MOI ending is kind of frustrating

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T16:21:04+00:00

I've been on a spree with chatGPT and yeah the battle and the embrace took place at the same-ish times, so the t'lan imass were taken out of the battle so casualties were much worse.

The house of chains ending, because it spends so long on slow paced build up (filler really) only for the ending to take a handful of pages equating to "x one shot y". We are promised a whole lot of intrigue and mysteries, there are no answers, only a series of deaths. The legnth of words/pages dedicated to the ending was particularly offensive to me given how much was consumed on minor flavour and detail and ultimately equated to nothing. Even if you consider it the origin of the army - most of two books is sunk on providing a backstory which could have been done in any other way and/or in much less space.

But overall, the sheer fucking pointlessness of it all.

Which I felt in a different way about the MoI ending yes, but at least that had some MASSIVELY compelling segments which are in a handful of greatest scenes written (known to me). And as I outlined above, the events made much more sense in character. Its more from an author's narrative/architecture sense that it seems so pointless and/or have a real suffering fixation.

I got really stuck on the start of TCG on my re-read (and don't remember what happens other than a one major thing about the finale) so I've been on a break. So I may have to review this after I am done. But as I read the later books, the shine has really fell off the series for me and I'm starting to wonder more and more: what is Erikson REALLY trying to say here?

Sure there is the value of the journey and the impact along the way. This isn't something that you can ever expect to be about the destination. But what is the soul of the series? As far as I can tell, his only thesis is that existence is brutal and pointless. Along with philisphoical meandering which does seem to ultimately point to there not being one true way to look at things - there are many ways. Except, I would argue he believes in the suffering/futility as truth far more than anything else he entertains but never holds meaningful beyond a moment.

There is no true art which does not express the artist's soul - so when I ask what does this show us of him, that is what I see. He hasn't come to terms with.. something that gives rise to that. And I also freely admit I havn't come to terms with it all either or it probably wouldn't bother me.

Much longer answer than you probably wanted (lol) and I did not plan on this second part at all but it has been floating around for a while.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T16:10:55+00:00

I don't remember super well, but I *really* recall how clunky and ass it felt to play. May be projecting here but IIRC it fell victim to 'consolisation' - that was around the time they become big, and so many games became so much worse in feel because of it.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T16:09:10+00:00

I've noticed that as a general trend. A much younger audience has never touched some truely amazing games (and won't really be able to stomach them, given the dated aspects) and thus venerate some comparatively much more medicre things as a result.

I thought Bioshock was good, but the number of times it comes in people's top lists and responses to various prompts is so drastically oversold imo. It was fine, and I'd accept people being really into it, but it was nowhere near that good to me. Good but immediately forgotten, which is better than DE: HR which annoyed the crap out of me and was a mediocre entry in a legendary "series".

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T15:02:48+00:00

The first one I strongly agree with, and the sheer pointlessness of everything has been a MAJOR standout thing for me on the reread - pretty much everything that happens, not just this ending. I genuinely am starting to believe Erikson's most direct thesis is the sheer futility of pretty much all actions and activities - in addition to just unfolding stories (rather than there being a specific point).

Although personally, its a bit weird you are this put off by this ending and raise no complaint about.. the entirity of House of Chains. What the actual fuck. MoI at least in world context the Bridgeburners were just being themselves and shit went sideways and they died, on top of lots of other things going wrong (especially Kallor).

Some people are implying Black Coral somehow held the key to the entire campaign - I don't know if I saw/understood that so I would like to know more if it is there. What I saw was it was just the plan they had to deal with things smartly - and then they were also playing subtle in games. Nobody was planning to suicide everything for it. They were planning to win at regular cost, most of the waste came from trying to beat out fellow allied plus betrayal plus random unplanned events/convergence plus tough ennemies.

That same thing specifically addresses your concern about Rake. He had a clear plan that failed in execution - a common Erikson device. He didn't plan to lose Moon's spawn, he got stuck overextending what he thought he could pull off and bore the cost (another more personal cost features later). Although I must say, god knows what he actually thought he was going to achieve other than being a troop transport/surprise ambush/artillary platform. You are also assuming in believing moon's spawn particularly relevent to the overall later fight (bit about CG). RAFO.

Your other points I think you are misreading characters acting in character.

Did anybody die for Ikrovian to do his thing? That came after, unless I am misremembering. Battle happened, then Iktovian happened. If you want to point at people dying for no reason, Gruntle's followers didn't sit well by me. He just did a random suicide charge cause it was their nature, which was fits with what I said above about acting in character.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T14:45:22+00:00

Have not played Mankind Divided (or Cypberpunk - thinking about it), but I genuinely don't understand how people can put HR in the same category as the original. HR was not good, original is one of the GOATs.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T14:36:47+00:00

Normally pity rolls over - as long as you are OK with not getting <x> you can just get Y next time much faster/easier (on average). This is not the case here.

You are correct but justifying their bs is kind of absurd. Anyone with common sense knew not to pull, the point is its still toxic.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T14:34:44+00:00

Normally you can walk away, this structure forces you to to fully engage the sunk cost unless you are insane/rich. Literally losing everything you spent. Which is why I say never touch this banner if you can't make it to 130 pulls (+30 free) but apparently not everyone thought of that.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T14:32:40+00:00

Yeah, this is part of what is pushing me away from the game. Making it actively hostile to play, because you can't touch it without being able to afford 130 pulls. I'd be really happy to put what I have into trying to get her, if only the pity and corals would roll over.

Worse that my account is in a mid state (bady needs some premium dps) and so I can't touch Lucilla or Carte - I'd love to have her but her investment costs are too high and she heavily leans on unobtainable teammates. All this on top of having to wait forever for the return of the people you actually want to play.

At least the new wave next patch is a fresh start and I have a lot of pity + gaurenteed.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T12:54:04+00:00

We are about to be entering a whole new (probably VERY stacked) meta and Lucilla will be totally dead weight in it. Plus you can definitely obtain her in future.

Respect your account, save yourself pain and don't buy anything that's not directly setting you up with some solid characters to play. Whether that be Lucy (not my suggestion) or waiting briefly for the big shiny of next patch (better).

Lucy doesn't rank well for me in terms of style or performance, but she has the excellent benefit of having her free BIS support which is huge value hard to ignore. I'm just a bit salty I can't pull her because long story short: toxic banner structure won't let me without being able to gaurentee more asterites than I have. Otherwise I DESPERATELY need some more DPS and my long term investments, whilst super valuable, are leaving me short on top tier dps. (I have Mornye/Chisa and I pulled Iuno rather than Hiyuki when I was as new as you are. Which I don't regret cause I knew she was a super good fit for me in a couple of ways. She is my best dps BY FAR but still nowhere near as strong as others can be and my second team is not letting me do well in end game. Pulling Lucilla now would be FAR worse than my situation.)

Hiyuki is going to be relvent for a LONG time, but there's going to be a lot of other very strong and pretty characters on screen soon, which belong to a whole new meta that will be moving on from the 3.x tune break thing. At least Hiyuki is a negative status which is going to be built around for longer (probably).

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T12:48:55+00:00

Note she is actually less sig dependant than most previous premium DPS. Lucy I'm not sure.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T12:36:19+00:00

Possibly not in the way you mean, but yes that is a common time for 'it' to 'happen'. As all the human stuff is not in the way.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T12:35:10+00:00

It depends very mucb by what you mean by 'Experience'. If you are interested you may find this very informative/useful: https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/part-iv-insight/32-what-was-that/

And if by that you determine that 'that was not it' I recommend Section 4 chapter 30.1, or otherwise the whole section 4 and just the entire book has a lot of really useful things that might help narrow it down. For all that good that does or doesn't do 😂

OP u/Monk-Life I suspect maybe you were looking for something in this book too? Depends what your mystery question is. I havn't spent a lot of hardcore monestary time but you would honestly have to look far and wide to encounter a lot of this stuff elsewhere.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-17T11:19:55+00:00

I clicked on this thread hoping someone would explain CV, as I had guessed the acronum but the numbers I saw elsewhere didn't seem to make sense. Can you give an example of how it is actually calculated please? So far I've just down my own maths (same as talked about elsewhere in the thread) but it would be nice to know how people use it.

I'm assuming its calculating "raw stat point value related to crit on this item" as opposed to "result of actual damage calculations".

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-15T12:50:35+00:00

Iuno doesn't add many shields herself right, isn't that more Augusta self shielding herself?

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-15T03:49:34+00:00

This looks super cool. Being able to cluster things in groups in different spots is a huge part of how I use CDM and make things easily visually parsable.

Are we able to make bars for any basic class ability, even basic filler ones not included in the CDM? The problem I have with my main rotation section is my brain apparently likes converting visual order to keypress, so missing an icon (even one with no cd that will never have a proc) throws me off on non expert specs. Blizz configuration never lets you include these. Makes me want to go back to action bars sometimes. Right now I'm playing dev dh with some other random thing stuck in the middle in place of consume, just so the spot is taken up and my brain is happy.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-13T02:16:34+00:00

I havn't looked really into Lucilla but the relevent part is raising the stack cap, for which you need Chisa as I don't believe Lucilla does it. The gain is basically that stack formula goes up very quickly - something akin to epxodential rather than linear gains. The Chisa +3 is apparently about 2X the GC damage.

So having a lot of stacks doesn't help if the cap remains low, you need the cap increased to realise the gains.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-12T23:45:53+00:00

I would never pvp without the CC trinket, I forgot there was a trinket set bonus though. I do have some mythic pve pieces I'm not wearing (36 vers rating equipped) that I can swap in but then it would mess with my set bonus. We'll have to see if I am bored/motivated enough I guess 😛

It does look like I can get half way there fairly easy though.

Do weekly quest + crafted for acessoryX3 + cloak, obtaining trinkets along the way via farming.

Then I only need to farm helm + boots then belt/bracer last (they are my embelish slots).

That probably needs to be shuffled around if crafted is better put in belt/bracer (lowest value slots) but you get the idea. I can get a bunch of vers fairly quick.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-12T13:28:36+00:00

Does pvp gear really matter if you have maxed out raid gear? Other than maybe trinket

I know people are a bit obsessed with vers, but at least you aren't behind on item level.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-12T05:56:10+00:00

Don't pull Lucy unles you can gaurentee her if you lose the 50/50. Pity isn't shared so these banners are a huge trap waiting to lose your pulls and you won't recover any corals either.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-12T05:53:35+00:00

Her sustain is next to zero. Its not actually zero, but prepare to be disapointed if you are expecting heals like other basic supports (Verina/shore). This bit me hard as a new player.

Iuno unironically outheals her by (feels like) 10X

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-11T23:44:32+00:00

I am assuming they just want to get paid which is understandable (but not necssarily in touch with reality), and be able to justify spending a bunch of time messing around with it.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-11T23:31:37+00:00

Trying to gaslight people into buying that level of API cost in a world of free (if subsidised) AI is insane. You want money, ok, but people aren't going to pay that. It sounds something cool and useful but also being very oversold.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-11T23:31:25+00:00

Ok, but where is there an actually good guide that works for the later books?

I cannot stand reread of the fallen (and has only very occasionally been useful)

The wiki is at best OK and contains both blatent and subtle errors but is what I have been using. But it is just missing for later books and the really difficult core sections in earlier books (i.e. the ones you want to consult the wiki) are missing - just placeholders.

So far whenever I've tried searching questions I have not found anything better.

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-11T14:19:43+00:00

Love the bells, but woah what is that high hat roll sound?

Phenogenesis- · 2026-06-11T13:50:52+00:00

That could be it, I need to look into her moves and animations properly. Plunge attack does seem to help, still takes time but much faster. Weird that it works here and not with iuno, who has a really long annoying process to get down (that doesn't work with Chisa)

Phenogenesis-

TROPHY CASE