|OT| This is GachaCouncil - Playing with money
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New Honkai: Nexus Anima trailers for the next closed beta.
Pretty big visual improvements imo. Still not sure how interesting the auto-chess/battler combat is gonna be long-term for me, but I'm actually looking quite forward to this in these times were every new 3D gacha has what feels like the exact same swap combat template.
And the vibes look fun.
Pretty big visual improvements imo. Still not sure how interesting the auto-chess/battler combat is gonna be long-term for me, but I'm actually looking quite forward to this in these times were every new 3D gacha has what feels like the exact same swap combat template.
And the vibes look fun.
So after seeing all the... uh... hype... for Remielle in ZZZ, I ended up redownloading the game. I saw that I had 60 odd pulls saved up and I figured I'll try pulling on the banner to see if I can pull her. If not, I'd just uninstall again and move on.
Got her in the first pull of the first 10 pull
Grabbed her Z-engine and the outfit bundle as well. I guess I'll be playing ZZZ for a while
. I noticed they added a bunch of new graphics options like ray tracing and frame gen. I turned all the settings up and it doesn't look all that different from what I remember anyway. Does anyone know how it plays on the Steam deck?
Also, who should I pick in the free character/weapon selector? I already have Jane Doe but not her weapon.
Got her in the first pull of the first 10 pull
Grabbed her Z-engine and the outfit bundle as well. I guess I'll be playing ZZZ for a while
. I noticed they added a bunch of new graphics options like ray tracing and frame gen. I turned all the settings up and it doesn't look all that different from what I remember anyway. Does anyone know how it plays on the Steam deck?Also, who should I pick in the free character/weapon selector? I already have Jane Doe but not her weapon.
I've been dipping my toes into ZZZ as well and also got Remi + her weapon. Main story wise I'm still in the middle of season 1 where I'm trying to stop a dude from using an EMP so I've got a ways to go before I catch up.
From what I've read, Lucia is the best selector character (but she specifically wants Rupture teammates). I got her because she looks like she plays a wizard in D&D.
From what I've read, Lucia is the best selector character (but she specifically wants Rupture teammates). I got her because she looks like she plays a wizard in D&D.
Zenless season 3 has been fantastic (it's basically been non-stop banger after banger since 2.6 imo).
For the selector, if there's a character you really just want, pick them.
In terms of Meta, Lucia + weapon is probably the best, if you have or want to play any rupture characters (Starlight Billy, Yixuan, Yidhari, Manato).
Jane is a good pick if you are aiming for her M2, which is supposedly really strong.
Trigger and Sanby aren't great anymore.
Hugo never was
Don't know too much about weapons. Only that Jane's can be gotten for free from one of the in-game shops in time and out of all characters Trigger needs her weapon the most. By far.
Probably going to pick Trigger weapon + Lucia M1 myself.
For the selector, if there's a character you really just want, pick them.
In terms of Meta, Lucia + weapon is probably the best, if you have or want to play any rupture characters (Starlight Billy, Yixuan, Yidhari, Manato).
Jane is a good pick if you are aiming for her M2, which is supposedly really strong.
Trigger and Sanby aren't great anymore.
Hugo never was
Don't know too much about weapons. Only that Jane's can be gotten for free from one of the in-game shops in time and out of all characters Trigger needs her weapon the most. By far.
Probably going to pick Trigger weapon + Lucia M1 myself.
I went ahead and got Lucia and her weapon. The biggest reason was to get rid of the red ! notification. It's not like I have any units that will synchronize well with her so she'll stay at level 1 for now.
Unfortunately, my issue with the ridiculously convoluted menus still remains. I genuinely cannot understand so many of the options that they've added in the last year or so. Still, I'm giving it a proper attempt and I figured I should try and level up Remielle. I had enough mats stocked up to get her and the weapon to 60 so I'm using energy to farm skill upgrades. Immediately ran into the Notorious Hunt timegate where it'll take me weeks to get enough materials to level all those passives. I did notice an option to "continue into the deep" or something like that while I was trying to farm the weekly boss. Ascheroth is that some kind of option that lets me farm more than 3 of those items a week? I couldn't understand it.
I also realized I've completely forgotten the combat system. My team is currently Anby, Nicole and Jane and I keep tanking hits no matter what. I can't seem to get the dodge working so whenever I get the attack notification I just swap to another character to try and avoid it, but I still tank hits. Will take some practice to get back into the groove.
I played the Sons of Calydon story chapter and I liked it a lot. The story itself was okay, but what really appealed to me was that it was a standalone vignette that took a few hours to complete. I'm actually very happy with playing small games right now and each of these patch stories can count as a 'small game' so to speak. I figured I can do one patch story in 1-3 days and keep moving the whole thing along. I know not all of the patches will have standalone stories but as long as there are logical break points between chapters, it'll feel like I'm tackling the very daunting task of catching up to the story in manageable, bite sized pieces.
Ascheroth one more question for you. Is there any youtuber you'd recommend for a lore catch up video I could watch? I very vaguely remember what happened in the game prior to where I am so a story recap would be quite useful. It doesn't matter if the videos are much longer than I need them to be... I just want to watch a story recap from 1.0 to 1.3.
EDIT - one other tiny thing that bothers me a bit. You launch the game and reach the main menu/home screen. You click once to login and it logs you in. Then you have to click again to 'Play' but all it does is load some resources. When those resources are loaded you have to click again to actually play. Why can't they just load the game when it launches. What other purpose do they think someone started the game for? Why does someone have to click 3 times just to start playing it? Neverness logs you in as soon as you reach the homescreen, but there's still an option to change account or server. If you don't want to do that, as most people won't, one single click gets you into the game.
Unfortunately, my issue with the ridiculously convoluted menus still remains. I genuinely cannot understand so many of the options that they've added in the last year or so. Still, I'm giving it a proper attempt and I figured I should try and level up Remielle. I had enough mats stocked up to get her and the weapon to 60 so I'm using energy to farm skill upgrades. Immediately ran into the Notorious Hunt timegate where it'll take me weeks to get enough materials to level all those passives. I did notice an option to "continue into the deep" or something like that while I was trying to farm the weekly boss. Ascheroth is that some kind of option that lets me farm more than 3 of those items a week? I couldn't understand it.
I also realized I've completely forgotten the combat system. My team is currently Anby, Nicole and Jane and I keep tanking hits no matter what. I can't seem to get the dodge working so whenever I get the attack notification I just swap to another character to try and avoid it, but I still tank hits. Will take some practice to get back into the groove.
I played the Sons of Calydon story chapter and I liked it a lot. The story itself was okay, but what really appealed to me was that it was a standalone vignette that took a few hours to complete. I'm actually very happy with playing small games right now and each of these patch stories can count as a 'small game' so to speak. I figured I can do one patch story in 1-3 days and keep moving the whole thing along. I know not all of the patches will have standalone stories but as long as there are logical break points between chapters, it'll feel like I'm tackling the very daunting task of catching up to the story in manageable, bite sized pieces.
Ascheroth one more question for you. Is there any youtuber you'd recommend for a lore catch up video I could watch? I very vaguely remember what happened in the game prior to where I am so a story recap would be quite useful. It doesn't matter if the videos are much longer than I need them to be... I just want to watch a story recap from 1.0 to 1.3.
EDIT - one other tiny thing that bothers me a bit. You launch the game and reach the main menu/home screen. You click once to login and it logs you in. Then you have to click again to 'Play' but all it does is load some resources. When those resources are loaded you have to click again to actually play. Why can't they just load the game when it launches. What other purpose do they think someone started the game for? Why does someone have to click 3 times just to start playing it? Neverness logs you in as soon as you reach the homescreen, but there's still an option to change account or server. If you don't want to do that, as most people won't, one single click gets you into the game.
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spindoctor Yes, you can continue to farm the weekly bosses however many times you want. The first 3 are just free, after that it takes 60 stamina each and it should be that option you mentioned.
And here's a video with all the recap you could ever need for 1.x stuff.
It's in chronological order, so some things that happen earlier but release later are first. The 1.0 main story starts at the timestamp I linked ~57 minutes in (and timestamps are in the description as well).
The Sons of Calydon section you just played starts at 2:24. It covers Agent Stories and events as well, feel free to skip around (the description has it all labelled with timestamps).
The first 20 minutes are general word-building and stuff, might be interesting as well to refresh things.
And here's a video with all the recap you could ever need for 1.x stuff.
It's in chronological order, so some things that happen earlier but release later are first. The 1.0 main story starts at the timestamp I linked ~57 minutes in (and timestamps are in the description as well).
The Sons of Calydon section you just played starts at 2:24. It covers Agent Stories and events as well, feel free to skip around (the description has it all labelled with timestamps).
The first 20 minutes are general word-building and stuff, might be interesting as well to refresh things.
Thanks for the tips 
I have some follow up questions; I currently have 2400 energy banked but I can't seem to figure out how to use it. Whenever I go short on energy the game gives me the option to recharge using those items or currency. Am I missing something here? Or actually, now I'm wondering, what exactly is that 2400 figure. I think it's energy but I could be wrong.
I unlocked Deadly Assault yesterday. Is it safe to assume it's an endgame mode that I shouldn't bother with? I typically don't do these hard modes in these types of games (Genshin tower etc.). I've only done up to level 6 of the base Shiyu Defense in this game because I didn't have 2 teams to take on level 7 onwards. When I went to that tent area where you start Shiyu Defense, Notorious Hunts etc., I noticed they've added a whole new bunch of combat challenges. I even accidentally ended up starting some game mode which was like the TV mode that they removed from the game. It's all so complicated for someone coming back to the game now.
Thanks for the video link. For a while I actually considered just completing season 1 by myself and then watching the whole video without having to skip from timestamp to timestamp. It includes lots of agent stories and I don't think I can do those now can I? My quest log has so many side quests in it that I don't know which ones I should try or if I should just push on ahead with the main quests only. On the other hand, it's already daunting now so every patch will add even more side quests and it'll get worse, so maybe I should try and do some of them. I wish I knew which ones were relevant to the narrative because then I could prioritize those.
I ended up yolo pulling on Remielle's banner again and lost the 50-50 and got Caesar instead. Still a new character for me so it's all good. No chance of leveling her any time soon though. People often say you can get through these games with just the starter units. They're usually referring to the high difficulty challenges but I'm about to put that theory to the test with just the main story and side quests. I know they're obviously easier, but I'm also very rusty on top of being low skilled to begin with, so this will be interesting. Hopefully they'll give a lot of trial characters in the story missions.
I have some follow up questions; I currently have 2400 energy banked but I can't seem to figure out how to use it. Whenever I go short on energy the game gives me the option to recharge using those items or currency. Am I missing something here? Or actually, now I'm wondering, what exactly is that 2400 figure. I think it's energy but I could be wrong.
I unlocked Deadly Assault yesterday. Is it safe to assume it's an endgame mode that I shouldn't bother with? I typically don't do these hard modes in these types of games (Genshin tower etc.). I've only done up to level 6 of the base Shiyu Defense in this game because I didn't have 2 teams to take on level 7 onwards. When I went to that tent area where you start Shiyu Defense, Notorious Hunts etc., I noticed they've added a whole new bunch of combat challenges. I even accidentally ended up starting some game mode which was like the TV mode that they removed from the game. It's all so complicated for someone coming back to the game now.
Thanks for the video link. For a while I actually considered just completing season 1 by myself and then watching the whole video without having to skip from timestamp to timestamp. It includes lots of agent stories and I don't think I can do those now can I? My quest log has so many side quests in it that I don't know which ones I should try or if I should just push on ahead with the main quests only. On the other hand, it's already daunting now so every patch will add even more side quests and it'll get worse, so maybe I should try and do some of them. I wish I knew which ones were relevant to the narrative because then I could prioritize those.
I ended up yolo pulling on Remielle's banner again and lost the 50-50 and got Caesar instead. Still a new character for me so it's all good. No chance of leveling her any time soon though. People often say you can get through these games with just the starter units. They're usually referring to the high difficulty challenges but I'm about to put that theory to the test with just the main story and side quests. I know they're obviously easier, but I'm also very rusty on top of being low skilled to begin with, so this will be interesting. Hopefully they'll give a lot of trial characters in the story missions.
It's just energy yes. It starts storing up when you hit the 240 maximum, but at a slower rate. Just use it if you need it.
Deadly Assault is endgame, yes. Unlike Shiyu, it's only a single boss fight per stage. It's limited to 3 minutes and you will need to get as much score as possible in that timeframe. Score is a combination of dealing damage and interacting with specific boss mechanics. I personally think its really fun, but you do need a bunch of strong teams for different scenarios.
The mode you're talking about is potentially Withered Domain? It was the first iteration of the weekly "roguelike" mode. After a while it was superseded by Lost Void, which has no TV mode, but is just moving from (random) room to (random) room. Lost Void lets you use Trial Agents you do not own, so it's fun to play around with.
This week there's going to be a new mode added that supersedes Lost Void, but you can still play Lost Void for weeklies as well. The new mode is an extraction mode and I'm super curious how it will feel like. Previews looked pretty cool.
No, Agent Stories are permanent. You can start them from the Video Archive in the video store (the room that also has the HDD from where you'd start main or side missions in 1.0).
I don't really think many Agent Stories are super plot related, there is only really Lycaon's that gets followed up on in 1.6 and 1.7 and Anby + Trigger as well a little bit. So probably those + I would recommend Harumasa and Seed just because they are fantastic.
I don't even remember the last time they didn't have Trial units in the story. I think it's just at the very beginning, where they teach you about the basics and progression, but very quickly it's all Trial. You can 100% play through the entire story without engaging in the gacha at all.
I uninstalled Honkai Star Rail. The story is going nowhere and while Amphoreus was a giant mess, at least it was ambitious. After doing today's Memory of Chaos and getting fairly mediocre results with my premium teams I realized that the power creep will be a never ending rat race (I know that's true for all gacha, but it's especially bad in HSR as the actual gameplay is extremely simplistic).
One down. Two to go.
Fair. The game's been pretty disappointing for a while now.
Amphoreus had its issues, but also had amazing highs, was very ambitious, and overall I left satisfied. Planarcadia has been a wash. Lots of potential, all wasted. None of the highs, but with all of the lows.
The 4.4 climax was an incredible letdown for me. Possibly my 2nd least favorite patch in the entire game (nothing will ever beat the utter dogshit that the 3.8 Penacony retcon garbage was).
I wanted to still give the Fate event a fair shot, since the gameplay at least seemed solid. Played through Day 1 of that event but I think that just broke me.
To be fair, gameplay was solid and story seemed actually decent.
But the lack of EN voices for the Fate characters completely killed all my motivation. The fact that it was the 2nd time they had this collab, and had a full year since the last one, and STILL did not have anything in place for EN dub players just made me stop giving a shit. Just give the option of playing the JP dub for all these character instead if nothing else. But nope. And if they don't give a shit, why should I.
I only logged in last Friday since then to blast them in the survey. And I did watch the stream, but it didn't really do anything for me.
There's nothing much interesting on the horizon either.
Not interested in the upcoming characters so far. I still don't know if I'll give 4.5 a shot or just cut my losses and wait and see if they maybe get their shit together with 5.x.
It's frustrating because the game has such cool lore and concepts and many great characters and ideas, but it feels like they waste it all and hardly improve. Especially when you look at Genshin and Zenless in comparison, which are the best they've ever been right now.
Can you remind me what this was? I played through to the end of Penacony and basically stopped right after that. I was disappointed with mihoyo in general because of their lack of reaction to the useless VA strike at the time, but that one scene at the very end of Penacony between Robin and Sunday completely ruined it for me. If I remember correctly it was Sunday saying goodbye to Robin and what was supposed to be a highly emotional moment was ruined by the fact that only one of them was talking and the other was mute. Absolutely destroyed the gravitas of the moment for me. In general, I feel like mihoyo sacrificing the global player experience for over 6 months by letting the trailers and game go mute is a pretty big black mark against them, and the most concrete proof that they care the least about the global server audience.
Anyway I've been playing ZZZ slowly. Honestly, I've not been making much progress with the main story but I am slowly leveling up a few characters. Having to go back to farming RNG gear was an unpleasant reminder of what I consider literally the worst aspect of all their games. Currently my main team is Remielle, Jane and Nicole which isn't ideal of course but that's what happens when you miss 50-75% of the characters. There are some rumblings (or perhaps wishful thinking) that Velina will rerun soon because people who pulled for Remielle will need her. I think it's fair to say that Remielle got a lot of returning and new players to the game and those people would like her best team mate. But who knows. Premium currency income is so slow in the game that I'll just be saving for at least a couple of patches and hope Velina does show up.
That said, I have been wondering if it's worth getting Astra Yao through this pay to win method?
I calculated that it would require buying the biggest currency pack and a couple of months of the daily pass to get there. That's a lot of money. The alternative is just saving for the next few months and then maybe setting up new teams entirely. It'll probably take that long to catch up to the main story and do all the side quests and permanent content anyway. Not sure what to do here. Joining (or rejoining) a gacha game after a gap of over a year is really tough.
Aw come on someone reply to my questions above 
Pre-registration for Silver Palace has started. The game must be pretty close to release. For some reason I thought it was quite a while away.
Pre-registration for Silver Palace has started. The game must be pretty close to release. For some reason I thought it was quite a while away.
Astra is still solid, but I don't think worth spending that amount of money. Only if you were going to spend the money on the game anyway for other stuff, and it woul be a nice bonus.
Penacony was in 2.x and after the following long story arc in 3.x (Amphoreus) they made a patch to "fix" the ending for Penacony. By introducing a character who can manipulate memories and had them go "that story you played back then? Actually a bunch of stuff that happened didn't really happen like that, it was just me manipulating your memories. I'll show you what really happened."
And on top of that, the "what really happened" part includes time-rewrite bullshit. The Star Rail writers are incompetent hacks and I try to pretend this PoS never happened, but Planarcadia being largely garbage on the writing front as well after an actually decently promising start doesn't make it easy.
Yeah it's a lot of money to spend. I will never buy currency to use for pulling in these kinds of games but I don't mind spending to buy cosmetics. Spending this money would be paying enough to buy about 6 current or future cosmetic outfits. Any which way I look at it, I'd still be spending $110 to get Astra now. Coming back to this kind of game after a gap of 2 years is kind of tough because of how far behind I am. Getting one character out of all the ones I've missed isn't worth it. But it also feels bad because I'll never be able to catch up. If I go for reruns I'll just be behind on new characters.
Anyway I finished the year 1 story and I'm currently wrapping up the side quests, agent quests and permanent events before moving on to year 2.
So... why did they retcon it? It must have been in service of the present story right? What were they writing for Amphoreus that caused them to go back and tamper with Penacony?
Near the end of season 1 of ZZZ and I'm liking it quite a lot. I like the brother/sister dynamic Wise and Belle have and I like the political intrigue between Mayflower and TOPS and the Lycaon/Hugo rivalry
I've heard the game's writing takes a big drop in quality in the first half of season 2, but picks back up in the second half and becomes good again in season 3. I guess I'll know in a few weeks.
Also
I'm already starting Deadly Assault. I know it's not that impressive, but I started playing in earnest in 3.1 and my only fully built characters right now are Remielle and Lucia (and Astra Yao, but I don't have a third team ready yet).
I've heard the game's writing takes a big drop in quality in the first half of season 2, but picks back up in the second half and becomes good again in season 3. I guess I'll know in a few weeks.
Also
I'm already starting Deadly Assault. I know it's not that impressive, but I started playing in earnest in 3.1 and my only fully built characters right now are Remielle and Lucia (and Astra Yao, but I don't have a third team ready yet).
3.8 is basically where I started peacing out in HSR. I kinda speed read that and Planarcadia was a big dud. I also read spoilers and an Aeon becoming a playable waifu is just goofy.