How to Prepare for the 2nd Inning in Diamond Dynasty

Boss Up

The only thing explicitly mentioned within Diamond Dynasty as being "gone" from the 1st Inning when the 2nd Inning replaces it is the 1st Inning Boss Choice Pack, which offers players an option of 90 OVR World Baseball Classic Series versions of Munetaka Murakami and Ronald Acuna Jr. and is obtainable by reaching 500,000 Inning XP and the end of the set rewards in the 1st Inning XP reward path.

YOU SHOULD GET THIS PACK. I cannot emphasize this enough.

Not only are Murakami and Acuna some of the best players in the game right now — Murakami especially, with his superb blend of the Contact attributes required to hit the ball and the Power to turn those balls in play into home runs and doubles rather than loud outs — they are cards that will be genuinely scarce going forward, as the Inning Bosses have always been in the long periods after the expiration of their available but before their availability at year's end. And every DD player got one of these pack with a choice between the two, which is a supply of fewer of these Bosses overall than has been available in years past. (Yes, players have earned two Boss-level players from the XP reward path, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto joining the other two as a 90 OVR WBC Series card, and Yamamoto, too, will be scarce going forward — but his supply should be twice that of the actual Bosses.)

That is a recipe for inflated prices, and the Buy Now and Sell Now figures for both have been steadily rising for about a week, with both creeping toward 40,000+ Stubs after being available for under 30,000. If you have already bought one or more copies of Acuna/Murakami, now is not a terrible time to make a profit on them.

But if you want either of them — the best versions of popular players that Diamond Dynasty will see for weeks at a bare minimum, good top-of-meta cards for in-game play, and cards that go into a collection rewarding a boost of XP for the 2nd Inning reward path — then it is incumbent on you to make it to the end of the XP reward path by any means possible to at least get your one of them for free.

Finish the Mission

That sprint to the end of the XP reward path might be challenging if you haven't been playing Diamond Dynasty every day and dabbling in more than a couple of its modes. But your intrepid author has over 600,000 1st Inning XP without having even touched Ranked or Battle Royale, and I've fully completed fewer than half of the assorted programs in game, and gleaned in the Inning XP from far fewer than half of the Team Affinity programs. It is possible to secure a huge haul of Inning XP by playing smarter, not harder, in this brief period before the changeover to the 2nd Inning that will happen at or very near 3 p.m. Eastern/noon Pacific on Friday, April 10th.

Here are a few excellent Missions for those purposes:

• The Drop 1, Drop 2, and Drop 3 Missions categories within the 1st Inning XP Path Tasks submenu accessible via the XP reward path screen have 21,000 XP each spread across all of the modes of Mini Seasons, Diamond Quest, Ranked, Events, and Conquest, with one per Drop for Parallel XP and a standalone task granting 2,500 Inning XP for 10 extra-base hits anywhere in Diamond Dynasty. If you've been playing even casually in DD, you have probably completed at least some of these tasks without even trying — but if you've been playing casually, you might not have tallied the 15,000 XP for racking up 10 hits, five homers, and 10 strikeouts in Events, which is fairly easy to do, or gotten 10 strikeouts in Conquest (3,500 XP) or 10 runs in Diamond Quest's Mini Boss Showdowns and Stadium Challenges. These are chunks that might just make 500K an easier bar to reach.
• The Egg Hunt Missions in the same submenu reward 1,000 XP each for 10 doubles and three stolen bases in multiplayer games, which pairs beautifully with diving into Events or what have you.
• Speaking of: The Swinging Into Spring Event program's first reward for 10 Stars is 10,000 Inning XP. 15 total bases and 10 strikeouts each get you 10 Stars. Even bad players can get those stats easily over the course of a handful of games.
• Inning XP exists in all sorts of other programs, too. Common Courtesy (5,000) and Egg Hunt (2,500) don't have large sums of it relative to the sweat equity needed, but New Threads (10K) and Spring Breakout (5K, earned very easily with five Moments and a handful of Missions you may well have already completed) have decent tallies for the effort put in. Each WBC Pool program has 20K, and the WBC Recap program holds another 10K. But the real gold mines are the Bill Mazeroski and Travis Hafner player programs, which have 5K for a Moment and the simplest possible Mission — hit a homer anywhere in DD — and 20K for several Moments and Missions to hit six homers and rack up just 1,039 Parallel XP anywhere in DD. If you haven't done those Moments — which it's entirely possible to overlook if you haven't tabbed through the Assorted Programs menu — then there's a significant amount of Inning XP a few minutes away.

Ready Your Theme Team(s)

The in-game hint for the 2nd Inning is a two-word clue with four and seven stars that could point to Jeff Bagwell or Mark McGwire or any of many players as potential Bosses or features of the 2nd Inning, including the Cornerstone program that will follow Hafner's. It could also be a starred-out name of a new program that has yet to be announced.

You know what else fits the four-and-seven phrase? Team ... uh, Sumthin?

It's not entirely clear what role Team Affinity programs will have in Diamond Dynasty going forward, and there have been interpretations of Sony San Diego employees' comments on live streams that forecast no further Team Affinity programs in DD post-launch, which seems to me like an overreaction that isn't based on much but fear and pessimism, with maybe a bit of fair worry based on the botched rollout of Team Affinity in MLB The Show 25 and the creation of an installment of it that was not part of the initial roadmap for the program.

But it would make sense to have some Team Affinity piece to the 2nd Inning, even if it isn't a full suite of 30 cards for each MLB team. Maybe there are Missions for 2nd Inning XP for each team, or for each of the six MLB divisions.

And if you've already built some sort of theme team prior to noon Pacific on Friday, well, you won't have to do so after noon Pacific on Friday.