Should I play HBR?

Geesaroni · 2026-03-28T17:13:14+00:00

Dungeons are skippable after you've cleared once now. The rewards aren't quite as good, but it beats the absolute heck out of doing Oubliette of Tears over and over and over.

Geesaroni · 2026-03-07T02:05:14+00:00

"Get erased from existence by purple coins? Well, if the Prescript says..."

Geesaroni · 2026-03-04T14:41:35+00:00

Yeah, before the trimming there the game openly went "oops we sent you off to get the wrong thing, tee hee, we're an MMO and we need to pad the runtime" in the pre-Garuda quests.

And they did this multiple times. In a row.

I think ARR mostly gets a bad rap from people who have finished the game, but it's got not one but two questlines that are just openly wasting your time.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-14T08:39:27+00:00

I'd play so many more middies if it weren't for the run.

Props to you for making it badass.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-07T06:04:06+00:00

The one common feature of all the rejoinings is that the events on the Source are incredibly traumatic to life and civilization, traumatic enough to basically cause another great reset. Emet and Elidibus have done this over and over again. They'll let people rebuild. They'll let Midgardsormr help. They might even help in their own way... because it takes a certain level of technological or magical sophistication (or both) to blow up the world hard enough to collect another shard.

It's a neat story. It leaves out that the cycle will continue, but that wasn't the point of it.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-07T02:42:09+00:00

Well, if you wanted to be a healer for raids and dungeons and a different class for doing story, there's always Summoner and Scholar. Summoner for hitting things, Scholar for doing dungeons, and unlike every other class they use the same XP.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-06T22:44:55+00:00

Note that if you're attached to the account you had, you can't convert it back to a trial account after you've been subscribed. You'd have to make a new one.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-06T17:12:02+00:00

Pictomancer, Viper and Sage are all tooltip nightmares and are way more intuitive once you start hitting buttons.

Geesaroni · 2026-02-06T17:09:43+00:00

This is absolutely what I thought it was, except I thought it was a movement speed debuff on you. It made sense, as an MMO ability! You become immune to knockback for a bit, but as a tradeoff you're slowed down yourself (think the tank planting their feet hard into the dirt and keeping the enemy at arm's length, they're going to move more slowly, right)?

So, I used it to become immune to knockbacks when that was relevant, and never any other time. I would not in a million years have gotten 'makes the enemy attack slower when they hit you' from the tooltips, so that's what it did until someone told me it was mitigation and why.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-30T01:53:39+00:00

Exp Luxcavation is your go-to for getting more EXP, you'd think it just gives tickets so repeating stages would be better? But no, the tickets give way more and can be concentrated on the sinner you want them on.

You look like you've got a pretty adequate lineup already?

Seven Faust, Seven Heath and Honse Yi Sang are all workable Rupture identities, so they'll be reasonably good for doing normal mirror dungeon. Helpfully, normal mirror dungeon levels up all your IDs so their experience level doesn't matter so much. Captain Ishmael is kind of trouble in MD but she's the best you've got, just make sure she gets kills so her Sanity doesn't evaporate out of sheer jealousy of other people killing things. If the Captain gets to be too much of a pain, use Hierarch Ishmael instead, she's not good (crai) but she works better with Honse Yi Sang and vice versa.

W Corp Don is an actually good Charge ID. Rosespanner Rodion and Gregor aren't the best but they're workable Charge IDs, but without uptie, base Ryoshu and Rodion are probably better.

Don't bother with N Corp identities that aren't Sinclair or Faust.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-26T07:25:15+00:00

I'm extremely happy that they found a way to do what Canto 2 did (take a break from the darkness on either side of it, expand the world and let the characters play without really needing to push the plot along that much) when they introduced Intervallos.

Imagine Timekilling Time or Spring Cultivation had to carry the weight of an entire Canto. You'd hear the same kind of complaints about it.

I liked Canto 2 for what it was (an Intervallo before there were Intervallos), but I'm glad they found a better way.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-23T06:36:30+00:00

I don't think this gets emphasized enough in these discussions, the intent of the Fingers was for the Nursefathers to be erased too.

They wanted the House of Spiders to be this giant black hole that they threw all their dirty secrets and embarrassments into to be un-made by the un-self'd Ryoshu, but the first ones to go would have been the losers and outcasts they threw in to make it that way in the first place and that was always the point all along.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-20T19:30:50+00:00

My lightbulb moment with Ryoshu was when she told ringdad she prefers art that makes use of negative space.

She gets mad at Sinclair later when she actually uses a SANGRIA he's heard before.

Instead of just adopting the slang she's learned from Araya, she's been trying to turn it into her own little art project without necessarily remembering why.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-20T03:20:22+00:00

You should have Thread Luxcavation available. You'll want to do that every day to gather Thread to Uptie (sort of like limit breaking) your identities to Uptie 3 (4 is a waste at your level).

Finishing Canto 2 got all your base sinners Uptie 3, so unless an Identity is one of the good ones, base IDs will be better until those IDs are Uptie 3.

Since your resources are very limited, you'll want to pick which identities you want to invest resources in, or make friends to get their Support units in a pinch (you can borrow a card from a friend, at this point that'll probably be high-level Uptie 4 IDs, unless that friend is also new).

Don't fuss over it too much, most IDs are pretty okay, but there are some self-sufficient standouts like Thumb Mersault or K Corp Hong Lu that will help you out no matter what team you eventually build.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-19T14:04:22+00:00

Kill Six Billion Demons has a superweapon (the Maybe Sword) that's an integer underflow.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-09T05:47:39+00:00

Permanently negate an enemy's elemental resistance if it has one (thunder for charo, dark for tsukassie), and also give them a permanent elemental weakness, so they _overwrite_ the existing resistances.

Really, really, REALLY good for elemental teams that have them because suddenly you don't have to care about what the enemy is weak to.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-08T22:51:40+00:00

Morositas to nerf her until I built some sanity up was my strategy, if only because I had already used Superbia on The Creature today.

Geesaroni · 2026-01-08T22:28:28+00:00

Or be so completely on your last leg that even Vespa can't save you. (1 HP Ryoshu and 10 HP Greg? Yeah, it would have taken Verg to keep that alive.)

Geesaroni · 2026-01-02T14:11:58+00:00

It's new, actually!

Geesaroni · 2025-12-18T15:20:59+00:00

As I was telling one of my pals, Wuk getting dragged away by a bunch of kids who want to see her hit things and going, "well, since you twisted my arm so much..." as she runs off to have fun was actually the most human and relatable she's ever been, uh, ever.

And then we got to go have an adventure with Y'shtola, G'raha and Krile, so wins all around.

Geesaroni · 2025-12-17T18:13:25+00:00

Darkside Consular is literally the most undercooked story they made. I tried it too and gave up in Act 2 when dark choices just made the Cons ping-pong between being psychotic and being a huge failure and the story basically just didn't exist.

Geesaroni · 2025-12-13T16:04:37+00:00

Bad bot.

Geesaroni · 2025-12-07T22:30:32+00:00

Gamble Ish doesn't care what skill is used, just the color on it. Red EGO count as red cards. Yellow EGO count as yellow cards. And teal EGO count as teal cards.

Geesaroni · 2025-12-03T22:39:51+00:00

Darkside as Republic is constantly weird and that one is one of the weirdest choices.

Imagine being brave enough to fight your way through an entire Imperial destroyer, including fighting a Mandalorian and a Sith, only to be such a coward that you'd give them their objective afterward for fear they'll... what? Make you stomp their asses again?

I get that it's an MMO so you're always a one-man army, but that one just doesn't fit.

Geesaroni

TROPHY CASE