused by the knowledge he shares, but at his core, his ideal wish is for everyone to understand everything about everything. He's experienced plenty of reasons not to trust what people will do with information, but it goes against his heart to restrict information from anyone. Who can determine who does or doesn't deserve to know the truth? If central Murr could have his way, even insects would be taught all the secrets of this world! Meanwhile, Figaro loves to restrict information, so even though he and Figaro have spent centuries acting as something of a partnership, their methods still completely clash. But since Murr doesn't want to restrict information, yet understands its value in reducing harm, maybe he can breathe a little easier by leaving it up to Figaro. That might be how they've somehow stuck to each other for centuries."

Murr has no hatred for anyone. even if someone goes against the things he loves and values, Murr will still find them fascinating, and will probably just feel like, well, I should have understood them well enough to counteract this (central...). he is still a beloved and beloathed eccentric genius whose research has caused upheaval after upheaval in the balance of the world. he's penned in on either side by Figaro, who loves humans above wizards, and Shylock, who loves wizards above humans, and he loves and wants to work with both of them, while both of them admire his indiscriminate 'justice' that favors everyone but also both butt heads with it in their own biases. Shylock loved his sense of truth, but felt betrayed when Murr created magic technology, which creates benefit for humanity at the cost of the magic world.

while Figaro generally supports Murr's endeavors, Murr doesn't always support Figaro's lol. he usually will just go do something else rather than outright go against him, but there are probably times when he's cooperated with Shylock-the twins-Oz and gone against Figaro too (ex. Figaro was prob involved in the wizard slave trade for a time and None Of Them Liked That). but Murr never holds grudges and he's too useful to Figaro so they just come back together again as soon as one of them has a new project they want the other on board for

Murr's probably founded a lot of schools and orphanages and welfare programs over the years to make education more accessible

• born in central a long time ago. sought out the twins in the west to learn from them for a time, but went back to central right away after he felt he'd gotten enough out of it. has otherwise always lived in central all his life. in contrast to canon Figaro, has a base of inflexibility that he constantly questions (if I had been willing to compromise a little more here or there, would I have been able to accomplish more?) but can't let go of
• instead of his village being wiped out by a natural disaster, they were wiped out by a vengeful wizard
• believes in the duty of the powerful (wizards) to protect the weak (humans). accumulated power over the centuries to become able to defeat/control/eliminate wizards who pose threads to humanity
• but he still prefers negotiations or other means when possible
• works with Murr often. has frequently funded/sponsored his inventions and helped with production and distribution since they improve human quality of life
• was previously prob in the top 3 for most magically powerful wizard in the world but halved his magic power in order to deflect a curse on Murr from Shylock

IF I WERE A MILLION TIMES MORE POWERFUL I WOULD WRITE FULL CAST AUS. LOVELESS FULL CAST AU. COUNTRY SWAP FULL CAST AU. ANOTHER COUNTRY SWAP FULL CAST AU BECAUSE I HAD MORE IDEAS I COULDN'T DO IN THE FIRST ONE. unfortunately I have learned I'm not even strong enough to juggle 4 character arcs at once in a fic, let alone 22

what pairing... I mean there's a lot... to be honest when I was mumbling to myself about Loveless au thinking how Riquet's name was probably removed by the cult and then meeting Mitile would probably be agonizing for them I was actually pretty taken with that... I want to see this kind of rikemichi... there's a lot of dynamics I like thinking about in my country swap au too, but a lot of them Idk if I would necessarily say I'd intend to write them as ships ?? like Rustica+Shino, or Rustica+the Flores brothers, or Owen+Riquet. actually when I list them out like this most of the dynamics I'm really excited for in the country swap au are largely antagonistic LMAO. the Shylock/Murr/Figaro classic can go in that bucket too (and also maybe kiss). country swap Shy/Nero aren't antagonistic tho, they could kiss and be nice about it

I technically started writing one but I lost the plot of what I wanted to do with it. setting that aside and just thinking of revgumi->vampire setting though (since the wip is doing other stuff too), the natural setup is Figaro sires Faust and Leno is livestock, right? I typed that and then immediately after thinking about it decided it actually makes more sense if Faust was turned by some other means and Figaro takes him in to teach him about vampire life after the fact... I don't think Figaro would take the initiative to turn him himself... I think if Faust was originally a human, then turns into a vampire, the shift in his relationship with Alec is interesting... it's a subtle difference, but the turning point of Faust becoming something that feels far away from Alec's reach is much more stark like this, right? I'm sure Alec would still try to support and accept and understand his friend and believe he hadn't changed, but over time, it becomes harder and harder to become unsure and wonder if his nature hasn't really changed...