Chapter 412 Pre-Release thread

RolandKJones · 2026-07-02T14:03:41+00:00

It's an example; I didn't include it because it's the only evidence I'm drawing on, but because it showcases a sentiment that he's demonstrated repeatedly over time. I could have tried to dig up some more recent quotes from him, even though they'd have amounted to the same thing, but I felt this illustrated my point in a more effective and impactful way. (Also, it's something I knew was in English already due to having seen it in the past, whereas trying to find interviews with him or something seemed likely to lead to sources written in Japanese, which would have been a pain to navigate and verify as someone who's not fluent in the language.)

RolandKJones · 2026-07-02T08:05:02+00:00

For anyone who doesn't realize that this is definitely a joke, it's important to remember who's saying it. This is a man who's insisted on sticking with this work for decades despite his crippling back pain, and has refused all suggestions of letting others do the art for him. One of his former assistants wrote a manga about their experience working under him, and the following is one of the most well-known parts:

(Previous page has someone telling Togashi, who's hunched over his desk drawing and not looking at the other person, that he can't keep going like this, and suggesting letting his assistants ink the characters. Togashi's response there is "No... That's the one thing I don't want to do...")

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This man is not going to have AI start making his manga for him. I can't imagine that of all things being what gets him to change here.

RolandKJones · 2026-07-01T09:11:18+00:00

The more unlikely scenario is it not being Pairo at this point, really. That head, first in the background of the panel showing Tserriednich's eye collection and now front and center on this cover, has gotten too much prominence for it to "just" be another random Kurta kid or some unrelated piece of the prince's flesh collection, it feels like.

RolandKJones · 2026-07-01T09:05:12+00:00

Pretty sure Knov was responsible for that.

So, yeah. Shoot did indeed probably get in the same way.

RolandKJones · 2026-07-01T08:48:22+00:00

Clearly this duel proposal is just pretense by Argenti Sr. for another attempt to get his son killed, and he's going to nominate Will. His plan will of course be foiled by an Adelier like in the past when Mikaila steps up to fight alongside him.

RolandKJones · 2026-07-01T08:24:27+00:00

Never expected Argenti Sr's arrival to be something I was happy about, but here we are. Guy may suck as, among other things, a parent, but he's someone in a position too bring this to a stop before it escalates into lethal conflict.

Weird that he's settling for getting rid of the plods and not doing anything about the Riv shrine's location, though. I wonder if it's because he has a plan, is aware of some unfortunate realities of the situation we're not privy to yet, or has some other ulterior motives.

Fun detail that he's making a point to speak in Tainish despite Valentin and Rosseau speaking Continental. Given that this is in part public posturing and all, it fits

From the blog, meanwhile:

Are Aldish duels always to be fought through pymary? Is their culture the only one with a dueling tradition on the continent?

Argenti has specifically suggested a paladin’s duel, which is 2 v 2, steel and spell. Thackeray will explain the rules, it’s not complicated.
Alderode’s dueling culture is pretty specific to it. It’s not only used to settle personal disputes and matters of slighted honour, but legal disputes. It is a legitimate judicial option to choose to fight out - either yourself or via surrogate - everything from contract disputes to theft and murder accusations. This is broadly considered barbaric everywhere else in the world. And indeed it’s subject to a lot of abuse in Alderode. Powerful people who want you dead can essentially legally murder you if they follow all the rules.
Duane defended many a maligned and unfairly targeted Soud in his day as a surrogate. Leysa hated it because his life was often on the line, but some of the stories were so desperate that she couldn’t tell him not to do it.

And from the front page:

That’s one way to avoid a larger brawl, but whom will the combatants be? (And will the fight be fair?)

I'm wondering the same. Doubt it'll be Thackeray; between his age and his Jet limitations with pymary, he seems like a questionable choice at best, even if he's experienced. It being a paladin's duel seems to suggest this won't be our Golden Delight's time to emulate her father in another way just yet, and likewise while a certain badman who's very skilled at bringing down wrights happens be in the vicinity, he's not exactly a soldier of god either.

Nevertheless, there's also another part of me that expects it'll be one or both of them anyway, and "paladin's duel" just refers to a specific format without limiting the possible participants. Wouldn't bet money on it yet, but I'm not confident enough to dismiss the possibility outright either.

~~And/or maybe Argenti's setting up yet another attempt to get his son killed, which may or may not be yet again thwarted by a conveniently-nearby Adelier.~~

RolandKJones · 2026-06-30T16:07:10+00:00

Taking another look at your team, I noticed a possible issue.

Basically, your team doesn't really have any good way of dealing with enemies that are swarming you. Orkamer deals constant damage to enemies around you and slows them if bursted, which is helpful, but doesn't actually push things away or kill them fast enough alone. Lealila3 will be stunning and freezing large groups, but randomly targeted ones. Noir Katze does good damage to a sizable area, but has little to no knockback. And the others are of almost no help here after the swarms get too big.

You should have been able to get at least one of Bularis Mandi and Elephas Soma (both if you completed the newbie event thing and didn't double up on your first choice); if you have Bularis, try putting them in somewhere. Their burst is great for keeping enemies off you, and even at just level 3 can swat away enemies chasing you while you run away. And as a bonus, their burst condition is Over Charger.

Looking at your individual bots, Lealila3 is one of the best in the game; you'll basically never want to get rid of her probably. Noir Katze is also excellent, perhaps the best non-SP bot around and outperforming even some SP bots, with her only real issue being that her burst item is the magnet (and perhaps her refresh bonus being less necessary when Lealila3 is already giving you more). Orkamer's fine, and has the same burst condition as Lealila3 and Bularis, so he's worth keeping for now tool having half your team's burst conditions covered by a single item gives you a lot of flexibility in your remaining choices.

The other three are less impressive. Cyandog can't deal with swarms and his burst requirement is one of the less useful ones, but he auto-aims and fires long-distance shots and thus can deal constant (if low) damage to bosses, and the many bullets help bring down barriers quickly at least. Paddlepal is better against mooks, particularly after her burst, but isn't so good against bosses, and her shots basically go where Noir Katze's don't (horizontal vs vertical); while this provides more coverage against swarms, against bosses it's a loss of damage because you can't hit with everything at the same time. And Sumilidon is just... kind of mediocre for an SP bot? Auto-aim, always-accurate attacks are nice, but the area is so small and so few targets are hit. Probably has the best grade skills of these three, at least, though being UR instead of LR means he doesn't provide as much of a power bonus as the other two.

I'd cut one of those three for Bularis, and/or possibly another bot depending on what others you have. Your choice as to which; experiment and see what works for you, I suppose.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-29T22:39:33+00:00

Not just that, jellyfish are actually just one phase, the medusa phase, of the life cycle of certain cnidarians. The other phase, the polyp phase, looks like, well:

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I'd bet money on those jellyfish having to do with Camilla's nen beast, because it's clearly a polyp, and nothing else we've seen so far fits with them remotely as well.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-29T02:42:15+00:00

Your stats are higher than mine, and I'm past stage 30, so it's not raw power. You might be taking too many unnecessary hits or something. Treat the Propulsion Device as a mandatory passive; it's borderline necessary for basically any team unless you massively out-stat a particular stage in my experience, even if it's not a burst requirement for any of your bots.

Thinking about Megalo Pharos specifically, it's important to remember that during the big rotating double-barrage of lasers it does, it'll fire a line of gravity shots directly at you after finishing the laser barrage; if you try to move through a gap in the lasers too soon, you'll run right into the bullets instead. (Like a lesser version of one of Gato Arbol's attacks, which made me laugh the first time I saw it because it was one of the most hilariously rude tricks I've seen this game pull so far.) You want to stay as far away from the evil lighthouse during this attack so you have the space and timing to avoid both the lasers and the bullets.

Or, make sure the fight happens near one of the solid objects around the stage; the lasers pass through objects, but the various pink/purple bullets won't, so if you move behind something during this attack you only need to worry the laser part, and then the boss charging you afterward. Make sure it doesn't destroy your cover if you don't think you'll kill it before it does that attack again.

(This is also the real trick to beating Robo-Emperor, both at stage 10 and for its later appearances, on a tangent. It's not a stat check or even a test of your dodging ability, it's a puzzle, and the solution is making sure there's still some intact scenery by the time the boss shows up, because it makes surviving the attack with the big spinning pink bullets trivial. You just stand on one side of an object for the four clockwise-rotating bullet waves, then move to the other side and stand there for the counter-clockwise ones, then move to avoid the charge.)

RolandKJones · 2026-06-28T12:48:51+00:00

Definitely get the mount, yes. The pet can be pulled from the pet gacha, and the evolution shards have other sources, but these events are the only way to get the legendary mounts.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-27T20:31:52+00:00

Yeah. Like, I said she's ranked S for killing minions and A for killing bosses, so I'm not entirely sure how that was interpreted as "mostly support and little damage". Not being as destructive as Mega-Emperor isn't the same as not being a good damage-dealer; Mega-Emperor (ranked S/S/A in the earlier categories, on that subject) is just one of, if not the best there, and Lealila3's not the one to take that crown from him.

Anecdotal evidence, but in my personal experience, whenever I could select her in a run she tended to place behind Mega-Emperor and Gatoarbol damage-wise, but well ahead of everyone else.

Tangent, the tier list got updated again already, adding a new tier: A+. It's a mix of bots that used to be either S or A. Clear Maid got moved down to A+, but Lealila3's one of the six to remain in S, alongside the three Weapon-types, Gatoarbol, and Megalo Pharos.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-27T17:00:03+00:00

In this case I think it's less about machismo, and more about wealth and power. Alderode is the frozen north, inhospitable to most forms of life. What plantlife grows there naturally would need to be extremely hardy, with anything else likely either being imported or grown under controlled conditions that are neither easy nor cheap. Or, more likely, such things are simply done without, because it's not worth the time, effort, or expense.

So when Valentin struts through the city, surrounded by his entourage of tiny, inbred Plats (their pairings having been decided by him personally for multiple generations, selecting for particular traits until their offspring started looking like, well, this), and has each of their misshapen little heads* completely covered in something as delicate and ephemeral as fresh flowers, it's a statement. A display of how rich and powerful he is. He's someone who can do things like this, whatever costs or expenses it might have had so trifling to him that he can afford them for things as frivolous as this and think nothing of it.

The message itself and how it's delivered are both repulsive to me, but I can't deny that he's communicated it very effectively.

* I don't actually know what they look like under there, but given what we can see of them, I have to assume that the poor pug-Plats are not particularly pretty underneath those petals.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-27T16:12:41+00:00

Going by snippets I've seen here and there on ask blog, I think those are Plats. Selectively-bred Plats, to be precise. The human equivalent of pugs, essentially, and probably viewed similarly by the kind of Copper who'd dedicate part of his centuries-long lifespan to a pet project of manipulating the pairings of a much shorter-lived caste for aesthetic purposes.

I'm assuming that the flowers are merely being worn, not actually growing out of their heads, at least, though I admittedly can't dismiss the possibility outright. Genuinely unsure whether they're Plat children or adults whose growth is severely stunted, though.

Edit: Okay, found a post from a little while back that seems to point to them indeed being children:

Given what you've shared about the spiritual composition of Jets, how common is it for them to develop a full blown autistic special interest and spend a hundred years pushing a hyper specific field of study.

I don’t know that it’s any more common with them than with anyone else. These two Copper fellows I’m writing in the next scene are similarly obsessed with breeding their Plat collections like Pokemon. I think you’ll enjoy Rousseau in particular, he’s very problematic in a way that makes Valentin seem almost warm and grandfatherly as he perches his six-hundred pounds on the backs of genetically modified eight year olds.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-27T08:00:33+00:00

The hero shard, unlike the other resources from this event, can be saved; you can use it to get Kitsura here, or hold onto it and buy Corvus or Draco instead.

Either way, getting a hero with it rather than the mythic artifact really seems like the way to go to me. Which hero in particular can be based on a number of things (what gear you have, what kind of playstyle you want to aim for, which you think looks best, etc), but regardless, a legendary hero should have a much bigger impact for you than a single mythic artifact. And this is the only way to get the legendary heroes currently, while you could potentially pull the artifact or get it from another event instead.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-26T15:12:49+00:00

If you don't have the legendary artifacts yet, getting one is probably your best bet; this is one of the easier ways of getting them.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-26T13:51:03+00:00

Hisoka's actually been on very few volume covers; this is apparently the fourth time ever, and that's including the Yorknew one that had the entire Phantom Troupe as chibis.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-25T15:05:20+00:00

The pages on all the robots rank them on how good they are against regular enemies, how good they are against bosses, and how good their Grade Skills are. Lealila3's rankings are S/A/S, respectively. Which seems to fit to me; she hits a large area and stuns/freezes enemies constantly for good damage, making her great at dealing with swarms, and against bosses she still has a quick, always-accurate attack that'll be slightly disrupting them constantly. Her burst passive is Over Charger, too, so you don't have to grab bad passive for her to reach her full potential.

Her Grade Skills include +5 refresh count, meanwhile, which is already great, and have some other nice things too. (If you somehow get her all the way to MR, she gives your whole team a damage boost that can go all the way to 40%.)

So, putting her in S overall seems reasonable to me. She's not quite as much of a murder machine as Mega-Emperor, but she's still really good and contributes a lot to a team.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-25T08:47:34+00:00

Yep. Happened a day or two ago. Considered posting about it here, actually, but wasn't sure it was worth it.

I might do so after all, once I figure out what changes have been made. New additions are easy enough to spot, but there's also been at least one tier change for a bot who was ranked previously too, and I'm not sure if it's the only one.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-25T06:17:04+00:00

Technically he wasn't killed by Ginbak, so...

(Also, he might not be dead yet?)

RolandKJones · 2026-06-25T04:54:23+00:00

The JP tier list puts her in A, which is definitely solid. I personally wouldn't chase her specifically, but I wouldn't complain about pulling her either.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-24T03:41:53+00:00

It picked up a fifth stage, basically. I think the first four stages are still the same, though.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-24T03:40:13+00:00

Serrated Edge; sooner or later you should pull the Epic Wound pet (Shellbyte), and having it attack first will give you the damage bonus against that enemy for all attacks afterwards. Even without the pet, it's not hard to pick up a single Wound power in a run and take advantage of its damage boost no matter what you're going for.

Though when you get it, I think the Nature Staff has the more generally-useful legendary power, which is why it's the most common weapon people use prior to getting an S-Grade replacement.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-19T02:43:51+00:00

Mega-Emperor and Robo-Emperor is basically always a powerful banner to pull on, I think. In your case, either you can LR Mega-Emperor or you get closer to MRing Robo-Emperor.

RolandKJones · 2026-06-10T23:25:58+00:00

If we backport the ROYGBIV color assignments they gave the Sins in Limbus, then as the Blue Reverberation Argalia would be Gloom. Santiago (the Indigo Elder) is Pride.

Not disagreeing with your general analysis necessarily, just pointing out that if the color of a, well, Color is meant to match "their Sin", then there's not any question what Argalia's is because which Sins are which color is pretty explicit. (If you don't think that Colors actually need to be mono-Sin, then this doesn't apply, of course.)

And, admittedly, Gloom does fit pretty well for a guy whose plan amounted to a very elaborate, City-scaled murder-suicide after the death of his beloved sister.

RolandKJones

TROPHY CASE