First, welcome here, and good luck on your journey Tr@veler
Second, this will be a long post and might seem a little demoralizing but I hope my good intetions will be clear to you at least by the end. Third, you're overanalyzing. You know...nowadays many physicists think black holes are the real shit in the universe and they are of great importance if we want further understanding on how things work out there. So they peek them from millions of light years and try to model things with splits of information and the help of mathematics. Wouldn't it be great if we could just go there and observe them, or even better, go through one without dying? That way we would get like a hundred times more information on them in a few hours than we're getting this way in years. Now it is the same with girls. Except for most of them don't have deadly gravitional force which curves space and time.
So what I'm trying to say is you can just analyze it in your mind and create theories and might even get close to the real thing if you're lucky but it's much more effective(and fun!) if you approach girls and learn it that way. When you know well enough how things work and should be managed, you can 'go through the black hole'
and believe me, that's when things REALLY start being interesting and fun. What you've written here is pure Mystery Method. There is nothing wrong with that, what is wrong with it however, is it SEEMS, that you think, that if you follow these simple steps, it should work every time, with every group, and every girl. Which is of course false it won't. Sometimes the group just doesn't want any company. Or they are simply douchebags. Or the girl will be on her period, or have a boyfriend, or she's not into your type, or she would be, but you ruin it with your overanalyzing, and the list can go on and on about why there is not a perfect algorythm that will just work always. There's no magic pill. Also, To tell you the truth I don't really use the type of negs in MM anymore at all. And I can still be successful. You can generate a lot more tension elseway, more easily, more naturally, more effectively with just simple flirting. Neither do I use FTCs, if you are interesting enough, they won't bother you staying, if you're not, a FTC won't save you. Now I'm not trying to speak against MM here because it did help me a lot in the beginning, but you must understand ,that you will get the most success, if you're not following an inner(or outer!) algorythm, but instead enjoy the moment, enjoy the girl's company, and make her enjoy your company by just being fun. If you've read 'The Game'(which I assume you did), you should see, that Style also gets to a quite similar conclusion in the end. Also you should really not bother thinking about these stuffs all the time. It's unhealthy and might not get you the results you want(Oh for someone it might, but all the things I've written so far is pure experience) So this goes for the pick-up part. But the best advice I can give you is to find a hobby. If you have an interesting hobby, that is attractive. Also, through your hobbies you will meet girls that have similar interests as you. This makes convos a lot easier to handle and you should also know that things in common is a strong attraction switch. I really hope I could help you if you've read this through and I'm going to answer your question NOW. The Mystery method is great for, as you say, 'getting the basics' because of it's detailed, in depth analysis of social situations. However you must be careful of not getting lost in these details because that will result in you NOT getting the basics(which is as it SEEMS at the moment)
Conclusion: Negs, DHVs, FTCs, routines etc., by themselves won't get you laid. Experiences, attractive life style, and basic theoritical knowledge WILL. Now why are you still reading this, and not out in field in some hot chick's panties?
Note: I used, and capitalized SEEMS twice because I do not know you, I do not know your pick-up skills or how many women you've slept with so far, I just took conclusions from what you've posted.
