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

spindoctor

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I mean, looking at that list I don't think you can say you've ever had bad luck, lol.
I would like to draw your attention to those big red numbers on the image :disappointed-face: . Going to pity, losing the 50-50 and then going to pity again to get Kafka. And around the same time, the same thing happened in Genshin when it took me about 160 wishes to get Yelan. 160 pulls is about 2 patches worth of jades/primogems... that's 3 months of playing. When this happened back to back in both games it felt a bit bad.
 
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Ascheroth

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I would like to draw your attention to those big red numbers on the image :disappointed-face: . Going to pity, losing the 50-50 and then going to pity again to get Kafka. And around the same time, the same thing happened in Genshin when it took me about 160 wishes to get Yelan. 160 pulls is about 2 patches worth of jades/primogems... that's 3 months of playing. When this happened back to back in both games it felt a bit bad.
They are all under 80! It can go up to 90! And it was your first lost 50/50 that matters - no losing 50/50 on your first pull doesn't count, lol.
You just had a streak of average luck that felt like bad luck cause you started this game with ridiculous luck (and went back right into riduculous luck :upside-down-face: )
 

spindoctor

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Yeah, I don't count the first pull Welt as a 50-50 loss but at the same time Welt sucks so it's not a win either. As for the other thing, 160 pulls is going to feel like bad luck to anyone even if it could have been worse at 180 pulls. And 160 pulls days apart in two different games feels even worse. Yelan is still my only limited 5-star in that game and I'm almost done with Inazuma at this point!

In short, I reject your reality and substitute my own!
 
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Ascheroth

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Already got our first fanconcert and it was fire - highly recommend checking it out!
 
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spindoctor

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Got Clara from the standard banner. Roughly the 205th pull there. I didn't have her so it's nice, but who knows when I'll be able to build her. So far I have not gotten a single usable piece for Jinglebelle since I started farming for her after pulling her.

 
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Trailer is okay I guess. Finally did the trailblaze mission which introduces her last night and I was a bit disappointed that you don't actually get to fight her at the end. They totally built that up as a boss fight.

Don't think I'll be pulling for her though. I just cannot keep up with the relic requirements of the characters I already have. Still not managed to build Jing Liu. Haven't even started on relics for Lynx and Himeko. Wanted to upgrade my 3 quantum DPS characters (Seele, Silver Wolf, Qing Que) as well. Just doing this will take several months of farming. No space for new characters at all.

EDIT: Liked this reference from the quest

 
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Ascheroth

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Just nothing much to say really. I've been enjoying everything from this update so far.
 

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Aetherium Wars was a lot of fun, though I am done with it now. Now I'm just building up my neglected characters to a decent level, so I have more options down the line. It's tempting to snag Topaz for my Clara team, but I think I'm going to hold off for a while.
 

spindoctor

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Well I mean there is stuff to talk about. Story, companion quests, trailers, upcoming characters and plans, pulling luck, event tips and stuff. We could talk about how the stock market event is going for everyone or team comps for the aetherem event. But yeah, there's only a handful of folks playing this here so... I get it. I'll probably stop talking about it after this too.

I didn't really want Topaz and none of the 1.5 characters seem all that interesting so I went ahead with the plan and got Seele's lightcone and first eidolon. Also snagged Guinafen in the process. I have 110 tickets left over. The plan now is to save for possibly a Luocha rerun or Hanabi if she turns out to be as good as Bronya or my (now) E6 Tingyun who I plan to build up. Don't know enough about the other upcoming/leaked characters to be excited about them. Realistically I don't think I'll be pulling for anyone for the next 2-3 months or more unless there's some big surprise release that becomes a must have.

I hope Penacony rekindles excitement in this game.
 

Dandy

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Dr. Ratio's design is amazing. He will be mine, no matter his kit.
 
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Ascheroth

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Will probably go for Ruan Mei and hope Xueyi is on her banner too

Livestream is also this weekend. Really curious what 1.5 is gonna be about.
 
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Update looks like it will be fun.
If the Trailblaze Continuance is as good as Future Market was I'll be happy.
Streamer event looks fun and with new maps I assume there will also be fun new secrets to find.

Bannerwise I'll be skipping. I'll probably throw a few pulls towards Argenti cause I really want Hanya (and his design is great, so I wouldn't mind an early "spook" either), but that will be it.
 
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Update looks like it will be fun.
If the Trailblaze Continuance is as good as Future Market was I'll be happy.
Streamer event looks fun and with new maps I assume there will also be fun new secrets to find.

Bannerwise I'll be skipping. I'll probably throw a few pulls towards Argenti cause I really want Hanya (and his design is great, so I wouldn't mind an early "spook" either), but that will be it.
I like Argenti's design too, but I'm saving for Dr. Ratio now that he's been shown. I kinda regret wasting my guarantee and 76 pity on Topaz though. I like her and she's been a great boon to my second team, but it was a whim and the next day they showed Ratio.
 
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Good stuff coming.



As an Erudition enjoyer, the new mode sounds nice, if I understand it correctly. I'm done with building Qingque for now, so I think I'll build Herta next. King Yuan and Himeko + her LC stonks are on the rise! Should be good news for Argenti wanters too.
...I'm really lacking Erudition Light Cones though :cold-sweat: .

All the QoL changes sound good to me.
MoC auto-clear means getting half the jades without having to go through the (boring) motions.
I dunno how to feel about floors 11-12 yet. Don't think I'll be a fan if they continue to make floor 10 harder while adding even harder stuff on top. If floor 10 stays the same or gets slightly easer but 12 is harder than 10 was I'd be cautiously fine with it I guess.

Alternating Memory of Chaos with Pure Fiction every 2 weeks while making them available for longer also sounds like a good idea, makes things a bit more varied and also gives you some time to work towards "countering" a specific iteration if you want to, or just simply take your time.
 
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Well would you look at that.
30 stars for the first time.




Had trouble solo-sustaining my Jingliu team with Lynx last time, but this time I realized "wait a minute, if one isn't enough can't I just run 2?"
Months of just having Natasha, Fire Trailblazer and March have me not used to this amount of choice, lmao.



New content seems alright. Played through the first chapter, but I'm not liking it as much as the stuff with Topaz last time.
New area also feels horrible optimized with massive FPS drops in places, so I haven't really done much explorationing and event stuff. Gonna take it slow for a bit to see if they push an update, cause right now it feels really bad to play.
 
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spindoctor

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I feel like if Mihoyo did 'exit interviews' for why long time players quit their games the number one reason given would be the awful relic/artifact farming system. I just spent over a month farming relics for Jing Liu before I finally decided enough is enough and it's time to move on. What's crazy is that the system gets worse the further you get into it. I actually only got 2 relics I thought were good during the entire time farming the calyx for them. So that meant the pool of acceptable drops reduced because now you need a specific slot items to drop with a specific main stat and acceptable sub stats. At the end I needed speed boots and wanted to swap my crit rate chest for a crit damage chest and I eventually just got those things through random item crafting. Not from farming the calyx.

It's an unbelievably poorly designed system that is frustrating and demoralizing to engage with. Well, not poorly designed from their perspective because it means people need to keep repeating it over and over while being constrained by their daily energy system. Just completely awful for players though. Absolute worst part of both their games. Sometimes people say that it's not that bad because you only need to build up a character once and then you're done but even that isn't true for this game at this point because they keep releasing new planar and relic sets. They just put out a new set that is BIS for Kafka so now I get to farm her gear all over again...

Anyway, I think she turned out pretty good after all the headache;

Planar ornaments need to be better but that shit is unfarmable so I don't care. Could have done with less effect hit rate overall because she has no need for it but what can you do.

This relic farming business makes me reluctant to pull for new characters now :|
 
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Ascheroth

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It's a terrible system in both games, but it's kind of impressive they've managed to make it worse in Star Rail.
Best is to resist the temptation to min-max and just aim for average.
I don't even have a 4p set on Jingliu since 2p + 2 randos with good substats is better than the conditional 4p effect anyway.
 
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Ascheroth

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Finished all of the event.
I still think as a main story it does not feel as significant as the Topaz one, but when looked at an extended companion quest for Huo Huo and Guinaifen it's really good.
A lot of of the Ghost Hunting side quests are good - there is nice mix of fun and serious stuff, the forum posts are genuinely funny most of the time and there's a lot of variety between Questing, Pathfinder, Cycrance flying, actual small puzzles in quests and combat.
The Fiendfire mechanic for combat is also really, really good. Especially in the final Surpression Tower challenge where you have waves of fighting chunkier enemies, timeline manipulation really becomes a proper extra layer of combat and suddenly you have to think of when to save or pop Ults instead of just doing the same basic rotations.
I guess it's a bit unfair since it so heavily blends "main story" and event toghether, but taking it as an event after doing it all it's probably on top of my list?
 

Dandy

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I can't wait for Penacony(and Dr. Ratio!).

I had a pretty big stockpile of jades, so I threw 40 at Argenti. I didn't get him, but managed to get E3 Hanya so that's good!

Edit: Oh nice! Hoyo is giving us 1600 Jades because they won best mobile game at TGAs.
 
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Congrats!
Got no Hanya :disappointed-face:
Only a bunch of Astas and another Lynx, which isn't bad considering how much I use them.

Future pulling is looking rough.
1.6 gonna be Kafka for me (probably skipping both Ruan Mei and Dr. Ratio).
2.0, if leaks are to be trusted, I'll be grabbing Black Swan for sure. Don't know enough and haven't seen enough of Sparkle to make a decision there.
2.1, if leaks are to be trusted, I want Sam for sure.
Acheron is also on my list whenever she appears.

Meanwhile I'm working on Herta and prepping Relics for Kafka and other DoT characters (wanna build Luka eventually) and ideally I'll get a new set for King Yuan and/or Himeko as well.


Penacony is gonna be important for them to get right after the Luofu mess. Really hope they can deliver.
 

Dandy

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Dr. Ratio is my main priority, and then probably Sparkle to support DHIL. After that, I don't know.
 
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spindoctor

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I can't wait for Penacony(and Dr. Ratio!).

I had a pretty big stockpile of jades, so I threw 40 at Argenti. I didn't get him, but managed to get E3 Hanya so that's good!

Edit: Oh nice! Hoyo is giving us 1600 Jades because they won best mobile game at TGAs.
I used about 30 tickets to try and get Hanya but didn't and instead got 2 Lynx eidolons and 1 for Asta. As always, a bad idea to try and pull for 4 stars. I've stopped paying for the monthly pass and battle pass so I should be more careful with my tickets now as they'll come in much slower than they used to. Still have more than 200 tickets left for now though.

I originally thought I'd wait until Hanabi (Sparkle) came out for my next character pull but I didn't know that Ruan Mei was also a Harmony character. So now it's between those two and we'll have to see which one seems more powerful and which one I like more.

Personally I'm hoping that Penacony ends up being a full reset for the game. Ideally I'd want a self contained and complete/linear story for that planet. I know they'll split it into parts like do always do but please not like the last 4 odd months of the Xianzhou story which had no cohesion, no continuity and were quite nakedly cooked up to sell more characters. I'd also like it if they introduce a big new cast of characters for Penacony at once so that we can officially meet them in the game before deciding whether to pull for them or not.
 
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spindoctor

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1.6 drip marketing has begun


Wind Nihility character. Not sure if I want her. I'm actually not sure anymore about who I want at all. I had this idea that I'd get a limited 5-star Harmony character because they would be great at boosting my team but for the last few weeks I've been running Fu Xuan, Jing Liu, Kafka and Seele as my team. They have no synergy whatsoever but they do so much fucking damage that they can just brute force everything. Even after ascending to trailblazer level 70. And I already have a somewhat well built Bronya chilling on the sidelines even though she's perfect for both Seele and Jing Liu, so why do I need another Harmony character? I suppose I could try for Black Swan and try to make a nihility team with Kafka. It's just that the idea of building a whole new team is just too daunting. Even Kafka needs to be rebuilt with the new relics they introduced. I just don't know what I want to do anymore.

They've started talking about 2.0 as well now. I guess that means we'll go from 1.6 to 2.0 and it should appear roughly around early April if I'm calculating correctly. So basically it will be the anniversary patch and we will have spent the whole year in Jarilo-VI and the Luofu. I don't know why but I really did think it would come sooner than that. I wonder how much time until the next planet after Penacony.
 
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They've started talking about 2.0 as well now. I guess that means we'll go from 1.6 to 2.0 and it should appear roughly around early April if I'm calculating correctly. So basically it will be the anniversary patch and we will have spent the whole year in Jarilo-VI and the Luofu. I don't know why but I really did think it would come sooner than that. I wonder how much time until the next planet after Penacony.
I think you're off by 2 months. 1.6 is gonna start December 27th, so 2.0 will be February 7th.
So Anniversary would fall into the very tail-end of 2.1.

Gotta say I'm also liking the current Fighting Tournament event quite a bit. It's surprisingly challenging, but less in a "account strenght" way and more as a puzzle that requires you to have some understanding of the game mechanics and characters.
 

spindoctor

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You are correct. For some reason I thought we're still in 1.4 and the next patch coming up is 1.5.

So now my question is whether Black Swan is coming in 2.0 or if they'll have a 1.7 in February and then keep the version increase patch 2.0 for the anniversary like they do with Genshin.
 
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You are correct. For some reason I thought we're still in 1.4 and the next patch coming up is 1.5.

So now my question is whether Black Swan is coming in 2.0 or if they'll have a 1.7 in February and then keep the version increase patch 2.0 for the anniversary like they do with Genshin.
2.0 will be after 1.6
 
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And we got the rest of the drip marketing.
All of them together now:



 
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Free Dr. Ratio is certainly something I did not expect at all. Definitely don't mind it though!
Especially cause his 4* selection sucks. Which still sucks for me cause Kafka shares it. :suicide-blob:
It's honestly making me reconsider things. I might go to 50/50 on Ruan Mei's banner and see what happens, it's infinitely more appealing.

Content-wise seems decent enough, but it's definitely got big filler vibes, which is probably why they spent a lot of time hyping up Penacony instead (which looked great).
 
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spindoctor

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Yea the rate up 4-stars on Ratio's banner are a sad selection. It's also the first time the new 4-star (Xueyi) is appearing on the first banner instead of the second one in the patch. Wonder why.

I finally finished up the ghost hunting and fight club events today. It took a whole week to do the ghost hunting one. The writing was funny and all but it was exhausting to get through the whole thing honestly.
 
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Dandy

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You must be very happy today :)
Very!

I decided to grab Argenti now that I don't have you worry about getting Ratio.

I still have 115 warps so should have enough to guarantee Sparkle by the time she releases.
 
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Dandy

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I've been spending time on Swarm Disaster the last few days, and now I've finally unlocked the Path of Propagation. It's a shame they didn't make Swarm Disaster count towards your weekly SU points. I'd have finished it much sooner if it did.
 
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Not gonna lie, Ruan Mei's Myriad Celestia trailer has catapulted her up on my list of interesting characters. I found it really, really, really good.

Hoyo is scarily good at these.
Must stay strong and skip her tho. But she goes on the "get on a rerun" list.
 
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I don't think I will have enough Jade to get Ruan Mei AND Sparkle... And Sparkle makes more sense for my roster at the moment.
 

spindoctor

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Took 80 pulls but I won the 50-50 and got Ruan Mei. Also 2 copies of Xueyi. To be honest it was kind of a half hearted pull because I already had 33 pity and had loads of tickets. Even after getting her I'm not super excited because... yep... relic farming.

I do sort of like her character from the quest. Mysterious and villainous, to an extent. Some people on reddit are actually annoyed about how that quest starts out. The new zone in the space station is okay I suppose, but you can really see the narrative of the game stretching at the seams when a Xianzhou character is introduced in a space station level.

I still have 225 tickets left so I can guarantee Black Swan. Not sure who comes after that. But there's lots of time to save up even more tickets.
 
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Wasn't a big fan of the two story missions this time around.
I had fun in the moment because of just how weird it all was, but after you're done and look back at it as a whole - there are so many things that just don't really make sense at all?
Why was the introduction to the new area horror-flavored but it was never really followed up on?
Why was Dr. Ratio introduced there?
Why did the 2nd quest start with us having memory issues and having to piece together something that supposedly just happened? Initially I thought it had something to do with Ruan Mei's memory-loss drug but the stuff happened after that and had nothing to do with her?
I don't understand what happened with Dr. Ratio at the end.

I pray to god Penacony will steer this train back on track. As it stands I haven't really been impressed with most of the post-launch main story content, unfortunately.


New Simulated Universe DLC is fun though. Reminded me just how much fun Propagation Qingque is. Just peak entertainment. And has me strongly considering picking up Sparkle based on her leaked kit just for that.
This update brought a bunch of good QoL changes as well, good stuff on that front.
 

Dandy

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I played this game for 360 hours this year o_O

EDIT: I'm missing 2 cards out of 14. Does anyone know how to figure out which 2 are missing? I can't seem to...
I'm at 406 hours played!

The 14th card is a reward for unlocking 13 cards. I don't have the one you are missing so I can't tell who it is either

Edit: The last one you need is Dr. Ratio
 
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I played this game for 360 hours this year o_O

EDIT: I'm missing 2 cards out of 14. Does anyone know how to figure out which 2 are missing? I can't seem to...
Here's a Dr. Ratio for you

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I'm missing Ruan Mei, Himeko and Kafka in case anyone has some dupes lying around :)
 
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Dandy

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Here's a Dr. Ratio for you

[Hidden content]

I'm missing Ruan Mei, Himeko and Kafka in case anyone has some dupes lying around :)
I have Ruan Mei and Himeko if you still need them.
Hidden content
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Dandy

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Yeah I messed up :cold-sweat: . Fixed the link (and added a 2nd Dr. Ratio as well for spindoctor

And I'd appreaciate Ruan Mei and Himeko cards, yes!
Someone on Reddit just gave me a Ratio, so you can keep yours. But feel free to take Ruan Mei and Himeko

Edit: Oh shit! I just got Ruan Mei! I decided to do 1 more 10 pull(so 40 pulls total), and got her! That's my first 50/50 win ever in HSR!
 
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Someone on Reddit just gave me a Ratio, so you can keep yours. But feel free to take Ruan Mei and Himeko
Oh shit! I just got Ruan Mei! I decided to do 1 more 10 pull(so I go her within 40 pulls total), and got her! That's my first 50/50 win ever in HSR!
Thanks!
 
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spindoctor

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Here's a Dr. Ratio for you

[Hidden content]

I'm missing Ruan Mei, Himeko and Kafka in case anyone has some dupes lying around :)
Thank you for Ratio. Here's Kafka

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Edit: Oh shit! I just got Ruan Mei! I decided to do 1 more 10 pull(so 40 pulls total), and got her! That's my first 50/50 win ever in HSR!
Congrats!
 
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