|OT| Honkai: Star Rail | Trails to the Wallet

spindoctor

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I would like to ask Mihoyo what they think the word 'DOUBLE' means...

EDIT: Ok apparently double reward means they will roll the reward drop twice and not just double your first reward. Hmm hmm...
 
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Ascheroth

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Yeah, that's how all the "double drops" have always worked in their games.
It's "2 separate drops for the price of 1", not "1 drop times 2".



I'm taking back what I said about Sushang. She's turning out to be pretty good. I am pairing her with Silver Wolf these times and that's working out pretty well.
 

Dandy

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New Code:

BTN5EL69P6K3

50 Jade and 10,000 credits.

Any of you pulling for Blade? I'm saving everything for DHIL at this point.
 
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Ascheroth

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Neither,
Fu Xuan, then Jingliu after. Imbibitor Lunae is also a strong contender though :face-with-cold-sweat:
 

spindoctor

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I hope Fu Xuan and Lynx appear on the same banner so I can get double value for pulls.

But seriously, nobody pulling for Blade?

EDIT; I mentioned earlier that I really liked the music in the 1.2 trailer. Enough that I found the source on the site and I've been listening to it quite a bit. This is the MP3 link in case anyone liked it too.
 
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Dandy

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Where are all the "I got Blade" posts?

Or are you all just Kafka simps after all :sneaky:
I'm not pulling for Blade or Kafka! I'm saving for Dan IL. I've lost every 50/50 so I need all the Jades I can get.

Though from what people are saying, Blade is pretty amazing.
 

spindoctor

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Yea Blade seemed interesting in his trial. I wish the trials were longer (like maybe 3 waves of enemies) to really get a feel for a character.

I'll probably do a 10 pull on the banner near the end after I've crossed 180 for Kafka.
 
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Man, I feel pretty disappointed by the new main story. It's really entertaining and hype in the moment, with stellar production values (visuals, music and cutscenes are all top-tier) and strong individual moments, but the stopping point is, again, awful (that's 0/2 on having a decent ending point for a story part of an update) and stepping back to think about it, the grander Xianzhou narrative is a fucking mess. Like, worse then even Inazuma in Genshin.

The timeline makes no sense, or at least is presented in a way that makes no sense. 1.0 ends abruptely in the middle with us running sidequests without pressure. In the 1.1 stream they said "the crisis is over for now" or something like that. But then 1.2 starts right in the middle and apparently Dan Heng was off doing his own thing the entire time. So was there supposed to only be a basically no time between 1.0 and 1.2? The ludonarrative dissonance in this game is far stronger than anything in Genshin, for me at least.

The Disciples of Sanctus Medicus plotline with Dan Shu got completely butchered. Her stuff should never have been the finale of 1.0, but it was good and provided some compelling questions and moral ambiguity. Now she's back as a generic "MORE POWAH!11!" mook and there wasn't even an acknowledgment about our previous meetings. Just killed her and moved on.

Then we defeated Phantylia and basically got immediately treated with a one liner on a black screen to wrap things up and it again just... ends.
There's no talk between Dan Heng and the rest of the crew. No post-battle talk with Fu Xuan (she just gets mentioned on the black screen). What's with Tingyun?
Star Rail is terrible at this. Like, seriously, all it would have needed would have been to just teleport us back to the General's office instead and have a few lines of Fu Xuan saying "It's over for now, but there's more to talk about. We'll continue this when the General wakes up. For now you have my thanks yada yada". Something along those lines. Like, to just make it not extremely abrupt and jarring.

It's so frustrating, because all the pieces of something really good are there, but they just botch the small things and fail to put them together properly.
 

Dandy

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Yeah, I feel the same way. I forgot who Dan Shu was because they don't acknowledge anything from your past encounter with them. It almost feels like the story was designed to be played all at once, and they just chopped it up randomly. They need to have scenes at the end like you described! Maybe even spell out what actually just happened for people.
 

spindoctor

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I just finished the story and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. I don't really mind where the story paused but I kind of am disappointed that they still left it hanging. After 3 months they couldn't even finish it for the Luofu. Apparently the conclusion is coming in 1.3 but this doesn't really bode well for the cadence at which they are planning to release new planets. If I think about it, the most ideal scenario (and very unrealistic) would be a new planet every 3 months Realistically I'm thinking we'll get one planet every 6 months. Worst case will be longer than that and the game will constantly feel dry. Surely the core appeal of the game cannot be to just keep logging in every day to progress characters.

As for the story itself, I liked
the two big twists; Tingyun and Vidyadhara High Elder.
The part I didn't like was how the story got even more complicated. The core story of the conflict between the Hunt and Abundance on the Luofu was not hard to follow but it was quite dense with loads of names, events and vignettes to keep track of. And now
Nanook and crew have joined the story to make it even more complicated. Also I never like fiction where the villain is revealed completely out of the blue near the end (kind of the opposite of deus ex machina). It's like "Here's what we led you to believe for 80% of the story but btw the real thing was this all along." Not a fan of that style of fiction.

Still, as a sci fi/fantasy story it's not bad. The new area looks gorgeous. So beautiful. And the music that plays during some of the pivotal scenes is just awesome.

I did the new echo of war and it was the first time my team actually struggled in anything in this game. That fight is tailor made for erudition characters and no matter how much single target damage Seele does, it is really hard to keep up with enemies that are constantly popping up and causing problems to the team. Guess it's time to seriously level up Serval since I don't have Jing Yuan. I was planning to pair her with Kafka anyway but now it seems like a priority.

As a side note, the word 'Vidyadhara' is a Sanskrit word. Vidya means knowledge and dhara translates (literally) to thread. Vidhyadhara means stream of knowledge in a way. It is a concept in Hindu and Buddhist religious mythology where they were demigods of sorts. Every voice actor in the game butchers the pronunciation of the word which is slightly jarring. I don't blame them too much because it's a word in a foreign language, but at the same time, I assume the voice actors are getting direction when it comes to the pronunciation of Chinese Mandarin words (like Xianzhou). Vidyadhara just gets a phonetic pronunciation.
 
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spindoctor

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Thread is not active anymore so this post will get merged with the last one and nobody will read it :disappointed-face:

I reached 73 pulls on the standard banner and pulled Gepard's light cone. I think it's the best preservation cone in the game so that's ok but also it feels really really bad to go to pity and then get a light cone. Especially because the rate at which you progress the standard banner is so ridiculously slow. I think 1-2 tickets per week at most.

On the bright side I have a 185 special tickets saved up for Kafka (along with 45 pity) but I still hope I'll get her soon because I also definitely want Fu Xuan and Lynx. And also kind of want Dan Heng v2.0 because he was so good in the story. But yeah, that's not realistic for anyone who isn't willing to buy jades directly from the store. Or isn't stupidly lucky.

Can someone roughly explain the gist of this new 'write a story' event that just happened. I was not too well and not really able to focus so I just clicked through the entire quest chain and autobattled the event challenges. I feel like the quests were lore heavy so did I miss anything important? I know you can read the story you create later but I was just clicking randomly and picking options so I doubt anything I chose is at all meaningful.

Also I finally reached a roadblock in SU7. The second elite who keeps summoning those mara-struck enemies and has a buff that gives him lifesteal while they are around was unkillable for me. By the time I killed his summons and got 1-2 hits in on him he'd summon them again. And in the time it took to kill all 4 again he would heal himself back to full or nearly full. I wonder again if this is a case where you really need erudition dps characters to succeed or just stupidly well built single target dps.

It does feel like the game is getting harder past TB level 60 and I expect that at TB65 all enemies will become level 80 and the game will get even harder (or slower) at that point. Really makes you question whether increasing equilibrium is worth it at that point since there no real benefits for your account in doing so. What do you guys think?
 
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lashman

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Thread is not active anymore so this post will get merged with the last one and nobody will read it :disappointed-face:
no, it won't :p there is a 1h cooldown on merges ;)
and besides - merged posts still send notifications, so even if it did get merged - people would still get notified :)
 
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Hektor

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Just not a whole lot to talk about.
New Story content was good, but it was incredibly short.
If that's the pacing for updates going forward, the game won't last as long as Genshin.
 
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Ascheroth

Ascheroth

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It does feel like the game is getting harder past TB level 60 and I expect that at TB65 all enemies will become level 80 and the game will get even harder (or slower) at that point. Really makes you question whether increasing equilibrium is worth it at that point since there no real benefits for your account in doing so. What do you guys think?
I'm knocking on the door of TL 65 and don't feel prepared at all. Probably gonna stay at TL60 Equilibrium. The TL 65 reward tiers don't feel like big changes and certainly not worth the extra hassle (I've heard that the TL65 enemies get quite tanky, but since you can't lower your Equilibrium yet I don't wanna test it out myself).
 

spindoctor

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Yeah I'm probably 3-4 days away from level 65. There's no significant increase in the amount of drops you get from farming stuff and the 5 level rewards for 65-70 are definitely not worth the game slowing down considerably once you move into the next equilibrium tier. The trailblazer points you get do continue to accumulate even if you don't do the equilibrium test right?
 

Dandy

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Yeah I'm probably 3-4 days away from level 65. There's no significant increase in the amount of drops you get from farming stuff and the 5 level rewards for 65-70 are definitely not worth the game slowing down considerably once you move into the next equilibrium tier. The trailblazer points you get do continue to accumulate even if you don't do the equilibrium test right?
Yeah, they continue to accumulate.

I'm pretty close to 65 and I'm just going to stay 60, as the game is telling me I'm too low for the content I'm doing now!
 
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Can someone roughly explain the gist of this new 'write a story' event that just happened. I was not too well and not really able to focus so I just clicked through the entire quest chain and autobattled the event challenges. I feel like the quests were lore heavy so did I miss anything important? I know you can read the story you create later but I was just clicking randomly and picking options so I doubt anything I chose is at all meaningful.
Just started it today, and am only midway through, but no it doesn't seem like you've missed anything important.
It's all just made-up fluff. Literally, cause Mr. Xiyan is basically making a bootleg copy of the 1.2 story by mashing generic Wuxia tropes together (which is kind of amusing if you know them) and it's all entirely non-serious.
 

spindoctor

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Just started it today, and am only midway through, but no it doesn't seem like you've missed anything important.
It's all just made-up fluff. Literally, cause Mr. Xiyan is basically making a bootleg copy of the 1.2 story by mashing generic Wuxia tropes together (which is kind of amusing if you know them) and it's all entirely non-serious.
The quest seemed so verbose and I was not feeling well when I was doing it. Ideally I should have just left it for later. It's not like the game is overflowing with content to do and there was so much time to get it done before the event ended. Anyway thanks for the confirmation that it's not super important lore wise.

I've been wanting to start farming relics for Serval and Kafka for a while but I couldn't get good enough relics for Seele to be able to move on. Eventually, after spending all my crafting material and probably over 50 fuels, I decided enough was enough and went ahead and picked whatever the best pieces I got were and leveled them up. This is where Seele ended up for me;



Her crit damage is pitifully bad and it makes me feel bad. I don't know what I can do about it now. Still, overall it's a statistical improvement over the previous set of relics she was using and I hope that ~50% quantum damage boost will do some heavy lifting.

No looking back now. Time to farm for Kafka/Serval.

EDIT: So I went into the game to see what all leftover quantum gear I could use for Silver Wolf and actually found a crit damage headpiece that balances Seele's stats a bit better. So I lose a bit of attack, crit and speed and instead get a bit of defense and about 18% more crit damage. I think this is better.



I actually have multiple choices for which pieces I should use on Silver Wolf. I'll ask for you guys' opinion on that later.

EDIT 2: Reformatted post to be less confusing.
 
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spindoctor

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Reached TB65 today. Not keen to do the equilibrium increase like I mentioned.

The XP to go from TB64 to 65 was about 26k.
XP required to go from 65 to 66 is about 65k :eek:
 

spindoctor

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Well okay as I mentioned, I'm back and looking for help to gear up Silver Wolf. I remember almost everyone got her so I'm hoping you guys know how she's supposed to be built. These are the options I have;

It seems a bit tricky to build her because if you look around on sites people build her differently and prioritize different substats (like some say effect hit rate and break effect are important while others go for damage oriented builds). I think some of that is due to having eidolons but also just mathematical min-maxing.

I'm just looking for a general purpose build. Leveling relics is costly so I'd like to choose the right ones.
 
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Ascheroth

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I haven't really built my Silver Wolf fully either cause of all the information.
But honestly, it doesn't really matter all that much at the end of the day.
The most important thing is giving her enough Effect Hit Rate to reliably trigger her Weakness Implant, which is 80+ iirc. Everything else is whatever.
 

spindoctor

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Yeah my intent wasn't to min-max her either. It's just that I had so many leftover quantum pieces from farming for Seele that I figured I should just ask which of them seemed worth leveling up.

This is what I've landed on for now

I think it's okay. Still need to level her up, her light cone and one more level of traces. That'll have to wait until farming for Kafka is complete. Which it almost is. I've managed to get all the materials required to level her and her traces up but relic farming is not going well and I don't think I've gotten anything I'm really happy with. Luckily I did get a couple of lightning relics that would work well on Serval.
 
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What are you guys using your Resins on? I think I used one to make a Crit Chest for Jing Yuan.

But I'm thinking of using the remaining ones to craft Energy Regen ropes going forward, since those seem to be the biggest pain to get, make a big difference to rotations and are literally the only source of getting Energy Regen on Relics.
I got 0 from the double drop event and even did some runs beyond, but no luck.

Currently in the process of building up Himeko, Asta, Herta and Pela. Everyone of those other than Himeko wants an Energy Rope, lol.
 

spindoctor

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Energy rope or a specific type damage sphere is the way to go I think. I personally wouldn't use them on regular relics. The reason being that even if you're getting frustrated by not getting the specific kind of relic that you want, you can always continue to autofarm it. Planar ornaments on the other hand require you to actually play the simulated universe even if you are just rushing the first elite over and over again. It's just more effort to get planar ornaments which I'd prefer to avoid.

I've not been impressed with the outcome of crafting with the resin anyway. Every item I've made this way either got poor substats or leveled up badly. I got a really nice quantum damage sphere for Seele but then 4 out of 5 of the upgrades went into flat defense and ruined it lol.

Anyway, as Blade's banner comes to an end I'm feeling tempted to try to pull for him. There's no real reason to have a second hypercarry unless you're going for MOC and that's not something I care much for. But the one time a month I try it it's so obvious how much a difference Seele makes. Whichever team she's on will glide through their enemies but the other team will struggle no matter what setup I use. And obviously, the others aren't as geared as Seele so it makes sense but the truth is the 5-stars outshine the 4-stars quite handily in this game so far. So that's why I was thinking of getting Blade or Dan Heng IL. I think I'd prefer a character that does follow up attacks and AOE damage and I don't think that fits IL.

I have 220 tickets/45 pity so I can get Kafka in about 105 tickets which would leave 115+ left over for Blade and the others I want down the line. Just sort of thinking about it. Is Jing Liu also going to be a hypercarry class down the line?
 
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Ascheroth

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Anyway, as Blade's banner comes to an end I'm feeling tempted to try to pull for him. There's no real reason to have a second hypercarry unless you're going for MOC and that's not something I care much for. But the one time a month I try it it's so obvious how much a difference Seele makes. Whichever team she's on will glide through their enemies but the other team will struggle no matter what setup I use. And obviously, the others aren't as geared as Seele so it makes sense but the truth is the 5-stars outshine the 4-stars quite handily in this game so far. So that's why I was thinking of getting Blade or Dan Heng IL. I think I'd prefer a character that does follow up attacks and AOE damage and I don't think that fits IL.
Blade, Imbibitor Lunae and Jingliu are all different flavors of Destruction characters, so DPS focused.
All of them have the single target + adjacent enemies semi-AoE with different activation conditions outside of their Ults.
Blade uses his own HP and has a true AoE follow-up attack.
Imbibitor Lunae can use his Skill multiple times to enhance his Basic Attack.
Jingliu seemingly also has HP cost mechanics, except for the entire team.

Kafka is a DoT enabler/DPS.
Fu Xuan is a tank. No idea what's beyond that.
 

spindoctor

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Yea I decided against trying for Blade. When I look at the mathematical possibilities (losing this 50-50, going to pity on that banner, how many tickets you can earn before the next banner you want and all that) it doesn't make sense given that I'd like to get Kafka, Fu Xuan, Lynx and maybe Jing Liu depending on how my luck goes in the next few months. Trying for Blade right now could mess up a whole lot of things down the line.
 
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That's as good as it's going to get for now.



The Himeko team is really fun. Going to be working on "completing" her and Asta for a while.
The double Relic drops can't start soon enough.
 

spindoctor

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I've only managed 3 stages of this new Xianzhou forgotten hall. I get straight zero stars on the 4th stage. The deer section is built specifically for AOE damage, follow up damage or AOE follow up damage. I really wish I had Himeko. People say her damage is mathematically bad but she has been super fun to play in every trial they've offered for her so far. This week's MOC turbulence is also designed for follow up attacks.

Reached level 40 in the battlepass. So the question for today is whether or not to buy the double price battlepass which comes with 10 level skips that will finish it off immediately. The amount of money you pay extra over the regular battlepass could pay for 2 months worth of express supply passes. So in other words, the question is 6000 stellar jades over two months or chibi Kafka avatar? I feel like there's an obvious answer to this but it's eluding me lol...
 
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Good luck to all Kafka pullers tomorrow!
 
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Just a quick FYI: if you refuse the message Kafka sends you often enough, you skip her entire quest (as in "you'll permanently lock yourself out of it and will never ever be able to play it").
I imagine most would immediately run to her side :p but just in case someone wants to try seeing if the game will force you to do it anyway despite giving you the option to refuse and then regret it afterwards.



Also I built Break Effect Silver Wolf and BOY.
I have 100% Break Effect on her and she does like 60k Entanglement damage. Getting her to 80 will improve that and I could still give her a Break Effect Rope for even more - though I'll have to see if it's worth sacrificing the Energy Regen.

With her and Himeko getting some build upgrades I managed a super cozy 15 star in Memory of Chaos.
That seems to be my hard limit right now though, since I don't have Wind and Ice built for stage 6 and March, Natasha and Fire Trailblazer aren't enough on their own in combination with the lack of DPS.
Only 6 more weeks until that changes, lol.
 
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If that is our first look at Sam, he is now a must-pull.
 

spindoctor

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I did the Kafka companion quest today and it was godawful. I cannot believe the entire quest is just standing in one place talking to Kafka with breaks in between to go and fight one enemy here and there. Unbelievable dip in quality from Yukong's/Clara's/Hook's personal quest.

Anyway this is how Kafka's banner went;

I've wanted Himeko since the start of the game so it's not a bad outcome. Until I realized that I have absolutely no desire to farm a whole set of fire relics for her. That completely deflated my enthusiasm to level her up for now. I can deal with the time gated farming of ascension/trace materials and stuff but relic RNG really puts me off. Especially when you get a super rare and decent enough relic and then all the upgrades go into the wrong stats anyway. I spent several days trying to farm lightning relics for Kafka and I just couldn't get good enough pieces.

So eventually I just stole some of Serval's relics and gave them to Kafka. The hope was to play them both together in a team but that's not happening for now. Kafka does loads of damage even with suboptimal relics so that's nice, but she really has just become a replacement for what Serval used to do. This is how she turned out;

Couldn't get her speed up to 120 even though 3 pieces have the substat. Maybe at some point I'll dive back into farming lightning relics and see what can be done to improve this build.

Anyway these last few banners have put a big dent on my stash of special passes. The plan was to get Fu Xuan/Lynx and then maybe Jing Liu if luck was on my side. Now I'll have to win the 50-50 just to get Fu Xuan and if that doesn't happen I doubt I'll be able to get either of them. And then they announced more new characters coming in 1.4. I think this might be my last banner of trying to get new characters and after that I'll just start saving up for reruns.
 
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1.3 special program today in a couple hours. Let's see what they got.
 
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Trailer


This honestly looks pretty chunky.
New main story, 4 companion quests, Museum 2.0 and a big-ass update to the Simulated Universe that basically looks like something completely new.
 
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Honestly, their trailers for Gamescom, TGS and such always suck, lol.
This tells you absolutely nothing if you aren't already playing this game.



In other news, it's only one more week until 1.3. I'm still pretty dang excited to be honest. I think Star Rail might have found its groove.
Also looking forward to Himeko stonks rising, because the new self-propagating bug enemy has a fire weakness. :evilblob:
 
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