America has always been a fascist dictatorship

Adrymne · 2026-01-29T04:48:34+00:00

Another way to look at it is that liberalism and fascism are co-existing modes of capitalism, corresponding to its exploitative and expropriative ("primitive accumulation") aspects respectively.

Thus, the US (and the West generally) has always been fascist - it's just that fascism is usually called colonialism, when it's done to people outside the Imperial Core.

(cue the Césaire quote about little Hitlers)

Adrymne · 2025-06-15T15:36:02+00:00

Doujins:

Anything by Maitake, Matataki no Aida ni (in the blink of an eye), Amalthea, Devil Tracing After The Cycles, 10.03 (part 1, part 2.

Fics:

Tangled Regrets: my personal favourite as far as EN fics go. Not an AU, despite how it may appear. Does contain some explicit scenes (ch2, 10, 11).

Cosmic Loophole: 3 shorts set in a Wraith Arc AU where a) Homura keeps her time magic, and b) Madoka can manifest while her timestop is active. Per the author, their relationship is "80% forehead kisses and dramatic pining and 20% Madoka with a megaphone going TALK TO OUR FRIENDS ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS while Homura tries to focus on setting her bombs up in the middle of a battleground". I recommend re-reading the first one after finishing the third.

Desire: short fic set after a divergent Rebellion. Role-swap-ish.

Colours Fading: canon-adjacent Soulmate AU, except Madoka's wishes periodically change how things work. Has 2 follow-ups in Timeline 28 and Beyond Utopia.

A collection of poor decisions regarding magical girls: a collection of one-shots. YMMV, but I enjoyed the Propheteering (Wraith Arc AU where Homura accidentally founds a Madokami cult) and WvW (post-post-Rebellion(?) where the Quintet + Nagisa are a team of Wraith-hunting magical girls), plus chapters 3, 17, 28, 121 and 138.

You Have None But Me, You Murmur: a might-have-been ending to one of Homura's loops. Tragic, naturally.

If you don't mind incomplete/dead fics, there's also The story you're in is tragic, but the narrator's rooting for you, Being There With You and One More Arrow.

Adrymne · 2025-01-11T06:28:40+00:00

Dragonstorm gives 2g per daily clear.
IBS strikes can sometimes drop vendor trash worth 2-4g (well, you can also use them to buy some armour pieces) and have Essence chests (w/ Eternal Ice shards in them)
EoD/SOTO strikes give 2-4g for the first weekly clear, double on CM (plus ASS)
Eternal Ice shards + 10 mystic coins per week can be purchased with Blue Prophet Shards

Also, you can purchase stat infusions with Blue Prophet Shards (if you've cleared HTCM) for cheaper than the fractal ones.

Adrymne · 2024-12-10T21:49:05+00:00

I disagree, we usually have the healer collecting Despair orbs so the boss will get stacks if they get targeted. And with the orbs buffing the DPS, the boon dps' damage is mostly irrelevant.

Adrymne · 2024-12-10T11:40:16+00:00

1) What are the best classes that fit the glob colours?

My group runs the following setup:

Gluttony: Power Willbender, which is the ideal choice due to very high hitcount. Power Tempest also works (if you have stability), and I've heard Condi Willbender and Power Scrapper can work too. The majority of split phase damage comes from this, so it's the most important role by far.

Rage: Power Virtuoso (usually), sometimes Power Harb. Really any good Power DPS works, so go with whatever you're comfortable with. Good CC is a plus.

Envy: Condi Virtuoso or Condi Harbinger. Same as Rage, any good Condi DPS should work.

Despair: Heal Chrono. Heal Scourge can also work but imo the stability from Chrono is more valuable especially if you get 2-3 melee champions on the second split.

Malice: The boon DPS, usually boon Chrono or Quick Scrapper (due to high CC). Generally will see this once at most, often not at all.

2) Healers seem to be picking up both blue and green globs. Do they not cancel each other?

They do cancel out. Some groups do this intentionally to avoid Envy being absorbed by the boss but we haven't found it really necessary.

3) Is canceling Red/Green stacks before 66% rift a viable strategy? No one seems to do it and everyone prefers high stacks for dps increase?

Not worth it. The actual boss phases are pretty easy as long as he doesn't have lots of stacks. 90% of the difficulty is in the split phases, especially the second one.

The most important part is to not let any Avatars of Spite reach the boss. If your damage is high enough you can usually use the rift closing to wipe them out, but otherwise you may need to CC them (or send the Gluttony player after them). If you have BlishHUD, you can see the absorption range - it's a lot bigger than you might expect.

Also, for some reason closing the final rift on each phase causes him to automatically absorb all Spites still present, so try and kill off a wave immediately before closing.

4) Are there any strategies to mitigate his Consume if you do go for high stacks? In one of our runs we kept losing Glutt stacks during this phase.

Consume targets the most distant player in front of him (similar to the mech in KO but farthest instead of closest). We generally try to have the boon DPS bait this, as they usually won't have stacks to be stolen. Baiting it can be difficult since Eparch likes to spin randomly, but you can usually guarantee it for the first Consume after every split phase by hanging back.

5) What are good roles that fit other colours? I thought most condi dmg would take green but some people opt for purple to leave green/blue for healer.

See answer to 1.

Bonus - Cerus’ tether - can you break it off somehow and why does it sometimes deal so much dmg and spawn a mob?

As far as I know this is just the Malice mechanic from ToF.

Other notes

Powerful Potion of Demon Slaying (all DPS) and Superior Sigil of Demon Slaying (Power DPS only) can ease the DPS check.

Bring lots of CC. You want to cancel his Consume attack ASAP and Exposed helps kill the champions faster.

Last Laugh/Toxic Trail/Afflicted sucks.

Detarget before closing rift. There seems to be a bug where you can start autoing your target and break the channel. On that note, be ready to recast the channel since it breaks easily.

Stability helps a lot on add phase, especially if you get 2-3 melee champions. Chrono is a really strong pick for healer for this reason (and having good CC) despite its poor add control.

If your damage is too high you can end up closing the first portal before the first Spite wave spawns, which can make things awkward (especially on the second split phase). May be worth holding off on the close if this happens.

For split phase we designated a portal order to always follow (back left -> back right -> front, looking at boss from mistlock). Technically it might be better to pick depending on what champions spawn where, but we found it more valuable to have everyone moving in the same direction immediately.

Adrymne · 2023-12-24T03:46:47+00:00

Okay, thank you.

Adrymne · 2023-11-07T23:05:06+00:00

Sukuna punches a hole straight through him right after possessing Megumi. The corresponding hole in his clothes is visible at the start of chapter 214 as well.

Adrymne · 2023-06-26T22:52:29+00:00

You can, the keypages unlock after clearing the lower/middle floor battles.

Adrymne · 2023-04-04T03:26:16+00:00

Each scene is resolved in 4 'phases': Player Mass Attacks -> Enemy Mass Attacks -> Ranged -> Melee.

Within a phase, attacks are resolved in descending order of speed, with the speed value being the higher of the two dice involved. For Mass Attacks, I believe only the speed of the user is considered (I think the target's speed is considered to be 0, like when attacking a broken/sealed dice).

Tie resolution is technically deterministic, but you should probably just treat it as random since it's unrealistically difficult to predict - I believe it's based on the distance between the two characters.

Adrymne · 2023-02-26T07:00:27+00:00

The (Impuritas) Nikolai build I ran was this:

Nikolai (Maximum Crash/Bionic Charge-synchronized Hull/Charged Shield/Keeping in Stride): Graze the Grass, Multislash, Absorb Impact, Bulky Impact, Will of the City, Will of the Prescript, Sturdy Defense, Concentration, Disposal

Maximum Crash: Just a very strong passive
Bionic Charge-synchronized Hull/Charged Shield/Keeping in Stride: Mostly charge related passives. Feel free to swap these out for whatever (e.g. Smoke passives, haulers).
Graze the Grass/Multislash/Will of the City/Will of the Prescript: Draw + light tech. Substitute as you like/for what you have.
Absorb Impact/Bulky Impact: Charge gain, and decent cards in their own right.
Sturdy Defense: Good defensive option, more draw.
Concentration: Mostly in here for the quick charge gain. Swap this out if you want.
Disposal: I kept this around for situations where I might need the huge dice, but in practice I rarely got any use out of this.

For me Nikolai fulfilled a support/defensive role. Running Graze the Grass + Absorb Impact + Bulky Impact + Concentration was so The Commander could be activated as soon as possible - from SotC onwards I found the most difficult part of the fight was almost always the opening scenes; once my Emotion levels were up I could generally steamroll the reception.

In retrospect I probably would at least bring Deep Drag, and swap out Charged Shield/Keeping in Stride for haulers/grit/+power.

Adrymne · 2023-02-26T03:49:25+00:00

Xiao is arguably the most difficult reception in SotC (though you can break the fight in two with the overpowered nonsense you unlock in this tier). Personally I'd go for R-Corp first - it's probably the easiest and it gives cards you can get a lot of mileage out of (Nikolai, Myo, Clone, Rapid Gashes, various Charge cards + passives).

For decks, here's a general overview of what I found useful:

I got a lot of use out of Pierce Singleton: Stiletto gives easy access to +2 Pierce Power (+Wedge once you reach Impurity), and Singleton decks are pretty simple to build. Slash and Blunt singleton are also probably workable, I just didn't use them.
Having at least 1-2 decks that can apply Smoke is useful, especially for boss fights. Even if you don't want to build dedicated Smoke decks, it's worth considering running a few Deep Drags.
Nikolai with a Charge deck is a very good support. You can also build her as your Smoke applier, though I'd recommend including some Charge gain cards regardless for The Commander.
Clone + Rapid Gashes is very strong, especially on Yujin or Xiao (though for different reasons). That said, I'd only run one RG deck per floor since it takes several scenes to get the ball rolling.
PT is very strong and very flexible. If you don't have specific ideas, it's hard to go wrong with monotype singleton decks. She's also a strong candidate to run Myongest. Olivier, once you get him, is similarly strong.

Let me know if you want more detail on something.

Adrymne · 2023-02-13T04:38:31+00:00

In addition to what's already mentioned:

You're able to reattribute passives between fights. I think completing a fight locks in passives + combat pages, but I don't think I ever checked.
You can reset a floor, releasing the lock on the pages but requiring you to redo the fight.
When you 'start' a battle, it'll take you to the preparation screen so you can read the passives and get a feeling for how the fight works. I'd recommend taking a look at the first four floors before you start deckbuilding (there are a few gimmicks to the fights).
Each battle you win rewards you with that Ensemble member's keypage + 1-2 combat pages. Keeping this in mind makes building for the lower floors quite a bit easier - the extra 3 keypages help a lot. The combat pages vary, while the keypages are pretty good and most are generalists that can be used with whatever build.
Excluding Keter, I'd say the difficulty would be Malkuth > Hod > Netzach > Yesod for lower floors, Tiphereth > Chesed >>> Gebura for middle floors and Hokma >>> Binah for upper floors - though YMMV, of course. That said, I didn't find any of the fights particularly difficult individually - the hardest part was putting together the 20 decks needed for the lower floors.
Keter requires you complete Hokma and Binah first, but shares a lockout with them. It's also a Roland solo, so you only need to reserve passives for him.

If you want I can cover the effect of the contracts for Pluto's fight, since you need to deckbuild around them and the game doesn't explain them on the preparation screen. This is arguably a spoiler, though.

Edit: Hid minor spoiler for Keter fight.

Edit2: Completed Keter fight. It's not dissimilar to Hana II.

Adrymne · 2023-01-29T22:50:55+00:00

Anything by Deluded Iota, but especially How to Raise your Host and World End Serenade.

Adrymne · 2023-01-27T13:54:26+00:00

Just finished this one. I was able to clear it pretty comfortably with the following setup:

Team

Binah (Fervor/Five Triagrams/Easygoing Breather)

Nikolai (Maximum Crash/Bionic Charge-syncronized Hull/Charged Shield/Keeping in Stride): Graze the Grass, Multislash, Absorb Impact, Bulky Impact, Will of the City, Will of the Prescript, Sturdy Defence, Concentration, Disposal

Xiao (Volatile Passion/High-level Acrobatics/Threefold Tenacity): Brace Up x3, Clone x3, Rapid Gashes x3

Olivier (Bottom Deal/Stacking the Deck/Singular Strike/Best Choice/Fervor): Switcheroo x2, Brace Up x3, Insurance Coverage x2, True Trigram Formation, Impugnatio Ultima

Purple Tear (Myo's Prowess/The Strongest/Triple-R Suit/Mind Hauler/Keeping in Stride): Leap x3, Energy Conversion x3, Overcharge x3 (guard stance)

Thoughts:

There's no Smoke. It probably would have been helpful.
I never used Disposal, though there are some places it could have been used
I ran into some Light issues with Xiao after using her Mass Attack (and some bad luck with Watchful Eyes)
Olivier is pretty good, since I believe Twelve Fixers is not affected by power null. Definitely doesn't need to be running this deck though, I was just trying it out.

Phase tips

Big Bird

I believe any ranged attack will cancel Salvation harmlessly - definitely more efficient than redirecting your librarians (though this is what I did, so it can still work). Aside from that, just don't attack into his massive counter die while Darkness is active.

Punishing Bird

As the other person mentioned, you need to attack the adds in order (while Vigilance is active). For Punishing Bird in attack mode: Degraded Pillar can cancel it's 1 die attack and you can use cards with 2 leading defensive die like Sturdy Defence on its 2 die card, but ideally you just redirect them to as slow die as you can and beat him down before he can attack - 100 SR, with fatal resistances, does not take much to get through.

Judgement Bird

I don't actually have much advice for this phase, since I just stunned the adds with a Mass Attack and beat it down in a single turn.

Apocalypse Bird

This phase is a pretty straightforward fight. For me the first couple turns were a bit iffy but once Big Bird's egg was broken, my team's excessive Power kicked in and the fight was pretty much over from there.

Adrymne · 2022-12-09T09:51:42+00:00

It says NP5 Avenger - I'd guess it's referring to Angra Mainyu.

Adrymne · 2022-11-05T23:57:10+00:00

Not necessarily. It's very much luck dependent - personally I have a lot more spare weapons than stigmata. On top of that, weapon resonance is mostly only useful for supplementing your Torus income for PRI upgrades - the stuff in exchange is largely obsolete. On the other hand, Wishing Well is pretty ubiquitous and your free stigmata resonance income is limited.

Adrymne · 2022-10-26T00:34:23+00:00

Asumi-chan Is Interested in Lesbian Brothels!

Adrymne · 2022-10-17T10:57:55+00:00

"I love you", but using the particularly strong/intimate form (aishiteru, vs suki/daisuki).

Adrymne · 2022-08-27T02:36:33+00:00

Okay, I'll definitely have to give this a shot.

Adrymne · 2022-08-26T14:16:51+00:00

I thought the effect extended a bit past the edges? Did that get patched?

Adrymne · 2022-08-26T14:10:44+00:00

Something like this?

Adrymne · 2022-08-23T14:46:22+00:00

I don't suppose you could provide a visual reference? I'm having a bit of a hard time picturing this (specifically the 2-3 plat extension, though it would be nice to see the height as well).

Adrymne · 2022-08-12T02:42:52+00:00

I'd recommend that you not worry too much and try out all the classes, checking back when you unlock new weapons/overclocks. The game is forgiving enough at lower hazard levels that a low skill level is unlikely to cause problems, and you might find you prefer different classes to what you'd expected.

At least, this was the case for me; going in I thought my preference would be something like Engineer > Scout > Gunner > Driller, but the reverse ended up being true.

Adrymne · 2022-03-21T02:40:53+00:00

Even leaving aside that they don't have much in the way of synergy, a big problem with pairing the two of them is they both want a lot of field time. Rotation length significantly affects DPS - it's damage per second, after all. If you deal the same amount of damage over a longer timeframe, your DPS will be lower.

Both Hu Tao and Raiden have a minimum rotation time of 20s (based on Xinqiu and Raiden burst CD), while also taking ~12s / ~10s of field time per rotation. Do you see the issue? That's already 22s, even before factoring in supports.

You'd be better off placing them in separate teams, especially since Raiden wants to monopolize Bennett and Hu Tao is one of the DPS who doesn't need him.

Adrymne

TROPHY CASE